Kitabı oku: «Cocaine Nights», sayfa 2
Along most of the Mediterranean’s resort coasts the mountains came down to the sea, as at the Côte d’Azur or the Ligurian Riviera near Genoa, and the tourist towns nestled in sheltered bays. But the Costa del Sol lacked even the rudiments of scenic or architectural charm. Sotogrande, I discovered, was a town without either centre or suburbs, and seemed to be little more than a dispersal ground for golf courses and swimming pools. Three miles to its east I passed an elegant apartment building standing on a scrubby bend of the coastal road, the mock-Roman columns and white porticos apparently imported from Las Vegas after a hotel clearance sale, reversing the export to Florida and California in the 1920s of dismantled Spanish monasteries and Sardinian abbeys.
The Estepona road skirted a private airstrip beside an imposing villa with gilded finials like a castellated fairy battlement. Their shadows curved around a white onion-bulb roof, an invasion of a new Arab architecture that owed nothing to the Maghreb across the Strait of Gibraltar. The brassy glimmer belonged to the desert kingdoms of the Persian Gulf, reflected through the garish mirrors of Hollywood design studios, and I thought of the oil company atrium in Dubai that I had walked through a month earlier, pursuing my courtship of an attractive French geologist I was profiling for L’Express.
‘The architecture of brothels?’ she commented when I told her of my longstanding plans for a book during our rooftop lunch. ‘It’s a good idea. Rather close to your heart, I should think.’ She pointed to the retina-stunning panorama around us. ‘It’s all here for you, Charles. Filling-stations disguised as cathedrals …’
Could Frank, with his scruples and finicky honesty, have chosen to break the law on the Costa del Sol, a zone as depthless as a property developer’s brochure? I approached the outskirts of Marbella, past King Saud’s larger-than-life replica of the White House and the Aladdin’s cave apartments of Puerto Banus. Unreality thrived on every side, a magnet to the unwary. But Frank was too fastidious, too amused by his own weaknesses, to commit himself to any serious misdemeanour. I remembered his compulsive stealing after we returned to England, slipping corkscrews and cans of anchovies into his pockets as we trailed after our aunt through the Brighton supermarkets. Our grieving father, taking up his professorial chair at Sussex University, was too distracted to think of Frank, and the petty thefts forced me to adopt him as my little son, the sole person concerned enough to care for this numbed nine-year-old, even if only to scold him.
Luckily, Frank soon outgrew this childhood tic. At school he became a wristy and effective tennis player, and sidestepped the academic career his father wanted for him, taking a course in hotel management. After three years as assistant manager of a renovated art deco hotel in South Miami Beach he returned to Europe to run the Club Nautico at Estrella de Mar, a peninsular resort twenty miles to the east of Marbella. Whenever we met in London I liked to tease him about his exile to this curious world of Arab princes, retired gangsters and Eurotrash.
‘Frank, of all the places to pick you choose the Costa del Sol!’ I would exclaim. ‘Estrella de Mar? I can’t even imagine it …’
Amiably, Frank always replied: ‘Exactly, Charles. It doesn’t really exist. That’s why I like the coast. I’ve been looking for it all my life. Estrella de Mar isn’t anywhere.’
But now nowhere had at last caught up with him.
When I reached the Los Monteros Hotel, a ten-minute drive down the coast from Marbella, there was a message waiting for me. Señor Danvila, Frank’s lawyer, had called from the magistrates’ court with news of ‘unexpected developments’, and asked me to join him as soon as possible. The over-polite manners of the hotel manager and the averted eyes of the concierge and porters suggested that whatever these developments might be, they were fully expected. Even the players returning from the tennis courts and the couples in towelling robes on their way to the swimming pools paused to let me pass, as if sensing that I had come to share my brother’s fate.
When I returned to the lobby after a shower and change of clothes the concierge had already called a taxi.
‘Mr Prentice, it will be simpler than taking your own car. Parking is difficult in Marbella. You have enough problems to consider.’
‘You’ve heard about the case?’ I asked. ‘Did you speak to my brother’s lawyer?’
‘Of course not, sir. There were some accounts in the local press … a few television reports.’
He seemed anxious to steer me to the waiting taxi. I scanned the headlines in the display of newspapers beside the desk.
‘What exactly happened? No one seems to know.’
‘It’s not certain, Mr Prentice.’ The concierge straightened his magazines, trying to hide from me any edition that might reveal the full story of Frank’s involvement. ‘It’s best that you take your taxi. All will be clear to you in Marbella …’
Señor Danvila was waiting for me in the entrance hall of the magistrates’ court. A tall, slightly stooped man in his late fifties, he carried two briefcases which he shuffled from hand to hand, and resembled a distracted schoolmaster who had lost control of his class. He greeted me with evident relief, holding on to my arm as if to reassure himself that I too was now part of the confused world into which Frank had drawn him. I liked his concerned manner, but his real attention seemed elsewhere, and already I wondered why David Hennessy had hired him.
‘Mr Prentice, I’m most grateful that you came. Unfortunately, events are now more … ambiguous. If I can explain –’
‘Where is Frank? I’d like to see him. I want you to arrange bail – I can provide whatever guarantees the court requires. Señor Danvila …?’
With an effort the lawyer uncoupled his eyes from some feature of my face that seemed to distract him, an echo perhaps of one of Frank’s more cryptic expressions. Seeing a group of Spanish photographers on the steps of the court, he beckoned me towards an alcove. ‘Your brother is here, until they return him to Zarzuella jail in Malaga this evening. The police investigation is proceeding. I am afraid that in the circumstances bail is out of the question.’
‘What circumstances? I want to see Frank now. Surely the Spanish magistrates release people on bail?’
‘Not in a case such as this.’ Señor Danvila hummed to himself, switching his briefcases in an unending attempt to decide which was the heavier. ‘You will see your brother in an hour, perhaps less. I have spoken to Inspector Cabrera. Afterwards he will want to question you about certain details possibly known to you, but there is nothing to fear.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Now, what will they charge Frank with?’
‘He has already been charged.’ Señor Danvila was staring fixedly at me. ‘It’s a tragic affair, Mr Prentice, the very worst.’
‘But charged with what? Currency violations, tax problems …?’
‘More serious than that. There were fatalities.’
Señor Danvila’s face had come into sudden focus, his eyes swimming forwards through the thick pools of his lenses. I noticed that he had shaved carelessly that morning, too preoccupied to trim his straggling moustache.
‘Fatalities?’ It occurred to me that a cruel accident had taken place on the notorious coastal road, and perhaps had involved Frank in the deaths of Spanish children. ‘Was there a traffic accident? How many people were killed?’
‘Five.’ Señor Danvila’s lips moved as he counted the number, a total that exceeded all the possibilities of a humane mathematics. ‘It was not a traffic accident.’
‘Then what? How did they die?’
‘They were murdered, Mr Prentice.’ The lawyer spoke matter-of-factly, detaching himself from the significance of his own words. ‘Five people were deliberately killed. Your brother has been charged with their deaths.’
‘I can’t believe it …’ I turned to stare at the photographers arguing with each other on the steps of the courthouse. Despite Señor Danvila’s solemn expression, I felt a sudden rush of relief. I realized that a preposterous error had been made, an investigative and judicial bungle that involved this nervous lawyer, the heavy-footed local police and the incompetent magistrates of the Costa del Sol, their reflexes confused by years of coping with drunken British tourists. ‘Señor Danvila, you say Frank murdered five people. How, for heaven’s sake?’
‘He set fire to their house. Two weeks ago – it was clearly an act of premeditation. The magistrates and police have no doubt.’
‘Well, they should have.’ I laughed to myself, confident now that this absurd error would soon be rectified. ‘Where did these murders take place?’
‘At Estrella de Mar. In the villa of the Hollinger family.’
‘And who were the victims?’
‘Mr Hollinger, his wife, and their niece. As well, a young maid and the male secretary.’
‘It’s madness.’ I held Danvila’s briefcases before he could weigh them again. ‘Why would Frank want to murder them? Let me see him. He’ll deny it.’
‘No, Mr Prentice.’ Señor Danvila stepped back from me, the verdict already clear in his mind. ‘Your brother has not denied the accusations. In fact, he has pleaded guilty to five charges of murder. I repeat, Mr Prentice – guilty.’
2 The Fire at the Hollinger House
‘CHARLES? DANVILA TOLD ME you’d arrived. It’s good of you. I knew you’d come.’
Frank rose from his chair as I entered the interview room. He seemed slimmer and older than I remembered, and the strong fluorescent light gave his skin a pallid sheen. He peered over my shoulder, as if expecting to see someone else, and then lowered his eyes to avoid my gaze.
‘Frank – you’re all right?’ I leaned across the table, hoping to shake his hand, but the policeman standing between us raised his arm with the stiff motion of a turnstile bar. ‘Danvila’s explained the whole thing to me; it’s obviously some sort of crazy mistake. I’m sorry I wasn’t in court.’
‘You’re here now. That’s all that matters.’ Frank rested his elbows on the table, trying to hide his fatigue. ‘How was the flight?’
‘Late – airlines run on their own time, two hours behind everyone else’s. I rented a car in Gibraltar. Frank, you look
‘I’m fine.’ With an effort he composed himself, and managed a brief but troubled smile. ‘So, what did you think of Gib?’
‘I was only there for a few minutes. Odd little place – not as strange as this coast.’
‘You should have come here years ago. You’ll find a lot to write about.’
‘I already have. Frank –’
‘It’s interesting, Charles …’ Frank sat forward, talking too quickly to listen to himself, keen to sidetrack our conversation. ‘You’ve got to spend more time here. It’s Europe’s future. Everywhere will be like this soon.’
‘I hope not. Listen, I’ve talked to Danvila. He’s trying to get the court hearing annulled. I didn’t grasp all the legal ins and outs, but there’s a chance of a new hearing when you change your plea. You’ll claim some sort of mitigating factor. You were distraught with grief, and didn’t catch what the translator was saying. At the least it puts down a marker.’
‘Danvila, yes …’ Frank played with his cigarette packet. ‘Sweet man, I think I’ve rather shocked him. And you, too, I dare say.’
The friendly but knowing smile had reappeared, and he leaned back with his hands behind his head, confident now that he could cope with my visit. Already we were assuming our familiar roles first set out in childhood. He was the imaginative and wayward spirit, and I was the stolid older brother who had yet to get the joke. In Frank’s eyes I had always been the source of a certain fond amusement.
He was dressed in a grey suit and white shirt open at the neck. Seeing that I had noticed his bare throat, he covered his chin with a hand.
‘They took my tie away from me – I’m only allowed to wear it in court. A bit noose-like, when you think about it – could put ideas into the judge’s mind. They fear I might try to kill myself.’
‘But, Frank, isn’t that what you’re doing? Why on earth did you plead guilty?’
‘Charles …’ He gestured a little wearily. ‘I had to, there wasn’t anything else I could say.’
‘That’s absurd. You had nothing to do with those deaths.’
‘But I did. Charles, I did.’
‘You started the fire? Tell me, no one can hear this – you actually set the Hollinger house ablaze?’
‘Yes … in effect.’ He took a cigarette from the packet and waited as the policeman stepped forward to light it. The flame flared under the worn hood of the brass lighter, and Frank stared at the burning vapour before drawing on the cigarette. In the brief glow his face seemed calm and resigned.
‘Frank, look at me.’ I waved the smoke aside, a swirling wraith released from his lungs. ‘I want to hear you say it – you, yourself, personally set fire to the Hollinger house?’
‘I’ve said so.’
‘Using a bomb filled with ether and petrol?’
‘Yes. Don’t ever try it. The mixture’s surprisingly flammable.’
‘I don’t believe it. Why, for God’s sake? Frank …!’
He blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling, and then spoke in a quiet and almost flat voice. ‘You’d have to live for a while at Estrella de Mar even to begin to understand. Take it from me, if I explained what happened it would mean nothing to you. It’s a different world, Charles. This isn’t Bangkok or some atoll in the Maldives.’
‘Try me. Are you covering up for someone?’
‘Why should I?’
‘And you knew the Hollingers?’
‘I knew them well.’
‘Danvila says he was some sort of film tycoon in the 1960s.’
‘In a small way. Property dealing and office development in the City. His wife was one of the last of the Rank Charm School starlets. They retired here about twenty years ago.’
‘They were regulars at the Club Nautico?’
‘They weren’t regulars, strictly speaking. They dropped in now and then.’
‘And you were there on the evening of the fire? You were in the house?’
‘Yes! You’re starting to sound like Cabrera. The last thing an interrogator wants is the truth.’ Frank crushed his cigarette in the ashtray, briefly burning his fingers. ‘Look, I’m sorry they died. It was a tragic business.’
His closing words were spoken without emphasis, in the tone he had used one day as a ten-year-old when he had come in from the garden and told me that his pet turtle had died. I knew that he was now telling the truth.
‘They’re taking you back to Malaga tonight,’ I said. ‘I’ll visit you there as soon as I can.’
‘It’s always good to see you, Charles.’ He managed to clasp my hand before the policeman stepped forward. ‘You looked after me when Mother died and in a way you’re still looking after me. How long are you staying?’
‘A week. I should be in Helsinki for some TV documentary. But I’ll be back.’
‘Always roaming the world. All that endless travelling, all those departure lounges. Do you ever actually arrive anywhere?’
‘It’s hard to tell – sometimes I think I’ve made jet-lag into a new philosophy. It’s the nearest we can get to penitence.’
‘And what about your book on the great brothels of the world? Have you started it yet?’
‘I’m still doing the research.’
‘I remember you talking about that at school. You used to say your only interests in life were opium and brothels. Pure Graham Greene, but there was always something heroic there. Do you smoke a few pipes?’
‘Now and then.’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell Father. How is the old chap?’
‘We’ve moved him to a smaller nursing home. He doesn’t recognize me now. When you get out of here you must see him. I think he’d remember you.’
‘I never liked him, you know.’
‘He’s a child, Frank. He’s forgotten everything. All he does is dribble and doze.’
Frank leaned back, smiling at the ceiling as his memories played across the grey distemper. ‘We used to steal – do you remember? Strange that – it all started in Riyadh when Mother fell ill. I was snatching anything I could lay my hands on. You joined in to make me feel better.’
‘Frank, it was a phase. Everyone understood.’
‘Except Father. He couldn’t cope when Mother lost control. He started that weird affair with his middle-aged secretary.’
‘The poor man was desperate.’
‘He blamed you for my stealing. He’d find my pockets full of candy I’d pinched from the Riyadh Hilton and then accuse you.’
‘I was older. He thought I could have stopped you. He knew I envied you.’
‘Mother was drinking herself to death and no one was doing anything about it. Stealing was the only way I could make sense of how guilty I felt. Then she started those long walks in the middle of the night and you’d go with her. Where exactly? I always wondered.’
‘Nowhere. We just walked around the tennis court. Rather like my life now.’
‘Probably gave you a taste for it. That’s why you’re nervous of putting down roots. You know, Estrella de Mar is as close to Saudi as you can get. Maybe that’s why I came here
He stared bleakly at the table, for the moment depressed by all these memories. Ignoring the policeman, I reached across the table and held his shoulders, trying to calm the trembling collarbones. He met my eyes, glad to see me, his smile stripped of irony.
‘Frank …?’
‘It’s all right.’ He sat up, brightening himself. ‘How is Esther, by the way? I should have asked.’
‘She’s fine. We split up three months ago.’
‘I’m sorry. I always liked her. Rather high-minded in an unusual way. She once asked me a lot of strange questions about pornography. Nothing to do with you.’
‘She took up gliding last summer, spent her weekends soaring over the South Downs. A sign, I guess, that she wanted to leave me. Now she and her women friends fly to competitions in Australia and New Mexico. I think of her up there, alone with all that silence.’
‘You’ll meet someone else.’
‘Maybe …’
The policeman opened the door and stood with his back to us, calling across the corridor to an officer sitting at a desk. I leaned over the table, speaking quickly. ‘Frank, listen. If Danvila can get you out on bail there’s a chance I can arrange something.’
‘What exactly? Charles?’
‘I’m thinking of Gibraltar …’ The policeman had resumed his watch over us. ‘You know the special skills there. This whole business is preposterous. It’s obvious you didn’t kill the Hollingers.’
‘That’s not quite true.’ Frank drew away from me, the defensive smile on his lips again. ‘It’s hard to believe, but I am guilty.’
‘Don’t talk like that!’ Impatient with him, I knocked his cigarettes to the floor, where they lay beside the policeman’s feet. ‘Say nothing to Danvila about the Gibraltar thing. Once we get you back to England you’ll be able to clear yourself.’
‘Charles … I can only clear myself here.’
‘But at least you’ll be out of jail and safe somewhere.’
‘Somewhere with no extradition treaty for murder?’ Frank stood up and pushed his chair against the table. ‘You’ll have to take me with you on your trips. We’ll travel the world together. I’d like that …’
The policeman waited for me to leave, carrying my chair to the wall. Frank embraced me and stood back, still smiling his quirky smile. He picked up his cigarettes and nodded to me.
‘Believe me, Charles, I belong here.’
3 The Tennis Machine
BUT FRANK DID NOT belong there. As I left the driveway of the Los Monteros Hotel, joining the coast road to Malaga, I drummed the steering wheel so fiercely that I drew blood from a thumbnail. Neon signs lined the verge, advertising the beach bars, fish restaurants and nightclubs under the pine trees, a barrage of signals that almost drowned the shrill tocsin sounding from the magistrates’ court in Marbella.
Frank was innocent, as virtually everyone involved in the murder investigation accepted. His plea of guilty was a charade, part of some bizarre game he was playing against himself, in which even the police were reluctant to join. They had held Frank for a week before bringing their charges, a sure sign that they were suspicious of the confession, as Inspector Cabrera revealed after my meeting with Frank.
If Señor Danvila was the old Spain – measured, courtly and reflective – Cabrera was the new. A product of the Madrid police academy, he seemed more like a young college professor than a detective, a hundred seminars on the psychology of crime still fresh in his mind. At ease with himself in his business suit, he contrived to be tough and likeable, without ever lowering his guard. He welcomed me to his office and then came straight to the point. He asked me about Frank’s childhood, and whether he had shown an overlit imagination as a boy.
‘Perhaps a special talent for fantasy? Often a troubled childhood can lead to the creation of imaginary worlds. Was your brother a lonely child, Mr Prentice, left by himself while you played with the older boys?’
‘No, he was never lonely. In fact, he had more friends than I did. He was always good at games, very practical and down-to-earth. I was the one with the imagination.’
‘A useful gift for a travel writer,’ Cabrera commented as he flicked through my passport. ‘Perhaps as a boy your brother displayed a strain of would-be sainthood, taking the blame for you and his friends?’
‘No, there was nothing saintly about him, not remotely. When he played tennis he was fast on his feet and always wanted to win.’ Sensing that Cabrera was more thoughtful than most of the policemen I had met, I decided to speak my mind. ‘Inspector, can we be open with each other? Frank is innocent, you and I both know that he never committed these murders. I’ve no idea why he confessed, but he must be under some secret pressure. Or be covering up for someone. If we don’t find the truth the Spanish courts will be responsible for a tragic miscarriage of justice.’
Cabrera watched me, waiting silently for my moral indignation to disperse with the rising smoke of his cigarette. He waved one hand, clearing the air between us.
‘Mr Prentice, the Spanish judges, like their English colleagues, are not concerned with truth – they leave that to a far higher court. They deal with the balance of probabilities on the basis of available evidence. The case will be investigated most carefully, and in due course your brother will be brought to trial. All you can do is wait for the verdict.’
‘Inspector …’ I made an effort to restrain myself. ‘Frank may have pleaded guilty, but that doesn’t mean he actually committed these appalling crimes. This whole thing is a farce, of a very sinister kind.’
‘Mr Prentice …’ Cabrera stood up and moved away from his desk, gesturing at the wall as if outlining a proposition on a blackboard before a slow-witted class. ‘Let me remind you that five people were burned to death, killed by the most cruel means. Your brother insists he is responsible. Some, like yourself and the English newspapers, think that he insists too loudly, and must therefore be innocent. In fact, his plea of guilty may be a clever device, an attempt to unfoot us all, like a …’
‘Drop-shot at the net?’
‘Exactly. A clever stratagem. At first, I also had certain doubts, but I have to tell you that I’m now inclined to think of your brother and guilt in the same context.’ Cabrera gazed wanly at my passport photograph, as if trying to read some guilt of my own into the garish photo-booth snapshot. ‘Meanwhile, the investigation proceeds. You have been more helpful than you know.’
After leaving the magistrates’ court Señor Danvila and I walked down the hill towards the old town. This small enclave behind the beachfront hotels was a lavishly restored theme village with mock-Andalucian streets, antique shops and café tables set out under the orange trees. Surrounded by a stage set, we silently sipped our iced coffees and watched the proprietor scatter a kettle of boiling water over the feral cats that plagued his customers.
This scalding douche, another stroke of cruel injustice, promptly set me off again. Señor Danvila heard me out, nodding mournfully at the oranges above my head as I repeated my arguments. I sensed that he wanted to take my hand, concerned as much for me as he was for Frank, aware that my brother’s plea of guilty also involved me in some obscure way.
He agreed, almost casually, that Frank was innocent, as the police’s delay in charging him tacitly admitted.
‘But now the momentum for conviction will increase,’ he warned me. ‘The courts and police have good reason not to challenge a guilty plea – it saves them work.’
‘Even though they know they have the wrong man?’
Señor Danvila raised his eyes to the sky. ‘They may know it now, but in three or four months, when your brother comes to trial? Self-admitted guilt is a concept they find very easy to live with. Files can be closed, men reassigned. I extend my sympathies to you, Mr Prentice.’
‘But Frank may go to prison for the next twenty years. Surely the police will go on looking for the real culprit?’
‘What could they find? Remember, the conviction of a British expatriate avoids the possibility of a Spaniard being accused. Tourism is vital for Andalucia – this is one of Spain’s poorest regions. Inward investors are less concerned by crimes among tourists.’
I pushed away my coffee glass. ‘Frank is still your client, Señor Danvila. Who did kill those five people? We know Frank wasn’t responsible. Someone must have started the fire.’
But Danvila made no reply. With his gentle hands he broke his tapas and threw the pieces to the waiting cats.
If not Frank, then who? Given that the police had ended their-investigation, it fell to me to recruit a more aggressive Spanish lawyer than the depressed and ineffective Danvila, and perhaps hire a firm of British private detectives to root out the truth. I drove along the coast road to Malaga, past the white-walled retirement complexes marooned like icebergs among the golf courses, and reminded myself that I knew almost nothing about Estrella de Mar, the resort where the deaths had occurred. Frank had sent me a series of postcards from the Club, which portrayed a familiar world of squash courts, jacuzzis and plunge-pools, but I had only the haziest notions of day-to-day life among the British who had settled the coast.
Five people had died in the catastrophic fire that had gutted the Hollinger house. The fierce blaze had erupted without warning about seven o’clock in the evening of 15 June, by coincidence the Queen’s official birthday. Clutching at straws, I remembered the disagreeable Guardia Civil at Gibraltar and speculated that the fire had been started by a deranged Spanish policeman protesting at Britain’s occupation of the Rock. I imagined a burning taper hurled over the high walls on to the tinder-dry roof of the villa …
But in fact the fire had been ignited by an arsonist who had entered the mansion and begun his murderous work on the staircase. Three empty bottles containing residues of ether and gasoline were found in the kitchen. A fourth, half-empty, was in my brother’s hands while he waited to surrender to the police. A fifth, filled to the brim and plugged with one of Frank’s tennis club ties, lay on the rear seat of his car in a side-street a hundred yards from the house.
The Hollingers’ mansion, Cabrera told me, was one of the oldest properties at Estrella de Mar, its timbers and roof joists dried like biscuit by a hundred summers. I thought of the elderly couple who had retreated from London to the peace of this retirement coast. It was hard to imagine anyone finding the energy, let alone the necessary malice, to bring about their deaths. Steeped in sun and sundowners, wandering the golf greens by day and dozing in front of their satellite television in the evening, the residents of the Costa del Sol lived in an eventless world.
As I neared Estrella de Mar the residential complexes stood shoulder to shoulder along the beach. The future had come ashore here, lying down to rest among the pines. The white-walled pueblos reminded me of my visit to Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri’s outpost of the day after tomorrow in the Arizona desert. The cubist apartments and terraced houses resembled Arcosanti’s, their architecture dedicated to the abolition of time, as befitted the ageing population of the retirement havens and an even wider world waiting to be old.
Searching for the turn-off to Estrella de Mar, I left the Malaga highway and found myself in a maze of slip-roads that fed the pueblos. Trying to orientate myself, I pulled into the forecourt of a filling-station. While a young Frenchwoman topped up my tank I strolled past the supermarket that shared the forecourt, where elderly women in fluffy towelling suits drifted like clouds along the lines of ice-cold merchandise.
I climbed a pathway of blue tiles to a grass knoll and looked down on an endless terrain of picture windows, patios and miniature pools. Together they had a curiously calming effect, as if these residential compounds – British, Dutch and German – were a series of psychological pens that soothed and domesticated these émigré populations. I sensed that the Costa del Sol, like the retirement coasts of Florida, the Caribbean and the Hawaiian islands, had nothing to do with travel or recreation, but formed a special kind of willed Umbo.
Although seemingly deserted, the pueblos contained more residents than I first assumed. A middle-aged couple sat on a balcony thirty feet from me, the woman holding an unread book in her hands as her husband stared at the surface of the swimming pool, whose reflection dressed the walls of a nearby apartment house with bands of gold light. Almost invisible at first glance, people sat on their terraces and patios, gazing at an unseen horizon like figures in the paintings of Edward Hopper.
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