“Hello,” I said.
It was a woman’s voice on the other end. She pronounced my surname the Danish way.
“Peter Lime?” Her voice was strong and clear, youngish and didn’t have a dialect that I could pinpoint. The mobile phone is a remarkable invention. It has made life significantly easier for people like me, but it is also a curse.
In Denmark my name is pronounced like the Danish word for glue, but I always introduce myself using the same pronunciation as that of the small, sour, lime fruit. And, although the apostrophe isn’t used this way in Danish, I put one after my name when referring to Lime’s photographs. Sometimes when I’m abroad, I have to explain that I don’t have any connection to Orson Welles and the Viennese sewers, but that the name has its origins in a little town in Jutland: Lime, between Ebeltoft and Randers.
When I was still quite young, I had decided to insist that my surname be pronounced in English. I didn’t want a name that suggested sticky, made-in-Denmark glue. My name is all I have in common with that particular backwater, but I come from a place just like it. It’s a speck on the planet, like I was a speck in the cities I called my own – those jungles where, more often than not, I’ve hunted my quarry and bagged it when it thought itself alone and safe. I love the anonymity that cities wrap round us, but not round the famous people whose lives I ruined for a living. They couldn’t stay inside their protective cocoons all the time, they had to emerge, and when they did I was ready. Perhaps they exposed themselves because, deep down, they liked the game of cat-and-mouse too. Because, when all’s said and done, they were narcissists who needed affirmation of their existence. Maybe what they feared most was that no one was lying in wait for them, because that would mean they were no longer interesting, and their 15 minutes in the seductive glare of the flash-bulb was over. It’s like a drug for thousands of people on our media-intoxicated planet.
“Who’s asking?” I said.
“Clara Hoffmann, National Security Service, Copenhagen,” she said.
“Where the hell did you get this number?” I asked as I crawled backwards until I was sure I could stand up without being seen from the beach and began walking down to the car. My t-shirt stuck to my back and the cameras jolted against my hip as I sped up.
“That doesn’t really matter. Have you got a moment?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“It’s rather important.”
“I’m sure it is, but I haven’t got time.”
“I would like to meet with you.”
“I’m not in Madrid,” I said.
I had parked where a little dirt track leading down across a field came to an abrupt halt, blocked by two boulders. The shepherd I had seen when I arrived was standing pretty much in the same place, surrounded by sheep trying to find bits of rough grass between the scorched rocks. He was wearing a broad-brimmed hat which concealed his face. All I could see was the end of a hand-rolled cigarette sticking out from the corner of his mouth. He had an old knapsack on his shoulder and was leaning picturesquely on his crook. A large, shaggy dog was sitting at his feet. Another one was patrolling the perimeter of the flock.
“Where are you?” asked the calm, distinct voice coming through clearly from Copenhagen – if that’s where she was.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“It’s important. If we could meet as soon as possible …”
“Ring in a couple of hours,” I said.
“It’s better if we meet. I’m ringing from Madrid.”
“You’re pretty sure of yourself, but I’m not in Madrid,” I said, although she couldn’t have known where I was, since she had rung my mobile.
“I’m sure you’d be glad to help your old country,” she said.
“I don’t owe Denmark anything,” I said.
She laughed. Her laughter was melodious, like her voice.
“I’m staying at the Hotel Victoria,” she said.
“OK,” I answered. I closed the mobile and broke into a slow run down towards the car. It was a brand-new, four-wheel-drive jeep that I had rented a week before. I threw my gear onto the back seat and drove off, spraying gravel behind me. The shepherd turned his head slowly, as if it was a camera mounted on a tripod, and followed me with his eyes as the jeep bumped and lurched away from the coast. The sheep carried on searching for grass and weeds and only a couple of them lifted their heads and huddled together as I left in a cloud of dust which, I realised much too late, might be visible from down on the beach.
I had made my headquarters in Llanca, a little holiday resort about 20 kilometres to the south. I tried to press the jeep on the steep, narrow and winding roads, which meandered along the rugged coastline like an asphalt-black ribbon. The heat was making the asphalt steam. It was only the beginning of June, but it was already very hot. It seemed it was going to be yet another long, hot and dry summer. The tourist season had begun and it was difficult to find an opening to overtake the slow-moving cars towing heavy caravans, already making the long trek to the beaches of the south coast. I drove like a Spaniard, letting the jeep gather speed going downhill and braking hard just before the hairpin bend and the next slope. Now and then I got lucky and found room to overtake a holidaymaker or a stinking lorry emitting thick fumes that danced like a greasy sash around my face in the open-topped jeep. The sea was on my left, blue as the sky, and from time to time a little white town would come into sight down below. I felt good with the wind in my hair and the result of the hit in the bag on the back seat. I looked forward to getting home to Amelia and Maria Luisa, home to my city. And as usual the feeling of victory, of having accomplished a difficult job, was indescribably gratifying. I didn’t actually need to take on as much work any more, but I wasn’t sure how I would fill my days if I didn’t. When pressed by Amelia I’d had to admit that the work, the hunt itself and bagging the quarry, gave me an almost brutal satisfaction. Even though I had lived in Spain for more than 20 years, my Danish Protestant background was probably a factor too. By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt earn bread. Without work you have no identity. Danes ask you what you do before they’ll tell you their name.
It was slow going even though I pressed the jeep in and out of the hairpin bends. There was too much traffic and it took me nearly two hours to travel 20 kilometres. Twice I got caught in tailbacks because of roadworks. It was getting on for 3 p.m. when I drove into Llanca. The town had shut down in the heat of the siesta, or at least holidaymakers were still strutting around while the residents sat at home and had lunch and watched television. My hotel was down by the harbour, which had a lovely natural sandy beach. It was packed with families sunning themselves on the yellow sand or bathing in the tranquil green water. Voices sounded as if they were muffled by soft cotton wool. Gentle hands rubbed suntan oil into a bare back. A father was carefully helping a toddler with a bathing ring. A mother was scolding a boy for teasing his little sister. A teenager was doing crawl with splashing strokes, showing off to a couple of girls with braces on their teeth and hormones in every fibre of their bodies. A couple exchanged a kiss. A man lazily turned the page of a novel. A pair of infatuated lovers got up and walked arm-in-arm towards their hotel. Afternoon lovemaking awaited them.
I was thirsty, sweaty and hungry. There had been a time when I would have looked down my nose at happy families on the beach. At dad, mum and the kids, as they sat there all sunburnt, together and self-sufficient. There had been a time when I would have been a little bit envious, even though I would never have admitted it to anyone, or to myself. But now I felt fine about families with their joys and sorrows. I had a family myself. I had been known for saying, and considering it the only right way to go about things, that wolves live and hunt best when alone. That there’s a difference between being lonely and being alone, and that I was alone and not lonely. But now I loved my life with my family and realised that I had been both alone and lonely before. Being indispensable – that others were dependent on me and that my actions w
ould have an effect on those dearest to me – gave me great satisfaction. My family: just being able to say that made me happy now, as did the fact that the money I earned wasn’t for me alone, but also contributed to the welfare and happiness of others.
I parked the jeep in a side street near my hotel. Before picking up my key, I stood at the bar and drank a large glass of freshly pressed orange juice and ate a tortilla with small pieces of potato and onion, which was light and delicate. The bar was next to the hotel. Like so many Spanish bars it was rather noisy, with a television blaring in one corner, litter and cigarette-ends on the floor, laminated tables, the smell of oil and garlic; and an agreeable chinking and hissing and clatter of cups, glasses and the espresso machine creating an animated wall-to-wall muzak. The walls were adorned with a couple of aged travel posters showing the Costa Brava’s rugged coast and various Barcelona football teams from past years. A young Michael Laudrup was smiling confidently in several of them, from the days when he led the team to one championship after the other. Most of the customers were locals having lunch. I smoked a cigarette and drank a double espresso as the edge wore off my adrenalin and I settled down. I talked football with the bartender. He had read about Barcelona’s collapse in his midday paper. The club wasn’t top of the division any more, but third. In Catalonia that counts as a collapse. Barcelona has to win the championship, otherwise the team’s a disaster. I’m a Real Madrid man myself, but we talked amicably as I tried to unwind. After a hit I always felt like I had done two hours with the Japanese in the karate institute on Calle Echégaray. I was refreshed, elated and exhausted all at once. So much planning, so much preparation, so many logistical considerations, and then the difference between success and failure was just a few hundredths of a second anyway. There could be a fault with the film or camera. A microscopic grain of sand in the shutter might have ruined the frames. For once my hands had shaken. The light calculation wasn’t right. The victim was blurred and unrecognisable. Umpteen things could have gone wrong.
I showered and packed before ringing Madrid. The exposed films were in the locked camera case, my clothes in a handy bag that could be taken on a plane as cabin luggage. I travel light and get the hotel to do my washing en route or buy a new t-shirt.
Oscar usually turned up at his office around 4 p.m., whereas lots of offices in Madrid didn’t open again until 5 p.m. That was changing. Their rhythm was becoming more and more European, but getting hold of people during the conventional siesta time was still difficult, especially in any kind of public administration office. The siesta hours were for business lunches, family, or for conducting affairs in secluded hotel rooms or in the small apartments of mistresses. I had the phone number of Oscar’s current mistress, but just for emergencies. You could generally only reach Oscar at home with his wife on Sundays; that was how he and Gloria had arranged their lives. Gloria was a big woman and still very attractive, but she could no longer hide the fact that we were approaching 50. That didn’t seem to bother her, and when she wasn’t taking care of her flourishing legal practice, she saw to it that younger lovers confirmed her desirability. Spaniards are a pragmatic people when it comes to affairs of the heart and neither Oscar nor Gloria would dream of getting divorced. Not because they were Catholics, the law gave them the choice. But they were well matched and their private life and joint business transactions were so intertwined that the only people who would profit from a divorce would be the army of lawyers employed to unravel their assets.
They were both my friends and my business partners and we had known each other for more than 20 years. We had met during the chaotic, expectant years following Franco’s death. Back then Oscar was a six-foot German journalist who wrote for a number of left-wing papers, and Gloria was a beautiful law student who carried her membership card of the outlawed Communist party as if it was one of the Tsar’s missing crown jewels. We had a brief, intense affair, but everyone seemed to sleep with everyone in the days when we said “comrades” without blushing, and the affair ended quickly and without acrimony. Oscar and Gloria were another matter. They fell madly in love and had stayed together against the odds; not that fidelity had played a major role in recent years. We had been young, poor and revolutionary together, and we had become rich together. They were my second family. They had never had children. Gloria had once had an abortion in England, back when it was forbidden in Spain, and after that she had regarded her illicit supply of the Pill as a revolutionary sword to be brandished in front of the Pope and all the other old, dyed-in-the-wool, reactionary, ludicrous men who tried to control her life. By the time she began to want children, it was too late. The clock had apparently struck. She couldn’t get pregnant, but if it was a big disappointment she hid it well. Oscar was pretty indifferent – if Gloria wanted a child, he was happy to be a father. She couldn’t, and without missing a beat they returned to life as normal, and after a couple of years stopped talking about it.
I thought about them as I packed my sweat-soaked jeans and t-shirt into the holdall and put on a clean shirt and a pair of light-coloured trousers. I drank a couple of cold colas from the minibar. Lately, I had begun thinking quite a bit about my childhood and youth. I was too happy and contented with my life to be experiencing a mid-life crisis, but maybe life ensures that you’re more inclined to look back when you accept that your youth is definitively over, that life has passed its peak, that there are some things you can’t do any more, even though you’d like to. Perhaps remembering the past makes it easier to cope with the years ahead, as you gradually slip into old age and hopefully an easy death.
I rang Oscar’s direct number and he answered straight away. Oscar didn’t speak Spanish when we first met, so we had used English from the beginning. Even though he now spoke fluent Spanish, we still used English when it was just the two of us. That’s what came most naturally.
“Well, old boy,” said Oscar in his husky, deep voice. “Fire away.”
“It’s in the bag,” I said.
“And?”
“Almost a Jacqueline,” I said. “So put the wheels in motion.”
“You’re a clever, cynical boy.”
“It’s a Minister, on the right.”
“Just as well or you’d have trouble with Amelia,” he said, and I could hear the amusement in his voice. He liked Amelia, but had never quite got over the fact that I was now married and was faithful to my wife, had become bourgeois in my old age, and listened to her and respected her opinions. But luckily all four of us got on well.
“I’ll bring in the material tomorrow,” I said.
“I’ll make sure there’s a technician waiting.”
“I’ll do them myself,” I said.
“What about a lawyer?”
“They’re taken on a public beach.”
Oscar and I seldom said things straight out over the phone. Spain has an extensive and powerful security apparatus and there isn’t always complete respect for the laws on protection from wire-tapping. Spain is a European country with terrorism, and blood and violence have a way of getting the better of constitutional rights.
“How public?” he said.
“Totally public. It’s not private property. Anyone with a boat can use it.”
“I’ll put the wheels in motion. When are you coming home?”
“I’ll change cars and drive to Barcelona now and get the first flight.”
“OK, signing off, old boy,” he said with the kind of satisfaction in his voice that these days was nearly only ever induced by the thought of making money.
“Give my best to Gloria,” I said.
“Will do, old boy.”
I checked out and walked over to the jeep with my holdall in one hand and the camera bag containing the negatives, which would fill Oscar’s and my bank account with many, many thousands of dollars over my shoulder.
A black Mercedes was parked at an angle in front of the jeep. Two men were leaning against the car, their arms crossed. One of them wouldn’t be much
trouble. He was short and podgy, with a broad, heavy face below a bald pate. He didn’t look very fit. He looked exactly like what he undoubtedly was: an expensive spin-doctor employed to pull unfortunate chestnuts out of the fire for his lord and master. The other one was 30-odd, with beefy arms bulging under his jacket and a cocky little smile below his black sunglasses, but he didn’t have the air of a bruiser. He looked like a body-builder, not a fighter. It was a case of pumped-up muscles, not the sinewy toughness that you got from the gym I used. They were both in suits, despite the heat. Well-cut tropical wear, and they didn’t seem to be sweating. The shepherd had talked. The shepherd could read and write, at least the numbers and letters on a licence plate belonging to Avis.
“Oyes, hijo de puta,” the heavy said. He straightened himself up, letting his hands hang down beside his body. He seemed relaxed, but I could read the signs.
The side street was deserted. The hum of the traffic starting up again drifted from the main street and I could hear the metallic sound of shop shutters being rolled up.
Lime's Photograph Page 2
