Not With a Whimper Page 2

  “You’re old enough.”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  I put a match to the tobacco, squinted at her through the flame. It was a strong healthy face, pretty but too square to be beautiful. The cheekbones and jaw were too wide. She wore her brown hair long down over her cheeks and jaw to hide it. Her nose was short and straight, her mouth small and firm. It would grow into a good-looking face that would last. “Eighteen?”

  “Nineteen. You don’t think that’s shocking?”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Happily?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “Children?”

  “One girl, she’s seventeen.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Cute, pretty, intelligent, works too hard.”

  “I bet you’re not like them.” She jerked her head angrily at the house.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not, I can tell.” She laughed, turned away and said, “I guess I talk too much. I always talk too much when I’m scared. They’re not too bad I guess. They’re letting me have the car tomorrow.”

  I grunted.

  “Big deal, huh? I’m going to Chipiona.”

  “What’s at Chipiona?”

  “Gypsies.” She laughed again. She had a nice laugh. “They come from all over Spain at Easter to cross the Guadalquivir to Los Marismos. They have marvellous horses. I’m really into horses. They give me a buzz.”

  “They scare me.”

  “They don’t!”

  “They’re too intelligent.”

  “Sometimes I think I’d kinda like to be a gypsy, just split, go where I wanted, anywhere away from them. Her laugh this time wasn’t pleasant. “I guess I’m getting too uptight. I’m sorry.” She shivered. “I’m cold.” She held both her arms. Then she laughed again. It was a little better this time. “I really do talk too much.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I didn’t sleep well. There was only one blanket on the bed and I was cold. At half-past seven I heard Byrd leave. I got up then and looked through the house for some coffee.

  A knock at the door saved my life. It was a young girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, wearing a cheap green dress. Her plimsolls had holes in them. Her legs were scratched and they needed washing. She smiled confidently. “Señor Christian?”

  “Sí.”

  “I am María, your maid. It is arranged that I shall look after you.” She was carrying a plastic carrier bag. “Your breakfast.” She walked past me.

  Breakfast was a large roll, greasy butter, apricot jam and coffee. She used a dessert spoon to measure the coffee and it was strong enough to walk on.

  I used the shower which was too narrow for me, water running off my elbows onto the floor. I also shaved. I dressed in a light blue shirt, grey check jacket, navy slacks, black slip-ons and told María apologetically that I had left the bathroom floor under water.

  “Tchah!” she said. “These houses are built for dwarves to live in, not men like you.” She flattered me with her dark eyes. “It is all the same now. It is the Americans’ fault.”

  I didn’t argue with her. Instead I asked her how to get to Calle Santa Clara, which was easy. It was near the harbour and the market.

  It had been raining during the night, the air was still fresh and cool. There were puddles in the potholes so I picked my way round them and over the bridge into the old town.

  It was a typical small Spanish town, squeezed together in a knot of one-way streets and narrow pavements.

  Santa Clara was a dark narrow street near the sea, iron grilles rusting over windows, the heavy doors cracked and peeling. The street hadn’t seen a coat of paint since the Civil War. Grey water trickled in the gutters. I could smell the sewage which poured untreated over the sands into the sea, the rotting seaweed, the dead fish. The market didn’t help either.

  The doorway to Número 4B was tiled in faded blue-glazed tiles which had been new when Franco was a lieutenant. The courtyard was cobbled and the walls were carefully whitewashed. An old woman brushed a doorstep with a stiff brush.

  “Buenos días, señora.”

  “Buenos días, señor.” She knotted her hands over the end of the brush and smiled expectantly.

  “Quiero hablar con Señor Miguel Aberaccín, por favor.”

  “Ah, Miguel.” A tan dog sniffed at her brush which she shook at it and it sulked away. She pointed to an open flight of worn steps. “He was out at the break of day fishing. He is upstairs now.”

  “Gracias, señora.”

  There were geranium pots on each step and the door was painted green. I knocked. There was no answer. I knocked again.

  “Un momentito, por favor,” a voice called. I waited and then the door opened. A man stood there. He wore a vest and dark grey trousers, unpressed and coarse, with pumps on his feet and an unshaven face.

  “Señor Aberaccín?”

  “Sí.”

  “Can I speak with you?”

  “Sí.” He waved me in with a broad hand.

  The room was dark. There were two or three ladder-backed chairs, a dark wooden table with dirty dishes, an unmade bed in one corner and a television set on a wooden box in the other.

  “I was writing a poem.” He took a sheet of paper from the table. It was written in pencil in childish handwriting, almost printing, but written without any corrections. “I write much poetry.”

  He put his broad hand on the back of a chair and pulled it out for me. “Some wine?” He took an unlabelled bottle off a shelf, two glasses and filled them. “This is a wine for drinking.”

  “Gracias.” I put it on the table.

  “So, señor, what can I do for you?” He sat down, combed his hair with thick fingers and smiled pleasantly.

  “Vance Hoggart sent me.”

  “So?”

  “He said you could help me.”

  “Certainly, señor.”

  “Do you know El Toro Negro?”

  He shook his head.

  “Somebody called El Toro Negro?”

  “That is a strange name, señor.”

  “Commander Byrd?”

  “He is the captain of Vance’s submarine. Why do you ask?”

  “Does Monday mean anything to you?”

  “No.” He pulled his brows together and rubbed the glass along his cheek.

  “Vance said you could tell me what is going to happen on Monday.”

  “Monday?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know of nothing.”

  “You are sure?”

  “I am certain, señor.”

  “Nothing?”

  “It is Easter Monday.”

  “But you know nothing of anything that is going to happen?”

  “What sort of thing, señor?”

  “Vance said you could tell me.”

  “Then he is wrong.” He scraped the chair back, stood up. He blocked the light from the window. He turned and opened it. “It is hot,” he said.

  A breeze came in and with it the scents of the street. A seagull mewed. Children played. “Bang, boom, everybody dead.” What the hell had Hoggart been talking about? And how the hell did I get it out of Miguel? I pushed my glass away and leant over the table.

  “Vance Hoggart is dead.”

  “Señor?” He became very still.

  “A young man called Juan knifed him.”

  “Juan!”

  “You know him?”

  “Madre de dios, how do you know this, señor?”

  I told him what had happened.

  He sat down slowly. His hand crumpled the poem he had written. “Juan Gallegos,” he whispered.

  “Who is he?”

  “Who are you, señor?”

  “Alan Christian.”

  “So?”

  “Did you know Francis Lynd?”

  “Ah, you are from London. You are taking his place.”

  “Am I?”


  “Francisco was a good friend. I find out much for him. I work at the base. I hear much because I speak good English. I work for seven years in Gibraltar.”

  “Why was Francisco killed?”

  “You take his place, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Francisco sees someone he knows, he recognises.”

  “Who?”

  “He does not say. It is someone he has met when he works in Paraguay, I think.”

  “South American?”

  “German. A Nazi. He is wanted for war crimes. Now he is here in Rota and he talks English, Francisco says. He is friendly with an American officer. GK. He sees him at his house.”

  “GK?”

  “He uses the initials. I ask him but he says it is better I do not know.”

  “The American?”

  “The German.”

  GK. That meant nothing to me. “You know who killed Vance, Miguel?”

  “Sí, it is Juan Gallegos.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Paco Jurado brings him to Rota.”

  “Who is Paco?”

  “Paco and I grew up together. We are rascals. In the end we have to leave Rota. I go to Gibraltar. Paco, he goes to Tangiers. Six months ago he comes back with a young man, Juan Gallegos, a bad young man, vicious, like a spiteful bull. Paco comes to me and asks me to work with him. He will not say what he is doing or who he is working for but there is much money. I am an honest man. If he cannot say what the work is, I will not do it. He says I am making a big mistake.” He shrugged. “It will not be the first mistake I make.”

  “You have no idea what is going to happen on Monday?”

  “No, Alan.” He drank his wine with a stiff angry jerk of the wrist.

  “Vance was drunk and scared. He had told Francis about something he was mixed up in, something that meant a lot of deaths – on Monday. He blamed himself for Francis’s death. He said you could tell me.”

  “But I have told you all I know.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything, Alan.”

  I pushed the glass over the table, muttered “Monday,” to myself.

  “Six days, Alan. What can we do?”

  I looked at him. “Can you meet Paco?”

  “Sí.”

  “Tell him you have been thinking about what he said, that you’ve changed your mind and that you want to join him.”

  “Ciertamente. Sure.” He slammed the table with the palm of his hand. The glasses jumped. “I shall find out who they work for. That will be good, no? Then we find out what is happening,”

  “You will be careful?”

  He sneered. “I am not afraid, Alan. If you will come to the bar of José Charnacero, El Corillo, tonight, I shall be there. Maybe I shall have something to tell you, heh?”

  “And be careful.”

  “Until tonight, Alan. El Corillo.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I enjoyed sunlight and a cigar going back to the house. María had gone but the kitchen was stocked with food and she had left me a note of everything she had bought and the price. At the foot of the list she had scrawled: “A lady has called to see you. She says she will return. M.”

  A lady?

  I just had time to sort out the makings of a tortilla when she arrived. She had russet hair lacquered into a pile on top of her head, cornflower blue eyes and a tawny skin. It was the sort of colouring you see in quite a few Spanish women but never in the men. Her trouser suit was expensive, well cut and matched her eyes, which I thought was overdoing it. A Romany patterned silk scarf hid the lines on her neck and she wore looped gold earrings, a single gold wedding ring and a slim gold Baume and Mercier watch. None of that was overdoing it.

  “You are a friend of Señor Lynd?” she said coolly.

  “Hardly.” I blew the cigar smoke away from her.

  “I know that he is dead.” She didn’t sound annoyed.

  I invited her in and she hitched her shoulder bag, made from real crocodile, and said if I was a friend of Señor Lynd, she had something important to tell me. I watched the bag closely and said I had known him. I half expected a .22 or something similar to appear but she said, “Francisco was not killed accidentally.”

  “You knew him?”

  “We cannot talk here. I would like you to come with me.” She had a Castilian accent and spoke as though she were used to people doing what she suggested without having to put any effort into it.

  I scratched the back of my neck and said, “Where?”

  “Chipiona. It is –”

  “I know it,” I interrupted. The small village about twelve miles away at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. “Why?”

  “My friends will tell you about it.”

  I stepped past her, smelling her scent, which was something subtle and expensive, and surveyed the street. There were two kids throwing stones into a puddle, a large dog that looked like a cross between a camel and a spaniel, a black sailor with a shopping bag. There was a red Mini 1000 at the kerb.

  She raised two smooth tawny eyebrows and I said alright.

  She drove in silence, leaving me to appreciate her perfume. I also sneaked a look at her from time to time and admired her profile. We bumped into Chipiona along an unmade street, left onto the Jerez road, then left again into a square opening directly onto the beach. On the far side of the square we came onto another unmade road and past two huge blocks of cheap flats covered with TV aerials. Then there were three expensive villas. It was the far one we were making for.

  It was the end of the road and she reversed the car to face back to Chipiona, switched off while I looked at her. She had her bag in her lap now and she unzipped it. I spread the fingers of my left hand and raised it. I was ready for action. She took out a compact and inspected her make-up, found a speck of dust on her forehead, removed it with a neat finger tip and I played with the gear lever as though that had been what I had been going to do all along. She snapped the compact, zipped the bag, both of us slamming the car doors while we got out after which she locked up.

  There were pine trees on three sides of the villa and it had a garden running down to the river. The sun was low and two or three fishing boats seemed to be doing nothing very much in the dazzling light on the water.

  I followed her up the path to the house and she rang the bell. He must have been watching because the door opened before the bell had stopped echoing. He beamed at me with cheap dentures and said, “Ah, good, you have come, señor. Please enter.”

  I stepped into a dark hall. They went in for wrought iron and dark oak. There were lamp holders on the wall, a cartwheel chandelier, and a table with a glass top, all made from wrought iron. There was a dark oak chest and the doors were all of the same wood. I shivered. It had the newly dusted air of a house which hadn’t been lived in all winter. I was beginning to feel a little unhappy.

  The man beamed at me again and I felt I’d seen him before. That didn’t make me any happier. He was fat and carried his weight well back on his heels but he looked solid nonetheless. His dark hair was well greased, receding at the temples, and he had a neat little moustache under a button nose, merry little eyes and a voice that echoed in the hard surfaces of the hall. He wore an open neck shirt with wallpaper stripes, an open cardigan two sizes too big, and the check trousers of a suit one size too small, finished off with red leather slippers.

  “If you will come this way, señor.” He padded towards a door on the right and I knew where I had seen him before. Behind the wheel of a Mazda pick-up.

  I hesitated.

  “This way, señor,” he insisted and I felt a lot colder and a lot less happy. He held a Belgian-made .32 Browning.

  “No, Ángel, you said no.” She had lost her Castilian accent.

  “Sí, Teresa, I am afraid so.” The gun waved towards the door and I went that way. The door shut, the key turned, I heard him laughing and I was alone in the room.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Spanish furniture may be on the
small side but it’s solidly made. Particularly doors. This one was three-inch best quality Spanish oak with fake medieval hinges and a lock to match.

  I rattled the handle because that’s the automatic reaction, banged on the door and yelled and then realised it wasn’t going to do me any good.

  They’d gone for dark oak and wrought iron in the lounge, too. Some of the ironwork was in the shape of a grille over the window. I tried it. It was firmly set in the stonework.

  The floor was stained pine with just the one rug, a maroon and orange patterned Persian job, thin as silk and twice as expensive. Wooden armchairs with tapestry coverings and a tie-arm settee were arranged round the rug and table. There was another table under the window with a Chinese vase which looked cracked and ugly enough to be genuine. A wrought iron stand supported a lamp with a crimson twisted silk shade. A break front bookcase with leaded glass and empty shelves occupied some of the wall opposite the window and a huge fireplace, built of enormous tailored hunks of grey stone, occupied most of the wall opposite the door. There was a wrought iron basket with logs and fire irons like jousting weapons in the fireplace.

  I tried the door again. I tried the window. I looked at the ceiling but it was solid wood and not a trapdoor in sight. I even tried the fireplace. The damn thing was a dummy. There was no chimney.

  I picked up the poker and swung it. It was solid, about three feet long and half a stone in weight and I would have liked it better if it had been two feet shorter and six pounds lighter. It was too clumsy. Still, it made some sort of weapon.

  I leant on it, thinking about how to use it. The point slipped. I discovered there was a quarter-inch gap between the floorboards. I wriggled the point under a corner of the board and felt it lift. The other corner came just as easily. I only needed to raise two boards to make enough room for me to slip underneath.

  Like most new villas it was built on raised ground in order to let air circulate under the house to keep it cool. I lay down and reached, feeling bare earth with my fingertips.

  I took the poker with me. There had to be an air intake grille somewhere.

  There was.

  I saw white circles of light contained in the rectangle of a grille to my left. I jimmied myself along on my left elbow and hip and, once I got used to the joists being there, I stopped cracking my head.