‘Si?’ I began.
‘Tu es el hombre?’
‘No,’ I answered, in Spanish, more than a bit cagily. ‘I am a man, not The Man. Step in out of the rain and tell me what it is you want.’
She did as she had been invited. ‘I was told to come here,’ she said.
This was something I had heard before. I took a closer look at the girl. She wasn’t the same one who had called a few weeks earlier but, if I had to guess, she was of the same nationality. Beneath the pancake make-up she was brown-skinned, and her eyes said Oriental. Given that Spanish seemed to be her native language, I guessed that she was Filipina. She was also very young, sixteen at most.
‘Who told you?’ I asked her. As I spoke I heard, from behind me, Susie clopping downstairs, still wearing Prim’s shoes and my robe. Whether that frightened the girl in any way, I wasn’t sure, but her eyes went from me to the floor and she clammed up.
‘Put down that case and come into the kitchen.’ I said it not as an invitation, but as an order. Our visitor obeyed, without a word, following me round the stairway and through to the back of the house.
Susie had got as far as breaking half a dozen eggs into the blender, and heating oil in a saucepan. ‘Make enough for three,’ I told her quietly. ‘This kid looks as if she’s starving.’
‘Freezing too. You mix more eggs and give her some coffee. I’m going to get her something warmer to wear.’
I poured her a mug from the percolator, added some milk and handed it to the strange girl. She gave me her first smile as she took it, wrapping both hands round it for warmth, taking a sip, then holding it to her chest. ‘Gracias,’ she whispered.
I didn’t try to question her as I broke more eggs into the mixer. She probably wouldn’t have heard me, anyway; she was looking at the mug too intently. I took some focaccia from the freezer, defrosted it in the microwave for a few seconds then put it in the oven to bake. As I closed the door, Susie returned; she had her red sweater, and she motioned to the girl to put it on. I felt a pang of regret: I liked her in that jumper, and she sure filled it better than the youngster did.
She went off again, leaving me to cook. I stayed silent, letting her get used to me. . Whoever or whatever she thought I was.
I looked across at her as I took the pot off the hob. ‘Huevos?’
‘Si, si. Por favor.’
I tipped half of the eggs on to one plate and shared the rest out evenly. I took the warmed through focaccia, cut it into wedges on a chopping board, then set the lot out on the breakfast bar. Susie returned as I did so, in her tan trousers and another red sweater, a polo-neck that I hadn’t seen before.
The girl ate so voraciously that I wondered when she had last seen food. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked her quietly, in English, as she picked up her fourth chunk of the Italian herb bread.
‘Gabrielle,’ she replied, without thinking, then gave me a guilty look as she realised how easily I’d slipped through her ‘No hablar Ingles,’ pretence.
‘Where are you from?’ I poured her some more coffee.
‘Manila.’
‘Have you just arrived in Spain?’
‘Si.’›
‘How?’
‘On a ship, a big ship from the Philippines to Barcelona.’
‘Did you work on board this ship?’
‘Si. I help in the galley and I clean the crew’s cabins.’
‘Nothing else?’ asked Susie, fairly heavily. The kid looked at her, then back to me, with a puzzled expression on her face.
I put it another way. ‘Did you have to be friendly to the crew?’
She shook her head until I thought she’d dislocate something. ‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘The man in Manila told me not to be friendly with the sailors. He said that if I did, you would know and I would be sent back home.’
‘He would know?’ Susie sounded incredulous. I waved her to indignant silence.
‘Okay, Gabrielle,’ I went on, gently. ‘Why did you come here, to this house?’
‘When the ship came to Barcelona, the captain gave me some Spanish money. Then he took me to the bus station and he put me on a bus and he told me to get off in L’Escala and to take a taxi to this house.’ She lifted up the sweater, delved into the gypsy blouse and produced a folded sheet of paper from her cleavage. ‘Here it is; he gave me this address.’
I took it from her and checked; sure enough, there it was, written in a big scrawl in ballpoint. Villa Bernabeu, Carrer Caterina, L’Escala, Girona.
‘So,’ I said. ‘You were sent from Manila to Barcelona, then here to see me. What were you told will happen now?’
Gabrielle looked up at me; she was a pretty wee thing, very pretty. She didn’t need any of that make-up. ‘You will look at me, and you will talk to me, and you will have a doctor examine me. Then I will go to work.’
I knew what was coming; I could tell from Susie’s expression that she did too. ‘Where do you expect to be working?’
‘In your club, senor; the Bluebird Club, the man in Manila told me it was called that. He tell me to dress nice, so you will like me.’
‘And what do you expect to be doing there?’
‘I ’spect to be a hostess; to wait on the tables, to serve the customers their food and drink, and to be nice to them.’
‘How nice? You mean friendly? Like you were told not to be friendly with the sailors?’
She frowned at me as understanding began to dawn. ‘The man in Manila did not say that. He only told me I would wait on tables and be nice, and I would make a lot of money and could send it home to my father and mother. My father is sick, so he cannot work. The man in Manila give him dollars; that’s why he let me go to Spain.’
‘You mean he sold you?’ Susie exclaimed.
Gabrielle caught the anger in her voice; it scared her. ‘No,’ she protested. ‘The man give him money to let me work for his friend. That was all.’
‘So you can go back to Manila any time you like?’ I asked her.
The youngster’s face fell. ‘No. The man said that I must stay in Spain and work at the club till you tell me I can go home. If I run away, he will hurt my father, and my mother.’
‘Tell me about this man. Do you know his name?’
She nodded. ‘He is an African man; Moroccan. His name is Hassani.’
‘Shit,’ I whispered. Susie was looking at me now; completely bewildered.
‘What’s my name?’ I asked Gabrielle.
‘Senor Capulet. You are Senor Capulet; isn’t that right?’
I shoved the last piece of bread towards her, across the breakfast bar.
‘No. I am not Senor Capulet, and I don’t own the Bluebird Club, or any other club for that matter. Capulet has been gone from here for over a year now. I don’t think the man who paid your father can have known this at the time.
‘I’ve never heard of the Bluebird, kid, but there are plenty of places like it in Spain. Do you know what a brothel is?’ She shook her head. ‘En Espanol, un burdel?’
‘Si.’ She nodded, and I saw her colour rise beneath the make-up.
‘Did you really not know that’s where you would be working?’
‘No. My father said it would be all right for me to go there.’ Her face fell. ‘Can you find out where it is, senor? For I must go there. If I don’t, the African man will do things to my father.’
‘No way are you going there, kid,’ said Susie. ‘Do you want to go home?’
Gabrielle was silent for a few seconds, then whispered something, so quietly that I couldn’t make it out, but I knew that it was ‘Yes,’ in one language or another.
‘Then that’s what will happen,’ I told her.
‘Susie,’ I said. ‘Take Gabrielle upstairs and put her in a hot bath. Then she should sleep for an hour or two. While you’re doing that, I’ll make a phone call.’
She nodded and squeezed my arm. ‘You still have a soft side left, then,’ she whispered, as she slid off her seat.
‘
Don’t you go getting maternal on me,’ I answered her, more than half seriously.
‘What’s your surname?’ I asked the girl.
‘Palacios. Yo soy Gabrielle Serafina Palacios.’
Left alone, I scratched my chin and thought carefully. Logically, there was only one guy I could call, but I was hesitant. There was a Catalan Society magazine lying on the bar, beside the telephone. I looked up ‘Useful Numbers’ and found the British Consulate in Barcelona. The telephonist told me that the only person on duty that day was the Commercial Counsellor, Ms Willis.
‘Anyone will do,’ I said. I introduced myself, and was wounded; the name meant nothing to her. I explained the situation, exactly as it had happened. ‘Phone the police,’ she advised at once. ‘She’s a foreign national, obviously an illegal; she’s not your problem.’
‘She turned up cold and hungry on my doorstep, expecting a job in my brothel!’ I replied. ‘Of course she’s my problem.’
‘What have you done with her for now?’
‘My girlfriend’s …’ I paused. I had used the word without a second thought. Well, it was true for a day or two. ‘. . giving her a bath.’
‘That’s a relief,’ Ms Willis exclaimed. ‘You’re not alone with her; you have a female there. Otherwise she could have accused you of anything. Please, Mr Blackstone, call the Guardia at once.’
‘I don’t know anyone there; I do have a friend in the Mossos though.’
‘Technically this has nothing to do with them, but if it’ll make you feel happier, call him. Meantime, I’ll get in touch with my opposite number in the Filipino Consulate. Give me all the details again.’
I repeated the girl’s name, gave her my phone number, and Fortunato’s, then caught him by telephone at home, just as he was about to leave for his office in Girona. He was on my doorstep within half an hour. By that time Susie had bedded Gabrielle down in one of the spare rooms. When I introduced her to the policeman she gave him one of the most unashamedly appraising looks I have ever seen, but thankfully said nothing beyond a polite, ‘Hello’, then went off, unasked, to make more coffee.
I told him all of Gabrielle’s story, beginning with her father’s sale of her in Manila to her arrival at the address to which she had been sent.
‘The Bluebird Club,’ Fortunato murmured, when I had finished. ‘I know it all right; it is just outside Figueras, on the road to Girona. By name, it belonged to a farmer and the licence was his, too, but we knew that there were other people behind it. They had papers for all the women there, so they were allowed to do business.
‘I guess now that Capulet was the other man.’
‘Is there a third Hassani brother?’
The policeman nodded. ‘As I recall there is. His name is Nayim, and he has a small prison record in Spain for dealing in stolen property. If you asked me to guess, he bought the girls in Manila. . You say the first one who turned up here could have been Filipina too?’
‘Yes, for sure. She was a bit older than Gabrielle, but not much.’
‘That’s the game then. He buys them young and fresh, finds them a cargo ship where they can work their passage, with some money to the skipper as well to ensure that the crew don’t fuck them useless before they get to Spain. Once they’re here, the skipper walks them off the vessel and sends them up to L’Escala, to Capulet.’
‘So why are they still coming?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. Nayim can’t know that Capulet has vanished. But sooner or later he will run out of money; then there will be no more girls.’
‘Where did Sayeed fit in?’
‘My guess would be that he delivered them to the Bluebird, once Capulet had given them the okay. The Frenchman wouldn’t have been seen dead near a place like that, even if he did own it.’
‘Speaking of being seen dead …’
‘No,’ said Fortunato, firmly. ‘There’s no sign of him.’
‘How about the story I told you yesterday, about Susie’s investment?’
‘Hah!’ He laughed. ‘You know, Oz. I am not sure if I want to be a friend of yours; they are all very unlucky. However that one has taken wings; there is no longer a need for Susie to make a formal statement. I arrested Toldo, the lawyer, yesterday afternoon; for a while he tried to claim that he also had been a victim of Chandler and Hickok, but there were letters in his office which prove that he knew all about the plan.
‘Once I took his statement, I phoned the Fraud people in London to tell them about it. Not long afterwards, they called me back. The British police are now looking for Senor Chandler, or Fowler, for the murder of his partner, Senor Wild Bill Hickok. So, among others, are the Guardia Civil.
‘They can place him on the Costa del Sol a month ago, but there have been no sightings since then.’
‘Is Susie in danger?’ I asked.
‘Why should she be? The story of the murder, although not of the fraud, is all over the newspapers in England, and television has shown a photograph of Fowler. He’s nowhere in Europe by now, I’ll bet you. But neither is the money, unfortunately.’
‘I heard that last part,’ came a voice from behind us. ‘How much is this man Toldo worth?’
‘Not enough to make it worth taking him to court,’ the policeman told her. ‘You will have to trace it all the way through from Barcelona to wherever it is now.’
Susie winced. ‘That could be difficult. Once money goes black, it tends to move around a lot, and fast. Could we have any comeback against the Spanish bank?’
‘Not unless they broke their own rules in making the transfer, and did it on one signature instead of two. I don’t think that is likely, senora.’
‘In that case. I’ll just have to hope that the Fraud Squad is up to the job.’ She gave us each a mug from the tray which she had brought from the kitchen.
‘Now,’ she said, fixing Fortunato with a stare, ‘what are we going to do about that poor wee girl upstairs?’
‘She’s a good girl, you say?’ he asked; a question for a question.
‘She seems to be. She’s lost, and scared, and thousands of miles from home, but she seems like a decent kid.’
‘Then I’ll look after her myself. I know she’s a Guardia Civil responsibility, but if I give her to them, they will put her in a detention centre. These things can move slowly; she could be there for months, among all sorts of bad people.
‘I will take her under my protection and arrange her return to Manila directly with the consulate.’
‘Where will she stay?’
He gave Susie a shrug which said, Where else?
‘She will stay with me tonight at least, if Veronique agrees. I will go home now and discuss it with her. I’ll be back for the girl in two or three hours.’
25
Susie let Gabrielle keep the sweater. She hugged it to herself, and looked at her gratefully, as Ramon picked up her pathetic wee case. He had brought his wife with him to collect the girl, a sensible move, so that she wouldn’t be frightened.
I walked them out to their car, a roomy family saloon; Alejandro was in the back, asleep and strapped into his safety seat. The girl’s face lit up as she saw him. Without her make-up, her skin was a very light brown; she could have passed for his older sister.
‘Are we still going, then?’ Susie asked as I walked back inside.
‘Where?’
‘This cocktail party Shirley mentioned last night. At Fred’s, or wherever.’
‘Frank’s. You want to go?’
‘Unless you’ve lost your bottle, and don’t fancy being talked about.’
‘They’re going to talk about me anyway, like Shirley said. Sure, let’s go. Unless you’d rather watch rugby on Sky that is.’
‘That will be right,’ she snorted. ‘What should I wear? Frock or trousers? Shirt or sweater?’
‘Those trousers you’ve got on, and a shirt.’ I went upstairs with her and gave the nod to her choice of a fawn shirt from the magic suitcase. I sat on the bed and watched
her as she changed; I hadn’t realised it before, but she was built very like Prim, an inch or two shorter, a cup size bigger in the bust, certainly, but with the same narrow waist and assertive hips. With her back to me, she could almost have been my wife in a wig.
I changed into my jeans, another white shirt, and cowboy boots. This time as we checked ourselves in the mirror by the door, me in my black leather jacket and Susie in the red one that she had bought in Torroella, I fairly towered over her.
Remembering my offer to Shirley of a lift, I called her, but she turned it down. ‘I’d rather keep the option of a quick getaway, Oz. So should you, if you’ve any sense.’
I had been to Frank and Geraldine’s house before, in my first spell on the Costa Brava. It’s a nice, fairly new villa, in a part of L’Escala called Montgo and it’s built on two levels, with loads of space inside and out and a small swimming pool with dark blue tiles like mine, so that it looks cool in the summer, and bloody freezing in the winter.
When we got there at about ten minutes after three, the place was already crowded. Gerrie met us at the door. ‘How good to see you, Oz,’ she said, enthusiastically. ‘And this is your sister, that Shirl told us about, is it?’
‘This is Susie,’ I answered. Not a lie, and I didn’t fancy any long explanations.
I gave her a couple of thousand pesetas entry money for the Catalan Society funds, and a bottle of champagne as a raffle prize, and she sold me twenty quid’s worth of tickets so that I could win it back. The weather had brightened up, and it was pleasantly warm again, so most of the crowd were outside. JoJo gave us a cheery ‘Good afternoon’ and two glasses of some pink stuff that she said was ‘punsh’, and we wandered off to mingle.
I hadn’t been a great player in the British Society of Catalunya during our first stay; I was given to loafing then. Still, I knew most of the faces from that time. The mingling part of it was easy; I was buttonholed straightaway by a couple from Yorkshire who admitted, in the slightly guilty way that grapple-fans of their age always have, that they watched the GWA wrestling on television, and wanted to know what it was like to be its ring announcer.
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