300 Days of Sun (20 page)

I felt him bump against me, and then his hand caught mine. We walked through the dark garden without speaking, his hand warm in mine, neither of us daring to mention it. Streetlights cast glittering ladders across the water of the marina. Our footsteps padded over the cobbles. I wondered if he could hear my breathing.

At the door to my studio I stopped to get out my key. He pushed the red door and it swung back, open as usual. Perhaps that should have worried me more than it did but my mind was full of other things. Nathan stood at the dark entrance, holding the door wide for me and still saying nothing.

“Okay, I'll see you in the morning, then,” I said.

He had let go of my hand so I reached out to touch his upper arm, intending it as reassurance that we were still as one on what had to be done. We'd go back to the café for breakfast, and we'd speak to Nuno Palhares. There was nothing else to be done until then.

He leaned in and I felt his arm come around my waist. I gave him the hug I thought he needed. His mouth was by my ear, and he gave a tiny sigh. Then I felt his lips touch mine, but only a brush.

“Can I come up?” he whispered.

T
he studio looked a bit messier than I remembered leaving it, but I wasn't really concentrating on the room. Nathan reached for me as soon as I'd shut the door.

I let him pull me closer. For all our banter and mild flirtation I hadn't considered this a possibility. I was curious, and flattered, but it was more than that—­far more. By the time both his arms were around me, and he dipped his head to kiss me, the physical attraction between us was overwhelming.

Neither of us spoke.

He ran a finger lightly down the opening of my blouse, and waited, barely touching my skin until he saw me smile. It felt good.

Nathan was gentle and playful in bed compared to Marc—­more gentle than anyone I'd ever been with, yet imaginatively so. His touch was electric. That was a surprise, too. What can I say? It was fun, very sensual, and I enjoyed every moment. I thought it was probably a one-­off event. I didn't mind too much about that. It was worth it, not only to sate my curiosity about him but because, as I let myself go, moving on top of him, feeling his silky muscles responding beneath me, I had such a profound sense of release and reconnection with my younger self, by which I mean the person who could simply be, without complication. I was glad it had happened.

The next morning he looked into my eyes and gave me such a heart-­flippingly lovely grin that I relaxed completely.

W
e went down to the street and along to the Café Aliança for breakfast together.

João was behind the bar wiping glasses. He nodded as we walked across the checkerboard floor. We ordered coffee and
tostas
. He brought them over to a table under an old photograph of fishermen mending nets, followed not long afterwards by the political candidate. In the flesh, Nuno Palhares had a buttery complexion, a smooth plump face and dark bearlike eyes.

“He is happy to speak to anyone, if they have—­or not—­a vote in Faro,” said João by way of introduction as we exchanged names.

“You can tell the ­people you meet here that I am a good guy!” Palhares said in American-­accented English. His professional handshake was warm and firm. It was clear from the start that his English was vastly superior to Nathan's command of local slang and my halting Portuguese. He was of medium height, but broad shoulders and a distinct presence made him seem larger. The smile seemed sincere, and exposed teeth that surely had received the attentions of an expensive cosmetic dentist.

He accepted our offer of coffee and sat down, all geniality and openness. “So, you are interested in my campaign?”

“It was your name that made me stop and think,” I said.

Palhares did a pantomimed double take.

“I have recently read a book,” I opened. “I don't know if it's true in every respect, but it concerns events here during the Second World War.”

“Here—­in Faro?”

“Yes. Right here in this café, too. It was written by a woman who came here in the 1940s.” I knew I had struck a chord because Palhares leaned in, his brown button eyes engaged. I watched them carefully. “The book is called
The Alliance
.”

Palhares blinked. We had him; I knew it then.

“You know that book?” he asked.

A pause.

“What do you want to know?” he asked.

Nathan jumped straight in. “Is it a true story?” he asked. His bluntness could easily have backfired, but our luck held.

“As much as I know, it is true,” said the man cautiously but with a degree of interest that encouraged me to push on.

“In the book, the fisherman—­was he a relative?”

“No.”

My shoulders slumped involuntarily. I had been so sure. “So . . . was there no connection, Esta Hartford just happened to give your name to one of the characters?”

“Ah . . . she switched the names around a bit.”

I sat up. “So—­?”

“My father, Calixto Palhares, was the manager of the bank.”

I tried not to let my excitement show. “And the good German, Klaus Mayer? He was also based on a real person?”

“Oh, yes. He was real, but that wasn't his real name.”

“What was his name?”

Palhares went to lift his coffee cup, and then replaced it. He seemed to know how important this was, and he played it as a true professional. “His real name was Karl Walde.”

“Do you remember your father speaking of him?” I asked.

“Of course. This was a story he loved to tell. I grew up with it. Karl stayed in Portugal with the woman he met during the war, and my father and he became close friends.”

“You remember meeting him then?”

“Very well.”

“A good man?” asked Nathan.

“A good man, yes. He and his wife—­Esta, who wrote the book—­they made a great success of a hotel the other side of Albufeira. One of the first to bring the tourists to the Algarve from the cold north of Europe. They got warm; we got prosperity!”

“This hotel—­it grew into the Horta das Rochas resort, is that correct?”

“That is correct.”

“And he and your father remained close friends after that, or—­?”

“Karl Walde was a big man. He never changed, even when he became rich. Compared to many here, he became very rich. But what you read in the book about how he helped the poor Portuguese on the Algarve was also true. He did many good works for the ­people here.

“I was not expecting to be talking about this with you.” He looked genuinely touched. “But it's good. I am glad to tell the story. It was because of my father and Karl Walde that I became a local politician.”

I have met enough politicians in my time to be deeply cynical. Most of them are opportunists and narcissists, more concerned with how their contribution will be judged rather than fighting for what might work best across party boundaries. Either Nuno Palhares was a terrific actor, or he was the most heartfelt candidate I had ever met.

“How did it really happen, when your father and Karl Walde met—­was it during the storm in 1941 as it is in the book?”

Palhares settled in his plastic chair, which gave a loud crack. “That night, it felt like the end of the world. That is what my father always said.”

“And the fishermen and Karl Walde brought the gold back here?”

“Yes. They tried to save the men who drowned, but they could not. They brought the gold to the bank and my father helped to distribute the funds to help repair the damage, and to recompense the farmers and fishermen and salt-­panners and boatmen who had lost so much. All true.”

I looked around at the café's crumbling grandeur, trying to picture the scene.

“It was the work of a great humanitarian,” went on Palhares. “Other men were digging and clearing, doing what they could with nothing. The gold was Karl Walde's tool and he gave it to us. What happened in 1941 was not unique. These events are natural phenomena. They occur randomly.”

For a moment I thought he was talking about war, not storms.

“In the long run, coastal engineering actually weakens the natural coastal defences in the event of storm surges. We live in a time of false confidence. We also believe that our science will predict and save, when nature unleashes her worst. But the truth is that the population is not prepared to deal with these forgotten calamities. We live in an everlasting present, with our governments and our media—­when we should be looking to the past and reading the warnings there.

“Every time some disaster happens, the authorities say that lessons will be learned. But with reconstruction comes forgetting. Each time, the catastrophe seems unique. But terrible events are not unique; they are recurrent. There is such faith in technology to keep us safe, touching really, but misguided. Never forgetting, that is the only insurance policy worth having. Memories and experience are undervalued. Who remembers the Great Storm of 1941 now?”

It was hard to disagree.

“What happened to Karl Walde afterwards?” asked Nathan.

“He and Esta had two children. Eduardo was born in 1948, the year before me. His sister Carolina came soon after.”

“A happy marriage?”

“It seemed to be.”

“They can't still be alive, can they?”

“No. Though Esta made it to her late eighties. Karl died much earlier. A heart attack, I think.”

“That was when his son, Eduardo, took over at Horta das Rochas, is that right?”

Palhares considered this. “It wasn't too long, certainly, before Eduardo became the boss.”

“Were you ever friendly with him?” I was imagining two sons of two friends. It had to be worth the question.

“As boys we were friends, yes. Later, it was harder.”

“Was there a reason for that, or was it—­?”

“When Eduardo took over as the hotel manager he had the idea to develop the resort into what it is today. But he had a hard time. Crime and corruption were growing. By the 1980s, organised crime had moved into the Algarve resorts.”

“Did that affect the Walde family?” asked Nathan.

Palhares stared at him, for the first time seeming to calculate how much he ought to say. “You don't know?”

“Know what?”

“About what happened to the Walde family?”

Silence. A vein pulsed in Nathan's neck. I wanted to reach out to him and dared not.

“In 1992, Carolina's husband was murdered and her child was taken from the garden of the family house—­no ransom demand was made, so the family never knew whether it was a failed extortion racket, a deal gone wrong, or a lesson being taught. It was a time when several children were abducted, one found murdered, none returned. The gangsters who killed Luiz Vicente, Carolina's husband, were never brought to justice. The two-­year-­old boy was never seen again.”

W
e walked away dazed, but with the one prize we wanted. Palhares had given us an office telephone number and a message for Eduardo Walde; I was to say immediately that we had spoken to him.

At one point, Palhares had given Nathan a long glance that made me wonder whether he had guessed why we were so insistent on talking about the Walde family, but he said nothing.

Nathan dropped an arm over my shoulders. “So what do we tell Eduardo Walde? Where do we start?”

“We tell him we have a confidential matter to discuss.”

“That just sounds dodgy.”

“That we were the ones who found Rylands?”

“I think we have to.”

“We tell him the truth, or as close to the truth as we can. That Rylands gave me the book. Where it led. Our suspicions that we may have some information about the boy who was kidnapped. See what his reaction is. Or we could go to the police or the British Consul with this and let the authorities handle it.”

A silence. The implications of allowing officialdom to intercede grew and settled.

“Bloody great, isn't it? Not just organised crime, but Nazis, too.”

“Not a Nazi. A good German.”

“Go on, do it.”

We walked to a bench in the Jardim Manuel Bivar and I rang the number for Eduardo Walde.

W
e spoke in English—­his English was extremely good—­but even so it was impossible on the telephone to gauge his reaction to my request for a meeting, even when I explained that we were the ones who had discovered Ian Rylands' body. That was understandable. As far as he knew, we were a ­couple of ghouls who wanted to milk the situation for all it was worth. In his position I would probably have thought the same.

He suggested a public space: the embankment of the Tagus, by the Monument to the Discoveries.

“Lisbon?” asked Nathan, one knee jiggling with impatience.

I nodded. “The monument where Alva ran into Ronald Bagshaw, in the book, when she was finding her feet in Portugal,” I reminded him.

If he thought that was interesting or otherwise, he didn't say.

“When?”

“Tomorrow at noon.”

We went to the beach that afternoon, the one close to the airport. Taking the ferry was a way of passing the time, of relaxing before whatever was to come. Back in town we had dinner in a tourist café and went back to my studio. It was only then, when I couldn't find my phone charger, that I remembered the feeling I'd had the previous evening when I'd opened the door.

“I think someone was in here yesterday,” I said.

“Er, that would be us?”

“Very funny. No . . . there was something not quite right.”

“Stuff missing?”

“No, just not where I left it.”

“You're sure—­really sure?”

I still couldn't find the charger, which was annoying. But maybe he was right; we'd messed up the studio ourselves. Nathan put his arms around me and my physical reaction to his touch was even stronger now I knew how good we were together. He didn't speak much and I was glad about that. I didn't want him to tell me he was grateful for what I'd done for him, much less have it confirmed that that was the reason he was making love to me so tenderly. But compared to the previous night, when my self-­absorption had been a form of self-­defence, I wanted to give more than ever.