A Shortcut to Paradise Read Free Page A

they’d agreed to meet up that night. He sensed that his friend had money, so he was intending to see if he could extract a little cash from him that would ensure their life didn’t go to the dogs.
    â€œI haven’t seen him for a hell of a long time,” said Ernest apologetically. “What’s more, he’s divorced and childless, so it will probably spin out and I’ll get back late…” he added, expecting his wife to react.
    Carmen was usually quick to complain when he spent an evening out with his translator friends lamenting the sorry state of the profession, but she didn’t moan and even told him not to worry. She simply asked him to wake her up when he came back and tell her how it had gone. She too was very worried by the disastrous state of their finances. Carmen realized their economic situation was bad, even though her man had generously spared her explanations of just how bad.
    At around eleven, when Carmen was in bed, Ernest left home wearing old jeans, a white shirt and the brown jacket where he’d hidden the toy pistol. His cheap brand of sunglasses and beige cloth cap were also in one pocket. He stopped the first taxi that passed by the corner near their house, heart racing but mind made up, as there was everything to play for, and once inside he stammered: “To Up & Down, please.”
    There isn’t a taxi driver in the whole of Barcelona who doesn’t know where Up & Down is, particularly if they’re on the night shift. North of the Diagonal, the disco had known better times, before other night spots, strategically placed in the Port Olímpic, usurped the top places in the glamour listings. Long gone were the days when it was de rigueur to wear a tie and sport shoes were banned; nevertheless, a selection process still existed that went from dress code to the size of one’s wallet. Like most fashionable discos, Up & Down favoured an easygoing style that encompassed rough-cut designer jeans and top brands of sweatshirts, and the casual uniform of Conservative Party youth, sleek hair and boat shoes included. The eagle-eyed doormen would have been loath to allow someone as drab as Ernest to pass through the gates to that temple to bourgeois
recreation, but he wasn’t in fact intending to go in. He was going to stay outside and hover like a vulture waiting for an easy prey. Although he’d never crossed that threshold, it was common knowledge that Up & Down was one of the favourite haunts for the wealthy of Barcelona.
    Ernest had finally decided on an easy enough solution to get hold of the two grand they desperately needed: he would steal it at pistol-point. Once he’d come to this decision, his ethical beliefs and strict scale of values forced him to limit his possible field to the rich. He didn’t want to risk holding up someone as povertystricken as himself, although that wouldn’t have been difficult. So after he’d chewed over his plan of action, he’d worked out that his best option was to travel to where the well-off lived and partied. On a Friday night, in a plush disco like that, he’d find the filthy rich thick on the ground. He was quite right. What’s more, the place had the added bonus of being surrounded by badly lit boulevards with few passers-by.
    The moral dilemma of the theft didn’t bother him in the slightest at that point in time. It was one thing to steal in order to avoid work, he thought, and quite another to enter St Dismas’s fraternity of thieves as a last resort. He wasn’t out to steal to put food on their table, but worse still, to continue having a dining room to put a table where he could put their Spanish omelettes. Of course, he was a total novice and anguished about picking the right victim, and about ending up in the police station and becoming part of the problem rather than the solution.
    When he reached the disco at around half-past eleven, Ernest realized it had only