Message From Malaga (27 page)

“And none of his friends will come knocking at its front door? You are sure of that?”

“Quite sure,” she said acidly. “You will find it completely secure. Only occasional visitors stay there—friends of mine.” She paused. “Usually friends,” she added bitingly, and looked at him.

“Did they know about this corridor?”

“Very few.”

“And Esteban, and Magdalena?”

“No.”

“But Reid knew of it?” he asked shrewdly.

“Yes.”

“You must have trusted him a lot.”

She stopped. She turned to face him. “I would have trusted him with my life.” She looked quickly away, hid the sudden betrayal of tears.

“An American?”

She was silent for a few moments, walking on with increasing speed. “I never thought of him as anything—except as a good man. An honourable man. That, I think, is too hard for you to understand. We shall not discuss him.”

All he was left to admire was the back of her head, held high and proud, with its thick dark hair smoothed into a heavy twist at the nape of her neck. Her shoulders were enveloped with the silk shawl, its long fringes swinging over her hips; her legs under the sway of her skirt were perfect in symmetry, the ankles slender yet strong. Spain produced some magnificent women, he thought, and then frowned at this outburst of chauvinism. “Not so fast,” he called to her. “I am carrying the suitcase. Remember?” He changed it to his left hand. There was nothing valuable in the case, nothing that could give away his true identity: a small cosmetic kit, with peroxide, hair dye, changes of clothing, some extra ammunition for the pistol, a knife he prized, a few carefully forged documents he might need if his present passport (Argentine citizen, Juan Blanco Jiménez, of Buenos Aires, rug importer) needed to be destroyed.

She slowed her rapid stride, but did not look around.

“How much farther?” he tried.

“Three hundred metres, no more.” She still did not turn her head.

All right, he thought, I shall talk to the nape of her neck, and resist making the obvious remarks such as “You must know this route extremely well. Did you always go up this way to visit your artist?” Instead he said amiably, “But we’ve already come that distance, haven’t we?”

“Less.”

Three steep steps, then ten long strides on a descending slope. “The Moors built this, did they? Must have taken them a few years.”

“They had plenty of time.”

“Yes, they were here for centuries. Almost seven? They must have begun to feel that they owned Andalusia. I have heard stories of Arab families, now in Morocco, who took away the keys of the houses they built, and have them yet. Of course, they have only been out of Granada for five hundred years. That leaves them two more centuries to wait, and equal the record set by the Christians.”

She didn’t answer. Her head was held even higher.

“Are there many of these corridors?”

“Several.”

“Well known?” he asked quickly.

“This one isn’t.”

“You are sure?”

“Quite sure. The records say that this was one tunnel that fell into complete disuse and became impassable.”

He said musingly, “Why did the Moors build them? They lived on the heights, yes. But they could take a troop of cavalry whenever they wanted to visit the Spanish quarter.”

“Some did not always want a troop of cavalry along with them. And by night, it was dangerous to ride down to the city.
They were pulled off their horses and had their throats slit.”

They walked the remaining distance in silence.

At the end of the corridor, there was a stout door similar to the one at its beginning. As Tavita slid aside the giant iron bolt he looked back at the way they had come. Incredible, he thought, and was impelled to speak even if he had determined that he would say no further word until she began talking again. “What lay above our heads? Streets and houses?”

She nodded, pulled the door open. Again, just as at the entrance to this long white tunnel, there was a short space leading to another door. And again, this door opened with the long-stemmed key and a peculiar twist once it was plunged deep into the thickness of the lock. She noticed his curiosity. “Enough security?” she asked with a touch of contempt.

He didn’t answer. Yes, there was enough security to please even him, but he would give her no satisfaction by looking impressed. She switched on a light, and he followed her into a small interior room, more like a large closet except for its decorative panelled walls—the excuse for the door that, now closed, made one of the panels, with its keyhole hidden under a movable design. Most ingenious, he thought, and now it is time for you to take charge. He moved ahead of her, entered a larger room. She had switched on two small shaded lamps which cast a benign glow around him. Probably safe enough, he decided; there were windows on either side of a large door—the front entrance to this apartment, obviously—but they were heavily shuttered on the inside, their louvres completely closed. These little pink lamps could attract no attention outside.

He explored quickly, thoroughly. There were two other doors from this room. One led to a bedroom with a window
and an interior bathroom. The other took him into a small tiled kitchen, shelves filled with canned foods from meat to fruit, a rack of wine bottles, a miniature stove and sink, a refrigerator jammed into the old fireplace under a high mantelpiece.

Tavita had followed him, watching his quick inventory. “Yes?” she asked, noting his frown.

“Who cleans this place?”

She looked at him impatiently. “Are these domestic details really necessary?”

“Yes.”

“Esteban has a cousin who comes in every week, just to make sure everything is safe and undisturbed.”

“When does she come?”

“On Fridays. Don’t worry, you’ll be gone before she comes again.”

“She never asks questions about bed linen or towels or empty cans and bottles?”

“Why should she? She is well paid. She needs the work. She is a cousin. Of course she asks no questions.”

“How does she enter?”

“By the front door.”

“She has her own key?”

Tavita said with studied boredom, “She has Esteban’s key.”

“She might use it any time.”

“She won’t. She does not intend to lose this job.”

“She will wonder about your visitors here.”

“She thinks they are Esteban’s friends,” Tavita said curtly. “I told you I’ve no connection with this place any more. I haven’t been seen near here for years. Now, come along—I want to show you the patio outside the front door.”

“One second,” he said, and pointed to the kitchen window. “Where does that face?” He crossed over to it quickly.

“Only on to a small interior courtyard—just like the bedroom’s window. A breathing space, actually. Not even the sun can look in on you.”

He opened the shutters, looked out, saw a blank wall only a couple of arm lengths away. “What lies above us?”

“A wing of the museum.”

He stared at her.

“Come here,” she told him, and led the way back into the main room. She switched off the lights. “This is the only place where you have to be careful when you turn on a lamp. Make sure, then, that the shutters are tightly closed.” She had moved over to a window, adjusted the louvres, let broad slats of bright moonlight come slanting over the tiled floor. “There’s the entrance to the museum,” she said, and pointed out at the patio. So he had to follow her, after all, and look. She drew aside, keeping well out of touch, he noted as he studied the layout of the courtyard.

He could see it clearly through the iron screens that covered the window with a light and intricate pattern. (But strong enough, he thought, to bar intruders: this ground-floor apartment was well protected.) The patio was spacious and pleasant, its paved floor bathed in moonlight, with an edge of deep shadow along one side. There were slender pillars, forming a shallow colonnade, on either side of a large doorway that stood directly opposite him. It must lead into a street filled with traffic. He could hear a distant steady murmur, like some unseen sea breaking in constant muted rhythm, from the world outside. But here, in this courtyard, there was only silence and emptiness.

He picked out the museum entrance to the right of the gateway, pillared and arched and heavy with stone curlicues. “Museum of what?”

“Oh, things of old Spain—wood carved and painted, silver-work, iron screens, leather, lace, embroidery and furniture and—”

“When does it open?” Arts and crafts, he thought. Always popular. People everywhere. Could be dangerous.

She opened her eyes wide. “Oh,
Madre de Dios
,” she said impatiently. “How should I know? It was always closing for lunch when I was having breakfast.”

“Does it open again in the afternoon?”

“Three, perhaps four o’clock.”

“And closes for the night?”

“Around eight, I think.”

“Is it a busy place?”

“Busy, busy, busy—particularly on Sunday afternoon. Then the Spaniards come as well as the tourists. It will entertain you, help pass the time, but don’t open the louvres too wide. Tourists are always prowling around, always curious.”

That was what he had feared. Constant movement out there in the patio. He would have to make sure everything was closed tight, suffocate in darkness, keep still, listen to the heavy footsteps trudging above his head on the old wooden floor of the museum. “So I’m locked away, am I?” Four or five days of this...

She smiled. “Now you will know how women used to feel, watching the world through shutters and screens.” Her amusement vanished. She added coldly, “You aren’t a prisoner, and you know it. You can walk out through that gate any time
you wish. And good luck to you.”

He studied the entrance gate, kept his temper down. “It looks impregnable at this hour,” he said.

“There is the key to this house.” She pointed to an elaborate piece of black metal, almost a hand span in length, that hung on the wall beside her front door. “And the caretaker will let you out of the courtyard—he is a veteran, who has his apartment right beside the gate.”

He took command again. “What is that shop on the left? Opposite the museum entrance,” he added impatiently as she glanced out in the wrong direction.

“A tinsmith’s. He spreads his wares in the morning outside those windows, takes them in again before nine in the evening. He is an excellent workman, employs only expert help.”

“Popular with the tourists?”

“He has many customers. So has the leather shop, next door to him.”

“And the other doors around the patio?”

“Once they were apartments like mine. But the museum now owns them, displays replicas of old Spanish rooms.” She moved back to the nearest lamp. “Close the shutters before I turn on the light,” she warned him.

He gave one last look at the peace of the courtyard, then blotted it out of sight.

She seemed to read his thoughts. As she switched on the table lamp, she said, “I should not risk taking a late stroll out there once the moonlight fades.”

“Ah—the loyal veteran who guards the gate?”

“And two other disabled veterans, custodians of the museum, who live in its basement. If they knew who you were,
they would take you to pieces, even if one has a wooden leg and the other a hook for a hand. Your legacy to them, Tomás Fuentes. It keeps their memory alive. Or do you think we have all forgotten?”

“Some have,” he reminded her, and scored a point. A good point, for she had nothing to say. He went on to improve it by adding, “You would be surprised by the number of recent contacts we have made—”

“So?” she interrupted angrily. “Then why did you come to me and Esteban for help? What was wrong with all your good political allies?”

He switched back to the courtyard. “All right, I don’t take any post-moonlight or predawn stroll. Not even when the veterans are sleeping off their brandy.”

“If they were, there is always the tinsmith. He lives above his shop. They say he works for the police in his spare time.”

Now that was an interesting piece of information, he thought. “Too bad,” he said. “A place like this, with so much coming and going, would make a perfect drop.”

“A drop?” She had turned on another lamp, was looking around the room as if she were giving it one last check.

“A place—” he began, but did not finish. She couldn’t care less, obviously, about a place where couriers could leave or pick up secret instructions. She was too engrossed with being the perfect, if unwilling, hostess. Women were really fantastic. He said, “When Ferrier gets here, how do you let me know?” She pointed to a telephone on a small writing desk in one corner of the room. “I shall call you before he comes down the long corridor.”

“What?” he asked sardonically. “You use an ordinary
telephone? No private line between this house and the love nest perched on the cliff?”

She faced him, eyes blazing with anger. Then she said, her voice low but intense, “It will be safe. When I call, the telephone will ring three times, and then break off. Within one minute exactly, it will ring again. This time, you can pick up the receiver. I shall do the talking. It will be brief.”

“Don’t mention anything important!” he warned her quickly. “Nothing—”

“Of course not!” she flashed back at him. “It is enough if you hear my voice. Then I shall interrupt myself, apologise for speaking to a wrong number. The call is over. Your voice is not heard. You are safe.”

“And what if, in your excitement, you do call a wrong number?” he teased her.

“Then the person to whom I was speaking would certainly tell me so. If it was a woman, she would be annoyed. If a man, he might try a little conversation. But you do neither. By your silence, I will know I
have
the right number.”

He burst out laughing. “Amateurs are really—”

“One last thing. I do not know what time of day you will leave here.”

“Surely night is the obvious time—”

“Too obvious, perhaps. Besides, it is also too quiet. Get rid of that suit”—she gestured to the chauffeur’s uniform—“and wear one of your own. Look like a tourist. You cannot carry your case, of course. You will leave it behind. I shall see it is destroyed.”