The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman

by Mamen Sánchez

  “Take me back to the hotel,” Moira managed to beg him, her hair sticky and Atticus’s Burberry covered in rubbish.

  Then she turned on her cell phone and called her husband.

  “Darling, I think I know where Atticus is.”

  “In Granada,” replied Marlow. “I left a message with the concierge, dear. Didn’t he give it to you?”

  Moira slumped into the seat of the car, took a handkerchief out of her pocket, and began to sob.

  CHAPTER 45

  Mrs. Craftsman still doesn’t understand why we need to bring María to Granada with us,” said Berta in the terse tone she had been using with Manchego since the previous day.

  “Fuck Mrs. Craftsman—don’t translate that, Berta, I’m just letting off steam,” said Manchego. “This woman is going to make me throw myself out of the car, mark my words, unless I throw her out first.”

  “As I’ve explained several times already, Mrs. Craftsman, the inspector thinks we need María with us in Granada for two reasons,” said Berta in English. “First, to protect her from Barbosa, and second, to lure Barbosa in so as to arrest him.”

  “And why not arrest him in Madrid?”

  “Mrs. Craftsman wants to know why you can’t arrest him in Madrid.”

  “Christ on a fucking bike!”

  “Because, Mrs. Craftsman,” Berta replied patiently, “if we don’t catch him red-handed we won’t be able to pin anything on him. The only evidence we have against him is María’s statement. She is, how should I put this, a ‘protected witness,’ I don’t know if you follow me.”

  “Bait,” said Moira, suddenly grasping what Berta meant and sneaking a glance at María in the rearview mirror.

  • • •

  Marlow Craftsman had hired a black eight-seater Mercedes with tinted windows for the journey to Granada, and had engaged a smartly dressed driver to make sure he and the ragtag bunch, with whom fate had decreed he would spend the day, got there safely. Under different circumstances he never would have made a journey of more than four hours in such company. He would have thrown himself off the white cliffs of Dover before voluntarily spending a car journey with the likes of them.

  Manchego sat in the passenger seat next to the driver, and to make matters worse, he was dressed in plain clothes. At least in uniform he commanded a certain respect, but wearing corduroy trousers, a knitted sweater, and an old jacket, he looked like a Suffolk sheep farmer. Behind him sat the Craftsmans, on either side of the center seat—his briefcase and her handbag acting as a barricade in the middle—and María and Berta were squashed into the back, huddled up to each other like two little girls afraid of the dark.

  The plan was to get to Granada as soon as possible, walk the last bit up to Soleá’s house, wait for her at the door, go with her up to Dolores’s cave, knock, ask for Atticus, wake him up from his deep sleep, give him the fright of his life, tell him everything that had happened, get him into the car, onto the plane, onto the train, and take him home to Kent and ensure that little by little, with the help of plenty of tea and good sense, he would slowly detox from all that unrequited love, cheap wine, cured ham, and tinned tuna, forget those wasted months, and get back to being a well-bred, responsible young man, heir to Craftsman & Co., his mother’s pride and joy, his father’s hope, Bestman’s success story, the company’s future. A promising young man, yes siree, worthy of his ancestors, faultless, proper, and respectable. And English. Above all, English.

  The previous day, Marlow Craftsman himself had, without a second thought, sacked Asunción, Gaby, Berta, and María, and closed the Librarte office with a slam that rang out like a gunshot. They didn’t get their severance checks and weren’t brave enough to ask for them. The girls, all distraught, saved what they could from the carnage: They shared a few books, kept the coffee cups as souvenirs, along with the crocheted cloths, Berta’s rocking chair, the potted roses, and other personal items, which they packed into miserable cardboard boxes.

  Asunción was in charge of switching off the fuse box and disconnecting the gas. She did the job with tears in her eyes. Gaby wiped the memory from each of the computers and turned them all off—someone would come soon to collect them and send them back to England. María organized the shoe boxes full of receipts and the useless, deceitful records, so that they could be included in the indictment for the fraud investigation.

  Berta couldn’t bear to watch the eviction. All she could manage was to take María’s kids away as soon as possible before their mother arrived. She went out with one of the twins in her arms, the other hanging off her hand, and little Lucía jumping down the stairs ahead of them, singing a nostalgic ballad that told the story of some shepherds going to the hills and who didn’t know when they would be home again.

  Berta walked with her head down, tearful and forlorn.

  Manchego was about to run out after her and say to hell with it all, but good sense got the better of him in the end, and he simply stood in silence, in a corner, for the two hours it took the girls to clear the office. Together with his client, Marlow Craftsman, he oversaw the process and impassively carried out his duty as a police officer.

  Then he escorted the gentleman to his hotel, the Ritz, and bade him farewell until early the next day, when, following the plan they had made, they would set off for Granada in a rental car with Berta, so she could translate, and María, so she could act as bait.

  “Precisely, Mrs. Craftsman,” repeated Berta for the umpteenth time, “María is the bait, and she has to come with us to lure Barbosa in so we can catch him red-handed, do you see? She’s the only one who can testify against the thief, and we can assume that he’ll try to find her so he can shut her up.”

  “Shut her up?” said Moira, wide-eyed.

  “Do her harm, yes,” said Berta. “Threaten her, beat her up, or even kill her.”

  “So you’re putting us all in danger,” remarked the Englishwoman, “by bringing the bait in this car. Bravo, very clever.”

  Marlow Craftsman turned around in his seat. There was some logic to what Moira was saying. Having María in the car with them was a risk he hadn’t taken into account. He glanced nervously in the rearview mirror. The motorway was busy.

  “César rides a Harley-Davidson,” María informed them, aware of Craftsman’s sudden anxiety. “He’s easy to spot. He usually wears a leather jacket with an orange logo and steel-toed boots. You have no idea how much a kick from those shoes hurts. It feels as if all your ribs are going to get smashed to pieces.”

  “Son of a bitch,” muttered Manchego.

  Berta hugged María even tighter. Moira opened the window, stuck her head out, and inhaled the cold December air. For some strange reason, she felt overwhelmingly hot instead of cold. The eggs Benedict were churning in her stomach, making her feel incredibly sick.

  “I don’t feel at all well,” she managed to say before her mouth filled with vomit.

  Because the back window was also open, the stream of puke flew directly onto María and consequently onto Berta, who was holding her like an overprotective mother.

  They had to pull the car over onto the hard shoulder in the middle of nowhere, where there was nothing but sheep grazing and a windmill on top of a distant hill, and while an embarrassed Moira apologized in English, opened her bag, took out a silk handkerchief, a bottle of mineral water, a couple of clean shirts—“Don’t look, please, gentlemen, cover your eyes, we’re going to get changed in this ditch”—a Harley-Davidson passed unseen behind the car, as quick as lightning, ridden by the delinquent Barbosa, heading for Granada, where he planned to round off his criminal activity by grabbing María by the hair and taking her with him to a Caribbean island where no one would ever find them. He had already bought the tickets. He had a bag full of cash. “Say goodbye to your children,” he was going to tell her, “because you’re not going to see them again. Either that or I kill you. Your decision.” And she would surely make the right decision: She would run away with him, despite knowing that
from that moment on she would become her executioner’s property, the object of his beatings, a slave to his desires. A thing, an animal.

  It had been easy to follow María—all he had had to do was scare the life out of Señora Susana on the dark landing outside her flat on Calle del Alamillo. She immediately confessed that Berta had left her keys with her and asked that she please water the plants because, apparently, she had to go to Granada for a few days, Señora Susana didn’t know who with, Berta didn’t say that, and she would be back before too long.

  “Manchego,” Berta had warned the inspector in the car, after speaking on the phone to a terrified Susana who stumblingly told her what had happened. “Barbosa’s on his way.”

  “Right,” he had replied without looking at her.

  CHAPTER 46

  Berta called Soleá that evening and told her every last detail of what had happened in the past few hours. María had confessed, Barbosa was the biggest son of a bitch in the history of the world, Míster Crasman himself had sacked everyone, they had closed the office—“Asunción’s got your things, don’t worry, they’re in safe hands”—and, most important, she was going to leave for Granada first thing the next day with María, Manchego, and the Craftsmans to try to rescue Atticus and take him back to England.

  The mixed emotions swirling around Soleá’s soul inexplicably condensed into a single feeling: that of a broken heart. Just as a doctor touches different parts of a patient’s ailing body and says, “Does this hurt?” until he finds the source of infection, Soleá ran through all her current sources of anxiety—María’s betrayal, the loss of her job, her uncertain future—and, to her surprise, she found that the epicenter, where it really burned, pulsated, writhed, screamed, and died, was located precisely in the tiny corner of her heart that belonged to Atticus Craftsman. She noticed how the rest of her worries paled in comparison to the unbearable idea of living without Atticus.

  She hardly slept that night, bathed in sweat, tossing and turning on the mattress she had chosen solely because he had slept there, sometimes getting up to look out the window, straining to hear the distant sound of his guitar, his foreign accent, his childlike laughter, recalling the kiss, the beach, the color of the sea, the smell, the taste, the softness, the hand spread out on her stomach, the heat.

  She got up when it was still dark, sticky with sweat, and went down for breakfast.

  Granny Remedios, who never slept, was awake and waiting for her, propped up on the cushions of her deathbed. However, in contrast to the lamentable state she had been in recently—her moans and cries of “Take me, Virgen del Carmen, take me, Jesus, oh, the pain!” her faints and other torments such that Soleá had begged the Lord to take her grandmother so she wouldn’t suffer anymore, so she might rest in peace—Granny Remedios looked fit as a fiddle and was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Come ’ere, Soleá,” she said under her breath so as not to wake the children, grandchildren, nephews, and nieces who were spread around her bed, awaiting her death, taking turns to stay by her side at night.

  The fire was lit. The whole house was sleeping silently.

  “My girl, you look like a lost soul,” she whispered to her granddaughter, who flopped down next to her. “You’re shaking, your feet are freezing, and you’re all hunched over. Have you finally realized?”

  “Realized what, Granny Remedios?”

  “What do you think, Soleá? That you’re in love with Tico and have been since the day you met him, since you brought him here, since you two first laughed together, since you both drank our Candela’s tea, since you jumped out the window so you wouldn’t bump into him. Niña, if that’s not love, then God knows what is.”

  Soleá lowered her eyes. The white sheet looked pink in the glow from the fire, her grandmother’s hands were lined with deep paths, her eyes were two mirrors that had seen so much, her words were truths that cut like knives.

  “But I didn’t—”

  “Of course you didn’t know. Sometimes, the person in love is the last one to realize. But Tico, he knew it from the first moment. He wouldn’t have followed you to Granada if he hadn’t known, he wouldn’t have spent days in this house shelling beans, he wouldn’t have learned to play the guitar, he wouldn’t have walked back from the beach—he walked three days and nights, that’s what he told me—just to be at your side. He knows it, Soleá, but he’s English, sweetheart, and he doesn’t understand that we do things differently here. He doesn’t understand that you can turn up one night at your girlfriend’s father’s house, take her away, and give her a child—that’s what your grandfather did to me—and rip your shirt open and beat your chest, and fight savagely for her if they won’t let you marry her because you’re only a cattle trader and you don’t have a fortune, and take her back to your village, quick as lightning, to the hills, love her furiously, tenderly, passionately. Tico’s cut from a different cloth. He acts like he doesn’t want to get his clothes dirty, Soleá, but in reality he’s desperate to eat you up. I can see it in his eyes every time you come downstairs and walk straight past him. It’s as if his body lights up when he sees you and switches off again when you leave.”

  Soleá felt that rain of burning truth cascade over her and remained silent, while her eyes focused on counting the wrinkles on her grandmother’s hand. She knew that Remedios, who was an expert when it came to human emotions, was absolutely right.

  “So what do I do now? How can I tell him I’m in love with him when I’ve treated him so badly?”

  “You don’t have to tell him anything, girl. Just keep quiet, let him come to you, and be ready for him. No one likes to feel as if he’s been trapped. You leave it to me. Tell him I’m dying and he has to come and see me because I won’t live through another night.”

  “Oh, Granny Remedios, don’t scare me!”

  “But I’m only pretending, Soleá, my girl, you silly thing. Haven’t you worked out that I’ve been in this bed for four months, healthy as a horse, waiting to see if you’ll make up your mind to go for Tico?”

  Soleá couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Remedios was smiling beautifully, as if it was absolutely fine to give them all the scare of their lives by telling them she was dying. The cousins had come from Antequera, they were sleeping piled on top of one another, afraid to leave her bedside in case the Lord suddenly came for her in the night.

  Remedios slipped out from between the sheets, small and wrinkled as she was, her hair all messed up, her nightgown threadbare from lying in bed for so long. She said, “What a relief, Soleá, I was going to catch something bad cooped up in there. Your mother is such an awful cook! What a relief that I can take over the kitchen again, my Manuela was going to starve us all to death!”

  Some of the cousins who were sleeping in the living room stirred. The fire crackled in the hearth and Granny Remedios did some yoga stretches.

  “Don’t look at me like that, close your mouth before the flies get in,” she told her granddaughter. “Go and find Tico and tell him I’m dying, go on. Tell him I’ve got something important to say to him before my time is over. A big fat secret that I don’t want to take to my grave.”

  After her stretches, Granny Remedios went back to her impression in the mattress, pulled the sheets up to her nose, put on her invalid’s face, and shouted, “Virgen del Carmen, take me soon!” A distant cousin finally woke up from her deep sleep, approached the deathbed, touched the old woman’s forehead, thought to herself that she didn’t have a fever, and asked if she wanted anything for breakfast.

  “Migas with bacon and a fried egg,” replied Remedios, who might have been dying but certainly hadn’t lost her appetite.

  CHAPTER 47

  The only prayers Soleá knew by heart were the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary. She made the rest up to suit the occasion: “Virgen del Carmen, patron saint of sailors, save me from this shipwreck” or “Sacred Heart of Jesus, have a heart,” prayers that were hardly liturgical but truly sincere, because she wasn’t the kind
of person who thinks of Saint Barbara only in a thunderstorm. No, Soleá thanked God every day for the good things in her life: her mother, her grandmother, her siblings, the fifty members of her extended family, her colleagues at Librarte, her work, her flat in Madrid, and even the spicy potatoes they made in the bar on the corner. And to this list she now added Atticus Craftsman’s green eyes when he stared at her back.

  She carried on up the steep little street to Dolores’s cave, praying under her breath all the way, oblivious of the fine rain, like angels’ tears, that was falling and making her hair wet and frizzy, soaking the hem of her long skirt and her ankles. She asked the Virgin Mary—because you’re a woman and you’ll understand better than the others—to help her find her way out of the impasse of her love for Atticus Craftsman, that pale, clumsy Englishman who wasn’t at all religious, which the poor thing couldn’t help, because, you see, Virgin Mary, he was born into a family of agnostic Protestants, although Granny Remedios had managed to pretty much convince him that heaven existed when she told him it was like having tea with Soleá for all eternity.

  Up until that moment, Soleá had done everything she could to avoid opening the doors to her heart. They were locked shut, surrounded by crocodile-infested water, defended by an army of prejudices and customs that would be tough to dismantle now that she had fed them so fervently. And yet, with every step she took through the rain, a tower or a battlement fell, the drawbridge was lowered, offering him a way to get into the castle, the heart of darkness, where she was waiting for him, asleep, or rather, unconscious, unaware that only his kiss could save her, only his love could redeem her, only his company could be her heaven.

  The cave was firmly closed. Atticus Craftsman was sleeping beside the only window, next to the door. Soleá knocked once, twice, three times, waited, and knocked again.