Death in the Sun (14 page)

This evening, Jadus hopes to achieve a greater degree of liberty.

He watches from a safe distance as Pulford stands in the courtyard of the Limekiln Estate. Above, Jasmine comes out, clutching Millie to her hip. She shouts down to Pulford, ‘You bastard!’ Jasmine is crying and Jadus can’t do anything about it. Yet.

If his original crime had been allowed to run its course, he would be free now, with his family. As it is, this is intervention time.

He watches Pulford walk away and pulls his hood down an extra inch or so, feels his warm, metallic advantage against his flesh and follows the off-duty DS onto Columbia Road, going up towards Shoreditch Park. The long hot summer has died its death and it begins to drizzle again.

The sergeant sits down on one of the statues and pulls out a fag. He looks done in; blowing his cheeks and checking his watch. On the far side of the park, Hoxton way, Jadus sees what the DS is waiting for. The blacked-out Cherokee cruises up to Pulford and Jadus’s heart slows. It means tonight can’t be the night, but he sticks around long enough to see that it is Brandon Latymer who the copper is meeting, and he wonders how B-Lat can sail so close to the law after what happened with the hit and run up on the Seven Sisters Road. He fears there is only one answer to that question, even though they grew up in each other’s cribs, have eaten from the same pot ever since.

A tramp comes up to Jadus, asks him for change and Jadus quietly tells him to go fuck himself.

‘Fuck
your
self!’ shouts the tramp, and the copper and B-Lat look across and Jadus has to pull down his hood another notch, walking away as naturally as he can to the cutting that plunges steeply to the Regent’s Canal. He rolls as slowly as he dare, trying to change his walk so B-Lat doesn’t clock him. They worked on his roll together. In theory, they are still together: every month, B-Lat coughs him two grand, still – for the time he served. Some might say it would suit B-Lat to have that debt of honour wiped.

Jadus walks along the canal and after three bridges he sits on a bench, looks left and right and up behind him. He checks the windows of the trendy, wooden-clad apartments opposite. There’s nobody watching, so he takes out his spliff. It’s phat and ready to go and he stretches his legs out, thinks ahead to a better day when that bastard sergeant will be behind them; when he and Jasmine are together, somewhere else. And B-Lat? He’ll take care of that down the line.

He sparks up and draws in: long and holding, like someone is rubbing his temples, whispering it all away.

Cyclists come and walkers go, and all along the towpath the evening plays itself out. He looks for the moon but it is absent and he can’t believe he has smoked the whole damn thing, but he has. What the fuck, he’ll walk up Dalston and maybe Vicky Park, get a bus up to Stokey, right out of the way tonight. Charelle’s up there and he’ll be safe. They go way back.

He stands, tries to work out what bridge he’s at – whether he’s gone under the New North Road yet. He can’t have, so he walks on, with the canal on his right. But he’s right enough because when he gets to the next bridge, it’s the one before the cycle-hire caff where the canal takes a turn. The bridge is low and in the pitch dark he ducks his head, which he finds funny and his laugh echoes back at him, like someone is calling him and that makes him laugh some more.

‘What the fuck’s funny?’

‘Hey?’ says Jadus, feeling like someone has punched him below the belly.

‘Nothing’s funny. That’s what.’

They are sitting at the empty table outside the empty caff. Jadus knows them. He looks around.

‘Nobody to save you this time.’

The lights are off in the building opposite, which is offices‚ done up nice. He remembers when it was shit here: oil drums and shopping trolleys. Now, there’s reeds by the water’s edge.

The barrel of the gun glints‚ and they say, ‘Everyone’s day comes around. It’s the law.’

And Jadus feels as if he’s been hit below the stomach again. Only it’s
in
the stomach this time. He knows the stomach is the worst place, the slowest place. And now the sound. A single shot. There’s a shadow on him. He can hear the canal in the reeds but he knows the canal doesn’t flow. There must be a breeze.

*

‘Are you sure this is it?’ says Staffe, looking up at the colonial-style building with its balconied, full-length windows, next to the church of Santo Domingo and close by the Campo de Principe.

‘She has the first floor,’ says Pepa, looking at the piece of paper Immaculada had given her.

‘Maybe she sold a couple of daddy’s paintings.’

‘He never publicly acknowledged her as his own.’ Pepa presses the buzzer and checks her dictaphone is charged. ‘Don’t freak her out. This is a lifestyle piece, pure and simple, and you are supposed to be the English journalist I’m syndicating to.’

‘I know, I know.’

The door clicks open and they enter a lofty hallway. The door creaks back into its jamb and clicks softly shut. A voice curls above, bounces down the curved, stone stairwell. ‘Up here!’ Fresh crocuses bloom from rounded, terracotta roof tiles mounted on the wall. The place smells like a garden.

Guadalupe, daughter of Hugo Barrington, stands in the open doorway to her apartment. Behind, her world is brilliantly light and the windows are open. The bustle from the street drifts up, weaves around a jazz guitar which Staffe thinks is Joe Pass. The room is enormous and two of the walls are densely hung with primitive art and pen-and-ink cartoons from a London newspaper.

‘I see you like Crichton,’ says Staffe, reading one of the cartoons and laughing.

‘Not my taste. But they are funny. And sad,’ says Guadalupe. She is older than Staffe had imagined: in her forties, he thinks. Her hair is thick and jet black, her eyes the palest green.

‘A friend of your father’s?’ says Pepa.

‘You can put that away.’ Guadalupe nods at the dictaphone. ‘And sign this.’

Pepa takes the paper and shakes her head. ‘I never surrender editorial control.’

‘Surrender? An odd choice of word.’ Guadalupe looks at Staffe and smiles, saying in English, ‘Then you can fuck off back where you came.’

Staffe takes the paper from Pepa, says, ‘It’s only a piece for our Style section. I think we can live with it.’ He hands the paper back to Guadalupe, says, ‘I like your Summers.’ He goes across to a birchwood armchair by the open window. ‘It is a Summers?’

Guadalupe smiles, quite proud, appearing to lose herself in a moment.

‘A gift?’

‘I’m amazed she gave you my address.’

Pepa says, ‘She is very weak.’

Staffe says, ‘We’re not here to pry into your family. But I would like to know more about the art you have, and the furniture. May I?’

She nods.

He sits in the Summers chair, says, ‘Furniture tells a story, and art, too. Usually, the better the art, the more fascinating is the story. It’s enough to make you consider becoming an élitist.’

Guadalupe laughs, comes towards the window, rests her bottom on the low sill and stares out towards Campo de Principe.

‘Your mother must be happy with where you have ended up,’ says Staffe. ‘Something to show them in the village.’

‘How would they know?’

‘Surely you have friends from Almagen who visit?’

‘They spurned me. Fuck them!’ Lupe’s eyes darken, as if she has seen something cruel. ‘Why has mother done this now?’

He says, ‘Perhaps she wants an acknowledgement of her relationship with your father: tacit but from afar.’

‘Is that what I am – tacit and afar?’ Lupe laughs.

‘An Englishman abroad,’ says Staffe.

‘I don’t feel remotely English.’

‘He comes, falls in love and stays the rest of his life. And he leaves his legacy.’ Staffe stands beside Lupe. ‘I love your building. It’s of the past; and the future, too. Like Granada. Islam in a Christian world. Do your neighbours have a similar aesthetic?’

‘There’s only two of us. And we think the same.’

‘She has the top floor?’

‘He.’

‘Can I take some photographs?’ says Pepa.

Lupe shrugs and Staffe mooches across to the kitchen area. As he goes, he points out a small seascape line drawing on an exposed brickwork pillar. In the flurry of ink, a boat is almost hidden amongst the waves, three people on board. In the background, the Luna dune. Pepa takes its photograph. ‘This is Gabo. My father fishes it.’ Pepa studies the drawing more closely then stands back. ‘It’s good. It’s very good. It takes me back there.’ She closes her eyes. ‘I could swear I can smell the sea.’

Staffe recalls the photograph of Barrington and Rubio; Astrid and Jackson Roberts, all together at the exhibition in Gabo. It was a different time, but Immaculada was out of sight; Guadalupe’s mother exiled in her own land.

‘Who drew it?’ says Staffe.

‘I think you’ve probably got enough, haven’t you?’

*

Staffe tokes gently on a mint hookah, feels the vapours wash through his body. It makes him see clearly. He leans back and speculates as to who Guadalupe’s neighbour might be. He enjoys the hookah some more and waits, and within an hour or so, on the very perimeter of his restful gaze across the Campo de Principe, a familiar and confident gait clicks, like a camera.

The man is wiry and wears a singlet top and hipster jeans; a peaked combat cap and aviators. A man of his age should look ridiculous dressed like this, but Jackson doesn’t.

Staffe counts out what he owes and walks double-time until he is three or four people behind Jackson. The pedestrian traffic is thick on Calle Molinos, but as Jackson passes slowly through‚ Staffe eases himself closer and by the time they pass the hardware shop that Staffe had visited earlier, for the putty‚ he is close enough to reach out and touch Jackson.

The shadow from the church of Santo Domingo stretches to meet them and Staffe puts his hand in his pocket, begins to work his putty. He has to step down into the road as a posse of nuns works its way in the opposite direction, towards the convent of Our Lady of Los Angeles, no doubt eager to bake that evening’s batch of
magdalenas
.

Jackson’s key is in the door to Guadalupe’s building.

Should he wait?

He takes out the putty, watches as the large door opens. Jackson steps inside. The door is closing and Staffe sets his eyes on the door’s lock, reaches out, pressing the putty into the lock. The door closes softly, not clicking.

Staffe bides his time. Waiting, he presses an ear to the thick, chestnut door. From within, he hears steps, diminishing. He counts to ten, presses open the door.

The hall is empty and he steps in, removing the putty. He can smell the linseed. He puts it in his pocket and decides to take the stairs. The door closes behind him with a click. Staffe turns, to double check.

Jackson is standing against the wall beside the door. He rubs the blade of a knife up against the grain of his three-day stubble; finings of his brown and grey face-hair sprinkle to the floor. The sound scratches the dark air. ‘Why trespass?’

‘I’m here to see Guadalupe.’

‘You could ring the bell, like a normal person.’

‘Looks like you’re doing all right for yourself.’ Staffe nods up to the high ceiling of the hallway.

‘Come on up,’ says Jackson.

‘What?’ says Staffe, fearing the worst now.

‘I’m going to kick back. And you’re going to join me.’

*

He checks his watch. It is ten minutes since the Englishman went into Roberts’s building. He looks up at the windows, feeling conspicuous and seeing no sign of life. Why is he such a big lump of a man – shoulders like hams and feet as big as blades of beef? He feels the full mass of the situation he has got himself into. His father used to tell him that once you start a thing, you finish it. Manolo thinks about the way his father was before life got to him. Now, anybody meeting Rubio would consider him arrogant, obnoxious. Masks. And one of them is mad.

*

‘Has it ever occurred to you that the world just might be a better place if you minded your own business?’ Jackson is in a Summers chair, just like Guadalupe’s in the apartment below. He prods the tip of his knife into the scallop shape of the flesh of his cheek and takes the first drag on an almighty, fully loaded joint.

‘Like I said before, you have a great place here.’

‘If you did your homework properly, you’d know my only dwelling in Spain is in the mountains.’ Jackson hands the joint to Staffe, stands over him. ‘I’d really like you to finish that fucker.’

Staffe looks at Jackson’s knife, imagines what a veteran from his war might be capable of. As he did gain entry illegally, so he takes a drag, trying not to inhale and looking around the apartment. He sees an open sketch pad by the fireplace. In pen and ink, the face of a beautiful African woman looks out, holding Staffe with her almond eyes. Her hair is wild and the sketch is a study in exoticism. Just a couple of dozen masterly strokes beguiling him.

‘Don’t do a Clinton on me,’ laughs Jackson.

‘Are you and Lupe an item?’ Staffe notices the top of a passport sticking out of Jackson’s shirt pocket.

‘I know lots of Guadalupes.’

‘Tell me about you and Barrington.’

‘Why should I do that?’ laughs Jackson. ‘You broke into my world, so finish that thing.’

Staffe takes another drag and gets a chemical hit at the back of his throat. He thinks it is probably skunk; definitely doctored. ‘Quite a gang – Barrington and Rubio and Astrid. And you.’

Jackson seems to tense up.

‘But Manolo’s my concern.’ Staffe feels his mind flit away from him. ‘What kind of hold do you have over Paolo?’ The dope smoothes his edges, almost to liquid. He tries to focus, but all the questions he had stored and collated morph.

Jackson stands again and places the point of the knife on the arm of Staffe’s chair. With the free hand, Jackson undoes the top two buttons of Staffe’s shirt and looks at the wound, trying its damnedest to heal again.

‘Don’t worry. I won’t harm you, not if you play ball.’

‘And what ball would that be?’

‘I want you to leave Guadalupe alone. It’s a promise I made and I don’t break promises. Ever.’