When she reached him she asked, “In trouble, darling?” His eyebrows tilted into that crooked line as he grinned at her. “Let’s just say I’m not making much progress!”
She looked at him in concern. “I wish I could help.”
“I know, Debbie. But you can’t, not in this.”
“I can, you know, Esmonde.” She came over to him, pulled him down to the ground beneath a tree, ruffled up his hair as they sat there together. “Listen. When you do get a lead— and you will, don’t worry — you’ll probably have to go quickly. So you won’t want to waste time arguing whether I’m coming with you or not. This is just to tell you that I am — see?”
That afternoon Shaw slipped into Malaga, sent his coded telegram to London, then strolled casually round the dock area, not taking too obvious an interest in the Ostrowiec. The ship was unloading a cargo and nothing out of the ordinary appeared to be taking place. Afterwards Shaw made some discreet inquiries in a couple of bars near the docks, but could pick up no hint of any likely sailing date for the ship, and after a while he went back to Torremolinos; and that night, after changing into his hombre rig, he made again for that scruffy little bar in the village. He was determined to find some lead to Domingo Felipe that night; and he was convinced that the bartender knew where the contact could be found. After the episode of last night, he could, he knew well, be heading into danger, but it was a risk he was forced to take.
He had a nasty feeling that conversation was stopping as he entered the bar.
As he asked for a glass of vino he saw a look pass from the bartender to some one at a table behind him. He didn’t see then who had met that look, for he didn’t consider it wise to display too much interest. But there was a decidedly naked feeling in his spine when he went over to sit at a table on the opposite side of the room from where the barman had glanced so meaningly. And after a time a man sitting across the gangway finished up his drink and got to his feet. He was a tall man, with a deep scar running the length of his right cheek, so deep that Shaw could almost see the bone at the bottom of the chasm of cleft flesh. As he lurched past Shaw’s table, this man dropped a coin through a hole in his trouser-pocket, gave it a little flick with his foot so that it rolled under Shaw’s table. The man swore fluently, bent to retrieve it; politely Shaw drew back his chair and joined in the search, and as the two heads came together he felt the man’s fingers squeeze his hand very gently. In a whisper so low that Shaw could only just make out the words, he said:
“Number Thirty-seven, Calle Santa Marta, Malaga.”
Cursing still, he found his coin, brought himself upright, and without another glance at Shaw he walked out of the bar.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Shaw didn’t linger after that.
Though nothing had been said in so many words, he felt quite certain that this address was where he would find Domingo Felipe and that it was genuine, for he had a good nose for a trap as a rule — though he blushed when he thought how Karina had fooled him. In any case, he would have to take risks now, for he was desperately short of time.
Leaving the bar, he caught the smelly, shaky bus into Malaga. It was the week of the fiesta in the town, and the bus was packed tight with those who had not managed to get in earlier. Shaw was hemmed in between fat and sweating bodies, scarcely able to move or even breathe, and his ears were bombarded by the continual loud, gay chatter and the horrible noises of the engine, his nose assailed by the many varied smells. The bus kept on stopping to pick up even more people en route; every one cheerfully moved along, and eventually Shaw was unable to move hand or foot. He felt he was never going to get out again as the vehicle swayed and jolted on, speeding dangerously.
On arrival Shaw found the fiesta in full swing, and he had to fight his way through the gaily dressed, laughing crowds who were dancing in the streets and squares to the all-pervading flamenco music. The noise drummed at his brain, and he felt quite sick with the greasy smell of frying-oil from the stalls where the churros and bunuelos—light pastries fried in deep oil — were being cooked. He pressed through those crowds, many of the men half-drunk sailors from the ships in port, prey to the pimps and women of the town; past the brothels, the usual tiny bars and cafes which were filled with light and sound and laughter and singing, with the strumming of guitars and with the occasional tinny notes of a junk-heap piano. Over all that flamenco music, the traditional music of Andalusia.
On the fringes of the crowd Shaw somewhat breathlessly asked the way to the Calle Santa Marta. When, following the verbose directions, he found it, it was a bleak contrast to the gaiety and the life and friendliness which he had now left behind him. It was a foul, filthy-looking alleyway full of dark doorways and deep shadows and overhanging balconies which seemed about to drop from the walls, with the same fetid smell of rotting dirt and lack of drainage as he’d smelt in La Linea not long before. Shaw walked along that stinking way, his flesh crawling; half-way along a twist in the alley took him from sight of the street at the end, and horrible thoughts crowded in on him as he reached Number Thirty-seven. The woodwork of the door almost fell away from him as he knocked, the whole frame heaving and falling back, feeling soft and crumbly and rotten to the touch, damp and putrid with slime. Round the sides of this door escaped some unnameable stench which nearly knocked Shaw off his feet. He retched violently; the thin outline of a face appeared briefly as a lightish blur against a window; a moment later the door was dragged protestingly back.
A voice whispered hoarsely, “Who is it?”
“Pedro Gomez.”
“Your credentials — your number?”
Shaw gave his departmental identification number, asked for the other man’s. Felipe told him, inquired, “You are satisfied, señor?”
Shaw nodded, trying to still the dreadful flutterings of his stomach, which was heaving up into his throat with a sharp, bitter taste.
“Come inside, and quickly, amigo—quickly.”
He went in.
The place was in utter darkness, and he stumbled into something which moved. He shrank back in horror, instinctively, and felt the skin pricking at the back of his neck and along his shoulder-blades, and a slow, crawling sensation in his legs. Then a flick of something furry swept his ankles, there was a mewing sound, and he relaxed. It was only a cat. The smell was really dreadful inside, with apparently no inlet of fresh air to drive the foulness away. The man who had admitted him came up to him in the pitch-darkness, drew him farther into the hovel, apparently into a back room, for Shaw stumbled and nearly fell over a low step and cannoned into what seemed to be a doorpost.
The man struck a match and a candle flickered up in an empty Fundador bottle. Shaw looked round the room, at its grimy, peeling walls and the heap of filth on the floor, the food cupboard hanging open to reveal one of the nastiest sights Shaw had ever seen: an assortment of rotting food covered with dust and mould and a heap of what had once been fresh meat crawling with thick white maggots. He shuddered, forced his attention away, gulped down his mounting nausea. Then he looked at the man who was moving about behind him.
He was a tall, emaciated figure, heavily pock-marked, and with several days’ growth of thin, straggly beard on his sunken cheeks. Half his nose was gone, eaten away by some foul disease, so that it was little more than a piece of bone and one misshapen nostril formed by thin, transparent white flesh; the other nasal opening was a mere hole farther up in the face. From between this hole and the shaggy grey brows bright eyes peered out at Shaw.