Atticus received Soleá’s kiss like a hard-won trophy, the prize for his efforts, the boat race, at long last the cup for Oxford, after seven years of disappointment, the taste of glory. While he nibbled her lips, he revisited one by one the scenes from his erotic library, which he had left behind in the flat on Calle del Alamillo—what an oversight—in the hope of putting them into practice as soon as this no-nonsense woman let him unbutton her shirt and rip off her skirt, something he thought might be tricky, because Soleá, while they were kissing, had already slapped him when she felt his hand trying to make tracks for her cleavage.
“Why not?” he had pleaded with her, his face red and stinging.
“Because I don’t want you to,” she had replied.
So as not to drag out any longer the agony of wanting to touch her and not being able to, Atticus asked her to marry him, as soon as possible, that very day, or tomorrow, at the cathedral, in a little chapel, out in the countryside, just the two of them or with the fifty cousins from Antequera. He didn’t have a ring, so he gave her the gold crucifix that hung from his neck, so the Gypsy Christ could bless their union. He pulled it off over his head, placed it on Soleá’s chest, and the heat it held made a mark, like a tattoo, in the shape of a cross, that he had to kiss better. More kisses.
He did it by the book, Soleá later told her mother and grandmother: on one knee, the classic formula, first in Spanish—“¿Te quieres casar conmigo?”—then in English—“Will you marry me?”—because it had always been his dream to ask the hand of the woman of his dreams in the language of Shakespeare. And Soleá said “sí” and then “yes,” and then, finally, she let him kiss one of her breasts, the right one, not because she wanted him to but because the cross had burned her.
CHAPTER 50
Moira Craftsman soon came around from her “emotionally triggered panic attack,” as it was diagnosed by a doctor who had to check three times that the electronic cuff wasn’t broken because each time it gave a blood pressure reading of one sixty over one hundred. At Atticus’s insistence, the doctor prescribed two cups of Twinings Earl Grey tea, conceding that, “It can’t do her any harm, she is English, after all.”
At around seven in the evening, the Craftsmans, Berta, María, and Inspector Manchego were finally able to settle into their charming little hotel, a pretty house with a courtyard and flowers. They were all exhausted from the journey, the emotion, and the hospital visit.
Why Moira didn’t notice the cross that hung from Soleá’s neck is a mystery that will never be solved. She didn’t say a word on the matter; it was enough for her to feel the icy cold of her son’s hands to know that something serious was going on, and to fear the worst. She ordered soup, a French omelet, and a cup of tea; she complained because the soup had bits of chickpeas floating on the surface and the omelet was less like a soufflé and more like the sole of a shoe. She cried for a while, and around nine o’clock she fell fast asleep. Marlow read until the words started to blur in front of his eyes. Then he turned off the bedside light and fell into a deep, snoring, whistling sleep.
Inspector Manchego sat with his ear pressed against the door and took all of this in. After all, it was his job to protect these people around the clock and deliver them safely back to Scotland Yard along with their son, Atticus, the missing person, you’ll never believe where he turned up, in perfect health, and all thanks to the investigative prowess of Inspector Manchego, who should be made superintendent and given a medal for bravery.
Berta, meanwhile, after ensuring that the Valium, blessed Valium, had finally done its work against María’s stubborn insomnia, went out onto the balcony for some air and came across the sturdy backside of Inspector Manchego, who had his ear against the Craftsmans’ door, his back tense, his gun at his waist.
She hesitated, unsure whether or not to sneak back to her room and avoid another confrontation with him. She still hadn’t managed to forgive him for all the unfair accusations he had hurled at her and the people she most cared about. Kidnapping, obstruction of justice, theft, capital flight, fraud . . . Manchego had deeply offended her, she felt like she had been seriously let down and, however much he had apologized afterward—“Forgive me, Berta, you know I didn’t really mean it, I said that in the heat of the moment, I love you, do you hear, I love you, there you go, three words I’ve never said to any woman”—the fact that he had embarrassed her still tipped the balance more toward resentment than compassion.
However, the trip to Granada, the persistent morning rain, and Manchego’s look of a helpless little boy who has put his foot in his mouth but later feels bad and grovels for forgiveness—all three softened her heart like a boiled potato.
“Fancy a cigarette?” she said to his back.
Manchego spun around, moving his hand to his gun.
“My God, Berta, you scared me to death!” he protested. “Don’t do that. It’s dangerous to frighten an officer when he’s on duty. I’m armed and I’m jumpy.”
“Okay,” she replied. “I can see you’re jumpy, so a cigarette and a bit of a rest will do you good.” Then she added, “Are they sleeping?”
“Like two freakin’ little angels.”
“María’s finally managed to get to sleep as well.”
“So it’s just us two still awake. Have you noticed how empty the hotel is?”
He was right. It was December 18, a Monday, and they had the hotel to themselves, with its Andalusian courtyard, its wooden balconies, and its geraniums.
“People are saving for Christmas.”
“Must be.”
Thinking of Christmas made Berta’s heart sink. She would normally decorate the Librarte office. She would buy a Christmas tree, cover it in baubles, buy poinsettias to put on the desks, spread a velvet cloth over the photocopier and place the nativity scene on top of that, and put a bottle of cider in the fridge, to celebrate with her colleagues on the morning of December 24. “Here’s to my good friends, God bless you, I hope the Three Kings bring you lots of presents, and may next year be the best one yet.”
But this year was a mess: The office had just been closed down, they were all out of work, María had turned out to be a liar, a thief, and a traitor. True, she had been forced into it, beaten and threatened by a heartless man, but she was a crook nonetheless. It was her fault that the magazine and the girls’ lives were ruined.
“What have you got planned for Christmas?” Manchego asked her.
“Other than taking some cookies to María in prison, not much,” she replied, feeling resigned to sadness.
“Right.” Manchego sighed.
“And you?”
“I was thinking of going to Nieva. Do you know, it’s three years since I’ve spent Christmas with my family.”
“How come?”
“Well, Berta, the truth is,” Manchego replied, “every time I go home they ask me if I’ve been promoted, if I’ve got a girlfriend, if I’ve solved any important cases, and I get the impression they’re disappointed every time.”
“This year’s different, though.”
“Workwise, yes,” he replied. “Girlfriendwise, no.”
Berta felt heat rising through her whole body. Like when she was a girl and drank hot wine in the village square and her ears would start throbbing, her legs would start wobbling, and her eyes would fill with tears.
Manchego hadn’t lit the cigarette. He was holding it between two fingers that were trembling as much as Berta’s legs. He suddenly fell silent. Their eyes spoke for them, the feelings of hurt giving way to something else. Somewhere along the way, these two had shed their pride, their singletons’ peculiarities, their love of solitude, and they met midway between hope and fear.
“Maybe we can do something about the girlfriend thing,” said Berta, drawing a bit closer to Manchego.
He dropped the cigarette into the courtyard below and threw his Suffolk sheep farmer’s arms around her. She felt like she was hugging a tree, a beech with yellow autumn leaves, and she breath
ed in the smell of damp earth, wild mushrooms, farm animals, and woodsmoke.
The kiss tasted of nuts and chestnuts, hot wine, an open fire. Manchego and Berta, as different and as inseparable as two sides of a coin, remembered at that moment the sound of the San Martín church bells on a wedding day and how the echo rumbled and rang down the cliff until it hit the stream where they used to paddle as children. And the taste of stew, the whole village invited, finally our Berta is getting married, so grown-up, how lovely, with a great guy, look how handsome he is, he looks like George Clooney, but taller. And the sound of fireworks, with a big finale, someone on the bridge sending rockets into the starry sky. That’s what the kiss was like.
CHAPTER 51
The hotel, before it was a hotel, had been the palatial house of a wealthy family. It was full of odd corners, corridors, and staircases, and the emergency stairs were made of mahogany and led down into a coach house with a coffered ceiling.
César Barbosa snuck in through the back door, silently crossed the garage, and poked his head out into the darkness of the courtyard. Everything was quiet except for a couple of voices, a man’s and a woman’s, whispering sweet nothings above.
He tiptoed around the edge of the courtyard, and as he passed under the spot where the voices were coming from, a cigarette dropped on his head. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of kissing, like soap bubbles bursting, and seized the opportunity to slip through the shadows unnoticed, sticking close to the walls, to go up to the door of the room where María was sleeping, to open it with a homemade lockpick, and to give her the fright of her life.
María had fallen into a deep, Valium-induced sleep, and this complicated the attack somewhat. Barbosa shook her, slapped her, splashed her with water from the glass on her bedside table, lifted her sleeping body, put her under a cold shower, hit her with a wet towel, and finally managed to reinstate the anxiety that the drugs had helped her overcome.
“Get dressed, slut, we’re going,” he said under his breath.
“Where are we going?”
“To the Caribbean, can you fucking believe it . . .”
Just like he had seen in detective movies, Barbosa knotted the ends of the sheets together and tied this improvised rope to the balcony. It was no more than four or five meters down to the side street where he had parked his Harley-Davidson, so the end of the sheet dropped into a puddle on the ground.
“Get down there!” he ordered María. “And if you do anything stupid, you’re dead.”
María obeyed. She waited for him at the end of the rope, got onto the back of her lover’s motorbike without a word of complaint, clung tightly to his leather jacket, and let herself be whisked off toward the unknown like a feather in the wind, having lost all her willpower the day she was first unfaithful to Bernabé.
Perhaps she was aware that she would never see her children again, or the man she once swore to love in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, for as long as she lived. And perhaps she could remember the good things from the marriage that had been built on hope, strengthened by the arrival of beautiful children, sustained by the everyday happiness of drinking hot chocolate and spending Sunday afternoons out in the country, and nourished by dreams of saving little by little, bathing at some beach down south, traveling, seeing her children graduate from distinguished universities, and finding Bernabé, after all those years, as exciting as when they first kissed.
The brutal sound of the motorbike’s engine starting up was multiplied a hundredfold by the damp walls of the narrow streets, producing a hellish noise that made Marlow and Moira Craftsman stir in their beds and shook Manchego and Berta out of the ecstasy of their embrace, catapulting them back to reality. As soon as they heard the roar of the motor and the sudden acceleration, they ran straight to María’s room, knowing they wouldn’t find her there.
When he saw the open window and the dangling sheet, Manchego didn’t think twice. He grabbed the improvised rope, jumped down into the street, drew his gun, and pointed it at the disappearing shape of the motorbike.
“Don’t shoot!” shrieked Berta, who was leaning over the balcony. “You might hit María!”
“Christ on a bike!” shouted Manchego, defeated.
The inspector felt for his cell phone and found it in his trouser pocket. He made one call: to his colleagues in the Granada police force, to whom he described the circumstances of the kidnapping and the two people involved.
Berta took out her cell phone as well. With trembling fingers, she called Soleá.
“Soleá, do something, Barbosa has taken María away on his bike!”
“Where did they go?”
“Along the street behind the hotel, the one that goes uphill.”
Soleá hung up without another word. She had arrived home moments earlier after spending the best afternoon of her life wrapped in Atticus’s arms. He had left her on the other side of the wrought-iron gate, as though it required a monumental effort to leave her, if only for a few hours, until morning came and he could knock on the door again, say good morning, and invite himself in for breakfast, see her still groggy with sleep, and verify that it was true, that Soleá existed and she was his.
“Arcángel?”
“How’s it going, Soleá?”
In all probability, Soleá’s explanation was poor at best. But three or four reasonably coherent words were enough for Arcángel to understand that he needed to chase a Harley-Davidson up Camino del Monte and beat the shit out of the guy riding it, the son of a bitch who had kidnapped his cousin’s friend, because none of the Heredias, the Amayas, or any of the El Albaicín cousins—“cousins” in the broadest sense of the word, as used by that family—were going to put up with that.
So in less than two minutes, more than two hundred ruthless men were ready to tear Barbosa to pieces. Some in cars, some on foot, others on motorbikes or bundled into trucks, surrounded Sacromonte, cut off the nearby streets, the periphery of the old town, the new exits to the motorway, and at some unknown point they merged with the police force and the civil guard. They were all disconcerted to find themselves fighting on the same side for once in their lives, a multicolored army of uniforms, official vehicles, black shirts, guns, and handmade penknives, the city stormed by the good guys to catch the bad guy Barbosa whom Manchego and Soleá both despised in equal measure.
César Barbosa couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Wherever he tried to escape, his path was blocked. Six or seven armed men lay in wait for him on each corner, with light glinting off their knives, gold teeth, crosses, and police badges. That night there was one thing all those men could agree on: doing away with him.
In desperation, he stopped the motorbike in a wide street. He grabbed María by the hair and shouted, “I’ll kill her! Let me out of here or I swear I’ll kill her right now!” He held a pocketknife in his hand up against María’s neck.
“Everyone stay where you are!” ordered a police chief, who took charge at that moment. “We need a negotiator!”
But from among the crowd came another, louder, and more authoritative voice.
“There’s nothing to fucking negotiate!” bellowed Manchego as he jumped the barrier and ran into the street where Barbosa was threatening to cut the terrified María’s throat.
Manchego slammed into Barbosa, and the impact took out María, the Harley-Davidson, a full garbage bin, and a poster advertising a flamenco recital. The two men rolled on the ground, fighting like gladiators, they bled, bit, and hit, they thrashed each other, and the rest of the spectators looked on, stunned, for some reason not splitting up the fight, until Berta screamed to make herself heard over the uproar:
“Somebody help him, for fuck’s sake!”
That’s what she said. “For fuck’s sake.” It was the first time in her life that Berta Quiñones had used this swearword, because the other possibility—“Somebody help him, please”—wasn’t going to have the same effect under the circumstances. It was a highly conscious, planned, an
d efficient use of a swearword that Manchego would revisit with his friends, in stitches, at every party. Especially when he described the tone of Berta’s voice and the purple tinge to her contorted face.
“It’s not funny,” she would complain.
And Manchego would wrap his arms around her to quiet her with kisses.
Berta’s scream managed to break the spell that had paralyzed everyone present and bring them back to life. More than twenty burly men, some police and some Heredia cousins, were needed to finally contain Barbosa and free María. But the difficult part was deciding what to do with the prisoner, whether he should be dealt with according to civil law or Gypsy law. The civil guard won, of course, but in exchange and by way of thanks for their help in detaining Barbosa, they gave Tomás, the family representative, a life-size image of the Virgen del Pilar to symbolize friendship and collaboration between the two sides.
That night, the only ones who slept like logs, thanks to one of Señá Candela’s special herbal blends, were Marlow and Moira Craftsman. And they didn’t just get a wonderful night’s sleep. For some strange reason, during the night the fire of their lackluster relationship was rekindled and they both developed wolfish appetites—what could there have been in Candela’s tea?—and when they awoke the next morning they made passionate love, like two wild animals, with teeth and nails, grunts and scratches, a pitched battle that drained their strength until lunchtime.
The rest of the inhabitants of Sacromonte congregated in the early hours at Dolores’s cave to celebrate the capture of Barbosa with drinks and music that thundered like a tropical storm on the new city of Granada. That night, more than a thousand complaints went ignored at the central police station by order of the provincial chief of the civil guard, who, alongside about ten of his colleagues, took part in the midnight celebration.
They sang and danced until their hands hurt from clapping and their feet from stamping, their nails from playing guitar and their hands from beating cajones, because, as Dolores reminded them all at the top of her voice, they had plenty to celebrate. Barbosa was going to spend a long time behind bars and, what was more, Soleá had met the love of her life, Tico from Dolores’s cave, a Gypsy at heart, with Gypsy customs already deep inside him: No one was going to shake Tico’s new home, his new identity, his new family out of him.
The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman Page 20