Michael Pearce - A dead man of Barcelona

‘No, no. It was not as you suppose. How — how do you know this?’

‘She was seen, Abou. Seen in Barcelona, and seen near the prison. And she told someone that she was arranging for something to be taken in to Lockhart.’

‘She will not confirm this! You will not be able to talk to her. You will not be able to ask her that!’

‘Why not, Abou? Why cannot she be asked in Algiers as well as she could have been asked here? And when she is asked, she will tell. Why shouldn’t she? She has done nothing wrong. You tricked her, Abou, nastily, and she will not like that. She looked on Lockhart as a father, remember. And I do not think she will be cowed into silence, Abou, not this time. Her father sent her back to Algiers so that she should not be asked, and she went along with that as a dutiful daughter and because she was not quite sure herself what she had done, unwittingly, or how she had been involved. She was young and puzzled and confused. But she loved Lockhart and she is a spirited girl, Abou, and now she will not be silenced. She will tell all right.’

‘How will you reach her to ask the questions? She is married and her husband’s permission will have to be obtained. And she is in Algeria! And my family-’

‘Your family, yes. In which family feeling is so strong. So strong that it could not bear the shame and disgrace of what Lockhart had done to Leila. So strong that it sent you, Abou, as Leila’s brother, to take revenge.’

‘I will speak to Farraj! And I will speak to my family. They will not allow-’

‘It does not matter what they allow or do not allow. You are in Spain now, not Algeria. And it will be by Spanish law that things will be decided.

‘And as to reaching Aisha, I am not sure that you will find Farraj as much on your side as you think. And if he is not, nor will his friend, her husband, be. Aisha will be allowed to talk. And she will have plenty to say. And, besides — besides,’ said Seymour, ‘I, too, have family in North Africa.’

And that, too, he suddenly realized, had now become definite.

'But — but he was a good chap!’ said Hattersley, bewildered. ‘I always got on very well with him.’

As if that was a sufficient guarantee of his innocence.

‘Well, there you are!’ said Seymour.

‘I must say, it comes as a surprise. I was sure all along that it was the Government. Or the Catalans. Or the anarchists. Or the Arabs.’

‘Well, it wouldn’t have been the Government, would it? I mean, why wait to get him in jail before killing him? When there were so many better opportunities during Tragic Week. I must say I agree with you about the Catalans, though. For a long time I thought they had a hand in it.’

‘You did?’

‘Oh, yes. But why should they kill the goose that was, from their point of view, laying the golden eggs? At one time I toyed with the idea that some of them might have thought he was going to betray them. There was a fisherman, you know, that was probably going to do that, and they killed him. But Lockhart? Who was out on the streets during Tragic Week trying to act as a safeguard for them? It didn’t make sense.

‘As for the anarchists, there obviously is a lot of anarchist activity in Spain and the police and the prison governor all assured me that it was the work of anarchists. But about the only anarchist I could find with whom Lockhart came in contact was his daughter, Nina. And she was a very isolated person. If there was an anarchist cell, she was about the only one in it.

‘Then there was the rumour about the wife of the high-up. Well, there was such a person and I talked to her. Like so many others, she had an affair with Lockhart. But, like so many others, it didn’t last. In the end, as you told me, he was always true to Leila. I thought maybe it was a case of jealousy. But she was a very high-handed lady and, although she might stoop to murder, she certainly wasn’t prepared to stoop to employing an Arab to do it.

‘That brought me back to the Arabs. And that brought me back to Lockhart’s wife, and her family, who were the Arabs that Lockhart was most in contact with. And here there was certainly motivation. Lockhart was betraying his wife all the time. She certainly resented it. Could she have been the one who set the killing in motion? Well, she could, but Leila herself was a complex person who had grown, and wished now to put a lot of things behind her, many of those things which she had brought from Algeria.

‘But, remember, although she had discarded them, others hadn’t. In particular, others in her family. Many in the family were still bound by tradition and in particular traditions of honour and dishonour and revenge. Try as she could, she couldn’t escape from these traditions. Even though she was now in another country. They sent over Abou, her brother, a man who knew only these traditions. An honourable man, in his way, who loved his sister and couldn’t bear to see her slighted and, as he saw it, dishonoured. She worked on him, however, and might have succeeded, but ran out of time.

‘So there you are. The difficult thing for me was to distance myself from everyone’s suggestions. Everybody thought they knew the answer and was eager to give it me. Before they had asked the questions.’

Of course, strictly speaking, Abou, and the prosecution of the charges against him, did not fall within the preserve of the Chief of Police, since Abou was in Gibraltar, and that, according to the British (but not the Spanish) was not Spain. For a few days it looked as if Abou might slip down the crack between them but the crime had definitely been committed in Spain and the Foreign Office, stiffened by the Admiral, was prepared to concede the practical, although not theoretical, point. By some legerdemain, the details of which remained obscure but which somehow involved a boat, the surprised Abou found himself in Barcelona, when he passed into the hands of the ever resourceful Chief of Police.

Not resourceful enough to satisfy his wife, however.

‘As a Chief of Police, Alonzo, you are a disgrace. It’s time you did something about it. Otherwise, we’re going to have to spend the rest of our lives in this dump, whereas, as I’ve made clear to you from the first day of our marriage, my mind has always been set on Madrid. That’s where I’ve always seen myself. I think I would feel at home there. But all through our married years I have seen the prospect of that dwindling over the horizon.

‘It’s time you pulled yourself together, Alonzo, and now you’ve got the chance. Mr Seymour has given it to you. He has solved the mystery of who killed Lockhart and given the solution back to you. Now all you’ve got to do is claim the credit for it. Oh, and now that you’ve got the murderer safely in prison, keep him there! Do you think you can do that?’

‘Of course, I can, Constanza!’ said the Chief reproachfully. ‘He’s in safe hands.’

‘Well, he wasn’t last time,’ said Constanza. ‘At least, Lockhart wasn’t. You let someone creep in and poison him. It could happen again. I might even do it myself. That bastard killed Lockhart and someone ought to get him. He extinguished the one light in my life.’

‘You say these things, Constanza, but-’

‘And I mean them. He was the only man, of many, that I’ve ever really cared about.’

The Chief felt compelled to tackle Constanza.

‘Constanza,’ he said, ‘there have been rumours about you.’

‘Only silly men listen to silly rumours,’ she said.

‘Nevertheless — ’ he began.

‘Of course I slept with Lockhart,’ she said impatiently. ‘And very enjoyable it was, too. Unlike with you, Alonzo!’

‘Constanza-’

‘ And with half of the male population of Barcelona,’ she said.