Coulliere just looked so beautiful. It was the first time she’d seen the sea on this journey and it seemed so incredibly blue and welcoming. The terracotta tiled roofs glowed in the late afternoon sun and the tiny town seemed so comforting. The taxi driver had taken her to what he said was the best hotel. In Coulliere, she was able to relax for a night or so and get over her ordeals that had happened in Glasgow and Edinburgh. She researched apartments to rent in Barcelona. She considered staying in Coulliere but it didn’t give her the camouflage she required. With Barcelona, she would have the madness that is Barcelona going on all around her.
By the time she arrived in Barcelona by taxi, she had three apartments to view. She viewed all three apartments and took the last one. A fourth storey apartment in the Gothic Quarter or Barri Gòtic as the locals called it. Two small bedrooms, a large grand bathroom which was inexplicably the largest room in the apartment, a kitchen, slash dining area and a compact but bright living room. The living room had double doors which opened to a small balcony overlooking Via Laietana. A busy street where there was usually a lot of noise most of the day and night. Car horns. Screeching tyres. Men and women shrieking at one another. Consumed with the heat. She loved it. Very... Spanish.
It was the way it was furnished which made the apartment though. Antique pieces mixed and matched with contemporary furniture. A strange mixture of reproduction Spanish art from Valasquez to Dali via Goya, Miro and Prado.
Far too much bull fighting paraphernalia dotted about the apartment but hey this was Catalan Spain. They loved it here. A brightly decorated bull fighting spear stood up in one corner of her bedroom which appeared to have dried blood on the white fluffy decorated stem. Was it bull blood or man blood she wondered. It was hooked on the spear end. This hook was probably how it stayed attached to the bull she thought but wasn’t sure. Her opinion was that it was a barbaric way of entertaining people. It creeped her out as did all the other bull fighting ornaments, paintings and photos - usually of proud looking bull fighters just dodging huge bulls whilst dressed as if for a lead role in a ballet. She quite liked it when the bull got his man but she decided that was probably best kept to herself around here.
Right on time, the Hotel Mercer called letting her know her parcel was awaiting her. She had to get rid of all this cash into a bank security box as soon as possible. As much as she’d grown used to having this lump of pure cash around her without any security, it just didn’t make any sense to keep it in her apartment.
After finding the Spanish for security deposit box (caja de seguridad) and asking around at one or two banks, she found a small bank that had exactly what she needed. She created an account and was made aware of the costs for the box which would be taken by direct debit. The bank was in a beautiful old building not far from her flat. The next day, she took half the cash in and asked for access to her box. She was shown upstairs by a young lady who introduced herself as Sandra. Sandra made no small talk at all. This was not that type of a bank. It was a bank of discretion. They wanted to know nothing of your personal life. The safety deposit boxes were on the fourth floor. Sandra showed her into one of several similar looking rooms. She pulled out Janet’s security box which was quite large and unlocked it but did not open it. She explained that once she was finished, she just needed to ring the bell by the door and Sandra would come back to get her. Sandra spoke very good English. Once Janet was alone, she opened the box lid and unzipped her bag. She took her time counting the money. She was fairly sure she’d got about half the cash, certainly in weight. She carefully counted two of the bundles of notes. Each bundle contained two hundred twenty pound notes. All brand new, making up four thousand per bundle and there were three hundred and four bundles in this bag. According the calculator on her phone, this was
£1,216,000 .
So there’d be roughly two and a half million across both bags minus the bits she’d spent which didn’t amount to very much. Just wait until she’d had a real shopping spree. No, Jesus this wasn’t a joke. Two point five million pounds was a really scary amount, but there was no going back at this point. She had pissed off the people who wanted this cash quite royally now. She’d made her (very expensive) bed and now she’d have to lay in it. The next day, she took the Gucci bag in with the other half of the cash. Again she was shown to the room, this time by Marcos. Again, he explained the routine for calling him back and with that, he left her to her privacy. She couldn’t be bothered to do counting again. What did ten or even a hundred thousand matter at this point. She knew roughly what the contents came to. Once she had all the cash out and into the security box, she closed the lid. The bag lay empty apart from one or two notes lying about in the bottom loose. She scooped them up and stuck them into her handbag. It was time to stick this incriminating bag into a bin. She stuck her hand in and found the base was open on one side. It was the hard piece across the bottom of the bag which gave it shape and solidity. There was something under it. An envelope. Beautifully handwritten across were the words Mr J. Nicholson. Was that Joseph? Had to be really she guessed. She placed it into the bottom of her handbag along with one bundle of notes and then zipped up the Gucci bag. She wanted to get out of the room and back home. As soon as she was out of the bank, the Gucci bag was dropped at the nearest charity shop. Once home, she read the letter.
Dearest J,
I do apologise that I couldn’t come to meet you personally recently, but you know how discreet we need to be in our line of business. Once things die down a little, I would like you to help me with a little project around the Sea of Galilee.
An acquaintance of a friend of a friend has recently acquired a piece and needs some help with transportation logistics from some calm, Still Waters and I know you are well versed in such matters. If you could help, that would be Nice. You have my details when you are ready to get in touch.
With Best Regards, MPW
What the hell was all that about? Talk about cryptic. She was sure it was meant for Joseph, who would not be reading it anytime soon. It may have made perfect sense to him, but she doubted it. There seemed to be a code in it, but if there was, it was not making itself clear to her. Did Galilee still exist? She thought that might be an old biblical name. There were other things in there which were capitalised which seemed to stand out. Still Waters and Nice should not be capitalised. Unless they were names of things. Or places. She read it again. Sea of Galilee and calmer, Still Waters. Hmm. So the project was that MPW wanted to get something from the Sea of Galilee to Still Waters and that would be Nice. She decided she’d let this percolate for a little while. She was a clever girl she reminded herself and she would crack this one way or another.
During five months renting in the heart of Barcelona, she enjoyed not working. She took Spanish classes. She had taken Spanish at school, enjoyed speaking Spanish whenever she was in Spain and it came back to her quickly. Her new life was simpler than before, less complicated and stress free. It was a life where she didn’t draw attention to herself. She blended in to her surroundings and the people around her. She visited the safety deposit box weekly and squirrelled away about a tenth of the cash into other bank accounts. She was buying a house and couldn’t very well turn up with a bag of cash. Plus it made sense to ‘diversify her investment’.
Over the course of the next few months, Janet travelled. She did her tour of the Americas. Planes, trains and automobiles. Starting off flying to Vancouver, through Amsterdam with Royal Dutch. A week of exploring Vancouver and spending time with her favourite long lost aunt before setting off toward Los Angeles via Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose and Las Vegas. She travelled business class or first class wherever she went for no other reason than because she could now. When you had the money, why would you not travel with table service. She mainly took the train with one stint on a Greyhound between San Francisco and Las Vegas but decided the train was a much preferable means of getting around. The Greyhound didn’t turn out to be as romantic as the song Americ
a would have her believe. She was in no rush and took her time to explore as she went. She took photos but didn’t put anything online as she had nowhere to put them. She would get them printed once she got home. And put them in an album. Just like people used to do. Her life was analogue now. She stayed for a month in LA soaking up the atmosphere, the culture, and the just plain out-there weirdness of the place. LA split opinions. You loved it or loathed it. Janet fell into the love camp. She mainly enjoyed the showy craziness. She had stints at the Four Seasons and the Bel-Air hotels before renting a one bed apartment near Santa Monica. Didn’t have a sea view, but was just a five minute walk to the beach.
She had sat next to a red-head called Tess on the train from Las Vegas to LA. They exchanged email addresses and Janet got a mail from her a few days into her LA stint. She really didn’t think she would do. Tess was 27, from Sydney and a free spirit. She’d been traveling for the last eleven months and had no plans to stop traveling and head home anytime soon. Janet was drawn to the adventurous aura that surrounded Tess. Tess was drawn to Janet’s hedonism. They hung out together occasionally meeting in The Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, drinking Mai Tais and Frozen Mojitos and going to gigs at the Viper Room and the Bootleg Theatre.
Tess was tall and elegant and had her own distinct style. ‘High class hippy hooker’ was the look she was aiming for, she so she said. Janet’s blond hair combined with Tess’s red locks attracted the boys like boozy drunken bees. They buzzed around and were occasionally allowed to get them a cocktail and if they had some good chatter, they’d be allowed to stick around for longer. Now and then, the boozy bees would get lucky. But mostly, they were having too good a night to let it get spoilt by men.
Tess had her own money. She inherited a large chunk of it from an older cousin she’d known until she was four. She’d never seen her since that fourth birthday and it had been a total shock. Some people just had this sort of luck Janet thought, before reminding herself she’d had a little break recently too. Tess certainly didn’t have an aversion to spending her way through it.
After the west coast of America, Janet wanted to go to Cuba and South America. Firstly Havana, then Rio before heading onto Buenos Aires. Then finally, she would go to Barbados and find a beach hut and relax for a month. She convinced Tess to go with her. Tess had wanted to explore South America too but was a little unsure about doing it alone. The arrangement worked well for the pair of them. They’d stay ten days in each place, give or take, and share accommodation. Neither of them needed to stay places long enough to find jobs and work to earn their keep or conserve their finances.
They stayed in Havana’s most exclusive hotel; Janet took a suite. It was grand but fabulously old fashioned and dilapidated; stubbornly remaining in a different era. They sought out the very best bars the place had to offer and drank copious numbers of Mojitos nightly. Mojitos were a drink that hit you hard in the morning and the best way to combat the thud in the back your head was to take an afternoon cocktail and get back on the wagon. A week into their stay, a Saturday, they found one of the local’s drinking dens and were very pleased with themselves. The whole point of traveling was to get away from the tourists. Away from the beaten track. No tourists found this place. It was a dark hole of a bar. Hot, sweaty, sticky, smokey. No well turned-out visitors wearing designer brands, just local Havanans with few worldly cares. Drinking their way through simpler lives. A motley Latino jazz crew played between drinks and smokes providing an irresistible foot tapping backing track. The Mojitos and Caipirinhas were delicious and lethal in equal measures. Two guys ended up chatting to them, one of them said he owned the bar. A striking pairing with slicked hair, sparkling brown black eyes and big collars. Their English was broken but it didn’t dilute their swaggering double act. The pair were amazed that these two had found the bar and quizzed them on how they managed it. They bought them drinks and kept them flowing. Janet watched the pair like a hawk even though she was getting drunk and giddy. They didn’t seem like the sort that would spike their drinks, but this was Havana and Charlie hadn’t seemed like the sort that would spike drinks either. Janet was so concerned with ensuring they were straight up with the drinks that she missed the real problem. The drinks didn’t need spiking, they had the kick of a vexed donkey without any additional chemicals. From about 11pm, the night speeded up as those nights tend to. Before they knew it, they were dancing on the bar with the men, getting whooped by customers. Then they were at the friend’s flat which was above another bar with the two men. Drinking again. Beers, shots of tequila, but this was not the salt and lemon type, it was more refined, you could drink it straight and it was smooth and tasty. A joint was passed around. It made Janet feel loose limbed and giggly.
Tess danced with the bar owner’s friend to a vinyl record they’d put on which was perfect follow on music to what had been playing in the bar. Janet was slouched on the sofa chatting and flirting and laughing with the bar owner. Discussing their collective thoughts on America. Then he was talking about her hands and how beautiful they were and then before she knew it, her finger was in his mouth. Sucking on it. It shouldn’t have but it made her giggle even more.
Then he was pulling her up some stairs which he seemed to have pulled from the ceiling out of nowhere. As they climbed them, the stairs waddled side to side under their weight. And then they were on the roof of the building under a billion stars. He had deck chairs into which they collapsed. It was the perfect stargazing spot. Occasionally Janet called out to Tess to ensure she was all good. Tess would call back ‘all good hun’. She wanted to make sure all was well but at the same time it was nice to have this privacy. She liked the bar owner. He was cheeky, charming, handsome and funny. He produced another joint from his chest pocket. Then from a tin box which sat between the deck chairs he pulled another bottle of rum. He poured them a small glass each and downed his straight off. She decided that was a sign all was ok. It was delicious. She took the bottle to see the make, but there was no English words on this bottle. She reminded herself that she’d need to take it easy from now on. She could easily imagine herself ending up here at the end of her remaining night in Havana. She felt incredibly content.
Suddenly, from downstairs, she heard the atmosphere change. Something happened between Tess and the bar owners friend and she heard a slap above the sound of the music. She jumped up and got down the rickety steps as quickly as she could. Before Janet knew it, they were in a full on shouting match with the bar owner’s friend. Janet grabbed Tess to make for the door. The bar owner pulled out a knife from his sock and jumped in front of them as if to stop them leaving, holding the knife up toward them. He’d stopped speaking in his broken English and was now just shouting in Spanish at both the girls and his friend. The knife was a particularly nasty looking job which was really quite dirty. Hunting knife Janet guessed. She was panicked and trying to find out from Tess what had happened but all she could get from her was ‘we are leaving!’ Tess ignored her and went as if to slap the bar owner’s friend and then kicked him as hard as she could in his crotch in a single sharp action. It was the most amazing thing Janet had ever seen. He dropped like a stone to his knees. The knife dropped onto a chair allowing his hands to cover and protect the source of the pain. He had stopped shouting and was whispering quietly to himself in Spanish. Janet grabbed the knife and Tess once more and pulled her toward the door. She was shouting something back at the man she’d slapped about rape and being presumptuous. They got onto the street without talking and started down it as fast as their feet would take them without actually breaking into a run. A loud crash exploded behind them. They looked behind briefly and there was a plant pot strewn across the road. She guessed the bar owner’s friend had slung it. At the end of the street, Janet clattered the knife into a bin and the pair of them burst into nervy laughter at exactly the same time. Probably from their massive bursts of adrenalin starting to subside. They ended up with cans of beer sitting on the beach watching the su
n coming up, chatting the pointless chatter of people who’ve drunk a skin-full. Tess confided that she had wanted to have sex with the guy, but he said that they wanted a foursome, then he had just started in on groping her roughly. ‘Fucking men!’
Tess was a lot of fun, but Janet soon discovered she was hard work to live with at close quarters. Janet believed her own life to be manic, messy and generally a little on the sporadic side. Tess was all this to the power of ten. They lasted 4 nights staying in the same suite. Had a rum drunk row about politics and decided the morning after that they’d both prefer a bit more space. The crazy thing was Janet had absolutely no interest in politics. They stuck together though and went on to visit Rio and Buenos Aires before locating side by side beach huts in Barbados. As beach huts went, these were the finest money could rent. Tess stayed in Barbados for a week, lazing around on the beach like an exotic Aussie lizard before heading off to find some more culture in Europe. She said she would ‘start in Naples and work her way north until she could see the northern lights’. Janet said she would visit her next year, either in Australia or wherever she happened to be.
This paradise was too perfect for Janet to give only a week to. She stuck around and learned to scuba dive with a handsome, blue eyed instructor by the name of Erik who was Danish. They ended up chatting after her morning lesson and Erik asked her if she’d like to get a drink later. A drink turned into several drinks. Drinks turned into a meal and the meal turned into a night in her hut. That night turned into the next two and a half weeks. Erik was physically extremely fit. At 46 years old, his stamina would have shamed most 18 year olds. They both shed a tear as Janet left to return to Barcelona. Erik said he would keep in touch and may visit her in Barcelona. Janet was happy to have spent the two weeks with him, but was now ready to get back to her life in Barcelona where she had her home comforts. Oddly, she was homesick for the place.
To Catch A Storm Page 11