It isn’t clear if this is a joke at her husband’s expense or a veiled threat. I merely nod and say, ‘So you found it interesting?’
‘Of course. And you?’
‘Very much. Twenty-five paintings about moral instruction and suppressed sexual desire. What more could a man want on a Saturday afternoon?’
And this, at last, brings a little grin to Sofia’s face and her mood begins to lighten. As if our earlier argument had never taken place, she proceeds to talk at length about the exhibition, about her job, about plans she has for buying a clothes shop in Barrio Salamanca and striking out on her own. We walk back through Chueca side streets in the general direction of my apartment, arriving home just as the mass peace march against the war is beginning on the other side of the city. Sofia wanted to take part, but I changed her mind with an expensive bottle of cava and a brief speech about the pointlessness of political rallies.
‘If you think Bush and Blair and Aznar give a monkey fuck what the public thinks about Iraq, you’ve got another think coming.’
After that, she became a little drunk and we finally went to bed. Perhaps I should have told her that I love her, but her eyes would not have believed me. Best to wait on that; best not to complicate things.
21. Ricken Redux
‘Fuck me this flat stinks of perfume. You been dressing up as a woman again, Alec?’
Saul comes back from Cadiz at ten wearing a three-week beard and a brand-new pair of Campers. From his bag he pulls out a half-finished carton of cigarettes and hands me a bottle of whisky.
‘Sorry it took so long to get back. Tube was packed at Atocha. Peace march. A present,’ he says. ‘You drink this stuff?’
‘All the time,’ I tell him. ‘How was your trip?’
‘Good. Really good. You look knackered, mate.’
‘I haven’t been sleeping much.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Still fucking the boss’s wife?’
I look up at the ceiling. ‘Ha ha. No. There’s this baby upstairs. Wakes me at five every morning.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I don’t know. Building a dam. Tearing down support walls. I think he wears clogs.’ Saul takes a piece of chewing gum out of his mouth and throws it in the bin. ‘There’s something different about you.’
Yeah? Maybe it’s the beard. Makes me look like the Unabomber.’
‘No. You look happier, more relaxed.’
‘Well, that’s good to know. I did a lot of thinking down there.’
We carry his bags back into the spare room and keep on talking. He has decided to fly back to London tomorrow morning and to ask Heloise for a divorce. I don’t feel it’s my place to say that he has made the right decision, but it’s good to be free of lies for once, just chatting with my mate about things that are important to him. It’s also significant that he is leaving Madrid so soon. If there were any connection with Julian or Arenaza, he would surely be sticking around. Nevertheless I check out the Julian coincidence, just to be sure.
‘So you know who was down in Cadiz while you were there?’
Saul is in the spare bathroom washing his hands. I can watch his face in the mirror as he says, ‘Who?’
‘My boss, Julian. The guy you met at the bar. The one with the wife.’
‘Really?’ He turns round. The tops of his cheeks have flushed slightly red.
‘You didn’t see him?’
‘No.’
‘Well, maybe you’d left before he got there.’
‘Or maybe in a town the size of Coventry, Alec, we didn’t bump into each other.’
‘Good point.’
I go into the kitchen, find a cigarette and pour both of us a glass of Rueda. When I come back to the room Saul has unzipped his laptop computer and powered it up on the bed.
‘Want to see some photos?’
There are dozens of pictures from his trip downloaded onto the hard drive: shots of the Mezquita, of the bullring in Ronda, the beach at Cadiz. One has Saul eating boquerones in a crowded restaurant sitting next to a pretty girl.
‘Who’s she?’
‘Just some bird. Yank. A lot of them down there. She was going out with the guy who took the picture.’
I’d like to have five minutes, alone with Saul’s PC, just to check his emails, browser history and cookies for any sign of a connection to Julian. Just to put my mind at rest.
‘And what about your friend, the one with the flat?’
‘Who, Andy? Refuses to have his photo taken. Says it steals his soul.’
This sounds unconvincing and I get my chance half an hour later. Saul goes for a shower before dinner and while he’s locked in the bathroom I scroll through his Outlook Express package looking for anything that seems out of place. I have the door of the room wide open and there is a lot of traffic passing by outside, but it should still be possible to hear the lock snap on the bathroom door if he comes out prematurely. I recognize some of the names in the ‘Sent’ folder as friends of Saul’s from London, but check several others in case Julian is using an email account of which I am not aware. There is a brief exchange with Andy about handing over keys in Cadiz, but otherwise the messages are a mixture of business and pleasure: enquiries about Saul’s availability for work; round-robin jokes; the latest updates on Chelsea players.
Internet Explorer is also simple to access. His history of websites is a straightforward mix of soft porn and Google, information about travelling in Andalucia and advice to prospective divorcees. Nothing for me to worry about. I go into the C: Drive Windows directory and look at deleted temporary files, but it’s all legitimate. With characteristic concern for his fellow man, Saul has accessed a medical website about cancer in an effort to understand more about Hesther’s condition. There are also numerous charities that he has visited in order to donate money on-line, and a portal for games where he has played a lot of chess. The cookies seem innocent, too, simply hundreds of links to sites already listed in the browser. Leaving the computer as I found it, I head back towards the kitchen and knock on the bathroom door.
‘You all right in there?’
It opens ajar. Saul’s face is smothered in shaving foam and the mirror is completely fogged up with steam. He’s going to be at least another five minutes.
‘I’m losing the beard,’ he says, coughing. ‘What’s for dinner?’
‘Wine.’
Using the extra time I find Saul’s mobile, take it out of his jacket pocket and check the address book, the list of numbers called and received, writing down any with a Spanish prefix. None, from memory, match numbers associated with Julian or Arenaza, but I may be able to find a link once Saul has gone back to London. Then I send Sofia a brief message and make spaghetti in the kitchen. Saul emerges ten minutes later wearing a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt bearing the slogan ‘Passive Aggression Rules (as long as that’s OK with you)’. His newly shaved cheeks are pink and smooth.
‘That feels a lot better,’ he says, tapping his face. ‘Now I can actually eat without storing up food for the winter.’
Neither of us feels much like going out, so we eat dinner on our knees and take out The Talented Mr Ripley from the rack to watch on DVD. Just as I’m putting the disc into the machine, the Telefonica mobile rings in my bedroom.
‘Do you have to answer it?’ Saul is mopping up sauce with a hunk of bread and wants to watch the movie.
‘Just give me two minutes. Hang on.’
It’s almost certainly Alfonso, the concierge at the Hotel Carta. Very few people have this number.
‘Senor Chris?’
‘Alfonso. Que tal?’
He sounds relaxed, calling from a phone booth. I make sure that we speak in rapid Spanish in order to prevent Saul understanding.
‘I have the information that you ask for. Do you have a pen?’
‘Yes. Just one moment.’ I reach for the pad beside my bed and retrieve a Biro from my trouser pocket. ‘O?, go ahead.’
<
br /> ‘The guest staying in room 306 is registered as Abel Sellini. He has stayed at the hotel with us on many occasions. The licence number of his car is M 3432 GH, a grey Opel Corsa. I check with previous entries and this is always different.’
‘Meaning that it’s rented?’
‘Almost certainly sir, yes.’ Alfonso’s voice is very steady and I am surprised by his lack of anxiety. ‘He has a mobile telephone, Senor Chris, and I can also give you this number.’
‘Great. How did you get that?’
I close the bedroom door.
‘Senor Sellini asks me for information about puticlubs. He likes to take girls back to the room. So he told me to ring him with information on the first night he arrived. The number is 625 218 521.’
‘A Spanish phone.’
‘I suppose. He is travelling under an Irish passport.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I am sure.’ This almost condescending. Perhaps the money has gone to his head. ‘The passport number is 450912914. But Mr Sellini does not appear to me to be Irish. I have met many people in the course of my work and he is South American. His place of birth was Bogota, Colombia, and his accent tells me this.’
‘Did you get a look at the passport?’ From the sound of it, Saul is watching a trailer from the DVD extras. ‘Any visas? Any customs stamps?’
‘No. It was handed back after registration. This is just information from our computer. He was born on 28 December 1949, if that is any help to you.’
‘Perhaps.’ I don’t want to sound too grateful in case Alfonso puts his prices up. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’
There is the sound of more change being pumped into the payphone, then a brief pause. The booth must be on a quiet street because I’m not picking up much in the way of background noise.
‘Well, of course Mr Sellini also left a credit-card imprint to confirm his reservation. A Visa card. But the information is in a part of our computer system that I am not permitted to access. Maybe you can find another way?’
‘Maybe.’
‘The only other thing I can tell you is that he asked to switch rooms last Wednesday night because he thought it was too noisy. That’s all, Senor Chris.’
It wouldn’t necessarily have occurred to the hotel management that Sellini might have been worried about audio surveillance.
‘That’s interesting. What room was he in before?’
‘I do not know. I would have to check this.’
I open the door as Saul walks past in the corridor carrying the empty plates from dinner. He looks at me, I smile back at him, and then indicate with my hand that the conversation will soon be over.
‘If anything else comes up you can reach me at this number. And of course we can discuss the financial arrangements at our next meeting. I’d like to make them more permanent.’
‘Vale,’ he says, without much enthusiasm. ‘ Adios.’
When I come back into the sitting room Saul has opened a second bottle of Ribera del Duero and rolled himself a joint. The picture on the television is frozen on the logo of Miramax International.
‘Who was that?’ he asks.
‘Just business. Just a thing about Endiom.’
‘Julian?’
‘No. Somebody else.’
I sit on the floor.
‘You all right down there?’
‘Fine.’
The opening credits start to roll. We probably won’t speak any more because both of us hate it when people talk during movies. A woman is singing a slow lament set to piano on the soundtrack. Graphics slice through Matt Damon’s head, revealing eyes, lips, mouth and hair until finally we see him sitting on a bed alone in a small room. Then he begins to talk:
If I could just go back. If I could rub everything out, starting with myself
And Saul says, ‘I know the feeling.’
22. Barajas
He is touched that I go all the way to the airport with him, but I want to make sure that Saul boards a plane. His flight is delayed, so we drink coffee for an hour in the arrivals lounge and he buys me a paperback of Ripley’s Game, in Spanish, at the newsagent. Later I see that Ripley’s wife is called Heloise.
At the security checks we embrace briefly but he continues to hold my arms when we break off.
‘It’s been good to see you, mate. Really good. I’m glad things have worked out. So just look after yourself, OK? Don’t do anything stupid.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You know what I mean. You’re missed in London. Don’t stay here for the rest of your life. This is not where you should be.’
‘I like it here.’
‘I know you do. It’s a great country. And Madrid is a great city. But it’s not home.’
He releases my arms and picks up his bags one by one from the trolley.
‘Saul?’
‘Yes?’
I am about to apologize for all my suspicion, all my tricks and paranoia, but I don’t have the guts. Instead I just say, ‘Good luck with everything,’ and he nods.
‘Everything will be fine. We’re still young, Alec. We can start again.’ He is grinning as he says this. ‘Don’t you think that everyone deserves a second chance?’
‘Absolutely. Have a good flight.’
And as soon as he is gone, waving just once before passing through into departures, I feel a great sense of loss. How long will it be before we see one another again? How long before I can go home? I have to find a bar and order a whisky to lift the gloom of sudden solitude. It feels as if I wasted his visit to Madrid, as if I misjudged Saul’s intentions and kept him constantly at arm’s length. He didn’t leave just one day after getting back from Andalucia because of Heloise. He didn’t leave because there was no connection with Julian or Arenaza. He left because something elementary in our relationship had shifted: what was once there is lost, and there was nothing Saul could do to get it back. The Alec he knew as a younger man is now a different creature, a creature whose true nature has been revealed. And if a friendship no longer gives you pleasure, then why remain loyal to that friend? Getting a cab back home I conclude that Saul will now move into a different phase of his life, just as I have done in mine. It’s ridiculous, really, speeding along the motorway in the taxi and thinking that, in all probability, I will never see my oldest friend again.
23. Bonilla
When Bonilla cancels yet another scheduled meeting I begin to think that I may have been ripped off. Five hundred euros in cash, handed to Mar at Atocha station almost a week ago, and not a single piece of useful information to show for it. Cetro’s entire week-end of surveillance turns up the following breathtaking facts: that Rosalia went to a party on Saturday evening dressed as a Bunny Girl; that she spoke to Gael for forty-five minutes on the telephone from the Delic cafe in Plaza de la Paja on Sunday morning; that she visited ‘a widow – almost certainly her mother’ in Tres Cantos that same afternoon. Neither has Bonilla been able to find out anything about Abel Sellini. Instead he is cloyingly apologetic on the telephone as he explains that he must attend a funeral in Oviedo (‘My wife’s brother, he has died suddenly’) before returning to Madrid on Thursday.
‘But let’s meet in person, Senor Thompson,’ he says. ‘I will take you to lunch at the Urogallo restaurant in Casa de Campo. This has been an interesting case. I always like the opportunity to meet a client in person.’
Once a hunting ground for the Spanish royal family, the Casa de Campo is now a vast area of protected land south-west of the old city overrun with prostitutes and mountain bikers. On an average evening in spring and summer, virtually every road running through the park from Pozuelo to down-town Madrid is jammed with kerb-crawling Pedros looking for a back-seat hand-job or a fumble in the woods. It’s a depressing sight: line after line of illegal immigrant girls from Africa, South America and Eastern Europe wandering into the headlights of oncoming cars, flashing their underwear and then banging on the roofs of the vehicles as they pass them by. Uroga
llo is at the more respectable end of the park, one of several outdoor restaurants lining the southern edge of a lake where rowing boats can be rented all year round.
Bonilla calls to confirm the lunch early on Thursday morning and I know that he’s not going to cancel again when he reminds me that I still owe him €1,600 for the weekend’s surveillance.
‘A cheque will be fine,’ he says, ‘although of course we prefer cash.’
A two-stop metro ride takes me from Plaza de Espana to Lago station, from where it’s just a short walk downhill to the restaurant. Urogallo has a large eating area set amongst a grove of plane trees looking out onto the lake, the jet-fountain at its centre bisecting a magnificent view of the city beyond. Bonilla has picked a table at the far side of a white marquee with flaps that can be raised and lowered according to the weather. It’s a bright afternoon, the first sign of spring, so the tent is open to the elements. He recognizes me from a description provided by Mar but doesn’t bother removing his €200 sunglasses as he shakes my hand.
‘Senor Thompson. I’m finally happy to meet you.’
Bonilla is younger than I expected, about thirty-eight and in impressive physical condition, with inflated pectoral muscles visible through a black nylon T-shirt. Gym-honed biceps roam through his light white jacket and he has tightly cropped black hair, long narrow sideburns and a very thin strip of beard that runs in a plumb line from the centre of his lower lip to a tanned cleft chin. Looking at him in a split instant, you might be reminded of a barcode.
‘Let me start by apologizing for any of the inconvenience my organization may have caused you in terms of any cancelled meetings,’ he says. ‘Maybe I can start by ordering you something from the bar, Mr Thompson, a cocktail of some sort?’
It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and we’re sitting next to a polluted municipal lake, so there’s something faintly ridiculous about the offer. Nevertheless I ask for a fino manzanilla and make small talk about the weather.
‘Yes,’ Bonilla replies, gazing up at the sky as if dazzled by God’s munificence. ‘It is a beautiful day, isn’t it? Tell me, how long have you lived in Madrid?’
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