by Lex Lander
Then again, maybe he wouldn’t.
* * * * *
He didn’t, God-damn it.
A postcard-size colour print turned up in my letter slot at the Connaught two mornings later, together with a short covering letter which read:
Dear André,
Rosie and I were glad to meet you at Toby Wyatt’s the other night. I enclose the most recent likeness we have of Linda.
We would like to take you up on your generous offer to enquire after her whilst you’re in Spain.
Meanwhile, we’re giving a cocktail party Thursday next, 11am. Come along if you can.
Yours in gratitude
Dave and Rosalie Pridham.
The address was W1, same as the Connaught. Walking distance.
The “likeness” was a professional job and top quality. Even allowing for the certainty that it had been selected as the most flattering of a bunch of similar studies, Linda Pridham was worth an enquiry or two. Dark brown hair, bit of a kink, and on the short side, like the man said. Pronounced cheekbones underscored eyes that would always laugh no matter what the mouth was doing. Colouring pale, verging on pallid, but it suited her the way it suited Cassandra, darkening her hair and the eyebrows that kinked like a dog’s hind leg, and reddening her lips. She looked happy, vivid, full of spirit. Wilful.
I slid the print inside my wallet. The letter I shoved in a pocket inside the lid of one of my suitcases. The invitation to cocktails I forgot.
Two days later the Aston and I were on a ferry to Spain.
Chapter Two
‘Is this a buying expedition or a bar crawl?’ I grunted as we exchanged the heat of a noisy, smelly, overcrowded bar for the heat of a noisy, smelly, overcrowded street.
Baynes raised his limp, wide-brimmed hat and mopped at the hairless dome beneath with a sodden handkerchief.
‘Just combining business with pleasure.’
Shielding my eyes from the burning sun, I peered at the surrounding buildings. This was not the most salubrious part of the resort of Fuengirola. The sea was less than a half a kilometre away, but might as well have been on the far side of the planet: high-rise blocks segregated it from this part of town as effectively as a prison wall. Nor was the concrete outlook uplifted by the graffiti that scarred much of it. Between second and third floor windows of a building opposite a message in faded red letters half a metre tall eclipsed all others:
JUAN CARLOS - EL JEFÉ DE LOS PUTAÑEROS!
‘Juan Carlos?’ I glanced at Baynes. ‘Is that the ex-king?’
‘I can’t think of another one famous enough to get his name in graffiti.’
‘What’s the accolade? Looks like chief of something.’
His lips gave a risible twitch.
‘The chief of the pimps.’
‘Not very complimentary. Why so?’
‘Somebody didn’t like him?’ Baynes postulated, fanning his red face with the hat. ‘Anyhow, he’s gone and now we have King Felipe.’
We were finely balanced on the edge of the curb, swaying a little like a pair of drunks undecided which way to fall. Traffic, mostly with non-Spanish plates, chugged past in a haze of poisonous fumes. Even in January with Christmas gone and the Spanish Three Kings Day to come, tourists were as numerous as ants in a colony. Spain was enjoying its hottest start to the year in living memory.
‘Where next?’ I said wearily.
Baynes belched discreetly, consequence of too many gassy Spanish beers.
‘Well, there’s the Alcazar. But that’s even more wrong side of the tracks, I’m afraid.’
I plucked my sweat-damp shorts free of my crotch. ‘I’m not exactly impressed so far, you know, Colin.’
‘I don’t dictate the market prices. If you could go to a million, say …’
‘I could, but I won’t.’ Half-a-million euros was plenty for a wild, ill-thought-out scheme to put down roots by buying a bar.
He shrugged unhappily. Like all his breed he was anxious to make a deal, preferably a lucrative one, but any deal beat none at all. The way things were shaping up though, no deal was the increasingly probable outcome of this fiasco.
To give Colin Baynes his due, he had put a lot of effort into our bar hunt. We had inspected fourteen in two days. None had appealed to me, mostly on account of their downscale locations. Some were clearly not well-patronised. If the best a Spanish bar in a tourist resort can muster mid-evening is a trio of gnarled cardsharps, it’s a sure sign of some underlying malady. Baynes tended to be dismissive of empty bars, pointing out that we were in the low season.
As we stood by the roadside he unfolded a much-folded list and studied it. I waved away fumes from a leaky exhaust. Passers-by jostled us good-naturedly and the list fluttered to earth, became impaled on the spiky heel of an African girl with braided hair. Baynes rushed after her.
‘For God’s sake …’ I growled, the combination of heat and bar-hunt fatigue straining my temper.
The list now had a tear in it and a footprint across the top half.
‘We could try the Corregidor,’ Baynes said doubtfully.
‘I’ve a better idea – let’s call it a day.’
His relief was as naked as the sun worshippers on the naturist beach on the south side of town.
‘A beer before you go?’ he proposed.
‘Haven’t you had enough? My bladder is stocked up until the end of next week.’ I patted his shoulder. His shirt was damp, the original dark patches under the armpits having spread like fungus over the back of the garment. ‘We’ll meet up tomorrow. Ten o’clock suit you?’
‘Whenever you say, Mr Warner.’
The rented BMW was parked about a kilometre away. I sauntered back, window-shopping as I went, keeping to the shady side of the street. What am I doing here? I asked myself in between distractions. Buying a bar? Lunacy! It wasn’t as if I liked Spain all that much. And this was supposed to be a vacation.
It was the Irish owner of the Dubliner Bar on the Paseo Maritimo who had sowed the seeds – Cathal O’Rourke, married to a Spaniard ‘these twenty-foive years an’ all’. A great life, he had enthused, over generous drops of some seriously hard stuff. Make a good living, meet lots of interesting people, live in the sun. It was an easy sell. It sounded as if it could be fun. Being in a personal and professional limbo had put me in a receptive frame of mind. So the next day, on O’Rourke’s recommendation, I tracked down expat estate agent Colin Baynes, late of Southend.
Salesman though he was, Baynes had not gilded the lily. The problem, he explained over beers in his front line office with its wall-to-wall colour prints of this, that, and the other desirable property, was that the bars in the “better” areas commanded a higher price than my stated €500,000 ceiling. Hence I would have to lower my sights. A beachside location was still possible, but not in the most fashionable strips to the south. Baynes proposed I junk the idea of buying an apartment nearby, and the money saved added to my stake.
‘Most bars have living accommodation,’ he asserted. ‘Be more secure too, living on the premises.’
At a practical level he was right. I just hadn’t figured on living over a bar, even my own bar.
Lack of progress and looming complications were waning my enthusiasm. I would give it two more days then, if I didn’t find a suitable place, I would call off the search. Dream up some other lifechanging gimmick.
My next assignment was unrelated to my bar search. The previous evening I had received a call on my cell from Dave Pridham, anxious for news of his missing daughter. Fact was, I had forgotten my promise to check out her address. He was polite about my feeble excuses and even apologised for the ‘imposition’. Quite right too. After all, I was doing him a favour.
So, post-Barnes, I set off in the Beamer in search of Calle Hinojo. The GPS guided me there through lookalike back streets to the suburbs, far away from the beach. No.14B was in an apartment block, four floors high, with what looked like a penthouse with a balcony on the fourth level. Brown awning
s screened all the windows. The entrance door was in a porch accessed via an archway. To the right, a garage door occupied the rest of the front of the building.
I had purposely left it until after five, in case the present occupant was at work. Beside the entrance door which, as expected, was locked, was a rank of buzzers. 14B was occupied by “IANCU”. I thumbed the button, held it down.
An eventual curt ‘Si?’ was my reward. Definitely not Linda Pridham.
‘Disculpe las molestias,’ I said. ‘I’m a friend of Linda Pridham.’
‘She go away.’ His Spanish was if anything worse than mine.
‘I know, but I need to contact her.’
‘Wait there.’ Surly, grudging. Not happy to be of service.
When he came, he closed the door behind him and talked to me in the porch. He was thin as a reed with unSpanish features and fair hair done up in a cute ponytail. From his name I took him to be of East European origin.
‘Who are you?’ he snapped, like a small dog trying to be big. ‘Are you police?’
‘A friend of Linda’s,’ I said, keeping a grip on my civility. ‘Her parents are trying to find her.’
‘I tell you,’ he said, reverting to English. ‘She go.’
‘I got that. Do you have her cell phone number?’
‘She change. I not know new number.’ Then the tension went out of him, and a weak smile emerged. ‘But you lucky. She coming back.’
‘To live?’
‘No, no.’ His headshake made the ponytail sway becomingly. ‘She leave things, clothes, CDs, tennis bat … stuff like that. She fetch.’
Which was a break for me in my unsought after quest.
‘When is she coming?’
‘Saturday. She say cuatro … four in afternoon. You can come speak with her.’
That I could do. Saturday was two days hence. I thanked him.
‘You use anything?’ he said to me as I turned to leave.
‘Use anything?’
‘You know …’ He glanced up and down the empty street: ‘Skunk, dust, applejack, I got all kind.’
As always when a drug pusher intersected my path, my thoughts went straight to Liza, remembering how her abductors had drugged her into submission and abused her, and the battle to get her off dependency when I finally brought her home.
I stuck a finger under his nose and, speaking slowly and distinctly so he would get the message, said, ‘Don’t say another word. Just turn around and go back inside and I’ll forget all the lives you’re ruining.’
Quick on the uptake, he backed away, entered a code on the lock pad and was gone without so much as a puff of smoke.
When I reported my progress to Dave Pridham later that evening I didn’t mention that his daughter had been shacked up in a part of Fuengirola where drug merchants operated. It wouldn’t have done much for his peace of mind.
* * * * *
On Friday, I took a break from viewing bars and went sailing. Seamist was a handful for a crew of one, but manageable. It was a balmy day, with only a flutter of wind from down south, so even with a full complement of sails, I barely made headway. I even read most of a book while cruising down the coast to the small town of Benalmadina, where I grabbed a visitors’ berth and lunched on shellfish paella at a restaurant on the marina.
A restful day. No special worries, just a lingering niggle about whether Il Sindicato, my regular employers whom I had displeased, would come calling anytime soon. Their silence was more unnerving than their threats.
Saturday afternoon I returned to the apartment on Calle Hinojo. I left the Fuengirola marina at three, so as to be sure to be there ahead of Linda Pridham. Being the weekend, and more people presumably at home, parking space on the street was all taken up, so I left the car in adjacent Avenida de los Lirios.
Jingling the car keys in my pocket, I rounded the corner into Hinojo. A woman was emerging from the doorway of no.14. Young, well put together in sawn-off denim shorts and a yellow top; brown hair secured with a yellow and blue headscarf. Maybe she had her stuff run up from second-hand Swedish flags. She had an armful of dresses and other garments on hangers, some of which were not yellow and blue. It was only when she showed me her profile while chucking the clothes on the back seat of an open top electric-blue Mustang, that I made the connection. It was the Pridham girl, a half-hour ahead of schedule.
I hailed her as she slid behind the wheel. When she didn’t react, I broke into a trot and called again, but by now she was gunning the engine and the noise drowned me out. Either that or she took me for a stalker.
‘Linda!’ Louder now, but too late. She was already moving away from the curb while I still had twenty metres to cover.
To the crackle of its twin mufflers, the Mustang accelerated down the narrow street. I waved my arms frantically, hoping she would spot me in the rearview mirror. If she did, she wasn’t curious enough to delay her departure.
An obscenity or few escaped my lips as I backtracked at sprint speed to the Beamer. Luck was with me: she was held up by traffic at the far end of Calle Hinojo. As I fed gas to the engine, she moved off, swinging left. At that point, I came close to quitting. Then, some vague noble impulse took over, urging me to restore the missing miss to her anxious parents. I gave the Beamer the gun.
By ignoring the speed limit I still had her in sight when I made the left turn at the Stop sign. She was just taking another left, two streets along. Traffic was light, so I was able to stay with her as she proceeded towards the ramp that led to the autopista. By the time she hit it I was snuggled up behind her, separated only by a decrepit pick-up truck.
The Mustang’s left indicator was winking as she infiltrated the four-track freeway, easing into a gap in the traffic stream. The pick-up followed through; two passing cars held me back, then I too was on the freeway, looking for an opening to shorten the gap between the Mustang and me.
Signs and the sun told me we were heading south-west on the A7. A Lidl supermarket on the right came and went as we hit the 100kph mark, the legal limit on this stretch. The road veered right, crossed a river. Up ahead, on a hill, was a Moorish castle with grey walls and a single turreted tower.
Not knowing her destination, I settled down for what might be a long haul. She was three vehicles ahead. I passed two of them, then drifted back into the inside lane behind a Fiat 500.
My expectation that it would be easy to keep track was blown away when she started passing every vehicle. Eventually she lost a duel with a Porsche, conceding force majeure with a resentful honk. Miss Linda was not to be messed with.
I allowed her to pull away a few cars’ lengths again, chiefly because I didn’t want her to catch sight of me and drive even more recklessly in a bid to shake me off. I wasn’t about to risk my life doing Dave Pridham a favour. Her Swedish-flag scarf was fluttering wildly in the airstream, like a ship’s pennant. She had a cell phone pressed to her ear, flouting the law that specified hands-free only when driving.
As Fuengirola receded in my mirror a new urban area began to spread across the windshield. On this section of the autovia the scenery was mostly solid concrete, relieved only by the glitter of the Mediterranean between the tower blocks. Out of season holidaymakers trudged the sidewalks and promenades. Over-commercialised as it was, Spain still had plenty to offer: endless sun, endless beaches, great food, passable wines. If it was to become my adopted country, I could do worse.
Mounted on a rise beside the autovia a line of large white lettering, not unlike the famous Hollywood sign. LA CALA DE MIJAS it spelled out. Abruptly, without signalling her intention, Linda swerved from the left-hand lane into the right, and from there onto an exit ramp. She almost threw me off her trail. I braked hard, triggering the ABS, and earned a bleat of protest from the Fiat as I cut in front of it to merge onto the ramp. The exit sign, white lettering on blue, read La Cala de Mijas, Cambio de Sentido. The ramp led down to a traffic circle. Linda took this too fast, tyres whimpering, leaving the circle at the second exi
t with me leeching on to her rear bumper.
Back under the freeway, the shade as dark as night, momentarily blinding. Now the sea was ahead of us, that azure blue that hurts to look at. Lights, intersection, left turn, into a street of front-line row houses. Palm trees bordered the street, some of them dead, victims of a disease that was rampaging across Spain, decimating the species. To the right was a parking lot that appeared to serve an apartment block with the vertical inscription EL OCEANO down one side. Linda whipped the Mustang off the road and into the lot too quickly for me to stay with her. I found a space between a couple of cars parked on the street and tucked the BMW in there.
On foot I hustled back to the parking lot. The Mustang was there, but empty of its driver. That didn’t worry me. Nobody would leave an open top car full of clothing in a Spanish street for more than a few minutes.
Across the road was a restaurant – El Oceano, like the apartments. With the sun now slipping towards the saw-toothed palisade of mountains to the west I was on the hot side of the street, so I stationed myself under the roofed entrance of the restaurant to wait. It wasn’t a long wait. A slim, hawk-featured man in army uniform – slacks, short-sleeved shirt with officers’ epaulettes – ambled up to me. He was bareheaded, his hair black and smooth as an otter’s pelt.
‘Buenos tardes, señor,’ he said, smiling in a relaxed, friendly fashion.
I nodded politely, wondering if I was about to be subjected to a random identity check. Normally a function of the police rather than the military, but in a come-lately democracy like Spain I wouldn’t have ruled it out.
His next utterance was longer and interrogatory. My understanding of Spanish being limited to what I had picked up during my infrequent sojourns here, I shrugged my incomprehension.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said in English.
He took that in his stride. ‘I ask if you are waiting for someone.’
I stared. I was tempted to tell him to mind his own business. Before I could reply though, Linda Pridham reappeared around the side of the restaurant. She strode mannishly towards the Mustang, her cut-off denim shorts tight across her behind, her legs long and smooth and tanned, just how I like them.