The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman (3 page)

“Come, take a seat,” his father told him, pointing to one of the office's two leather chairs.

Atticus felt as comfortable there as in the living room at home. Portraits of the same men hung on the walls, there were photos of the same family members in silver frames, and his boss was the same hero who had banished his nightmares when he was a little boy. He was tempted to put his feet up on the mahogany desk, but his father's worried expression stopped him. He opted for a more formal posture: legs crossed at the ankles and a hand on his chin. Just like his grandfather Dorian in his portrait.

“You see, Atticus,” began Marlow, before changing smoothly
from father to boss, “First and foremost I want to thank you for your work. You've become an important part of the company, and I'm very proud of you. As you know, when Mr. Bestman retires next year you'll be named development director.”

“Um-hmm,” mumbled Atticus, who frequently received the same information from his father: congratulations and the reiteration of his next promotion as a prelude to a delicate assignment. He was sure that the surprise would come next.

“Good.” Pause. Cough.

“Um-hmm?”

“It's an unpleasant matter.”

“Yes.”

“It requires an urgent solution.”

“Right.”

Marlow drew breath. He got up. He started pacing around the office.

“I'll start from the beginning,” he said. “To bring you up to speed,” he added. “The matter dates back to 2006.” Pause. Cough. “Therefore, as you will have deduced, the problem arose six years ago. Although at the beginning it wasn't a problem, it was an investment.”

He really was struggling to get going. Atticus felt an urge to get up from his chair and shake his father like a snow globe, to see if he could make it snow once and for all.

“Back then, the business was expanding healthily,” Marlow explained. “We were opening offices in several European capitals. One of these, as you know, was in Spain, in Madrid.”

Atticus nodded.

“Mr. Bestman had a visionary idea.” He frowned. “He thought that to support our book sales it would be advisable for Craftsman & Co.
to also publish small literary magazines in each country, so as to promote our titles.”

“Very astute,” Atticus acknowledged.

“We rolled out those projects, and I must say that, to date, they have more than fulfilled their purpose. As you must understand, they don't make a lot of money, but they are valid tools. Some, like the German magazine
Krafts
, have even come to be considered among the most prestigious literary publications in the country.”

Marlow went back to his desk. He let himself fall heavily into his chair.

“All bar one, that is.”

•  •  •

That afternoon, after the meeting, Atticus Craftsman felt the need to drink alone. He went into a pub and ordered a cold pint. He downed it in one. He burped.

His briefcase contained the documents his father had given him. It certainly was a thorny issue, hence Marlow's initial reluctance to spit it out. For Atticus, it meant climbing a rung of the career ladder, there was no doubt about that. The issue called for someone experienced, in whom the company could place complete trust. But it also meant a significant change to his routine. He would be forced to leave England for an indefinite period and defer other matters that currently occupied all his energies.

He ordered another pint.

The task, after all, was simple. Unpleasant, yes, but simple. He would have to travel to Madrid and close down
Librarte
magazine, fire all its staff, hand out severance checks, shake hands, put up with tears, explain the reasons behind such an extreme
decision in the nicest way possible, and lay all the blame on them: They were responsible for the economic losses, the lack of foresight, the irreparable damage to the Craftsman brand, et cetera.

“There is one more detail you should know,” his father had said between a pause and a cough. “
Librarte
magazine has only five employees. Five. And it so happens, son, that they are all women.”

•  •  •

How hard can it be?
thought Atticus in the pub. Even so, for some strange reason, he felt the urgent need to inject alcohol directly into his veins. Four pints later, he stumbled home. Perhaps that's why he forgot to pack many of the essential items that he would soon miss in Madrid.

CHAPTER 4

I
nspector Manchego had managed to convince his friends that
mus
was a country bumpkin's card game. Due to, he said, the use of chickpeas as counters. Someone suggested that they could swap them for something else, like pebbles, jacks, or sugar cubes—something easy to find in the bar or nearby—but Manchego insisted that they hadn't left their village, put up with hardship, and made their way in the capital only to ruin everything on account of a game like
mus.
He also banned them from ordering tumblers of wine or tapas like Russian salad. Lousy bunch of yokels. As for him, he intoned solemnly, he was going to learn to play poker and drink whiskey. There were, at first, some dissenting voices, but the guys soon got into the swing of meeting to play poker on Thursday evenings. What Manchego didn't know was that his friends took turns standing on the corner so they could see him coming and raise the alarm, allowing the others to quickly hide the Spanish deck of cards, gulp down their wine, choke themselves on croquettes and squid before, very seriously, welcoming him with the chips laid out and their poker faces on.

They went to all this trouble for two reasons: first, because they were genuinely fond of him, and second, because he was the
only policeman in the group, and in their neighborhood it was every man for himself against thieves, drug addicts, loan sharks, and parking fines. Manchego had helped all of them get out of fixes or protect their businesses. And he didn't ask for anything in return, they reminded themselves, except this obsession with poker, the poor guy, and in the end it was no skin off their noses to make him happy.

So, regular as clockwork, that Thursday shortly after nine o'clock, Macita, Josi, Carretero, and Míguel (yes, with an accent on the “i”) were waiting for him with the whiskey on ice.

Manchego turned up with an odd kind of look, a half smile, eyes sparkling. He greeted them, as usual, with slaps on the back. Then he sat down, spreading his legs wide.

“
Guess what?
” he said, wiggling his eyebrows up and down to signal suspense.

He had news.

“I've got a case,” he continued, before any of them had a chance to come out with something stupid like “You got a raise” or “They finally installed your broadband.”

“Drugs?” asked Josi.

“Maybe, Josi, maybe. I don't rule anything out, you know that,” he replied, pleased with the shrewdness of his friend, who owned a garage and was his star pupil. “But no. On this occasion it seems not. It's an international affair that goes beyond our borders.”

“Immigrants, say no more,” decided Macita, who ran a grocery store and was obsessed with how many shops run by Chinese immigrants were springing up. “Those people sleep on their feet,” he liked to say. “I've seen them with my own eyes, swear to God.”

“I'm investigating the case of a missing person,” Manchego revealed. “A stuck-up English aristocrat has lost his son and is looking for him. He came to the station yesterday. Scotland Yard sent him.”

He poured another round of whiskey.

“I'll prove it,” he announced.

He took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. They listened carefully.

“
Manchego espikin
,” he said. “
Not in jospital
,” he added. Whoever was on the other end of the line must not have understood the phrase that Manchego had written on a scrap of paper, so the inspector repeated it.

“Manchego,” he repeated. “
Polís, Espein. Yes, yes. Not in jospital.
” And then for the third time: “
In jospital not.
”

His friends looked at him, intrigued. No one dared ask anything.

“I have just informed
Míster Crasman
, the aristocrat, who is an important businessman from London and, by the way, a friend of the queen, that his son has not been admitted to any hospital.”

He leaned back and stretched out his legs.

“When investigating a disappearance,” he explained to his admiring audience, “the first thing is always to be sure that the missing person has not been the victim of an accident or a violent robbery. To do so, we use the special police line to contact all the hospitals across Spain. There are thousands. We give them the person's details and wait.”

“And nothing,” figured Macita.

“Nothing?”

“They didn't find anything, I mean.”

“Correct. He isn't in a hospital anywhere.”

“Then
Míster Crasman
will be relieved,” Josi thought to suggest.

“Not at all, Josi. Think about it,” Manchego corrected him. “When a missing person turns up, even if he's seriously injured in the hospital, that's the best news possible. It's much worse not knowing where he is or in what condition he is in. If he's not in a hospital, that could mean he's dead, at the bottom of a well, for example. Or kidnapped.”

His tone of voice was different when he said that last word; he stretched it out in a loud whisper.

“And you're sure it's nothing to do with drugs?” insisted Josi.

CHAPTER 5

M
arlow Craftsman was lying down, engrossed in reading
The Waste Land
, pursuing the Holy Grail, imagining empty cemeteries and other poetic cruelties when he was assaulted by the sound of the phone ringing on his bedside table.

He lifted the receiver.

The voice of Inspector Manchego, drowned out by the cheerful tinkling of ice in glasses, the laughter of barflies, and background music, caused him the same pain as a blow to the head. The man was shouting unintelligible words in a devilish language.