The Seville Communion (21 page)

It sounded like a threat. Quart was beginning to lose patience. "Us lot?"

"You know what I mean." Again the obsequious smile. "The clergy and all that." "Ah. The clergy."

"I see we understand each other," Bonafé said, his double chin wobbling hopefully.

Quart looked at him calmly, his hands clasped behind his back. "And what exactly do you want to know?" he asked.

"Well. Let's see." Bonafé scratched his armpit beneath his jacket. "What's the view in Rome on that church, for instance. What's the position of the parish priest in terms of canon law . . . And whatever you can tell me about your mission here." His smile was slimy. "That shouldn't be too difficult."

"And if I refuse?"

The journalist clucked his tongue, as if to say that wouldn't do, especially as they'd been getting on so well. "I'll write the article anyway, of course. And he that is not with me, is against me." He stood on tiptoe as he spoke. "Isn't that what it says in the Gospels?"

Quart stared at him for a moment without a word. He glanced to the right and left before moving closer to the journalist, as if to speak in confidence. But there was something in his demeanour that made Bonafé step back. "I really couldn't care less what your name is," said Quart quietly. "I can't decide whether you're rude, stupid, criminal, or all three. In any case, even though I'm a priest, I have a bad temper. So if I were you, I'd get out of my sight. Now."

The street lamp cast vertical shadows on the journalist's face. No longer smiling, he gave Quart an aggrieved look. "Not very priestly," he complained, his double chin trembling. "Your attitude."

"You think?" Now it was Quart's turn to smile unpleasantly. "In that case, you'd be surprised how unpriestly I can be."

He turned his back on him and walked away, wondering what he'd have to pay for his small victory. Clearly, he had to conclude his investigation before the situation became too complicated, if it wasn't already. A journalist rooting around in church matters was the final straw. Absorbed in these thoughts, Quart crossed the Plaza Virgen de los Reyes without noticing a couple - a man and a woman - sitting on a bench. They stood up and followed him at a distance. The man was fat and wore a white suit and a panama hat; the woman was in a polka-dot dress and had a strange kiss-curl on her forehead. They walked behind Quart, arm in arm like a husband and wife enjoying the cool evening air. But when they came to the Bar La Giralda, they exchanged looks with a man in a polo-neck sweater and checked jacket in the doorway. At that moment, bells began to ring throughout Seville, startling the pigeons dozing under the eaves.

When the tall priest went into La Albahaca, Don Ibrahim gave El Potro del Mantelete a coin and told him to telephone Peregil from the nearest call box and fill him in. A little less than an hour later, Pencho Gavira's henchman turned up to see how things were going. He carried a Marks & Spencer's plastic bag and looked tired. He found his troops strategically deployed about the Plaza de Santa Cruz outside the restaurant, a converted seventeenth-century mansion. El Potro leaned against a wall, motionless, near the exit leading to the Arab wall; La Nina Punales sat crocheting at the foot of the iron cross in the middle of the square; and Don Ibrahim's bulky shadow moved from one side of the square to another, swinging his walking stick, the ember of a Montecristo cigar visible beneath the broad brim of his pale straw hat.

"He's inside," he told Peregil. "With the lady."

He made his report, pulling his watch from his waistcoat and consulting it by the light of the street lamp. Twenty minutes earlier, he had sent La Nina into the restaurant for reconnaissance, pretending to sell flowers.. Later he himself exchanged a few words with the waiters when he went in to buy the cigar he was now smoking. The couple were sitting at a good table beneath a reasonable copy of
The Topers
by Velazquez. The lady had ordered scallop salad with basil and truffles, while the Reverend Father had chosen sauteed goose liver with honey vinaigrette. They were drinking uncarbonated mineral water and red wine, a Pesquera from the banks of the Duero. Don Ibrahim apologised that he hadn't been able to ascertain the vintage. But, as he told Peregil, twirling his moustache, excessive curiosity might have aroused the suspicions of the staff.

"And what are they talking about?" asked Peregil.

The former bogus lawyer shrugged. "That," he said, "is beyond the scope of my investigation."

Peregil considered the situation. Things were still under control. Don Ibrahim and his colleagues were doing well, and the cards they had given him looked good. In his world, as in almost every other, information meant money. It was a question of knowing how to get the best deal, the highest bid. Of course, he would have preferred to take all this back to his boss, Pencho Gavira, who was the principal interested party here, being both banker and husband. But the missing six million and Peregil’s debt to loan shark Ruben Molina made it hard to think straight. Peregil had been sleeping badly for the last few days, and his ulcer was troubling him again. When he stood in front of the bathroom mirror this morning, constructing the complicated edifice that concealed his baldness, Peregil saw only despair in the sour face staring back at him. He was going bald, his digestion was wrecked, he owed his boss six million and almost twice that to a moneylender, and he very much suspected that his last glorious spasm with Dolores La Negra had left him with the alarming little itch in his urogenital tract. Just what he needed.

And there was worse. Peregil glanced at the rotund form of Don Ibrahim, who awaited instructions, at La Nina Punales crocheting in the lamplight, and at El Potro del Mantelete on the corner. To all the things complicating Peregil's life could be added another: the information obtained by the three partners was already circulating on the market, because Peregil needed cash urgently. Bonafé had slipped him another cheque, this time as payment for confidential information about the priest from Rome, Peregil's boss's wife (or ex-wife or whatever she was), and the business of Our Lady of the Tears. The next step was obvious: Macarena Bruner and the elegant priest would make the front page of every magazine in Seville. Their dinner at La Albahaca, rang the cash register in Peregil's brain. Bonafé paid well, but he was a dangerous and unpredictable character. Selling him one priest, or several, had its attraction. But blowing the whistle on Peregil's boss's wife for a second time was more than a little mischief - it was institutional betrayal.

He had to foresee every eventuality. Gathering information was a type of life insurance for him. With that in mind, he turned to Don Ibrahim, who stood solemnly in the shadows with his smoking cigar, walking stick over one arm, and thumbs hooked in his waistcoat, awaiting instructions. Peregil was pleased with him and his colleagues and felt a little more optimistic. He almost put his hand in his pocket to pay for the Montecristo from the restaurant, but he stopped himself in time. He shouldn't encourage their bad habits.

"Good work," he said.

Don Ibrahim didn't answer. He merely drew on his cigar and glanced at La Nina and El Potro, giving Peregil to understand that the credit was to be shared with them.

"Carry on like this," added Pencho Gavira's henchman. "I want to know everything, right down to when the priest takes a piss."

"What about the lady?"

This was touchier. Peregil chewed his lower lip anxiously. "Absolute discretion," he said at last. "I'm only interested in her business with this priest or with the older one. But I want every detail."

"What about the other business?"

"What other business?"

"You know. The other business."

Don Ibrahim looked around, embarrassed. He read the newspaper
ABC
every day, but he also glanced at
Q&S
from time to time. La Nina bought it along with
Hola, Semana
,
and
Diez Minutos
.
In the former bogus lawyer's opinion,
Q&S
was more sensationalist and tacky than the rest. The photos of Senora Bruner and the bullfighter were in very poor taste. She was from a distinguished family, and a married woman to boot.

"The priests," said Peregil. "Concentrate on the priests." Suddenly he remembered what he had in the bag: a Canon camera with a long zoom. He'd just bought it, second-hand, and he hoped that the outlay - another gash in the soft underbelly of his straitened finances -would prove worthwhile. "Are you any good with a camera?*'

Don Ibrahim looked offended. "Of course." He put his hand on his heart. "In my youth I was a photographer in Havana." He thought a moment, then added, "That's how I paid for my studies."

In the dim light of the square, Peregil could see the gold chain, with Hemingway's watch gleaming against Don Ibrahim's paunch. "Your studies?" he asked.

"That's right."

"Your law studies, I suppose."

The fraud had been exposed a few years ago in the papers, and they both knew it, as did all of Seville. But Don Ibrahim swallowed and gravely held Peregil's gaze. "Of course." He paused with dignity. "What else?"

Peregil said nothing and handed him the bag. After all, he thought, what would become of us if we didn't have ourselves? In life's shipwreck we cling to what we can.

"I want photos," he ordered. "Anytime that priest and the lady meet, I want a picture. Discreetly, OK? So they don't notice. You have two rolls of high-speed film in there in case there's not much light, so don't think of using a flash."

They stopped under a streetlight and Don Ibrahim peered inside the bag. "That would be difficult," he said. "There is no flash here."

Peregil, lighting a cigarette, shrugged. "Are you kidding? The cheapest was
25,000
pesetas."

La Albahaca was situated in a seventeenth-century mansion. The proprietors lived on the second floor, and three of the rooms on the ground floor were given over to the restaurant. Although the place was full, the head waiter - Macarena Bruner addressed him as Diego - had reserved for them a table next to the large fireplace in the best room, by a leaded window looking out on the Plaza de Santa Cruz. They made quite an entrance. She looked very beautiful in a black suit with a short skirt, escorted by the slim, dark figure of Lorenzo Quart. La Albahaca was where a certain class of Sevillian brought guests from out of town, to show them off and to be seen, and the arrival of the daughter of the duchess of El Nuevo Extremo with a priest didn't go unnoticed. Macarena exchanged a couple of greetings as she entered, and people at nearby tables were fascinated. Heads bowed, voices whispered and jewels sparkled in the candlelight. The whole of Seville will know about this tomorrow, Quart thought.

"I haven't been to Rome since my honeymoon," she was saying over her appetiser, apparently unaware of the stir they had caused. "The Pope gave us a special audience. I was in black, with a comb and mantilla. Very Spanish . . . Why are you looking at me like that?"

Quart slowly chewed his last piece of goose liver and put his knife and fork on his plate. Above the candle flame, Macarena Bruner's eyes followed his every movement. "You don't seem like a married woman," he said.

She laughed, and the flame enhanced the glints of honey in her eyes. "Do you think the life I lead isn't suitable for a married woman?"

He rested an elbow on the table and tilted his head a little to one side, evasively. "I don't pass judgement on that kind of thing," he said.

"But you wore your collar, instead of a tie as you promised."

They regarded each other unhurriedly. The shadow from the candle hid the lower half of her face, but Quart guessed she was smiling from the glow in her eyes.

"I make no secret of the life I lead," said Macarena. "I left the marital home. I have a boyfriend who's a bullfighter. And before him I had another boyfriend." Her pause was calculated, perfect. In spite of himself, he admired her nerve. "Does that shock you?"

Quart put his finger on the handle of his knife. It wasn't his job to be shocked by such things, he said gently. That was a matter for her confessor, Father Ferro. Priests, too, had their specialities.

"And what's yours? Scalp hunter, as the archbishop says?"

She put out her hand and moved the candle to one side. Now he could see her ample mouth with its heart-shaped upper lip. Under her jacket she wore a low-cut raw silk shirt. Her short skirt was edged with lace. She wore black tights and pumps, also black. The outfit showed off legs that were too long and too shapely for the peace of mind of any priest, including Quart. Although he had more experience of the world than most priests. Not that that guaranteed anything.

"We were talking about you," he said, enjoying the strange instinct that made him stand crabwise, like a dueller.

Macarena Bruner now looked disingenuous. "Me? What else do you want to know?" she asked. "I'm one metre seventy-four centimetres tall, I'm thirty-five but don't look it, I have a university degree, I belong to the Sisters of the Virgin of El Rocio, and at the Seville
feria
I never go in for flounces, I wear a short dress and Cordobes hat." She stopped, as if trying to remember if there was anything else. She fingered the gold bracelet on her left wrist. "When I got married, my mother ceded the dukedom of Azahara to me, a title I don't use. When she dies, I'll inherit another thirty or so titles, twelve grandee-ships, the Casa del Postigo with some furniture and paintings, and just enough money to keep me in the manner to which I am accustomed. I'm in charge of preserving what remains and sorting out the family archives. I'm now working on a book about the dukes of El Nuevo Extremo under the Hapsburgs ... I don't need to tell you the rest." She drank some of her wine. "You can read about it in any gossip magazine."

"The gossip doesn't seem to bother you."

She held her wine glass. "That's true," she said. "It doesn't. Shall I
confide in you?"
' '

Quart shook his head. "Maybe you shouldn't." He was being honest. He felt relaxed but also expectant, amused, strangely lucid. He put it down to the wine, although he'd had little. "I don't even know why you invited me to dinner here this evening."