300 Days of Sun (9 page)

I tried to imagine how dreadful that must be, surrounded by a derelict resort. “What about squatters?”

“Oh, there are squatters. And drug users and glue sniffers. I wouldn't advise you to wander around there at night.”

“The money must have gone into other pockets,” said Nathan.

“Sure. But I have no knowledge of any of that. In my position, I don't pry.”

“No. Quite,” I said.

Nathan looked around casually. “Don't suppose The Lucky Horseshoe is still going?”

“That's a blast from the past. No, that got closed down while the rest of Vale Navio was still going. It was just over there.”

“Ever have a drink there yourself?” he asked.

Pip shook her head. “The odd one, but I wasn't a regular. I'm not a big drinker. And it was mainly the holidaymakers in there, you know. They had entertainment and quizzes, that sort of thing.”

“Mainly? You wouldn't happen to know anyone who was a regular, who still lives down here?”

She thought for a moment, while I willed Nathan not to mention Terry Jackson by name, just to exercise a bit of subtlety.

“It used to be owned by a British man called Terry,” said Pip.

“Can you remember his surname?” I asked.

“Not sure I can . . .”

“It wasn't Jackson, was it?” prompted Nathan.

“Yes . . . now you say it, perhaps it was.”

B
etween Albufeira and Portimão, heading west towards Horta das Rochas, we stopped for a cold drink and a sandwich and the chance to take stock.

From the terrace of the café we could see orange-­gold and tawny brown cliffs crumbling like ancient walls above the beach. Teetering columns of rough-­hewn rock stood out in the sea, giving a desolate grandeur to the shore, like the flooded ruins of a mediaeval cathedral.

Across a blue-­and-­white-­tiled table, Nathan jiggled one knee and drummed his fingers on the scrap of paper Pip had given us, on which he had scrawled what she recalled of his family's old friend Terry Jackson. It wasn't much, but it was some traction at last.

“That would make sense, wouldn't it, that he was the owner of the bar,” said Nathan. He drained a glass of Coca-­Cola and rattled the ice. “It would explain why he was so involved with Vale Navio, and also that it was somewhere he could meet his dodgy mates and feel sure he wasn't treading on anyone else's toes.”

“It's definitely a start,” I said cautiously. “And it's interesting that Pip remembers him having other business interests over this side of Albufeira. But I'm not sure where we go from here, except to have a look at Horta das Rochas.”

That's what we'd decided as soon as we left the stables. It wasn't much further west and Nathan's blood was up for the chase. Not for the first time that day, I had to check myself and question what I thought I was doing. Whether it was really such a good idea to get involved. But then, as I looked at his eager, determined face and absolute conviction that he had to do this, I couldn't help feeling a spark of excitement. I tried to tell myself this was down to the potential story, and the story alone, but that wasn't the truth. I was equally fascinated by Nathan.

“Still nothing from this Ian Rylands?” he asked.

“No. I've left several messages. Any more and it starts to look desperate. What about your ‘Peter Maitland'?”

“Same.”

When Nathan went off to pay the bill, insisting this was his shout, I pulled out my phone and made another call.

“Will Venning.”

“Will, it's Jo Millard.”

“Hi, Jo—­how are things?”

“Not too bad, thanks. I'll come straight to the point. I'm in Portugal and I was wondering whether you had a contact number, or even better, an address for someone here. I gather he helped you out on a story some time ago.”

“I'll do my best.” He didn't ask what I needed it for. We'd always trusted each other.

“A man called Ian Rylands who runs the Anglo-­Algarve Association.”

“Spelled R-­I-­lands?”

“No, with a ‘Y.' ”

“Leave it with me. I'll get back to you when I get home. I'm at a barbecue and cricket match with the kids—­no, put that back, please, Sam—­sorry. Better go—­we'll speak later, yes?”

“Thanks, Will. Appreciate it.”

“What was that about?” asked Nathan.

“A long shot. Guy I work with—­used to work with. When I met Rylands that time he told me that their paths had crossed. It's worth asking. Journalists tend to keep a record of the contacts they make. If he finds anything, he'll get back to me.”

B
ack in the hire car—­it was small but surprisingly comfortable, though I found the gear changes a bit sticky—­we pushed on through acres of modern whitewashed houses, standard Mediterranean developments fringing the golf courses and tennis courts that brought the sportier tourists and retirees to the region. Prices in some areas had fallen by an eye-­watering forty percent recently, though, according to the
Algarve Daily News
. Plenty of ­people were selling up as overdevelopment bumped up against the continuing financial squeeze.

Horta das Rochas was announced on a sleek black plate, gold lettering, set in a stone gatepost. The entrance was open. Though I couldn't see security cameras, I was sure there were plenty. The driveway snaked through well-­tended gardens of umbrella pines and lawn. It was as quiet as Vale Navio, for entirely different reasons. We drove in silence, too, as the red roofs and white walls of holiday villas began to appear, set discreetly in the improbably green landscape. There were signs to tennis courts and the golf course. The main hotel was another modern Moorish design, elegantly accomplished to meet the expectations of visitors used to high-­end international resorts. I pulled up and parked easily in a space trimmed by oleander and palms.

Again, Nathan sprang out of the car, already ten metres ahead of me as I leaned in to pull out my bag.

“Let's just take it easy,” I said as I caught up with him at the steps of the entrance. “Don't start putting Jackson's name out here yet. We're on holiday, OK? We have all the time in the world to have a late lunch and look around. If anyone wants to know, we thought long and hard about booking to stay here—­and wanted to see what we were missing, right?”

He nodded.

I went over to the reception desk, my low-­heeled sandals clicking on the polished marble floor, and asked for directions to the beach restaurant.

“How did you know there was a beach restaurant?” Nathan asked as we emerged onto a flower-­banked path the other side of the building.

“The wonders of the Internet. I looked this place up.”

We followed the path down towards the shore through gardens shaded by pines and emerged at a chic wooden structure concocted mainly of decking and canvas. An enticing barbecue smell rose.

“I bet you're still hungry.”

He was. He demolished a dish of piri-­piri chicken recommended by the pretty waitress while I picked at the inevitable plate of olives and pale cheese and gazed at the beach with its archipelago of boulders stretching into the sea. Close up, the cliffs looked as if a giant shovel had gouged part of the structure away, leaving an unstable pile of reddish sand. On the higher reaches, pine trees clutched at this unstable seawall, but I could see patches where a frizz of roots held nothing but air.

Perhaps it was my call to Will, bringing back as it did the mental picture of the old newsroom and all the associations that went with it—­my old self, in other words—­but I felt a bit unsteady, too.

In Brussels I was always wondering if a snippet I heard could be the basis of a story; ­people came to me with observations and off-­cuts of conversation and laid it out like half-­sewn patchwork for me to assemble. I'd call Eurobots and bankers and politicians for their reactions, and no one would give me an authentic, illuminating reply, just an automated response spewing standard lines from the machine. In Faro, now here, with Nathan, I was on an authentic trail, destination unknown. I hadn't had this frisson of excitement on a story in years.

I smiled across at him. He pushed his long hair out of his eyes, and I couldn't help but notice he didn't look tired anymore.

My phone rang from the depths of my bag. It had its own special pocket inside but I must have chucked it into the sedimentary layer of old papers and other detritus.

“Don't know how you find anything in that granny sack,” said Nathan as I delved in.

“Shut up and hold this.” I handed him the exhumed remains of our first picnic on the beach, which he held up between two fingers with wary amusement. “All journalists have big bags they can't find anything in. It's a badge of honour.”

I pulled the phone out and answered it just in time. “Hi Will, that was quick. Any luck with Ian Rylands?”

“I have got something, yes. What are you up to over there, by the way?”

“I will tell you, but not right now.”

A slight pause at the other end of the line. “All right. I have his number and email, and I've managed to find some old notes, too.”

“Will, you're a star.”

“The Anglo-­Algarve Association, is that what he told you?”

“I got his name from their website.”

There was another pause, during which I knew Will was going to tell me something that he knew he shouldn't.

“You know he's ex–Foreign Office?”

“He said he'd been in the civil ser­vice, but much happier with early retirement and the pension.”

“He played it down then. Some postings to far-­flung places early on in his career—­Kinshasa, Santiago, Hong Kong—­but he ended up a European specialist. Brussels, of course. Bonn in the early nineties, and after the Maastrict Treaty was signed in '92 he kept tabs on the whole European Union project, the political side, from Luxembourg. He would only be quoted anonymously, and I described him as ‘a disillusioned former Brussels hand, with nebulous links to the intelligence ser­vices.' ”

“A spook?”

“Not quite a spook, no. I wouldn't go that far.”

“What was your story—­the one he was helping you with?”

“It was about the rise of disillusionment across Europe with the EU, and especially with German economic dominance.”

“And was he helpful?”

“Let's say he has some pretty contentious views and a few axes to grind. He has some theory about the Nazis after 1945, and the dream that wouldn't die.”

“Blimey. Bit of a nutter, then?”

Will exhaled in a way that expressed that was exactly what he thought. He gave me the contact details though, and urged me to keep him in the loop, whatever it was I was up to. We chatted a bit more about old colleagues and then said goodbye knowing there was plenty more to be said but now was not the time or place.

“This is definitely getting weirder,” I told Nathan.

I rang the number Will had given me, and after a moment's indecision, left a message for the elusive Ian Rylands.

After we'd eaten, we walked along the pretty beach and through the impressive gardens of the resort. Luggage—­and in one case, guests—­were delivered and collected from villas in the grounds by golf buggy. The heat was softened by well-­spaced trees. Horta das Rochas was secluded and expensive; all was quiet, well-­mannered, and offered no insights whatsoever.

B
ack in Faro I found a parking spot that didn't seem to have any restrictions and we walked back through a small square set with a modern sculpture of a stork. On one bench a ­couple of middle-­aged drunks were kissing like teenagers, their bottles at their feet. An ebony-­black man, with an air of loneliness but also under the influence, looked on.

“Don't know about you but I wouldn't mind a proper drink,” said Nathan.

“Why not?”

I was longing for a glass of wine after a long hot day on the road punctuated by too many Cokes.

The Bar Verde promised cool green shade but was stifling. Refrigerated displays of fish made you wish you were in there with them, and the smell of cooking faintly sickening. A breeze struggled to get in but went away disappointed.

“This may have been a bad choice,” I said. “Let's have this drink and go.”

“We could find somewhere where we can sit outside for another one.”

“Not for me. I'm going to have an early night.” Although I'd been fine all day, buoyed up by the excitement of the quest, I was suddenly feeling the effects of my night sitting up reading.

“I'll walk you back,” said Nathan.

On the edge of the marina, crowds were milling around the Folk Faro stage, claiming standing room behind the metal barriers for a free view of the show. Final sound checks boomed. Groups of dancers made bright clusters dressed in national costumes: French Basque, Argentinian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Hungarian. Above the scene, international flags drooped from their fixings on the rooftop terrace of the Hotel Faro while the starred circle of the EU fluttered on video screens placed either side of the stage.

The night market in the Jardim Manuel Bivar had opened, and, greedy as children, we couldn't resist buying sticky slabs of carob and honey-­and-­almond cake to share. We ended up strolling slowly through the Old Town gates and into the cathedral square, and over to the steps of the cathedral, where we sat down to open our package. The wide cobbled space, the elegance of its low whitewashed buildings, and the border of orange trees revived my energy level.

“Built on the remains of the Roman forum,” he said. “Two thousand years ago. Isn't that amazing?”

“Yes. It is.”

We let the night fall around us as we ate, cooled by a welcome breeze, then wandered back to the red door on Rua da
Misericórdia.

“You'll be all right going back to yours tonight?” I asked.