Michael Pearce - A dead man of Barcelona

Her mother shook her head.

‘It was very good of him,’ she said. ‘But sometimes I wish he had not.’

Seymour went out early the next morning to sniff the sea. The smell was a different one from that of the murky waters of the East End docks; he never felt inclined to go down in the morning and sniff those! They were dirty and oily and acidic, the tang so strong some days as to make you retch. That was when the fog lay heavily over London, when the smells of the docks were reinforced by the fumes rising from the old, closed courts of the east, the working, end of the city, where small workshops fed smoke into the thick, choking air that he had known from childhood.

Gibraltar was not like that. It opened out at once into the blue, glittering width of the bay and the air came in straight from the open sea. In front of him the long arm of the Old Mole curled round with just a few small boats this side of it. Behind him were the tall, thin buildings of the Old Town, with its narrow streets rising up the hill to the crenellations of the ancient Moorish castle. And, over to the side, stretching away into the far distance, were the peaks and crests of the mountains of Andalusia.

Everywhere there was warmth and light. The sun, only just becoming hot on his face, was burning the last early morning mists off the sea. The air, which later would become hot, and possibly unpleasantly so, still felt fresh in his face. He breathed deep.

Chantale would like this, he thought. He must bring her here tomorrow morning. She would enjoy the continuation of freshness and warmth, which would remind her of Tangier, and respond to the feeling of openness which came from the great bay opening up with the sea and escaping from the hills closing in behind.

And then a second thought struck him, the old, nagging doubt: could he ask her to exchange this — the sun and warmth and light — for the constricted, choking darkness of London’s dockland? Was it fair? Was it right?

Seymour had come down to the sea front so early because he was reckoning to spend the whole day making his nominal inspection of the stores. With luck that would be enough to establish a reason for his being in Spain and divert attention from the real purpose of his inquiries.

He met McPhail, still the Duty Officer, at the guardroom and walked over with him to the stores.

‘Are you finding the Francia to your taste, sir?’ the midshipman said, with a knowing smile.

The reason for the knowing smile was soon apparent. Word had got round that Seymour had Chantale with him. As he went into the stores he heard the petty officer’s voice at the far end. For a moment he was obscured by the shelving and Ferry did not see him.

‘ And he’s brought his bird with him!’

‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ asked another voice. ‘Wouldn’t you do the same?’

‘Yes, but he’s on duty, like. How did he manage that? Fly bastard, isn’t he? I wonder who’s paying?’

‘Not him, I don’t suppose. What’s she like?’

‘A bit of all right. I wouldn’t mind having a quiet evening walk along the Mole with her myself!’

‘What would Bella say to that?’

‘Bella would never know!’

‘How do you know he’s brought his bird with him?’ challenged another voice.

‘I saw them at the Francia.’

‘Well, that’s the place to stay, isn’t it, if you’re like that.’

‘Your fame precedes you, sir,’ murmured McPhail.

‘Just as it should!’ said the Admiral, over a drink at lunch in the wardroom. He gave Seymour one of the knowing looks. ‘Got your girlfriend with you, I gather?’

It didn’t take long for the news to get around, thought Seymour. He began to wonder if it had, after all, been such a good idea to bring Chantale over. Suppose word got back to London?

‘Ah, I think you’re thinking of Mademoiselle de Lissac,’ he said. ‘She’s assisting me at this end.’

‘Good-looker, I hear. You obviously know how to pick them.’

‘Purely for their Intelligence skills,’ said Seymour, hoping that that would get around, too.

‘Are we going to have a chance of seeing your assistant, sir?’ asked McPhail, as he was taking Seymour back to the stores, after lunch.

‘Maybe. But she’s busy pursuing her own line of inquiries.’

‘That would be, I understand,’ said McPhail hesitantly, ‘in the way of Intelligence?’

‘Yes. She’s Intelligence, I’m policing. I think there’s a question of broadening the inquiry.’

‘Jesus!’ he heard Ferry say. ‘They’ve brought bloody Intelligence in as well?’

‘Here, I don’t like the sound of this. It sounds a bit bigger than we thought.’

‘What the hell’s Intelligence got to do with this?’ said Ferry’s worried voice. ‘Just how deep are they going?’

Not very deep, if Seymour’s own inquiries were anything to go by. He was never at his best on this kind of thing. His mind glazed over as he went from one section of the stores to another, and seized up completely when he was confronted with that mysterious thing, ‘the Books’.

‘He don’t look happy!’ he heard someone whisper to Ferry.

‘Jesus!’

Even McPhail was impressed.

‘Are you on to something, sir?’

‘Just a few questions in my mind, that’s all.’

Like, when could he decently stop for a drink?

‘You’ve got to remember, sir,’ said McPhail, already beginning to see a need to come to the defence of his men, ‘that the Navy is not quite the same as a shore establishment. We’ve got our own ways of doing things.’

‘Yes, I see that,’ said Seymour.

It was a neutral, fobbing-off remark, and he intended nothing by it; but it had a disconcerting effect in the stores generally.

‘You’re going to have to smarten up your act, Ferry,’ Seymour heard the midshipman say.

A little later Ferry approached Seymour.

‘Of course, things may not be quite shipshape, sir. The fact is, there’s a lot of pilfering when you’re on shore. These bloody natives!’

‘The Gibraltarese?’

‘That’s right. Bloody get their hands on anything. You’ve got to watch them like a hawk. And that, though I say it myself, sir, is what I do. Keep my eyes skinned all the time. Even come here after dark occasionally, when I’m not really on watch. Just to see nobody’s breaking in. Because that’s what they do, sir, all the time. Unless you’re keeping a good lookout.’

‘It’s just as well you do, Mr Ferry.’

‘Ah, it is, sir. It is. Things go missing.’

‘I’m sure they do.’

Again, he meant nothing by it. But it didn’t seem to assuage the petty officer’s uneasiness at all.

Midshipman McPhail’s thoughts, however, were turning, with the buoyancy of youth, away from the temporary tribulations of the store room and to more permanent interests.

‘I was wondering, sir,’ he said, as they walked away at the end of the afternoon, ‘whether your assistant would come to join us in the bar this evening?’

‘I’m sure she would like to. This evening, alas, she has an engagement already.’

‘A pity, sir. Perhaps some other time? We’re all rather eager to make her acquaintance, sir.’

I’ll bet you are, thought Seymour.

‘She is rather striking, sir.’

‘Yes, I think so, too.’

Perhaps it was time for a shot across the bows.

‘She is, of course, married.’

‘She is?’ said McPhail, downcast.

‘Or very nearly,’ a slightly optimistic definition of the truth compelled him to add.

‘Knot not yet tied?’ said McPhail, cheering up.

‘Practically,’ said Seymour.

‘Oh, well,’ said the midshipman, ‘it would be nice to see her at the bar anyway.’

He seemed, however, to be weighing something in his mind.