A Dead Man in Barcelona Read Free

making them go on the ships. There had been shooting before but this time it was close, just outside, in the street. “This is the stuff!” he said. He was quite excited. And then he wanted to go out. “You’d do better to stay in,” I said. “You don’t want to get mixed up in this. You stick to business.” “Ah, but this is business,” he said.’
    ‘What did he mean by that?’
    ‘I don’t know. I didn’t know what he was talking about.’
    ‘What was his business?’
    ‘Something to do with the docks. He had an office down there. Just past the church. But I never quite knew what his business was. We didn’t talk about it. Well, you wouldn’t, would you? In bed? Anyway, that night he insisted on going out. And then he didn’t come back.
    ‘There was more shooting, not just in our street but in all the streets, and I got frightened and ran back here to the café. And Manuel – he’s the boss, he owns the café – and said, “You stay right here until it’s all over.” He said that to all of us, and we all stayed. “There’s no point in getting mixed up in it,” he said. “It’s not your fight.”
    ‘But Inez – she’s another of the waitresses – said it was – her fight. She’s Catalan, you see. Well, I am, too, but not like her. I mean I wasn’t sure it was my fight. But she said it was our boys, and she went out. And she didn’t come back, either.
    ‘I was in a hell of a state, I can tell you. We were all in a state. But Manuel said, “Just stay here. You’d be all right here.” Although it didn’t seem so.
    ‘It was hours before the shooting stopped. But then Manuel went out. There were a lot of bodies, he said, but hers wasn’t among them. He came back and said we should stay inside.
    ‘But I wanted to see. I mean, he had looked for Inez but I wanted to look for Lockhart. So I went out and another of the girls came with me. But I couldn’t find anything. He wasn’t among the bodies. “That’s good,” Marie said. “It means he’s alive.” But I couldn’t believe that. Not until I’d really seen him. They said a lot of people had been taken to the prison so I went along and asked to see him. But they wouldn’t let me, they wouldn’t let anybody. And then Manuel said to come home and he would fix it when things had settled down. So I went back to the café.
    ‘And a couple of days later he did fix it and I went to see him.’
    ‘You saw Lockhart when he was in prison?’ said Seymour.
    ‘Yes. I couldn’t see him really properly, though, it was so dark. He was lying in a corner and I thought maybe he had been wounded, but he said not. He told me to go away and not come again. “Don’t get mixed up in this!” he said. I said I could bring him things, food, perhaps. I wasn’t sure that they’d fed him and I’m damned sure they weren’t giving him enough water, but he said keep out of it. “Don’t come back,” he said. But I would have gone back. But then we heard that he was dead. Those bastards had killed him – killed him in the prison!’
    Her voice had risen. Everyone else in the café had stopped talking. Then a man’s voice said soothingly, ‘It’s okay, Dolores, it’s okay. You come here now. Get back into the kitchen.’
    Dolores got up from the table.
    ‘I’d better go,’ she said. She managed a smile. ‘Or Manuel will have my ass.’
    ‘Did he say anything else?’
    ‘Only to tell Nina.’
    ‘Who’s Nina?’
    ‘She’s a girl in Barcelona. He always used to go and see her when he was over here. Why, I can’t think, because she’s a real pain in the ass. I used to wonder if he had a thing for her but I reckon not. It wouldn’t be easy to get a thing going with Nina. It would be like being in bed with a hedgehog.’
    ‘Did he say why?’
    ‘No. Just told me to tell her. Well, I did, but that was a waste of time. She knew anyway. She just looked at me with those cold eyes and nodded. That was all. A hard bitch. As well as