Next morning I woke with trembling hands, a burning sensation in my stomach and a splitting headache. The room stank of smoke and booze. From down on Calle Echégaray I could hear the dustcart lumbering along the narrow street. Clanking and clattering, metallic grating and crashing like thousands of cymbals, the dustmen’s warning shouts to pedestrians who had to pin themselves against the walls, all the morning sounds flooded in through the open window. I rolled up my bed linen and threw the clothes I had slept in into the wastepaper basket. The staff of the Hotel Inglés had undoubtedly seen worse. I drank a couple of bottles of mineral water and washed down two pills with cola. I didn’t indulge in the empty promise of never doing it again. I knew my own weakness, but maybe self-contempt could be turned into something constructive. Would I want to look at myself in the mirror again? Had Amelia and Maria Luisa really been there during the night? What had they said? I seemed to hear their voices – “You mustn’t kill yourself. You mustn’t die and leave us!” But that couldn’t be right. Because they had died and left me. They had been taken from me. That was the whole injustice.
I took a long shower, dressed in clean clothes from top to bottom and went down to a bar, where I ordered a huge glass of coffee with milk and another bottle of water. The street buzzed with normal, Monday morning activity. It smelled fresh now that the water truck had driven through and sluiced the weekend grime down the drains. I began to feel better and greeted acquaintances and the bartenders standing outside their premises in the lovely morning light. The air was fresh and invigorating and the heat had yet to take hold and cast its clammy mantle over Madrid.
I packed my spare jeans, last t-shirt, cotton shirt, socks and underwear into my bag along with my toiletries, and carried the suitcase of photographs down to reception. Of course they would store the suitcase for me. They could put it in the basement, and it could stay there for as long as I wanted. For as long as the Hotel Inglés continued to exist, and after all, it had survived both revolution and civil war, Carlos reminded me. I rang SAS and booked my ticket, and got them to reserve me a room at the Hotel Royal in Copenhagen. That left me enough time to buy some clothes and have a lunch of vegetable soup and trout, plus more water.
Once I was on the plane I had a Bloody Mary and felt my jangling nerves settle down. After that I stuck to a quarter bottle of wine, suppressing my bad conscience and fell asleep. I woke when I heard the sound of the engine change and my ears registered the fall in pressure. Looking out of the little window I could see the Øresund, the strait between Denmark and Sweden, sparkling blue and speckled with a myriad of tiny, colourful yachts.
Copenhagen looked like its old self, lovely in the evening sunshine, with swarms of brightly coloured bikes and the traffic running smoothly and calmly. People grumbled about the heat, but after stifling Madrid it felt pleasant and fresh with a faint smell of salt drifting in from the Øresund.
I didn’t ring anyone, but stayed in the hotel and avoided the minibar. I switched on the television, and was channel hopping, thinking about Bruce Springsteen’s “57 Channels (And Nothing On)” when I came upon one of my old colleagues, Klaus Pedersen, on the News with a feature about Lola.
I had last seen him ten years earlier when he had been working for Jyllands-Posten. He had hired me a couple of times for assignments in Madrid, and on one occasion we had been together with the guerrilla soldiers of the Polisario Front, behind the front line in the Western Sahara. Following seasoned Bedouin soldiers on their raids against the Moroccan army hadn’t exactly been a safe assignment. The Polisario had been fighting for the independence of the old Spanish Sahara for over 20 years. Yet another of the world’s forgotten, hopeless wars, but my friend had written some good articles and my photographs had been given a prominent position in the paper. Oscar and Gloria had been furious with me. There was no need to carry on accepting dangerous assignments now that the money was rolling in from my paparazzo shots, but now and then I wanted to take “real” photographs.
Klaus Pedersen seemed to be a competent television reporter. Like me, he had aged. I had lost quite a bit of hair, he had kept all his, but he had put on at least ten kilos since our adventures in the desert in those zippy jeeps that tore across the sand.
The item was about Lola’s disappearance. The News referred to her as Laila Petrova, but I knew it was Lola. It seemed that Lola’s administration of a big art museum had cost the Minister of Culture her job. They had looked at the books after Lola had vanished. The sum of 6.7 million kroner was missing. How much of that amount dear little Lola had taken and how much was lost because the accounts were in such a shambles wasn’t clear. Copenhagen had been designated Cultural Capital of Europe and, as also happened in Madrid, certain creative personalities had taken this opportunity to milk the coffers of the European Union, Denmark and Copenhagen. The News showed pictures of a new museum of international modern art that had just been built – a big greyish-white building that looked like a beached ship. Klaus Pedersen gave a brief summary of what had happened. The director, Laila Petrova, who claimed to be highly regarded in London and at Moscow’s Manége Exhibition Hall, had vanished. Inquiries made by Jyllands-Posten and other papers had revealed that she did not have the qualifications she had claimed. They had never heard of her at the gallery she had claimed to have worked at in London or in Moscow.
The Minister of Culture appeared on screen and made a statement, surrounded by a forest of microphones and hand-held tape recorders, and looking like she would happily be anywhere else but there. She was a haggard woman, about my age, with a rather pursed mouth. She defended herself, saying that her civil servants ought to have checked Laila Petrova’s references, and then she said she had no further comment. Passing the buck to the civil servants clearly hadn’t worked this time. She had absolutely no comment on the Prime Minister having relieved her of her duties. No, she didn’t know if there was another post awaiting her. Now she would take stock of her future. But none of this was her fault.
Klaus appeared on screen.
“Laila Petrova was appointed on the warm recommendation of the Minister of Culture, even though no prominent member of the Danish art world had ever heard of her. At the time of Laila Petrova’s appointment, the Prime Minister called it a bold and visionary decision to bring her over from London, but today he laid the responsibility fairly and squarely on the Minister of Culture’s desk. This tangled affair is not yet resolved – the story of how an elegant, charming woman fooled the Danish political establishment. This is a modern version of the Emperor’s new clothes, and the real losers are the Danish taxpayers.”
Klaus Pedersen’s final words were accompanied by a shot of Lola in an extravagant crimson gown, walking with the Queen. It must have been at the opening of the museum. I could see the young Lola in her as she sailed through the imposing gallery, a tiny step ahead of Her Majesty, who looked insignificant and strangely out of place compared to Lola, who had managed to position herself in the Golden Section of the frame. It was as if the Queen had chosen an inappropriately plain gown for such a grand occasion, as if she was underdressed.
“Nice one, Lola,” I said out loud, and rang the desk and got them to look up the number of the News.
At first the switchboard didn’t know if he had already left or not, but then I was told that Klaus Pedersen was on the late shift, and I was put through.
“Hello, Klaus. It’s Peter Lime.”
“Peter, damn it! It’s been ages. How are you?”
I could hear the News in the background. I could see on my set that they had started the weather.
“OK. And you?”
“Fine, fine. Are you calling from Madrid?”
“No. I’m in Copenhagen. I’ve just seen your item on Lola.”
“Laila.”
“Her name’s Lola. It was fascinating. She stitched them up good and proper, didn’t she?”
“Not half. And she could charm the pants off them. When she looked at them with her big blue eyes, a
ll those Social Democrats who wanted to be oh so sophisticated just melted at her feet. Forgot to check her references. She didn’t have a single qualification. Did you know her, Peter?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be damned,” he said, and I could hear the newshound in his voice.
“I’m at the Royal. Let me invite you for a drink and I’ll tell you about her.”
He went quiet at the other end of the line. The summer was set to continue, said the weatherman, and smiled.
“That’s not really so good, Peter. I’ve promised to get home.”
“What?”
That wasn’t the Klaus Pedersen I knew. In the past he had never given his family a thought. He had lived and breathed foreign news, taking every opportunity to travel with the paper picking up the tab.
“Of course, you don’t know. I got divorced a couple of years ago and then I married again. You know, a younger version. So I’ve got a new brood of kids, and the youngest one’s got colic and screams all the time and if I don’t get home to do my bit you could cut the air with a knife for the next fortnight.”
“OK.”
“You know what it’s like, don’t you? I sure as hell didn’t want any more children at my age, but you can’t just say no when a new wife wants a family, can you?”
“Not really.”
“I gave up the foreign desk for the same reason. All that travelling did for my first marriage. So I applied for a job on the television news, home affairs. Fixed shifts and my own bed every evening. There’s no damn way I could afford to go through another divorce.”
“No problem, Klaus. It’s none of my business, anyway.”
“Haven’t you got any children?”
“No,” I said. “I haven’t got any children.”
“The same old lone wolf. Well. Right. I just can’t, even though I’d like to. Couldn’t you come out here tomorrow? I’m working.”
“That sounds fine,” I said.
“If you’ve got time then come about eleven o’clock. Ring just before you leave the Royal, then I’ll go down and let you in.”
“That sounds just fine. And give my regards to the new wife.”
“See you. Good to hear from you.”
I looked across at the minibar, but stopped myself and did some push-ups instead, until my shoulders and ribs ached. I read the Herald Tribune, starting with the front page news, on to what the leader writer had to say, then to sport and Calvin and Hobbes. I watched a late-night film on some satellite channel or other, before finally managing to get a few hours of fitful sleep. I woke up early and stayed in bed watching morning television. A succession of people came into a studio constructed to look as if they were in a living room, complete with both bookcases and a kitchen area. The guests chatted for five minutes about Danish topics that meant nothing to me and then they left the studio again. Now and then there was a bit of cooking and short news bulletins, and a woman stood gesticulating strangely in front of a weather map of Denmark and said that summer was set to continue.
I turned over to CNN and took a shower, waiting until I thought it would be all right to ring Clara Hoffmann. She sounded wide awake and breezy, and told me that her flat was just a few minutes’ walk from my hotel, so she could come by on her way to the office, in half an hour.
I ordered a pot of coffee and two cups in the lobby, and sat waiting for her on a sofa in a corner where I could keep an eye on the door. There’s something soothing about the sense of anonymity in an international hotel. You’re alone and yet together with scores of other people, each going about their own business. When a hotel is run efficiently, everything is clean and tidy, buzzing with activity. A group of Japanese tourists stood waiting in the lobby and businessmen in dark suits carrying attaché cases and laptops were checking out, casting anxious glances at the clock and even more anxious glances at their mobile telephones. Mine was still at the Hotel Inglés back in Madrid. I enjoyed being incommunicado, a stranger in a strange place, which was just as familiar and recognisable as Madrid.
A lanky chap with a ponytail just like mine came out of the lift and walked across to the reception desk. He was wearing a pale, crumpled summer jacket, jeans and what was certainly a short-sleeved shirt with a loosely knotted tie. He was carrying a practical, cabin-sized bag in one hand and a heavy camera bag in the other. At first I thought I would pretend I hadn’t seen him, but considering how many hours he had waited on our behalf and also with me when, for instance, Princess Di had gone to the gym, that would be have been ridiculous. He was an Australian named Derek Watson, who had stalked the jet set for 20 years and one of his photographs still brought in the money. A photograph of Diana with her children. She’s wearing a long, flimsy summer dress and bending slightly at the knee as the wind catches her skirt and lifts it so that you can see most of one bare leg. It was a lovely picture of a mother with her two small children but, because of who she was, it was more than that. It was a sensation. Or as Oscar had put it when we got the photograph on commission, “There are lovely thighs everywhere, but not hers.”
Derek and we had earned a packet from that photograph. A second time around too, when the Princess was killed in the car crash and the media all over the world went mad and we could sell any picture that had her in it. Derek’s photograph had sold particularly well. It was perfect for the serious newspapers, accompanying their indignant leaders and articles on how outrageous it was to take precisely that kind of photograph.
So I got up and went over to him and tapped him on the shoulder as he stood fiddling with his credit card.
“Hi Derek. How’s it going?”
“Lime, you old hound. Nice to see you.”
“Join me for a coffee?” I said.
He looked at his watch.
“That would be nice, but I’ve got a flight to catch.”
“OK.”
“I’ve heard about it, you know … I met Gloria in London. I’m really sorry, Peter.”
“OK.”
He got his bill, barely glanced at it and handed his credit card to the receptionist. He wasn’t paying.
“I hear you’ve called it a day?” he said.
“Well, I’m taking a break.”
“I thought about doing that too, after the business with Di. You’d have thought that everyone with a damned camera was a murderer. Or worse. A paedophile. For a couple of weeks politicians were better placed on the shit-list than us journalists and photographers. Even my own newsagent wouldn’t even sell me a paper because he held me personally responsible, but think about how much money he’s earned thanks to you and me supplying pictures the readers want.”
He flung his arms out.
“I tell you it was incredible. The crowds. The media. It was love and harmony and hypocrisy and bullshit across the board. All those flowers! It was enough to give you damned hay fever! Not to mention the BBC and the teddy bears. I don’t know what was worst.”
He signed his credit card receipt.
“Die young, then you’re both martyr and saint,” I said.
“And you have to be pretty. If she’d been 20 years older and not so damned photogenic it would have been a non-story. A tragic, mundane road accident. And our colleagues weren’t even to blame, you know. But you can’t say that to anyone. You weren’t in London, were you?” he asked.
Even though I got the feeling that he had said all this many times before, I could tell that he welcomed an opportunity to get it off his chest again to a colleague who knew what riches lay unseen in photographs, knew the compelling fascination of the hunt and the satisfaction when the quarry was bagged.
“No. I wasn’t, but Madrid went wild too.”
“Even here in fair Copenhagen, they tell me. The whole thing was so over the top. When you think about how she used us, you know? When the dry stick or mummy needed a jab in the solar plexus or hungry children a bob or two. I still don’t understand what came over the world. For the first time in my life I realised what it must be
like to live in a dictatorship, be a citizen in a country like the GDR with thought police and enforced orthodoxy and all that shit. If you didn’t think the woman was the greatest thing since the Blessed Virgin, you got the cold shoulder, and if it had been up to the people and sanctimonious editors, Britain would have set up its own Stasi to find anyone who didn’t think Di was the incarnation of goodness, so they could be registered as enemies of the people for all eternity. Jesus Christ!”
“It’s all forgotten now,” I said.
“Precisely. That’s the whole point,” said Derek.
He looked nervously at his watch again, so I said I wouldn’t keep him and asked him to pass on my greetings to Gloria or Oscar if he ran into them at one of the places in London where media types eat and drink.
“OK. It wouldn’t surprise me if I saw them. How long are you staying here? If they ask.”
“No idea. Maybe a week. Maybe until tomorrow.”
“Called it a day, have you Lime? In my dreams. Well, ciao. See you around. Enjoy your break.”
We shook hands and he doffed an imaginary cap on his way to who knows where. What he had been doing in Copenhagen was none of my business. He would never give up, he couldn’t live without the hunt and the rewards, even if he managed to get a shot of Clinton with his trousers down and a young lady kneeling in front of him. A photograph like that would make him seriously rich, but he would still stand, rain or shine, in some city or behind a private beach or wherever, waiting as patiently as a sniper in Sarajevo. It was the chase that appealed to him. Just as it had me. The knowledge that anyone in this world could be brought down and exposed as merely human when they least expected it. His world was both enticing and awful. I had a choice: go back to the business and do something I was good at, or stay as I was in the void between oblivion and memory. I could go back to photojournalism and visit all the trouble-spots of the world, illustrating the horror for the morning papers. Or I could spare myself the decision and just carry on drifting with the tide. I stood in the lobby watching his retreating figure, the nonchalant way he lit a cigarette, the carelessness with which he slung his suitcase into the back of the taxi, his casual and appropriate greeting to the driver, the self-assurance of sitting in the front seat. I imagined his often-repeated request to be taken to the airport, his certainty that lovers and assignments were left behind and new ones awaited him, his loneliness, and his fear that age would catch him up and he would die alone. A portrait of my own state of mind. I saw all that as I stood, rooted to the spot, feeling both loss and relief.
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