five
The biggest mistake of his new life was agreeing to meet Ned.
But he’d thought that by seeing him once, he might get rid of him.
Big mistake. They arranged to meet in Cafè de l’òpera, halfway down the Rambla.
It was an elegant café decorated in the floral style that the people in this city loved.
David had come across it in his early wanderings around the city and absolutely fallen in love with the cool, high-ceilinged bar.
Its cream walls were decorated in elegant panels showing Grecian urns and satyrs bearing fruit, interspersed with full-length mirrors etched in nymph or goddess designs.
Below them, a scrunched-up mess of brown-varnished wooden tables, through which bow-tied waiters maneuvered with cheerful efficiency, seemed to him typically European.
Sitting there with a cafè amb llet or milky coffee in an elegant white Viennese-style porcelain cup and saucer before him on the table, gazing out at the stately Liceu opera building across the Rambla, and the people strolling up and down, made him feel like he’d truly succeeded in changing his life, escaping.
It was one of the few luxuries he allowed himself on the minimum wage that Carme paid him.
True, sleeping above the tack room, he didn’t have to pay rent, but he was trying to save as much as he could for whatever the future might bring.
Who knew how long he’d be able to keep working here?
And after those two coppers had shown up yesterday, now he was even less sure.
“Milky coffee? I thought you’d be greeting me with something a little stronger than that!”
“Hello, Ned.”
He stood, and they gave each other a clumsy hug, before Ned crashed down into the chair beside him. When the waiter appeared almost immediately, he ordered for them both:
“Give us two beers, mate, big ones!” He laughed that long, loud hyena-like laugh of his that had everyone in the café pausing and staring over at their table before continuing.
“And two tequila chasers! Start as we mean to go on, eh!” he cried, slapping his big hand down on David’s thigh.
“Let me look at you: still the same little Davey Dormouse, ain’t you! ”
“Don’t call me that, Ned,” David murmured. “That was primary school!”
“Still suits you!” Ned laughed his expansive laugh again.
If anyone hadn’t changed it was Ned. Sprawling there in one of the café chairs, his long-limbed length seemed to occupy almost the entire width of the café, forcing waiters and patrons to step over his gangly legs and scuffed boots.
He still wore the battered leather trench coat that was his signature attire winter or summer, and his expansive bird’s nest of wiry red hair looked like it hadn’t seen a comb in months. His pale blue eyes interrogated David:
“So, why Spain? Why the change?”
“This is Barcelona, Catalonia. They think of it as separate from Spain.”
“Still Spain though isn’t it! Don’t change the subject. Why’d you come here?”
David let the Spain thing go. Since he’d come here, Carme and everyone else at the stables had been informing him every second minute that Catalonia wasn’t Spain.
It would be wasted breath to try and teach Ned that point of view.
The fact that Ned was asking him this question meant that he couldn’t have heard about what had gone down back home.
So David needed not to blow it, and somehow get Ned to shut up about having bumped into him here. That’d be a tall order.
“I needed a change,” was all he said.
“A likely story,” Ned leered. “What, get some girl up the duff or somat?”
“No, of course not.” Then he kicked himself. That would have made the perfect alibi. And have kept Ned from blabbing. “Well, she… didn’t think she was. But then she missed her period.”
There, he’d told a lie. But it was one of those little white ones, not a bad one, surely.
“Your secret’s safe with me,” hissed Ned in a stage whisper, leaning close with one finger against the side of his nose and winking solemnly.
David hoped so.
“Anyway, here’s to us meeting!” David raised his beer—the last thing he felt like drinking so early in the morning, but he needed to move the subject along—and clinked Ned’s glass. “So how’s Owen?”
“Your brother…” and Ned howled loudly to express whatever it was about David’s brother he just couldn’t put into words. Again everyone in the café stopped and looked over at them. “Is he a one! Chip off the block of your dear old man, I tell you!”
And Ned was off, regaling David with a long-winded tale about one of his brother’s latest exploits. David breathed more easily. He seemed to have done it, put Ned off the scent, and now he just had to be nice to the guy, play along until he could say goodbye and get back to his stables.
But after the second beer and another tequila chaser, that was proving trickier to do.
He suggested a change of bar, hoping to take Ned to some less conspicuous drinking hole.
The thing was, Ned was tall, larger than life, and loud in more ways than one.
Everywhere he went he became the center of attention—exactly what David was hoping to avoid.
They ended up in Bar Kentucky, down the narrow alley that was l’Arc del teatre, some way off the Rambla, barely after it had opened at midday.
This was a long low bar that came into existence for the sailors from the US Sixth Fleet who used to dock in Barcelona even as far back as the fifties.
The wall behind the bar was hung with memorabilia and autographed photos of the seamen who used this hole in the wall as a safe port in a storm, and a place to meet the locals—of both sexes.
“There’s something a bit gay about this bar,” Ned declared, downing his shot.
The tequila chasers had turned to bourbon, and they were now on their third beer. So much for a quick coffee and get back to the stables.
“Well, you know sailors,” David murmured, shrugging.
Personally he liked the place. Maybe that was why.
It was family-run, but the clientele were a mixed bag, everyone from streetwalkers to student rockers and tourists looking for an edgier experience.
It was a place where Ned wouldn’t stand out so much, as almost everyone who drank here was eccentric in some way.
But not having done any power drinking like this in weeks, if not months, David was getting quickly drunk.
Whereas for Ned, the alcohol hardly seemed to touch the sides as it went down, just adding to his natural gregariousness.
David had horses to work. Carme would be pissed at him.
But he could hardly head back to the stables in the state he was now in.
He should have thought that one out better.
That policeman was supposed to be coming back to look at his horse today too—another reason for David to make himself scarce.
Perhaps he could hang out with Ned today, and then slip back into the stables in the evening, after Carme had gone home, and sleep it all off.
He’d get hell for abandoning the horses for a day, but it was Saturday, after all.
And he’d worked hard enough, six days a week since he’d got here.
There were Maria and other hands to do the feeding and watering.
Him being absent a day wouldn’t bring the world crashing down.
At least hanging out with Ned, you didn’t have to say much, as he did most of the talking; all he needed was an audience.
And David had good practice at that, nodding and chuckling where needed and letting Ned go on.
Strangely he was wondering if that policeman had turned up at the stables yet.
Probably. Would he try and seek David out?
Probably. There was something… It had been weird, the way they’d touched…
and those intense eyes, almost black, they kind of bored into you.
He was quite unsettling. A good looker though.
Powerful legs and a muscular ass… all that riding probably.
He snickered at the double entendre, wondering what his dick was like.
“What?”
“What what?”
“What are you chuckling away about? You was miles away. Spill. Is she cute?”
“Nah, it’s nothing. What were you saying?”
“I was asking you the name of this secret lassie you’re mooning about.”
“There’s no one.”
“Come on, spill, you dark horse.”
“It’s… she… Her name’s Carme.”
“Calmer? What sort of a name is that?”
“No, Carme, like good karma, bad karma, you know? It’s a Catalan name.”
“And? Come on, tell Uncle Ned… all the details… Is she a looker? You gone all the way yet?”
“Ah…yeah… no… It’s early days. What were you…?”
“Give her a call. Tell her to come for a drink.”
“No, she’s working.”
“Tell her to take a sickie.”
“No, Ned. Change the subject, alright?”
And finally, seeing he’d got his hackles up, Ned backed off. To change the subject, David said the first thing that came into his mind:
“So has Owen been getting much heat from the cops?”
Ned’s eyes narrowed.
“For what?”
Where had that come from? It had just slipped out. He’d had too much to drink and was just saying stupid stuff.
“Come on, he’s always in trouble with the cops, isn’t he?”
But Ned wasn’t buying it. He was silent as he took a long pull of his beer. That was it. David couldn’t afford to do this. It was too risky. He pulled some money from his pocket and slapped it on the bar.
“I’ve got to go. Work to do. Horses don’t train themselves. Good seeing you, Ned. Great catching up. Say hi to Owen when you see him.”
“Wait, I haven’t even finished my beer! Neither have you!”
But David was already heading out the door.
Once in the street he broke into a run, wanting to dive around the corner before Ned came to his senses and followed him.
Looking back as he ducked into the next street, he saw Ned hadn’t left the bar yet.
But he kept running, pelting along for all he was worth, changing direction every time he came to a corner.
And even once he knew Ned hadn’t followed him, he kept running, wanting to work the fear, adrenalin and alcohol out of his system.
He ran until he came to Montju?c, and then, as he began toiling up the mountain’s steep slope, he slowed to a walk.
He was hot and panting, sweat pouring off him.
As well as that, having got drunk so early in the day had left him feeling sick and sluggish.
But he’d lost Ned, at least. And that was that—no more contact.
It was bad enough they knew he was in Barcelona.
He was enjoying being at the stables, and didn’t want to have to leave.
Where else would he find a set-up like this?
Carme his girlfriend! God she would kick him ninety-six ways from here to Christmas if she knew he’d used her as his decoy like that.
But he could hardly have confessed he was daydreaming about Ramon, a sexy cop with piercing eyes and a hot ass.
Where to now? He was still really drunk and probably stank of alcohol.
And it was barely even two in the afternoon.
He’d go to his special place and sleep it off.
At that point he realized his phone was buzzing.
Taking it out of his pocket, he saw three messages and a missed call from Ned.
He ignored them and shoved his phone back in his pocket.
Should he change his number? He’d have to think how to explain that to Carme.
He couldn’t say he’d lost it; she’d tell him just to get a replacement SIM.
Damn Ned! Damn his brother! Everything had been so brilliant and now it was all a mess.