Inhuman Remains

Thirteen

The evening seemed to pass so slowly it made me think back to my time in the nick, when every day dragged. My hotel didn’t offer an evening meal, or I’d have settled for room service in front of the telly. The receptionist did recommend a few nearby restaurants, but I didn’t fancy sitting at a table for one in a formal setting.

In the end I decided to go back to the Gallego, and my new-found buddy Carlos, the only Barca supporter in town, since the evening was hot and humid, and I didn’t want to walk far. When he saw me coming, and caught my nod, he chased away four back-packers, who had been making a beeline for the only available pavement table, and ushered me straight to it. I asked him to use his imagination and bring me a selection of tapas. He did just that, coming back with a tiered arrangement that looked like an old-fashioned cake stand, with a nice bottle of albariño to wash the lot down. I had packed an English-language novel for my trip. It was called Death’s Door, and as I ate I pretended to read it, as a barrier against intrusions as much as anything else.

That said, I’d probably have been pissed off if nobody had tried to talk to me all night, so when two American guys took over the next table and said, ‘Hello,’ I didn’t blow them out. Their names were Sebastian Loman and Willie Venable, they were around thirty, about the age I was when I stopped being normal, and it didn’t take me long to realise that they were travelling as a couple and I was as safe as houses with them. They told me they were from Topeka, Kansas, and preferred to holiday in Europe than in their staunchly Republican home state.

We spent a pleasant evening together; they helped me finish the albariño and I helped them through a jug of beer. They told me their life stories: they were former teachers who had become computer programmers after they found themselves unemployable in modern America because of their sexuality. I gave them a heavily edited version of mine: I said that I was a divorcée with a young son, taking a break for a few days, thanks to my aunt, who was minding child and dog at home. When I revealed where that was, they announced that they were heading north to a resort (they didn’t say ‘gay’ but I was sure that’s what they meant) they knew in Catalunya, so I gave them my mobile number and my address, just in case their onward travels took them anywhere near St Martí.

The encounter drew to a natural end around nine thirty. The guys went on their way, towards Plaza Nueva, and I went on mine, back towards the hotel, stopping off at another pavement café for the last coffee of the gently cooling day.

I’ve always been good at going to sleep: insomnia and I are strangers. But that night I was afraid we would become acquainted, given the facts that I was away from familiar surroundings for the first time in a few years, and that I had a significant meeting next day, one for which I had no concrete agenda.

Over that final latte I had given some thought to what I might say to Bromberg, how I might handle her, armed as I was with Mark’s very useful information about the status and possible purpose of the company she was trying to sell me. There were two ways of playing it, as I saw it. One, I could carry on with my Jan More act, let her hit me with her sales pitch, and ask a few gentle questions, leading up to one about Roy Urquhart, whose ‘name was mentioned when I first started looking into this investment opportunity’. Two, I could abandon any subtlety, and tell her exactly who I was and why I was in town, threatening to make a hell of a loud noise unless she told me damn quick what had happened to Frank and where I could find him.

Inevitably, I asked myself, What would Oz have done? It didn’t take me long to come up with the answer. He’d have kept well out of it. He’d either have commissioned Mark, or he’d have sent Conrad Kent, his aide-cum-bodyguard, to resolve the situation. I was pretty sure that if I asked Mark to do the same for me, he’d take the job on. But I was on the ground, I had my meeting with Bromberg in my diary, and I saw no harm in going through with it, especially as it was to be in such a public place.

Still, as I slipped under a single sheet that was all the bedcover I needed, I hadn’t decided whether I was going to be Ms Gauche, or Ms Blunt. The final choice could probably wait until I saw the woman and could size her up.

I was still wide awake as I returned to Death’s Door, but I hadn’t read two short chapters before my eyes grew heavy and I found myself reading the same paragraph twice. I laid the novel on the bedside table, switched off the light and let myself sink.

Although I find it easy to nod off, that doesn’t mean I’d sleep through an earthquake or, in this case, a rush of feet so loud that, in the seconds after I awoke, I thought it was happening right there in my room. I sat upright, eyes wide open, disoriented until I remembered where I was. Heavy boots were slamming on the walkway outside my window, or rather outside the french windows that opened on to a minuscule patio, and which I had left slightly ajar for extra ventilation. As I listened it dawned on me that the noisemakers were heading along Calle Alvarez Quintero in the direction of. .

It was then that I made a big mistake. As I jumped out of bed, in the dark, heading for the curtained window, I forgot all about the special design feature that was part of my room, the painted metal pole running from floor to ceiling. (Why it was there, I still have no clue.) I remembered its existence as soon as my right big toe slammed into it, followed almost instantaneously by my shoulder.

When Tom’s around I try not to swear, but even if he’d been in the room’s other bed, I reckon I’d have let go with the same mouthful I did then. I bounced off the wall, then hirpled across to the window. As I did so, I heard a loud, splintering bang from outside. I parted the drapes, opened the twin doors, and was about to lean forward into the street, when I remembered I was buck naked.

By the time I had found the courtesy bathrobe and put it on, the post-midnight runners had gone (I checked my watch; it was just after three a. m.), but I could still hear noise. There was just enough light in the narrow street for me to guess that some of it might be coming from the newly opened door of number forty-seven. ‘Bloody hell,’ I murmured, ‘what did Mark say about getting someone to kick it in?’

I stood there watching for at least ten minutes. For a while I wasn’t the only onlooker: there was a guy in an apartment opposite my room, leaning out of a window. He asked me if I knew what had happened, but I didn’t want to be involved in a conversation, so I lied and told him in English I didn’t understand him.

A couple of minutes after he had drawn himself back in and closed up for the rest of the night, three uniformed cops emerged from the house. Two of them stood at the door, as if on guard, while the other walked back towards me, heading for the entrance to Calle Alvarez Quintero.

‘What’s the noise about?’ I asked him as he passed beneath me. He couldn’t have seen me for he almost jumped out of his steel-capped boots, before recovering himself and donning the superior expression that some young police officers adopt before the world teaches them that life isn’t Hollywood or vice versa.

‘Police business,’ he said.

‘Son,’ I told him, feeling a momentary chill as I used the word and realised that I was indeed old enough to be his madre, ‘when you waken me up in the middle of the night, it becomes my business.’

He looked at me and decided to take me seriously. ‘There’s a dead man in there,’ he said. ‘In that building along there.’

‘Was he dead when you smashed the door down, or did that happen afterwards?’

He didn’t get the irony. ‘No, he was dead already,’ he replied, straight faced.

‘So what made you go there?’

He shrugged. ‘All they tell me is we had a call that there was a deal going on there, and that we should get in. But it’s a con.’

‘What do you mean, a deal?’

‘Drugs. That’s what my team does.’

‘You’re telling me that my hotel is next to a drug den?’

‘No; that’s why I say it’s a con. There’s no drugs there that we can see, only whisky bottles and maybe some pills. . and the dead guy.’

‘So why’s he dead? Was he old? Heart-attack?’ I was doing my best to sound casual.

‘Heart-attack maybe, but he’s not that old. Maybe my father’s age.’ He smiled up at me, without any idea of the relief I felt. I realised that the bathrobe had loosened, and jerked it tight. ‘You should go back to bed, lady,’ he advised. ‘I have to go, to show the medics where to find us.’

I watched him as he walked away. As he took up position at the junction, fifty yards away, I glanced back towards the raided house. The two guards were still at the door; both were smoking, and I could hear the faint sound of their conversation, but not its detail. They did not give the impression of men on high alert.

I stepped back inside my room but left the wood-framed doors ajar. As I did so I realised that my right big toe was hurting like hell from its vicious assault on the base of the defenceless pillar. I went into the bathroom, filled the bidet with cold water and bathed my foot for a while, then limped back through and lay on my bed, waiting for the pain to subside. It didn’t. It occurred to me that I might have broken the damn digit. If that was the case there was nothing to be done, other than taping it to my second toe as a splint and taking painkillers as necessary. My nursing training has led me always to travel with a basic first-aid kit, so I patched myself up there and then.

I had just finished when I heard two vehicles pull up outside, one after the other. I rolled off the bed, limped carefully past the pole, and peered down into the street. Below, I saw a woman in plain clothes with a great frizzy ponytail that looked in the streetlight as if it might have been red, and two paramedics, one male, one female, pushing a trolley, with an empty stretcher on top. Ponytail carried a bag; it made me think, Medic. The young cop was ambling along behind them. He glanced up at my window, but didn’t appear to see me.

As they reached the door I saw that the two officers had become three. The new arrival was older than they were and wore what looked like significant braid on his shoulders. The door guards had stubbed out their cigarettes and were standing to something that might have been attention, so I assumed that he was the brass.

He greeted Ponytail with a handshake and a smile. I heard her call him something that might have been Pablo, but as she had her back to me I couldn’t be sure. He led her inside. As soon as they had gone, the male paramedic produced a pack of cigarettes and offered them to the three remaining cops. I watched, unobserved, as all four guys smoked; they chatted quietly among themselves. Suddenly the youngest, my informant, glanced round in my direction, grinning. The phrase ‘her right tittie falling out’ floated up to me. I must have been leaning further over than I’d thought. Happily, he added, ‘It looked like a pretty nice tittie, too.’ The night was getting better.

But not for long. After less time than it took to finish the fags, the doctor’s head reappeared in the doorway, together with a hand, beckoning. Her team took the stretcher from the trolley and followed her inside.

It took no time at all to load up, and I saw why as soon as they arrived. I’ve heard it said that the Spanish are less hot on dignity than us Brits. In general terms I don’t believe it, but in the middle of that night in Sevilla it was certainly the case. There was no sheet on the body as they rolled it past under my window. They took him out as they had found him, dressed in a shirt that was as grey as his face, and crumpled cream trousers that might have been linen. From the way the body was lying I could tell he had been dead for a few hours, as rigor mortis had set in.

One of his eyes was half open, staring up at the night sky. His face was a couple of days short of a shave, and his greying hair hung lankly. He was middle-aged, northern-European in appearance, and he was the spitting image of one of the pictures that still lay in my bag, that of George Macela, or whoever the hell he really was.