A Dead Man in Barcelona (10 page)

‘You have chosen the right place,’ said a voice beside them.’

It was Ricardo. He dropped into a chair beside them. ‘You permit?’

‘Please join us,’ said Seymour.

A girl put a pot on the table and three plates. The pot contained a mixture of things, squid, shellfish and great lumps of fish: a sort of fishmonger stew.

‘This is where the fishermen eat,’ said Ricardo. ‘Also the people who work in the fish market. And many others, too.’

‘Provided they are Catalan?’ suggested Seymour.

Ricardo gave him a quick look.

‘Provided they are Catalan,’ he agreed.

‘It is just that I have been listening to the conversation,’ said Seymour.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Ricardo, ‘you have a good ear. And now, perhaps, that you have been here for a while, you are beginning to tell the difference between Catalan and Spanish.’

‘The fishermen are all Catalan?’

‘Mostly.’

Seymour picked a shrimp out of the pot.

‘Was Ramon Mas a Catalan?’ he asked.

‘Was Ramon Mas a Catalan?’

‘Andalusian, I think.’

‘But definitely not Catalan?’

‘Definitely not,’ said Ricardo. He signalled to the waitress and she put a bottle on the table. It was the local wine, strong, rough, and with a bit of a tang.

‘Why are you interested in Ramon?’ he asked.

‘I was wondering if Lockhart was interested in Ramon,’ said Seymour.

‘Not very,’ said Ricardo.

‘Someone told me he gave money to Ramon’s family.’

‘Did he?’ said Ricardo. ‘Or was it the police?’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it was Lockhart. He was always a generous man.’

‘Tender heart?’ suggested Seymour.

‘Why, yes,’ said Ricardo. ‘A tender heart.’

‘Too soft,’ said Seymour, ‘to bear grudges?’

The girl had brought a basket of coarse, thick, brown bread. Ricardo took one of the pieces and dipped it into the juice at the bottom of the pot.

‘It was not so much that,’ he said. ‘These people can’t afford to bear grudges. They are very poor. So poor that they have no choice other than to be realistic. If they see their livelihood threatened, they have to take action.’

‘Ye-es,’ said Seymour, ‘I see that. But Ramon was poor, too.’

‘Desperately,’ agreed Ricardo. ‘But he thought he saw a short-cut, you see.’

‘Was it that?’ said Seymour. ‘Or was it that he did not entirely share everyone else’s belief in what they were doing?’

‘That is possible,’ conceded Ricardo.

‘He being an Andalusian,’ said Seymour, ‘not a Catalan?’

‘It is possible.’

‘What,’ said Seymour, ‘was it that they were smuggling?’

‘Smuggling?’ said Ricardo.

‘A traditional pursuit along the coast,’ said Seymour, ‘and not one which, I would have thought, Ramon would ordinarily have objected to.’

He waited.

‘Probably not,’ said Ricardo.

‘Nor Lockhart either,’ said Seymour. ‘But, then, I can’t see why Lockhart would have been interested in smuggling, anyway. A bit small beer for him. Unless, for him, it wasn’t entirely to do with profit.’

‘For them, too,’ said Ricardo. ‘They may be poor, but it wasn’t just money. They are proud people. They have beliefs and ideals and values, too.’

‘Arms?’ said Seymour. ‘For the Catalans?’

Ricardo hesitated.

‘Was he selling them to you?’

‘No,’ said Ricardo. ‘It wasn’t like that. We went to him because we knew he could arrange it. With all his contacts.

‘Along the coast,’ said Seymour. ‘And in the military?’

‘Not so much the military,’ said Ricardo, ‘as with their suppliers.’

‘Of course. And with his sympathy for the Catalans.’

‘We paid for the arms,’ said Ricardo, ‘we didn’t pay him. He did it because . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Well, because he felt the way these poor, brave men do.’

Chantale tied a scarf around her hair and went down alone, without Seymour, to the little market beyond the soot-blackened church. It was an Arab market, of course, and she felt quite at home. She studied the fat tomatoes and squeezed the luminous aubergines and gazed long at the melons. There, too, she talked to the veiled shoppers in their long, dark burkas and compared notes. And she talked to the stall-holders and asked them about the provenance of their products. Were they local or had they come from ‘the other side’, from Algeria or Morocco?

Or Tangier, even? She herself came from Tangier. But she and her husband were thinking about moving over to ‘this side’. Was there scope here for a small fruit business? She had heard that it was hard but that in the long run you could do well. ‘That might be so,’ said the stall-holder she was talking to, but he had been here for six years and found that the run was longer than he had hoped.

‘It is like,’ he said, ‘a bird on a cliff. It can find a niche to build its nest and lay its eggs. But there is not much room on the ledge and the fledglings still have to go somewhere else to fly.’

‘There is not much money here,’ said the woman beside her, ‘even for the Spaniards.’

‘More than there is in Morocco, though,’ said another woman close by.

Chantale nodded.

‘So they say,’ she said.

‘But I haven’t found it yet,’ said the stall-keeper. ‘The Spaniards buy from their own.’

‘And keep to themselves,’ said the woman beside Chantale.

‘You find that?’ said Chantale, ‘We were told that it would not be like that.’

‘Depends what you’re selling,’ said the stall-holder, ‘and where you are.’

‘We were told there was a businessman here who might be able to help us,’ said Chantale. ‘An Englishman, not a Spaniard. His name is Lockhart.’

‘His name
was
Lockhart,’ corrected the stall-holder. ‘He’s dead now.’

‘Dead?’ said Chantale, as if shocked.

‘He might have helped you. He helped a lot of people.’

‘Arabs?’ said Chantale.

‘Arabs, too.’

‘Even Arabs,’ said the women beside them bitterly.

‘That may have been his undoing,’ said the stall-holder. ‘They say he went too far.’

‘In helping the Arabs?’

‘People here didn’t like it. And, you see, he wasn’t a Spaniard himself. He was an Englishman. And they said, “What is he doing here? Always with the Arabs. But making money from the Spanish.”’

‘He was married to a woman from Algiers. She came from a big family there. They traded all along the coast. People say they were the ones who gave Lockhart his start.’

‘Certainly he was close to them,’ said the stall-holder.

‘Until they fell out,’ said the woman.

‘Fell out?’ said Chantale.

‘When they heard he was playing around. With other women.’

‘They sent someone over. A brother, I think.’

‘But then it all got sorted out.’

‘They say his wife forgave him,’ said the stall-holder. ‘It’s best like that.’

‘I don’t know,’ objected the woman. ‘It’s always the woman who forgives.’

* * *

Chantale was thinking about this as she walked back to the hotel. And then her mind moved on to the difficulty of carving out a new life in a new country. She was thinking about herself, of course, and about Seymour. She was always thinking of that these days. But today she was thinking less about herself and more about Seymour. Suppose, instead of her moving to England, he moved to Morocco? That would get rid of the difficulties, wouldn’t it? At least from her point of view. She would have no hesitation about marrying him then. And he would manage all right in another country. She had seen him. He was at ease in Spain, as he had been at ease in Tangier. His own family had moved to England. His roots were not that deep in England.

But then, what would he do? She had asked herself that question before. He would have to find a job. What as? A policeman again? Not a chance. Neither the Moroccans nor the French, who now called the tune in Morocco, would have it. He would have to do something else. Set up a business, perhaps, as these people she had just been talking to had done. But what sort of business? She smiled. A fruit shop, perhaps? She couldn’t see it. Either for him or for her.

The Arab men were still lounging at the corner. They looked at her as she went past. They looked at her with hot eyes and sullen faces. They made her feel uncomfortable and she hurried on past them and back up past the scorched church and out into the open, leafy space of Las Ramblas. There she felt better.

She met Seymour and they went back to the hotel together. Two women were talking in the foyer. One of them was the proprietress of the hotel, whose grim visage had daunted Seymour’s hopes of the double room. She was always dressed in black. When she went out to the church, which she was always doing, two or three times a day, she covered her head and shoulders with a black shawl. He had never seen her smile.

But now she was talking animatedly to the other woman, as if they were old friends who had not met for a while. And, indeed, he learned later, they were old friends. They had been children at a convent school together. Which was why, when Nina had moved to Barcelona, and began teaching at her school, her mother had written to her old friend and asked her to keep an eye on her. For the other lady, the one the proprietress was talking to, was Nina’s mother.

She recognized him at once.

‘Señor Seymour –’

‘Señora!’

‘The Señor is looking into Lockhart’s death,’ Nina’s mother told her friend.

The proprietress clicked her tongue sympathetically.

‘Ah, Lockhart!’ she said, and shook her head.

‘Even in death he will not leave us alone,’ said Nina’s mother.

The proprietress put her hand over Nina’s mother’s hand.

‘Do not speak ill of the dead, Maria,’ she said. ‘With all his faults, he had a big heart.’

‘But a small head,’ said Nina’s mother.

‘And he loved his child.’

‘Sometimes love is a curse,’ said Nina’s mother.

Later in the evening Seymour and Chantale came down the stairs. The two women were still talking, the proprietress now sitting at the reception desk, Nina’s mother perched on a stool nearby.

‘Would you like some calico?’ she was saying. ‘I’ve just had a chance to get some cheap . . .’

Chapter Ten

As they passed Manuel’s café, on their way back after dinner that evening, Dolores came rushing out.

‘Where have you been?’ she said. ‘He’s sent me out twice to look for you!’

‘Manuel?’

‘And sent you a message! I know, I delivered it. I told him you weren’t there, at the hotel, and he said, “Where the hell is he?” And he sent me out again, and I’ve been looking all over the place!’

Manuel appeared in the doorway. ‘Ah, there you are! Look, this has been costing me. Four cups of coffee so far. Each! And Enrico keeps wanting me to add something stronger too.’

‘Enrico?’

He remembered now: the warder.

‘Not just Enrico,’ said Manuel. ‘They’ve all come.’

‘All?’

‘All the family. Wife, mother, even the children. Three! And little buggers, all of them. But I didn’t give them coffee. I sent them out. “Either they go or I go!” I said. “All right,” says Enrico, quick. “I’ll take them down to the playground.” “No, you won’t!” said his mother. “There could be money in this!” “No, you won’t!” said his wife. “There’s a woman in that playground and you’ll fall on her just as you did on the other one.”’

‘What
is
this?’ said Seymour.

Manuel led him inside. There, at the table in the kitchen, were Enrico and his family, a row of empty cups before them.

‘I got a message,’ said Manuel.

‘I sent it,’ said the mother.

‘I certainly didn’t!’ said Enrico.

‘You were not to be trusted,’ said his wife, bursting into tears. ‘I shall never trust you again! Never! Never!’

‘That a son of mine –’ said his mother.

‘Not a son, but a beast!’ said his wife, through sobs. ‘A ravenous beast!’

‘Now, look here –’ started Enrico.

‘And a dirty Arab, too!’ said his wife. ‘That is what hurts!’

‘That a son of mine –’

‘Conchita first,’ said the warder’s wife, ‘and then an Arab! How many more? Oh, how many more?’

‘Disgusting,’ said his mother. ‘That a son of mine –’

‘Look, I haven’t done
anything
–’ said the warder desperately.

‘Not for want of trying!’ said his wife darkly.

‘Not for want of trying!’

‘
She
approached
me
!’

‘And you surrendered at once!’

‘No, I didn’t! I just agreed to take him some food, that’s all.’

‘Ah, but was it all?’

‘She gave me three hundred pesetas.’

‘And what else did she give you, Enrico?’

‘Nothing!’

‘Three hundred pesetas is a lot of money,’ said the mother, watching.

‘She didn’t give you herself, by any chance?’ said his wife implacably.

‘No, she didn’t!’ protested Enrico. Then, goaded beyond endurance: ‘If only she had!’

‘But we know this!’ said Seymour. ‘There’s nothing new here. You all knew it.’

‘Ah, but what we didn’t know was that she was an Arab.’

‘I thought she was a decent Spanish lady,’ said Enrico’s wife.

‘Men are all the same!’ said his mother.

‘An Arab! You didn’t tell us she was an Arab. You let me think that she was a decent, honest Spanish woman. Suffering because the man she loved was in jail! Prepared to do anything to help the man she loved! Smuggle in files to cut through the bars of his cell window –’

‘There
aren’t
any bars! There
wasn’t
a file!’

‘She would have been ready to die for him if necessary!’

‘Ah!’ said the mother, sighing. ‘Women are like that.’

‘And now you tell me she was an Arab!’

‘That a son of mine –’

‘No, no, don’t start that again!’

‘– should betray the trust placed on him by His Excellency!’ finished the mother, eyeing her son balefully.

‘And his country!’ said his wife spiritedly.

‘Look, you were all in favour of it!’ said the warder. ‘You wanted to send in pies for all of them –’

‘Not for Arabs,’ said his mother.

‘To think of you talking to her!’ said his wife. ‘Fondling her –’

‘
Fondling
her?’ said her husband desperately.

‘Very probably,’ said his wife, facing up to things bravely.

‘I never touched –’

‘I never ‘Beast!’

‘All men are like that,’ said his mother philosophically. ‘Even my son!’

‘Even your son!’ echoes Enrico’s wife.

‘Not to mention his father.’

‘My God!’ said Enrico. ‘You’ll be bringing in Grandfather next.’

‘Him too –’

‘For God’s sake!’

‘Was that what you wanted to tell me?’ said Seymour.

‘We thought you would like to know. That she was an Arab.’

‘Well,’ said Seymour thoughtfully. ‘You’re right. I would.’

‘Well, that’s a relief!’ said Manuel.

‘You thought it was Dolores, didn’t you?’ said Seymour.

‘What?’ said Dolores.

‘You thought it was Dolores who had given Enrico the poisoned food.’

‘Yes,’ said Manuel, ‘yes, I did.’

‘You thought –’ said Dolores, stupefied.

‘I am sorry,’ said Manuel.

‘You surely did not think . . . But that was a terrible thing to think!’

‘I thought so, too,’ said Seymour. ‘For a moment.’

‘That is awful! How could you even suppose –’

‘I am sorry, Dolores,’ said Manuel. ‘Very sorry!’

‘But I loved him!’ she said.

‘It was partly because I knew that you loved him,’ said Seymour. ‘Loved him so much. And thought that perhaps he did not love you.’

‘Our love was not like that,’ she said. ‘We were not jealous of each other. We allowed ourselves things. I knew about him, he knew about me. And it didn’t matter. We found that when we came together, it would be as it always had been. The others were just – flings. For both of us. Really he loved me.’

‘Dolores –’

‘Yes, he did!’ she insisted. ‘“I’m just your bit on the side,” I said to him once. “Yes, but you’re my
special
bit on the side,” he said. “you’re like a second wife.” There! You see? He said it. “In fact,” he said, “if I were a Muslim and you were a Muslim and Leila would agree, I’d
make
you my second wife.” So you see, I was his wife. Almost.’

‘Dolores, Dolores!’ said Manuel, shaking his head.

‘I knew about his other women. Of course I did! But I didn’t mind. They wouldn’t last, I knew that. They never did. They never worried me. Except once. It was just before he died. He’d told me about this one. She was the wife of a high-up. She’d fallen for him, bang! Couldn’t live without him. She said. But she would have to. She was already married. And she was a Catholic, too. These married women!’ Dolores said, sighing. ‘Always getting in the way!

‘That what I told myself. She couldn’t be a real rival. She couldn’t be his wife. That’s what I told myself. But then I thought – this was after my visit to the prison, after Tragic Week, when I was doing a lot of thinking – I thought that maybe she felt like me, maybe she felt as much as me. And I – I almost felt sorry for her.

‘But then I thought, maybe she felt like me, and was just as jealous as I was. Because I was jealous, despite what I said just now. Deep down I was jealous. Very. And I thought maybe she was, too. And that maybe – maybe she had killed him. Because of that.

‘And then I thought, maybe it wasn’t her. It was him. Her husband. The high-up. Well, it could have been. He wouldn’t have liked it, would he? And he could have done it, couldn’t he? While he had Sam there, at his mercy . . . Well, he could, couldn’t he? He could have done it.

‘But then I thought, perhaps I was imagining things. I tried to put it out of my mind. But I couldn’t. I kept imagining . . . and then you came,’ she said to Seymour, ‘and I thought, maybe he will find out. And I thought, if it is a woman I will kill her. And if it’s a man, well, perhaps the authorities will kill him. And if they don’t, I will.

‘But then I thought, if it is this high-up, maybe he’s got it all sorted out. I mean, why haven’t they found him out already? It must be because they’re not looking. Because this man, the high-up, has got it all fixed. And I thought maybe this new man, this Englishman, coming to it from outside, will get somewhere. Because they won’t find it so easy to fix him.

‘That is what I thought. But now the warder says the woman who gave him the food to take in was an Arab. So I couldn’t be right, could I, about her? But I could still be right about him. The high-up. He could have got someone else to do it. It would be easy for him to get an Arab.

‘I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to think now.’

She burst into tears and Manuel led her away gently.

Seymour stepped down into the underground café. It was more full than it had been before. They were all Arabs, of course. He was conscious of them scrutinizing him surreptitiously. He hoped that they would recognize him and know that he had been before and that he had talked to Ibrahim, so that he had, as it were, credentials. The waiter came to him more quickly than he had done before and served him coffee, so that, perhaps, he thought, they did.

He didn’t mention Ibrahim this time, just sat there.

A man went out and a little later Ibrahim came in and sat down beside him.

‘You are still here, then?’ he said.

‘For just a little longer. Then I shall go back to England.’

‘Did you speak to Leila?’

Seymour nodded.

‘I think she plans to build a life here,’ he said.

‘Don’t we all?’

‘Despite losing her husband.’

‘That is brave,’ Ibrahim said. ‘But perhaps she is right. Once you have made the step you shouldn’t go back.’

Seymour looked round the café with its solely Arab clientele.

‘Isn’t this a kind of going back?’ he said.

‘Yes. But you can only go so far at a time. Later, perhaps, you will take another step. What was it you wanted to know?’

‘I want to know if any of you visited Lockhart when he was in prison.’

Ibrahim made a little motion with his hand and the waiter brought more coffee.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Others did. I wondered if his friends did, too.’

‘It was just after Tragic Week,’ said Ibrahim, ‘and most of us were lying low.’

‘You must have talked together, though. And possibly about him.’

‘We talked, certainly. And, when we heard, about him. There was a lot to talk about and many of us were in two minds.’

‘About Lockhart?’

‘Yes. But mostly about what was to be done. And we were still deliberating when we heard that he was dead. You have to remember this was just after Tragic Week and the police were looking for us. They were looking for others as well, of course, but it was thought best if they did not see us together for a while. So, for a while, the community was fragmented.’

‘And then you heard that Lockhart was dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what did you think?’

Ibrahim shrugged. ‘That a good man was gone.’ He hesitated. ‘At least, many of us thought that.’

‘And some didn’t?’

‘Some didn’t.’

‘What did they think?’

‘That perhaps it was best if it ended.’

‘Even like this?’

‘Even like this.’

‘Did you think that?’

‘I did not see how it could end like this.’

‘Because . . .?’

‘Because in the Arab world things like this never end.’ He sighed. ‘I sometimes think that is the reason why I am in Spain and not in Algeria. If you never let things end, what hope is there? And yet this is all so bound up with the way we are.’

‘And the way Lockhart was?’

Unexpectedly, Ibrahim laughed.

‘You could say that,’ he said wryly. ‘But in a different way.’

He touched Seymour’s hand.

‘But I’ll tell you this,’ he said. ‘That is what Leila thinks. Let it end, she thinks. Let it end here. And I think that is why she will never go back. She wants to put it behind her, all that has happened, and not – not pursue it.’

Seymour nodded. ‘I had a specific reason for asking if any of you had visited Lockhart when he was in prison. Perhaps I should have made it clearer: if any of you had visited the prison while he was there, not necessarily Lockhart himself.’

Ibrahim looked puzzled.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

Seymour hesitated. How far could he go? How much could he rely on Ibrahim being on his, on Lockhart’s side? He hesitated, and then plumped.

‘Lockhart was poisoned in his cell,’ he said. ‘Probably by some food that the warder was given to take in to him. A pie, probably. The warder was given the food by a woman. She gave him money, too, to take it to Lockhart. The woman was an Arab.’

‘An Arab?’ said Ibrahim. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

Ibrahim sat there for some time thinking. ‘I am shocked,’ he said. ‘I do not know a woman from our community who could have done that,’ he said. ‘But, as I told you, after Tragic Week, the community was very fragmented. Even so . . .’

He thought some more.

‘I do not know who it could be,’ he said. ‘Even though there were disagreements among us over Lockhart, I find it hard to believe that . . .’

‘Do you really find it so hard to believe,’ said Seymour, ‘knowing the kind of man that Lockhart was?’

‘I know the kind of man that Lockhart was,’ said Ibrahim, ‘especially, and I think this is what you are saying, the kind of man that Lockhart was as regards women. But Arab women! It is not with Arab women as it is with Spanish women. Or English women, as far as I know. An Arab woman is hedged around. It is not easy for her to meet a man, let alone . . . Which is, I think, what you have at the back of your mind. Harder here, even, in some ways, than it is back in Algeria. We are a small community. Everyone knows everything. And we are, as I think you were suggesting earlier, defensive. We look inwards still. Too much. Not outwards. That kind of thing – our women – we are jealous of. It touches us closely. Our pride, perhaps, but also our fear. I find it hard to believe . . .’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Seymour, ‘it was an Arab woman.’

Ibrahim sat there for some time turning it over in his mind. Then he said, ‘Go away for a while. An hour perhaps. And then come back.’

Chantale, meanwhile, had been doing what she had taken to doing more and more when Seymour was away. She had gone out into the plaza and sat on a bench beneath a palm tree. At first when she had been left alone she had gone for a walk along Las Ramblas. The feeling of release and freedom which she had experienced on the first day was still with her; but she was beginning now to have a sense of horizons closing in, that things couldn’t go on like this.