Poison At The Pueblo (6 page)

The car was a Mercedes; the chauffeur wore a dark-blue suit, white shirt and striped tie. His English was unaccented and fluent. Contractor sat in the front alongside him; the Bognors lent back in the rear of the vehicle and inhaled the smell of leather. Class distinctions were still applying. They would share a hotel but Contractor would have a bog-standard single; the Bognors a mini-suite.

Spain rolled past outside the tinted glass windows. She had moved on amazingly in Bognor's lifetime, but remained the most impenetrable of foreign neighbours. The Spanish capital had taken on a sense of style. The women had become svelte and soignée and the men well-groomed. When Bognor first encountered them the Spanish were drab. He thought of the women in black shapeless smocks and the men in blue overalls. That can't have been entirely true but it was how he remembered them. In those days the British had looked down on them, regarding them as third-world peasantry from a backward sad country, whereas they, the British, were the victors of the world war and were taller and more cultivated, richer and smarter. They were still, for the most part, taller but that was about all.

Cranes and scaffolding dominated the cityscape making Madrid feel almost Chinese. The prosperity was almost tangible. In its wake came organized crime. Central and South America spoke the same language and came with drugs. Eastern Europe provided tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, many of them subsisting on crime, mostly petty. Prostitution and pickpocketing were rife. Lawlessness had become almost endemic. A natural Hispanic disdain for such puritan ethics had been reined in under the Generalissimo's regime, but, some argued, freedom had bred licence. The old certainties had died; the church was in decline; the country was in a state of flux.

It took about half an hour to reach the city centre, where they encountered a traffic jam engendered by what appeared to be a burst water main. It took them another half-hour to reach their hotel, which was old-fashioned and faded, with revolving doors, concierges in top hats and gold-braided topcoats, aspidistras and antimacassars, poodles and women with wigs as tightly-curled as their dogs' coats. The vestibule smelt of mint and mothball. Treatment from the receptionist seemed to be identical for Contractor and for his master and master's wife, but the similar warmth of greeting and width of smile didn't disguise the fact that Contractor had a standard room and the Bognors a suite. Back to class distinctions.

After they had checked in and acclimatized, Simon left Monica to unpack, took the elevator to the lobby, met Harvey, returned to the waiting Mercedes and drove on to Guardia Civil headquarters.

Carlos Azuela was waiting on the pavement outside. He smelt faintly of Serrano ham, manzanilla, untipped cigarette and aftershave. A very Spanish smell, thought Bognor. He had a dark five o'clock stubble which looked as if it had been cultivated with care and attention. He and Harvey embraced and kissed each other on both cheeks in a manner which Bognor found as mildly foreign as the
teniente
's smell.

They took the lift to the top floor where
Teniente
Azuela escorted them to the Admiral's office which was large and enjoyed a view over the city rooftops. There was a boardroom next door, a terrace outside sliding glass doors, and a large photograph of King Juan Carlos over the Admiral's desk which was cluttered with papers and family photographs. The Admiral had several children and many grandchildren. Apart from this Bognor felt immediately and instinctively at home.

He and the Admiral embraced, a little more rigidly than Harvey and Carlos, then withdrew to inspect each other for signs of wear and tear, and to smile appreciatively. Both seemed quite reassured to find their counterpart still breathing.

‘Long time, as you say in your great country,' said the Admiral, ‘no see.'

Bognor nodded. ‘That Helsinki conference about whatever it was supposed to be about.'

The Admiral laughed.

‘Conferences are about corridors,' he said, ‘about footnotes not agendas.' His English was disturbingly immaculate and idiomatic, a legacy of time spent on an exchange assignment with the British Home Fleet at Devonport dockyard. He had at the same time acquired an improbable affection for Cornish pasties and Plymouth Argyle Football Club. He was a Galician and therefore a Celt. His Spanishness was of a very particular and unusual variety, unlike Azuela who was from somewhere near Seville.

Coffee was produced: hot, strong, sticky-sweet, almost Graeco-Turk. The Spaniards smoked; the Brits, who had given up long before, feigned indifference and forbore.

Presently after a few minutes of ice-breaking catch-up conversation the Admiral drained his cup, smacked his hands together, and proposed a move to the boardroom next door. It contained a wide, state-of-the-art liquid screen. It was at this that they were invited to stare and presently, spurred on by Carlos, who was of an age, more or less, to understand and manipulate such things, the screen began to fill with images.

The first such image was a map of Spain. To begin with this was blank, but almost at once it began to fill with coloured images to illustrate the incidence of British expatriates domiciled on the Iberian peninsula. A high proportion of these, it appeared, were criminals, convicted or suspected, and most, if not all, were known to the Spanish authorities in general and to the Guardia Civil in particular.

The biggest concentrations, unsurprisingly, were around the Costas – Brava and del Sol. This was much more marked when the supposedly law-abiding segments of ex-pat society were removed from the screen. At the press of an Azuela button almost every evidence of inland exile vanished. Inland was where Hispanophiles, eccentrics and the poor hung out. Bloated British criminals centred their activity round a beamed country pub called the Bell and Balls or the Crooked Gasket, an eighteen-hole golf club with an English-speaking professional and an active branch of the Manchester United Supporters Club. That meant, very crudely, somewhere reasonably close to Malaga or Alicante. There were exceptions, but the beach was a prerequisite and these people were seldom, if ever, loners. They hung out together, took comfort in each other's company, liked to flaunt beer guts, tattoos and expletive-laden Scouse, cockney or similarly unreceived English.

The man called Trubshawe had several villas mostly within a nine-iron of the prescribed un-Spanish amenities.

In due course they all came up on screen together with a mugshot of the deceased in the top left-hand corner, unsmiling, porcine and bald. The shots of the villas included detailed aerial ones taken, presumably, from a helicopter but possibly a satellite. Carlos was able to zoom in for closer shots of the naked girls lying by the pools, the driving range, or even through open windows. The villas all looked as if they had cost a lot of money.

‘You seem to know a lot about our friend,' Bognor remarked, slightly sardonically.

His friend smiled.

‘Naturally,' he said, ‘we make it our business to know everything possible about people like him. It is our job.'

‘But you didn't
do
anything about him?'

Admiral Picasso looked at his junior,
Teniente
Azuela as if to say, ‘Honestly, these English!'

‘We were unable to
do
anything, as you put it, my friend, because your Mr Trubshawe had committed no crime in Spain. We understood that he was a wanted criminal in the United Kingdom but our understanding was that your people were happy to be rid of him and did not want him back. So we watched, and we waited.'

He shrugged.

‘Until,' said Bognor, ‘he made a false move.'

His old friend smiled again and sighed like the thin wind that whipped across the strait from North Africa and assailed Algeciras.

‘Until he went to the Pueblo,' said Picasso, ‘and ate the wrong mushroom.'

‘Wrong move,' said Bognor.

The Admiral shook his head.

‘Very wrong move,' he said.

SEVEN

A
dmiral Picasso stared at his English counterpart quizzically.

‘So,' he said, at last, ‘you would like to visit the scene of the crime?'

‘You sure it was a crime?' asked Bognor.

The Admiral smiled. ‘Trubshawe was a convicted criminal. He ate poison fungi. He died.' The boss gave an expansive shrug. ‘Maybe it was just, as you say, “one of those things”, I myself have doubts. The coincidence is a little . . . how shall I put it? Coincidental.'

‘I'd like to visit the Pueblo, yes,' said Bognor. ‘Crime or no crime. That's why I want to go. Decide for myself.'

‘Good,' said Picasso. ‘It's been arranged.'

He winked at Carlos. ‘Eh,
Teniente
? All fixed?'

‘Yes, boss,' said his junior. ‘Sir Simon is embedded as an Anglo and Lola Martinez has volunteered to be our Spaniard. Lola is very convincing. In fact, she will play the part so well that not even Sir Simon would know that she is one of us and not one of them. Lola and Sir Simon will make an interesting pair. She is so good at being submerged that she may be surprisingly little help. They are expected tomorrow morning.'

‘Hang on, hang on,' said Sir Simon. ‘I need more information.' He found the whole business of Lola oddly disconcerting, though unpleasantly familiar.

‘Carlos is the case officer,' said Picasso. ‘He can fill you in. I'd like to know more myself. So it's all yours,
Teniente
. Tell us the story.'

Azuela coughed. It was a strange expectoration – a mixture of diffidence and self-assurance. He knew he lacked seniority but what he lacked in that department he made up for in knowledge and intelligence. On this particular subject he knew more than anyone else in the room; he may not have been cleverer than Contractor, who was indubitably bright, but he certainly thought himself intellectually superior to Picasso and Bognor. In this, he was probably not as correct as he thought himself. Certainly he had a good degree, better than that of either of the two older men, but that did not necessarily give him a mental edge. Possibly even the reverse. It tended to make him smug.

Still, there was no denying that in this particular case he knew what he was talking about.

‘The English Experience is a direct crib of
El Pueblo
,' he said. ‘The idea is beautifully simple. It's designed to teach English to Spanish speakers, not by formal instruction but by exposing them to native English speakers and conducting everything, and I mean
everything
,
in English. If you want someone to pass the salt or pepper, you have to ask in English; if you want to use the toilet, you have to do it in English; if you're making a pass at someone, you have to do it in English. Doesn't matter if it's two Spaniards together and there's no one to overhear them. They still have to use English.

‘From a commercial point of view the Spaniards or their companies are charged an arm and a leg. The Anglos, on the other hand, don't pay anything. They have to get themselves to Madrid, but from then on everything is taken care of. You're bussed to and from your luxurious hotel and all your food and drink is paid for by the Experience.'

Sir Simon nodded. ‘So the Anglos get a free Spanish holiday and the Spanish pay for them, plus a profit for the Experience. And provided everyone takes it reasonably seriously they're all happy.'

‘Seems like it,' said Carlos. ‘On the whole, as far as we can see, everyone does take it reasonably seriously and there are at least two Experience staffers to keep everyone in line.'

‘How does it differ from the other outfit you mentioned? The one they nicked the idea from.
El Pueblo
?'

‘They've gone way upmarket,' said Carlos. ‘I'm fond of
El Pueblo
. It's very professional and on balance they work hard and play hard. The accommodation and food is perfectly good, but not – how would you say? – “gold tap and wall-to-wall caviar”. The Experience is more in that class. They peel your eggs for you, pamper you. Much more expensive and more backsliding. The discipline is not as pronounced as elsewhere. Spanish is quite often spoken. Not like
El Pueblo
.'

‘You're not a fan?' Bognor smiled.

The younger man shrugged. ‘I'm not an inspector,' he said. ‘It's not my business. But if you ask my personal opinion then I'd have to say the Experience is not exactly, as you would put it, “my cup of tea”. For you, perhaps, it will suit you better. Is better, I think, for senior people.'

‘Old people.'

The
teniente
smiled and contemplated his shoes. He said nothing.

‘What do we think Trubshawe was doing there?' asked Bognor, shifting tack. Trubshawe was, in Bognor's view, trying it on, chancing his arm, flexing his muscles. He was proclaiming himself above the law, saying that he was impossible to catch.

The Admiral rubbed his hands together and seemed to think. Then he smiled gnomically.

‘That is for you to say,' he said. ‘Mr Trubshawe was one of yours. He was an Englishman and therefore, for us Spaniards, “a closed book”. Why would he not visit the Experience like any other English speaker? Out of curiosity? Because he was in need of some sort of holiday and this was free? Perhaps he was escaping, running away from something? The Experience is an excellent hiding place. Like visiting a religious community for a “retreat”.'

‘Did Trubshawe need to run away from anything? Did he have to hide from anyone?' Bognor was genuinely curious. Trubshawe had seemed untouchable. The British seemed to have let him go and Spain had been a sanctuary for him. He appeared to be stuck between the Rock of Gibraltar and a not very hard place.

‘You don't become Trubshawe without making enemies,' said the Admiral, ‘There were many people who would have liked to see the end of Mr Trubshawe. Even if,' he added with an impish smile, ‘that evidently did not include the British police or the British government. Which is peculiar, as they should have wanted to bring the man to justice more than anyone. But not apparently,' and he smiled again, ‘so.'