‘Hey,’ Jonny called out, suddenly, ‘you had a call earlier. Man, English.’
‘Name?’
‘Didn’t leave one. He said he’d tried your mobile, but it was off.’ (True: I didn’t want to be disturbed at Shirley’s, and if Tom had needed me he had the landline.) ‘I asked him if he wanted to leave a message, but he said it wasn’t important.’
‘Journalist, possibly?’ I suggested
‘Don’t think so, he wasn’t pushy.’
‘So not a salesman either. Ah, bugger him. If he’s keen he’ll try again tomorrow.’
The three of us discussed our plans for the next day. I told them about my trip to the winery. The guys were going to Pals in the morning, to practise and for Jonny to confirm his touring pro relationship. His manager had been at work during the evening, negotiating terms on his client’s behalf. He told me what they were: not much money, in the first year at least, but he had pre-emption rights on the practice ground over even the club teaching pro, and he could play the course whenever he liked, with his guests at half price.
I left them to enjoy the prospect of a quiet day, and hit the sack. I slept like a brick, and woke early the next morning, clear-headed and full of enthusiasm, feeling as if I had a hangover in reverse. I wondered about it for a little, then remembered Jonny’s home truth over dinner at Can Roura, about me having withdrawn into my place of safety. The trip to the winery, even though it wasn’t very far, only to the slopes on the far side of the bay, was a step outside, and it was exciting me, without giving me the hang-up that the consulate job had, through the requirement that it involved handing over Tom’s care to someone else.
I chose a business suit for the visit, a lightweight dark number but with a skirt rather than trousers. There’s power dressing and then there’s overpower dressing: I was the absent owner’s sister-in-law, and however enthusiastic the manager had sounded on the phone, I didn’t want him to get the idea that I was there to intimidate him.
As it turned out, I couldn’t have even if I’d been so inclined. The boss man, whose name was Manolo Blazquez, would not have been intimidated by Attila the Hun. He was the manager by title, but he had owned the company before selling it in the hope of extra investment, and of access to new markets. He was also its principal oenologist, its production director, one of the most respected in all of Spain.
Miles had tied him into a five-year earn-out, with the final price related to performance. They had spent the first eighteen months or so getting to know each other. One thing my brother-in-law had learned about Manolo was that he was a better wine-maker than he was a manager, but he didn’t want to take the risk of antagonising the heart and soul of his investment by parachuting in some guy with an MBA and an attitude. That’s why he had asked me to take on the role. ‘You’ll be a director,’ he’d told me, ‘but I don’t want you to direct. Support, suggest, cajole where necessary, but don’t give him the impression that he’s no longer the man in charge on the ground. This is a three-generation family business, and he’s proud of it.’
He was indeed. The former owner of Bodega Blazquez was a stocky man in his fifties with hair that was more pepper than salt, and with wine in his blood. He had an eye for the ladies as well, I could tell, but he had the good sense to keep it hooded as he welcomed me to his oak-furnished office, in a stone building that had once been a farmhouse. In fact, his father had been born there, as he told me during a quick lecture on the foundation and evolution of the business. The tour he gave me showed that it had grown indeed, into something pretty substantial, with factory sheds that were less than twenty years old, and modern equipment, some of which had been bought with new money injected into the business by Miles.
‘At this moment,’ he told me, when it was over and we were lunching in the boardroom, ‘I sell pretty much one hundred per cent of my annual production as soon as it is confirmed. Most goes to our major wholesaler in Emporda, but I hold some back for direct sales to the public and to supply local specialists like your friend Ben Simmers. Often, though, I sell whole vintages years ahead of their maturity date, to hotel groups across Spain. However, I believe that our quality is such that we can double our sales and our profits by tapping into new foreign markets, through Mr Grayson’s connection with the business.’
‘That’ll mean doubling your production, won’t it? Is there spare capacity in this site?’
‘No,’ he admitted, ‘but I have plans. They will involve more investment, and the purchase or leasing of more land so that we can increase our capability. I have mentioned this to Mr Grayson, and he has told me to put it before you.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Not now,’ he replied, ‘not today. I would like to put formal proposals to you and to Mr Bravo.’ He was another guy I had still to meet; he was at sub-board level in the bank that represented Miles in Spain. ‘What I would like to do, Mrs Blackstone, is to have meetings with you every fortnight, either here, or I will come to you in St Martí.’
‘Here will be fine,’ I declared, ‘unless I can’t make it across for any reason; if my son were to need me, for example.’
‘Very good. In that case I will make my presentation to you and to Mr Bravo in two weeks’ time.’
I thought over what he had told me on the drive back to St Martí. Blazquez had, it seemed to me, something of the entrepreneur in him, but he didn’t strike me as being a gambler. His insistence on having the finance guy sit in on our meeting struck me as prudent. He had plenty to gain by increasing profit, but as much to lose by under-performing. Bravo’s role would be that of a risk assessor, as well as a banker.
I was still pumped up by the meeting when I put the car away and climbed up and into the house. It was three thirty and the place was empty; that didn’t surprise me, since Jonny had warned me that he and Uche were likely to spend all day at Pals, on the range and in the small gym that the club’s owners had just installed.
I fed and watered Charlie, priority number one, then took a bottle of water from the fridge and strolled out on to the front terrace, my mind still full of product ranges, output volumes, margins and so on. I wasn’t thinking of anything else as I glanced down into the square, and so it took me a while to realise that someone, a lean, grey-haired man, was waving at me from a table in front of Esculapi.
I did a triple take. On first glance I thought, vaguely familiar, on second, no, it can’t be, and on the third time of asking myself, Jesus Christ, it is!
‘Mark,’ I shouted. ‘Wait there!’ I left the water bottle on the table, ran downstairs and out through the front gate. Charlie decided that he was coming too and I didn’t have time to argue, so the pair of us crossed the square to where he was sitting.
He smiled and glanced at the bouncing Labrador as I took a seat. ‘Faithful hound, huh?’
I looked for the elbow crutches that he’d used the last time we’d been together, but I saw only a stick. Knowing him, I reckoned it probably had a sword in it ‘That’s him, but what the. . Mark, what are you doing here? How did you get here?’
‘Eurostar to Paris, then TGV to Perpignan, and finally by hire car down here. My consultant in London isn’t keen on me flying. The remission is stable for now, but we don’t know enough about the new drug regime to be certain of its reaction to air travel.’
‘There are worse ways to travel than French trains,’ I said. ‘But what about my first question? Why are you here?’
His MS has affected his facial expressions; the muscles seem to work more slowly than those of a well person. He became sombre, in stages, as if he was taking off one mask and putting on another.
‘It’s necessary,’ he replied. ‘I was asked to come. Those people you asked me to find, the soldier surgeon and her sister, the daughters of your mate’s missing boyfriend. I traced them, no problem, but when I did I rang alarm bells like you would not believe. You are into something, Primavera, that nobody wanted stirred up. Now it has been, I’ve been engaged, retained, to get all the bees back into the hive.’