A Case of Noir (Atlantis) Read online

  I was relieved when the metrosexual Polish barman, Roman according to his name tag, brought over another drink.

  ‘Anything else sir?’ he said, flashing a neon smile which dimmed when he saw the American.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said, my voice unsteady.

  Every time I met someone from Poland I had a flashback to my scrape in Warsaw. As I damped my T-shirt with a napkin, Roman wandered over to see me.

  ‘You have a guest Mr Case. A friend of yours from Madrid?’

  I smiled uneasily. The modern day torch singer, Lena K, known around the world as The Final Chanteuse, was my boss Pedro’s striking-looking former girlfriend. She was in her early twenties. A tall, Teutonic, blue-eyed blonde.

  Lena and Carmello Estevez, the Seville record producer, had eventually embarked upon a massively successful world tour. The big time had hit her like a knockout punch from Mike Tyson. There was even talk of Brian Eno, producing her and apparently she ‘owned’ YouTube.

  Lena was also possibly, if not probably, involved in the death of a former colleague of mine and her presence sent a chill through me, even though I’d invited her.

  I was halfway through my glass of beer as Lena sat down. Her hair was now completely shaven and, when she took off her massive, round sunglasses, she seemed to be wearing crimson contact lenses that matched her lipstick, nail-varnish and PVC raincoat.

  ‘Well, this is a bit of a surprise, Luke,’ she said. Her accent was now pure cut-glass English, not the fake German one she’d put on when I’d known her in Madrid.

  ‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘It’s been almost a year since …’

  Lena smirked.

  ‘Yes, since.’

  Roman placed a hot chocolate in front of Lena. She winked at him and he grinned. I felt a tsunami of déjà vu envelope me and tapped on my almost empty beer glass. Roman nodded.

  ‘So, what can I do you for?’ she said.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ I said, draining my glass. Roman came back with another beer.

  Lena dug into her raincoat pocket and took out one of those new-fangled electronic cigarettes that seemed to be catching on across Europe; judging by the American woman’s appalled expression they were not so popular across the pond.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said the American, tapping on her table with a pen.

  Lena looked the woman up and down and clearly found her not up to scratch.

  ‘Well, I’ll try my best, darling,’ said Lena, ‘though, until you buy yourself a new wardrobe it’s going to be a tiny bit difficult.’

  She turned back to me and leaned close.

  ‘So, how’s the hack life in Madrid?’

  She looked as if she was trying to stare me down.

  ‘Same old thing, same old thing,’ I said.

  ‘So, you said you had an … acting job for me?’ said Lena.

  ‘Well, after a fashion,’ I said.

  I was about to tell Lena about Kelly’s predicament when there was scraping sound and the American woman, whose face was now as red as Lena’s raincoat, marched over to our table. She loomed over Lena and I knew that this little misunderstanding was going to end in tears. And not Lena’s.

  ‘Listen, dipshit, this is a non-smoking bar,’ she started wagging her finger at Lena. ‘and unless you want me to get your Eurotrash ass thrown into some Spanish fleapit jail then you ...’

  Lena’s hand shot out as quickly as a rattlesnake and caught the American’s wagging finger. And bent it back.

  The woman’s scream was shrill enough to bother the local dogs and Roman raced out onto the balcony. Lena said something to him in Spanish and they quarrelled for a few minutes until Roman burst out laughing.

  The American woman was now on her knees. She was sobbing and repeating ‘Please, Please, Please,’ but she certainly wasn’t singing the James Brown song.

  I tried to ignore the commotion, took out my iPhone and checked my emails. The usual rubbish, but one made me spill my beer down my Duffer of St George T-shirt. For the second time that month, there was an email with the subject title ‘FAO Johnny Boy’. The body of the email only contained the word URGENT! And a link. I switched off my phone.

  The sound of Roman’s voice trying to placate the American faded out as sweat trickled down my spine. Pin pricks acupunctured my body. My mouth turned dry. I felt like someone in an old Western movie, staked out under a hot desert sun with vultures circling above.

  So, I did the most sensible thing I could think of under the circumstances. I ordered a double whisky.

  The woman was still sobbing. Looking terrified as Lena whispered in her ear. Roman brought my whisky, a cruel smirk on his face as he looked at Lena and the American. Shook his head.

  ‘Keep them coming,’ I said. He nodded.

  I gazed out into the distance as twilight enveloped the Sierra Nevadas, sipped my whisky and let the velvet dusk enfold me.

  4

  The Big Rain

  Toulouse

  I plucked my Ray-Bans from my shirt-pocket and hastily put them on. Grabbed a Fred Perry T-shirt from my backpack and held it over my mouth. It was only a couple of hundred metres from Gare de Toulouse-Matabiau to the bar on Rue de Bayard where Pedro and I were meeting Sean, but the tear gas stung all the way.

  Not that it seemed to bother Pedro, of course. But then, he never seemed to be fazed by anything. He was laughing like a lunatic as French police used their batons and tasers to beat the crap out of the handful of punk rockers that had started a bonfire in the middle of a roundabout. A couple of them looked unconscious and were being thrown into the back of a black police van. Others were still getting a beating from the mob of uniformed men and women in gas masks. A little dog barked until a policewoman gave it a kick and it ran off and cowered beneath a lamp post. The bonfire continued to burn. I was still half asleep after the five-hour train journey from Lyon to Toulouse and the whole thing seemed like a dream.

  It had started to rain as soon as we left the railway station and I rushed across the empty Boulevard Bonrepos, the late night traffic having been stopped by the police. I noticed that Pedro had left me behind and was probably already in the bar. He seemed to have limitless energy. Even though he was only ten years younger he made me feel half-dead, like a zombie.

  I paused to catch my breath on the corner of Rue de Bayard. Leaned against a wall scarred with graffiti and gaudy vending machines selling condoms. The sound of Manu Chao’s ‘King Of Bongo’ burst from the nearby bar as group of drunken businessmen staggered out into the damp night. I took off the sunglass, wiped my face with the t-shirt and shoved them back into my backpack. I pushed open the heavy door and walked into Bar Le 31.

  It was small, dimly-lit watering hole — all dark wood and red velvet, and smelling like a soggy mongrel. I imagined it would have been thick with smoke in the days before it was banned. A horseshoe-shaped bar dominated the room. Along one side were a series of small booths. Pedro was stood at the bar talking to a massive crop-headed Legionnaire with a scar on his face. Holding court, as usual.

  Pedro was at least a foot shorter that the Legionnaire but he still seemed to be dominating the conversation. Then again, Pedro had personality and ‘personality’ as John Travolta once said ‘goes a long way’.

  He wasn’t even a particularly handsome bastard, looking quite a bit like a young Jean Reno, but the women loved him because Pedro had charisma. Charm. He could have bottled the stuff. He was the kind of man that could sell ice cream to Eskimos, as my Gran used to say.

  My boss at The Madrid Review Pedro Dominguez was dressed in leather trousers, paisley shirt and wore his hair in a pony-tail. He was waving a pair of round, green-lensed sunglasses around as he spoke and should have looked out of place in a dive like Bar Le 31, but Pedro seemed to fit in wherever he was. He nodded to me as I walked toward the back of the bar.

  A small group of drunken Legionnaires sat in one of the red, velvet booths and glared at me as I walked past. A television screen was showing ‘The Good
, The Bad and The Ugly’. As I heard Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack, my skin prickled.

  I used my usual poor French to order a bottle of Heineken from the stumpy barman in a too-tight waistcoat and stained white shirt. He looked decidedly unimpressed by the way I mangled his language and slid the beer across the wet bar without looking me in the eye. At the end of the bar, a familiar face was sipping red wine and flirting with a tall, blonde waitress.

  I walked towards him.

  ‘Same again, Sean?’ I said.

  ‘Of course, Luke!’ he said, staggering off the bar stool and aiming a wobbly hand at me.

  We shook hands and Sean spoke in French to the waitress who smirked as she handed him a large glass of draft red wine.

  ‘Any good?’ I said.

  ‘The house special? Cheap as chips and gets the job done,’ he said. ‘Can’t complain.’

  Sean Bradley was looking good. A damn sight better than when I’d last seen him, anyway. Characteristically he was wearing a blazer, slacks and the tie of some public school that he’d almost certainly never attended, but this wasn’t the frayed, second-hand stuff that he always seemed to wear when I came across him in Poland. Maybe he’d managed to sponge a decent amount of cash from his elderly mother, at long last. Or maybe she’d died and hadn’t disinherited him, as he suspected she would.

  Whatever, his face still had the familiar alcohol suntan. Not that it stopped him being a handsome devil. Blue eyes, blonde hair and a devilish grin as wide as the Grand Canyon.

  Sean was the archetypal boozy, nicotine-stained TEFL teacher, typical of Warsaw’s ex-pat community. He was an ageing boozehound on the run from who knows what, and he had sometimes supplemented his teaching income by chess hustling. I literally stumbled into him the first week I arrived in Warsaw. After that, we seemed to orbit each other, more than you’d imagine. But as I mentioned, I’d had to leave Warsaw in a hurry.

  I certainly never expected to see Sean again, though we had kept in touch via the occasional email. He’d also sent me a couple of Facebook friend requests but there was no way I was going to be dragged into the more of social networking. I’d actually sent him an email a couple of weeks before, telling him about my trip to a crime fiction festival in Lyon. Shortly after, Sean had replied telling me that he had now moved to Toulouse. It was a hell of a small world, that was certain. A little too small for my liking.

  ‘Shall we grab a booth?’ I said.

  I didn’t feel particularly comfortable with the Legionnaires watching us. I was paranoid enough these days.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Sean and he wobbled over to a small booth near the fire exit, which was propped open with a chair and letting in the night rain.

  ‘This isn’t exactly the sort of weather I expected in the south of France, in spring,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sean, ‘I suspect that it’s connected with Global Warming or something or other.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in Global Warming?’ I said.

  Sean had once given me a long boozy lecture on how Global Warming, allergies and Bipolar Disorder didn’t really exist.

  ‘You used to say it was an example of twentieth century paranoia.’

  ‘Well, it’s the twenty-first century now, Luke,’ he said.

  He suddenly looked crestfallen.

  ‘Indeed it is,’ I said. ‘Just noticed? Time flies, eh?’

  ‘Unfortunately so. Anyway, what was this book festival that you went to?’ said Sean. He took a big slurp of his wine.

  ‘It’s called the Quais Du Polar,’ I said. Sean grimaced at my horrible pronunciation. His French was perfect, of course.

  ‘Never heard of it,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it’s a crime fiction festival,’ I said. ‘Attracts quite a lot of big names, apparently. Not your mug of slosh, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, I used to be rather partial to the writings of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett once upon a time. Or should I say once upon a crime?’

  He giggled to himself. ‘But I rarely read fiction these days. The concentration’s shot to bits, I’m afraid. I blame old age. And the booze, of course.’

  He stared at his glass of wine with a mixture of longing and contempt.

  ‘And why were you there, anyway? I doubt I’ve ever seen you read a book apart from those saucy Chastity Flame novels. Have you taken the plunge and written a pot-boiler?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. In fact, not at all. I’m writing an article about it for The Madrid Review. And I also know a writer who was attending. Lena K, heard of her?’

  ‘The singer? I have heard of her. Wonderful voice. Chilling. Didn’t know she was a writer, too.’

  ‘Oh, Lena’s got more than a few strings to her bow,’ I said. Which was a bit of an understatement. Lena was Pedro’s ex-girlfriend and on-going protégé.

  Pedro had later introduced her to Carmello Estevez, the Seville-based record producer whose star was on the rise and which became positively incandescent once he started working with Lena. And Pedro was more than happy to be dragged along on their comets’ tails.

  Lena was also very probably responsible for the death of one of my friends — a hack called Nathan Jones, who was probably her father. She was also currently ghost-writing a series of crime fiction novels for Simon Kelly, a former East London criminal that I’d met in Granada. She wasn’t exactly the shy and retiring type.

  Pedro came over and placed two bottles of Les Corbières on the table.

  ‘Nice,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t introduce myself,’ Pedro said to Sean. ‘My name’s Pedro.’ He sat down next to me.

  Sean nodded at the wine. ‘That’s a good enough introduction for me. I’m Sean.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard a lot about you from Luke.’

  ‘None of it good, I hope,’ said Sean. He guffawed, spraying wine over the table. He picked up a napkin and cleaned it. Dabbed his mouth.

  ‘Luke told me he knew you when he lived in Poland,’ said Pedro. ‘How did you end up coming to France?’

  ‘Cherchez la femme fatale,’ said Sean, uncorking one of the bottles of wine with a Swiss army knife.

  He poured us each a glass of wine and told us his story.

  The first time Sean met Christine, he was sitting on a bench beside the fountain outside Warsaw’s Muranow cinema. He was reading a biography of the American photographer Weegee, lazily flicking through the pages and pages of black and white crime scene photographs. It was over thirty degrees and he was wilting a little, to say the least.

  He was debating whether or not to return to his flat for a nap when a shadow hung over him. He looked up to see two tall blue-eyed blond men beaming 2000 watt smiles. They were identical twins dressed in identical suits and ties and despite the sweltering heat they weren’t sweating.

  ‘You’re English?’ said one of them, in a broad Dukes Of Hazzard accent.

  ‘How did you guess?’ said Sean.

  ‘Oh, only an Englishman would spend such a glorious day looking at photographs of dead bodies.’ He winked.

  Sean closed the book and pushed it into his battered old briefcase.

  The American held out his hand.

  ‘I’m Chad,’ he said.

  Sean wiped his hand and shook.

  ‘This is Chet,’ said Chad, gesturing towards the other man. ‘And this is Christine.’

  Sean hadn’t noticed her until then although he couldn’t imagine how he could have missed her. She was in her teens and beautiful. A tall blonde with a boyish haircut and big blue eyes. She was wearing the sort of prim summer dress that you’d expect to be worn by the Sunday school teacher in ‘The Little House On The Prairie’ but on Christine it looked great.

  ‘Pleased to meet you all,’ he said. ‘I’m assuming you are all Americans. What the hell are you doing in Poland?’

  Christine smiled and handed him a leaflet. ‘Come to this place tomorrow night and you’ll find out,’ she said.

  And so he did.

&nbs
p; Sean, Pedro and Cyprien, the tall Legionnaire, had stepped out into the alleyway at the back of the bar to smoke some hash. The beer and wine had worked well together and I was feeling more than somewhat mellow.

  Brimming with Dutch courage, I took out my Samsung android and checked my emails. Again there was an email addressed to ‘Johnny Boy’. Again I deleted it but I suddenly felt like I had my head in a vice. A vice that was squeezing tighter and tighter.

  I polished off the last of the wine and ordered another beer. ‘Enter The Dragon’ was now showing on the television and I could feel every one of Bruce Lee’s blows.

  Sean and Pedro came back into the room, laughing.

  ‘I’ve never actually tried opium,’ said Sean, to Pedro. ‘But it certainly couldn’t do as much harm as most religions.’

  Pedro laughed. ‘But without religion we have no moral compass,’ he said.

  ‘My moral compass is always pointing down South, anyway,’ said Sean. He winked and sat back down. Pedro leaned against the bar and took out his Smartphone.

  ‘What about you, Luke, are you of a religious bent?’ said Sean. He pulled out a handkerchief and shined his ruby red cufflinks.

  ‘No, not all,’ I said. ‘I still remember going to my grandmother’s funeral when I was seven years old and saw all these people weeping and wailing. I just didn’t get it. So, I asked my mother why everyone was sad if granny had gone to heaven.’

  ‘And her response?’ said Sean.

  ‘Oh, she just clipped me round the ear and told me to stop being stupid. But after that, I started to doubt most things that adults told me. The start of my nihilism, I suppose.’

  The grumpy waiter brought over another couple of bottles of wine.

  ‘Ta much,’ I said, annoyed by his sour expression.