‘Vale,’ he says, without much enthusiasm. ‘ Adios.’
When I come back into the sitting room Saul has opened a second bottle of Ribera del Duero and rolled himself a joint. The picture on the television is frozen on the logo of Miramax International.
‘Who was that?’ he asks.
‘Just business. Just a thing about Endiom.’
‘Julian?’
‘No. Somebody else.’
I sit on the floor.
‘You all right down there?’
‘Fine.’
The opening credits start to roll. We probably won’t speak any more because both of us hate it when people talk during movies. A woman is singing a slow lament set to piano on the soundtrack. Graphics slice through Matt Damon’s head, revealing eyes, lips, mouth and hair until finally we see him sitting on a bed alone in a small room. Then he begins to talk:
If I could just go back. If I could rub everything out, starting with myself
And Saul says, ‘I know the feeling.’
22. Barajas
He is touched that I go all the way to the airport with him, but I want to make sure that Saul boards a plane. His flight is delayed, so we drink coffee for an hour in the arrivals lounge and he buys me a paperback of Ripley’s Game, in Spanish, at the newsagent. Later I see that Ripley’s wife is called Heloise.
At the security checks we embrace briefly but he continues to hold my arms when we break off.
‘It’s been good to see you, mate. Really good. I’m glad things have worked out. So just look after yourself, OK? Don’t do anything stupid.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You know what I mean. You’re missed in London. Don’t stay here for the rest of your life. This is not where you should be.’
‘I like it here.’
‘I know you do. It’s a great country. And Madrid is a great city. But it’s not home.’
He releases my arms and picks up his bags one by one from the trolley.
‘Saul?’
‘Yes?’
I am about to apologize for all my suspicion, all my tricks and paranoia, but I don’t have the guts. Instead I just say, ‘Good luck with everything,’ and he nods.
‘Everything will be fine. We’re still young, Alec. We can start again.’ He is grinning as he says this. ‘Don’t you think that everyone deserves a second chance?’
‘Absolutely. Have a good flight.’
And as soon as he is gone, waving just once before passing through into departures, I feel a great sense of loss. How long will it be before we see one another again? How long before I can go home? I have to find a bar and order a whisky to lift the gloom of sudden solitude. It feels as if I wasted his visit to Madrid, as if I misjudged Saul’s intentions and kept him constantly at arm’s length. He didn’t leave just one day after getting back from Andalucia because of Heloise. He didn’t leave because there was no connection with Julian or Arenaza. He left because something elementary in our relationship had shifted: what was once there is lost, and there was nothing Saul could do to get it back. The Alec he knew as a younger man is now a different creature, a creature whose true nature has been revealed. And if a friendship no longer gives you pleasure, then why remain loyal to that friend? Getting a cab back home I conclude that Saul will now move into a different phase of his life, just as I have done in mine. It’s ridiculous, really, speeding along the motorway in the taxi and thinking that, in all probability, I will never see my oldest friend again.
23. Bonilla
When Bonilla cancels yet another scheduled meeting I begin to think that I may have been ripped off. Five hundred euros in cash, handed to Mar at Atocha station almost a week ago, and not a single piece of useful information to show for it. Cetro’s entire week-end of surveillance turns up the following breathtaking facts: that Rosalia went to a party on Saturday evening dressed as a Bunny Girl; that she spoke to Gael for forty-five minutes on the telephone from the Delic cafe in Plaza de la Paja on Sunday morning; that she visited ‘a widow – almost certainly her mother’ in Tres Cantos that same afternoon. Neither has Bonilla been able to find out anything about Abel Sellini. Instead he is cloyingly apologetic on the telephone as he explains that he must attend a funeral in Oviedo (‘My wife’s brother, he has died suddenly’) before returning to Madrid on Thursday.
‘But let’s meet in person, Senor Thompson,’ he says. ‘I will take you to lunch at the Urogallo restaurant in Casa de Campo. This has been an interesting case. I always like the opportunity to meet a client in person.’
Once a hunting ground for the Spanish royal family, the Casa de Campo is now a vast area of protected land south-west of the old city overrun with prostitutes and mountain bikers. On an average evening in spring and summer, virtually every road running through the park from Pozuelo to down-town Madrid is jammed with kerb- crawling Pedros looking for a back-seat hand-job or a fumble in the woods. It’s a depressing sight: line after line of illegal immigrant girls from Africa, South America and Eastern Europe wandering into the headlights of oncoming cars, flashing their underwear and then banging on the roofs of the vehicles as they pass them by. Urogallo is at the more respectable end of the park, one of several outdoor restaurants lining the southern edge of a lake where rowing boats can be rented all year round.
Bonilla calls to confirm the lunch early on Thursday morning and I know that he’s not going to cancel again when he reminds me that I still owe him €1,600 for the weekend’s surveillance.
‘A cheque will be fine,’ he says, ‘although of course we prefer cash.’
A two-stop metro ride takes me from Plaza de Espana to Lago station, from where it’s just a short walk downhill to the restaurant. Urogallo has a large eating area set amongst a grove of plane trees looking out onto the lake, the jet-fountain at its centre bisecting a magnificent view of the city beyond. Bonilla has picked a table at the far side of a white marquee with flaps that can be raised and lowered according to the weather. It’s a bright afternoon, the first sign of spring, so the tent is open to the elements. He recognizes me from a description provided by Mar but doesn’t bother removing his €200 sunglasses as he shakes my hand.
‘Senor Thompson. I’m finally happy to meet you.’
Bonilla is younger than I expected, about thirty-eight and in impressive physical condition, with inflated pectoral muscles visible through a black nylon T-shirt. Gym-honed biceps roam through his light white jacket and he has tightly cropped black hair, long narrow sideburns and a very thin strip of beard that runs in a plumb line from the centre of his lower lip to a tanned cleft chin. Looking at him in a split instant, you might be reminded of a barcode.
‘Let me start by apologizing for any of the inconvenience my organization may have caused you in terms of any cancelled meetings,’ he says. ‘Maybe I can start by ordering you something from the bar, Mr Thompson, a cocktail of some sort?’
It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and we’re sitting next to a polluted municipal lake, so there’s something faintly ridiculous about the offer. Nevertheless I ask for a fino manzanilla and make small talk about the weather.
‘Yes,’ Bonilla replies, gazing up at the sky as if dazzled by God’s munificence. ‘It is a beautiful day, isn’t it? Tell me, how long have you lived in Madrid?’
‘About five years.’
‘And you plan to stay?’
