The Spanish Game

36. Blind Date

Carmen’s conversation with María the following evening makes flattering listening. Macduff has isolated the relevant sections of dialogue, revealing the target’s excitement at the prospect of meeting me again, married to an anxiety that I will fail to call. María counsels caution – it’s in her nature to do so – but she shares Carmen’s basic view that I am ‘guapo’. Their only reservation, predictably, concerns my marital status, or the possible existence of a girlfriend back in Glasgow.

‘You always have to be careful with men from the UK,’ María warns. ‘They’re emotionally repressed. My cousin had a boyfriend from London once. He was very odd. Didn’t wash properly, never spoke to his family, wore terrible clothes. They dress very scruffily, the English. And they drink. Joder. This boy was always in the pub, watching football, buying alcohol. Then he would eat kebabs on the way home. It was very strange.’

I translate most of this for Kitson and Macduff, and it’s no use pretending that I don’t derive a significant amount of pleasure from Carmen’s crush. It lifts my spirits after the farm, and I think Kitson understands this. He seems satisfied that our plan is on course and we discuss the next step.

The following morning – Monday – I call Carmen’s mobile and leave a message expressing the hope that she will ring me back. When she does so, three hours later, she plays it cool but agrees to meet for a drink in Plaza Santa Ana on Wednesday evening. Kitson is not happy about the delay, but I assure him that things will move quickly once the two of us have spent some time together.

We meet beside the statue of Lorca at 9 p.m. under the watchful eye of the Hotel Reina Victoria, the façade of which acts as a physical reminder that I have yet to break off relations with Sofía. Carmen has dressed up for the occasion, as we expected she would, although her taste in clothes has not improved from Saturday night. She’s also wearing a new perfume that I don’t like, floral remnants of which linger in my nose long after I have kissed her hello.

‘You look great,’ I tell her, and the compliment is returned as she suggests walking just a few metres to the Cervecería Alemana, an old Hemingway haunt where I took Saul on his second night.

‘You have been here before?’ she asks.

‘Never.’

Carmen is easy to talk to, intelligent and eager to please, and at first I ask a lot of questions, to set her at ease and to establish that I’m a good listener. It’s what anyone would do on a first date, so the artifice feels natural and just. I hear about her work in Medellín, her friendship with María, and she speaks briefly about her job in the Interior Ministry. I deliberately let this slide and instead steer the conversation towards a discussion about the importance of the family in Spanish life, instigating a good ten minutes about Mitxelena’s skin cancer. Looking suitably sympathetic, I tell her that my own mother had a malignant melanoma on her leg which was successfully removed, with no further complications, in 1998. Then I talk about my PhD, my job at the Glasgow Herald editing copy written by drunken Scottish hacks and she laughs when I make up a story about a crime reporter called Jimmy who was caught screwing a work-experience girl on the editor’s sofa. She does not seem prudish or coy about sex, but has an astonishingly conservative view of society and politics, even for a servant of the Aznar government. When, in a second tapas bar, I venture a mildly critical opinion of the Bush administration, Carmen frowns and argues with some force that America’s mission in Iraq is not about oil or weapons of mass destruction, but a long-term crusade to create stable democracies right across the Middle East.

‘If we are strong,’ she says, ‘if we have the courage to see that young men will no longer wish to become terrorists because they live in these new democratic environments, then the world will be a safer place. We cannot continue to be isolated, Alex. Spain must move into the rest of the world, and this is where Aznar is taking us.’

Such an attitude is relevant to my operation inas-much as it reveals something about Carmen’s political affiliations. In due course, I will have to ask her for information which may help to bring down the government; her willingness to assist in that task will certainly be affected by her loyalty to the state. On this basis, it seems sensible to position myself in the same ideological neighbourhood.

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ I tell her. ‘It’s not naïve to suppose that once every family in the Arab world has a colour TV, a microwave and a vote, things will become a lot easier. I often think that Arab leaders prefer violence and poverty to democracy and freedom, don’t you? If they could only share the Western values Bush and Aznar are trying to promote.’

‘What values do you mean?’

I have to scramble for answers. ‘You know. Honesty, tolerance, the desire for peace. There’s nothing we want more than for these people to live civilized, peaceful lives as part of a civilized, peaceful global community. The idea that America would invade Iraq just to get its hands on some oil and a few construction contracts is cynical and counter-productive. It makes me really angry.’

I may have gone a bit far here, because even Carmen looks astonished to have encountered a man under the age of forty espousing such views. Yet her perplexed expression gradually melts into one of intense relief. She has met a fellow believer. Assured now of both our physical and intellectual compatibility, she flirts with greater emphasis, and I feed off the energy of her desire, even as my own lies dormant. We order tapas and I pretend that I have eaten jamón on only two occasions in my life, a confession which cements her impression of me as a card-carrying guiri. For the rest of the night she makes a point of introducing me to the delights of Spanish cuisine – boquerones en vinagre, pimientos de padrón – and I play the role of the gobsmacked tourist to perfection, marvelling at the variety and sophistication of her nation’s food. I am even mindful of María’s warning about drunken Englishmen, and match Carmen drink for drink despite longing for the fuel of vodka.

‘You know what I like about Madrid?’ I say at one point.

‘No, Alex. Tell me.’

We are sitting in La Venencia drinking manzanilla with a bowl of olives and a plate of mojama. The bar is itself an appropriately artificial environment, an old-style, spit-and-sawdust bodega in the heart of Huertas where the bullfight and flamenco posters have hung on the walls for decades, stained by years of smoke.

‘I love it that the city is so relaxed and friendly. I love it that when I order a whisky, the barman asks me when to stop pouring. I love the fact that the sun is shining virtually every day and that you can see small children running around in the Plaza Mayor at midnight. I love children. In Glasgow everything is so grey. People are drunk all the time and miserable. Madrid really lifts the spirits.’

She falls for it.

‘I like you, Alex, very much.’ It is a statement without any specific carnal inflection, largely because Carmen would surely be incapable of even the simplest eroticism. Nevertheless, her inference is clear: if I play my cards right, our relationship will quickly become sexual. Leaning across to touch her hand, I say that I like her too – very much – and both of us savour the moment with a mouthful of cured tuna.

‘So, I have to ask now. Do you have a girlfriend back in Glasgow?’

I summon one of my consoling smiles. ‘Me? No. Used to, but we split up.’ She looks pleased. And you?’

Macduff has not been able to ascertain anything about her previous relationships, although I would suspect that Carmen has been on the losing end of one or two disappointing encounters. There is something desperate, almost pleading in her nature which a man might find initially sympathetic, but increasingly tiresome. Her political views would also find few sympathetic ears, except possibly amongst those who still mourn the passing of General Franco.

‘Not at the moment, no,’ she replies, a little fizz of spittle appearing at the side of her mouth. ‘For a while I was with somebody at work, but it did not go anywhere.’

Now this is interesting. It might be possible to find out who Carmen was seeing and to use that information against her. As soon as I get an email address, Kitson might be able to persuade somebody back in London to look through her accounts on the sly. If either de Francisco or Maldonado was the boyfriend, that would certainly give us leverage. We talk for another half-hour, mostly about Glasgow and the Scottish Highlands, but at around midnight Carmen yawns and says that she needs a good night’s sleep.

This is it. The consummation. I offer to walk her the short distance from Calle Echegaray back to her apartment in La Latina.

‘You English are so polite,’ she replies. I don’t bother to remind her that Alex Miller is Scottish. ‘That is very kind of you. It will be nice to have you walk me home.’

Yet things go wrong once we get there. Convinced that Carmen is both expectant of, even desperate for, a threshold kiss, I lean in, in full view of the customers at her local bar, only to be rebuffed by a slow, careful turn of the head.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Not now,’ she says. ‘Not here.’

‘Why?’ For some reason I am intensely irritated. I had built myself up for this on the walk and her rejection is crushing. ‘What’s the matter?’

A man is looking at us from across the street.

‘I do not know if I want to kiss you yet. Please understand.’

It is difficult to read her face. Is this a well-brought-up, conservative girl playing hard to get, or a genuine expression of a sudden loss of interest? Was she worried that I would expect to be invited upstairs, or simply embarrassed to indulge in a lengthy snog in front of her neighbours? Within a few seconds Carmen has kissed me all too briefly on the cheek and gone inside with a promise to ‘be in touch’. I feel angry, but also embarrassed. The man across the street – who appears to be waiting for a cab – is still facing me and I look him full in the eye from twenty metres, staring him down. How dare she flirt with me all night and then duck home without a kiss? What the hell am I going to tell Kitson? Perhaps I was too self-confident. Perhaps I was too assertive and sure of success. In the shadow of my eyes, did she see the damage of the farm, of JUSTIFY and Kate? It is impossible to know. Perhaps she decided, as long ago as the Alemana, that it was not in her best interests to make room in her life for a man who was so obviously damaged. But I thought that I had hidden that from her. I thought that I had played the game.

‘How did it go?’ Kitson asks when he calls at 1 a.m. ‘Anthony tells me you’re not in the apartment. What happened?’

‘Carmen Arroyo is a good Catholic girl is what happened.’ I struggle to sound composed. ‘We had a little kiss on the doorstep, nothing more, then she went inside. It was all very romantic, Richard. We’re having dinner again on Friday.’

‘Did you set that up or did she?’

‘The latter.’

‘You don’t sound convinced.’

‘How does somebody sound convinced about something like that?’

There is a short pause. I have never been able to lie convincingly to Kitson.

‘Then good,’ he says. ‘So you’ll brief Anthony tomorrow?’

‘I’ll brief Anthony tomorrow.’