here,’ and frowns. What is he thinking? The characteristics of his face have been altered so much by age that I cannot even read his mood.
‘Why don’t you come inside, have a drink or something?’ I suggest. ‘Maybe you’d like a bath.’
‘Maybe.’
‘There’s not much hot water. Spaniards prefer showers. But then we could go out for dinner. I could show you round.’
‘Fine.’
Another silence. Does he want an argument? Does he want to have it out now?
‘Did you have any trouble with customs?’ I ask.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Leaving England. Did they search your bag?’
If John Lithiby had wanted to find out if Saul was bringing anything to me, he would have alerted Customs and Excise at Luton and instructed them to search his luggage.
‘Of course not. Why would they do that?’
He closes the balcony doors, muffling the sound of traffic, and begins pacing towards the kitchen. I follow him and try to seem relaxed, cloaking my paranoia in an easy, upbeat voice.
‘It’s just a possibility. If the cops want to check somebody’s stuff without raising suspicion, they hold everybody up and go through all the bags, maybe put a plain clothes officer in the queue to plant a rumour about a drugs bust or a bomb threat…’
‘What the fuck are you talking about? I went to HMV and Costa Coffee. Had an overpriced latte and nearly missed my flight.’
‘Right.’
More silence. Saul has found his way into my bedroom and is peering at the framed photographs on the wall. There’s one of Mum and Dad together in 1982, and a shot of Saul as a teenager with spiked hair. He stares at this for a long time, but doesn’t say anything about it. He probably thinks I hung it there this morning just to make him feel good.
‘I’ll tell you one thing about Luton airport,’ he says eventually. ‘Ann Summers. Don’t you love that? Just the thought process behind putting a lingerie shop in the pre-flight area. Couples going on holiday, probably haven’t had sex since 1996, then one of them spots the black suspender belt in the window. The shop was packed. Every father-of-three handing over wads of cash for a soft lace teddy and a pair of jelly handcuffs. It’s like announcing that you’re planning to have sex on the Costa del Sol. You might as well use the PA system.’
Taking advantage of his lighter mood, I fetch Saul a bottle of Mahou from the fridge and begin to think that everything is going to be OK. We make a plan to walk up to Bilbao metro to play chess at Café Comercial and he takes a shower after unpacking his bag. I notice that he has brought a laptop with him but assume that this is because of work. While waiting I wash up some mugs in the kitchen and then send a text to Sofía’s work mobile.
Have friend staying from England. Will call you after the weekend. Agree about the hotel…
A minute later she responds:
A friend? I did not think alec milius had friends…xxxx
I don’t bother replying. At 8.30 Saul emerges into the sitting room wearing a long coat and a pair of dark, slip-on Campers.
‘We’re off?’ he asks.
‘We’re off.’
FIVE
Ruy Lopez
Café Comercial is located at the southern end of Glorieta de Bilbao, a junction of several main streets–Carranza, Fuencarral, Luchana–that converge on a roundabout dominated by a floodlit fountain. If you read the guidebooks, the café has been a favoured haunt of poets, revolutionaries, students and assorted dissidents for almost a hundred years, although on an average evening in 2003 it also boasts its fair share of tourists, civil servants and mobile-clutching businessmen. Saul walks ahead of me through the heavy revolving doors and glances to his right at a crowded bar where bag-eyed madrileños are tucking into coffee and plates of microwave-heated tortilla. I indicate to him to keep walking into the main body of the café, where Comercial’s famously grumpy, white-jacketed waiters are bustling back and forth among the tables. For the first time he seems impressed by his surroundings, nodding approvingly at the high marbled columns and the smoked-glass mirrors, and it occurs to me that this is a foreign visitor’s perfect idea of cultivated European living: café society in all its glory.
The upper storey of the Comercial is used as a club on Tuesday and Friday evenings by an eclectic array of chess-loving locals. Men, ranging in ages from perhaps twenty-five to seventy, gather in an L-shaped room above the café, cluttered with tables and green leather banquettes. Very occasionally a woman will look in on the action, although in four years of coming here twice a week I have never noticed one taking part in a game. This might be sexism–God knows, still a familiar feature of twenty-first-century Spain–but I prefer to think of it simply as a question of choice: while men battle it out at chess, the nearby tables will be occupied by groups of chattering middle-aged women, happier with the calmer arts of cards or dominoes.
Coming here on such a regular basis has been a risk, but chess at Comercial is a luxury that I will not deny myself; it is three hours of old-world charm and decency, uninterrupted by regret or solitude. I know most of the men here by name, and not an evening goes by when they do not seem pleased to see me, to welcome me into their lives and friendships, the game merely an instrument in the more vital ritual of camaraderie. Still, back in 1999, I introduced myself to the secretary using a false name, so it’s necessary for me to stop Saul halfway up the stairs and explain why he cannot call me Alec.
‘Come again?’
‘All of the guys here know me as Patrick.’
‘Patrick.’
‘Just to be on the safe side.’
Saul shakes his head with bewildered, slow-motion amusement, turns, and climbs the remaining few steps. You can already hear the snap and rattle of dominoes, the rapid punch of clocks. Through the doorway opposite the landing I spot Ramón and a couple of the other, younger players who show up from time to time at the club. As if sensing me, Ramón looks up, raises his hand and smiles through a faint mist of cigarette smoke. I fetch a board, a clock and some pieces and we settle down at the back of the room, some way off from the main action. If Saul wants to talk about his marriage, or if I feel that the time is right to discuss what happened to Kate, I don’t want any of the players listening in on our conversation. One or two of them speak better English than they let on, and gossip is an industry I can ill afford.
‘You come here a lot?’ he asks, lighting yet another Camel Light.
‘Twice a week.’
‘Isn’t that a bad idea?’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘From the point of view of the spooks.’ Saul exhales and smoke explodes off the surface of the board. ‘I mean, aren’t they on the look-out for that sort of thing? Your pattern? Won’t they find you if you keep coming here?’
‘It’s a risk,’ I tell him, but the question has shaken me. How does Saul
