Michael Pearce - A dead man of Barcelona

‘No?’

‘Not when he got killed. Because, you see, I thought he might have been killed because of that. Because he’d got mixed up in it. And I didn’t like that. I felt I still owed him. So when they did nothing about it, I said, Damned if I’m going to let them get away with this! So I called in you.’

‘You think he died because of the Catalan connection?’

‘Dead sure of it!’

‘I’m not,’ said Seymour.

‘Talking of Nelsons,’ said Seymour, as he turned to go, ‘you’ll remember that part of my duties was to investigate theft in the stores. If you wished to take action — and I think a little frightening might be in order — you could centre it on a matter of some calico. But I’ll leave it to you, sir.’

‘Back to Barcelona, then?’ said the Admiral, as they went out of the door together.

‘Just for a day or two. And then back to England.’

‘I knew a girl in Barcelona once,’ said the Admiral nostalgically. ‘Her name was Dolores.’

‘Lockhart?’ said Leila. ‘Well, he was always a man of sympathies.’

‘Catalan sympathies?’

‘Arab, too. That’s what attracted me to him in the first place. Here is a man who understands us, I thought. And so he did. Up to a point. But lately I have been wondering whether he really understood us. These things go very deep, you know.’

‘And did you mind his sympathies? For people other than the Arabs?’

‘No. Not at first, at any rate. It was all part of him. His generosity, his enthusiasm for everything, his idealism. I loved that, and I loved him.’

‘But you changed. You said, not at first. Not at first: but later?’

‘Well, maybe I did change.’

‘Why?’

She was silent for a little while, thinking.

‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually. ‘Perhaps one grows older. At least, I grew older. I am not sure about him.’

‘He kept the sympathies, while you gradually abandoned them?’

‘Not just that.’ She hesitated. ‘I found that in his case they were mixed with other things.’

‘Women?’

‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘Too often and too much.’

‘People have told me that you forgave him.’

‘So I did. Up to a point. But something died in me.’

‘Did you hate them? The others?’

‘Hate them!’ She looked startled. ‘Well, I suppose I did. Disliked them, certainly. That unspeakable creature in Barcelona! And there were others.’

‘Also in Barcelona?’

‘Yes. There was one woman especially. She — she flaunted him. As a conquest. “Look, I’ve got him. He’s mine, not yours.” Of course, she didn’t really do that. I never met her. But I heard of her, and it was as if she was doing that. Deliberately, to hurt me. And yes, I hated her. But she went the way of all the others, so I shrugged, and let it rest. In the end he always came back to me.’

‘And your family?’

Again she looked startled, and this time there was something else: she suddenly became guarded.

‘My family?’

‘Back in Algeria. How did they feel about it?’

‘They didn’t know about it. Not for a long time. But when they did hear about it they didn’t like it. It wasn’t so much the dishonesty that they didn’t like, it was the shame. They felt that the family had been dishonoured. Their pride was hurt.’ She grimaced. ‘We Arabs are a proud people. Like the Spanish, only worse.’

‘And your brother?’

‘Abou?’

She took her time about replying.

‘Well, Abou,’ she said then, softly.

She paused. ‘Well, Abou is a simple creature. He sees things in black and white. And the family is important to him.’

‘So he came to you. But when he got to you, he found that you had changed?’

‘Yes, I had changed,’ said Leila, looking down at her hands.

‘So he didn’t know what to do?’

‘What to do?’

‘He came here to do something, didn’t he? Or was sent to do something.’

Again she looked at her hands. ‘It all seemed so simple to him. So clear. I had been dishonoured. The family had been dishonoured. It could not be let rest. But I reasoned with him. I said that things were not like that here. This was Spain and they did things differently And if I was prepared to let it rest, so should he be. Well, of course, he couldn’t understand that. And why should he pay any attention to what I thought? Women don’t usually have much of a voice in my country. And the family had already decided. But, in his way, he loved me. And I think I could have persuaded him.’

‘But then came Tragic Week.’

‘Then came Tragic Week.’

‘Abou,’ said Seymour. ‘I want to talk to you about Aisha.’

‘Aisha?’ said Abou, surprised. ‘Farraj’s daughter?’

‘That’s right. You knew her, didn’t you?’

‘I knew the family. At one time. Farraj worked closely with us.’

‘Us? Your family? Or Lockhart?’

‘Both. My family had had connections with Farraj’s for a long time. In Algeria. And then when Lockhart became part of our family he and Farraj began to work closely together. They were almost partners. Farraj handled things for him in Algeria and Morocco, and then Farraj moved to Gibraltar to work even more closely with him.’

‘And Aisha?’

‘I got to know Aisha when Farraj came back to Algiers on visits, which he did regularly. Of course, I didn’t take much notice of her at first. She was a girl. Just another of Farraj’s family. But then on one visit I did.’

‘You noticed that she had grown up?’

‘Yes. She made me notice her. She spoke up. That is unusual in Arab families and Farraj was quite upset about it. It quite put me off her. I thought it was unseemly. But Leila said that was because she had lived in Spain and that was the way women behaved in Spain. And I grew quite to like it.’

Abou became embarrassed.

‘At one point I even thought of marrying her. Leila would have liked that. She encouraged me. “What you need is a good wife, Abou,” she said, “and Aisha would make you one.” I even went so far as to ask her. Farraj first, of course, and he was not unwilling. But then when it was put to her, she refused. I could not understand that. She said that it was nothing personal but that she wanted her freedom. Farraj was angry with her. It made things difficult for a time and he left her behind when next he visited.’

‘But you did not forget her?’

‘No.’

‘And you knew that she remembered Lockhart?’

‘She was fond of him. She thought of him as another father.’

‘And so it was easy to pressure her, when you went over to Spain yourself, to do something for him when he was in prison?’

Abou gave him a startled look.

‘That wasn’t part of the original plan, was it? It couldn’t be, because you didn’t know that he would be in prison. In fact, when you learned that Lockhart had been taken to prison, you must have thought for a moment that that had put a stop to what you intended to do. What you had been sent to do.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ muttered Abou.

‘But even before that, it seemed that Tragic Week had made what you planned impossible. But then you realized that it could actually work for you. Help you. With all the general chaos no one would notice or care. You went out on to the streets to find him. But then things went wrong. You suddenly discovered that he had a bodyguard. You couldn’t get to him. And then you learned that he had been arrested and taken to prison, where you couldn’t reach him. You had to think again; and you thought of Aisha.’

Abou did not say anything.

‘You thought of a way of reaching him even though he was in prison. You would poison him in his cell. You made inquiries and found that food could be got in to the prisoners. But that meant talking one of the warders into it, and you thought that could be done better by someone other than you. And then you had an inspiration. You thought of Aisha. You got her to talk to the warder. And to persuade him to pass in some food which you had prepared. Poisoned food.’