Lime's Photograph (18 page)

“Thanks. Go down towards the harbour when I’ve left,” she said in Spanish, turning her head and held out the lolly for the delighted child again.

My heart was thumping. She sat calmly and let the child finish eating, but I saw her hands tremble a little as she wiped the infant’s mouth with a paper napkin. Then she got up and pushed the pram
towards the crossing by the Hotel Londres. I stayed where I was for another five minutes, one tourist among many, and then walked slowly towards the little fishing harbour where blue cutters were moored below the grey stone walls adjoining the town centre. I tried not to look around, but the palms of my hands were sweaty.

There were lots of people strolling down by the harbour. I stood at the quayside and looked out at the blunt-nosed cutters. A young man came up beside me. He looked at me and I followed him, walking a few paces behind. I knew what they were up to when, like all the other people out for an evening walk in San Sebastián, we wandered, apparently aimlessly, around the town centre. Others would be watching to see that no one was following me. We returned to the harbour. Loud rock music was blaring from a bar, which the young man entered. His place was taken by another young man wearing the same kind of outfit, jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, who walked up to me, took a firm hold of my arm and pointed at a white BMW parked by the kerb with its engine running. I got into the back seat and the car drove off smoothly.

There were two men in the car. They were wearing baseball caps and sunglasses, despite the fact that it was dark, and they took care not to turn round. Again we drifted aimlessly with all the other young men in their shiny cars. The modern, motorised version of the Spanish
paseo
. To see and be seen before dinner. Up and down the boulevards and up in the direction of one of the headlands and back again before driving out to the industrial suburb of Renteria, leaving fashionable San Sebastián behind us. It was replaced by tenement blocks, the flaking walls appearing in the car’s headlights, burnt-out cars along the kerb looking like modernist sculptures. I could see scrawny human shadows hunched between the piles of rubbish and rubble. Junkies and junkie prostitutes on their way out into the dark night. ETA could be safe here too. Not because they loved the fiery young
terrorists in Renteria, but because they hated the police and authorities even more.

The BMW turned off into a wasteland. Two big rats ran alongside a derelict building which had once been another squalid tenement block, housing the Andalusian workers who had come here during Franco’s time to participate in the Spanish economic miracle. In the glow of the headlights, I could see a gas cooker and a rusty fridge lying in one corner. The nearest streetlights had long since been smashed.

“Out, Lime!” said the driver.

I got out, and the BMW slid away. My heart was hammering. I could hear cars on the nearby motorway interchange that sliced through the neighbourhood like a luminous scar. I had the feeling that there was someone inside the ruin, but without the light from the BMW’s headlights, everything was in total darkness. Adrenalin was pumping through my body, and I took a couple of deep breaths, clenched my fists and slipped into combat stance. Ready for action, as I had learnt at the karate institute in Madrid.

But they didn’t come from the derelict building. Another car pulled in and stopped a few metres from me, so I turned and stood with my back to the ruin. It was a black Seat and two men got out from the back, while the driver stayed in the car. The engine was running and the headlights dazzled me, but that was the whole idea. They stood next to the car, so they could get in again quickly. I stood in the glare of the lights, but I could see their silhouettes. They were sturdy young men, wearing jeans and dark windcheaters. They had turned up the collars and pulled their caps down over their foreheads.

“We haven’t got long, Peter Lime,” said one of them.

“Why did you murder my family?” I said hoarsely and took a step forward. My mouth and throat were dry.

“Don’t move, Lime,” said the same man.

“Why?” I said.

“It wasn’t us. We understand that you want to hear it from us. You’re hearing it now. I swear on Euskadi’s soil and by the blood of the martyrs, we had nothing to do with it. We didn’t even know the traitorous whore had been housed in that building. It wasn’t us.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have a second’s doubt that they were who they appeared to be. They exuded danger and desperation, and the possibility that Tómas might have conned me was completely out of the question. It was obviously important for them to have it put on record that they weren’t responsible. They wanted to tell me – perhaps because they owed Tómas a favour.

“I am grateful for the information,” I said tonelessly.

One of them got back into the car, but the other one stayed where he was.

“If you find out who was behind it, then perhaps we can help you to take the revenge you apparently want,” he said.

“Why should you help me?”

“Because you once helped one of ours.”

“That was many years ago.”

“We never forget, Peter Lime. Remember that. We never forget.”

He got into the car and, before he had even slammed the door, the driver released the clutch and accelerated round the corner, churning up a shower of grit and sand. I couldn’t see a thing in the total darkness. I was gripped by fear and broke into a gasping run out of the wasteland, down a side street and onto a main road. I don’t think anyone was following me, but anxiety drove me to keep running until I reached a well-lit road. I stood catching my breath. San Sebastián’s golden sheen lay before me and I walked calmly now, looking over my shoulder for a taxi with a green light that would drive me back to my motorbike.

It was where I had parked it, outside the Hotel Londres. I drove home slowly. I was exhausted and my mind was filled with conflicting
thoughts and emotions. It was the answer I had been expecting, but perhaps I had hoped they would claim responsibility so that I would have had a convenient target at which to direct my anger.

The house was in dark and quiet. There was a faint smell of smoke from the bonfire. I didn’t look at it as I took out the key to the front door. I let myself in. He must have gone to wait in the alcove just inside the door as soon as he heard the motorbike, because he struck me squarely on the neck with a cosh. Everything exploded in a shower of fragmented light.

When I came to again, I was sitting on one of the narrow-backed kitchen chairs. They had moved it out onto the floor against the low wall leading into the kitchen and tied my hands tight behind my back. My neck hurt, but not unbearably. My assailant knew the effect of his cosh. He had struck neither too hard nor too soft, just the right touch to knock me out without fracturing my skull. They were professionals and they terrified me, making my heart beat wildly. There were three men, in their late 30s. I was even more scared to see that they weren’t wearing masks. Two of them were of medium height and built like small, stocky rugby players. The third was bigger and taller. They were wearing jeans and open-necked shirts. Two of them were wearing leather jackets; the big one was in his shirtsleeves. He was holding the cosh, a fat little rubber sausage that he patted lovingly against the palm of his hand. He had a narrow, sly face under a high and pockmarked forehead. The other two stood opposite me, just to the left of our dining table. One of them had a narrow moustache and slicked-back, greasy hair, the other one’s fair hair was fashionably cropped. They surprised me by speaking English, with an unmistakable Irish accent.

“Well, my friend. Welcome back to the land of the living,” said the big man with the cosh. “Now we’re going to have a nice little chat.
Apologies for not introducing myself first, but we know about your Japanese talents, so we thought it best to get you nice and settled first. Before our little chat. Don’t you think? You should sit comfortably when you’re having a friendly little chat, don’t you think?”

“Three clowns in my house,” I said.

They reacted fast. Three steps and moustache was standing behind me and yanked my vain ponytail, pulling my head back with a crack, while the cropped one jabbed me twice, precisely and sharply, in the liver, racking my body with pain. Everything went dark again.

“Well, well, well, Mr Lime. Mr fucking-funny-name Peter Harry Lime of movie-fame,” said the big one with the cosh. “Not a good idea to be a naughty boy at night.”

“What’s the IRA doing in Euskadi?” I said when I had got my breath back. I probably appeared quite calm on the surface, but I was terrified.

“We’ve got a lot in common with our Basque comrades,” said the cosh. “They’re good nationalists and Marxists. Like us they’re oppressed and kept in chains by a fucking king who they don’t acknowledge. Like us they’re nationalists first and Marxists second. Like us they have a just cause in an unjust world.”

There had always been connection between the IRA and ETA. I knew that they had collaborated on arms deliveries and the purchase of Czech Semtex. The IRA could call on American sympathisers for money and weapons. ETA could buy weapons from the IRA, financing their purchases by collecting protection money, which they chose to call a “revolutionary tax”, and other activities. I understood why Tómas had been so nervous. Friendship was one thing, the issue apparently another. If he hadn’t been given the choice between betrayal and death, that was. Now I couldn’t make it all fit. I simply couldn’t see what they were after. If they didn’t want me snooping, they could just have liquidated me and left me at the side of the road
with a bullet through my mouth. Then they would have sent yet another clear signal.

That was probably how this was going to end anyway. They weren’t wearing masks because they didn’t count on me being around to describe them.

“Fuck off,” was all I said, and tensed my body, but it didn’t help, the pain was still intense as the cropped one belted me on the jaw and I tasted blood as he hit me hard and accurately in my side again.

“Mr Lime,” said the cosh. “It’s not worth it. I know you’re a tough guy, but it’s not worth it. We won’t let up.”

“I don’t know what you want,” I said hoarsely.

“Mr Lime. Please accept my apologies. I had quite forgotten to say. What do we want? We want to know where you’ve hidden the suitcase containing a photograph or two which we would like to have for our photo album.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, and tensed every muscle again, but it didn’t help of course.

When I came round my mouth was full of blood, and the small of my back and my stomach were aching and it felt as if they had cracked a rib. One of my ears was swollen and my lips and one eyebrow were split. At first I thought my t-shirt was soaked with blood, but they’d thrown water over me when I fainted. Spots of light danced before my eyes and I had that nauseous feeling that accompanies slight concussion. The cosh was sitting at the kitchen table now and they had dragged my chair up close to the edge of it. I could sense the other two standing right behind me. The smaller one held me up. My arms had been untied, but they were numb, and my elbow was burning. They must have finished up by overturning the chair. I rested my arms on the table. They started tingling. My ankles had been tied to the chair. My eyes focused on the bottle of whisky in front of the one I thought of as the cosh, and the two tumblers next to it. He poured
a small shot for himself and filled the other tumbler to the rim. The golden brown liquid stirred almost sensually as it caught the light. The aroma of malt and peat filled me with a mixture of lovely memories and awful nightmares.

“Let’s be friends, Mr Lime. Let’s have a drink together instead,” said the cosh. He smiled, but his strangely colourless eyes were completely dead in his acne-scarred face.

“No,” I said.

“But yes, Mr Lime. Friends should have a glass together.”

“I don’t drink,” I said.

“In Ireland it’s very impolite, well almost an insult, to say no to enjoying a drink with a friend. It’s sissy too. Only fairies and sissies don’t drink. Real men like their whisky the same way they like their women – unadulterated. Have a glass, Mr Lime!”

“I don’t drink,” I said, and swept the full tumbler off the table. The liquid ran along the brown wood and the glass smashed onto the stone floor and shattered into pieces. I waited for the punch, but none came. Instead, he shook his narrow head that seemed at odds with his large body. He got up and fetched another glass and half-filled it. The cropped one took hold of my arms and wrenched them back so I sat rigid. The other one held my head back with my damned ponytail in one hand and pinched my nose together with his other hand, as the cosh got up slowly, as if in slow motion, holding the glass. He came closer, the glass grew larger before my eyes, my mouth gasped for air. The glass with its rippling, golden and compelling liquid dominated my field of vision. I could smell the oak casks and the malt and the smokehouse peat. It was a fine Irish malt. It was both compelling and repulsive. He tipped a mouthful into me. It tasted like fire and I was about to vomit, but he waited patiently until I had regained my breath, and then the rim of the glass bit into my battered lips again. Most of it ran down my chin, but I instantly felt the effect of the little
that stayed in my mouth. It was impossible not to swallow, despite the coughing fit provoked by the strong drops seeping down towards my lungs. It was as if every cell in my body rejoiced and wept at the same time, but opened up like flowers after rain and sucked in the alcohol. A beautiful, white light infused my brain and the pains in my body were soothed in a second, as if I had been given a shot of morphine.

I hadn’t touched spirits for nearly eight years. Before that I had drunk heavily for 20 years. Most of the time I could control it, but there were many occasions of which I had no recollection whatsoever, when I had been on one of my grand benders, disappearing into an alcoholic haze for days on end. Amelia had put up with it at first, even though the first time she saw me with a complete blank about what I had been up to it had frightened the life out of her. But when Maria Luisa was born, she had given me a choice. The bottle or them. She loved me, but she didn’t want to witness, or let our child witness, my slow self-destruction. We lived in an alcohol-soaked culture, and Oscar and Gloria had never so much as mentioned my problem, but they backed Amelia up. I realised for the first time how they saw me. It seems so simple to write about that period, but it was hell. Going to my first meeting at Alcoholics Anonymous was one of the hardest decisions of my life. And then slowly, with an air of unreality, walking through the rows of chairs, up to the rostrum and turning to face the gathering and say “Good evening. My name is Peter. I’m an alcoholic.” It was a difficult time, but the choice was actually no choice at all when I looked at Amelia and Maria Luisa. The karate institute was my physical salvation. Meetings at AA a vital crutch. I could keep the demon at arm’s length by pressing myself physically to the limit. But I could never walk past a bar without hearing that tempting call, like a siren promising me good fortune and joy if I followed her and stepped inside, putting myself in her hands once more. Just once. Just a single
glass. But I had kept the image of my two miracles in my mind’s eye and gradually it became easier. I had been on the verge of succumbing several times after their deaths, but somehow I felt that my promise to Amelia had even greater significance, meant even more, now that she was no longer here.