Gibraltar Road (13 page)

In a low voice, and smiling as she used to in the way that crinkled up her nose and brought something utterly nameless to the eyes and the oval face, she’d said rather mockingly, “Well, my Esmonde? Have you nothing to say to me, after all this time?”

Running his tongue over dry and gritty lips, he’d found the words he wanted had all gone. All he’d managed was: “I was coming to the—”

“The brothel.” She gave a low ripple of laughter. “You don’t need to euphemize with me, my Esmonde. We know each other well enough for that, I think. As it happened, I preferred to meet you here—the other was risky, for the Madame is not in my confidence. To her I am just another of her girls.”

“It’s not risky here, then?”

She said, “Not in the least. No one would interfere with a señorita and her bargaining with a client in the Calle del Virgen!” The green eyes smiled at him; he could have sworn in that instant that he’d caught a hint of wistfulness in them. But she went on, in a crisper tone, “You will turn round now, please. You will walk back along the alley and turn to the left at the end. There you will find a car waiting, and you will get in.”

Shaw didn’t move. Coming out of his dream now, he asked, “What’s the idea, Karina?”

“That I will tell you when you are in the car.”

“You’ll tell me now.”

She shrugged. “Very well. I wanted anyway to see you again for old times’ sake, but now there are other things.” Her voice had become harder. “In a nutshell, my dear Esmonde, I want to have you out of the way until the man Ackroyd is clear of Spain—oh, yes, I have him!” she added, as she saw the query in his eyes. “He is no longer in La Linea. He is where you will never find him, but I believe in making quite sure, you understand? And I want you for something else—information. The man Ackroyd, he is a useless worm. If necessary you will come back to my country with me.”

Other things, too, returned to Shaw. Through the mists he realized that there was one satisfactory aspect: Ackroyd hadn’t talked. That must be true, for otherwise Karina would not want him for ‘information.’ He wasn’t quite sure what she’d meant by saying Ackroyd was a useless worm. But, with a growing sense of dread, he recalled something else she’d said, and that was that she knew through her contacts in London about Debonnair’s flight, knew she had arrived in Gibraltar—and had threatened that if Shaw did not talk, she would bring Debonnair out from Gibraltar, make him talk under threat of what might be done to her. In this there was one patch of light: Karina could not know of the danger threatening Gibraltar, or she would scarcely use the removal of Debonnair as a threat. Security was, as yet, intact.

He’d stood firm, and he hadn’t gone towards the car. Instead he’d asked, “What if I don’t move?”

“I will shoot, even though I do not wish to do that to you.”

He grinned down at her. “You’d never get away with that.”

“On the contrary.” She gave a short laugh. “In the Calle del Virgen they look after their own kind. Turn, please. Esmonde, I do not wish to harm you.”

She’d sounded as though she meant that.

Shaw had given a slight shrug then and turned. But as he did so he’d brought his left hand smashing down on her wrist. As her small pistol fell with a click on the ground he’d brought out his own revolver, pushed the muzzle at her. She was close enough for him to see the firm roundness of her breasts through the thin suit, close enough for him to draw in her perfume, that wonderful perfume . . . and then, as she gave a sudden cry, as though of warning, he saw her glance flick upward and he caught a glimpse of a figure in deep shadow on the balcony above, the balcony towards which she had drawn him, and something swinging on the end of a rope.

As the sandbag took his skull Shaw went out like a light, stone cold on the filthy paving-stones. Just before the bombshell burst in his head he’d seen Karina dart a little to one side and, just as the sandbag hit, some reflex action made his fingers tighten on the trigger of his revolver. As he fell Karina flitted unhurt into the shadows, but a uniformed member of the Policia Municipal, coming with a companion into the mouth of the alley, cursed as Shaw’s bullet snicked through his coat-sleeve;-the bullet went on and spun the carbine on the shoulder of a Civil Guard passing along the other side of the street beyond.

It was morning before Shaw realized where he was.

The filthy, smelly cell, the
calabozo
with the tiny, high-set grille window through which the sun now faintly struggled, had meant nothing to him until the door had been swung back and the light from the passage showed up the
municipal
coming in with a tin platter of revolting-looking food and a mug which gave off a thin trail of steam.

The policeman was quite jovial really, told Shaw that it had been lucky for him that a police patrol had been entering the alley when he passed out, or he might never have been seen again—as it was, said the policeman, the figure of a woman had vanished with most suspicious haste—vanished altogether—at their approach. The man seemed to take it for granted that Shaw had been bargaining with a prostitute, that he knew—or should know—the dangers of being discovered drunk on the paving-stones by the scavenging men and women who inhabited the Calle del Virgen.

Shaw asked, “What am I being charged with?”

“With firing—fortunately harmlessly—an offensive weapon at the Policia Municipal.”

“How long will I be kept here?”

The policeman shrugged. “I do not know. Possibly a long time.”

Shaw glowered, but knew it would be no good arguing with this man. The policeman said, quite kindly, “
Hombre
, you must indeed be considered very fortunate in being alive at all. Perhaps you will be more careful in future.”

He set down the food and went, locking the door behind him. After the man had gone Shaw felt in his pockets. All his papers had gone, and so, naturally, had his revolver. He didn’t know what construction they would place upon a British Service revolver being found in his possession, but since (as it appeared from the way the
municipal
had spoken) they seemed to be taking his worker’s pass into Gibraltar as genuine, and had no other apparent reason for not believing him to be a bona fide Spanish citizen, he could probably say that he’d pinched the weapon from somewhere in the dockyard and trust to their not being over-concerned about British property. He didn’t think he would be unduly pushed over that aspect; the big questions were, how long would they keep him locked up, and how could he skate from under the charge of actually firing the gun at the police— an act, incidentally, which he himself didn’t remember in the least? There was a chance—just a chance—that it mightn’t be all that serious; the policeman had seemed more kindly disposed toward him than he would have expected, considering that the charge was one of firing at the Policia. The inference, if anything at all was to be inferred from that, was that he had the excuse of being drunk. They understood that kind of thing in Spain. But—the Spanish legal formulae were timeless, might go on for days or even weeks.

His mental processes made his head pains almost unbearable, and he lay back, sick in the guts, weakly cursing his lack of alertness the night before.

Later, when Shaw had refused to touch the revolting breakfast, he was taken under escort to a dusty office where the sergeant in charge sat behind a deal table layered with forms. Charges were preferred, and Shaw felt too ill to attempt the sheer futility of disputing the indisputable. But he did gather that he was, as he had thought, being taken at his face value as Pedro Gomez, worker in Gibraltar Dockyard, which suited him well enough. He knew that it would be worse than useless to plead his British status to secure his release—for one thing, he had in any case entered Spain illegally, and as an agent he had only himself to blame for his predicament; and likewise—even apart from the all-important question of security—it would do him no good in the world to denounce Karina. She would clearly have left La Linea by this time, might be anywhere; and by the time the interminable delays, the procrastinations, the mañanas, over verification and all the diplomatic niceties had been gone through it would be far too late to find her; and anyhow the mere fact of her arrest would not of itself stop Gibraltar blowing to the skies.

And now there were only five days to go. Shaw just had to get out of that casilla. So he played his one and only permissible card, the card which had been handed to him by Carberry and Latymer back in London.

To the sergeant he said, “Señor, I ask you to get in touch with a friend of mine, a very good friend who lives in Torremolinos.”

The sergeant grunted, picked at his teeth with a corner of Shaw’s worker’s pass. “It will do you no good,
hombre
.”

“Nevertheless I ask you to do this.” Shaw’s fingers bunched into fists, his angular body tensed. “My friend is Señor Don Jaime de Castro, who has business interests in Jerez, and knows me well.”

The tooth-picking operation stopped; the worker’s pass rasped downward over an unshaven chin. “Don Jaime!” The sergeant shot a stream of saliva on to the floor, scuffed it into the dust with his boot and laughed aloud. “Don Jaime would be flattered to think he had a friend such as you!
Hombre
,
hombre
, Don Jaime would not be interested, and you waste my time.”

Shaw sweated, felt his teeth clench hard; he hung on to his remaining strength. He reeled a little, was forced to clutch at the table to steady himself. The pain was intense, grew worse as he thought of the overwhelming urgency. He said, “Señor, I am a sick man. I shall grow worse, much worse, in the calabozo. Don Jaime is my good friend. If you do not contact him at once, without delay—that is all I ask of you—it will go hard for you when he finds out that I asked for him and did not tell him.”

Shaw hadn’t got the letter of introduction on him—it would have been stupid to bring in a letter addressed to Commander Shaw, a letter intended only as an excuse to the Gibraltar people for taking a little leave; he had to continue arguing and pleading, and his shirt became drenched with a cold sweat, his trousers clung clammily, he was shivering violently with a kind of ague. His threats became lurid.

Don Jaime de Castro was walking up from his private beach towards the emerald-green gramon, the creeping-grass lawns * which surrounded his Torremolinos villa. This grass appeared exceptionally green, miraculously unscorched by the burning heat of the fierce Andalusian sun, against the background of the surrounding country whose barren brown was slashed only by the villas and the white-dusty road into Malaga. Don Jaime’s villa was big, its white walls set off to perfection by the brilliant green surround. It was big and cool and white, altogether delightful, with a green veranda deep and comfortable and shady and furnished with cushioned basket-chairs and a table on which Don Jaime, as he approached from the sand with water dripping from the thick black hairs on his chest on to his full, round paunch, could see his butler setting out the paraphernalia of his mid-morning appetizer. It would be a fine, dry Amontillado. Don Jaime’s habits never varied, and the Amontillado was one of the oases to which he looked forward immensely. It would be a fine—the finest—sherry from Don Jaime’s own
bodega
in Jerez de la Frontera, where Don Jaime owned the most famous
bodega
of them all, as had before him his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, his great-great-grandfather. As the most substantial sherry-exporter of Spain, Don Jaime was a man of very great importance and quite considerable influence in an area stretching far beyond Jerez—an area stretching from Cadiz northeast to Granada, and from there down to Almeria.

Don Jaime advanced slowly, almost sensually savouring the strength of the sun as it steamed the Mediterranean off his broad shoulders and left him feeling fresh and invigorated. Tufts of black hair proliferated from his armpits like young bushes, and these were matched by the luxuriant sprouting of his eyebrows and a profusion of hair from ears and nostrils. A hairy man—even his back carried a fluffy outcrop across the shoulders and tapering down the spine— except for the head. Apart from thickish tufts above the ears, and some sparse growth at the back, that head itself was as bald as a Seville tile and just as smooth, the brown scalp with its criss-cross of bluish veins tight and shiny over the immense barren plain of the flat head.

A child—son of his eldest son, who would one day succeed to the great responsibilities of the
bodega
and its dependants —scampered up to Don Jaime across the grass, and the big man gathered the boy into his arms and lifted him high above his head, great muscles rippling in the boxer-like arms.

He gave a booming laugh.

“Well, little señorito. What brings you away from the school-room? Playing truant?”

“The Miss has gone to her room. She has a headache,” said the little boy gravely.

“Which you gave her,
hijo
.” The thick black brows came together in awful accusation.

The boy’s skin darkened a little, but the eyes were mischievous. “Oh, no, Abuelo. I came to tell you that Señor Martin is troubled. The telephone rang once—twice. The matter is urgent, and he does not know what to do.”

Don Jaime’s eyes twinkled through rolls of sun-dark flesh. He asked, equally grave, “How do you know that Señor Martin is troubled?”

“Because he perspires, and looks anxious, and his belly wobbles.”

The old man gave a great gust of laughter, and set the boy down gently at his feet. He lowered his thick eyebrows, and the laugh expired in a grunt. “Señor Martin knows better than to disturb me until I have dressed and drunk my sherry, little one. Until then we must let him agitate himself in peace.” He tweaked the child’s ear. “What else did the small ears pick up—the small ears which should not have been listening to what they were not meant to hear?”

“Nothing more,
Abuelo
.”

“Then off with you!” The Spaniard gave a huge roar and crinkled his eyebrows terrifyingly. The little boy ran off, laughing but instinctively obedient. Don Jaime lumbered on towards the house, his body dried off now. In his shady, shuttered bedroom his valet had laid out a clean starched shark-skin suit, a dark red cummerbund, a white silk shirt. When Don Jaime had dressed with his usual care he strolled out to the veranda looking like a prosperous pirate from the Spanish Main, and smelling richly of the special pomade from Paris which he used upon the remnants of his hair. The butler, who was waiting for him, carefully poured the Amontillado into the cone-shaped glass and then left his master’s presence.