Benefit of the Doubt

by Les Cowan

  David made a half-hearted smile.

  “So what would a weirdo look like?”

  “Oh – I don’t know. Adam and Eve, fire and brimstone, women with hats on – whatever. But the real problem is who’s in charge. Since I was six I’ve been in charge of things. I told you Mum drank. Dad used to rely on me a lot. I suppose it wasn’t fair on such a youngster but it made me grow up quickly. So coming to faith means giving up control, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s exactly what it means. Much more than the details of what you believe.”

  “Well, yesterday I just had to think that through.”

  “Any decision?”

  Gillian squeezed his hand and kissed him.

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  For a few moments they sat quietly listening to the metro car rattling its way under the weight of all the streets and avenues of Madrid. The squeal of the brakes, the hiss of the doors, carriages banging over a junction. Apparently random but with an underlying music if you knew how to listen to it.

  They made it to Mariano’s just a few minutes late. Espinosa was waiting. Parked outside was a silver-grey Jaguar XJ. David couldn’t quite believe it.

  “The captain’s idea,” Espinosa said in accented but good English. “You’ll be in the best hotel in Toledo so you couldn’t very well show up in a Kia Picanto.” David passed the keys to Juan as the local boy.

  “There’s a map and some information in the glove compartment,” Espinosa continued. “The SatNav should take you right there. You’ll have new identities for checking in.” He pulled a sheaf of papers from a briefcase. “Please read these and make sure you adhere to the instructions, for your safety and that of our officers.” The lieutenant had little place for small talk and needed to be sure they were taking things seriously. He needn’t have worried.

  As Juan and Espinosa checked over the details, Alison, Gillian, and David went inside the house. In less than five minutes they were out again, cases in the car and ready to go.

  “Well Señor David, I gather you’ve already had some success,” said Mariano, glancing at Gillian. “God speed. Rodriguez is a good man. He’s embarrassed about what Spain has become. In the eighties there were a lot of drugs around – you remember don’t you? – but now in the crisis it’s all got a lot more serious. It’s not about freedom and experimentation any more. The business interests are only in it for the money. And with so many young people out of work and no chance of anything, what else is there to do but get high and forget the future? Now he feels he has a mission to clean things up. He takes it very seriously. If there is any way to achieve what you want, he’s the man.”

  “Muchas gracias, hermano,” David replied. “For your welcome and all your help. I hope we’ll have good news when we see you again.”

  “Gracias por tu hospitalidad,” said Gillian, embracing Maria and kissing Mariano. “And your prayers.”

  “Un placer, hermana,” said Maria, smiling.

  And they were off.

  “En el próxima rotonda, toma la primera a la derecha,” said a cultured female voice.

  “I know my way to Toledo,” said Juan and turned the SatNav off.

  Chapter 23

  Parador de Toledo

  If the Costa del Sol might be the cheap and cheerful Butlins of Spanish tourism, then the Parador network could be its Claridges. Somewhere in the depths of the ministry charged with travel and accommodation in the 1920s must have laboured an unusually far-sighted and visionary funcionario. Beavering quietly away he (almost definitely a “he” in those days) thought up the idea of a network of government-owned luxury hotels situated in some of the most historical, beautiful, and spectacular buildings in all of Spain. Gradually, over the years, monasteries, convents, hunting lodges, country mansions, smart town houses, even Moorish castles and fortifications, all found their way into the network to be lovingly restored, modernized, and equipped. Many were also visitor attractions in their own right for historically minded Spaniards to wander around and imagine the life of wealthy aristocrats in the golden age. Where no suitable historical location could be found a small number of modern Paradors were also built and a few existing hotels taken over. One of these is located on the slopes of the Cerro del Emperador or Emperor’s Hill, on the south side of the ravine at the bottom of which runs the River Tajo, protecting three sides of the city of Toledo. Inside, perhaps inspired by its mountain eyrie, the building has something of the feel of a Swiss chalet resort with high-beamed ceilings, massive fireplaces, white plaster walls and polished, red-tiled floors.

  Late that afternoon, Juan pulled into a car park occupied by BMWs, Porsches, Mercedes, and a bright red Ferrari.

  “Buenos días. Tenéis una reserva en el nombre de Gómez?” David asked at the desk.

  “Buenos días, Señor,” the clerk smiled. “Un momento…” He glanced through the register.

  “Si. Cuatro personas. Dos habitaciones con camas matrimonias. Correcto.”

  “What’s he saying?” Alison whispered to David, a bit alarmed by the word “matrimonia”.

  “Just confirming our rooms – four people, two rooms, double beds.”

  “Oh.” If the full implications of travelling as married couples hadn’t already struck her it did now.

  “What? Does that mean we… do we… I hadn’t thought…” she stuttered.

  Turning away from the clerk who was by now looking up at them under slightly raised eyebrows, David smiled, tried to look relaxed, and whispered back, “Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out. Just look calm.”

  She tried to compose herself as the paperwork was filled in. She was willing to do almost anything to get Jen back but hadn’t expected it might come to this. She smiled weakly at Juan who was also wondering what sacrifices their endeavour might require.

  The clerk confirmed room numbers, then handed over keys to rooms one and two and sent a porter out for the cases. Five minutes later they were upstairs, at the end of the long corridor, surveying the decor and fittings of Room One – the bridal suite. Furnishings were dark wood with white plaster and more red tile. The bed was enormous. French windows opened out onto a balcony with a stunning view over the ravine, the river, and the complete medieval city draped over the hill leading down to the water. The massive Alcázar fortress and Gothic cathedral stood out from a maze of winding streets, gently pitched roofs and mottled roof tiles, all set against a solid sheet of blue sky. The heat was intense but the colours of the city seemed more autumn than summer – creams, golds, russets, and a thousand shades of terracotta red. Here and there the sharp index finger of a cypress tree jutted upwards in mossy green. Below them the river wrapped itself around the city, cascading down through a series of weirs. They could hear its roar mixed with traffic noises and bells. To their right, round the bend in the river, bridges stretched over the gorge and into the city from the east.

  “So, what do you think?” David asked as they took in the scene. “They say this is the best view over Toledo from any direction.”

  “It’s fantastic,” Gillian said. “I love it.”

  “And it fits perfectly with the texts,” Juan added. “We’re on the heights overlooking the city and these are the gates at the entrance to the town.” He paused. “I wonder where she is.” They stood together taking in the view Jen herself might have seen while hunting through a Bible for the ideal verse. If they were right, somewhere round the slopes of the very hill they were on, they would find her. Alison cleared her throat and brought things back to reality.

  “Can we talk about bedrooms?”

  “Of course,” David replied. “I’m sorry. We should have sorted that out first. Maybe we should go back inside.”

  Inside the room the luggage was still in the middle of the floor where the porter had left it.

  “Ok,” David continued. “We’re supposed to be travelling
as two couples in case Álvarez has any contacts in the hotel. This does not mean we’ll be sharing rooms as couples, but it does mean we have to keep up the pretence. So Juan and I will be sharing, and Gillian and Alison, are you happy to have this room?” They nodded in agreement. “Well, that’s the sleeping arrangements but we’ll have to spend the rest of the time as if we were couples. So Alison and I will have to change places quite early in the morning and quite late at night. Otherwise we just behave as normal. It’s not ideal, I know, but I think it’s necessary. How does that sound?”

  “Good.” Alison breathed a sigh of relief. “No disrespect to anybody but… well… you know…”

  “That’s fine,” Juan agreed. “Alicia told me to behave myself this trip. Somehow I don’t think she’d approve of any other arrangement.”

  “So that’s agreed,” David continued, much relieved as well. “We’ll have to keep all of our things in the room we’re supposed to be in. How you cope with the sleeping arrangements I’ll leave to you. Just don’t call for room service in the middle of the night.”

  “What’s the next move from the police?” Gillian asked. “Do we know how long we’re likely to be here?”

  “Not entirely, no. Rodriguez said there’s to be a conference first thing in the morning. We’re to join in some of it. He says they’ve been concerned about leaks in earlier operations, so they’re not using local police – which means they can’t use local facilities. That means meeting rooms here. We’ll just have to try to make sure staff don’t link us up. And we treat the police as if they were just any other guests unless they approach us first. So, in the meantime, we’re just on holiday.”

  That seemed all there was to say. Alison was relieved at the resolution of rooms but was still keyed up and finding it impossible to be “just on holiday”. She took her bag and headed for the door. Juan shrugged, picked up the cases, and followed her with a look at David as if to say, “I’m doing this and I’m not complaining, just don’t expect me to like it.” David laid the remaining cases on the bed. This wasn’t entirely straightforward. It was one thing to be conducting a relationship – another to find the pace dictated by a police investigation.

  “Sorry things are… a bit awkward,” he said. “Do you want me to leave you to unpack?”

  “What do you think?” Gillian returned, half smiling. “I’m not feeling awkward at all. I’m here. You’re here. So you and Juan have a bachelor pad next door and Alison and I share in here. The rest of the time we’re together. Me gusta mucho.” He smiled, mainly out of plain relief. As usual, Gillian did complicated emotions so much better.

  “You’re great,” he said simply as they held each other, framed in the balcony doors as the evening sun began to slant long dark shadows over the honey-coloured stone of the City of God.

  To maintain the illusion and “live the cover” (as Captain Rodriguez had mysteriously put it) they decided that everyone should unpack in the room they were supposed to be living in. The men finished first and with nothing else to do went downstairs to explore. Alison had packed light and was also soon done. She wandered over to the open balcony and looked out on the city. “Which direction?” she thought. “Which building? Which window?” Then, “No, I’ll go mad if I start that. Better think about something else.” She tried leafing through the Paradors magazine lying on the bureau but found she wasn’t the least bit interested in Merida with its Roman amphitheatre or Santiago de Compostela, the oldest continuously functioning hotel in the world. “So what?” she thought, letting the magazine fall lifelessly on top of all the other unwelcome paraphernalia. This wasn’t a holiday and nothing could make it into one. And these would not have been her natural choice of travelling companions. She was the odd one out and lately it had been getting on her nerves. She had spent most of her life studiously avoiding contact with Christians of her mum’s particular flavour. Now here she was sharing her life with her mother’s own minister and worship leader, for goodness sake. And sharing a room with his girlfriend! Despite feeling indebted she couldn’t shake off the awkwardness and discomfort. Particularly since her only possible ally now seemed to have jumped ship. She remembered feeling her heart turn cold as Gillian and Maria came back into church all smiles. “That’s it,” she thought. “Everyone except me. This simply isn’t fair.”

  She knew it was a probably a bad idea but couldn’t stop herself. She had to say something. She walked through to the other room. Gillian was busy hanging up a mixture of summer dresses and floaty Persian print blouses, quietly humming to herself. She smiled as Alison came in.

  “You were looking like I felt downstairs,” she said with half a giggle. “I hadn’t thought through the rooms thing either.” Alison nodded, looked down to examine her fingernails, then again directly at Gillian.

  “So, I just wanted to ask you. Are you a Christian as well then?” Gillian turned to Alison, a long silk scarf and hanger in her hand. She opened her mouth and made to speak but no words came.

  “I know it’s none of my business,” Alison stammered, “but I heard you’d been praying with Maria. Is that not what it usually means?”

  “I… uh…” Gillian began.

  “I’m sorry,” Alison muttered. “Forget I asked.”

  Gillian put the hanger into the wardrobe, sat down and rubbed her brow. “No, it’s ok,” she said. “It’s a fair question. What am I? To be entirely honest, I really have no idea. I was a bit upset in the service. It’s all been so new and confusing. I felt I had to do something. Look, I’ve finished unpacking. Shall we get some coffee sent up? Spanish police are paying, remember. Then we can talk.”

  The change of subject was like a lifeline. Alison nodded. They ordered a cappuccino and a cortado and took two wicker chairs out onto the balcony.

  “I’m really sorry,” Alison repeated. “I have absolutely no business interfering. It’s just that… well… it kind of feels like just one more thing. Sometimes it’s hard to always be the odd one out. My mum took me to a Billy Graham meeting once when I was wee. They were all streaming down the aisles, and the choir singing ‘Just as I am’ and all that. I know it would have made her really happy if I’d gone forward too but I just couldn’t. I’d have been doing it for her, not me. And that’s kind of the way it’s always been. I’d like to believe but I’ve never been able to. Then you getting… you know… involved. It just kind of brought it all back. Sorry.”

  Apart from the story about Jen in the back room at Southside Fellowship, Gillian had never heard Alison string more than a couple of sentences together. Now it felt like a lifetime of frustration was pouring out. Frustration and disappointment. Disappointment with herself, with life, now maybe with someone who might have been a friend. There was a discreet knock at the door. Gillian got up, thanked the waiter, and brought a silver tray over to the balcony table. She took a sip of the cortado to compose herself, wondering where to start.

  “Ok,” she began as Alison nibbled a ginger biscuit. “I have no idea what you’re going through and how all this must be feeling but I think I understand what you mean. It’s all been a new world for me. I wasn’t brought up with this like you. As far as I was concerned ‘Christian’ just meant that you weren’t a Hindu or Jew or something. So I never had that sort of pressure. Meeting David was my first real contact with someone who took it all seriously. He showed me it wasn’t even so much about beliefs as… well… your whole direction really. As for Warehouse 66, I guess it all just came home to me that I had to do something, but I had no idea what to do.”

  “So that’s why you went out?”

  “Well, at that point it was all just getting too much. I guess I thought I would just sit in the foyer till it was all over, have a good greet, then go home. Then Maria came out and we talked for a bit.”

  “What did she say?” Alison put down the remains of the biscuit and was leaning forward.

  “Not that much really. She go
t me a glass of water. I told her what I was feeling – in between blubbing – and she told me a bit about herself.”

  “What was that?”

  “Well, she said she’d come from a traditional Spanish background but it was really just about going to Mass and remembering saints’ days and so on. It wasn’t a personal faith at all. Then she met Mariano and started seeing things differently.”

  “A bit like you and David then?”

  “I know. Weird, isn’t it? But anyway, she said leaving her parents’ church was the hardest decision she’d ever made. She’d spent months worrying about it – how her mum would take it. Then she said she just got to the end of her tether and told God if he wanted her to change he would have to do something about it. And somehow things began to move. She didn’t tell me the full story but somehow she began to see things a bit more clearly and know what she had to do.”

  “Hmm.” Alison looked thoughtful. “Seems a bit too easy, that. Think of the thousands of people who ask God for a bit of help every day. I don’t think things get that much clearer for them. And I know nothing magical has ever happened to me.”

  “Well, I suppose all we really know is our own story. Maria said I should maybe just ask to know what was right and then see what happened.”

  “So you didn’t plan to actually become a Christian?”

  “No, and I don’t think I have. I’m still thinking it through. Maria said God can cope with our uncertainties and that seems enough for me right now.”

  Gillian took another sip and looked out over the city which had so much spirituality in its past.

  “I have prayed a couple of times recently,” she said with a ghost of a smile. “But it always seems to start with, ‘If there’s anyone there, I’m not sure I believe in you but…’ or something like that.”

  “I’ve prayed like that too. Specially since Jen went missing. I’ve never got anything back though. It would be nice to know you’re not alone. Some days I think it would be great to have everything tied up and no more doubts. Like my mum, for example.”