A Dead Man in Barcelona

by Michael Pearce

  ‘“Leave my moustaches out of it!” I say. Although they are rather fine.

  ‘“How can I leave them out?” she says, “when you go waving them at every pretty girl you see!”

  ‘“I have not been waving them at Nina. As I told you, it’s just that I feel for her as I would for a daughter.”

  ‘And then she flies off the handle and stamps out!’

  ‘Well, there you are, Chief!’ said Seymour. ‘That’s a woman for you.’

  ‘That’s my wife for you,’ said the Chief gloomily.

  ‘So when I heard you warning Nina that day, you were doing it just out of the kindness of your heart?’

  ‘That’s right. As I would do for a daughter. Although I would hope that any daughter of mine would not be like Nina.’

  Seymour laughed. ‘I think I can understand that, Chief! But, tell me, you must have had grounds for your warning?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’

  ‘You said that she was mixed up with a bad lot?’

  ‘Oh, yes. A very bad lot!’

  ‘Oh, yes. A very ‘Anarchists?’

  ‘The lot of them!’

  ‘I ask, you see, because I understand from the prison governor that he has a lot of anarchists in there. And that they were there when Lockhart was there.’

  ‘Ah, yes. They would have been arrested at the same time. In Tragic Week.’

  ‘Was that awkward for you?’

  ‘Awkward?’

  ‘Well, I rather gathered from what you said that you’d had your eye on them in connection with something else. And if you were already deep into an investigation, having to shovel them into prison like that may have cut across your inquiries.’

  ‘Well, it did – I thought that we were getting somewhere. Of course, you can say that if they’re in prison then they landed up in the right place, even if it’s for something else.’

  ‘Yes, but – correct me if I’m wrong – but I thought your original investigation was into something very, very particular.’

  ‘Well, it was.’

  ‘What sounded to me – from what you said to Nina – a possible murder.’

  ‘It could turn out to be that. It could very well.’

  ‘A man died.’

  ‘He did, he did.’

  ‘Ramon Mas.’

  ‘Ramon Mas.’

  ‘And you thought that Nina’s friends might have been mixed up in it.’

  ‘Not “might”; they definitely were, the bastards!’

  ‘Could you tell me about it?’

  ‘They were all in it together.’

  ‘Smuggling?’

  ‘Of course! Everyone’s into smuggling on this coast. That is, all the fishermen. There’s not much money in fishing, you see. To keep a family alive, you’ve got to have good money coming in. So they all do it. A boat goes out in the middle of the night and meets another boat, and something is handed over. There’s nothing to it. And they really think there’s nothing to it, it’s completely natural to them. They’ve been doing it for years, for always. They don’t even see that it is wrong. Against the law? The law? What’s that? Never heard of it. Don’t believe in it. They’re anarchists, as I said. All of them.’

  ‘Not Catalan Nationalists?’

  ‘There are no Catalan Nationalists in Spain,’ said the Chief automatically.

  Chantale joined him and they continued along Las Ramblas. They ran into a group of cabezudos and stood for a while watching them lollop around. They were playing with some children, giving them rides on their shoulders and taking part in their skipping games, pretending to be clumsy, stumbling and even falling. The children shrieked with laughter.

  Despite their bonhomie there was something slightly frightening about them, he thought. Partly it was their size. Seymour was tall himself but they towered over him. To the children they must have seemed giants. And yet it didn’t appear to bother them. They were used to them, he supposed. But also, perhaps, he thought, they fitted naturally into a child’s world, among the giants and the ogres and the fairies good and bad. They had something of the ambivalence of figures in folk stories, creatures who were unpredictable, as adults were sometimes unpredictable, as their parents occasionally were.

  The cabezudos were a bit like that for adults, too. They might turn out to be good or bad, could give a helping hand or could lead you astray. They were not to be relied on. They had been pretty helpful to him, but was that just something to gain his confidence so that he could be tricked later? That was what the woman had suggested when they had first encountered them.

  They seemed to know everything that was going on: about him, for instance, and what he was doing there; about Lockhart and what he had been up to; about – for that, surely, was what the tip about Lockhart’s interest in fish was meant to convey – the smuggling. They seemed to have tap-roots into everything, especially if it was in any way underground.

  Who were they?

  Locals, certainly, and therefore, and from their speech, Catalans. Nationalists? Or was that the wrong sort of question to ask? Did they reach back past modern political organization into deep folk tradition?

  Or were they not so much Nationalists as anarchists? There was a sort of disruptive spirit about them, an opposition to authority and all that was order. To the authorities, certainly. But they didn’t seem to be anarchists in the way that he was used to, anarchism as a political form – the way that Nina was, for example. It was more spontaneous than that.

  Whose side were they on? They had seemed to be on Lockhart’s side. Why? Was it because they recognized in him a kindred free spirit? Or was there some closer, more practical tie? A commercial one, perhaps? Or a sympathy they and Lockhart had in common? Or both?

  As one of the cabezudos skipped past him, he murmured, ‘I’m looking for Ricardo.’

  The cabezudo gave no sign of having heard and danced away. A little later, though, it returned and said, ‘You don’t look for Ricardo. He looks for you.’

  ‘All right, tell him to look for me, then.’

  The cabezudo capered off and soon the whole group of cabezudos had moved on. Seymour knew that they would find him if they needed to and he and Chantale walked on.

  They found a little restaurant tucked away down by the harbour, almost on the quay. It didn’t look much of a place, consisting of a few, bare, untableclothed tables, but it was crowded and they had difficulty in finding a table. It was a busy place. Girls in black dresses were dashing about armed with bottles and baskets and some of them were bringing out black earthenware pots from the kitchen, which they placed on the tables. As they lifted the lids off delicious smells spread though the restaurant. The pots all contained fish of some kind: sardines, mullet, bass, but also mussels and lobsters and shrimps.

  ‘You have chosen the right place,’ said a voice beside them.’

  It was Ricardo. He dropped into a chair beside them. ‘You permit?’

  ‘Please join us,’ said Seymour.

  A girl put a pot on the table and three plates. The pot contained a mixture of things, squid, shellfish and great lumps of fish: a sort of fishmonger stew.

  ‘This is where the fishermen eat,’ said Ricardo. ‘Also the people who work in the fish market. And many others, too.’

  ‘Provided they are Catalan?’ suggested Seymour.

  Ricardo gave him a quick look.

  ‘Provided they are Catalan,’ he agreed.

  ‘It is just that I have been listening to the conversation,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Ricardo, ‘you have a good ear. And now, perhaps, that you have been here for a while, you are beginning to tell the difference between Catalan and Spanish.’

  ‘The fishermen are all Catalan?’

  ‘Mostly.’

  Seymour picked a shrimp out of the pot.

  ‘Was Ramon Mas a Catalan?’ he asked.

  ‘Was Ramon Mas a Catalan?’

  ‘Andalusian, I think.’

  ‘But definitely not Catala
n?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ said Ricardo. He signalled to the waitress and she put a bottle on the table. It was the local wine, strong, rough, and with a bit of a tang.

  ‘Why are you interested in Ramon?’ he asked.

  ‘I was wondering if Lockhart was interested in Ramon,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Not very,’ said Ricardo.

  ‘Someone told me he gave money to Ramon’s family.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Ricardo. ‘Or was it the police?’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it was Lockhart. He was always a generous man.’

  ‘Tender heart?’ suggested Seymour.

  ‘Why, yes,’ said Ricardo. ‘A tender heart.’

  ‘Too soft,’ said Seymour, ‘to bear grudges?’

  The girl had brought a basket of coarse, thick, brown bread. Ricardo took one of the pieces and dipped it into the juice at the bottom of the pot.

  ‘It was not so much that,’ he said. ‘These people can’t afford to bear grudges. They are very poor. So poor that they have no choice other than to be realistic. If they see their livelihood threatened, they have to take action.’

  ‘Ye-es,’ said Seymour, ‘I see that. But Ramon was poor, too.’

  ‘Desperately,’ agreed Ricardo. ‘But he thought he saw a short-cut, you see.’

  ‘Was it that?’ said Seymour. ‘Or was it that he did not entirely share everyone else’s belief in what they were doing?’

  ‘That is possible,’ conceded Ricardo.

  ‘He being an Andalusian,’ said Seymour, ‘not a Catalan?’

  ‘It is possible.’

  ‘What,’ said Seymour, ‘was it that they were smuggling?’

  ‘Smuggling?’ said Ricardo.

  ‘A traditional pursuit along the coast,’ said Seymour, ‘and not one which, I would have thought, Ramon would ordinarily have objected to.’

  He waited.

  ‘Probably not,’ said Ricardo.

  ‘Nor Lockhart either,’ said Seymour. ‘But, then, I can’t see why Lockhart would have been interested in smuggling, anyway. A bit small beer for him. Unless, for him, it wasn’t entirely to do with profit.’

  ‘For them, too,’ said Ricardo. ‘They may be poor, but it wasn’t just money. They are proud people. They have beliefs and ideals and values, too.’

  ‘Arms?’ said Seymour. ‘For the Catalans?’

  Ricardo hesitated.

  ‘Was he selling them to you?’

  ‘No,’ said Ricardo. ‘It wasn’t like that. We went to him because we knew he could arrange it. With all his contacts.

  ‘Along the coast,’ said Seymour. ‘And in the military?’

  ‘Not so much the military,’ said Ricardo, ‘as with their suppliers.’

  ‘Of course. And with his sympathy for the Catalans.’

  ‘We paid for the arms,’ said Ricardo, ‘we didn’t pay him. He did it because . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Well, because he felt the way these poor, brave men do.’

  Chantale tied a scarf around her hair and went down alone, without Seymour, to the little market beyond the soot-blackened church. It was an Arab market, of course, and she felt quite at home. She studied the fat tomatoes and squeezed the luminous aubergines and gazed long at the melons. There, too, she talked to the veiled shoppers in their long, dark burkas and compared notes. And she talked to the stall-holders and asked them about the provenance of their products. Were they local or had they come from ‘the other side’, from Algeria or Morocco?

  Or Tangier, even? She herself came from Tangier. But she and her husband were thinking about moving over to ‘this side’. Was there scope here for a small fruit business? She had heard that it was hard but that in the long run you could do well. ‘That might be so,’ said the stall-holder she was talking to, but he had been here for six years and found that the run was longer than he had hoped.

  ‘It is like,’ he said, ‘a bird on a cliff. It can find a niche to build its nest and lay its eggs. But there is not much room on the ledge and the fledglings still have to go somewhere else to fly.’

  ‘There is not much money here,’ said the woman beside her, ‘even for the Spaniards.’

  ‘More than there is in Morocco, though,’ said another woman close by.

  Chantale nodded.

  ‘So they say,’ she said.

  ‘But I haven’t found it yet,’ said the stall-keeper. ‘The Spaniards buy from their own.’

  ‘And keep to themselves,’ said the woman beside Chantale.

  ‘You find that?’ said Chantale, ‘We were told that it would not be like that.’

  ‘Depends what you’re selling,’ said the stall-holder, ‘and where you are.’

  ‘We were told there was a businessman here who might be able to help us,’ said Chantale. ‘An Englishman, not a Spaniard. His name is Lockhart.’

  ‘His name was Lockhart,’ corrected the stall-holder. ‘He’s dead now.’

  ‘Dead?’ said Chantale, as if shocked.

  ‘He might have helped you. He helped a lot of people.’

  ‘Arabs?’ said Chantale.

  ‘Arabs, too.’

  ‘Even Arabs,’ said the women beside them bitterly.

  ‘That may have been his undoing,’ said the stall-holder. ‘They say he went too far.’

  ‘In helping the Arabs?’

  ‘People here didn’t like it. And, you see, he wasn’t a Spaniard himself. He was an Englishman. And they said, “What is he doing here? Always with the Arabs. But making money from the Spanish.”’

  ‘He was married to a woman from Algiers. She came from a big family there. They traded all along the coast. People say they were the ones who gave Lockhart his start.’

  ‘Certainly he was close to them,’ said the stall-holder.

  ‘Until they fell out,’ said the woman.

  ‘Fell out?’ said Chantale.

  ‘When they heard he was playing around. With other women.’

  ‘They sent someone over. A brother, I think.’

  ‘But then it all got sorted out.’

  ‘They say his wife forgave him,’ said the stall-holder. ‘It’s best like that.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ objected the woman. ‘It’s always the woman who forgives.’

  * * *

  Chantale was thinking about this as she walked back to the hotel. And then her mind moved on to the difficulty of carving out a new life in a new country. She was thinking about herself, of course, and about Seymour. She was always thinking of that these days. But today she was thinking less about herself and more about Seymour. Suppose, instead of her moving to England, he moved to Morocco? That would get rid of the difficulties, wouldn’t it? At least from her point of view. She would have no hesitation about marrying him then. And he would manage all right in another country. She had seen him. He was at ease in Spain, as he had been at ease in Tangier. His own family had moved to England. His roots were not that deep in England.

  But then, what would he do? She had asked herself that question before. He would have to find a job. What as? A policeman again? Not a chance. Neither the Moroccans nor the French, who now called the tune in Morocco, would have it. He would have to do something else. Set up a business, perhaps, as these people she had just been talking to had done. But what sort of business? She smiled. A fruit shop, perhaps? She couldn’t see it. Either for him or for her.

  The Arab men were still lounging at the corner. They looked at her as she went past. They looked at her with hot eyes and sullen faces. They made her feel uncomfortable and she hurried on past them and back up past the scorched church and out into the open, leafy space of Las Ramblas. There she felt better.

  She met Seymour and they went back to the hotel together. Two women were talking in the foyer. One of them was the proprietress of the hotel, whose grim visage had daunted Seymour’s hopes of the double room. She was always dressed in black. When she went out to the church, which she was always doing, two or three times a day, she covered her head and shoulders with a black shawl. He ha
d never seen her smile.

  But now she was talking animatedly to the other woman, as if they were old friends who had not met for a while. And, indeed, he learned later, they were old friends. They had been children at a convent school together. Which was why, when Nina had moved to Barcelona, and began teaching at her school, her mother had written to her old friend and asked her to keep an eye on her. For the other lady, the one the proprietress was talking to, was Nina’s mother.

  She recognized him at once.

  ‘Señor Seymour –’

  ‘Señora!’

  ‘The Señor is looking into Lockhart’s death,’ Nina’s mother told her friend.

  The proprietress clicked her tongue sympathetically.

  ‘Ah, Lockhart!’ she said, and shook her head.

  ‘Even in death he will not leave us alone,’ said Nina’s mother.

  The proprietress put her hand over Nina’s mother’s hand.

  ‘Do not speak ill of the dead, Maria,’ she said. ‘With all his faults, he had a big heart.’

  ‘But a small head,’ said Nina’s mother.

  ‘And he loved his child.’

  ‘Sometimes love is a curse,’ said Nina’s mother.

  Later in the evening Seymour and Chantale came down the stairs. The two women were still talking, the proprietress now sitting at the reception desk, Nina’s mother perched on a stool nearby.

  ‘Would you like some calico?’ she was saying. ‘I’ve just had a chance to get some cheap . . .’

  Chapter Ten

  As they passed Manuel’s café, on their way back after dinner that evening, Dolores came rushing out.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she said. ‘He’s sent me out twice to look for you!’

  ‘Manuel?’

  ‘And sent you a message! I know, I delivered it. I told him you weren’t there, at the hotel, and he said, “Where the hell is he?” And he sent me out again, and I’ve been looking all over the place!’

  Manuel appeared in the doorway. ‘Ah, there you are! Look, this has been costing me. Four cups of coffee so far. Each! And Enrico keeps wanting me to add something stronger too.’