It was just coming to the boil, and I had just finished buttering the toast, when I heard a loud thump on the front door. My heart vaulted into my mouth; a slice of breakfast stopped halfway there. I froze, not knowing what to do, and so in effect doing nothing. Which was not what the people at the door wanted. Another bang, and a shout. ‘Open. Police!’
‘Oh my God,’ I said, aloud, reverting to my native language in my moment of crisis. ‘How the fuck. .’ What options were open to me? Go back downstairs and get away through the garden? But was there an exit that way? I didn’t know. Try and wait them out? They didn’t sound like the types who’d go away before they battered the door down. Open the door and take what was coming?
The way I saw it I didn’t have a choice. I walked through to the living room, shouting, ‘I’m coming, be patient,’ in Spanish, then throwing the door open. Two officers stood there, in uniform, big guys, looking belligerent, guns on their hips. . on their hips but not in their hands, I registered. ‘Yes?’ I barked at them, deciding that it was better to attack than flutter my eyelashes.
They didn’t take kindly to that; some cops don’t. One put his hand on the butt of his pistol; the other one snapped, ‘That your car outside? That ancient little blue thing?’
‘Not exactly,’ I replied.
‘What the hell does that mean?’ the pig. . that is not meant to be the insulting noun often applied to police officers; this guy was a male chauvinist, impure and very simple. . sneered.
As he spoke, I thought I heard a sound behind me, the sound of a door opening.
‘It means it’s mine,’ said a deep, familiar voice. ‘So tell me what your fucking problem is and leave my girlfriend alone.’
He walked past me, dressed in jeans and a khaki shirt that I’d never seen before, his wide shoulders filling the narrow doorway as he squared up to the two cops. They backed off straight away. Able to look at them more calmly, I saw that they were from the city force, and not of the considerably more authoritative Guardia Civil. ‘You shouldn’t be parked there,’ the non-pig explained.
‘It’s my house. Am I blocking anyone’s way?’ He stepped out into the street, forcing them to move away from the door.
‘No, but. .’
‘No, but nothing; I’ve been parking there for years. You ask Jorge Lavorante; he’ll tell you that.’
Both cops seemed to flinch at the name. ‘One of your tyres is nearly bald,’ Porky chipped in, as if he was determined to get out of there with some sort of a result.
‘Thanks for pointing it out. I’ll replace it today.’ He kept moving, ushering them towards the Suzuki. ‘Let me show you the papers and insurance documents for the car; they’re in the glove box, and they’re all valid.’
‘We’ll take your word for it,’ said the kosher cop.
‘Thanks. Now if there’s nothing else you want to bother us about, my breakfast has a greater call on me than you guys.’
Piggy gave him a look, but not for long; he followed his mate to the patrol vehicle and they reversed it out of there.
He turned and came back towards me. I was standing just inside the doorway, stunned, speechless. I’d spoken to him less than a day before, and he’d said nothing about flying down to L’Escala. ‘Sorry for the surprise,’ he said, smiling. He needed a shave. I’d never seen his full eight o’clock shadow before; it looked good on him. ‘I got in very late. I guessed you’d be asleep, so I was very careful not to wake you when I came downstairs.’
As I looked at him, I remembered my thoughts in the Paseo de los Tristes, and the resolutions I’d made. ‘Maybe I wouldn’t have minded if you had,’ I murmured.
His eyes widened as he looked at me. I’d taken him aback.
‘Gerard,’ I began, ‘I can’t bottle things up any longer; and I sense that you can’t either. We have to talk, you and I.’
And then he laughed; he put his head back and roared with laughter. I felt the heat rush to my face.
‘He didn’t tell you,’ he chuckled. ‘The innocent, unworldly idiot didn’t tell you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I exclaimed, truly bewildered. ‘Who didn’t tell me what? Gerard, for. .’
‘I’m not Gerard,’ he said. ‘I’m Santiago, Santi, his brother. His twin brother.’
It’s funny, but looking back, as soon as he said it, I knew; I saw all the little differences, the hair cut slightly shorter, the signet ring on his right hand, the Breitling watch on his left wrist, not the Tissot that was all Gerard would allow me to buy him the Christmas before, when I’d suggested a Tag Heuer or a Mont Blanc, the small, healing scar on his forehead, and most of all, the difference in the way he looked at me.
‘You’re right,’ I told him, softly. ‘He didn’t tell me, not that you’re identical. But now I think of it, he did warn me that you’d be here. He said we were not alone, and that I was being looked after. Gerard being what he is, I assumed that he was talking about God.’
‘My brother might be a priest, but he’s more practical than that. He’s hands on when he has to be,’ he smiled again, ‘although not in the way that’s often meant.’
‘So this is actually your house?’ I ventured.
‘No, it’s not; it’s Gerard’s. He’s half an hour older than me, and so when our mother died he inherited, naturally, under Spanish law. He offered me half. . in fact he offered me it all. . but if I’d accepted he’d have had nothing. Anyway, I didn’t need it. I’m an airline pilot; I’m rolling in money. I have an apartment in Madrid.’
‘But this house has been modernised. Gerard can’t have done that.’
‘No, I did it. I use the place a lot; I come here on holiday, and if I have a stopover in Malaga. He hasn’t been here for years; he has no idea what I’ve done to it.’ He smiled. ‘The car is mine though. I left it with him the last time I saw him, in L’Escala.’
‘You’ve been to L’Escala?’
‘Only twice. And we didn’t go out; not far, anyway. It would have confused the parishioners, we decided.’
‘Are you married?’
He blinked, not sure why I’d asked. ‘No; I have a girlfriend in Madrid, but she’s cabin crew with another airline, so our meetings are unpredictable.’
‘Sorry to be so inquisitive. It’s just. .’ I explained what I’d found in the bathroom.
‘When I come here on stopover,’ he said, ‘I usually bring my co-pilot. One of them’s a woman.’ Then the implications hit him, and he laughed. ‘But you didn’t know about me. So you thought. . Gerard? No, never.’ He stopped and his eyebrows rose. ‘Unless you and he. .’
‘Gerard?’ I replied to the unfinished question. ‘And me? No, never.’ I almost added, ‘More’s the pity,’ but I didn’t feel that I knew Santi well enough.
Thirty-seven
I called Gerard on the mobile as soon as I went back downstairs. Breakfast was abandoned when I realised that I was talking with a stranger while clad in a long T-shirt and nothing else.
I told him of my heart-stopping visit from Pinky and Porky, and of my nick of time rescue by his doppelgänger brother. ‘You should have warned me, Gerard,’ I complained. ‘Have you any idea of the way I felt when he walked into that room and took on those two cops? I honestly believed it was you, that you’d climbed on a plane and come down to. .’ I paused. ‘Even when he said that he’d got in late and had been careful not to wake me,’ I continued, ‘I thought he was you.’
‘I imagine that could have been embarrassing.’ He sounded apologetic.
‘Could have been?’ I squawked. ‘Could have been? Bloody well was.’
‘You didn’t do anything. . inappropriate, did you?’
‘Certainly not!’
I thought I heard a sigh of relief. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was going to tell you all about Santi, before you left from Shirley’s, but you talked across me and I was anxious for you to be on your way, so the chance never came up again.’
‘Did you know he was coming here?’
‘I sent him an email from a café in Figueras, telling him that I had a friend who was in trouble and that I was sending her down to Granada for a while. I asked him to keep an eye on you, if he could, even if it was only from a distance like me. Last night, after we’d spoken, I had a reply from him saying that he’d adjusted his schedule and was taking some time off. I didn’t expect him to arrive so soon, though.’