Jonny stopped in his tracks, and turned, staring at him like a chastened schoolboy.
‘It’s not worth it,’ he said, in a tone that was almost apologetic. All the people at the surrounding tables were staring at us, but he calmed them with palms-down gestures, until gradually their interest subsided. (Only Charlie was unaffected. Some bloody guard dog: he slept through the whole drama.) ‘He didn’t get anything,’ he continued, looking at my nephew, ‘and you never know with these guys. Thank you, Jonny, but if you’d caught him and he’d been carrying a knife. .’ He shook his head. ‘No, it doesn’t bear thinking about.’ He smiled at Tom, who was holding out his wallet, like an offering. ‘Well done, young man,’ he murmured, as he accepted it, and slipped it into his trouser pocket. ‘It’s not like me to be so careless. It just goes to show; you should never take your surroundings for granted.’
‘But here you can,’ I protested. ‘This is St Martí, not bloody Barcelona. We don’t have pickpockets and petty thieves here.’ I was furious, partly because I’m very proud of my home village, but mostly, I’m sure, because my son had been involved in a situation way beyond his years. Later, after I’d gone to bed, I shed a few tears of pride over the way he’d handled it, but at that moment, all that registered was anger. ‘I’m not having this,’ I declared, digging out my mobile.
‘What are you going to do?’ Shirley asked.
‘I’m going to call my pal Alex Guinart, and report the son of a bitch to the police.’ He is one, a detective, based in Girona.
‘And what are you going to tell him? To look out for a running man, and that’s it? ’Cos I never saw him.’
‘No, more than that; for a start he was. . white,’ I added, lamely, realising that I could offer little more than her by way of a description.
‘He was wearing Lacoste pirate pants, and a Def Leppard T-shirt,’ Jonny volunteered. ‘Dark hair, skinny. Tom was able to get a good grip of his wrist, so it couldn’t have been that thick. I think he’d a Mont Blanc wristwatch on the other. . they’re one of my sponsors, so I recognised it. And New Balance trainers. . they aren’t, but I had a pair in Arizona, so I know the logo.’
‘He has blue eyes,’ said Tom, firmly, ‘a gold tooth, a scar on his chin,’ he touched his own to demonstrate. ‘He needs a shave and his hair’s grey as well as dark. And he’s not British,’ he added, as a postscript, ‘or Spanish, or French, or German … and he’s too short to be Dutch.’
Patterson frowned at him, curiosity engaged. ‘How do you know that?’
‘It’s a game we play, Tom and me,’ I explained. ‘We reckon that seven times out of ten we can tell a punter’s nationality just by looking at them, and at their body language, before we ever hear them speak. Apart from their clothing, and that’s a big give-away, especially among the youngsters, we can tell the Dutch by their height, the Germans by their build, the French by their frowns. . very serious people; always worried about something. We know the Spanish because they seem most at home here. . and they’re most likely to be smokers. Our lot, they’re easiest of all. They might as well have “British” tattooed on their foreheads.’
‘You’re British yourself,’ he pointed out, ‘you and Tom. That must give you an advantage.’
‘No,’ I contradicted. ‘Tom’s lived hardly any of his life in Britain, yet he’s better at the game than I am. I didn’t get any sort of look at the guy, but if he says he isn’t a Brit, then trust him; he isn’t. Not that I’d expect it,’ I added. ‘That job that I had for a couple of years: I was based in the consulate general in Barcelona. I was in and out of there, but I still heard things. For example, I know that up to twenty people a week need passport replacements because theirs have been stolen. For example, I know that it’s quite common for British youngsters to get themselves lifted by the Mossos d’Esquadra for drunkenness, brawling, and other loutish behaviour, but hardly ever for petty theft. And I have absolutely never heard of a British pickpocket, in his thirties, wearing designer gear and a thousand quid watch; not anywhere, and most certainly not here.’
I had a question in mind, begging for an answer. The restaurant was busy, and there were more than a dozen people seated against the fence. Most of them were as casual with their property as Shirl’s new other half had been, yet none of them was panicking or screaming about a loss. Patterson was modestly dressed, in what looked like a Marks amp; Spencer shirt, and showed no obvious sign of wealth, yet the thief had gone straight to him, past a woman in a dress that was definitely not chain store, with dangly ruby and diamond earings, and a handbag slung so carelessly over the back of her seat that it was begging to be emptied. Why? Why him? Because the guy was stupid, I decided, a man suddenly down on his luck, choosing a victim at random.
I set the thought aside, and opened my phone. I was calling up the contact list, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me, Primavera,’ a man murmured, in Spanish. I turned; Cisco, the owner of the restaurant, and a good friend, was crouching beside me. He was agitated, even more so than usual. ‘I saw what happened,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I don’t want that sort of thing in my place. I’ve never known it before, not in St Martí.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I replied, in English, for the benefit of Patterson and Jonny. . although during the day I had begun to realise that he understood quite a bit of Spanish. ‘Anyway, there’s no harm done. The guy didn’t get anything and he’s been scared off. He must feel a real idiot being caught by a ten-year-old. I’ll report him to the Mossos; he’ll probably be nicked the very next time he tries it.’
‘I have something that might help them,’ said Cisco, switching languages. ‘A man at the table behind yours, he was taking pictures with his phone, and he has one of the guy, with Tom holding on to him.’ He beamed at my son. ‘Hey, amigo, well done. If I ever need a bouncer I give you a job.’ Then he turned back to me. ‘He says you can have it.’
I looked round and caught the eye of the diner in question. I recognised him at once; he was an ex-pat from L’Escala, called Stan something, at a table with his pretty blonde wife. He looked pleased with himself. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Can you message it to my phone?’
‘Sure, love,’ he replied. ‘It’ll cost you a beer, mind.’
‘Cheap at half the price.’ I gave him my number, he fiddled with his phone and a few seconds later, the image downloaded on to mine.
It was pretty sharp. I couldn’t make out the gold tooth or the scar that Tom had described, but it showed the thwarted robber full on, well enough for a Spanish court to nail him when the time came. ‘Brilliant,’ I told the donor. ‘Cisco, one beer on Señor Cowling’s tab, please, and whatever Wendy’s drinking.’
‘Can I see it?’ Patterson asked.
I passed my phone across to him, touching the dial to keep the image displayed. He peered at it, then took a closer look, focusing hard. As he did so, I could see his thumbs move. It was discreetly done, but I realised what he was up to: he was copying Stan’s picture to his own mobile.
He handed mine back. I pulled up my directory once more, and was about to push the button on a call to Alex, when his eyes met mine. He shook his head, slowly. ‘No,’ he murmured, so quietly that I almost had to lip-read.
‘Why not?’ I asked. Our first courses were arriving, so the exchange wasn’t picked up by the other three.
‘It’s not worth the trouble. This man’s disappeared into the crowd already. He’ll be out of town by now, well on the way to wherever he came from.’
‘But the police can circulate his photo,’ I protested.
‘They’re not going to do that, not for a robbery that never even took place. I’ll grant you it’s a good picture, but it is what it is, an image taken on a mobile from a few yards away. However good a friend this Alex is to you, he’s not going to thank you for wasting his time, for that is all you’d be doing, I promise you.’