A Dead Man in Barcelona

by Michael Pearce

  The Chief breathed heavily. ‘You will find yourself mixing with them more if you go on the way you are doing.’

  ‘Oh? What way is that? Teaching our children?’

  ‘How you teach your children is not my concern, Señora. Although it may be the Church’s. It is what you do out of school that bothers me.’

  ‘I do not break the law.’

  ‘You do not treat it with respect.’

  ‘It does not deserve respect. And nor, Chief, do you.’

  The Chief reddened. ‘I am giving you advice, Señora. Good advice. The next time it will not be advice. You will be back in jail. And this time there will be no one to bail you out.’

  ‘Will you kill me, as you did him?’

  ‘Señora –’

  ‘I do not need your warnings,’ said Nina scornfully.

  ‘You do, Señora. And would do well to heed them. You mix with bad people.’

  ‘Poor people,’ said Nina. ‘Not bad people.’

  ‘Murderers.’

  ‘What nonsense!’ said Nina, beginning to turn away.

  ‘We know who killed Ramon Mas.’

  Nina stopped.

  ‘No one killed him,’ she said. ‘He died when his boat sank.’

  ‘Sank? Just like that? A fisherman’s boat? One that was out on the water every night? No, no, Señora, boats like that do not sink. They sink only when somebody sinks them.’

  ‘Why should anyone do that? He was a poor man, like us.’

  ‘He knew too much. He was out on the water every night and he had seen. And he was going to tell.’

  ‘He was an ordinary fisherman out with other fishermen. What was there to tell? That he had seen the nets being pulled in, that he had seen fish leaping in the darkness.’

  ‘Oh, more than that, Señora. More than that!’

  ‘He was a poor fisherman and he died as other poor fishermen have done. Let him rest in peace. Do not draw him into your sick fantasies.’

  ‘He was a poor fisherman, Señora, and needed money. Otherwise he was going to lose his boat. And he was not like your friends, Señora, he was not one of them. So why shouldn’t he tell? The night before he died he met one of my men and they made an appointment. Someone must have heard them, for he did not keep it.’

  ‘You think that because my friends are anarchists –’

  ‘I think that because they are anarchists they do not fear God. Nor His justice. And I think you should have nothing to do with them. You are an innocent young girl without a father and your mind is full – well, you spoke of my sick fantasies. You should have regard to the beam in your own eye. And stay away from such men.’

  Nina walked away. The Chief of Police stood for a moment watching her and then turned. He saw Seymour and beamed.

  ‘Señor Seymour, it is good to have you back with us!’

  ‘It is a pleasure to be back. Of course, I have not been away for very long.’

  ‘At Gibraltar, did you say?’

  Seymour hadn’t said, but he guessed that this was a way of telling him that they knew.

  ‘Gibraltar, yes.’

  ‘I hope you had a fruitful time?’

  ‘I did, yes.’ And then, to rattle the Chief a little, ‘More than I had expected.’

  ‘Ah? Well, Señor, we have missed you. “I was just getting to know him,” I said to Constanza. (That’s my wife.) “Oh?” she said. “Well, that’s very nice. Why don’t you come home at a proper time one evening and get to know me? Instead of going out drinking.”

  ‘Well, there you are, Señor! That’s a wife for you! She doesn’t understand that a man needs a drink after a hard day’s work. “A glass, yes; but a bottle?” she says. But it’s only a bottle when I’m with friends. “Everyone’s a friend if they buy you a drink!” she says. “We’re talking business,” I say. “There’s obviously a lot of business,” she says. Well, there is. That is why I am not home till late.’

  ‘“I don’t come home on the dot,” I tell her, “because I am conscientious.” “You don’t come home on the dot,” she says, “because you’re a drunk.”

  ‘A drunk! What a thing for a wife to say to a husband! Does your wife say things like that, Señor? Ah, I was forgetting. Perhaps she is not your wife, the lady I met.’

  He gave Seymour a rascally wink.

  Then he looked around. ‘Where is the beautiful Señora, by the way?’

  ‘Out shopping.’

  ‘Ah, shopping? Dangerous, dangerous. They run through the money as if it was water. A pity, Señor. I was hoping to take you both out for a drink.’

  ‘Alas!’ said Seymour. ‘Another time, perhaps. But perhaps this time you will allow me to take you out for a drink?’

  ‘Well . . .’ said the Chief of Police.

  He took Seymour to a little bar on Las Ramblas.

  ‘I come here often,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘But it is not as Constanza supposes. I come here to pursue my duties.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes. You know what they say about Las Ramblas? They say that on Las Ramblas you will meet everyone in Barcelona that you know. Sitting here, they come to me. I don’t go to them. I can keep an eye on what they’re up to. See, for instance, who they talk to. And that suggests things. Things that might happen. Or things that have happened or might have happened. As with Señor Lockhart, for example.’

  ‘Lockhart?’

  ‘Yes. Whenever he came to Barcelona he would take a walk along Las Ramblas. and I would see him and see who he talked to. And I would see him talking to someone and say to myself: ah, so something’s happening in that quarter, is it? And later something would happen. A bargain would be struck, a deal made. And I would have seen it coming. People say to me, “How do you know these things?” I know them because I have seen the beginnings of them. Here on Las Ramblas.

  ‘Of course, Señor Lockhart used to talk to many people. It would be necessary to sift a bit. I would see him talking to someone and say to myself, “Ah, that is an old friend.” Or perhaps I would see him talking to a pretty girl and say to myself, “Ah, there he goes again!” But in this way I learned a lot about Señor Lockhart.

  ‘I would see him talking to the cabezudos, for example. He always talked to them, every time he came. He said they brought fun into the life of Barcelona. And that, perhaps, is true. But they also brought other things : disorder, misrule, subversion. The things that a Chief of Police has to keep his eye on. And I wondered why Señor Lockhart always talked to them.

  ‘But the answer is clear, is it not? There was a side to Señor Lockhart that was sympathetic to them. It showed itself in other things; that crazy girl, for example, that you just saw me talking to. They tell me he used to give her money. For the school, he said. Well, I wonder about that. I, too, am keen on education. We would have sent our children to a good Catholic school. The one near St Mark’s, for example. And when the Fathers come along, I put my hand in my pocket. But that is different from supporting a place like that. And I wonder if he really was supporting it, or whether – well, you know, Señor, some would see her as a pretty girl and maybe that’s the way it was.

  ‘She told me once she’d been to a decent Catholic school. A good convent school, she said. You would have thought, then, that she would have known better. But she said they were all nasty old bitches there. I told Constanza this, and she crossed herself, and said, “It takes one to know one.”

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that. I always try to steer clear of religion when I’m talking to Constanza. But she’s a difficult girl, that Nina, and a bit crazy. She’s another one to steer clear of.

  ‘But that school wasn’t the only thing. There were other things, too. The Catalonians, for example, and the Arabs. He had time, too much time, for them all. And for any other cracked group of misfits. So I was not surprised when Tragic Week came along and he got mixed up in it. You could say I had seen it coming – here, on Las Ramblas. It was in the wind, in th
e air.’

  The Chief gave a great sniff. ‘You could say it was my job. To sniff the air and see when trouble’s coming. And here on Las Ramblas is a good place to sniff it.’

  He looked down into the bottom of his glass. It was empty.

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  When they resumed, the Chief said, ‘So when I sit here, with a glass in my hand, like this, I am not wasting my time. Despite what Constanza thinks. I am working. I am noticing things. And adding them up. I have watched Señor Lockhart from here many times. Watched what he does, who he talks to.

  ‘And I think, Señor, that I have seen a process. It begins with a walk along Las Ramblas. Sampling the air, enjoying the fun. Talking to acquaintances, old friends. Acquaintances become old friends on Las Ramblas. And I have watched Señor Lockhart’s friendships grow. They begin with a stop to watch, continue with a laugh, and then another laugh, develop into an exchange, into a conversation, and soon there is something more. There is a relationship.

  ‘And that relationship leads on. One relationship leads to another. And in the end it led, in Señor Lockhart’s case, to what happened during Tragic Week. That is what I think, Señor Seymour. It is like pitch. You touch it and it sticks to your fingers. But you also stick to it; and it draws you in. That is what I think happened to Señor Lockhart.

  ‘And why I am telling you this is that I see in this also a risk for you. For you, too, Señor Seymour, have been touching pitch. I have watched you, too, and seen you talking to the cabezudos. And the beginning, perhaps, of a conversation?’

  Afterwards, as he was walking back to the hotel, he wondered what the Chief of Police had been trying to tell him. Warning him, certainly; but about what? Not about talking to the cabezudos, surely. But who else was the ‘pitch’? Again, surely not Nina. He had warned Nina, too. And there seemed to have been some grounds for that warning. Was that, what she had perhaps been mixed up in, the pitch?

  While Seymour had been talking to the Chief, Chantale had gone for a walk of her own along Las Ramblas. On her way she had a strange encounter. She had noticed a man looking at her intently. Well, she was used to that and here, in Barcelona, she didn’t mind it. In Tangier she would have felt uneasy and possibly a little apprehensive. Here, however, in some odd way, it added to the sense of freedom.

  The man wavered and then suddenly came purposefully across to her.

  ‘Señora,’ he said apologetically, ‘I would not ordinarily have approached you in such a way, in the absence of your husband. But I am in some difficulty and when I saw you, I thought, ah, yes, perhaps with her special knowledge she can help me.’

  He spoke as if he had recognized her. And then, after a moment, she realized that she recognized him. It was Abou, Leila Lockhart’s brother.

  ‘Yes?’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘The fact is, I am in Barcelona for a special purpose.’

  ‘Yes?’ Still slightly uncertainly. If this was a sexual approach, it was a rather unusual one.

  ‘I do not know the customs here,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I am not exactly an expert,’ said Chantale, ‘but if I can help –’

  ‘I am going back to Algeria,’ he said. ‘Soon. Perhaps next week.’

  ‘Yes?’ she said, encouragingly.

  But he seemed unable to say anything more. And then it come out with a rush.

  ‘I want to arrange my marriage before I go.’

  ‘Marriage?’ said Chantale.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and stopped again.

  ‘Really?’ said Chantale encouragingly. ‘Marriage?’

  ‘It is not easy here. In Algeria I would know what to do. I would make it known to my family and, if they approved, they would see to it. They would approach her family and between them they would settle it – the portion, and so on. But here I have no family.’

  ‘What about your sister?’

  ‘Leila?’ He frowned. ‘Leila is angry with me. Very angry. I do not want to ask her. And I don’t think she would be very willing to help me, not in this.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure that I –’

  ‘It is advice that I need, Señora, only advice. And I thought that you, as a woman, would know about these things. How it is done here.’

  ‘Well . . .’ She paused. ‘I am not sure that I do. I am from Morocco.’

  ‘But that is precisely why you would understand. You have taken the step yourself.’

  ‘Step?’

  ‘Of marrying a foreigner.’

  Chantale felt uncomfortable. ‘Well, actually . . .’ And then enlightenment dawned. ‘Ah! So you are intending to marry someone – not from Algeria?’

  ‘That is it! Precisely it. She is Spanish. She is the daughter of a business acquaintance of mine. I have seen her when visiting his house. And I have decided to make her my wife.’

  ‘I – I am not sure it is as straightforward as that, Abou – it is Abou, isn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘Abou, yes.’

  ‘It is not quite the same as it would be in Algeria. Or Morocco.’

  ‘Ah, good! That is what I wanted to know.’

  ‘Have you any idea as to how she feels about it?’

  ‘How she feels about it?’

  ‘Yes. That is important here, you know.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t had a chance to ask her – I did not wish to speak to her until I had spoken to her father first.’

  ‘Well, you see, he will want to know how she feels.’

  ‘Surely she will be guided by him?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘He knows me. He knows that I am a man of honour. And can provide for her.’

  ‘Ye-es, but it is not quite the same thing. You see, Abou, one thing I have learned is that here in Spain much depends on how the woman feels.’

  ‘She will surely be pleased –’

  ‘Inclination comes into it much more than it does with us. A woman may see that a man is a man of honour and can provide for her but still not wish to marry him.’

  ‘But that would be foolish of her!’

  ‘It probably would. But that’s the way it tends to be here. A woman follows her heart. It is not just honour and position. Her heart has to go with it.’

  ‘Well, that is quite right. Her heart should go with it. But will that not follow afterwards?’

  ‘It may do. But here a woman has to be inclined first.’

  Abou thought for a moment.

  ‘It worries me,’ he said. ‘I think people here are too ready to follow their inclination. There is no restraint. It has shocked me sometimes. I have thought it, well, promiscuous. The way some women behave! And men, too. It cannot make for a good marriage. A woman should enter marriage spotless –’

  ‘There is much to be said for your point of view,’ said Chantale cautiously.

  ‘But the one I have in mind is spotless. She is pure and innocent and truly modest. She casts down her eyes before men –’

  ‘Abou, how old is she?’

  ‘Old? I do not know. Thirteen, fourteen.’

  ‘In Spain that would seem too young to get married.’

  ‘I could wait, I suppose.’

  ‘That might be a good idea.’

  ‘For a year. If we were contracted.’

  ‘That would give you an opportunity to get to know her and for her to get to know you.’

  ‘But I go back to Algeria in a week!’

  ‘These things take time,’ said Chantale neutrally.

  Abou seemed cast down.

  ‘I had hoped . . .’ he said. Then he squared his shoulders. ‘Perhaps I will speak to her father all the same,’ he said.

  ‘You do that.’ And then, with a gush of pity:

  ‘Abou, do not be disappointed if he says no. It will not be your honour that he doubts. It is just that the way they do things here is different.’

  ‘So I see.’ He gave a despairing shrug. ‘Sometimes here,’ he said, ‘I feel lost. You do things that a
re obviously right. And then they turn out not to be right! Leila is angry with me. But how could I know? I did what would be right at home, but things are different here. Leila herself has changed since she’s been here. She is not the Leila I knew!’

  Following their visit to the prison, Manuel had been making inquiries of his own. The tip that it was possible to get private supplies of food into the cells gave him something to work on. In the end it would have had to come in through the warders. Kitchen staff brought food to the floor in covered containers and left it there for the floor warder to deliver to the cell. The warder it had to be and Manuel had soon been able to identify the one. And here Manuel had had a great stroke of luck. One of the girls who worked for him, little Rosa, had a sister-in-law who was a remote cousin of the warder Enrico’s wife. Among the Catalonians such relationships, however remote, counted for a lot and Manuel had used the sympathetic Rosa – made even more sympathetic by the belief that the inquiries were being made on behalf of the bereaved father so that it was in the cause, said Manuel, of a trust that was almost sacred – to put out feelers.

  She had learned that something was definitely not right with Enrico and hadn’t been right for some time, since, in fact, the formal investigation had begun. He had not been eating properly and had been drinking, correspondingly, far too much. His mother was very concerned about him and had urged him to go to Father Roberto and make confession.

  Enrico had responded roughly and said that if everyone made confession who should make confession then Father Roberto would have a busy time. The mother had enlisted the aid of Enrico’s wife, who was equally uneasy about his permanent, or so it seemed, loss of appetite, not just for food but for other things as well. His wife had put it down to some malign pressure in his bowels, a giant tumour perhaps, and had indicated to Rosa with considerable vivid pantomime, but probably rather less accuracy, the likely whereabouts of the tumour. She had even summoned the doctor. Enrico had, however, spurned the doctor as he had the priest, saying that doctors were only interested in extracting money from poor men and that he would be damned if he would let the doctor have anything to do with him.