by Chris Ward
As he lay there, staring up into the canopy as it slowly caught the first glitters of dawn, he wondered what he would say to the Grey Man when they next met.
15
Peter calls a council
‘Was it really necessary to bring your fucking staff?’ Peter said, as Merlin thumped the ground again like a judge calling for order.
Merlin waved the ornate end in the direction of Dave Balls, who was slumped in an armchair in the corner. Balls’ face was a colourful patchwork of plasters and bruises.
‘I think having some sort of suitable deterrent is pretty useful in the light of recent events, don’t you think?’
Peter looked around the room. More than thirty of Barcelona’s official street performers had showed up for the emergency meeting. It was better than he had expected, but what had happened to Dave Balls was just one manifestation of all their recent fears. Things had come to a head. It was time something was done.
Peter stood up and called the group to order. A gradual hush came over the assembled men and women. When most heads were facing him, he called Dave Balls forward.
‘Thank you everyone for coming,’ Peter said. ‘As you know, there have been a number of recent … incidents … putting our livelihoods at risk. Life is tenuous at the best of times for us street performers, but things have reached a breaking point. Dave, can you please give a brief account of what happened to you the night before last?’
There were gasps and cries of astonishment as Balls stepped forward into the light. He looked around the room and gave a little nod, as if soaking up the atmosphere. Then he lifted Peter’s microphone to his swollen mouth.
‘I got jumped,’ he said. ‘Walking home from an honest day’s work, I was set upon and given a bit of a pasting.’
‘Can you tell us exactly what these people said to you, Dave?’ Peter asked.
Balls nodded. ‘I don’t remember exactly because I had a boot in my face for most of the event, but it was something like, ‘you’re going to get some, motherfucker, for stirring up shit in our city’. Something like that.’
Peter frowned.
‘They used those exact words?’
‘More or less. There might have been a couple more ‘motherfuckers’ in there, but I forget. Like I said, I was taking a pasting at the time.’
The crowd stirred, people conversing in hushed tones.
‘What do the police say about all this?’ someone shouted from near the back. ‘Did you report it?’
Balls nodded. ‘Of course I did. The police didn’t give a crap. They just laughed me out of the station.’
Peter frowned. Dave Balls had left a few aspects of his story on the cutting room floor—like how he had been roaring drunk and dressed as a blood-stained melon when he stumbled into a police box at midnight and started berating them in a hybrid of English and Spanish about not protecting the citizens—but such revelations wouldn’t help to keep the unity of the group together.
In fact, it would have been harder for Peter to pick a more unreliable narrator to try to unite the group, but at least several others had witnessed the strange new performers on Las Ramblas. Balls’ story backed up what a lot of them were thinking: that the new arrivals pushing onto their turf and upsetting the tourists were putting their livelihoods were at risk.
‘It’s obvious what’s happening,’ Balls said, continuing even after Peter had asked him to sit back down. ‘They’re an anti-fucking-devolution group trying to ruin Barcelona’s reputation to fuck up Catalonia’s hopes in next year’s referendum.’
Peter scowled. Balls had clearly been talking to old men in bars. The referendum wasn’t even confirmed.
‘Thanks, Dave,’ he said, and this time Merlin stepped forward to usher Balls back to his seat.
‘Now,’ Peter continued, ‘has anyone else had any trouble with these new guys who’ve been seen around? I’ve checked with the council and no new performers have been registered. In any case, they’re supposed to join the union, and no one has joined in months.’
‘Probably because your union isn’t worth shit,’ someone else shouted from near the back of the room. Peter looked into the shadows and picked out Leonard Alphonse, a young Barcelona native who made himself up every day to look like Freddie Mercury. He had a prime spot on Las Ramblas down near the port, and was popular, particularly among the older European crowd. The financial problems would be hitting him less than most, but that gave him no excuse to be a smartass.
‘The Union protects all of us, Lenny,’ Peter said.
‘It didn’t protect Dave, did it?’
People at the back of the room began to stir again. I’m losing them, Peter thought.
‘This morning I spoke to the police,’ he said. ‘They’re going to increase the police presence on Las Ramblas for a couple of weeks until this blows over.’ It was a lie, but he hoped it would calm them. The police had told him to file a report, and they would look at it in time. The problem was that the period up until Christmas generally saw few tourists, so the police presence was likely to be less if anything.
‘What good is that?’ Lenny said. ‘More police means less tourists, and less tourists means less money. What we want is for these people pushing on to our turf to be stopped.’
Easier said than done, Peter thought. The strangers rarely showed themselves at peak times or in open locations. They showed up, caused a bit of trouble, and disappeared. It was looking more and more like a deliberate attempt at sabotage.
He put his theory to the group. There were a few ums and ahs. ‘I think the biggest question we have is why?’
‘I’ve already told you that,’ Dave Balls said, jumping up.
‘Dave,’ Merlin said, ‘it’s not the kind of thing that the government would do, is it? I mean, it’s hardly a political tactic.’
‘Then who?’
At the back of the room a man had stood up. Peter felt an involuntary shiver of fear at the sight of the seven-foot-tall albino with the red eyes. Slav the Russian hailed from Moscow, and while no one knew anything about his past, that it was dark and contained violence was obvious from one look at the man. He had only been around a few weeks, getting a permit privately through the city council, and had only shown up at a couple of previous union meetings. His sensitive skin meant he only worked early mornings and evenings, usually while wearing a thick layer of protective paint, which made him even whiter than usual. Out on Las Ramblas, while playing the role of a wrestler a little too convincingly, he was popular for his ten Euro move, holding laughing children nine feet in the air in his huge hands.
‘It’s time to stop playing games,’ Slav said, in a deep booming voice with a hint of a Russian accent, his words angular and sharp enough to make Peter wince. ‘Forget the police. Forget the council. This is our war.’
Several heads were nodding. Even Merlin seemed to approve, banging his staff on the ground.
Slav’s muscles bulged under his shirt as he clenched a fist and held it up. ‘We go underground, and we fight them. We drive them out.’
Peter couldn’t help but admire the way Slav spoke. Despite his size and his obviously weak Spanish, he had a conciseness to his words that resonated.
Peter looked around him and saw that Merlin and Balls had stepped down off the stage to get closer to Slav, and now no one in the room was looking at him. The huge Russian had become the centre of attention.
Almost in the space of a sentence he had lost whatever control he might have had over the union, and the entire assembly had switched allegiance to a new faction.
Peter couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not.
#
Peter’s phone was ringing. He lifted his head off the pillow and shook off the bottle of wine he had drunk in the aftermath of the union meeting. His phone had somehow found its way to the floor, so he reached down and picked it up, squinting at the brightly lit display.
It was an unrecognized number.
‘Hola?’ he croaked.
‘Is this Peter Salvadore?’ an authoritative voice said.
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
‘Sorry to bother you so late at night, sir, but I need to talk to you if I may.’
‘Um, sure, who is this?’
‘My name is Officer Antonio Valdo, with the Guardia Urbana de Barcelona. There’s been an incident and I’d like to talk to you about it.’
Hairs began to rise on the back of Peter’s neck. Why would the Municipal Police want to talk to him? ‘What kind of incident?’
‘A murder.’
‘What? Who?’
‘I’m not at liberty to give out details over the phone, Mr. Salvadore. I trust you will be in tomorrow? I would very much like to drop by for a chat.’
‘I have work tomorrow.’
A chuckle came from the other end of the line. ‘Oh, that’s what you call it, is it, Mr. Salvadore? Standing around on Las Ramblas in the bright sunshine is work now, is it?’
Peter wouldn’t let himself be drawn into trading insults, especially not over the phone with a police officer. ‘I’ll be home by six o’clock,’ he said.
‘Perfect.’
‘Can’t you give me some idea what this is about?’
A long sigh came from the other end of the line. ‘We have a body, Mr. Salvadore, and it appears to belong to a tourist. Not great for our city’s image, is it?’
Part Two
The Battle for Las Ramblas
16
A secret liaison of lost love
Jun had that glazed look in his eyes as he looked at her. Jennie wanted to slap it off his face, but it was no use.
‘I’m going out,’ he said again. ‘I need some time … alone. I just need to clear my head for a bit.’
‘Where? Jun, you’re not really in a fit state—’
He lifted a hand, but didn’t look at her. ‘Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.’
‘Jun!’
He pushed past her to the door. She started to block him, but his eyes were staring straight ahead, and he had a creepy smile on his face. Something told her it was a good idea to get out of the way.
He went out without looking back. Jennie glanced back towards the bed, where, despite a couple of days of changed sheets, that impression still seemed to linger.
She couldn’t be alone in the room with whatever was haunting them, if that was what it was. And Jun was getting away.
She hurried downstairs, past Manuel in the lobby, and out on to the street. Just in time, she saw Jun turning out of the street onto Avenida Diagonal. She reached the corner just as he descended into the subway a little further on, and she reached the top of the steps just as he vanished out of sight.
She was a few places behind him in the queue as he bought a ticket in a curiously vacant manner, and a few metres back as he passed through the ticket gates and headed for the platforms. For a few moments he stopped and stared up at a subway map, as if looking for a destination gifted to him during a ghostly visitation.
Jennie was one carriage behind when he got on to a northbound train.
Luckily the train wasn’t too busy, otherwise it would have been easy to lose him. Jun didn’t sit down but stood near to the doors, one hand holding on to a rail, his face pressed close to the window as though he was watching the subway walls as they rushed past. He didn’t move for five stops, then suddenly ducked out as the train pulled into a place called Sant Andreu.
Jennie almost missed him. He was gone, striding up the stairs, weaving between people coming down, before she’d even got off the train. Up to now his movements had been slow and languid, but now he moved with purpose, hurrying on to some final destination.
Jennie caught sight of him again as she reached the ticket gates, but he had already passed through. There were several people in front of her so she tried to duck around and slip through a side gate, but a guard appeared in front of her with his hands up, holding her back.
By the time she had pulled her ticket out of her purse to prove she wasn’t trying to jump the trains, it was too late. Jun was gone.
She exited into bright sunshine in the middle of a residential area. A short distance down a street to her left was a small plaza surrounded by restaurants with verandas and pictureboard menus. Several groups of people sat around drinking sangria and scooping food from big silver dishes of paella.
There was no sign of Jun, but there was more activity in the direction of the plaza, so she headed that way. Several people looked up as she turned on her heels, scanning the many small roads and alleys that led away. Jun could have gone anywhere, but when she half-heartedly asked the men on a nearby table in her best Spanish, she received only a nonchalant shrug in response.
Feeling desperate, she headed down the largest street out of the plaza, and used that as her benchmark from then on, taking the biggest of the roads that presented themselves, as though Jun would have been choosing his route the same way.
It was hopeless. Finally, turning into a road that angled gently uphill between two rows of pretty townhouses, she stopped and sat down on a nearby wall, admitting defeat. Her heart was racing, her hands shaking from the exertion of the blind chase. The street was empty except for a couple of old cars parked outside shuttered and empty-looking buildings that bled their silence out on to the road like a fine mist. Jennie wondered how she had found her way here, to this seemingly abandoned part of town, and she held in the urge to start crying in frustration, afraid of the sound being too jarring, like a drunk waltzing into a private party. Her breath seemed to be coming in fits and starts though, and only when she cocked her head to listen did she realise that another sound was coming from nearby.
It was muffled, hidden behind a door or beyond a wall, but it was unmistakable.
Somewhere nearby, a child was crying.
#
She was waiting by the fountain in the middle of the quiet little glade tucked away in the corner of Parc de la Maquinista de Sant Andreu, just as she had said she would be. Jun grinned, unable to contain his excitement any longer, and lifted a hand to give a goofy wave.
She smiled and waved back.
‘You found me,’ she said, as he reached her and sat down, leaving a respectful gap between them. Jun was so excited he sat on his hands to stop them shaking, even though an itch just above his left eye was crying out to be scratched. He stared at the ground at his feet, terrified that if he looked at her she might disappear like the dream she had to be.
‘Is it really you?’ he asked, staring only at the shoes she wore, the crisp trainers that were probably from Shoe Mart or Ito Yokado or Shimamura. She had never been one to dress up or spend excessively. The shoes were her; the jeans that were probably from Uniqlo were her too. He was too afraid to look at her face, but he could see her hands; the pale, flawless skin, the neatly trimmed, unpainted nails. Once there had been a blemish between the thumb and forefinger on her left hand, a darkish patch of skin about the size of a one-yen coin. A birthmark perhaps, or a burn scar from her infancy. It was gone now, probably grown out. After all, she wasn’t the same girl he remembered. She couldn’t be. That girl had died twelve years ago.
‘I don’t know what I can do to convince you, Jun,’ Akane Yamaguchi said, in that deep but lilting tone that still teased his dreams. ‘Ask me a question about us. Go on, anything.’
He opened his mouth to speak, to ask her something inane, like which idol band’s poster had been on the left side of her bedroom door when she was twelve, but it seemed petty and stupid. And part of him didn’t want to test her. She was here with him, back from the dead. If he grilled her too hard she might just disappear again, leaving him alone.
Instead, all he said was, ‘You didn’t die, did you? I mean, I thought you did. I even went to your funeral. I identified your body. But you didn’t die, did you?’
Akane shrugged. ‘Life has a funny way of working things out, Jun. I just needed to disappear for a while after what happened. Like you did.’
‘Yes, you did.’
She reached up a blemish-less hand and pressed it over his heart. Her touch was strangely cool over the afternoon warmth, like a glass of water that had been left chilling in the refrigerator a little too long.
‘In here, Jun. You disappeared for a while. Just like me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You lost me. So I went away for a while. I waited until you needed me back.’
‘I always needed you.’
She shook her head. He still couldn’t look directly at her, as if to see her would dazzle him. He continued to stare at her legs, at her trainers, at the hand pressing over his heart.
‘Not enough, Jun,’ she said. ‘You had other people looking out for you.’
‘They failed.’
Akane laughed. ‘We all failed, Jun. Now we’re trying to undo our failings.’
He finally gathered the strength to look up at her, but as he turned towards her his eyes seemed to blur. He could see the outline of her face, but when he tried to concentrate on details they refused to focus. He felt like he was looking at a blurred photograph, one that no matter how hard he tried would never become sharp and clear. He wanted to scream with frustration.
‘Why can’t I see you?’ he whispered, squeezing the hand that was pressed over his heart a little too hard. Instead of crying out with pain, Akane just pulled it away, dropping it to her side.
‘This is a lot for you to take in, Jun,’ Akane said. ‘I didn’t know whether it was right for me to come to you or not. I didn’t know whether you could handle it. I know what happened to you, after you encountered Kurou for the second time.’
Jun looked away, staring down at the dust at his feet, pushed into little mounds and depressions by his fidgeting shoes.