The Serpent Papers (53 page)

Lost my partner, what’ll I do? I’ll get another one, prettier than you.

Skip, skip, skip to my Lou.

The call rings out. And out again.

Click. Carr-rrink, caaarunk.

‘
Hello, you’ve reached Peter Warren’s phone, please leave a message . . .
’

The breath rushes out of me. I call again. No answer.
Not this time
, I decide.
No message.

Peter Warren.
I type his name and ‘Barcelona’ into Google’s search bar. Far down in the results a series of links to articles published in the British travel magazine
Bulldogs Abroad
detailing nightlife in the city. A small photograph of the man is attached to the third article advocating a pub crawl linked to religious heritage sites of the city. Brown skin, broad smile, pixelated features. The fourth article, published in 1998 and reposted on a blog, is a review of a breakout performance by an ingénue, eighteen-year-old
Natalia Hernández.
The writer quotes the actress.

Back at my desk, I dial Fabregat. I hesitate.
Do not tell him about the priest. The scrap of paper. It was left for me – and not for him.
Instead I focus on a hunch – a ‘nebulous feeling’ – my circus act.

‘Good girl!’ he shouts down the line.

‘Can you do something for me . . . ?’ I ask slowly. ‘I don’t know what your capabilities are but—’

‘Out with it! I’ve not got all day. Barça is on in ten!’

‘I have a name for you.’

‘Who are we looking for?’

‘Peter Warren.’

‘Anything else?’

‘A telephone number.’ I read it out.

‘On it.’ Fabregat signs off. I shuffle into the kitchen and make a cup of tea, leaning my weight into the countertop. When the water boils I choose chamomile and drop the bag into a yellow cup. Steam rises. A brown stain leaks into the water.

Fabregat calls back almost immediately.

‘He left the city ten years ago. Sold an apartment in Gràcia. No residency papers. UK national. Goes back and forth in the summer months. Seems to have come through Border Patrol this year, no record of leaving. Doesn’t pay taxes. Scrounger. Does that help? The phone number belongs to a house in Capileira, Cortijo del Piño,’ he booms, audibly pleased. ‘I’m asking my boys to check it out – any single British males in that town.’

Time slips by me. I find the taste on the air off-putting; Natalia Hernández has emptied me of emotion. I pick up my phone and dial Peter Warren. His voice clicks on:
‘
Hello, you’ve reached Peter Warren’s phone, please leave a message . . .
’

No response. Irritation boils. Who the hell is this man? What is he up to in Andalusia?
He’s here illegally
 – no residency papers? A criminal record perhaps?
Nothing serious. A bar fight in Seville in 1989.
Can they find him? Fabregat hunts quickly. Where was he in 1996? The year Cristina died and Villafranca went on tour?

A day passes listlessly. I call the landline again. Obstinate.

‘
Hello, you’ve reached Peter Warren’s phone . . .
’

I leave a message, calm, collected. My name and number. And my interest in speaking to him, euphemistically about his ‘time in Barcelona’. Next I consult the Great Oracle Google.
C-A-P-I-L-E-I-R-A.
Image search.
El Cortijo del Piño.
It comes up immediately. A holiday rental in the summer, occupied by the owner in the winter. I forward the details to Fabregat. The town hall next,
tourism
,
any hack will do. I get a village number. A local bar. Scribble them down.
How big is the population?

528
.

A village that small?
They’ll know him
. Everyone will know him. I call the tourist centre in the town hall and speak to Juan, who agrees that, yes, there is a man who fits that description.
Pedro?

Is he there now?

Maybe.

Ahora?
I ask.

No sé. I don’t know.
He gets suspicious.

I say I will call back later. Phoning the bar, I hit up a cheery woman with a croaky voice – ‘
Comó?
’ she asks, perplexed. With whom do you want to speak?

I’m trying to reach my uncle
. ‘His cell phone isn’t working. Tell him I want to speak to him urgently. About Natalia.’

‘
Un Peet-Tirr Warren. Si. Lo tenemos. El inglés
. The Englishman? I know him. Yes
. Si
,’
she adds gently. ‘Of course, we will help you. Of course.’

The next morning it’s sports bra first, uncomfortable elastic round flesh. Black leggings, baggy long-sleeved shirt, braced for winter, hair tied back, hidden for now. Grab the metro pass, keys, music, stuff it into a pocket, close the door, groggily stumble down the stairs, wipe the sleep from the eyes again, squint, open the inner door, take a second look in the mirror for good measure. This part of the ritual is always a mistake. Face sleep-bloated and worn. Close eyes. A message chimes into my phone.
Notícies?
Has esmorzat?
Fabregat wants to know if I have eaten. Ignore reflection, then click, door open, freedom, escape into the road, and
run
. Up past the memorial to the Catalan fallen, the eternally burning flame to the west of the apartment. Salute the gargoyles of Santa Maria del Mar. Street cleaners in their funny green cars brushing the cobbles like mad – and continue running. Up Via Laietana, the great central square of the city – Plaça de Catalunya – just a little bit (mustn’t strain the self) into the
Ferrocarriles
.
Catch a train, up the mountain to Funicular de Vallvidrera. Vertical. Ride up to the Carretera de las Aigües
.
Escape train – walk into: dirt, cacti, open earth, sea breeze, sun white bright morning. Tie your shoelace. Now. Breathe. Run. And as you run the city wakes. The sun rises higher in the sky above the sea.
You are alive!
In time with my breath. The sweat stains the small of my back and I feel free of coldness. Light pours over the terracotta rooftops. Dust flies. Thoughts calm.

When I return to my apartment I seat myself at my desk and prepare my work for the day. I have scheduled a call with Bingley to let him know things are moving, carrying forward. At 10 a.m. the phone rings. An unknown number. I pause. Decide. Then pick up. The voice comes like a salutation from the heavens.

‘Hello . . . ’ English syllables I recognize. Precise and clear. ‘Peter Warren here.’ He pauses. ‘I think I might have what you are looking for.’

The Englishman Peter Warren sits on the patio of his country house in the Alpujarra, eighty kilometres south of Granada, up and along the old road that runs past the mass graves of Órgiva and Lanjarón, marked by legends of a holidaying Generalissimo who once bathed in mountain springwater. The wine in Peter Warren’s hand is pink, much like his cheeks. Oh, Peter Warren. He is content as a man can be – admiring his Gibraltar Candytuft in his greenhouse (grown from a clipping smuggled in from the littoral flora of the rock) with its many blushing petals, a hazy cloud of violet splayed in concentric circles. He has planted heirloom roses in three varietals: a climbing peach Gloire de Dijon, a bed of Sombreuil, and an Aimée Vibert and they are doing brilliantly, though they will not bloom for many months yet. As he was away for the majority of the last year, Peter Warren hired a local woman from the village, Concha, to come daily and water his plants and she has done a bloody splendid job, has Concha, tending the lavender and the young olive trees at the end of the drive. Peter Warren’s patio curves around a 300-year-old pine, which emerges from the ledge below, and shades the house from the late afternoon sun across the valley. The patio is formed of pebbles, arranged in interwoven circles. The house had been his father’s, and had only recently received electricity, which pleases Peter Warren. The water that runs from the taps is hard, and the surfaces in the house are positively medieval – but Peter Warren likes these details. The wormwood and fire-blackened rock link him to his father who had loved Spain, and to an old Andalusia near extinction – the land of the Alpujarra, the last strongholds of the Moors and Cante Jondo and by God he loved it. Possibly more than he loved women, possibly more than he loved Barcelona, he loved this house in the mountains so deeply he dreamt of never leaving here and making a vegetable garden and living off the land until he expired in his sleep; whereupon women who adored him in the village would bring his body cured meats and dried flowers as offerings to the dead and the priest would bless him and lay him here in the ground forever.

He leads me quickly into the house. The cedar beams are low. Inside, Peter Warren sits with his back to his desk, turning his chair to face me. I am struck then by how well young Natalia had drawn him.
She was a master.
The desk is a wide slab of oak on metal, circular legs made of old piping, facing the square window cut out of the rock wall of the house and looking into the garden.
Concha, my cleaner
.
He nods; through the window I see an old woman opening the cast-iron gate and walk up the cold dirt path to the garden, weaving her way beneath the pine tree.

Sitting with his back to his desk, Peter Warren speaks openly.

‘At first I was afraid when you called. I wanted nothing to do with it. Let the past die. Move on. But you can’t kill it, can you? I make a point not to answer my phone anyway. When you called again, I thought, damn, this girl is persistent. Then the third, fourth time, and I began to feel guilty.’

Peter’s eyes wander to the washerwoman as she gathers a tin watering can in her hand, goes to the old tap to fill the can with water and tends to the icy roses.

‘A drink?’ he asks me.

Yes, I nod.

Peter Warren returns to the kitchen and pours us two glasses of a sparkling white wine. He takes some dried almonds and cuts a slice of bread with black crust and offers them to me on terracotta plates. He eats slowly. He sits with his back to the desk, where the green Olivetti typewriter of university sleeps solemnly, gathering dust. The sheaf of paper he had placed in its jaws untouched. I feel the noise and darkness of Barcelona fall away from my shoulders with all the satisfaction of a finished thunderstorm.

‘I betrayed her.’ Peter Warren watches an ant run up to the rim of the terracotta bowl that holds the olives on the wooden table. ‘It was not a great betrayal. I did something small, and all the more cruel for that smallness.’ Peter Warren wipes his eyes on the back of his hands.

‘Don’t know what’s come over me. Tea is required in moments like this. Sugar?’

I shake my head and thank him. He claps his hands on his knees and stands, his body towering over me.

Peter Warren returns with two steaming cups and sits down beside me on the sofa. He claps me on the knee. ‘So,’ he says. ‘I suppose you’d like to see it?’

‘Yes.’ Warm liquid slips down my throat.

‘Give me five minutes. I’ve hidden it away somewhere. Didn’t want to get it out without company. Brings bad things up.’

That summer, Peter Warren’s apartment had been on the fourth floor of a modern brick complex to the north side of Gràcia – west of metro stop Joanic near a florist who specializes in South American orchids. It is small and sparsely decorated. White walls covered by a few theatre posters in black frames, and a remodelled kitchen that had cost him nearly his entire life savings.