She re-entered in a short cocktail frock in her signature dove-grey and the faintest suggestion of scent. Her hair and her eyes shone. Alex stared at her.
"You look..
"Yes, Captain Temple?"
I as if you're on holiday."
"Good," she said.
"Let's go."
They chose a bar more or less at random. It was a little past five in the evening, and the glare had lifted from the sea and the gin palaces in front of them. The tables near them held middle-aged men in yachting gear and much younger women with implausibly huge breasts.
Their food arrived, plus a couple of Cokes. Alex had warned Dawn that some fairly serious drinking lay ahead. From his pocket he took a small plastic container holding a dozen ephedrine tablets. These, drawn from the Fairlie Clinic, had the dual effect of sharpening the senses and keeping drunkenness at bay.
"Bottoms up!" He grinned, downing two of them and handing the container to Dawn.
"Cheers!" rejoined Dawn rather more soberly. She took two and placed the container in her bag for safe keeping.
"Glad to see you're taking deodorant," observed Alex, peering A down into the bag.
"Things could get a bit sweaty."
"Funny guy," said Dawn.
"It's actually a can of Mace. Anyone tries any monkey business including you they go down."
"Riot girl, huh?"
"You bet."
The drive took fifteen minutes.
El Angel was a very different proposition from Puerto Banus. Not so much a village as an arbitrary strip of land between the highway and the sea, it comprised a clutch of new and not-so new hacienda-style developments. The largest of these a bowling and fast-food centre was windowless and uncompleted, and from the weathered appearence of its plaster work had clearly been so for some time. A large painted sign showed the development as its architects had envisaged it~ bustling, youthful and cosmopolitan but in truth it looked merely forlorn.
Parking the Mercedes on the highway, Alex and Dawn followed the track towards the sea. This passed through low scrub and between areas which had clearly once been intended to be gardens.
Now, however, they only contained builders' rubble, rusting angle iron and other construction detritus. The evening breeze carried a strong smell of dogshit.
Dawn winced as thistles tore at her ankles.
"Perhaps I'm not so ideally dressed after all," she remarked, glancing down at her strappy sandals.
"You look fine," said Alex.
The path led on to a custom-built road flanked by white-rendered houses. Some of these were occupied and had cars on their drives and defiant little gardens of bougainvillea and hibiscus in front of them, but most stood empty.
Alex was struck by the desolation of the place. These deserted villas were, in a very real sense, the end of the road. You would come here and slowly forget everything.
Dawn must have been feeling the same, because to his amazement she slipped her arm through his.
"In every dream home a heartache," she murmured.
"Yeah. I'm beginning to feel seriously in need of a drink."
"This bar is actually on the sea, is it?"
"That was the impression I got," said Alex.
"Shall we ring one of these bells and ask?"
They looked at each other, laughed nervously, then Dawn strode over to the nearest house. The sign read "Tangmere'.
The door was opened by an elderly man in a cravat and an RAF blazer. A vague house coated figure, presumably his wife, peered nervously behind him.
"We're looking for Pablito's," began Alex, shielding his stitched-up ear with his hand.
"Over the road, face the sea, track at eleven o'clock between Sea Pines and Casa Linda. ETA three minutes. Calling on young Denzil?"
"Yes."
"First-rate chap. Darkish horse, of course, but then that's the rule rather than the exception out here. Tempt you inside for a minute or two? Raise a lotion to the setting sun?"
"Perhaps some other time," said Alex guiltily, seeing the poorly concealed desperation in the other man's eyes.
"Very good. Dunbar's the name. Usually here."
Alex and Dawn set off down the track and saw the bar almost immediately. It was a blockhouse of a place, finished in a rough brownish render which matched the stony seashore. A neon design, not yet illuminated, showed palm trees and a sunset. Around the building stood half a dozen wooden benches and plastic topped tables. A rusting motorcycle leaned tipsily against one wall.
"I am definitely overdressed," said Dawn, picking her way awkwardly over the shingle.
"Whereas my pimp's outfit is spot on." Alex grinned.
As they approached Pablito's they saw that they had taken a very indirect back route and that, in fact, a narrow road led straight to the front entrance. The swing doors in front of the building were half open. Inside, the place looked more spacious than its exterior suggested. A bar ran the length of one wall and on one of its stools a fat, heavily tanned man in a sarong, perhaps forty-five, was watching football on a wall-mounted television. Behind the bar a twenty something woman with bleached blonde hair polished lager glasses. A cigarette smoked in an ashtray at her elbow.
As Dawn and Alex peered over the swing doors, the woman assumed a practised smile.
"Come on in, loves. We're still in injury time, as you can see, but make yourselves at home. What can I do you for?"
Alex turned to Dawn. From the corner of his eye he could see the blonde woman staring at the dressings on his face.
"What's it going to be, pet?"
Dawn smiled sweetly at him.
"Ooh, I think a Bacardi Breezer might just get me going!"
"One BB coming up. And for you, my love?"
"Pint would be nice."
The man on the stool scratched his stomach and looked up.
"Tell you, that Patrick Viera's a bloody liability. Someone's going to put his lights out one of these days. Staying locally, are you?"
"Puerto Banus," said Alex.
"Very nice. Come over on the 1615?"
Alex nodded, helped Dawn on to a bar stool and with due consideration for his lacerated thigh, sat down himself "Exploring the area, then?"
The features were pufFy with alcohol, but the eyes were shrewd. And beneath the gross brick-red body, Alex saw, were the remains of a disciplined physique.
On the broad forearms were the marks of tattooes removed by laser.
"We wanted to get away from things for a few days." Alex winked at Dawn and allowed his hand to stray to the dressing on his cheek.
"And as you can see, I've had a bit of a bang-up in the motor. We reckoned we were due some quality time."
"Well, you've come to the right place for that." The fat man's eyes flickered over the knife wounds.
"What game you in, then?"
"Den, love, leave the poor man alone," said the woman, clattering over to the optics in her high-heeled mules.
"He hasn't set foot in here more'n two minutes and already you're.
"No, it's OK," said Alex.
"I'm a physical training instructor. And Dawn, well, Dawn's one of my best customers, aren't you, pet."
She giggled.
"I hope so."
This was the explanation that they had agreed on. If pressed, the suggestion was to be that Dawn was mar ned to someone else.
The fat man nodded and returned to the football, shaking his head at intervals to mark his disapproval of Arsenal's failure to wrest control of the game from Sturm Graz. As the final whistle blew he swung round on his bar stool and extended a large hand to Alex.
"I'm Den. Big Den, Dirty Den, Fat Bastard, whatever." He moved behind the bar and slapped the woman s tight, white-denimed rump.
"And this is Marie. Pull us a bevvy, love.
"Leave off! And for Gawd's sakes put on a bleedin' shirt." The woman reached for a lager glass and winked at Dawn.
"He wouldn't stand for it if I went about with my chest hanging out - I don't see why I should when he does!"