William McGivern - The Caper of the Golden Bulls

Peter read it and frowned. Francois was watching him. “Who gave you this?” Peter asked the waiter.

“A man. Over there.” He waved with a suggestion of total frustration and impotence towards masses of people on the opposite side of the terrace. “Over there. A man.”

Peter saw no one he recognised. He put the note in his pocket.

“Excuse me,” he said to Angela. To Francois, he said, “Same time tomorrow morning. Don’t be late.”

Then he hurried off. But as he fought his way through the crowds in the plaza, someone hailed him by name. “Peter. I knew I’d come across you. What wonderful luck!” Antonio Gonzalez y’Najera, the policeman of their village, smiled broadly and pounded Peter’s shoulders with rough affection.

“I asked for you at the Administration of Police. I thought you would call on them.”

“I’ve been busy, Antonio. What the devil are you doing in Pamplona?”

“I am guarding, if you will forgive my using an important word for an unnecessary task, I am guarding our Virgin’s trinkets. Here she comes now. Bringing up the rear, with hardly a thousand pesetas’ worth of finery on her poor head.” The small float which supported the Virgin of Santa Maria was brilliant with flowers. There were wild poppies, marguerite daisies, tiny blue iris, mimosa, carnations, and roses.

Sprays of jasmine, the tiny trumpet blossoms waxen and fragrant, formed a double border around the float.

In the arms of the Virgin was a bouquet of white roses. In her simplicity and dignity, it seemed to Peter that she represented something of Spain that was not quite reflected in the opulence of her grand sisters. The applause for her was warm and affectionate. “She’s getting quite a hand, Antonio.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Listen to the applause.”

The policeman dismissed it with a shrug. “It’s a sentimental response. Patronising and contented. It’s like the millionaire on the terrace of his villa smiling wistfully at the fishermen toiling below him on the beach. Ah, how he envies them! Such purity and innocence! But in his heart he is very glad not to be burdened with such innocence. Let’s have some wine, Peter.”

“I’ve got to meet someone. How about tomorrow?”

“I’ll look for you.”

The hotel, the Aguilar, was in the new quarter of the city. Peter rode to the third floor in an elevator, hurried along a clean, carpeted corridor, rapped on a door. It was opened by Morgan.

“Oh, Peter, I knew you’d come. I knew you wouldn’t desert me.”

“What kind of trouble have you got yourself into?”

“The very worst kind, Peter.” Morgan’s sigh caused his stomach to swell out like a sail in a great wind. “The very worst!”

“Your note said someone was trying to kill you. Is that on the level?”

He walked into the room. Morgan stepped aside and closed the door.

Something hard prodded Peter’s spine.

From behind him Blake said: “Take it nice and easy now. If you think this is a gun, go to the head of the class.”

Tonelli appeared in the doorway of the adjoining bedroom.

“Hello, Mr. Churchman,” he said with a faint smile. He held a forty-five automatic in his right hand with a suggestion of familiarity and competence. “As my pal suggested, take it nice and easy. You’re going to be our guest for a couple of days.”

In Grace’s room, Francois looked bitterly at Angela. “It’s not puzzling to me, not in the least. He’s run out on us. I think that should be clear enough by now.”

“You may be right. But it isn’t like him.”

“You’re both talking like fools,” Grace said. “You know Peter wouldn’t quit. Something’s happened to him.”

“Yes, of course,” Francois said, in a voice suddenly high and rigid with emotion. “And I’ll tell you what it was. He knew I was on to him.”

Grace looked helplessly at the walkie-talkie she still held in her hand. It was a mute link to Peter, an earnest token of her faith in him, and she hadn’t been able to put it aside. But hours had gone by and there was no word from him. Not a whisper.

“Oh, damn him,” Angela said, more in weariness than anger. “Even if he came back, it wouldn’t matter. We missed our chance today.”

Francois had been looking intently at Grace.

“Now listen: He received a note in the Castillo last night. It disturbed him. Or he meant me to think it disturbed him. I don’t know which. What do you know about it?”

“Why, nothing at all,” Grace said.

“You’re quite sure?”

“Of course.”

Francois smiled faintly. “You’re getting nothing from this? And neither is Peter? The risk, the danger, are all debts owed to honour, eh? Well, I doubt it very much.”

“What do you think?” Angela asked him.

“Perhaps they want the diamonds for themselves.”

“Oh, you’re an idiot,” Grace said. “We’re wasting time. We’ve got to go out and look for him. He may be lying unconscious in a hospital, or in jail.”

“Yes,” Francois said drily. “And while we run about the town searching for him, what will he be up to?” He smiled. “No, I don’t like that idea. So unless you tell me the truth, I am going to do something very unpleasant to you.” Still smiling, he explained the details of techniques he had seen employed on stubborn natives in Algeria, and when he had finished, Grace, who was rather pale by then, said, “Well, I shouldn’t like that at all. It sounds most disagreeable.”

“Then be intelligent. Co-operate with us.”

“Very well. I’m an awful coward about things like that. Peter said if anything unexpected happened I was to give you two things.” Grace picked up a copy of the magazine Espana from a coffee table and gave it to Angela. “This was one of them.”

“Did he tell you what I was to look for?”

“He said that you would know.”

“And the second thing?”

“It’s here on the dresser.” Grace’s slim, dark skirt whispered lightly as she hurried across the room. Sunlight the colour of ripe lemons gleamed brightly on the white bow of her throat and lent a pale liquid sheen to her nylons. She fumbled with combs and brushes, and then pulled open a drawer with a suggestion of haste and desperation.

But when she found what she wanted, and spun around to face them, her eyes were cold, and something small and deadly glittered in her hand.

It was a twenty-five calibre automatic, decorated with mother-of-pearl handgrips.

She said quietly: “This throws high and to the right. Francois, if you take another step towards me, I’ll aim for the: middle of your left thigh. I’m a good enough shot to put a very painful cloud over your technical qualifications to manhood.”

Francois seemed to be trying to smile, but he only succeeded in flattening his lips, for the steady blue shine of the muzzle was not less unnerving than the light in Grace’s eyes.

Angela threw the magazine on the floor and stamped on it.

Grace picked up the telephone. When the operator answered, she gave her a number in rapid Spanish... Peter watched the first fragile lights of dawn rising on the horizon. It was Sunday morning, and in a few more hours the bulls would be running for the last time in this fiesta of San Fermin.

It was all over now... He and Morgan shared a sofa. Tonelli sat facing them with a gun in his hand. He looked alert and wary, despite the long vigil, but he also wore a ‘sportsman’s’ ring, and cords knotted with a jewelled clasp in lieu of a tie, and Peter could not believe he was a serious man. Blake stood at a table against the wall making himself a drink. He was the hairy one, with the bunched-up features, the head pointed like an artillery projectile, the fingers like bananas.