Free Death in the Sun by Adam Creed Page A

you know Raúl?’ asks Pepa. She is late twenties but has a hoarse voice, drags on a cigarette between mouthfuls of coffee. Like many of the people at Raúl’s funeral, she works for La Lente .
    ‘A chance encounter. He showed me Almería, took me to a peña on the Avenida Lorca.’ Staffe shades his eyes from the setting sun. They are in El Marisco, barely half a mile from where they buried the victim in Raúl’s last ever story.
    ‘He liked his flamenco, that’s for sure,’ says Pepa.
    ‘And his Stone Roses.’
    ‘Aah. I got him into them, but he preferred drink and women. Did he show you those, too?’
    Staffe cannot see her eyes behind the over-sized Prada shades. He says, ‘I heard they didn’t have a post-mortem.’
    Pepa raises her glasses, gives Staffe a quizzical stare. ‘The coroner’s verdict was clear.’
    Staffe wonders what else Raúl was going to tell him about the killing amongst the plastic. He looks across at a defaced sign for Golfo Tropical, says, ‘It seems like some people aren’t too keen on recreation round here.’
    ‘They’re attached to their water. It’s kind of important. They don’t need it wasted on golf courses.’ Pepa finishes her Cacique rum. ‘There are a couple of things of mine up at his place. I need to go.’
    ‘I could give you a hand,’ says Staffe.
    She lowers her sunglasses. ‘I bet you could. But first, tell me what you want.’
    ‘I don’t . . .’
    ‘Then I will go alone.’
    The maître d’ hovers. Staffe thinks he knows him, or maybe vice versa. ‘There was a murder Raúl was covering.’ Both Staffe and Pepa instinctively look towards the plastic, the sea beyond. ‘He knew a friend of mine.’
    ‘Is that how you met Raúl?’
    ‘Not exactly.’
    ‘Do you believe in the small world?’
    Staffe shakes his head. ‘And what is worse‚ he knew a man I would like to see dead.’
    ‘Ahaa. In our worlds‚ we have to be suspicious of such coincidences’ Pepa takes off her glasses and lays them on the table. She says, ‘Can you promise me, on whatever is holy in your life, that if there is a story in what you are snooping for, you come to me?’
    ‘I’m not snooping.’
    ‘Promise?’
    He nods, watches Pepa pull a bunch of keys from her pocket. As she spins them on her finger, he thinks she is probably trouble. Nonetheless, he goes with her.
    *
    Pepa lies on Raúl’s bed, stares at his ceiling. ‘I’d like a few minutes,’ she says.
    Staffe says, ‘I’ll check out the view.’ He climbs the steep, stone steps onto the roof and from the terrace he can just make out the canopy above the etched window of Casa Joaquín – where he and Raúl shared manzanilla and the red shrimp of Almería just the other evening. He can see the port; the other way, across the rooftops and beyond the Cathedral, stands the Alcazar.
    After a while, Staffe thinks he can hear crying from below, but when Pepa eventually emerges onto the roof, she is dry-eyed and carrying a holdall, emblazoned with ‘Feria de Almería 2011’. ‘I’ve got what I came for.’
    They go down into the apartment and Staffe notices a large, carved door they haven’t been through. He tries the handle but it is locked. ‘What’s this?’ he says.
    ‘He wasn’t born here. It was a start from nothing. Did you know that?’
    ‘His father went to Germany.’
    ‘He loved it so much here: his bulls and his peñas . And he could sail. God! He could sail, but all that’s ash now. Just ash.’ She reaches up to the lintel above the door and pulls down a key. ‘You can go in.’
    The door is made from chestnut, intricately carved. It is heavier than any of the other doors, as if to an entire house. Staffe pushes it open and listens to it creak. There are large, leaded windows on either side of the room. One window has a desk beneath it, the other a sofa and as Staffe approaches the desk, he can see that he is above the alleyway that leads down to Joaquín’s. Now, he can work out where he