THE SPANISH WAITER: TWENTY-THREE

The coming together of things....

Geraldine Bonny, Probation Officer with a deep concern over the way Ivan Maybe’s life has been turning out was taking a few days holiday at the Pyramido Hotel. Her own private investigations as well as a friendship with a senior Spanish police woman had led her to this place and she rather liked it. For several years she’d tried to find a way through the culture of secrecy surrounding the dreadful life her client’d had forced on him by what she broadly classified as the secret services. She’d looked into his case as thoroughly as time and a sometimes overwhelming caseload allowed and had slowly and methodically traced the absurd machinations of the law to one hidden office in a forgotten corner of old London.

And now she was completely up to date, and the trail had gone on to lead her to the very hotel where she had found a waiting job for the disgustingly treated Ivan Maybe. He hadn’t killed anyone, not even raised a fist to anyone, she was sure of that, and as an attachment to an email she had received that very morning she had an image of the virtually untraceable Governor of the sad little office where he appeared to rule supreme. She’d even gone to the trouble of getting it printed off by that nice young woman who spent some of her time on the reception desk, Andrea Something-Spanish.

She looked at the photograph and sniffed. He thought that she knew the type.

By the look of him he was, she decided, ex-public school, and she was pretty sure that he had been mistreated by bullies, both of the junior and, sadly, teaching staff variety. She had read what those places could be like, pain inflicted and no questions asked, dormitories where the sadistic could reign supreme over less powerful juniors, and when they left the frightening world that they had been placed in by parents who never ought to have had children, they found the need to assert themselves for the first time ever and the bullied became bullies And when she saw the image if the Governor she believed she could see such a man.

She was wrong, of course: Mr Smith’s education had been far more humble, in an old-fashioned grammar school when such institutions still existed. But one of the masters there had terrorised him with threats of draconian corporal punishment anyway, so the bullying had been there as part of his life.

She walked into the restaurant cum bar with the photograph in her hand, and there he was, sitting a chair right in front of where she was walking, and what’s more he was talking to her client, Ivan Maybe.

She was fond of Ivan. She’d even slept with him once or twice even though such things were more forbidden than dancing naked down the High Street of a busy Saturday afternoon, and quite liked the experience, and it was that almost emotional attachment that had driven her to try and sort his life out for him once and for all.

She paused and looked at the two people sitting at a table talking to Ivan. The man she had a photogrpph of in her hand was talking to a ferret-faced woman. What, she wondered, should she do in order to start putting the world to rights? If she leapt in straight away she might do more harm than good because she was wise enough to know she didn’t know everything or knew enough about the man she’d learned was called the Governor.

She found a table close to where Ivan was talking to the horrible agent, and she could hear everything that was being said, and when Ivan noticed her and was aware that she was eavesdropping he contrived to speak slightly louder.

“I have no idea what youi could possibly man by the loose phrase errors that may not have been made in the past,” he said, “but if you are referring to the fact that your agency made sure I was incarcerated for over a decade for the murder of someone who’s still alive and who I’ve seen in this very hotel, then you can be quite sure that compensation to me will have to be in the region of, let me see, six figures.”

“Good on you, Ivan,” she thought, and the words slipped out as an almost audible whisper which made the leader of the two guests at their table turn and look her straight in the face. Yes, it was the face on the photograph

“Did you say something?” he asked, “I say, Alice, did you hear somebody actually whispering near here?”

“I did, Randy,” replied the woman he was sitting with, “and because I’ve always had special hearing I suspect it was that woman at the next table,” and she tried to pierce Geraldine with both eyes at once, “did you say something, my dear?” she asked

“Are you talking to me?” asked Geraldine

“You were eavesdropping,” snorted Alice, “if Randy thinks you were listening in to a private conversation then he is always right, and that sort of behaviour can’t be tolerated even though this is a foreign hotel where everything goes, no doubt.”

Ivan coughed discreetly. “I think you’ll find she was trying to attract my attention,” he said, “maybe she has something important to convey to me. Or is it a little more about the three British Agents that are being held at the secret works down the road? It’s all the talk in the kitchens because they sent to us for English food, some Shepherd’s pie in order to feed two men and a woman before they’re locked away for the duration.”

That made Randy sit up sharply and bang his knees painfully on the underside of the table.

“Ouch!” he said, then “three people? Are they British?” he asked..

“Don’t be bothered about such things, Randy,” said Alice with a hiss almost as loud as Geraldine’s, “they’ll only be lager louts out to make trouble.”

Ivan smiled at her. “Oh no,” he said with the sort of smile tat ought to have been genuine, but wasn’t, “one of them, believe it or not, is suppose to have been murdered years ago but there he is, behind bars in Spain,, I believe, but alive and well and wanting his mummy!”

Geraldine looked at him and smiled.

“Look” he said, I’m working in this Restaurant and I see that: I’m wanted at the bar. If you want to continue this conversation feel free to perch on a bar stool t the bar to talk when I’m not too busy. But remember, At least six figures, and rising…”

© Peter Rogerson 26.11.22

...