Tattoo Read online

  ‘Where’s Ginés?’

  ‘Which Ginés? There’s four of them.’

  ‘The cockiest.’

  ‘Then there’s only one. Go up to the fourth floor. And be careful, there’s scaffolding everywhere.’

  The building was nothing more than a concrete shell with metal girders. From a distance it looked as though it were peppered with the orange balls of the labourers’ protective hats. Carvalho peered up at the geometrical structure at the bottom of one section, then began his climb.

  ‘Hey, you!’

  The foreman ran towards him carrying a hard hat.

  ‘Make sure you wear this. There are lots of apprentices and they can knock your block off if you’re not careful.’

  Carvalho put the hat on. It was like being given the seal of approval for his adventure. The staircase was little more than a cement ramp filled with bricks to walk on. When Carvalho reached the fourth floor he paused to get his breath back. All around him, the horizon seemed to be bristling with half-finished constructions like this one, a forest of bulky skeletons growing inexorably. Below, a yellow curtain of smog lay over the city’s industrial belt.

  ‘Ginés!’

  An orange helmet bobbed up. Underneath it was Ginés’s white, rat-like face.

  ‘Where’s your detective’s hat?’

  ‘Have you got a moment?’

  Ginés wiped the sweat from his thin eyebrows with his sleeve.

  ‘Oh, Pepe, I’m so hot it’s killing me! If only I could make a living with no sweat like you. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m looking for someone. A drowned man. His body was found on the beach a few days ago and I need to know who he was. The cops haven’t given any description. He had a tattoo: Born to raise hell in hell.’

  ‘That drowned guy has caused a real fuss. The cops have turned the neighbourhood upside down. My brother managed to stay out of jail only by a miracle.’

  ‘Do you know anything?’

  ‘Nobody knows anything. It’s all connected to drugs and those French pimps who’ve brought whores in, from places as far away as the Cameroon. But there’s no telling what it’s all about.’

  ‘Have you any idea what his name was?’

  ‘No, and I’ve no way of finding out. For a couple of weeks I’m going to keep my head down. I’m going to take the children to the park and help my wife make balls of wool so she can knit me a winter pullover. Remember, I’ve spent seven of the last ten years inside.’

  Carvalho had met Ginés when they were both in Aridel jail. Ginés was in for breaking a security guard’s arm with a chair.

  ‘Do you think Felix might know something?’

  ‘He was the first to make sure his hundred and fifty kilos were well hidden.’

  ‘What about Valencia?’

  ‘He’s off his head. All the flowerpots at his place are full of marijhuana. It’s his wife who goes out to earn the dough, and he’s on another planet. You’ll have to try elsewhere, Pepe. I’m keeping away from all my contacts: this looks bad, real bad. When they close down all the brothels like they have done, really close them down, that means it’s serious and won’t go away overnight.’

  ‘Let’s go for a drink. Can you get out of here?’

  ‘Yes, if I give an excuse.’

  ‘What will your excuse be?’

  ‘That I want to have a drink with you.’

  Ginés strolled down the four flights whistling cheerfully. He arrived at ground level while Carvalho was still struggling two floors above.

  ‘What about politics? When’s that Khrushchev of yours coming on his Vespa?’

  ‘Khrushchev isn’t coming on a Vespa or anything else. He’s dead. And I’m not involved in politics any more.’

  ‘And there I was thinking I had a friend who would be a minister one day.’

  They reached the foreman.

  ‘Listen, this gentleman is thirsty and I’m going to have a drink with him.’

  ‘What will I tell the contractor if he comes?’

  ‘That’s your problem.’

  The foreman muttered something behind their backs. Ginés stifled a laugh with his hand.

  ‘That’s right, arsehole, you go on moaning, that’s why you’re an arsehole. He’s got an ulcer, you know.’

  ‘So do you.’

  ‘But I keep mine quiet by drinking.’

  ‘Do they let you do what you want here?’

  ‘They respect me. I’m the best. And they know it pays to keep me happy.’

  Carvalho knew the stages of Ginés’s drinking. At the fourth glass, he started talking about his mother. By the sixth, he was on to his mythical brother, his bosom pal. By the tenth, he was talking about what Carvalho wanted to hear. The bar was full of cheap plastic tables and calendars of chubby girls in bikinis. The floor was covered with a sticky layer of grime that not even Carvalho’s impatient heels could dislodge.

  ‘Ginés, if you were offered a thousand pesetas, couldn’t you find out tonight who that drowned man was?’

  ‘I’d do it for you, Pepiño. But I swear this is a bad moment. And my mother isn’t well. I don’t want her to suffer by getting banged up again. Try Bromuro. What he doesn’t know about this …’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive. And if he hasn’t told you anything, it’s because there’s nothing to know. Perhaps the cops are in the dark too.’

  ‘But the drowned man had fingers, and there’s something called an ID card.’

  ‘That’s true. But if they haven’t said a name it’s because they’re being extra careful … You’re not drinking, Pepiño. You’re making me talk, but you’re not drinking. Typical Galician, that’s what you are.’

  Ginés’s head was lolling back, and he was staring at Carvalho as though he wanted a fight. Carvalho ignored this, and thought everything over.

  ‘You seem very worried. Was the dead man close to you?’

  ‘No, but I’m interested in the case.’

  ‘Shit, you look just like a film star when you say things like that. Real style. But you’re a sly one. You haven’t had two glasses, and I’m on my fifteenth.’

  ‘Do you have to go back to work?’

  ‘I’ll say I’m sick and I won’t return. The house will get finished just the same. Come on, let’s got and eat tapas in Calle Escudillers.’

  ‘I can’t. Really I can’t.’

  ‘Be off with you, then. I’ll stay a while longer. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to scare my mother to death again.’

  He was almost in tears.

  ‘The last time it was my brother. They caught him in bed with his boss’s wife and tried to beat the shit out of him. The boss and his sons. They attacked him with a hammer, but he fought back. You know what we’re like, we may be small but we’ve got balls. Six months. They gave him six months for vagrancy. And he was lucky. But you should have seen what it did to our mother.’

  ‘How’s your wife?’

  ‘She’s been got pregnant.’

  ‘Who did it?’

  ‘It could have been me. All I know is that’s she pregnant. This big.’

  Ginés held his hands out in front of him and burst out laughing. Carvalho recalled the dim outline of a tiny girl from Andalusia, bird-boned but with huge eyes, on the far side of the double wire mesh in the prison visitors’ room. Ginés had leaned towards him and said:

  ‘This is my wife. She’s a real beauty, though she doesn’t look it now. As soon as I get out I’ll spoil her a bit, she’ll come up a treat, and I’ll be in clover.’

  All that was ten years ago, and only Ginés had remained the same.

  Carvalho dined on tapas in Plaza Real, then headed for Charo’s apartment with two litres of beer in his stomach and heartburn from fried whitebait cooked in too much flour and oil. This time he used his key, and as he opened the door he was confronted with the scene exactly as he had imagined it. One of Charo’s companions was sitting on the sofa crying her eyes out, while a sharp,
sallow-skinned young man paced up and down beside her. Charo was trying to comfort the crying girl; her Andalusian friend was in the kitchen.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘He’s her boyfriend,’ Charo tried to explain.

  Carvalho pointed to the front door. The young man’s sour expression gave way to the self-satisfied grin of a jumped-up mafioso. Carvalho glanced at the flashy rings festooning his hands.

  ‘Put your cheap jewellery away and get out of here.’

  ‘Why don’t I stuff it in your mouth?’

  Carvalho appeared to take no notice of this, but suddenly whirled around and chopped the other man hard across the neck. He staggered backwards, and Carvalho was on him, connecting with a right and a left to his face. Neither the girl’s screams nor Charo’s protests could stop him. Carvalho bent over the pimp, grabbed him by the hair, and beat his head against the wall. The pimp slid down until he was sitting on the floor. Carvalho went through his pockets, his waistline, under his arms, and the lining of his shoes. He took a folded switchblade from somewhere. Then he stepped back and from the middle of the room glared at the three women to prevent them protesting. Charo was paralysed by indignation and fear. The girl from Andalusia seemed to be preparing some sort of explanation; the other girl had her arms round her bloody and battered boyfriend.

  ‘I told you your pimps were not to set foot in here!’

  ‘I thought he’d been arrested!’ moaned the tearful girl as she knelt beside her man. Charo kept saying over and over like a stuck record that Carvalho should go with her into the bedroom, because she had something she wanted to tell him. He pushed her away.

  ‘The cops aren’t joking. People are being swatted like flies, and here you are playing at sisters of charity.’

  Carvalho led Charo out into the kitchen. He did not offer her the chance to complain, but gave her a stark picture of what was happening in the city. Charo began to be less frightened of him and more worried about what might happen to her if she got mixed up in what was going on. ‘But in any case, that’s no reason to treat that boy the way you did, Pepe,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t stand pimps.’

  ‘He’s not a bad sort. He really loves her. She would have ended up badly but for him.’

  ‘They need to understand things one way or another. Did you find out anything for me?’

  Charo had been able to talk only to five brothel madams. One of them from Calle Fernando thought she remembered a guy who had a strange tattoo, though she wasn’t sure that it was exactly that one.

  ‘There’s no brothel in Calle Fernando.’

  ‘Well, in that short dead-end street. I can never remember its name.’

  ‘Is that where she lives?’

  ‘No, she lives with her son in an apartment in La Ronda. Near San Antonio market. She told me that some time ago a man fitting the description you gave me went to the brothel a few times. He always asked for the same girl. One they call Creamy or Frenchy. She pretends she’s French, and she’s always carrying round creams to sell to her clients to make a bit of extra. Apparently this Frenchy told her he was a really strange guy with a very strange tattoo. But he’s not well known round here. Nobody else remembers him.’

  ‘How can I meet this Frenchy?’

  Charo left the room, but came back a minute later.

  ‘They say you should ask in a bar that’s almost on the corner of Calle Fernando. It’s one of the few they haven’t closed, though the girls have gone.’

  ‘OK, but I’ve got to go abroad for a few days anyway.’

  Charo stood in his way in the kitchen door and kissed him on the mouth, then whispered in his ear for him not to be too hard on the others. Carvalho moved her aside gently and went into the living room. The young pimp still looked completely out of it, though the two women were busy trying to bring him round with wet flannels.

  ‘When he’s feeling better, turf him out. And if you two won’t see reason, you’re out as well. I’ve already told you, I don’t want Charo mixed up in all this.’

  Carvalho sounded almost amiable, so the girl from Andalusia decided it was time to deliver her sermon.

  ‘Look, Pepe. There are lots of ways to say things, and you could have come in politely and said this is what I want, rather than getting violent about it. We’re all in this together, and we have to help each other out, Pepe. Show a bit of solidarity …’

  ‘As much as you like, but as soon as you’ve patched up our friend here, throw him out.’

  ‘I’ll come looking for you!’ growled the pimp, angrily but in a weak, shaky voice.

  ‘You’ll need to get your eyes back first,’ said Carvalho drily as he left. Charo was waiting for him in the doorway. They said nothing as they went down in the lift, or when they were out in the street. Carvalho seemed lost in thought. When they reached the centre of the Rambla, Charo hung on his arm.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Would you like me to come to your house? Are you going to be abroad long?’

  Carvalho shrugged. They walked on until they came to the bar she had mentioned.

  ‘I ask the questions. You keep quiet,’ he warned her.

  The raids had at least added some brightness to almost all the bars in Raval. As if by magic, the red and green lights had disappeared, and new hundred-watt bulbs made everywhere as garish as shopfronts. In the harsh white light, everything looked unfamiliar. Carvalho and Charo sat on a couple of high swivel stools up at the bar. Despite Pepe’s encouragement, the barman kept his mouth tight shut. He knew nothing about the raids. Or what was behind them. But Pepe only had to glance despairingly at Charo, and she closed her eyes, leaned across the bar towards the barman, and whispered to him:

  ‘Look, I’m worried about a girlfriend of mine. I don’t know if they’ve picked her up or not. I’m talking about Frenchy.’

  In Charo’s body and voice, the barman heard the call of his tribe. Until then he had thought she was just Carvalho’s sidekick. He knew his stuff, and almost without turning his head, made sure that nobody else was going to hear what he was about to say.

  ‘Frenchy doesn’t work round here any more. She went up to the Sarriá highway about six months ago. The cops have been up there too, but not as much.’

  Carvalho left him a tip. The barman winked his thanks. When they were out in the street, a proud Charo hung on his arm again and gave her verdict on all that had happened to them that evening:

  ‘See? All you need is to be a bit friendly, and you get what you want.’

  Carvalho nearly burst out laughing. Charo saw him, and sneaked into what she thought was a crack in the Pepe monolith.

  ‘That’s right, laugh! Laugh if you want to, I’m not going to charge you!’

  Carvalho paid her no attention. He was considering the situation. One trail led to Holland, a specific job, a specific place. Another led to a woman on the game who had probably put away all her creams and pillows until the storm had passed.

  ‘Charo, I’m off to Holland. Look for this Frenchy for me while I’m gone, will you? Be calm and patient about it, and make sure you take no risks.’

  By now Charo was giving him short pecks on his shoulder-pad. Carvalho could feel her kisses penetrating this layer of protection and exploding all over his skin.

  The plane landed at Nice for a stopover. Carvalho feasted his eyes on the spectacle of the mountains above the Côte d’Azur. Kilometre after kilometre of hills with villas nestling among well-tended vegetation. Carvalho compared this rational speculation of tiny paradises with the unbridled destruction of the Spanish coastline. His mind began to fill with the old logic that sought links between cause and effect, between good and evil. But as soon as this logic became demanding and insistent, an alarm bell went off in his head, and he dismissed all the arguments. He wanted nothing more to do with any analysis of the world he lived in. He had long since decided he was on the journey between childhood and old age of a personal, non-transferable destiny, of a li
fe that nobody else could live for him, no more, no less, no better, no worse. Everybody else could go get stuffed. He had deliberately restricted his capacity for abstract emotion to what he could get from the landscape around him. All his other emotions were immediate, skin deep.

  Ten new passengers boarded the plane at Nice, and the blue-uniformed stewardesses of the Dutch airline distributed them in the remaining seats. A leathery old woman sat next to Carvalho. She was wearing a typical flowery hat and looked neat and well turned out. She was in talkative mood, and Carvalho soon found himself immersed in an absurd discussion about why the salinity of the Mediterranean was dropping alarmingly year after year. When the stewardesses started bustling up and down the cabin, he realised they must be in the last stages of the journey. He stood up and headed for the lavatory. He checked his papers. He had his Spanish private detective permit and the out-of-date ID the San Francisco police had given him eight years earlier. He made sure his Star revolver was fitting snugly in his shoulder holster. He took two switchblades out of his jacket pocket. One belonged to the pimp he had beaten up in Charo’s apartment. He threw it into the lavatory bowl. The other was his, a magnificent Mexican blade he had carried with him ever since his adventures in Baja California.

  He pulled up his trouser leg and slipped the knife into a sheath hidden in his shoe lining. Then he returned to his seat. The old French lady had dozed off. Carvalho took advantage of this verbal truce to consider what had brought him on this journey. He could not get out of his mind the image of the faceless corpse of the man who was ‘bold and blond as beer’. Sometimes he found himself filling the blank with other people’s faces: Jean-Pierre Aumont in Scheherazade, or Tab Hunter. Or a blond Yves Montand with less clown-like features. All of a sudden, the words of the song Bromuro had mentioned came back to him, although they were still rather jumbled:

  He arrived on a boat