Meanwhile, in Barcelona…
Night fell. Mountaintops soft and fluffy like marzipan turned a blazing red and the colour of the Mediterranean changed from violet to purple. In one flowing move, the last light of day was erased from the sky. The girl hurried through the winding streets. Under each lamppost she looked around, as if she were afraid of her own shadow. The gothic barrio had a grey and grubby feel. Almost on every street corner, a hooker in a bolero dress was leaning against a doorframe. Max curled his upper lip and showed them his teeth. Klik-klak, klik-klak. He felt a stranger in his own body. In between old balconies, white sheets were draped over clotheslines. The evening air was soft and cool in the narrow alleyways. Everywhere, television sets blaring far too loud. A gas salesman rattled a metal bar against the canisters on his barrow. A red scooter was chained to a tree and a blind musician played a violin in a church portal. The violin was hopelessly out of tune. Carmen went underneath an elaborate arch and Max followed her across a medieval patio and through a garden with slender palm trees and tropical plants in earthenware pots. Klik-klak, klik-klak. She mounted the stairs to a Gaudi style balcony tiled in colourful potsherds. Hidden behind the tropical plants, Max could feel his blood rushing through his veins. His brain sizzled, he felt extremely alert and vigilant. He had all the time in the world and he knew it. She wouldn’t run away from him. Not now, not ever. Max looked at his hands and cracked his fingers.
The house was wrapped in darkness. Bougainvillea climbed the stucco walls. Max listened. Chirping crickets, television sets blaring. He could hear water splashing in a bathtub. Slowly and silently he came closer, creeping on top of his toes, closer still. The sweet, sweet perfume of the Mediterranean lingered over the garden and the patio and the broad stairs leading up to the balcony. All the windows in the house were wide open.
Carmen peeled off her clothes, lit a cigarette and immersed herself in the welcoming mountain of foam, sucking bitter cigarette smoke in her lungs. On the washbasin in front of an oval mirror, tea waxes coloured the bathroom in yellow flames. The farther the candles burned up, the longer their shadows became, until in a far corner they broke in squares and rectangles similar to an early cubist painting. The radio played a request song, a sad melody, and Carmen rhythmically swayed her upper body in the damp cloud of steam and cigarette smoke. I love you I love you, in Spanish. Te amo, te amo. Lustfully she touched her dark, fleshy nipples until she could feel the all too familiar tingling in her labia and she lowered her eyelids. Her lashes quivered. She had tears in her eyes. Puffing the cigarette smoke in tiny circles, her nipples blossomed like a pair of flowers and suddenly tiny drops of milk were slowly gliding down her breasts and down her body and dissolved in the soapy bathwater. She stubbed her cigarette on the rim of the tub, turned off the hot water tap and wrapped her damp hair in a white beach towel. Sitting upright, she cut her toenails, using a pair of small crooked scissors. She screwed the cap off a triangular bottle and carefully painted one toenail after the other. Her thighs had the colour of marinated olives. The melody faded out, the music stopped. Suddenly it was dead still in the house—and in the sudden stillness, Max jumped on Carmen and reached for her throat. With all his strength, his fingers clamped around her neck. Carmen hacked and scratched the scissors at her attacker, her tongue lulled from her mouth and blood spouted from her nose, she kept coughing and retching until finally she threw up, her body relaxed, a reddish foam bubbled on her lips and in a death agony her mouth with its short, sharp teeth snapped shut, like a trap, and she bit off her tongue. The scissors clattered on the bathroom floor. Max snorkled with anger and contentment.
The airport building was plastered with police drawings and photographs of Basque terrorists WANTED by the Guardia Civil DEAD OR ALIVE. Terrorists everywhere look alike, Max thought. He tried to read the caption underneath the black and white photographs, but the only thing he could clearly decipher was the age of some of the male terrorists. They weren’t young anymore. Forties, early fifties. Amazing, Max was thinking. He looked up at the flickering screens and checked arrival and departure times of incoming and outgoing flights. Frankfurt, London and Amsterdam had landed. Milan was cancelled. Brussels flickered on the screens. The Sabena flight was delayed. New York and Johannesburg too had landed. Max wasn’t interested in direct flights to nearby cities like Milan or Frankfurt. He scanned the screens for faraway destinations: Melbourne, Rio, Buenos Aires, Washington. It would be midnight anyway before his plane touched down in Los Angeles. He queued at costumes officials, dropped his Louis Vuitton travel bag on the conveyer belt and stepped through a metal detector. The brown bag hobbled through the machine while x-rays made the items inside visible on the display monitor.
‘Mira! Look!’ the machine operator whispered. She wore a green Guardia Civil uniform.
Two heavily armed Guardia Civil officers and several security agents stared wide-eyed at the screen. They wore black leather gloves and had a shining black helmet on top of their head. The helmet looked like a urinal turned upside down.
‘Hijo de puta!’ one of the officers whistled. ‘Mother-fucking son-of-a-bitch!’
The travel bag wobbled out of the machine. The moment Max lifted it from the conveyor belt, two officers jumped at him and twisted his arms behind his back and clapped a pair of metal handcuffs around his wrists.
‘What…! I am…! Aaaauuu…!!!’ Max shouted.
An officer held him in a stranglehold while another officer silenced Max knocking him full-fisted in the face. His head flung back, as if there were brass knuckles hidden inside the glove, his neck snapped and cracked and a scorching pain shot to his brain. His black sunglasses shattered on the terminal floor. His lips were swelling rapidly and Max tasted blood in his mouth. He yelled and cursed in rage and desperately tried to wriggle himself out of the stranglehold the Guardia Civil officer held on him.
‘Shut op, hijo de puta!’ the officer shouted.
‘You fucking bastard!’ the other officer hissed and again and again he thumped Max full in the face.
The machine operator unzipped the Louis Vuitton travel bag and shook it upside down. The handful of brass bullets Max had inadvertently taken with him clattered on the white marble tiles and rolled in all directions and vanished between the feet of the waiting passengers who jumped up and down as if the bullets might explode any given moment. In terror, passengers stepped back and ducked behind the x-ray machines.
‘Cuidado! Be careful!’ a security agent shouted.
‘Watch out! A terrorist! Cuidado!’ yelled the Guardia Civil officers.
The excitement and commotion alarmed a storm trooper in night blue battle dress. He came running over, in great strides, his black boots thumping on the floor, and drew his service pistol, a 9 mm Para from the Star factory in Basque Country.
Max was speechless. He had forgotten all about the bullets. ‘Por favor…!’ he mumbled in his best Spanish, blood dripping from his mouth. ‘Listen! Écoute…! This is… is… a misunderstanding!’ In desperation, he tried to raise his voice above the tumult and the arguing and squabbling.
‘Shut up, cabrón, or we’ll finish you off here and now, you lousy filthy son-of-a-bitch!’ the two Guardia Civil officers shouted in the same split second and they punched Max full in the face. Like a hand grenade, their gloved fists exploded all over his battered head and a stream of blood sprouted from his nostrils.
‘Balas! Bullets! A terrorist indeed! Get out of the way!’ the storm trooper screamed on top of his lungs, brandishing his black pistol. He grabbed Max by the shoulder and pressed the chill barrel of the 9 mm Para right in the middle of his forehead while he shouted ‘Alarma! Alarma!’ in a shrill voice. The echo of his desperate cry tumbled from his mouth and reverberated all through the airport terminal.
Inside the dome, the serrated leafs of tall palm trees touched the all-glass roof. His old schoolbag in hand, mackintosh loosely over his shoulder, the Chief Constable stepped from the Sabena plane and walked to the central arrivals and departure hall past hamburger restaurants and duty free shops. The sun was shining and the air was quivering. It was a most beautiful day. Suddenly he stiffened, cold shivers running down his spine. Que Sera Sera. A crimson trail of warm, wet blood marked the white marble floor, from the x-ray machines all the way to the exit gates. WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE. What will be, Will be. Out in the open, under the blazing sun, the dripping blood had turned into black treacle.
With BLACK SNOW, his debut crime thriller, the author won
the much coveted Hercule Poirot Award 2002 for best crime novel
of the year.
‘A gem.’
‘Highly original.’
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