A Dead Man in Barcelona (2 page)

Then he came back.

‘It’s all right now,’ he said. ‘They can relax.’

He sipped his coffee and put the cup down.

‘You speak Spanish very well,’ he said, ‘but Spanish is not the thing to speak here.’

Seymour nodded.

‘Thank you for telling them,’ he said. ‘And for telling me.’

He sipped his coffee.

‘There are people here who knew Lockhart.’

‘Can I talk to them?’

‘You had better talk to Dolores.’

He signalled with his hand and a waitress came over.

‘Dolores, this is a friend of mine. He would like to talk to you.’

‘Señor?’

‘I am an Englishman and I would like to talk to you about an Englishman. His name is Lockhart.’

‘I knew Lockhart,’ she said.

‘I knew ‘Well?’

‘Too well. He was my husband.’

‘Dolores!’ said the elderly man reprovingly.

‘Well, almost. That’s what he used to say. As good as. He always used to stay with me when he came to Barcelona. And he used to say that one day he would take me back with him.’

‘To Gibraltar?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Dolores,’ protested the elderly man, ‘he had a wife already.’

‘I know, but there would have been room for another. I wouldn’t have made any fuss. We could have managed.’

‘Dolores, he was spinning you along.’

‘Don’t all men do that?’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, I didn’t mind. It was nice to think of him in that way. That’s the way he thought of me, too. As his wife. Almost.’

‘He was staying with Dolores that night,’ said the elderly man.

‘When –?’

‘When it happened,’ said the elderly man, pulling up a chair for her to sit down. ‘Tell him.’

‘We heard shooting,’ she said. ‘There had been trouble. Those boys. They were making them go on the ships. There had been shooting before but this time it was close, just outside, in the street. “This is the stuff!” he said. He was quite excited. And then he wanted to go out. “You’d do better to stay in,” I said. “You don’t want to get mixed up in this. You stick to business.” “Ah, but this
is
business,” he said.’

‘What did he mean by that?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t know what he was talking about.’

‘What was his business?’

‘Something to do with the docks. He had an office down there. Just past the church. But I never quite knew what his business was. We didn’t talk about it. Well, you wouldn’t, would you? In bed? Anyway, that night he insisted on going out. And then he didn’t come back.

‘There was more shooting, not just in our street but in all the streets, and I got frightened and ran back here to the café. And Manuel – he’s the boss, he owns the café – and said, “You stay right here until it’s all over.” He said that to all of us, and we all stayed. “There’s no point in getting mixed up in it,” he said. “It’s not your fight.”

‘But Inez – she’s another of the waitresses – said it was – her fight. She’s Catalan, you see. Well, I am, too, but not like her. I mean I wasn’t sure it
was
my fight. But she said it was our boys, and she went out. And
she
didn’t come back, either.

‘I was in a hell of a state, I can tell you. We were all in a state. But Manuel said, “Just stay here. You’d be all right here.” Although it didn’t seem so.

‘It was hours before the shooting stopped. But then Manuel went out. There were a lot of bodies, he said, but hers wasn’t among them. He came back and said we should stay inside.

‘But I wanted to see. I mean, he had looked for Inez but I wanted to look for Lockhart. So I went out and another of the girls came with me. But I couldn’t find anything. He wasn’t among the bodies. “That’s good,” Marie said. “It means he’s alive.” But I couldn’t believe that. Not until I’d really seen him. They said a lot of people had been taken to the prison so I went along and asked to see him. But they wouldn’t let me, they wouldn’t let anybody. And then Manuel said to come home and he would fix it when things had settled down. So I went back to the café.

‘And a couple of days later he did fix it and I went to see him.’

‘You saw Lockhart when he was in prison?’ said Seymour.

‘Yes. I couldn’t see him really properly, though, it was so dark. He was lying in a corner and I thought maybe he had been wounded, but he said not. He told me to go away and not come again. “Don’t get mixed up in this!” he said. I said I could bring him things, food, perhaps. I wasn’t sure that they’d fed him and I’m damned sure they weren’t giving him enough water, but he said keep out of it. “Don’t come back,” he said. But I would have gone back. But then we heard that he was dead. Those bastards had killed him – killed him in the prison!’

Her voice had risen. Everyone else in the café had stopped talking. Then a man’s voice said soothingly, ‘It’s okay, Dolores, it’s okay. You come here now. Get back into the kitchen.’

Dolores got up from the table.

‘I’d better go,’ she said. She managed a smile. ‘Or Manuel will have my ass.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘Only to tell Nina.’

‘Who’s Nina?’

‘She’s a girl in Barcelona. He always used to go and see her when he was over here. Why, I can’t think, because she’s a real pain in the ass. I used to wonder if he had a thing for her but I reckon not. It wouldn’t be easy to get a thing going with Nina. It would be like being in bed with a hedgehog.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘No. Just told me to tell her. Well, I did, but that was a waste of time. She knew anyway. She just looked at me with those cold eyes and nodded. That was all. A hard bitch. As well as prickly.’

She set off across the room.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said.

She was back, however, after two steps.

‘Why do you want to know about Lockhart?’ she demanded.

‘Friends are interested in what happened to him,’ he said. ‘Friends in England,’ he added with emphasis.

‘Tell them to go on being interested,’ she said fiercely. ‘Tell them to ask questions and go on asking questions. In the end someone’s got to answer.’

The conversation in the café resumed.

‘You see?’ said the elderly man. ‘You see now how it was?’

‘I am sorry,’ said Seymour. ‘I did not mean to upset her.’

The man shrugged.

‘She’ll get over it,’ he said. ‘It may even help her.’

He got up from the table and put out his hand.

‘Marques,’ he said. ‘Ricardo Marques.’

‘Seymour.’

‘Do what she says: go on asking questions. Perhaps we will be able to help you.’

He shook Seymour’s hand once more.

He shook Seymour’s hand once ‘We shall meet again,’ he said.

An hour later Seymour was walking up Las Ramblas with Chantale. As it left the port area the street opened up and became an airy boulevard crowded with people. They seemed in no particular hurry, stopping frequently to chat with acquaintances or study the great bunches of flowers hung above the flower stalls. There were flowers everywhere, not just on the stalls but spread out in swathes of colour along the side of the road and bunched in miniature fields at the foot of the trees: roses, sweetpeas, carnations, chrysanthemums and great streaked tiger lilies whose powerful scent reached out right across the boulevard.

Everywhere, too, there seemed to be street performers, fire-eaters, jugglers, acrobats, dancers, and strange figures straight from a carnival, huge figures sometimes on stilts with grotesquely large papier-mâché heads. A Spanish word came into his mind:
cabezudos
. That’s what they must be,
cabezudos
, the bizarre, capering figures that were part of every procession at carnival time.

The whole street was like a carnival. There were floats, there were musicians, there were clowns. From the floats people in bright costumes were throwing sweets for the children. The children dashed in among the
cabezudos
to retrieve the sweets and the
cabezudos
affected to trip over them. Everyone was laughing. Surely this must actually be a carnival? But no. He learned later that every day was like that on Las Ramblas.

Chantale, responding to the mood, had unbound the headscarf she normally wore in Tangier, even when she was in European dress, and let her hair fall down on to her shoulders.

If she had done that in Morocco it would have caused a riot. For some reason a woman’s hair seemed especially sexually inflammatory to Arabs.

But here, on Las Ramblas, Chantale suddenly felt a great expansion of personal freedom, as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She let her hair fall and felt as if she had come out into the sunshine.

Seymour had been recommended a hotel in a small square off Las Ramblas. The square was little more than a patch of baked mud surrounded by apartment blocks. The blocks were three or four storeys high and many had rooms with little balconies fenced in by a kind of iron fretwork. Children played on the balconies and from time to time women dressed in black would come out and pick one up. Then they would lean on the balcony and monitor events in the plaza below. There was a play area in one corner of the plaza and perhaps they were keeping an eye on other offspring.

Seymour suspected that a good deal of monitoring went on in the square. He knew that his arrival in the square earlier that day had been noticed and now Chantale’s arrival with him was registered too. When he had asked for a room he had wondered whether to make it a double room but the suspicious eye of the proprietor suggested that it might be unwise. She was one of the landladies, he felt sure, who could tell at once whether a woman was married or unmarried: and he sensed that even in Barcelona that could still make a difference. In the end he had booked a separate room for Chantale.

After she had checked in they returned to Las Ramblas. There seemed to be more people there even than before. It was growing dark and the lamps had been lit. The street entertainers were out in force, often performing around braziers where they could be seen better.

In one place there were several braziers together and a space had been cleared where gypsy-like figures were dancing the flamenco. There was the click of castanets and someone was tapping on a small drum.

Cabezudos
were stalking round the edges of the cleared space chatting to the spectators in Catalan.

‘Does that
cabezudo
know you?’ asked Chantale.

‘Does ‘No.’

‘Well, it seems to be wanting to speak to you.’

‘It can’t be.’

The
cabezudo
, which was about eight feet tall, loomed over him.

‘Señor, Señor!’

‘
Si?
’

‘Lockhart,’ it said quietly, and then capered away.

He followed it to the edge of the crowd.

‘You want to know about Lockhart?’ it said in a hoarse whisper.

‘I do; but how did you know that?’

‘Ricardo told me.’

‘Ricardo Marques?’

‘
Si.
’

Seymour nodded. ‘You’re right, I do.’

‘Talk to Nina.’

‘Who is Nina?’

‘A teacher. She teaches at the school in your square.’

Your
square? He had moved into the hotel only the day before. How did they know about him?

‘Just a minute!’ he said.

But the
cabezudo
had danced away into the crowd, the huge head jerking comically as it chatted to people, throwing a gigantic, grotesque shadow as it emerged for a moment into the light of the braziers.

Chapter Two

‘Nationalists?’ said the Chief of Police, looking at him blankly. ‘There are no Nationalists in Spain. Catalonian or otherwise.’

Seymour had gone to the police station early the next morning to present his credentials.

‘But, surely, what happened in Tragic Week –’

‘Tragic Week? Ah, terrible, terrible! But that was nothing to do with the Nationalists.’

‘No?’

‘No. Riff-raff. Criminals. Arabs. Anarchists. But –’ The Chief of Police shook his head. ‘Nationalists, no.’

‘But I thought –’

‘The Señor has been misinformed.’

The Chief of Police relented slightly.

‘Of course, it’s easy to get a wrong picture,’ he said. ‘The situation was very confused. I was confused myself. It all happened so suddenly! There was I, having breakfast on the patio, when the phone rings and my wife comes rushing out. “Alonzo,” she said, “you’d better get off your ass. Things are happening.”

‘And then I heard it: shooting. “What the hell’s that?” I said.

‘“It’s down by the docks,” she said. “Those filthy Arabs again.” (We’ve got a lot of Arabs in the docks, you see, Señor.) “Oh, is it?” I said. “I’ll soon sort them out.” And I went back into the bedroom to get my gun.

‘And while I was there, there was a knock on the door, and it was Pedro, one of my inspectors. “Chief,” he said, “you’d better come. There’s trouble down at the docks.” “It’s those bloody Arabs again, is it?” I said. “No, Chief, I don’t think it is this time,” he said. “It’s more general. All hell is breaking loose.”

‘And when I got there, Christ, all hell
was
breaking loose! There was fighting everywhere. Shooting, burning, stones flying – stones flying everywhere! It was bloody mayhem. And after a bit of this I thought, this is not for us. You need the bloody Army. So I pulled my people out. And then I thought I’d better ring my bosses.

‘But you can do that from home as well as from the office, can’t you? And I felt in need of a drink. So I went home. And after a bit my wife said, “Come on Alonzo, you’ve got to do something.” “Why?” I said. “Because if you don’t, Madrid will be on to you.” And, Christ, the next minute there
was
Madrid on to me. “What’s going on, Alonzo?” they said. “It’s bloody war,” I said. “There is fighting, there’s shooting. The docks are in flames.”

‘“What are you doing about it?” they said. “Hadn’t you better get stuck in?” “I did get stuck in,” I said. “But I had to pull out. We were taking casualties. There are bloody hundreds of them. This isn’t a thing for the police,” I said. “It’s something for the Army.”

‘Well, they went quiet at that. And then they said, “All right, Alonzo, we’ll talk to Colonel Ramirez. And when you hear the Army’s guns, you go down there and pick up the pieces.”

‘Well, we waited until we heard the Army’s guns and then I said, “Right, we’d better get down there.” But my wife tapped me on the shoulder and said: “Don’t be in too much of a hurry to get down there, Alonzo. Wait until the Army’s guns have stopped.” She’s got her head screwed on, my wife.

‘And it was as well we didn’t get down there too quickly, for the fighting went on for days. The best part of a week. But eventually the shooting stopped and I sent my lads in.

‘“Pick them up!” I said. “Don’t ask questions. Just bang them in. We can sort out the sheep from the goats later.” So that’s what we did. Picked up everyone in sight. Including, as it turned out, Señor Lockhart.’

‘Including Señor Lockhart?’

The Chief of Police poured himself some water from a carafe standing on his desk, looked at the glass, a little disappointedly, it must be said, as if he had hoped that somehow the water had miraculously turned into wine, and sipped it. He put the glass down.

‘Including Señor Lockhart,’ he said. ‘You have to understand, Señor, that all was confusion. We had no time to get life histories. We just took everybody in, no matter what they were doing. And if you think about it, Señor Seymour, that is not so unreasonable. If bullets are flying all over the place, you’re not going to be just standing there, if you’re nothing to do with it.’

‘Bullets were still flying?’ said Seymour. ‘I thought you said you’d waited until –’

‘The occasional bullet was still flying.
Enough
bullets were flying,’ said the Chief of Police, wiping his mouth, ‘to make honest people want to keep out of the way.’

‘And that’s when you arrested Señor Lockhart?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What was he doing there?’

‘That,’ said the Chief of Police, ‘is a good question.’

‘But haven’t you been able to answer it? Surely you’ve had enough time. All this happened two years ago!’

‘It is rather more complicated than that,’ said the Chief of Police. ‘To start with, normally we would take statements as soon as a person was admitted. But we took so many people in that week that we couldn’t. We were still working through them when we heard, alas, that Señor Lockhart had died.’

‘Yes,’ said Seymour, ‘I am coming to that.

‘I thought you might be.’

‘But even if Señor Lockhart died – especially since he died – surely an investigation was made?’

‘Oh, yes. Of course. And a report is being drawn up.’

‘
Is
being drawn up?’

‘The investigation has not yet been completed.’

`After two years?’

The Chief of Police was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Are you sure you
want
the investigation to be completed?’

‘Want it?’ said Seymour, taken aback. ‘Of course we want it!’

‘But are you sure? Even if it revealed something that perhaps was better not revealed?’

‘Surely in circumstances like this, an inquiry
has
to be made. And if it is embarked on, it has to be completed.’

‘And then?’ said the Chief of Police.

‘Well, what happens next depends on the circumstances. There will be several possibilities. A decision will have to be made by the appropriate authority.’

‘And you think that procedure has not been followed?’

‘I don’t
know
that it’s been followed. That’s the point.’

‘I don’t that it’s been followed. That’s the point.’

‘You don’t think the authority may have some discretion in this? Over the publishing of the findings?’

‘Well, in principle –’

‘And may have exercised that discretion?’

‘What are you saying? That there is some reason for hushing it up?’

The Chief of Police held up a hand. ‘That there
may
be a reason. That discretion
may
have been exercised. There doesn’t have to be anything sinister here. The reason may simply be in order not to distress the family unduly. Or there may be some wider reason. That it might distress a Government, say. Or complicate an already complicated situation.’

‘You are saying this was the case here?’

‘No. Just that it
may
be the case. We keep coming back, you see, to that question you asked, a very good question. What exactly
was
Señor Lockhart doing during Tragic Week?’

‘Was he taking sides, you mean?’

‘Or did he have his own agenda? In which case, what exactly was that agenda? You see, Señor, even after all this time, these questions still have to be answered.’

‘There is another question which has to be asked,’ said Seymour. ‘Even after all this time.’

‘I know, I know!’ said the Chief of Police.

‘It is about how Lockhart came to die.’

‘A shock!’ said the Chief of Police. ‘It came as a terrible shock. I couldn’t believe it! I went home and told my wife and she couldn’t believe it, either. A man like Señor Lockhart, known to all, respected by all. But in the midst of life we are in death, Señor Seymour. One moment Señor Lockhart was with us and the next he was taken away.

‘“Let it be a warning to you, Alonzo,” my wife said.

“You, too, could be carried off if you go on the way you do. Remember, God has his eye on you!”

‘“Father Roberto has his eye on me, more like, and has been talking again,” I said.

‘Don’t get me wrong, Señor, my wife is a good woman and on the whole has her head screwed on all the way. But, between you and me, Señor, she listens a bit too much to the people in black. She’s always there at the church, morning, noon and evening. Well, that’s as it should be. And perhaps she’s right. Maybe I should go there more often. But how to find the time? In our job one is always busy. And never more busy than that dreadful week!

‘Madrid was on to me, Colonel Ramirez was on to me, the Legal Department was on to me – “Get those men processed!” they said. But there were hundreds of them! I didn’t know which way to turn. I’ve only got a handful of men, and, between you and me, Señor, some of them are not great hands at paperwork. So it all fell on one or two. And me. And it wasn’t until about the third day that I saw Señor Lockhart’s name on the list.

‘“Christ, what have you done?” I said. “There’s a respectable man here!”

‘“How were we to know he was respectable?” they protested. “We just took him in like everyone else!” And, you know, Señor, when I thought it over, I couldn’t blame them. In the heat of the moment . . .

‘“All right, all right!” I said. “But, boys,” I said, “you’ve make a mistake. You’ve picked up someone who was nothing to do with it. Someone who’d popped out for a look –” “But, boss,” they said, “he
was
something to do with it. And he hadn’t just popped out for a look. He’d been there all the time. We’d seen him.”’

‘Seen him doing what?’ said Seymour.

‘Talking. Talking to them. In a friendly way. Giving instructions, my men said. Telling them what to do.’

‘How do they know that?’ said Seymour.

‘That’s just what I asked them. They said they’d heard him. But, between you and me, Señor, I had my doubts. How anyone could hear anything in all that racket beats me. I said, “Look, lads, this is an important man and you’ve got to be sure. Sure enough to be able to stand up to a lawyer asking you twisty questions.”

‘Well, they weren’t so sure then, and I wasn’t so sure, either. All the same, I wasn’t not sure, if you know what I mean. I mean, what the hell was he doing there? If he wasn’t mixed up in it somehow?

‘The fact was, we’d taken him in, and there he was in the prison, and that’s no place for any respectable man to be. Particularly with all those hoodlums. So I sent a man down there post haste.

‘But by the time he’d got there, Lockhart had already died. I was – well, I won’t say I was distraught, I’m not that kind of man, you can’t be in my job, but I was pretty cut up, I can tell you. “He’s a decent man,” I said to my wife, “and now – this!”

‘Well, she thought a bit. “Yes a decent man, yes,” she said. “But he’s also a big one. There will be questions asked about this. And you’re going to have to find some answers.” “I’ll get down there right away,” I said. “No,” she said. “Don’t you do that. All you did was pull him in. It’s for others to answer questions about what happened afterwards.”’

‘But, just a moment,’ said Seymour. ‘Is it? He was in police custody when he died. Your custody.’

The Chief put his hand up. ‘Ah, no, Señor. I must correct you on that. He wasn’t in my custody.’

‘Not in your custody?’

‘No. You see, Señor, we had so many coming in that in no time at all our cells were full. So we had to send them straight down to the main jail. And that’s where Señor Lockhart was taken. And where he died.’

‘Ah, Señor Lockhart!’ said the prison governor, shaking his head. ‘A bad business, that! Tragic! One of the many tragic things that happened during Tragic Week. I couldn’t believe it when I heard.’

‘When you heard?’ said Seymour. ‘But surely you knew that he had been admitted?’

‘No. Not straightaway. You have to understand, Señor, that hundreds were being admitted. We were swamped. It was days before we sorted ourselves out. And, besides, we weren’t supposed to be doing the initial processing. That is normally the responsibility of the police. But everything was at sixes and sevens during that week. It took time to sort it out. And it was only when things were beginning to settle down that I heard that an Englishman had been admitted. And it was some time after that that I heard it was Señor Lockhart.

‘“Señor Lockhart?” I said. “But that is ridiculous!” For Señor Lockhart is well known around here. Was well known, that is. I knew him myself. My wife knew him. Socially. I sent someone down immediately. But then they came back and told me he was dead. “Dead?” I said. “How can he be?” For all prisoners are looked at by a doctor when they are admitted. Now, as I said, we were all at sixes and sevens that week and there may have been a little delay. But he should have been seen by a doctor, and in fact he
was
seen by a doctor. Who should surely have spotted it if he had been wounded.

‘I called him in at once. “What’s this?” I said. “What sort of examination is this, when you can’t even tell when a man’s got a bullet in him?” “But, Governor,” he said, “he
didn’t
have a bullet in him!” “Oh, come,” I said, “what did he die of, then?”

‘“Shock,” he said. “Heart failure. A stroke or something.”

‘“Or something.” I said. “Look, you’ll have to do better than that. This man was known to me personally. And to my wife. And to a lot of other people, too. Big people. People who’ll put their boot up your backside. You’d better find out what he did die of. Pretty quickly, too.”

‘Well, he went off. And then next minute he was back. White as a sheet. “Boss,” he said, “he was poisoned!”

‘“Bollocks!” I said. “Now you go back and look again. And look a bit more carefully this time. Poisoned, my ass! Here? In my prison?”

‘But, Christ, it was true. That was what the post-mortem showed. Poisoned! I couldn’t believe it.’

‘Was there an inquiry?’ asked Seymour.

‘Was there an inquiry?’ the prison governor mimicked ironically. ‘You bet there was! I told my deputy to get down there at once. And then I went over it myself. With a fine-tooth comb.’

‘And did you find anything?’

‘No,’ the governor admitted.

‘No?’

‘No. Nothing hard, that is. Nothing that would stand up in court. The bastards were too clever. I had them in and grilled them. Personally. Myself. But there was no one we could actually tie it on to. They were too damned clever. Of course, we know who did it.’