Free The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman by Mamen Sánchez Page A

his ineloquent presentation of the facts: no news, no leads, no line of investigation . . .
    â€œTrying to find Crasman in Spain is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” concluded Manchego. “That’s what it is.”
    On the other end of the line, Bestman was cringing at the mere thought of having to pass on that information to Marlow. He made a mental note of the phrase “a needle in a haystack.”
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    When he hung up, Manchego acknowledged that he was at a dead end. The next stage should be to look for evidence in the flat on Calle del Alamillo. He would ask for a warrant, but he knew that the judge was unlikely to give him permission to bash the door down without a weighty reason. Not to mention that with Christmas, New Year, and Three Kings Day coming up, there was little chance of his request being dealt with until the middle of January.
    Perhaps the moment had come to skirt around the edges of legality, he said to himself. In films, when the state machine moves too slowly and danger is imminent, the hero usually takes justice into his own hands.
    The greatest danger, he understood, was precisely that he might get taken off the case. Christ on a bike, if Bestman and Craftsman’s patience ran out, they might take the case out of his hands and hire a firm of private detectives instead.
    He couldn’t let that happen. He hadn’t waited half his life for a case like this to come his way only to screw up now thanks to a sluggish, overloaded legal system and the haste of a couple of Brits who lacked the requisite stiff upper lip.
    While he was contemplating this, adrenaline set his mind racing and merged the nebulous image of Bestman with that of a stranger, a flimsy tree, and a couple of cigarettes. He remembered having had an odd conversation about the Craftsman case with a man who claimed to be a locksmith. He put his hand in his pocket. He still had the scrap of paper with a phone number and a name: Lucas.
    He dialed the number.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œLucas,” he said authoritatively. “We need to meet.”

CHAPTER 16
    W hen Soleá wanted to make someone fall for her, she wore her short floral skirt, her close-fitting shirt, and her high-heeled espadrilles. She let her black hair hang long and smooth down her back, with a natural wave on either side of her face. She put lengthening mascara on her eyelashes and applied lipstick that was midway between the color of blood and red wine.
    She knew her assets and defects like the back of her hand: She would have liked to have been taller, with wider hips and a fuller bust, and been able to dance like her grandmother Remedios and sing like her brother Tomás. But she recognized that her blue eyes and her plump lips, inherited from her mother, and the golden skin of the Montoya family mixed with the perfect oval of her Heredia face were God’s gift to her. Soleá knew that she could dance and sing well, at least well enough to attract attention outside Granada’s El Albaicín neighborhood.
    In the past, women like Soleá used to get married very young, then have a handful of beautiful children and spend their lives surrounded by cooking pots and guitars. That was enough to make them happy. Now, however, thanks to television, the Internet, and the foreign students who had moved into the newpart of the city, with their sandals and hairy legs, their accents and modern ideas, things had changed significantly. Girls went to school, had dreams, wanted to see the world.
    Grandmothers crossed themselves when one of their granddaughters started talking about university and languages, career opportunities and economic independence.
    â€œAnd when are you going to get married?” they would invariably ask.
    That said, the women were still more understanding than the men. Most of the men tried to squeeze girls’ desire for freedom out of them with kisses and promises of