Michael Pearce - A dead man of Barcelona

‘I have come to warn you.’

‘Oh?’

‘You are mixing with bad people, Senora.’

‘Only when I talk to the police. Which isn’t very often.’

The Chief breathed heavily. ‘You will find yourself mixing with them more if you go on the way you are doing.’

‘Oh? What way is that? Teaching our children?’

‘How you teach your children is not my concern, Senora. Although it may be the Church’s. It is what you do out of school that bothers me.’

‘I do not break the law.’

‘You do not treat it with respect.’

‘It does not deserve respect. And nor, Chief, do you.’

The Chief reddened. ‘I am giving you advice, Senora. Good advice. The next time it will not be advice. You will be back in jail. And this time there will be no one to bail you out.’

‘Will you kill me, as you did him?’

‘Senora-’

‘I do not need your warnings,’ said Nina scornfully.

‘You do, Senora. And would do well to heed them. You mix with bad people.’

‘Poor people,’ said Nina. ‘Not bad people.’

‘Murderers.’

‘What nonsense!’ said Nina, beginning to turn away.

‘We know who killed Ramon Mas.’

Nina stopped.

‘No one killed him,’ she said. ‘He died when his boat sank.’

‘Sank? Just like that? A fisherman’s boat? One that was out on the water every night? No, no, Senora, boats like that do not sink. They sink only when somebody sinks them.’

‘Why should anyone do that? He was a poor man, like us.’

‘He knew too much. He was out on the water every night and he had seen. And he was going to tell.’

‘He was an ordinary fisherman out with other fishermen. What was there to tell? That he had seen the nets being pulled in, that he had seen fish leaping in the darkness.’

‘Oh, more than that, Senora. More than that!’

‘He was a poor fisherman and he died as other poor fishermen have done. Let him rest in peace. Do not draw him into your sick fantasies.’

‘He was a poor fisherman, Senora, and needed money. Otherwise he was going to lose his boat. And he was not like your friends, Senora, he was not one of them. So why shouldn’t he tell? The night before he died he met one of my men and they made an appointment. Someone must have heard them, for he did not keep it.’

‘You think that because my friends are anarchists-’

‘I think that because they are anarchists they do not fear God. Nor His justice. And I think you should have nothing to do with them. You are an innocent young girl without a father and your mind is full — well, you spoke of my sick fantasies. You should have regard to the beam in your own eye. And stay away from such men.’

Nina walked away. The Chief of Police stood for a moment watching her and then turned. He saw Seymour and beamed.

‘Senor Seymour, it is good to have you back with us!’

‘It is a pleasure to be back. Of course, I have not been away for very long.’

‘At Gibraltar, did you say?’

Seymour hadn’t said, but he guessed that this was a way of telling him that they knew.

‘Gibraltar, yes.’

‘I hope you had a fruitful time?’

‘I did, yes.’ And then, to rattle the Chief a little, ‘More than I had expected.’

‘Ah? Well, Senor, we have missed you. “I was just getting to know him,” I said to Constanza. (That’s my wife.) “Oh?” she said. “Well, that’s very nice. Why don’t you come home at a proper time one evening and get to know me? Instead of going out drinking.”

‘Well, there you are, Senor! That’s a wife for you! She doesn’t understand that a man needs a drink after a hard day’s work. “A glass, yes; but a bottle?” she says. But it’s only a bottle when I’m with friends. “Everyone’s a friend if they buy you a drink!” she says. “We’re talking business,” I say. “There’s obviously a lot of business,” she says. Well, there is. That is why I am not home till late.’

‘ “I don’t come home on the dot,” I tell her, “because I am conscientious.” “You don’t come home on the dot,” she says, “because you’re a drunk.”

‘A drunk! What a thing for a wife to say to a husband! Does your wife say things like that, Senor? Ah, I was forgetting. Perhaps she is not your wife, the lady I met.’

He gave Seymour a rascally wink.

Then he looked around. ‘Where is the beautiful Senora, by the way?’

‘Out shopping.’

‘Ah, shopping? Dangerous, dangerous. They run through the money as if it was water. A pity, Senor. I was hoping to take you both out for a drink.’

‘Alas!’ said Seymour. ‘Another time, perhaps. But perhaps this time you will allow me to take you out for a drink?’

‘Well…’ said the Chief of Police.

He took Seymour to a little bar on Las Ramblas.

‘I come here often,’ he said.

‘I’m sure.’

‘But it is not as Constanza supposes. I come here to pursue my duties.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes. You know what they say about Las Ramblas? They say that on Las Ramblas you will meet everyone in Barcelona that you know. Sitting here, they come to me. I don’t go to them. I can keep an eye on what they’re up to. See, for instance, who they talk to. And that suggests things. Things that might happen. Or things that have happened or might have happened. As with Senor Lockhart, for example.’

‘Lockhart?’

‘Yes. Whenever he came to Barcelona he would take a walk along Las Ramblas, and I would see him and see who he talked to. And I would see him talking to someone and say to myself: ah, so something’s happening in that quarter, is it? And later something would happen. A bargain would be struck, a deal made. And I would have seen it coming. People say to me, “How do you know these things?” I know them because I have seen the beginnings of them. Here on Las Ramblas.

‘Of course, Senor Lockhart used to talk to many people. It would be necessary to sift a bit. I would see him talking to someone and say to myself, “Ah, that is an old friend.” Or perhaps I would see him talking to a pretty girl and say to myself, “Ah, there he goes again!” But in this way I learned a lot about Senor Lockhart.

‘I would see him talking to the cabezudos, for example. He always talked to them, every time he came. He said they brought fun into the life of Barcelona. And that, perhaps, is true. But they also brought other things: disorder, misrule, subversion. The things that a Chief of Police has to keep his eye on. And I wondered why Senor Lockhart always talked to them.

‘But the answer is clear, is it not? There was a side to Senor Lockhart that was sympathetic to them. It showed itself in other things; that crazy girl, for example, that you just saw me talking to. They tell me he used to give her money. For the school, he said. Well, I wonder about that. I, too, am keen on education. We would have sent our children to a good Catholic school. The one near St Mark’s, for example. And when the Fathers come along, I put my hand in my pocket. But that is different from supporting a place like that. And I wonder if he really was supporting it, or whether — well, you know, Senor, some would see her as a pretty girl and maybe that’s the way it was.

‘She told me once she’d been to a decent Catholic school. A good convent school, she said. You would have thought, then, that she would have known better. But she said they were all nasty old bitches there. I told Constanza this, and she crossed herself, and said, “It takes one to know one.”

‘Well, I don’t know about that. I always try to steer clear of religion when I’m talking to Constanza. But she’s a difficult girl, that Nina, and a bit crazy. She’s another one to steer clear of.