A Dead Man in Barcelona

by Michael Pearce

  ‘She might be joining us a bit later.’

  ‘Like a tot?’

  ‘Christ, is that a tot?’

  ‘Navy style, Navy style. Here’s to you. And to your inquiries. How are you getting on?’

  ‘Pretty well there now, sir. Just one or two small points to clear up. The irregular shipments of oil, for example.’

  ‘Irregular –? Never heard of it!’

  ‘Before the Anglo-Persian deal.’

  ‘I’m quite sure I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘To Gibraltar. I’m not saying they weren’t needed. And this, actually, does not need to be part of my inquiries, nor of my report.’

  ‘It doesn’t? Have another one?’ He signalled to the barman. ‘Another one for Mr Seymour, and me. And make them a reasonable size, Edwards. None of this thimble stuff!’

  ‘I did, though, have a question,’ said Seymour.

  ‘You did?’ said the Admiral warily.

  ‘I can see you had to cut corners to get hold of oil. Before the Anglo-Persian deal. There was something dodgy about your arrangements with Lockhart. However, they got you the oil, and that was what counted. For you. But perhaps not for the Admiralty auditors?’

  ‘Bastards!’ said Admiral.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. They usually are. But it put you in a tight spot afterwards from which, fortunately, you escaped.’

  ‘The devil looks after his own!’ said the Admiral, grinning.

  ‘I suspect that while the auditors found out some things, they did not find out everything.’

  ‘That is possible,’ acknowledged the Admiral.

  ‘And did not that put you in rather a spot with respect to Lockhart?’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, he could have revealed what he knew.’

  ‘Why would he do that? He had been paid. Handsomely.’

  ‘Ah, but hadn’t he also, in the process, acquired – how shall I put it? – credit that he might, at some point in the future, draw on?’

  ‘Well, naturally –’

  ‘Let me put it a bit more sharply, hadn’t he got a bit of a hold on you?’

  ‘Let’s stick to the word “credit”, shall we?’

  ‘Or we could say “favours”. He had done you a favour. Might he not reasonably expect a favour back in return?’

  ‘That would not seem unreasonable.’

  ‘What was the favour that he asked?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘I think I know, actually. Or can guess.’

  ‘You probably can, damn you, Seymour!’

  ‘But you tell me.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  The Admiral finished his glass and put it down on the bar.

  ‘What he wanted was a touch of the Nelsons.’

  ‘Touch of the Nelsons?’

  ‘A blind eye. To certain shipments.’

  ‘Of arms?’

  The Admiral nodded. ‘There’s a sort of informal agreement among the Big Powers in this neck of the woods that one Power doesn’t ship arms to territories of another Power.’

  ‘And you breached it?’

  ‘Not quite. We didn’t do anything ourselves. But we knew it was going on. And I guessed he had a hand in it. I knew it was for those damned Catalans that he was always so keen on. More trouble than they’re worth, in my opinion, though I’ve got a certain respect for them. But I owed him something, so when he came to me – I agreed to a judicious touch of the Nelsons. But, of course, that wasn’t the end of it.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Not when he got killed. Because you see, I thought he might have been killed because of that. Because he’d got mixed up in it. And I didn’t like that. I felt I still owed him. So when they did nothing about it, I said, Damned if I’m going to let them get away with this! So I called in you.’

  ‘You think he died because of the Catalan connection?’

  ‘Dead sure of it!’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Talking of Nelsons,’ said Seymour, as he turned to go, ‘you’ll remember that part of my duties was to investigate theft in the stores. If you wished to take action – and I think a little frightening might be in order – you could centre it on a matter of some calico. But I’ll leave it to you, sir.’

  ‘Back to Barcelona, then?’ said the Admiral, as they went out of the door together.

  ‘Just for a day or two. And then back to England.’

  ‘I knew a girl in Barcelona once,’ said the Admiral nostalgically. ‘Her name was Dolores.’

  ‘Lockhart?’ said Leila. ‘Well, he was always a man of sympathies.’

  ‘Catalan sympathies?’

  ‘Arab, too. That’s what attracted me to him in the first place. Here is a man who understands us, I thought. And so he did. Up to a point. But lately I have been wondering whether he really understood us. These things go very deep, you know.’

  ‘And did you mind his sympathies? For people other than the Arabs?’

  ‘No. Not at first, at any rate. It was all part of him. His generosity, his enthusiasm for everything, his idealism. I loved that, and I loved him.’

  ‘But you changed. You said, not at first. Not at first: but later?’

  ‘Well, maybe I did change.’

  ‘Why?’

  She was silent for a little while, thinking.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually. ‘Perhaps one grows older. At least, I grew older. I am not sure about him.’

  ‘He kept the sympathies, while you gradually abandoned them?’

  ‘Not just that.’ She hesitated. ‘I found that in his case they were mixed with other things.’

  ‘Women?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘Too often and too much.’

  ‘People have told me that you forgave him.’

  ‘So I did. Up to a point. But something died in me.’

  ‘Did you hate them? The others?’

  ‘Hate them!’ She looked startled. ‘Well, I suppose I did. Disliked them, certainly. That unspeakable creature in Barcelona! And there were others.’

  ‘Also in Barcelona?’

  ‘Yes. There was one woman especially. She – she flaunted him. As a conquest. “Look, I’ve got him. He’s mine, not yours.” Of course, she didn’t really do that. I never met her. But I heard of her, and it was as if she was doing that. Deliberately, to hurt me. And yes, I hated her. But she went the way of all the others, so I shrugged, and let it rest. In the end he always came back to me.’

  ‘And your family?’

  Again she looked startled, and this time there was something else: she suddenly became guarded.

  ‘My family?’

  ‘Back in Algeria. How did they feel about it?’

  ‘They didn’t know about it. Not for a long time. But when they did hear about it they didn’t like it. It wasn’t so much the dishonesty that they didn’t like, it was the shame. They felt that the family had been dishonoured. Their pride was hurt.’ She grimaced. ‘We Arabs are a proud people. Like the Spanish, only worse.’

  ‘And your brother?’

  ‘Abou?’

  She took her time about replying.

  ‘Well, Abou,’ she said then, softly.

  She paused. ‘Well, Abou is a simple creature. He sees things in black and white. And the family is important to him.’

  ‘So he came to you. But when he got to you, he found that you had changed?’

  ‘Yes, I had changed,’ said Leila, looking down at her hands.

  ‘So he didn’t know what to do?’

  ‘What to do?’

  ‘He came here to do something, didn’t he? Or was sent to do something.’

  Again she looked at her hands. ‘It all seemed so simple to him. So clear. I had been dishonoured. The family had been dishonoured. It could not be let rest. But I reasoned with him. I said that things were not like that here. This was Spain and they did things differently. And if I was prepared to let it rest, so should he be. Well, of course, he coul
dn’t understand that. And why should he pay any attention to what I thought? Women don’t usually have much of a voice in my country. And the family had already decided. But, in his way, he loved me. And I think I could have persuaded him.’

  ‘But then came Tragic Week.’

  ‘Then came Tragic Week.’

  ‘Abou,’ said Seymour. ‘I want to talk to you about Aisha.’

  ‘Aisha?’ said Abou, surprised. ‘Farraj’s daughter?’

  ‘That’s right. You knew her, didn’t you?’

  ‘I knew the family. At one time. Farraj worked closely with us.’

  ‘Us? Your family? Or Lockhart?’

  ‘Both. My family had had connections with Farraj’s for a long time. In Algeria. And then when Lockhart became part of our family he and Farraj began to work closely together. They were almost partners. Farraj handled things for him in Algeria and Morocco, and then Farraj moved to Gibraltar to work even more closely with him.’

  ‘And Aisha?’

  ‘I got to know Aisha when Farraj came back to Algiers on visits, which he did regularly. Of course, I didn’t take much notice of her at first. She was a girl. Just another of Farraj’s family. But then on one visit I did.’

  ‘You noticed that she had grown up?’

  ‘Yes. She made me notice her. She spoke up. That is unusual in Arab families and Farraj was quite upset about it. It quite put me off her. I thought it was unseemly. But Leila said that was because she had lived in Spain and that was the way women behaved in Spain. And I grew quite to like it.’

  Abou became embarrassed.

  ‘At one point I even thought of marrying her. Leila would have liked that. She encouraged me. “What you need is a good wife, Abou,” she said, “and Aisha would make you one.” I even went so far as to ask her. Farraj first, of course, and he was not unwilling. But then when it was put to her, she refused. I could not understand that. She said that it was nothing personal but that she wanted her freedom. Farraj was angry with her. It made things difficult for a time and he left her behind when next he visited.’

  ‘But you did not forget her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you knew that she remembered Lockhart?’

  ‘She was fond of him. She thought of him as another father.’

  ‘And so it was easy to pressure her, when you went over to Spain yourself, to do something for him when he was in prison?’

  Abou gave him a startled look.

  ‘That wasn’t part of the original plan, was it? It couldn’t be, because you didn’t know that he would be in prison. In fact, when you learned that Lockhart had been taken to prison, you must have thought for a moment that that had put a stop to what you intended to do. What you had been sent to do.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ muttered Abou.

  ‘But even before that, it seemed that Tragic Week had made what you planned impossible. But then you realized that it could actually work for you. Help you. With all the general chaos no one would notice or care. You went out on to the streets to find him. But then things went wrong. You suddenly discovered that he had a bodyguard. You couldn’t get to him. And then you learned that he had been arrested and taken to prison, where you couldn’t reach him. You had to think again; and you thought of Aisha.’

  Abou did not say anything.

  ‘You thought of a way of reaching him even though he was in prison. You would poison him in his cell. You made inquiries and found that food could be got in to the prisoners. But that meant talking one of the warders into it, and you thought that could be done better by someone other than you. And then you had an inspiration. You thought of Aisha. You got her to talk to the warder. And to persuade him to pass in some food which you had prepared. Poisoned food.’

  ‘No, no. It was not as you suppose. How – how do you know this?’

  ‘She was seen, Abou. Seen in Barcelona, and seen near the prison. And she told someone that she was arranging for something to be taken in to Lockhart.’

  ‘She will not confirm this! You will not be able to talk to her. You will not be able to ask her that!’

  ‘Why not, Abou? Why cannot she be asked in Algiers as well as she could have been asked here? And when she is asked, she will tell. Why shouldn’t she? She has done nothing wrong. You tricked her, Abou, nastily, and she will not like that. She looked on Lockhart as a father, remember. And I do not think she will be cowed into silence, Abou, not this time. Her father sent her back to Algiers so that she should not be asked, and she went along with that as a dutiful daughter and because she was not quite sure herself what she had done, unwittingly, or how she had been involved. She was young and puzzled and confused. But she loved Lockhart and she is a spirited girl, Abou, and now she will not be silenced. She will tell all right.’

  ‘How will you reach her to ask the questions? She is married and her husband’s permission will have to be obtained. And she is in Algeria! And my family –’

  ‘Your family, yes. In which family feeling is so strong. So strong that it could not bear the shame and disgrace of what Lockhart had done to Leila. So strong that it sent you, Abou, as Leila’s brother, to take revenge.’

  ‘I will speak to Farraj! And I will speak to my family. They will not allow –’

  ‘It does not matter what they allow or do not allow. You are in Spain now, not Algeria. And it will be by Spanish law that things will be decided.

  ‘And as to reaching Aisha, I am not sure that you will find Farraj as much on your side as you think. And if he is not, nor will his friend, her husband, be. Aisha will be allowed to talk. And she will have plenty to say. And, besides – besides,’ said Seymour, ‘I, too, have family in North Africa.’

  And that, too, he suddenly realized, had now become definite.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘But – but he was a good chap!’ said Hattersley, bewildered. ‘I always got on very well with him.’

  As if that was a sufficient guarantee of his innocence.

  ‘Well, there you are!’ said Seymour.

  ‘I must say, it comes as a surprise. I was sure all along that it was the Government. Or the Catalans. Or the anarchists. Or the Arabs.’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t have been the Government, would it? I mean, why wait to get him in jail before killing him? When there were so many better opportunities during Tragic Week. I must say I agree with you about the Catalans, though. For a long time I thought they had a hand in it.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But why should they kill the goose that was, from their point of view, laying the golden eggs? At one time I toyed with the idea that some of them might have thought he was going to betray them. There was a fisherman, you know, that was probably going to do that, and they killed him. But Lockhart? Who was out on the streets during Tragic Week trying to act as a safeguard for them? It didn’t make sense.

  ‘As for the anarchists, there obviously is a lot of anarchist activity in Spain and the police and the prison governor all assured me that it was the work of anarchists. But about the only anarchist I could find with whom Lockhart came in contact was his daughter, Nina. And she was a very isolated person. If there was an anarchist cell, she was about the only one in it.

  ‘Then there was the rumour about the wife of the high-up. Well, there was such a person and I talked to her. Like so many others, she had an affair with Lockhart. But, like so many others, it didn’t last. In the end, as you told me, he was always true to Leila. I thought maybe it was a case of jealousy. But she was a very high-handed lady and, although she might stoop to murder, she certainly wasn’t prepared to stoop to employing an Arab to do it.

  ‘That brought me back to the Arabs. And that brought me back to Lockhart’s wife, and her family, who were the Arabs that Lockhart was most in contact with. And here there was certainly motivation. Lockhart was betraying his wife all the time. She certainly resented it. Could she have been the one who set the killing in motion? Well, she could, but Leila herself was
a complex person who had grown, and wished now to put a lot of things behind her, many of those things which she had brought from Algeria.

  ‘But, remember, although she had discarded them, others hadn’t. In particular, others in her family. Many in the family were still bound by tradition and in particular traditions of honour and dishonour and revenge. Try as she could, she couldn’t escape from these traditions. Even though she was now in another country. They sent over Abou, her brother, a man who knew only these traditions. An honourable man, in his way, who loved his sister and couldn’t bear to see her slighted and, as he saw it, dishonoured. She worked on him, however, and might have succeeded, but ran out of time.

  ‘So there you are. The difficult thing for me was to distance myself from everyone’s suggestions. Everybody thought they knew the answer and was eager to give it me. Before they had asked the questions.’

  Of course, strictly speaking, Abou, and the prosecution of the charges against him, did not fall within the preserve of the Chief of Police, since Abou was in Gibraltar, and that, according to the British (but not the Spanish) was not Spain. For a few days it looked as if Abou might slip down the crack between them but the crime had definitely been committed in Spain and the Foreign Office, stiffened by the Admiral, was prepared to concede the practical, although not theoretical, point. By some legerdemain, the details of which remained obscure but which somehow involved a boat, the surprised Abou found himself in Barcelona, when he passed into the hands of the ever resourceful Chief of Police.

  Not resourceful enough to satisfy his wife, however.

  ‘As a Chief of Police, Alonzo, you are a disgrace. It’s time you did something about it. Otherwise, we’re going to have to spend the rest of our lives in this dump, whereas, as I’ve made clear to you from the first day of our marriage, my mind has always been set on Madrid. That’s where I’ve always seen myself. I think I would feel at home there. But all through our married years I have seen the prospect of that dwindling over the horizon.

  ‘It’s time you pulled yourself together, Alonzo, and now you’ve got the chance. Mr Seymour has given it to you. He has solved the mystery of who killed Lockhart and given the solution back to you. Now all you’ve got to do is claim the credit for it. Oh, and now that you’ve got the murderer safely in prison, keep him there! Do you think you can do that?’