William McGivern - The Caper of the Golden Bulls

“Take my word, Morgan. Killin’ ’im will cause an awful bloody row. It will get around, you know.”

In dark slacks and a black shirt Peter drifted like a shadow to the side of the Pez Espada which faced the sea. In the parking lot on the other side of the hotel, car doors slammed and high-pitched laughter came floating through the night. Music rose and fell in tinkling loops.

The first floor terrace was three feet above Peter’s head. He crouched, measured the distance, sprang upward through the darkness.

His hands caught the edge of the terrace. He secured his grip, chinned himself, swung up on top of the railing which rimmed the terrace.

Balancing himself, Peter peered into a room in which a tall man with a cold face was practising putting.

The man tapped a golf ball towards a mechanical gadget six feet away.

The ball disappeared into a hole, popped out, and rolled back to him.

Clever, Peter thought. The man sank nine putts in a row. The tenth hung on the rim of the hole. The man stamped on the floor. With a glance over his shoulder, he strolled to the gadget, his putter swinging casually. He tapped the ball in without looking at it. A woman appeared in the bedroom door.

“Ten in a row, dear,” he said.

“Wonderful.”

Peter leaped up through the darkness. On the second floor an American couple played backgammon. On the third, an elderly woman in a bathrobe scolded a small dog. The room on the fourth floor was dark. God bless Pepe, Peter thought, as he swung lightly over the railing He let himself into Angela’s suite and moved silently to the bedroom.

From his hand a beam of light probed the darkness like a slender lance.

It took him only a few minutes to check the closets, drawers, and luggage. He noticed a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. A hasp and combination lock secured its lid.

Peter settled himself before the trunk, rubbed his hands together to warm them, then began delicately to manipulate the dial on the lock.

The tumblers fell with no more sound than feathers on velvet, but to Peter’s sensitive fingertips they were noisy as castanets.

Smiling, he opened the lock, raised the lid of the trunk.

Something cold touched his temple.

“Get up,” Francois said.

Light flooded the room. Peter swivelled his eyes sideways and saw the muzzle of Francois’s revolver inches from his head.

“Peter, I’m becoming very cross with you,” Angela said.

Peter stood slowly, remembering Pepe’s sigh and cursing himself for a bloody fool.

Angela stood in the doorway to the living-room. She wore a short, ice-blue evening dress, and slippers with rhinestone heels. Under the shining cap of black hair, her face was white with anger.

“You look smart, I must say,” Peter said.

“This is your last chance, Peter. Your very last.”

Francois wore a dinner jacket. Peter didn’t like the fear and anger in his eyes, nor the way his knuckles had whitened on the butt of the gun.

“Don’t kill him, Francois,” Angela said quietly.

“Tell me why not? He’s no good to us. We returned to our room, found a prowler, I shot him. Tell me why that isn’t the intelligent thing to do! The only thing to do, as a matter of fact.”

“Peter, will you give me your word? No more tricks?”

“I have no choice.”

“San Fermin starts a week today. Will you promise to go to Pamplona tomorrow and look things over?”

“Yes.”

“Will you promise to do exactly what you agreed to yesterday?”

“I promise.”

Francois looked at her angrily. “And you’ll take his word?”

“I should have thought of it before. He is very serious about promises. Aren’t you, Peter?”

“It all comes down to how one was brought up, I imagine.”

“Then I have your word. No more tricks.”

“You have my word.”

“This seems too simple,” Francois said drily. The gun in his hand was still aimed at Peter’s belt buckle. “He gives us a promise like a Boy Scout, and then everything is all right. Mr. Churchman, listen to me: Angela is after money, but I am fighting to save my life. There’s a difference. I hope you understand it.”

There was a subtle change in the Frenchman’s manner now, and Peter attempted to assay it with care and accuracy, for his instincts warned him of danger. The gun, that was it; the gun made the difference. It gave him weight and substance. Until this moment Peter had looked through Francois as he would a pane of glass. But now he fancied he saw something alive and sinister at work behind the greedy eyes, the pointlessly handsome features. The potential of the gun seemed to magnify Francois in an odd fashion; in this new dimension the very neutrality and ordinariness of his features became a fact of curious significance.

Peter said: “I’m going to do all I can to save my friends, you can be sure of that. I’ve given you my word; I’ll try my best. That’s all I can promise you, now isn’t it?”

“Let me give you a promise in return,” Francois said quietly. “If you don’t get what we want, I’ll kill you. Is that clear?”

“Oh, yes. And I’ll certainly keep it in mind. Goodnight, Angela.”

In the lobby Peter listened ruefully to Pepe. “They were suspicious when I told them it would be necessary to fumigate their rooms. They offered me money.”

Peter sighed. “And I didn’t. It was stupid of me, Pepe. I forgot. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right, Senor Churchman.”

“It wasn’t intentional, you realise. No hard feelings?”

“Of course not. Such things shouldn’t come between friends.”

“Good night, Pepe.”

“Good night, Senor Churchman.”

In a chair near the entrance to the hotel, a tall and formidably proportioned man in a black raincoat lowered his newspaper and watched Peter pass through the revolving doors. Then he popped a mint into his mouth and sucked on it. There was an odd lack of animation in his face and eyes; like a sluggish, heavy animal behind a fence, he seemed to regard the world without interest or curiosity. He might have been thirty or forty; his blond hair was clipped short, and his eyes were clear and patient under a pattern of scars that were drawn on his forehead as precisely as the lines in a tick-tack-toe game. When he stood, however, slapping the newspaper under his arm and stepping out towards the information desk, it was evident he had been trained to handle his big body with economy and precision. At the counter, he smiled at Pepe, and said in careful, unaccented English: “The man you were speaking with a moment ago can you tell me something about him?”

He analysed Pepe’s expression and drew out a wallet.

Peter went home and drank four large brandies before going to bed. As sleep began to circle him like a vast but silent typhoon, he wondered drowsily if the film had really and truly been hidden in Angela’s steamer trunk. It made very little difference one way or the other now, but he disliked not knowing; it nagged at him. Ask Angela? No.

No good. Go back and take another look? No. There was his promise... No more tricks. “God help me,” he murmured despairingly and fell asleep.

Peter tried valiantly the following morning. He rose, showered, brushed his teeth, thought calmly of what lay ahead of him, and then went wearily back to bed.

Much later came soft footsteps, an aroma of coffee.

“Take it away, Adela. Please.”

“It’s not Adela, it’s me,” Grace said. “May I open the curtains?”

“Good God, no.”

“What’s the matter, Peter? Why are you avoiding me?”

The bed sank slightly with her weight. Waves of sluggish liquids sloshed about in Peter’s head.

“It has nothing to do with you, darling.”