Chapter 102

It wasn’t that Harry McFry had stopped thinking about Laurel McFry, or her problem with her missing family. It was just that, for the moment, his thinking time was being overburdened (just a little) by ‘other’ things.

Now, as he stood outside Madrid’s old Post Office, waiting for Ana to arrive, his mind was playing over the conversation he’d had with Yolanda, over breakfast. The rhythm of the morning was starting to assert itself in the city, as tourist buses in from the provinces began to disgorge travellers ready to embrace the culture, gastronomy, architecture and – of course – the shopping, that made a place like Madrid such a conspiracy of pleasure, even on a relatively chilly Sunday morning in February.

So. Yolanda thought, it seemed, that he was weak, and undeserving of the love she’d only hinted that Ana might still have for him. But she had been prepared, nevertheless, to help her sister get Pablo out of the way so that Ana and he could get on with their ‘business’, as she had put it – in her typically conspiratorial manner. But Harry couldn’t see a way through the fact that Ana was married. His own divorce, the pain and anguish of it, made him reluctant to wish a separation on anyone. Particularly if, as it seemed, Pablo had so comprehensively replaced he himself in Ana’s affections.

The streets were getting busier around him but, somehow, through the throng he saw Ana, walking towards him. Even at a distance of many hundreds of yards, he could tell it was her, as if a spotlight had picked her out in the highest tiers of a theatre. Her movement, though quick enough through the crowds, looked to Harry to have a little hesitancy about it, as she stopped here and there to let an older couple, or a mother with a buggy, cross her path. She looked wonderful, Harry thought. And just a little pre-occupied, too, he could see, as she got nearer to him.

He stubbed out a cigarette he’d lit before he spotted her, and checked the pocket inside his coat for Lillian McFry’s bond, as Ana drew nearer. Harry’s eyes seemed drawn to the ring she was wearing.

There was an immediate, and quite foreign, sense of discomfort between the two of them, like a couple that had met the previous night on a one-night stand who had agreed to meet later the next day, each of them having thought better of it, but neither wanting to appear dishonourable by not showing up. Ana, who had been glancing up at Harry as she approached the steps of the building, now looked at his shoes.

“Everything alright?” she asked – subdued in her tone, Harry thought.

“Yes. How about you? You managed to get rid of him, then?”

She shot a harsh glance at him: “I said I would, and I did. I’m here for you now, aren’t I?”

At the same time, they must have both decided to declare a mental truce at that point, as if Harry’s apparent flippancy and her curt response were quite enough, since that was as bad as it got between them before the meeting.

“Follow me – the Ministry’s just around the corner,” Ana said, and Harry walked beside her as she briskly descended the steps.

In a few moments, Ana was pressing a buzzer on a wall beside an imposing door in one of those solid, grey buildings you would imagine housed an embassy of some sort. The security guard, having been told to expect visitors at this time, opened the door to them and ushered them inside. They found themselves in a huge reception hall, as the guard closed the door behind them and led them to his desk to take their details. He spoke a few words over the phone, replaced the receiver, then spoke to Harry (in Spanish). Harry nodded, guessing they’d been told to wait, which Ana confirmed, with a whispered translation.

The two of them sat beside each other on a wooden bench against the wall, scanning the grandeur of the interior, both of them marveling at how quiet it was, with no hint of the busy bustle of the city outside its walls.

A minute or two passed. “So, where is your Danny?” Ana asked. Harry realized Yolanda couldn’t have told Ana that his brother was hosting his colleague this morning. He whispered his reply: “He’s with Alan.” He paused a moment, as if considering something.

“You know, I never realized Alan kept in touch with you quite so much as he did after I … err … left you.”

“Why shouldn’t he have? It was a good job he did. He’s a changed man – a better man – since he met Yolanda,” she said. They were both of them staring straight ahead at a grand staircase as they spoke.

“How so?” Harry asked, genuinely curious (and not a little surprised) that Alan might have changed.

“Well, he doesn’t drink so much, for one thing.” Another dispatch from abroad that had somehow never reached Harry. It went some way to explaining why the drunken calls from his brother had dried up over the past year or so, at least. It had never for a minute crossed Harry’s mind to ring Alan, even if just to ask him why he’d stopped ringing so often. That would have been too easy, of course. His brother’s drinking had been big factor in the break-up of his marriage to Carrie, he knew. She finally had enough of it, and their separation had become inevitable the night he never came home and she received a call from the police to ask her to post bail for him against a charge of being drunk and disorderly.

Ana must have sensed the thought that had just percolated Harry’s mind.

“People can change, you know. It’s entirely possible.” She was thinking about how Harry might have changed. How intimate was he, now, with Carrie, she wondered?

Before she could find the words to frame a suitably discrete enquiry that might tease out an answer from Harry, she heard a door open at the top of the stairs, and a man began to descend towards them.

“This is him, Harry,” she said, nudging him as she whispered. “Someone is about to become very rich!”

Chapter 101

It was an unusual Sunday morning when Bill Blunt didn’t spend an hour or two in his study, marshalling his thoughts in readiness for the fray of the week ahead. The deadline for the Birkenhead Beagle was Tuesday, noon, so it always helped to have a plan ready for the next day.

The modus operandi of the seasoned journalist was very different to that of someone like Harry McFry. Lacking the intellectual rigour of a training in history, Bill relied, instead, on his instincts, and on his knowledge of what he thought made men – and women – tick.

He had, he thought, the measure of his friend Harry. From the vantage point of a man who had scaled a mountain, with a forty year marriage behind him, he could see Harry picking over the boulders down in the valley below, never managing to get much beyond the foothills before he had to return to base camp and start all over again. That, he knew, was just how some men were. Sometimes, he could envy them their regular forays up and down the low hills of relationships but, for the most part, he felt a certain accomplishment on his own part. He hadn’t scaled the highest mountain in the world when he married Mrs Blunt, but at least he’d got there, stayed the course, and could claim some kind of superiority over many men he knew.

When it came to a case like the one Harry was working on, Bill suspected his journalistic skills – honed over decades – were more than a match for Harry. He knew they worked differently. To write a newspaper column, you skimmed the lake of life, picking off tiny insects that were floating there. Just occasionally, a nice juicy one would present itself for dinner, but you rarely had to dive much below the surface for your feast. Someone like Harry spent his time in the furthest depths of the lake, lurking and investigating the darker recesses, where the pickings were slim, even if bigger, and more satisfying, when caught.

He’d rather hoped that Harry McFry would have been in touch with him, by now. After all, hadn’t Harry seemed more than a little interested in the real identity of the journalist, Jonathan Harcourt? Surely Telford hadn’t detained him over the weekend – unless Harry had developed a fascination with roundabouts he hadn’t told his old friend about, that is. It was a puzzle, to Bill, why Harry hadn’t got back to him after he’d left his message for him on his answer phone. He’d subsequently tried the mobile number he had for Harry a couple of times, but on each occasion the call had been picked up by someone called Steve, who professed to know nothing at all about any Harry McFry. His angry insistence that he should ‘stop (expletive deleted) ringing for McFry!’ had led Bill to think he must have made a mistake in recording Harry’s number.

He skimmed through the rough notes he’d penned for himself on Friday, an aide-memoir of his conversation with Cyril Galloway and the facts he’d gleaned from the National Union of Journalists about Jonathan Harcourt. His mind was trying to process what few bits of information he had into some semblance of a story, but it wasn’t really working…

One thing Harry would be interested to learn, he was sure, was that Jonathan Harcourt hadn’t died in Spain. That much, Bill had established. The NUJ had records of his membership subscription being paid until well after the Second World War, even if they were at a much reduced rate. This must mean, he knew, that Harcourt had ‘hung up his quill’ – he’d stopped being a professional journalist – but had elected to stay a part of the union, possibly because his continued membership promised him some benefits, perhaps as he approached his retirement…

It had been a while, he ruminated, since trades unions looked after their members in the same way they had when he, himself, had first entered journalism. As he scanned his notes anew, his eye was drawn to the few paragraphs he’d drafted about Cyril Galloway. There must be more to those medals than he’d first supposed, he guessed. What if he called Galloway? There couldn’t be any harm in it. He could imply he’d located Harry McFry, could suggest he knew that Harry had those medals, and see where that got him…

He wasn’t sure where the Bank of Bilbao fitted in. But a bank, to Bill Blunt, spelled money. Especially a bank which, he had discovered, was the majority share holder in the McFry family business. Bill knew, of course, that Harry wasn’t part of that McFry dynasty (he’d asked Harry that very question soon after they met and, let’s face it, if he was part of that particular empire he’d hardly be plying his trade from a two-bit office in Birkenhead). He had to wonder what Harry was doing nosing around in the affairs of the McFry family, though. What if – and he could only speculate here, he realized – Harry was working on a case for another member of the McFry family? Now that, he thought, would be interesting…

Old Philip McFry had died a few years ago, he remembered. He’d been well enough known in the town - why, Bill himself had written his obituary for the Birkenhead Beagle. He couldn’t, just now, recall who had inherited from Philip, but seemed to think it may have been his daughter. What was she called again? He pulled a telephone directory from the shelf, had just started paging through it when he heard the brusque voice of his wife calling him through to the kitchen, for breakfast. He left the directory open for his return since, if Bill had learned anything over the course of his marriage, it was that it was better (all things considered) not to keep Mrs Blunt waiting.

Interlude

Thanks to the good offices of Barbara Blunt, here's a little synopsis of 'the story so far'...

Technical Note: An Apology

Readers of Harry McFry Investigate may be interested in this note. Please excuse the interlude.

Kind Regards

THJnr

Chapter 100

Meanwhile, lest we forget…

When Lillian McFry answered the phone on Sunday morning, she might have thought it would be her friend, from further up the close of bungalows, just ringing (as she often did) to see how she was. They had a practiced repartee – honed over many years. “No need to ring the florist!” she would say.
Instead, though, she heard the measured tones of a voice she immediately recognized, and which sent an involuntary chill down her spine.
“Good morning, Mrs McFry,” was Cyril Galloway’s opening gambit, before he introduced himself. “I’m afraid I owe you an immense apology.”

Lillian wasn’t accustomed to having her apologies served to her in a dumper truck, so it wasn’t the best choice of words on the part of the auctioneer. Which was a shame, as he’d thought long and hard about how he should approach his call to Lillian. He’d known it wouldn’t be the easiest call he’d ever made in his life, but he’d realized he could afford to sacrifice a former friend’s reputation on the altar of his greed. Dacre Lawrence was in no position to argue, he knew, and the thought sustained him.

“I’m afraid that Dr Lawrence may have misinformed you,” he said.
“Mr Galloway.” Lillian was quite sure what she wanted to say, even though she hadn’t for a minute anticipated a call from the auctioneer. She was sharp and clinical in her response:
“I may be an old woman, but I have learned the hard way to keep my wits about me. I know full well that you were in league with Dr Lawrence. I’m afraid that whatever business the two of you had with me is done.”
“Well, not exactly, Mrs McFry. Would that it were. You see, I know all about Harry – and I know he has your medals.” He waited to see how she took the news. Was that an intake of breath at the other end of the line? Had he shocked her, as he’d planned?

“I am afraid I made a big mistake telling Dr Lawrence about the medals. I can assure you that I had no idea he was such a crook,” Galloway said, wondering if she would take the bait.
“Then you should take more care of the company you keep, Mr Galloway.” Not even a chink was showing in the old woman’s armour.

“I fear you may be right, of course. I can see that now, well enough. But you see, I never fully appreciated the true value of the medals.” Galloway was finding it difficult. He wasn’t used to apologizing – even when he didn’t mean it. “I never fully appreciated what you did for Spain. I know it was a long time ago. And I know, now, that your medals are worth considerably more than I said they were.” He paused a moment, to let her process his plea.
“You see, I was very fortunate to see, some many years ago, their companion pieces.”

“Companion pieces?” Lillian said. “What do you mean?”

“Come, come, Mrs McFry. I mean the set that was issued to Jonathan Harcourt, of course!”

Galloway had turned the key.

Chapter 99

It’s true that Yolanda had kept her distance from Harry McFry since he arrived in Madrid. She’d manoeuvred it so that she wouldn’t be at home when he was due to arrive there.

“So, why did you come to Madrid now, Harry?” she asked, as they sat in the small bar over coffee, orange juice and pastries. He knew what she might be getting at. He was here, he told her, strictly on business. Yolanda refused to believe her sister was the only person in the world qualified to translate that document of his – and she told him this.

“It’s not a case of being qualified – it’s more about whether I could trust anyone else to do it,” he said, pleased with the distinction he’d made.
“So – you wouldn’t have ‘trusted’ me to do it, then?” Her smile was sly.
“I hardly know you,” he replied, breaking off a wind of dough from the churros and shaking off the sugar.
“Whose fault is that then, Harry?” she asked.

When he’d first met her, he’d thought he had the measure of Yolanda. An older, protective sister, who was on the look-out for Ana’s welfare. She was much closer to Harry, in age. Ana was nearer to Alan’s. There might have been a hint of jealousy, he’d thought, that Ana had found Harry, but he knew he wasn’t the best person to judge that. In truth, after they’d been introduced they’d not really had a whole lot to do with each other, had only met a few times when she’d been visiting Ana while Harry was staying. Yet, he’d felt her presence in the relationship constantly. Harry had guessed that the two sisters were close, and that they saw a lot of each other while he wasn’t there, while he was back in England. He suspected Ana might have confided in Yolanda quite regularly – particularly in the later, dying days of their relationship, when Harry was ‘pulling away’.

For her part, Yolanda was in no doubt that Harry was a malign influence on her kid sister. Too old for her – he threatened to pull her from the orbit of her successful academic career when he arrived on the scene. For all she knew, he might even drag her away to some God-forsaken town on the north-west coast of England that looked, in the few pictures of it she’d seen, like it might have known better days.

Trying to switch tack, Harry took a gulp of coffee. “I never did find out how you met Alan,” he said. Yolanda pulled a cigarette from her purse, and waited while Harry lit it for her. As she dragged heavily on it, she formed her careful reply: “There’s nothing to know. Alan was visiting her one day when I came around.”

Harry looked – and sounded – genuinely surprised. “Alan – visiting Ana?”
“Of course! He’s great pals with Pablo. Didn’t he tell you?”
No he didn’t! It must have slipped his mind entirely, Harry thought, laconically. His world was being slowly undermined be everything he was learning about Ana, Yolanda and Alan. In Harry’s multiplex mind, it was like the noise from the theatre next door had suddenly started to intrude on the film he was watching. He’d suddenly become aware of a set of parallel lives, friendships and interactions that had been hidden from him for the last five years. Alan had never once mentioned that he’d seen Ana (probably regularly) since Harry had left her. And he’d certainly never mentioned Pablo.
“You better tell me about this Pablo, Yolanda,” he said. Might as well deal with it sometime, he was thinking.
Yolanda’s brow furrowed up. “But surely Ana told you about him?” She was arch.
“No – I wasn’t exactly in the market for that kind of information last night. We were otherwise engaged.” Discretion might be the better part of valour, but Yolanda wasn’t about to hand out medals to Harry for his heroic defence of her sister’s virtue.
“Yes. Of course. Your ‘business’. How could I forget that?” Yolanda said. “Tell me, then. What is it you want to know about ‘this’ Pablo?”
She was the queen of sarcasm, today, Harry thought.
“Well … what is he like?”
“You’d like him,” she replied, quickly. She was looking Harry straight in the face. “You know, he looks a lot like you. Very similar eyes. Ana loves him very much, you know.” As if explaining why Ana might have fallen for someone else, she went on: “Did you stop to think how hard it has been for her since you left her?”
Harry hadn’t. Not much, anyway. Most of the time he’d learned it was best to lock any thoughts of Ana well away from his heart. He shifted in his seat, and lit a cigarette for himself.
“It wasn’t easy for me to leave her, you know. But what could I offer her then – or even now?”

Yolanda’s eyebrows darted north. A humble Harry? This was a new one on her. “You could have offered her what you can offer any woman. Love. It’s not so complicated as you think. Keep it simple, stupid!” she said, mockingly.

“Well, it’s academic now, anyway. There’s Pablo. And if she loves him as much as you say she does, there’s no future for us.” Some of Harry was hoping Yolanda might come back, and protest otherwise.
“When she told me you were coming to Madrid, my advice to her was to stay away from you. Not to see you at all, while you were here. It’s just ‘raking over coals’ as I think you say.”

She was right, Harry thought. Someone else was fanning Ana’s flame, now. And yet … Ana had disregarded her sister’s advice. She must still feel something for him, to do that. Yolanda might have anticipated his thoughts.
She stubbed out her own cigarette, slowly and carefully. “Ana’s asked me to entertain Pablo while you and her conduct some more of your ‘business’ today. I’m going to take him out of harms way – while Ana and Harry play,” she said. She looked at him with knowing eyes. “Now,” she said. “Isn’t that nice for you?”
With that, she stood up and walked from the café, leaving Harry to contemplate his place in the world – lord of the lonely hearts, prince of the charmers and king of the fools.