‘ “Oh?” she said. “So you’ve been disappointed, have you?”
‘ “No,” I said. “I’m just pointing out what anyone can tell you: that the only thing between us has been harsh words. Whenever I try to help her, all I get is rudeness.”
‘ “Playing hard to get, is she?”
‘ “Not at all,” I said. “She’s a child alone, without a father, and has a mother far away, in Gibraltar or some place, and as difficult, from what I hear, as she is.”
‘ “And you want to step in,” she says, sneering, “and be a father to her, is that it?”
‘ “She needs a father,” I say.
‘ “Oh, yes!” she says. “Well, you’re a bigger fool even than I thought. You think she’s taken a fancy for your big moustaches, I suppose!”
‘ “Leave my moustaches out of it!” I say. Although they are rather fine.
‘ “How can I leave them out,” she says, “when you go waving them at every pretty girl you see!”
‘ “I have not been waving them at Nina. As I told you, it’s just that I feel for her as I would for a daughter.”
‘And then she flies off the handle and stamps out!’
‘Well, there you are, Chief!’ said Seymour. ‘That’s a woman for you.’
‘That’s my wife for you,’ said the Chief gloomily.
‘So when I heard you warning Nina that day, you were doing it just out of the kindness of your heart?’
‘That’s right. As I would do for a daughter. Although I would hope that any daughter of mine would not be like Nina.’
Seymour laughed. ‘I think I can understand that, Chief! But, tell me, you must have had grounds for your warning?’
‘Oh, yes!’
‘You said that she was mixed up with a bad lot?’
‘Oh, yes. A very bad lot!’
‘Anarchists?’
‘The lot of them!’
‘I ask, you see, because I understand from the prison governor that he has a lot of anarchists in there. And that they were there when Lockhart was there.’
‘Ah, yes. They would have been arrested at the same time. In Tragic Week.’
‘Was that awkward for you?’
‘Awkward?’
‘Well, I rather gathered from what you said that you’d had your eye on them in connection with something else. And if you were already deep into an investigation, having to shovel them into prison like that may have cut across your inquiries.’
‘Well, it did — I thought that we were getting somewhere. Of course, you can say that if they’re in prison then they landed up in the right place, even if it’s for something else.’
‘Yes, but — correct me if I’m wrong — but I thought your original investigation was into something very, very particular.’
‘Well, it was.’
‘What sounded to me — from what you said to Nina — a possible murder.’
‘It could turn out to be that. It could very well.’
‘A man died.’
‘He did, he did.’
‘Ramon Mas.’
‘Ramon Mas.’
‘And you thought that Nina’s friends might have been mixed up in it.’
‘Not “might”; they definitely were, the bastards!’
‘Could you tell me about it?’
‘They were all in it together.’
‘Smuggling?’
‘Of course! Everyone’s into smuggling on this coast. That is, all the fishermen. There’s not much money in fishing, you see. To keep a family alive, you’ve got to have good money coming in. So they all do it. A boat goes out in the middle of the night and meets another boat, and something is handed over. There’s nothing to it. And they really think there’s nothing to it, it’s completely natural to them. They’ve been doing it for years, for always. They don’t even see that it is wrong. Against the law? The law? What’s that? Never heard of it. Don’t believe in it. They’re anarchists, as I said. All of them.’
‘Not Catalan Nationalists?’
‘There are no Catalan Nationalists in Spain,’ said the Chief automatically.
Chantale joined him and they continued along Las Ramblas. They ran into a group of cabezudos and stood for a while watching them lollop around. They were playing with some children, giving them rides on their shoulders and taking part in their skipping games, pretending to be clumsy, stumbling and even falling. The children shrieked with laughter.
Despite their bonhomie there was something slightly frightening about them, he thought. Partly it was their size. Seymour was tall himself but they towered over him. To the children they must have seemed giants. And yet it didn’t appear to bother them. They were used to them, he supposed. But also, perhaps, he thought, they fitted naturally into a child’s world, among the giants and the ogres and the fairies good and bad. They had something of the ambivalence of figures in folk stories, creatures who were unpredictable, as adults were sometimes unpredictable, as their parents occasionally were.
The cabezudos were a bit like that for adults, too. They might turn out to be good or bad, could give a helping hand or could lead you astray. They were not to be relied on. They had been pretty helpful to him, but was that just something to gain his confidence so that he could be tricked later? That was what the woman had suggested when they had first encountered them.
They seemed to know everything that was going on: about him, for instance, and what he was doing there; about Lockhart and what he had been up to; about — for that, surely, was what the tip about Lockhart’s interest in fish was meant to convey — the smuggling. They seemed to have tap-roots into everything, especially if it was in any way underground.
Who were they?
Locals, certainly, and therefore, and from their speech, Catalans. Nationalists? Or was that the wrong sort of question to ask? Did they reach back past modern political organization into deep folk tradition?
Or were they not so much Nationalists as anarchists? There was a sort of disruptive spirit about them, an opposition to authority and all that was order. To the authorities, certainly. But they didn’t seem to be anarchists in the way that he was used to, anarchism as a political form — the way that Nina was, for example. It was more spontaneous than that.
Whose side were they on? They had seemed to be on Lockhart’s side. Why? Was it because they recognized in him a kindred free spirit? Or was there some closer, more practical tie? A commercial one, perhaps? Or a sympathy they and Lockhart had in common? Or both?
As one of the cabezudos skipped past him, he murmured, ‘I’m looking for Ricardo.’
The cabezudo gave no sign of having heard and danced away. A little later, though, it returned and said, ‘You don’t look for Ricardo. He looks for you.’
‘All right, tell him to look for me, then.’
The cabezudo capered off and soon the whole group of cabezudos had moved on. Seymour knew that they would find him if they needed to and he and Chantale walked on.
They found a little restaurant tucked away down by the harbour, almost on the quay. It didn’t look much of a place, consisting of a few, bare, untableclothed tables, but it was crowded and they had difficulty in finding a table. It was a busy place. Waiters in black trousers were dashing about armed with bottles and baskets and some of them were bringing out black earthenware pots from the kitchen, which they placed on the tables. As they lifted the lids off delicious smells spread though the restaurant. The pots all contained fish of some kind: sardines, mullet, bass, but also mussels and lobsters and shrimps.
‘You have chosen the right place,’ said a voice beside them.’
It was Ricardo. He dropped into a chair beside them. ‘You permit?’
‘Please join us,’ said Seymour.
A waiter put a pot on the table and three plates. The pot contained a mixture of things, squid, shellfish and great lumps of fish: a sort of fishmonger stew.
‘This is where the fishermen eat,’ said Ricardo. ‘Also the people who work in the fish market. And many others, too.’
‘Provided they are Catalan?’ suggested Seymour.
Ricardo gave him a quick look.
‘Provided they are Catalan,’ he agreed.