But just off to my left the glasses rattled on the waiter's tray.
I finished my drink at a leisurely speed and made my way back to the police station. I hadn't caught a fish but I'd certainly stirred up the mud. Maybe the murk would attract a big one. I thanked the desk sergeant for his help and drove into the narrow gateway from the station yard. I stopped there, and looked both ways to see if the road was clear. It's a policy I've adopted over the years. It wasn't, and I had to wait for several seconds.
A man in a doorway opposite was having great difficulty lighting a cigarette. His body language was yelling: 'I know this looks suspicious, but I can't think of anything better to do.' It wasn't possible to be certain, but he looked like the waiter from the Pillars.
I pulled on to the road and immediately stopped. In the mirror I saw him leave the doorway and hurry off. On the back of his T-shirt was a picture of a Greek bodybuilder carrying a club over his shoulder. What a prat. I chuckled at the ease of it all.
If I hurried I could make it to Puerto Banus with an hour or two of daylight left, so I did. It hadn't changed much, just put on its evening gown and dinner jacket. I had to admit it: the place had style. The loudest noise you could hear was that of wealth rubbing up to opulence. None of the boats had moved. I was reaching the point where I could name most before I saw them. I ordered a glass of house tin to in a pavement cafe and let darkness fall around me. There were worse places to be.
'Suki! Stop doing that. Be a good boy. Oh, Kimmy! You're all in a tangle. Come to Mummy.'
Northern vowels were breaching the peace. I turned towards their source. A peroxide blonde in a leopard- spot blouse and leather miniskirt had two dogs on leads. One of them was having a pee against a lamppost and the other had the lead wrapped round its legs. She untangled it and picked it up.
'Hurry up, Suki,' she said impatiently.
Personally, I'd have toe-ended the little bugger into the bay. When it had finished she waddled off, lucky Kimmy pressed to her bosom and Suki trotting alongside. She was wearing stiletto heels, and her skirt was so tight that her legs couldn't move in parallel they had to oscillate around each other with each mincing step. If you'd placed a dry stick between her thighs the friction would have ignited it.
It was the dogs, though, that I was mainly interested in. They were a bit like Yorkshire terriers, but hairier and more softly coloured. I didn't know what a shih-tzu looked like, but I'd have gambled Gilbert Wood's pension that I was looking at a pair. I left a three hundred per cent tip because I had nothing smaller and followed her.
The only description I had of Cakebread's wife was that she was an ex-beauty queen. The ex part was accurate, but I wasn't happy about the rest of it, unless you only had to enter to qualify. I followed her along the quay until we were down among the wanna bees the ones that it would only take me eight lifetimes to earn the equivalent of.
She turned on to a jetty and then picked up the other dog to carry it up a short gangplank. Ignoring the sign showing a lady's shoe with a line drawn through it she crossed the deck towards the cabin and let herself in. I watched from the shore. The boat was called Pelican; there was no need to look — I could remember it. Only because of its associations with Francis Drake, though: my powers of theoretical deduction had been a complete waste of time.
I sat on a bench on the dockside until nearly midnight, watching the lighted windows on the boat, sometimes turning to watch the beautiful women and their partners strolling by, resplendent in their evening finery. Lady Breadcake would either go to bed, in which case I'd go home, or she was right now changing into something stunning before hitting the town, in which case I would follow her. Plenty of people were promenading up and down, enjoying the warm night air. A couple of times I walked on to the jetty and strolled along it, hanging about as I passed the Pelican, but there was no sound to be heard.
I'm never sure if you can actually see a light go out. One moment it's there, a hundredth of a second later it's not. The windows at the front of the boat went dark, then those in the middle, sorry, amidships, and then the ones at the stern. It was as if she were working her way towards the door, before coming ashore. Some people were passing in front of me. I stood up and walked a few paces forward to lean on the railing.
Someone rattled off something in Spanish in my ear and a hand gripped my arm.
A pockmarked man was speaking to me, but it was the ugly black automatic he was poking into my side that demanded most of my attention.
He had the advantage of a gun, I had the advantage of unpredictability.
Of the two, I'd have preferred the weapon, but you can only make the best of what God gives you. I swept his gun hand to one side and thumped him, hard, in the solar plexus. The air in his body burst out in a rasping gasp, bringing most of his stomach contents with it, and he went down like a tower of dominoes. His pal was more professional: he must have cracked me on the side of the head with his pistol. I saw a display that would have pleased Standard Fireworks and the next thing I remember is being on the ground, surrounded by legs and shiny shoes.
It was impossible to tell if they were friendly or foe-ly.
I rolled on to my side. I was immediately grabbed by strong hands and my arms were forced behind my back and manacled.
They were definitely foe-ly. They dragged me to my feet and pushed me towards a car. I swayed about and kept my head down, trying to act a lot worse than I felt. The one I'd hit was sitting on the pavement, his back against a post. His face was the colour of a toad's belly, and the front of his shirt looked like a salad bar. We tore off with a squeal of tyres, and I did my best to take notice of where we were heading. I needn't have bothered: we arrived in about three minutes.
They pulled me out of the back seat and bundled me towards the door of an imposing building. Several cars were neatly parked on either side of the entrance. They were black and white, and had POLICIA stencilled on the sides. These were the good guys.
Nobody read my rights to me. They just confiscated everything from my pockets, removed the laces from my trainers, took off the 'cuffs and threw me in a cell.
A sickly youth with a stupid grin was already in it. He put two fingers to his lips and said: 'Cigarrillo?'
'Yes, thank you,' I told him, in fluent Spanish.
There were two benches, for sleeping or sitting on, and a small sink in the corner with a single tap. It smelt as if someone had been pissing in it. I swilled round the basin with cold water, then washed my face.
There was no mirror or towel, so I dried myself on the front of my T-shirt. The wound on the side of my head had bled a little, but it had stopped now. After a few minutes the guard's keys rattled in the lock.
Good, I thought, let's be getting out of here. He opened the door and threw me a blanket. There was an air of finality about his action. I rolled it into a pillow and stretched out on the vacant bunk. The youth was laid under his blanket. Trying to perform two functions with a single blanket was a form of torture. I resolved to write to Amnesty International, if I ever escaped from this dump. I looked across at my cell-mate. He wasn't very big; if it became cold during the night I'd just have to steal his.
Morning came, although there were long periods when I doubted if it ever would. Like I'm told they do in hospitals, they woke me up just after I'd dropped off to sleep. A full English would have gone down well, but they didn't even offer coffee. The guard just told me to 'Come', grabbed me under the armpit and marched me upstairs. I didn't argue, I was in no position to, but I was amazed how compliant one night in jail had made me.
Capitano R. Diaz sat behind a big polished desk that could have graced a modest boardroom. He wore a blue suit with a dazzling white shirt.
The silver stripes in his tie were echoed in his cufflinks. The desk was clear, apart from the large brown envelope that had contained my meagre possessions, which were now coming under his scrutiny, and a nameplate that told me who he was. One of his lieutenants was also in the room. He studied the contents of my wallet for several minutes, the last few being devoted to my warrant card. Then he sat with his hands together as if in prayer, his fingertips touching his lips.
Finally he said: 'Sit down, Inspector Priest,' gesturing to a chair and passing my laces across the table. 'Would you be good enough to tell me what you were doing last night in Puerto Banus?' His English was about as good as mine, but his accent was sexier.
'Thank you.' It seemed impolite to put my foot on his desk while I replaced my laces, so I wrapped them around my fingers. 'I'm on holiday, Captain. Whilst I was here I heard that a known criminal one I've had dealings with was in the area, so I thought I'd watch out for him. I believe he may be staying on the boat called the Pelican.9 'And his name?'
