The Verge Practice (22 page)

‘Next time,’ he had said, and set about wiping the sauce from his textbook with paper towels. He had a sad air about him, which Kathy put down to a touch of the martyrs.

A steward offered drinks. Audrey McNeil and Kathy both asked for glasses of wine, Peter McNeil a scotch.

Down the aisle Kathy saw Tony and Linda being handed glasses of champagne, and she smiled.

Peter had his Barcelona guidebook open and he and his wife began to give Kathy a briefing on the city. The hotel where they would be staying, on Linda’s recommendation, was very conveniently located, they explained. Just off the Plaça de Catalunya, it was not far from the Passeig de Gràcia, where they thought they had seen Charles Verge, and only a short taxi, bus or metro ride to the Palau de Justicia, if that was where Kathy was heading. And from the point of view of sightseeing, it was also very handy to La Rambla and the Gothic Quarter. Peter explained all this with the complacent superiority of the seasoned traveller, interrupted from time to time by his wife’s chirpy elaborations, delivered very fast before Peter could cut her off.

The original plan had been for the McNeils to stay just one night, flying home again on the Monday evening after spending the morning with Kathy on the Passeig de Gràcia, but they had arranged to extend their stay by another day— principally, it transpired, to allow Audrey to meet her internet bridge partner on the Tuesday morning. ‘We’ve arranged to meet at a café opposite the cathedral. I have to brandish my copy of
Fifty Favourite Bridge Problems
.’ She reached into her handbag to show Kathy the book. ‘I’m really looking forward to it. It’s so strange to meet her in the flesh after getting to know her so well as my partner in cyberspace.’ She said the last word with relish, perhaps to make some point with her husband, who snorted indulgently and took a pull at his whisky. ‘Fine building, the cathedral,’ he said.

‘Yes, Audrey showed me your photos,’ Kathy replied.

‘Oh no, that was Gaudí’s church, the Sagrada Família,’ Audrey corrected her with a smile and an unspoken undertone,
do get it right, dear
, so that Kathy felt obliged to repeat it.

‘The Sagrada Família, right.’

‘The cathedral is in the Gothic Quarter,’ Peter said, ‘not far from our hotel.’ He pointed it out on the street map. ‘It was started in 1298, but wasn’t finished until 1913, to the plans of the original French architect. That’s a construction period of six hundred and fifteen years. And our clients tell us we’re too slow!’ He had a good chuckle at this.

‘Peter wanted to be an architect originally, didn’t you, dear?’

Her husband’s nose screwed up, in disapproval, Kathy thought, as if Audrey had betrayed some shameful weakness on his part. ‘I suggested the idea to my father, who told me not to be daft. “Architects are all poofters in yellow ties,” he said. Well, maybe they did wear yellow ties in those days, I don’t know, but anyway, I took his advice and became an engineer, like him.’

‘I always wondered about your father’s sexuality,’ Audrey said thoughtfully.

For a moment Kathy thought there might be a small domestic, but the prospect of the trip seemed to have mellowed Peter, who let the comment pass.

The plane descended over a brown landscape, and

Kathy had the first inkling that they were coming to a place that had had a very different summer from their own, long and hot and dry.

Linda had said that ‘Jeez’, as she called Lieutenant Jesús Mozas, would most probably meet them in the arrivals hall, but when they reached it there was no sign of him, and after hanging around for ten minutes they decided to take two taxis into the city. When they stepped out of the building they were momentarily stunned by dazzling sunlight and heat, and as they drove down the motorway towards the city, Kathy had a sense of disconnection from the autumnal reality they had left behind.

She was impressed with Linda’s choice of hotel when they arrived. An elaborately uniformed man hurried across the footpath to collect their bags, and the reception area was cool and impressively furnished with what looked like antique pieces. When the second taxi arrived, Linda was handed a note—from Jeez, she announced—apologising for not meeting them and saying that he and Captain Alvarez would come to the hotel for them at nine the next morning.

‘That’s too bad,’ Linda smirked in Tony’s direction.

‘And you were hoping we could get down to work right away.’ From the way Tony grinned back, this was clearly a private joke.

Kathy’s room had a little balcony overlooking the street, one end of which ran into the wide Plaça de Catalunya, in which she could make out numbers of pedestrians promenading now that the afternoon heat was dissipating. After a shower, she went down to meet the others in the foyer. They walked out to the Plaça and from there into La Rambla, the tree-lined pedestrian avenue leading down to the port. The place was thronged with evening strollers now, sedately eyeing each other and the various attractions along the way. Mime artists lined one side of the route like statues, motionless until a coin was thrown into their pot, when they would jerk into life, bowing or gesticulating in character to their patron. There was Julius Caesar in full uniform, sprayed from head to toe in silver paint, and further along a terracotta-coloured Sitting Bull, and General MacArthur, complete with corncob pipe, in khaki.

Linda and Tony walked a few paces ahead of the others, at first turning back from time to time to point something out, but soon absorbed in their own conversation. They reached a stall with caged birds and she made a face of mock annoyance at some remark of his and punched him on the upper arm, then pulled him closer to her to examine the cages.

‘They work together a lot, do they?’ Audrey asked Kathy cautiously.

‘They’ve been working on this case for a few months now, I suppose. Seem to get on well, don’t they?’

Audrey gave a little smile. ‘The spell of foreign travel.

I used to discourage Peter from going away without me, though I’m sure there’s no need now.’

Kathy glanced back at Peter, who had been distracted by a tarot reader sitting beneath one of the broad trees that lined the avenue, telling the fortune of an old man.

‘Are you married, dear?’

‘No.’

‘Ah well. Plenty of time.’ Kathy felt herself being scrutinised. ‘Maybe you’ll meet a nice Spaniard while we’re here.

They like blondes, I’m told.’

‘Like Charles Verge’s mother. She bumped into a Spaniard on the London tube and that was that. She came back to Barcelona with him and had Charles. I dare say they used to stroll along here fifty years ago.’

‘Is she still alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Poor woman. To think this tragedy was lying in wait for them all this time.’ They walked a little way in silence, then Audrey McNeil added, ‘I do hope you aren’t expecting too much from us, Kathy. I mean, bringing us here will probably turn out to have been a complete waste of time.’

‘Don’t worry, they won’t ask for the airfares back,’ Kathy said, and they had a laugh, but all the same, she understood the woman’s sense of being there under false pretences because she felt exactly the same. If anything came of the trip it would almost certainly be due to Linda and Tony.

They continued down the Rambla to the Columbus monument, and beyond that onto the pedestrian boardwalk and across to the new waterfront Maremàgnum, where Linda chose a small restaurant for them to eat at.

She ordered plates of tapas and a couple of bottles of cava and they sat and watched the daylight dying on the water and the families taking a last turn of the quay before heading for home.

After breakfast the following morning, they gathered in the foyer to wait for the two officers of the CGP. Peter McNeil passed the time studying the city map, Audrey some postcards from the hotel desk, and Tony and Linda each other.

The two Spaniards arrived promptly in separate cars. They wore plain clothes, Captain Alvarez in a sober suit, Lieutenant ‘Jeez’ Mozas in a leather jacket and jeans. Linda and Jeez greeted each other like old buddies, while Alvarez, whose expression was as tightly controlled as the little moustache drawn like a ruled ink line on his upper lip, stood back, shaking hands formally when introduced by Linda to the others. Kathy had the distinct impression that he was displeased by their visit, and especially by the McNeils. After the introductions he asked the couple in slow, stilted English if they would please leave the police officers to discuss matters among themselves for a few minutes. Obviously impressed by the man’s gravity, they quickly got to their feet and left. The others sat in a circle in the lobby’s armchairs, surrounded by the suitcases of departing guests, and spoke together quietly.

Jeez, whose English was more fluent and colloquial than his colleague’s, led the discussion. ‘Okay, the captain suggests that Linda and Tony and I go meet some guys in our commercial section who can help with your questions.

We have an appointment at eleven with the manager of the bank. Captain Alvarez will accompany you, Kathy. You have anything special in mind?’

Kathy addressed herself to Alvarez, trying to gauge his reaction as she spoke. It wasn’t easy, as he kept his face expressionless. ‘I wondered if we could borrow one of your people to stand in as Charles Verge. One point seven metres, seventy kilograms, age about fifty, straight black hair, clean shaven . . .’

‘We know what he looks like,’ Alvarez said drily.

‘Of course. Wearing a black leather jacket, black trousers and shoes.’

Alvarez glanced at Jeez and gave a barely perceptible nod.

‘Not a problem,’ Jeez said. ‘Give us an hour?’

‘Ideally, I’d like to walk them down the street at around ten-thirty, at the same time on the same day of the week as when they think they saw him.’

‘What are you wanting from these people, exactly?’

Alvarez asked.

‘There seems to be a discrepancy in their recollections of what they saw. We just want to be quite certain.’

The captain looked puzzled. Linda began to translate Kathy’s words, but he cut her off. ‘After such a long time?

You have made a mistake?’ His eyes narrowed accusingly.

‘We sent photographs, plans.’

‘They were very helpful. But my chief wanted them to come in person.’

Alvarez shook his head slowly, whether at the waste of his time or the incompetence of the British police Kathy wasn’t sure, then he said something very fast and low to his lieutenant in what Linda later said was not Spanish but Catalan. Jeez nodded. ‘Captain Alvarez will return for you and the English couple at ten-fifteen.’

‘I understand the street isn’t far away. We could walk up and meet him there.’

Again Alvarez said something in Catalan and Jeez translated. ‘Captain Alvarez will pick you up here, at the hotel, at ten-fifteen exactly.’

‘Whatever you say.’

An hour later, the captain was precisely on time. He arrived in a patrol car, followed closely by a taxi carrying a single passenger in a black leather jacket. Kathy and the McNeils bundled into the back of the patrol car that swept off into the Plaça de Catalunya, circling it to its far corner where the broad boulevard of the Passeig de Gràcia began. After six blocks it pulled over and Alvarez got out, followed by the others.

‘This is the place,’ he said, gesturing towards the building in front of them.

This wasn’t how Kathy had wanted to play it, but she held her tongue. The McNeils looked around, trying to orientate themselves, obviously intimidated by Alvarez’s manner. Kathy recognised some of the buildings from the photographs the CGP had sent them, and immediately realised that her fancy theory about sunlight and shadows was wrong. Now, in September, the sun would be at a similar angle to that morning in May, and she saw that the entrance Peter McNeil had identified was in full sun, even though it was on the east side of the street. The reason was the peculiar layout of the Eixample district, of which the Passeig de Gràcia was one of the principal streets. The quarter had been laid out as a model of town planning in the nineteenth century. The blocks were square, but with the added refinement that their corners were sliced off on the diagonal, so that where four blocks met, their corners created the effect of a small diagonal square at the crossing of the streets. The result was that, although the main east street façade of the Passeig was in shadow, the south-facing corners on both sides of the street were sunlit.

As they stood there the taxi drew into the kerb and the rear door opened. The passenger got out, pretended to pay the cab driver, and strode across the pavement in front of them towards the corner doorway, disappearing into the shadows inside.

‘Okay?’ Alvarez said, sounding ready to pack up and drive them to the airport.

‘Well . . .’ Peter McNeil frowned, still trying to get his bearings. ‘Let me see. Yes, I suppose this must be the place . . .’

‘Well, it doesn’t feel right to me,’ his wife said.

‘What’s wrong, Audrey?’ Kathy prompted.

‘I don’t know . . . Are you sure the sun’s in the same place? Only it’s practically shining into our eyes, so you could hardly make out that man’s face.’

Captain Alvarez’s mouth tightened. This obviously wasn’t what he wanted to hear, and Peter wasn’t best pleased either. ‘Oh yes you could, Audrey. At least, I could.’