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.’
37. The Raven
As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. On Thursday morning Carmen sends me a text message apologizing if she seemed ‘strange’ outside the apartment and promising to ‘make this up’ to me if I am free for lunch on Saturday. I give Macduff the good news over coffee – explaining that our Friday dinner date has morphed into a weekend lunch – and he concurs with me that Carmen simply didn’t want to seem cheap by sleeping with me on our first date. I run through my general impressions of the evening and then head home for a siesta. The vital question – concerning her willingness to betray de Francisco once she learns of the dirty war – is left unanswered. None of us can make an informed judgment about that until I have spoken to her at length both about her career and her views on Basque terror. Of course it’s still possible that she herself might be part of the conspiracy. It’s an implausible thesis, but the liar is always vulnerable to his own deceit.
When I have woken up, later than planned after a night of gruelling dreams, I walk down Ventura Rodriguez and check emails at the internet cafe. There’s one from Saul which reawakens all my old paranoia just at the point at which I was sure there was nothing left to worry about.
From: sricken 1789@hotmail. comTo: almmlalam@aol. com
Subject: Enrique
So, what does a recently divorced man of 33 do with his time except sit around drinking Rioja and watching DVDs? And what does he do once he gets bored of doing that and of ringing up his old girlfriends, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF WHOM is now living in Queen’s Park or Battersea with her ‘wonderful husband’ and their little ‘bundle of joy’ and their wedding list crockery and their David Gray albums? Well, a recently divorced man of 33 writes down a list of famous Spanish movie stars and translates their names into English.
Here’s what I came up with:
Antonio Banderas – Anthony Flags
Penelope Cruz – Penelope Cross
Benicio del Toro – Ben of the Bull
Paz Vega – Peaceful Lowlands
Good game, isn’t it? Only, I was doing this for quite a long time, got into singers and politicians, and guess what I discovered?
Julio Iglesias – Julian Church
He’s a spook, Alec! It’s a cover name! All your worst nightmares have been confirmed! Pack your bags! Sell your flat! Check your underwear for bugs!
Hope all well -
S
I cannot allow myself to react to this. If I am going to do my job properly there can be no doubt in my mind about the legitimacy of Kitson’s operation, of Sofia’s possible role in the dirty war or of Julian’s double-life as a spy. All these things have been ironed out. I have to blank out such conspiracies. In none of my initial research into Julian’s background, nor in the more recent discoveries regarding Nicole and his life in Colombia, did I discover anything to make me remotely suspicious about his real identity. Julian Church is just who he appears to be – a private banker with an adulterous wife living out the expat dream in Spain. Saul is just winding me up.
Carmen and I meet for lunch on Saturday at a restaurant off Calle de Serrano, and it is from this point on that our relationship starts to become more serious. Barrio Salamanca is a more rarefied environment than La Latina, and one in which she seems a good deal more relaxed, at home with the expensive wives and moneyed twentysomethings gabbling into their mobile phones in branches of Gucci and Christian Dior. I glimpse, not for the first time, her secret dream of joining this elite urban middle class through marriage; they are, after all, the very people who voted her boss into office. Afterwards we go for a walk in the Retiro and I hire a rowing boat in a spirit of romantic endeavour. About fifteen metres from the concrete shore we share our first, surprisingly skilful kiss. I spend the rest of the afternoon in abject terror of encountering Sofia walking hand-in-hand with Julian but disguise my apprehension with ease. Fortune tellers, portrait painters, Peruvian puppeteers, even a poet from Chile have set up stalls along the western edge of the Estanque lake and we drift from group to group in the dense crowds with the permanent accompaniment of pan-piped music. On a grass verge near the cafe a group of Chinese immigrants are selling head and shoulder massages for a couple of euros. Carmen offers to buy me one – giggling now, really enjoying herself – but just as I have sat on the low stool and felt a dry hand settling on my aching neck two policemen appear on horseback, scattering every illegal immigrant in the vicinity to the four winds.
‘Not very relaxing,’ I joke, struggling to my feet. Carmen laughs and we kiss again and she puts her arm round my waist.
