Lime's Photograph (2 page)

“Don’t cast the first stone, my friend,” I said under my breath in the Danish that still felt like my own language, even though for years I had spoken it regularly only to myself and then mostly in my own head. English was for business, Spanish for love and Danish for those innermost, secret thoughts which demand a profound understanding of the underlying nuance of each word; where it’s not what is said that counts, but the way in which it is said and thought.

The man manoeuvred the boat steadily towards the beach. I heard the sound of the motor cutting out and the boat slowly drifted the last few metres before the man threw an anchor overboard and let the boat swing round against the tide. I lifted my new camera, a marvel of computerised technology. I knew I had made the right choice in selecting a 400-mm telephoto lens. I could see them clearly in the viewfinder. She must have been in her 20s, with a smooth, brown body, her black pubic hair clearly visible in the sunlight. She was neither too thin nor too fat, but shapely. She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t place her. There were immaculate female bodies like hers from St Tropez to Marbella. They attracted rich, middle-aged, powerful men as rotting meat attracts flies. With their seemingly flawless, perpetually young beauty they allowed men to forget their own decay. These young women had so little experience of that particular torment that they thought decay would never strike them.

I pressed my damp but steady forefinger on the release button, let the motor run and took a quick series, before zooming out a little so I got a clear shot of the young woman with the man’s face in sharp focus behind her. He was in his late 40s, with dark, Latin looks, a clean-shaven face and thick black hair. He had strong arms and shoulders, but the beginnings of a paunch under his dark body hair indicated that he was no longer in tip-top condition. He was very tanned and through the viewfinder I could see his even, white teeth as he smiled down at the woman.

He said something and threw a pair of rubber sandals over to her, and the woman smiled and said something back as she put them on. Then she picked up a mask and snorkel and slipped naked into the water. There were lots of sea urchins on the submerged rocks, but the couple seemed to know about them and quite rightly had respect for the long prickly spines. I let the film run to the end and got a couple of shots of the woman’s naked behind as it broke through the
surface, before her legs stretched out straight and she disappeared under the water again as gracefully as a dolphin. She snorkelled in wide circles round the bobbing boat.

The man detached a rubber dinghy from the deck, lowered it into the water and rowed towards the beach. He was wearing red trunks and his legs were muscular yet elegant. Hadn’t he once been a competitive swimmer? He paddled into the shallows and dragged the dinghy onto firm ground. He spread out a blanket on the sand and put a picnic hamper on it with a slender bottle sticking out of it. The woman swam to the beach and flung her snorkel and mask to the man, who caught them. She called to him and he threw himself into the water, breaking the surface with hardly any spray, and crawled with long steady strokes out to where the water was deep. The woman followed him. I changed the film and let the motor shoot frame after frame of the couple in the water. I had a momentary stab of conscience, or was it envy? They played like children and were beautiful as the drops flew off their bodies and sparkled in the sunlight with every colour of the rainbow. But there was no point thinking about that. Now it was a question of concentrating on the moment. Purely practical things like aperture, shutter, focus, definition. The woman pulled off his swimming trunks and let them float away like a red jellyfish. He lifted her right out of the water and kissed her breasts. The motor in the reflex camera whizzed like a flicking whip and instead of changing the film I changed the camera and took another batch. Sweat broke through the fabric of my t-shirt. I could feel a big wet patch spreading down my back. They were playing like puppies. He swam between her legs and lifted her half out of the water and let her fall over backwards, the spray encircling their bodies like a halo. Then she swam over to him and put her arms round his neck and wound her legs round his loins. It was a wonderful picture, full of love and eroticism and yet not revealing the actual act. Not being able to see the penetration made
it more arousing. I also shot a couple of films as they finished their lovemaking on the blanket on the beach, although those pictures probably wouldn’t find a buyer. It was no longer erotic, but pornographic, and I wasn’t a pornographer.

Afterwards, the couple lay happily in the sun, as people do when they think they’re safe in their nakedness. When they think they’re alone in the Garden of Eden, forgetting to think about the serpent in the form of a 50-centimetre-long, sophisticated, high-tech, Japanese telephoto lens, which catches the moment and freezes it for all eternity and for everyone to behold.

The man rubbed her with suntan oil and I had enough experience to know that the best picture, the picture that would swell my bank account by as much as $200,000 over the next couple of years, was the least sexual, but at the same time the most erotic. It was when the Minister took his lover’s feet in his hands and massaged them slowly and sensually. Maybe a sea urchin spine had found its way into the delicate skin of her small, shapely feet after all. She sat leaning back on her outstretched arms and gazed at a point behind his head. Her face was calm and satisfied and she smiled gently as he put her big toe in his mouth and then, as lovingly as a child with a sweet, sucked each one of her shapely toes.

“Bingo,” I said, and was about to crawl away so as to give the couple at least a little time alone together before their happiness and lives were smashed for ever, when my mobile phone rang in the bag beside me. They couldn’t possibly hear the weak beeping down on the beach. They were too far away and the gentle murmur of the sea would have smothered the sound even if the wind had carried it down towards them. But powerful men have become powerful men because of a sixth sense, a gut feeling for danger, for political minefields. It’s as if they know in advance, maybe feel that something is niggling at their aura, nudging their self-confidence. He lifted his head at the very
moment my mobile rang and squinted towards me, as if he fleetingly sensed danger lurking. Just as animals drinking at a water hole on the savannah know that a leopard is approaching even though they can’t see, hear or smell their predator. We made the same movement. I thrust my hand into the bag and fished out my phone, while he pulled a mobile from the hamper and keyed in a number, looking up towards my hiding place. I crawled back from the cliff edge and flicked open my phone. I ought to have anticipated it. Of course he would have a bodyguard or two nearby. He might be reckless, but he was still vigilant and far from stupid.

“Hello,” I said.

It was a woman’s voice on the other end. She pronounced my surname the Danish way.

“Peter Lime?” Her voice was strong and clear, youngish and didn’t have a dialect that I could pinpoint. The mobile phone is a remarkable invention. It has made life significantly easier for people like me, but it is also a curse.

In Denmark my name is pronounced like the Danish word for glue, but I always introduce myself using the same pronunciation as that of the small, sour, lime fruit. And, although the apostrophe isn’t used this way in Danish, I put one after my name when referring to Lime’s photographs. Sometimes when I’m abroad, I have to explain that I don’t have any connection to Orson Welles and the Viennese sewers, but that the name has its origins in a little town in Jutland: Lime, between Ebeltoft and Randers.

When I was still quite young, I had decided to insist that my surname be pronounced in English. I didn’t want a name that suggested sticky, made-in-Denmark glue. My name is all I have in common with that particular backwater, but I come from a place just like it. It’s a speck on the planet, like I was a speck in the cities I called my own – those jungles where, more often than not, I’ve
hunted my quarry and bagged it when it thought itself alone and safe. I love the anonymity that cities wrap round us, but not round the famous people whose lives I ruined for a living. They couldn’t stay inside their protective cocoons all the time, they had to emerge, and when they did I was ready. Perhaps they exposed themselves because, deep down, they liked the game of cat-and-mouse too. Because, when all’s said and done, they were narcissists who needed affirmation of their existence. Maybe what they feared most was that no one was lying in wait for them, because that would mean they were no longer interesting, and their 15 minutes in the seductive glare of the flash-bulb was over. It’s like a drug for thousands of people on our media-intoxicated planet.

“Who’s asking?” I said.

“Clara Hoffmann, National Security Service, Copenhagen,” she said.

“Where the hell did you get this number?” I asked as I crawled backwards until I was sure I could stand up without being seen from the beach and began walking down to the car. My t-shirt stuck to my back and the cameras jolted against my hip as I sped up.

“That doesn’t really matter. Have you got a moment?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“It’s rather important.”

“I’m sure it is, but I haven’t got time.”

“I would like to meet with you.”

“I’m not in Madrid,” I said.

I had parked where a little dirt track leading down across a field came to an abrupt halt, blocked by two boulders. The shepherd I had seen when I arrived was standing pretty much in the same place, surrounded by sheep trying to find bits of rough grass between the scorched rocks. He was wearing a broad-brimmed hat which concealed his face. All I could see was the end of a hand-rolled cigarette sticking out from the corner of his mouth. He had an old knapsack
on his shoulder and was leaning picturesquely on his crook. A large, shaggy dog was sitting at his feet. Another one was patrolling the perimeter of the flock.

“Where are you?” asked the calm, distinct voice coming through clearly from Copenhagen – if that’s where she was.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“It’s important. If we could meet as soon as possible …”

“Ring in a couple of hours,” I said.

“It’s better if we meet. I’m ringing from Madrid.”

“You’re pretty sure of yourself, but I’m not in Madrid,” I said, although she couldn’t have known where I was, since she had rung my mobile.

“I’m sure you’d be glad to help your old country,” she said.

“I don’t owe Denmark anything,” I said.

She laughed. Her laughter was melodious, like her voice.

“I’m staying at the Hotel Victoria,” she said.

“OK,” I answered. I closed the mobile and broke into a slow run down towards the car. It was a brand-new, four-wheel-drive jeep that I had rented a week before. I threw my gear onto the back seat and drove off, spraying gravel behind me. The shepherd turned his head slowly, as if it was a camera mounted on a tripod, and followed me with his eyes as the jeep bumped and lurched away from the coast. The sheep carried on searching for grass and weeds and only a couple of them lifted their heads and huddled together as I left in a cloud of dust which, I realised much too late, might be visible from down on the beach.

I had made my headquarters in Llanca, a little holiday resort about 20 kilometres to the south. I tried to press the jeep on the steep, narrow and winding roads, which meandered along the rugged coastline like an asphalt-black ribbon. The heat was making the asphalt steam. It was only the beginning of June, but it was already very hot. It seemed
it was going to be yet another long, hot and dry summer. The tourist season had begun and it was difficult to find an opening to overtake the slow-moving cars towing heavy caravans, already making the long trek to the beaches of the south coast. I drove like a Spaniard, letting the jeep gather speed going downhill and braking hard just before the hairpin bend and the next slope. Now and then I got lucky and found room to overtake a holidaymaker or a stinking lorry emitting thick fumes that danced like a greasy sash around my face in the open-topped jeep. The sea was on my left, blue as the sky, and from time to time a little white town would come into sight down below. I felt good with the wind in my hair and the result of the hit in the bag on the back seat. I looked forward to getting home to Amelia and Maria Luisa, home to my city. And as usual the feeling of victory, of having accomplished a difficult job, was indescribably gratifying. I didn’t actually need to take on as much work any more, but I wasn’t sure how I would fill my days if I didn’t. When pressed by Amelia I’d had to admit that the work, the hunt itself and bagging the quarry, gave me an almost brutal satisfaction. Even though I had lived in Spain for more than 20 years, my Danish Protestant background was probably a factor too. By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt earn bread. Without work you have no identity. Danes ask you what you do before they’ll tell you their name.

It was slow going even though I pressed the jeep in and out of the hairpin bends. There was too much traffic and it took me nearly two hours to travel 20 kilometres. Twice I got caught in tailbacks because of roadworks. It was getting on for 3 p.m. when I drove into Llanca. The town had shut down in the heat of the siesta, or at least holidaymakers were still strutting around while the residents sat at home and had lunch and watched television. My hotel was down by the harbour, which had a lovely natural sandy beach. It was packed with families sunning themselves on the yellow sand or bathing in the tranquil
green water. Voices sounded as if they were muffled by soft cotton wool. Gentle hands rubbed suntan oil into a bare back. A father was carefully helping a toddler with a bathing ring. A mother was scolding a boy for teasing his little sister. A teenager was doing crawl with splashing strokes, showing off to a couple of girls with braces on their teeth and hormones in every fibre of their bodies. A couple exchanged a kiss. A man lazily turned the page of a novel. A pair of infatuated lovers got up and walked arm-in-arm towards their hotel. Afternoon lovemaking awaited them.