Poison At The Pueblo (19 page)

‘You are a friend of the Admiral,' she said, as they set off up the path. She took his arm, balancing against him so as not to fall over on the ridiculous heels.

‘Admiral Picasso?' he ventured. Picasso was the only Admiral he knew either in Spain or anywhere else. Not that he had ever regarded the title as anything more than an honorific. He had always thought of Picasso as a sort of Gilbert and Sullivan admiral, not someone who would have commanded an Armada galleon in 1588. Italians who had mastered the equivalent of the three Rs were always called ‘
Dottore
'. Same sort of nonsense.

‘Admiral Picasso,' she said, rolling the words around her tongue so that they took on a sexy quality that they completely lacked when enunciated by an Englishman like Bognor, ‘Juan. Do you know him through your work?'

‘No, certainly not. I know him through our mutual love of . . . er . . . classical guitar . . . Rodrigo, Segovia, Julian Bream, John Williams.'

She laughed and Bognor sensed her disbelief.

‘I always understood Juan was tone deaf. It shows only that even when you think you know someone quite well, you hardly know them at all. Juan and the guitar. I must tease him the next time I see him.'

Bognor had always regarded the Admiral as a randy old goat but had never before had anything approaching proof. Old salt or not, Picasso had always played his sexual cards close to his chest. Ahead of them a door opened and closed, and there was a brief sound of lively conversation and what sounded like bagpipe music rinsed through Iberian muslin – something to do with goatherds from Asturias or lobster-potters from Galicia, he thought, slipping easily into colour-magazine travel-writing mode.

‘You know the Admiral well?'

She flicked the glowing end of her cigarette into the darkness and he felt a shrug.

‘He is a very old friend,' she said, explaining as little as possible, ‘of the family you might say.' She laughed plangently. ‘He has asked me to make sure you come to no harm. I said there was no chance of harm. This is a very safe place.'

Bognor thought of Jimmy Trubshawe and the shot that missed. He shivered despite himself. He wondered whose side Dolores Calderon was on, if indeed she was ever on anyone's side except her own.

‘The death was very unexpected; very unusual. It is the first we have had in the entire history of the Pueblo.'

‘I'm very sorry to hear that.'

‘Thank you.'

She stopped and turned to face him. They were about halfway to the main building. An owl hooted. A dog barked.

‘Sir Simon, I would like to be frank with you. Especially as you are a friend of my friend the Admiral, though not, of course, in what you British call “a professional capacity”.'

‘Shoot,' said Bognor, not meaning to use such an inapposite word and regretting it as soon as it was uttered. It could not be withdrawn though. Like an e-mail message once you had inadvertently pressed the wrong button. It didn't matter that you sent the wrong message and possibly to the wrong person. The pressing of the button was irreversible, just like the speaking of words. He remembered the old adage about not digging further when you entered a hole and did not explain or apologize. She did not appear to notice but Bognor was unconvinced.

‘Thank you,' she said. ‘If I may be honest, Mr Trubshawe was not a nice man. Not nice at all.'

‘So I rather understand,' he said.

‘He was quite rich. He had money. But it was difficult to say where the money came from. Our friend the Admiral warned me that I should be careful.'

‘How so?' Curious and curiouser. Admiral Picasso had confided none of this. He would have seen the files; heard Bognor's views on Trubshawe; been under no illusions regarding his character and provenance. But he had said nothing about voicing his suspicions to Dolores Calderon and indeed said nothing at all about any relationship with her. Nor her family. Bognor felt like laughing out loud.

‘I mentioned that Mr Trubshawe was joining us on the seminar. But he also had what I think you call a “hidden agenda”.'

‘That's a very sophisticated phrase,' said Bognor, ‘and quite a sophisticated concept. Can you explain?'

They were still facing each other in the dark; not more than a few inches between them. Bognor wondered, fleetingly, if it had been Dolores who fired the shot and whether or not he might be in danger even now, when, despite his age, or even because of it, he was rather enjoying the proximity of this musky, husky foreign female.

‘Mr Trubshawe and the man called George claimed to have money and they were interested in buying the business. Before they finally made an offer they said they wanted to see how it worked. Close up. For themselves. Sharing the experience.'

‘So Trubshawe and the man called George knew each other?'

‘They were colleagues,' she said, ‘so, yes, naturally. They were business associates. Maybe friends also but that was not my impression.'

‘And what was your impression?' If Bognor was not so sure that he was carrying out his duty and only doing his job he might have thought that they were flirting. Ridiculous. This seemed to have become a universal truth and a source of recurring bother. He sometimes thought he was not destined for old age and uxorious slipperdom.

She lit another cigarette, dragged on it and exhaled strong, tarry smoke through her nostrils.

‘My impression is that they . . . how does one say it? That they were not friends. They acted together. They had known each other a long time. They did deals. But friends, no. Looks between them. And once I heard them arguing.'

‘How did they come to be here?'

‘They came to the office in Madrid. You know, of course, that I am partly the owner of the Pueblo organization?'

Bognor hadn't known this. He would kill one or two people, starting with Admiral Picasso, when he returned to civilization. Why did no one tell him things any more? Maybe they never had. But he always found out in the end. For the time being he just shrugged.

‘I am just what people in my part of the world call “an ordinary Joe”,' he said, ‘and I'm not naturally curious. Let's just say that I knew but I did not know.'

Two lies followed by an ambivalence, but she let it pass.

‘We had better go,' she said. ‘At least you go on. It is better that we are not seen together. I have nothing to do with the day-to-day organization. As you would say, “I am here but I am not here”. Also our friend the Admiral has made me responsible for your being safe. So I will be watching. And I think you should be careful of the man called George.'

‘Are you saying that he killed Jimmy Trubshawe?'

She breathed in smoke and blew it out again, appearing to give the question thought.

‘I do not know why you think anyone killed Mr Trubshawe,' she said. ‘He was not a very well person. It could have happened at any moment. Accident. That is all. It was very sad, but an accident. Everyone says so.'

‘But someone fed him the wrong kind of mushroom.'

‘Maybe,' she said, and bent forward to kiss Bognor lightly on the cheek, turned and was gone as swiftly and completely as she had arrived.

Bognor felt both elated and apprehensive, but moved on towards the main building and the impending discussion about the relative merits of Spanish and British sausages.

He felt vulnerable. He supposed everybody except Arizona Brown and Felipe Lee shared that sense of exposure. All of them were exposed and alone; the Spaniards even more so because they were dealing in a language not their own, though the Anglos also suffered from an isolation by language, all the more menacing because it was not apparent in their unnatural little cocoon of Englishness. The reality was that this was Spain and the tiny group of Anglos were, though apparently in charge of the proceedings, actually surrounded by a world of Hispanic otherness. At any moment this could intrude and break in on the artificial Anglocentric world of make-believe that was the Pueblo.

He supposed he had not known quite what he was letting himself in for when he took on this assignment. Maybe no man was an island. He had forgotten what it was like to be alone among potential enemies with the smell of death always in his nostrils. Security and status were insulating, and there was no question that as one progressed up the rungs of the career ladder one lost touch with life below. Whether life at the bottom was any more ‘real' than life at the top was a moot point and a matter for conjecture and debate, but there was a widespread popular notion that ‘reality' was ‘synonymous' with deprivation and lack of success, whereas the further up the tree you climbed the more out of touch you became.

He personally believed that he was astonishingly adroit at keeping in touch; that he enjoyed a special rapport with youngsters such as Contractor who came from a different generation, as did his much-loved and appreciated nephews, nieces and godchildren. He did his utmost to tune into their tastes, to appreciate the same music and clothing, and even food and drink. From time to time he even took public transport, thus risking the disdain of Thatcherites who believed that any man who takes a bus or train when he has passed the age of thirty is one of life's failures. (He half-believed this himself and only used public transport in the interests of research and ‘keeping in touch'.)

And now sausages.

He smiled at the manifest absurdity of the impending charade. Who would have thought that Sir Simon Bognor, Permanent Secretary at Special Investigations, Board of Trade, would have found himself in isolated Spain discussing the merits of the British banger with a bunch of complete strangers. Or that he would be there to investigate the sudden death of a known British villain who had been holed up in Spain, without apparent fear of extradition, ever since escaping in broad daylight from the care and custody of Her Majesty's Prison Service. Or that the aforementioned Sir Simon Bognor would have been shot at by a person or persons unknown, warned off by others, confided in – up to a point – by yet others, and generally been reduced to the ranks. All this of his own volition, without instruction from elsewhere, and to the definite disapproval of other parts of Her Majesty's Government, thus putting him yet further at risk, if not of physical harm, at least of verbal disgrace, opprobrium and so on.

He rubbed his hands, rather relishing the predicament in which he found himself. It was dark; it was cold; it was foreign; it was threatening. He was no longer as grand as he thought he was; he was far from home; there were precious few comforts close at hand.

Yet he was in his element.

He quickened his pace, still rubbing his hands together, and allowing himself the softest of self-congratulatory chuckles.

Sausages, eh?!

TWENTY-TWO

H
e was the last to arrive.

Arizona Brown looked ostentatiously at her wristwatch – an expensive Tag Heuer of the sort used by deep-sea divers many fathoms down. She did not speak but the look spoke volumes.

‘Sorry I'm late,' he said. ‘Got a bit tied up.'

‘“Tied up”,' explained Arizona to her charges, ‘does not mean ‘tied up' in a literal manner. Simon did not get in a muddle with his shoelaces. He has just produced an old-fashioned English euphemism for being late. It is not a reason. It is an excuse.'

‘Being late is pretty rich for the country which patented the word “
mañana
”,' said Bognor irritably.

‘No Spanish, please, Simon.' She sounded at least as irritable. The log fire spat.

‘English I may be,' he said, ‘old-fashioned I am not.'

One or two people tittered. He couldn't see who they were. Didn't care. Told himself he didn't care. Not necessarily the same thing. Odd how he suddenly found himself communicating inwards in staccato-speak. Must mean that I'm rattled, he thought.

Arizona spoke. ‘You're a banger,' she said, ‘so you're down the far end of the room near the fire with George, Lola and Belen. Leonel, Tracey, Camilla and Eduardo are chorizos. I shall float between the two camps assisting where needed. Felipe will do the same.'

Felipe smiled and nodded, and Bognor joined his group trying to appear nonchalant and as if he did this sort of thing all the time. He could imagine himself and Monica sitting up of an evening playing chorizos and bangers like a Darby and Joan couple settling down to a mug of cocoa and a round or two of whist.

Everyone had a writing implement and a clipboard or notebook. Each group sat round a low table with a cafetière of coffee, a bowl of sugar and a milk jug in the middle, along with a bottle of sparkling mineral water. In front of every participant was a mug and a glass. It was almost like a real conference.

Bognor sat at the spare chair at the Bangers table, smiled and nodded at his three team mates, wondered if one of them had murdered Jimmy Trubshawe and pulled out a pencil and notebook. A moment or so later, Arizona Brown clapped her hands and smiled glacially.

‘Now that we're all assembled,' she said, looking pointedly at Simon, ‘I'd like to run over the ground rules once more just to be certain you understand.' She said once again more or less the same as she had said after lunch. Bognor felt his attention wandering.

There were two quantities unknown to Bognor, one in each group: Banger Belen on his own side and Chorizo Tracey on the other. Belen was, if his memory served him right, in her late thirties, lived in a suburban apartment and was the export manager of a small chain of Madrid-based boutique hotels. She did a lot of business in Scandinavia and sounded rather a dull stick. There was a live-in partner. She worked out.

‘You do a lot of business in Scandinavia?' he ventured, ‘Dull people the Scandinavians. Not much into sausages. Cold fish.'

She smiled back at him, discomfited.

‘Cold fish?' she repeated, obviously taking the remark literally and trying to equate Finns with ceviche, Danes with gravadlax. Not that difficult. ‘Fish in Scandinavia I like very much,' she said.