When Lucas opened the door to the apartment and called out to announce their arrival, a young man with startling blue eyes in a deeply tanned face hurried out from the living room to greet them.
‘Holà, holà,’ he said, and he grasped Mackenzie’s hand in both of his to pump it enthusiastically. ‘I’m Antonio, welcome. Excuse me for not speaking English, but Cristina says your Spanish is impeccable.’
Mackenzie raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Did she?’
Antonio ruffled Lucas’s hair, and Mackenzie wondered if the boy had inherited the gene which was already leading to early hair loss in his father. ‘Come in, come in.’
They squeezed past a coat stand laden with jackets and hats and scarves and into a cramped, square living space with a dresser and dining table, and an oversized L-shaped settee gathered around a coffee table. A small TV on a stand burbled in the corner beside French windows leading on to a small balcony. What little floor space remained was booby-trapped with discarded toys and shoes.
Antonio was suddenly self-conscious, as if seeing for the first time his own living space through someone else’s eyes. ‘Excuse the mess,’ he said, and started scooping away jackets and laundry to create sitting space on the settee. ‘Lucas, put those toys away in your room.’
Obediently the boy did as he was told, gathering plastic trucks and models of Star Wars characters and a couple of footballs into his arms to carry away to his bedroom.
Through a door opening off the living room, Mackenzie saw into a tiny kitchen. Cristina, pot in hand, swung into view. She wiped a forearm across her forehead and glared at him. She was out of uniform now, and if anything seemed even smaller in jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair tumbled freely around her shoulders, and she looked harassed. Mackenzie thought that if he’d met her like this in the street he might not have recognized her. ‘Sit at the table, I’m about ready to serve up,’ she said, and vanished from view again.
Antonio grinned at him. ‘Always chaos in here,’ he said, and waved Mackenzie into a seat. Lucas returned from his bedroom to claim the seat opposite Mackenzie and sit watching him with unabashed curiosity. Antonio drew in a chair beside his son and said, ‘Didn’t seem right that you should be eating on your own up at the hotel. Where did you learn your Spanish? At university?’
‘Never went to university,’ Mackenzie said. ‘I taught myself all my languages.’
Antonio’s eyes opened wide. ‘All your languages? How many do you speak?’
‘Four if you include English.’
Antonio whistled softly. ‘That makes me feel very inadequate. My English is very poor. Lucas speaks it better than I do. Don’t you, son?’
Lucas blushed.
‘We send him to a private Catholic school near Estepona. They teach half his subjects in the medium of English. It costs an arm and a leg, and we have to drive him there every day. But you have to make sacrifices, don’t you? Can’t put a price on your children’s future.’
Mackenzie felt a stab of guilt, and wondered if it could be said that he had made sufficient sacrifices for his.
Almost as if he sensed it, Antonio said, ‘Do you have any yourself?’
Mackenzie nodded. ‘Two.’ But he didn’t want to elaborate. That would only lead to the subject of his marriage and his separation from Susan. Subjects he did not want to discuss with strangers, but would feel obliged to do so if they asked. He was rescued by a flustered Cristina carrying two steaming plates of spaghetti bolognese to the table. She placed one each in front of Mackenzie and Lucas and hurried off to get another two, while Antonio poured red wine into their glasses.
He laughed ‘Boloñesa. An Italian dish for your first night in Spain.’
Cristina returned with the other plates, but was not amused. ‘Pasta is quick and easy,’ she said, ‘when you have been out working all day.’
‘We all work all day, cielo.’
‘But we don’t all have to make dinner when we get home.’
Antonio’s smile was strained. ‘Except when your wife’s on the night shift being shot at.’
Mackenzie sensed the tension between them and took a mouthful of spaghetti to avoid having to speak.
‘Nobody shot at me.’
‘No, just threatened to kill you and your family after you made him shoot his girlfriend.’
Cristina glared at him, and flicked her eyes pointedly toward Lucas, as if to say not in front of the boy! But Lucas appeared not to be paying any attention, his eyes fixed on the TV screen in the corner, and Mackenzie thought he must have heard this script before.
Antonio tried to laugh it off. ‘It’s a tough town this,’ he said to Mackenzie. ‘You wouldn’t think so to look at it. Especially since the ayuntamiento spent taxpayers’ money on the makeover. Tourists flock here in the summer. Beautiful buildings, wonderful views, delicious wine. Unaware of the gangs that operate out of the derelict housing developments on the outskirts. Boom town Marviña until the financial crash. You’ll have seen the consequences everywhere, all over the valley. Unfinished apartment blocks. Concrete skeletons. Cranes standing over them, like dinosaurs frozen in time. Most of them haven’t moved in over ten years, the companies that owned them long since gone bust.’
‘Breeding grounds for crime,’ Cristina said gloomily. ‘Squatters. Illegal immigrants. Drugs gangs.’
Antonio used his fork to wind spaghetti into a ball in his spoon. ‘The kind of people the mother of my son has to mix with every day.’ He flashed a glance towards his wife.
‘Not really,’ Cristina said. She seemed weary. This was a well-rehearsed argument. ‘The men get to do all the fun stuff. I get to do paperwork, traffic duty and search female suspects. A little ironic since I actually topped my year at the police academy.’
Antonio said to Mackenzie, ‘Her parents were dead set against
