Moon over Tangier (The Francis Bacon Mysteries Book 3)

by Janice Law

  I was barely listening. I set up my easel and arranged my paints on a small table along with the book of Picasso reproductions. This struck me as a very bad spot, and I thought that, despite Richard’s warnings, I should get myself out of the Spanish Zone and leave North Africa as soon as possible.

  Chapter Nine

  I was eager to get rid of Harry, who spoke of “sharing a few glasses” and getting to know me. That’s the sort of thing I try; I expected more focus from a man spending the Queen’s shillings and guarding the realm. Besides, the light of the oil lamps was not kind to him. Blond good looks come to grief under the African sun, and close up, he reminded me strongly of ancient leather shoes and crocodile purses. That, not to mention the present caper, forced me to be all business. “If you are serious about more ‘Picassos,’” I said, “I’ll need some different paints.”

  “What the hell? You brought a whole sack of paints.”

  I explained about drying times. “Goldfarber got me several cans of Johnstones’ emulsion that worked really well. They’ll still be in his studio.”

  Harry made a face. “Where they’ll stay. Police have it locked up like the crown jewels. But you’re not going to do a ‘Picasso’ in house paint.”

  “Correction: I’ve done a ‘Picasso’ in house paint.” When he looked skeptical, I added, “Richard didn’t notice, did he?”

  Harry thought about that and shrugged. “Richard doesn’t know damn all. But I doubt you’ll get good house paint in Tetouan. I’ll have to go back to Tangier for it.”

  My idea exactly. “That’s fine,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.” I made a list for him and saw him out the door with the reminder that time was short. Once he was gone, I went into the kitchen, ate the salad, bread, and wine I’d been left, and prepared to go out. Despite Richard’s threats, I planned to find someone willing to take me across the strait or along the coast to Tangier, where I could attempt the ferry as Jerome Hume. The idea of leaving the Zone on legitimate transport, courtesy of Richard’s phony papers, was almost irresistible. Indeed, I saw so little wrong with the scheme that as soon as I finished eating, I took the torch and made my way toward the flickering lights of the port. The road was steep and unlit except for the moon. Now high in the cloudy sky, it cast deep shadows under the palm trees and streaked the road black and silver.

  I kept alert for feral dogs and loose stones and fellow travelers of one sort or another. Occasionally, I heard a restless donkey or a horse, and near one large house, someone playing a melancholy Arab melody on a flute. Elsewhere, darkness and silence and the pervasive uncertainty of moving half-blind in unfamiliar places: shades of the Blitz and patrolling dark London streets. How swiftly the past returns at some moments. I thought of Nan and Arnold, who’d loved me, better, I feared, than I had loved them. These were bad thoughts, but I knew the cure. I reached a ramshackle cafe near the water and climbed the listing steps to the door.

  The low, cramped interior might have belonged to an ancient merchant ship or some ghastly freighter. Smoke hung like a London pea-souper, barely penetrated by the single lantern on the bar and the faintly glimmering candles on the tables. The clientele all looked to follow the less reputable branches of the maritime trade. They wore tattered shirts and pants, and their lean brown faces were topped with sea caps or battered straw or felt sun gear. They favored long mustaches and scraggly beards, and they smelled of salt, fish, and gasoline. I got a once-over from their shrewd, avaricious eyes.

  Smugglers to a man, I guessed, and so much the better, though the heavy, even sinister, atmosphere could only improve with alcohol. I went up to the bar, and good luck kept me from ordering drinks for the house or a bottle of something bubbly, for when I reached into my jacket pocket, I came up empty. No wallet. A bad moment as I tried my other pockets, before I remembered Harry reaching for my passport. He must have palmed the wallet at the same time.

  I’d underestimated him. To be in a rough bar with neither money nor beauty is an awkward spot, and I’d have faced an inglorious retreat if I hadn’t found some pesetas in my pants pockets. The bartender poured me a glass, and despite my reduced finances, I set out to make myself agreeable to a man I judged to be relatively sharp and relatively sober and possibly interesting in one way or another.

  He was thin and rawboned, and his short hair was quite gray. His face was dark from the Mediterranean sun and deeply lined from the sea wind. He carried a whiff of motor oil, and I noticed that his fingers were stained black, suggesting he had a boat with an engine, suggesting that he could do the run to Tangier. When I found he spoke some French, I bought him a drink, and we started talking.

  His name was Xavier: another saint, I was surely destined for sanctity. He claimed to be a fisherman. I claimed to be a tourist who painted picturesque scenery. In pursuit of the Spanish Zone’s magnificent beaches and charming villages, I fancied a run along the coast—maybe as far as Tangier?

  He made an expressive gesture. As a visitor, I wouldn’t realize that it would be impossible to travel beyond the boundaries of the Spanish protectorate. But a run up to Ceuta would be attractive, and he quoted me a fancy sum. If I’d had the remnants of Goldfarber’s two hundred pounds, I could have been off and away. But without my wallet, I was stuck on dry land—and dry in every sense, for my resources would just about stretch to another round for Xavier and me.

  Just the same, I sounded him out on ways to reach Tangier. Or Gibraltar. “There must be people who need to leave fast and unofficially. People with enemies, perhaps?”

  He shrugged again. He did not know personally, but he had heard there were possibilities. Strictly for cash in advance. “You understand, señor, that there are many dangers and difficulties. And only at night.”

  I said that was too bad since the coast was said to be spectacular.

  “Alas, señor, politics interfere with the life of man.”

  I could agree with that. We had another drink and might have become even more confidential if I hadn’t been short of money and if the clientele hadn’t kept early hours. The smuggling trade clearly cuts into prime drinking time, for most of the mariners had already left before I headed for the exit, inwardly cursing Harry the Light-Fingered. The British secret service couldn’t catch Goldfarber and could neither expose nor protect Angleford, but they’d managed to leave me penniless in the Spanish Zone. Her Majesty’s subject could have done without that expertise, and I went trudging up the steep road fast enough to get my lungs protesting.

  I stopped beside a dense, shadowed garden to catch my capricious breath, which was threatening to depart for good. I stood wheezing and gasping until a dog howled somewhere nearby. The canine tribe is the bane of my existence, distasteful to me and toxic for my asthma. Fearful of meeting one of the feral packs that roam the hinterland, I forced myself uphill.

  The light of my torch bobbed ahead of me, spearing into the ragged shadows of the palms and eucalyptus, the figs and fruit trees. My breath was so noisy that I didn’t hear the steps until they were quite close. The road had been deserted only moments before, and I turned around quickly. No lights, no torch. I switched off mine and listened.

  Silence. Whoever it was had either turned into one of the dark gardens or was standing, like me, waiting. I edged off the road onto the verge, where dusty weeds muffled my footsteps and the shadows of garden wall protected me from the moonlight. Then I walked on as fast as my lungs would let me.

  The road was a gray streak to my right. Everything to my left was in shadow. The footsteps kept pace with mine, but though I kept turning around, I only once spotted the two men who emerged briefly from the shadows when the moon picked out their light shirts and trousers before vanishing behind the clouds. I was in darkness again. I put my hand out until I felt the wall next to me and followed it as quickly and quietly as I could. When it turned a corner, I made my way blindly across a narrow lane and picked up another wall
on the other side.

  I moved in this fashion for perhaps a hundred feet. When I reached the next cross street, I turned the corner and felt my way along. Almost instantly, something dry and brittle hit me in the face. I almost cried out, before I recognized one of the big flowering vines favored in the area. I felt for the trunk and squeezed behind the mass of leaves, dead flowers, and branches.

  I had a chance if the moon stayed behind the clouds and if I could keep from coughing and wheezing. I waited. Now I could hear their steps quite clearly. Would they turn down the lane? I could just make out the faint line of the road. Two dark shapes crossed it and moved away. How far would they go? And how far was I from the rented house, which would be almost indistinguishable from its neighbors in the dark?

  I waited what seemed like a long time, then extracted myself from the vine, thinking I needed a more secure hiding place. I’d started along the lane when I heard voices, and I shrank against a garden wall. The footsteps became clearer along with voices, low and urgent, as if they knew they’d lost me. I was sure they would begin searching the side streets, but within a moment, their steps faded. It seemed that I’d fooled them.

  Or, I thought, once my breathing was returning to normal, maybe they had nothing to do with me at all. Maybe I had let Harry and Richard infect me with their nerves and paranoia, and my supposed danger was no more than two men, tipsy after a night down at the cafes, returning home somewhat uncertainly. That had to be it, and I was rather annoyed with myself for giving way to fear instead of greeting them.

  When I was back on the empty road with silence behind me, I had another thought: they were unwilling to exert themselves, because they were well aware of where I’d be; they were confident of success and in no hurry. That was an unpleasant idea. I waited quite some time and listened carefully, but I heard nothing more, and anxious to find the house, I switched on the torch. Aiming it over the walls as I walked, I soon found the building where I was to be, more or less, a prisoner. From being reluctant to see Goldfarber, I was now almost eager to make contact with him. I needed money, and I needed it quickly if I was to get out of the Spanish Zone and out of Morocco.

  With this in mind, I was in the studio early the next morning. My mood was irritable. I had several ideas for paintings, which I must put aside to copy Picassos from what I considered one of the master’s less admirable periods. And from rather inadequate images, too, for most of the reproductions in the books were black and white. Just the same, the captions of Richard’s selections were encouraging: damaged; missing; lost; and my favorite, presumed destroyed—the label on a painting formerly in Dresden. It was represented by a rather muddy color reproduction, one of the few in the book, but I judged it a safe choice, unless the master himself should refuse to authenticate it.

  That was a possibility too remote for worry. I planned to be well away from phony Picassos and North Africa before any forgery of mine hit the market. Nonetheless, I hesitated. I hate fakes, and after last night, I feared Richard’s scheme might be even riskier than I’d imagined. In the interests of delay, I went downstairs for another cup of coffee.

  Elena, the housekeeper, had arrived at dawn, and I’d awakened to the sound of her moving about the kitchen. For a moment, I was back in London, back in my old studio with its high ceilings and Millais’ fancy Victorian chandelier. With sudden, relieved joy, I thought it was Nan, up early as always to fix breakfast and, being half-blind, to endanger us both with the gas stove.

  Then the white coast light through the shutters, unfamiliar birds in the trees, a whiff of the distant sea; Nan was dead and gone except in the back chambers of my mind. Knowing I wouldn’t get back to sleep, I dressed hastily and went into the kitchen. Elena was working at the table, kneading some bread. She was small and dark, past middle age but by no means decrepit—one of those sturdy, domestic, bustling women who keep the home fires burning. When I opened the door, she turned and greeted me in Spanish. So much for her being deaf.

  I answered in French and added that it looked to be a nice day.

  She smiled and agreed. When I asked for some coffee, she lifted a battered pot from the stove and poured me a large cup. Accustomed as I was to the delicious espresso types of Africa, I was surprised by a bitter but familiar taste. For a moment, I suspected that a quirk in the universe had decreed that everything in the protectorate should remind me of London, of Nan, of the past. Then, more rationally, I took a closer look at Elena.

  Despite her iron-gray hair and tanned features, I suddenly doubted that she was either Spanish or Moroccan. It was not just the coffee, or the bicycle that I noticed parked near the kitchen door. No, there was something fundamental in her forthright manner that suggested points farther north. “Will you fix me breakfast?” I asked in English, and I was sure she understood, but she didn’t reply, just gestured as if eating.

  I nodded.

  “Muy bien,” she said and went to the stove.

  Harry had lied about her but lied carelessly, confident that I would take no notice of a servant. He didn’t know about Nan and London mornings in my old studio. But who was Elena and why was she here? I guessed she was at least part English and that she’d really been hired to keep an eye on me. Well, I was wise to that. Downstairs, I got another cup of the wretched, if reminiscent, coffee, and returned to the studio.

  None of my alternatives were good; all required money, and at the moment, my only source of funds was dodgy paintings. After I’d delayed and organized my painting supplies and stared out the window and killed as much time as possible, I gave in and measured out the photo of the lost Dresden painting.

  Fortunately, Picasso had used standard canvas sizes, and I had a stretched and primed canvas of the correct proportions. I sat down at the table, squared up the photo, and figured how much I needed to enlarge the image. Then I took a pencil, and using an extra stretcher as a straight edge, lined my canvas. Once the grid was done, I began copying what was in each of the small squares of the photo onto the larger squares of the canvas.

  By the time Harry arrived, much out of sorts and without any emulsion, I had the image sketched and the canvas ready to go.

  “Like a coloring book,” he said. “You just fill ’em in.”

  Is such a man born offensive or is it something he’s cultivated? “Right. Anyone can do it, and you can do without me.”

  “Touchy,” he said.

  “So where are the house paints?”

  “Richard said no good. Has to be oils. He doesn’t need them dry, he said. He needs them authentic.”

  I shrugged. I’d at least gotten rid of Harry for an evening. “Tell him then I’ll need some racks for carrying them. Otherwise they’ll be smeared all over.”

  “Right, another fool’s errand. Never mind the drying. How soon can you get one finished?”

  “It depends how motivated I am.” I was thinking of my wallet, my hundred-plus pounds sterling, my various escape options. But given Harry’s level of vigilance and paranoia, it might be better if he didn’t know I’d already missed the money. “Probably finish one today except for the fine details. If it dries, finish tomorrow. If not, start the second—if I get another color reproduction. ”

  I expanded on this until he grew bored. As myself, I always try to be amusing. Not so as Jerome. As Jerome Hume, I found myself quite willing to be tiresome, and I nattered on while trying to think how to get some cash from him.

  But Harry never took off his jacket—wisely, I admit—and I wasn’t skillful enough to pick his pants pockets. Not that I was going to get much opportunity. After being reluctant to leave the previous night, he now seemed eager to be off to serious snooping and hair-brained schemes in Tangier. “You must try Elena’s coffee before you go,” I said. “It’s the real thing.”

  He agreed to a quick cup, and we went down to the kitchen. Elena offered some sweet rolls, which, to be fair, were excellent, though th
e coffee had much the same effect on Harry as it had on me. I made small talk and watched the pair of them. She looked like everyone’s favorite auntie, but I was sure she was at least as fishy as Jerome Hume.

  If my suspicions were correct, she was a real pro. There wasn’t the slightest sign of recognition between the two of them, which was odd in a way, since he had supposedly hired her. As soon as we were served, she busied herself at the stove with preparations for lunch, giving no sign that she understood a word we were saying. I had my doubts just the same.

  “Have you any pesetas?” I asked Harry when I saw him to the door. “All I came away with was pocket change and some large pounds. At the very least Elena will need a tip, and I need some local currency to go about with.”

  “You don’t need to go about at all. You’ll stay here and finish those damn paintings.”

  “Did I waste my breath explaining about drying times?”

  “Right. But at the moment there is nothing to dry, is there?”

  “A few hours this afternoon will do the trick for one of them. But how are we going to flush Goldfarber if I’m kept in solitary? How’s he to know I’m here? I need to get out and about and see things and meet people.”

  “Painting first.”

  Harry seemed unconcerned about Goldfarber, although supposedly everything was being done to attract him. I might have questioned that, but instead, I said, “Money after one painting is done or I go no further.”

  Harry indulged in a bit of bluster about this, but I pointed out that I couldn’t do more than one anyway until Richard got me more color reproductions. “I want some pesetas as soon as I finish the first one,” I said. “You can change some of my pounds if you must, but if I’m on Her Majesty’s business and keeping Gibraltar safe from Reds, I really should be on expenses.”