The Lovely

'Ah, Watson,' said Holmes. "Maybe you would not behave so elegantly yourself if you were at once deprived of both wife and fortune."

A. Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

With a paso doble playing in the background, the guide's voice could be heard over a loudspeaker – something about the Torre del Oro being eight centuries old. The engine of the tourist boat resounded outside on the river, and after a few moments the swell reached the Lovely, rocking the moored vessel. The cabin smelled of stale sweat. As the sound of the engine and the music faded, Don Ibrahim watched a ray of sun that was streaming through the open porthole move slowly to starboard, across the table littered with the remains of a meal. The ray glinted on La Nina Punales's silver bracelets and then slowly returned to port, coming to a stop on Peregil''s poorly disguised bald patch.

"You could have chosen a place that didn't rock," said Pcregil. His hair was untidy and he mopped his sweating forehead with a handkerchief. His eyes were dull and he had the unmistakable pallor of the seasick. Tourist boats passed frequently; and the swell of each brought new discomfort.

Don Ibrahim said nothing. His own life had taught him not to judge other men in their misery and shame. He removed the band from a Montecristo and gently stroked the cigar. He pierced it with Orson's penknife and placed it in his mouth, turning it voluptuously as he wetted one end and savoured its aroma.

"How's the priest?" asked Peregil, a little more composed now that the boat had stopped rocking but still waxen.

Unlit cigar in his mouth, Don Ibrahim nodded gravely, as befitted a situation involving a man of the cloth. There was no reason for a kidnapping to be devoid of respect. This was something he'd learned in Latin America, where people shot one another while preserving good manners. "He's fine. Very quiet and composed."

Peregil steadied himself by the table, making sure he didn't look at the food, and smiled faintly. "The old man's tough," he said.

"Othu" said La Nina. "Bloody tough." She was crocheting, her fingers moving quickly, her bracelets jangling. From time to time she put the work down and had a swig of her Manzanilla, the half-empty bottle within arm's reach. Her mascara had run in the heat, and her lipstick was smeared. Her long coral earrings swung as the boat rocked.

Don Ibrahim arched his eyebrows approvingly at La Nina's remark. She wasn't exaggerating. They'd gone to nab the old priest after midnight, in the alley leading to the garden gate of the Casa del Postigo, and it took some doing to get a blanket over his head, tie his hands and bundle him into the van – rented for twenty-four hours -waiting on the corner. In the scuffle, Don Ibrahim's walking stick was snapped in two, El Potro received a black eye and La Nina lost two fillings. You wouldn't have believed what a fight the little old man put up.

Peregil was nervous as well as seasick. Manhandling a priest and keeping him out of circulation for a few days wasn't likely to be viewed sympathetically by a judge. Don Ibrahim was having doubts too, but he knew it was too late to go back now. Besides, this was all his idea. Men like him went forward bravely. On top of that, the four and a half million they'd get for the job wasn't to be sniffed at.

Like Don Ibrahim, Peregil had removed his jacket. But unlike Don Ibrahim's white shirt, Peregil's shirt was a lurid combination of blue and white stripes with a sweat-stained salmon-pink collar, and his tie, patterned with green, red and mauve chrysanthemums, looked like a dead bouquet. "I hope you'll stick to the plan," he said.

Don Ibrahim looked offended. He and his colleagues were conducting this operation with razor-sharp precision – if you discounted little episodes like El Potro's contretemps with the petrol, or the unfortunate propensity of film to be ruined by exposure to light. Anyway, the plan was nothing special. It was just a question of holding on to the priest for another day and a half and then letting him go. It was easy, inexpensive, and had a certain elegance. Stewart Granger, James Mason, Ronald Colman and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

would have approved. Don Ibrahim, El Potro and La Nina had rented videos for research purposes.

"As for renumeration…" The former bogus lawyer tactfully left the sentence unfinished, concentrating on lighting his cigar. Men of honour didn't discuss money. Peregil wouldn't know what honour was if it hit him in the face, but that was no reason not to give him the benefit of the doubt. So Don Ibrahim held his lighter to the Montecristo, took the first, delicious draw, and waited for Peregil to speak.

"When you let the priest go," Peregil said, "I'll pay the three of you. A million and a half each, excluding VAT." He laughed quietly at his own joke and mopped his forehead again. La Nina looked up from her crocheting for a moment, and Don Ibrahim squinted at Peregil through the cigar smoke. He didn't like the man or his laugh, and suddenly he had the awful suspicion that Peregil might not have the money to pay them. With a sigh, he pulled his watch from his jacket. It was hard being a leader, he thought. Pretending you were confident, giving orders in a steady voice, hiding your doubts with a gesture, a glance, a smile. Maybe Xenophon – he of the five hundred thousand – or Columbus, or Pizarro when he drew a line in the sand with his sword, maybe they too had experienced this feeling of having the ladder whipped away from under you and being left dangling cartoon-like from the ceiling.

Don Ibrahim looked tenderly at La Nina. The only thing that worried him about going to prison was that they would be apart. Who would look after her then? Without El Potro, without Don Ibrahim to go oli when she sang, to praise her cooking, to take her to the Maestranza bullring, to give her his arm when she'd had a bit too much to drink, the poor thing would die like a bird out of its cage. And what about the tablao they wanted to set up for her?

"Take over from El Potro, Nina."

She finished her Manzanilla, stood up, smoothed her polka-dot dress and looked through the porthole. Beyond the geraniums planted in old cans – wilting even though El Potro watered them every afternoon – she could see the old quay, a couple of tethered boats and, in the background, the Torre del Oro and San Telmo Bridge. "No Moors in sight," she said.

Taking her crocheting with her, she crossed the cabin, her starched flounces bouncing, and left behind a heady fragrance of Maderas de Oriente, which made Peregil visibly queasy. When she opened the cabin door, Don Ibrahim caught a glimpse of the priest: sitting on a chair, facing away, one of La Nina's silk scarves tied around his eyes, his wrists bound to the back of the chair with thick tape bought the previous afternoon from a pharmacy in the Calle Pureza. He was as they'd left him, unmoving, closed off, not saying a word except when asked if he wanted a sandwich, a little glass of something, or to take a piss. Then he would tell them to go to hell.

La Nina went in and El Potro came out, closing the door behind him.

"How's he doing?" asked Peregil. "Who?"

El Potro stopped by the table, looking perplexed, his eye the worse for wear after the trouble last night. His lean, hard pectorals, glossy with sweat, were outlined beneath his vest. His left forearm was still bandaged. On his right shoulder, next to the vaccination mark, he had a tattoo of a woman's head, in blue, with an illegible name beneath. Don Ibrahim had never asked if it was the name of the unfaithful one who caused his downfall, and El Potro had never referred to it. Maybe he didn't remember. Anyway, their private lives were their business.

"The priest," said Peregil faintly. "How's he doing?"