Chapter 105

Danny was enjoying his morning with Alan McFry. He’d settled into their easy amble around the flea market, picking over the oddments of people’s lives that were on display for sale. No launderettes were passed en route.

Alan seemed ‘straight up’. There was none of that second-guessing which he’d begun to feel was part and parcel of being a work colleague of Harry. That didn’t mean he didn’t have questions, however. Danny was as much of an analyst in his spare time as poor old Harry. Perhaps that’s what had drawn them to work together?

Why, he wondered, had Alan been so interested in the idea that Harry might have been seeing his ex-wife? Could it be that he still carried (‘sic’, he said, in his mind) a torch for Carrie? He’d never met this Carrie woman – tried to imagine what she was like.

Maybe Alan and his brother had a ‘type’ of woman they both went for, the way some men seemed to go for redheads, or blondes, or women who were well-endowed or had a good pair of legs? He hadn’t even met this mysterious Ana of Harry’s. All he had to go by was Yolanda, and he supposed she was attractive – if you liked the kind of confident, sharp woman he reckoned her to be, that was.

The McFry brothers were very different, he’d noticed. Alan was much more relaxed (at least on the surface), while Harry had seemed, at first, supremely in charge of himself and self-assured. But he’d seen, soon enough, some of Harry’s weaknesses – for drink, for cigarettes and (he guessed) for women, too. The older of the brothers masked a mass of insecurities beneath the confident exterior he projected. He’d caught glimpses of that same insecurity towards the end of the week in Birkenhead. If they were so different, what explained the way they seemed to share their lovers (or, at least, their siblings)?

Had Harry spent Friday night at his (ex-) sister-in-laws? Danny couldn’t know for sure. He knew Carrie had rung Alan, though: he’d been there, he guessed, when Alan had taken her call. What if she’d hinted to her ex-husband that Harry had been with her, the night before? He remembered waiting around for Harry to arrive back at his flat on Saturday morning, and how he’d seemed flustered at being late. Maybe he'd got it wrong: Carrie might have told Alan all about her night with Harry to make him jealous, precisely because she was the one holding the torch?

Danny found himself visualizing Harry alongside a woman (who might look a little like Yolanda - his only yardstick). One thing was for sure – and he knew this for certain. They wouldn’t be in a car. Or, of they were, it wouldn’t be a Ford Cortina. And if it was, he doubted it would have a sun visor with their names printed on it.

Harry Carrie – that would just be suicidal…

“Hey, Danny,” Alan said, interrupting his train of thought. “Should we walk back through the park?”

Well, it seemed like a perfectly good idea, at the time...

Chapter 104

When Snr Guttierez told Harry the value of the bond, it was the first time he really believed the true value of the piece of paper held by Lillian McFry, and the potential windfall that might be heading in Laurel McFry’s direction. A part of him – that rueful part that all of us have – fleetingly wondered whether he shouldn’t have booked himself into a five star hotel in Madrid, instead of staying at his brother’s, on the strength of an expenses claim he guessed Laurel would be more than happy to pay. What Harry couldn’t fully understand was why the combined expertise of an entire department of the Spanish Government had been unable to locate Lillian McFry… but then, he knew how elusive some of the McFry’s had been when he’d been looking for them himself. He was still sat alongside Ana and Snr Guttierez in the boardroom. He had another question which was nagging him:

“Why would this document specify that the bond would be passed down the female line?” To Harry, it seemed just a little odd.

Before Snr Guttierez could reply, Ana spoke in what seemed, to Harry, a strange dialect of Spanish, addressing herself to Snr Guttierez, who smiled and nodded, before turning to Harry.

“As your colleague so correctly reasons, Mr McFry, we can assume that this bond was issued according to the precepts of Basque law. In our province,” and here, Snr Guttierez nodded gently towards Ana, “it is quite usual for property to pass down the female line.”

Harry pondered for a second: “That makes sense – since we know Lillian was in Guernica during her final months in Spain.”

“Do we assume that Stuart McFry and Lillian Blyth were in some kind of ‘relationship’?” Snr Guttierez asked.

“It’s possible. He accompanied her out of Spain. They escaped via Bilbao. With a young baby girl,” Harry explained.

“Ah … so she would inherit the bond?”

“From what you say, this was theoretically possible. But she died in 1981.” Harry was working without notes, but he remembered the detail of Colleen’s death from the interrogation of Laurel.

“She did, however, marry, and had a daughter, Laurel McFry.”

Snr Guttierez was struggling to work this out. “All these McFry’s everywhere. Tell me, who did she marry?”

“She married Stuart’s younger brother, Philip,” Harry said.

“Your Lillian seems to be remarkable fond of the McFry’s, doesn’t she?” Snr Guttierez replied, almost rhetorically.

“My guess is that it was the other way around. Lillian Blyth was a very beautiful woman – still is, in some respects. She seems to have had no shortage of admirers.”

Here, Snr Guttierez smiled towards Ana and said a few words in that same, strange dialect which Harry thought he recognized, now, as Basque. He saw Ana blush and lower her head.

“Well,” he went on, switching back to his precise English, “I think we know what we need to do now. I can take the bond from you and give you a receipt. We will store it for you safely. We will need to get a signature from Lillian Blyth to redeem it in full, of course. And we will need to draw some reserves to pay it.”

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Harry (maybe prompted by the mention of money, again). “Tell me, Snr Guttierez. Who holds the money to pay these bonds, as you discover them?”

“Oh, we hold it in the Bank of Bilbao, of course. The government is a major shareholder in the bank.”

Harry had just completed another corner of the jigsaw, and he allowed himself a wry smile.

*

As they made their way out of the ministry building, Harry having left the bond with Snr Guttierez in exchange for the receipt, the noise from the street outside hit them as if they’d turned on a TV where the volume was set just a little on the high side, and it took a moment or two to adjust to the bustle.

Ana paused a few yards from the corner of the street, Harry pulling out his cigarettes and lighting one.

“You seem very pleased with yourself, Mr McFry!” she exclaimed, smiling. And why wouldn’t he be? He’d just secured the future of his client – with spades.

Dragging the nicotine deep into his lungs, his mind was working overtime.

“I just tied up another loose end. Laurel McFry’s income was dependent on shares she held in the family firm. About 5% of the company, I think she said,” Harry explained. “Just last week, she had to sell those shares because the price was falling. My guess is that the Bank of Bilboa, who are the principal holders of McFry stock, has been steadily unloading them onto the market to fund the repayment of the government bonds by Snr Guttierez.”

Ana smiled again, the irony of ‘poor’ Laurel McFry’s situation not lost on her. The very thing that had threatened her fortune was the prospect of an even bigger fortune.

“Then she will have reason to thank you, Harry. I hope you are on a percentage fee for this case!”

Harry shook his head (today was Ruing Sunday for Harry, it seemed): “Not really – shame about that, I know. But maybe she’ll be happy to be a little more generous when it comes to paying my bill.”

He changed the subject, quickly: “How long do you have?”

Ana checked her watch – it was coming up to midday. “Oh, maybe another couple of hours. I don’t want to push my luck with Yolanda – you know what she’s like.”

“It’s a little early for lunch,” he said. “How about the Retiro?” he asked, tentatively.

The day was mild, despite a few grey clouds bubbling on the horizon. Ana thought a walk in the park with Harry might be pleasant, a chance to discover exactly where they were up to, with the plot. Harry hailed a passing cab, and in a short time they were entering the Retiro. En route, Harry asked Ana what Snr Guttierez had said to her to make her blush. She blushed anew, as she told him: “He said if Lillian McFry was half as beautiful as I was, he could understand why she might have had so many admirers.”

As they entered the park, they weren’t to know it, but their path took them past the very place where, seventy years earlier, a young English nurse made love to a young English journalist, weaving a history both peculiar in its sadness, and wonderful in its persistence through the years.

Chapter 103

Juan Guttierez descended the stairs with the confidence of someone who was on the final pages of a novel they had been enjoying, knew they had only a few paragraphs left to read and had already worked out the conclusion of the story.
He was wearing a casual, sand-coloured linen suit, a crisp cotton shirt and brown loafers, the absence of a tie his concession to being called into work on a Sunday.

As he neared the bottom of the stairs, he seemed to take the measure of Harry McFry and Ana, even as they rose from the bench where they’d been sitting.
He smiled as he introduced himself, offering them both a warm and hearty handshake. He carried under his left arm a leather document folder.
Harry was almost as pleased as Ana to hear that Snr Guttierez spoke good English. The last thing Ana had wanted was to act as a translator for the morning, while Harry realized it would speed matters up without the need for Ana to repeat everything the man from the ministry said. Harry guessed he was in his early 50’s, his grey hair cropped fashionably short, and his grey-rimmed spectacles smart and trendy.

“So! At last we can solve the mystery of our missing bond!” he exclaimed, with a grin, and he gestured to a corridor to the right of them, saying “Please, follow me,” taking them past the security desk where the guard acknowledged him with a nod.

The conference room he took them to looked out over a courtyard inside the building. A long, dark oak table took up most of the room, which was furnished in period pieces at each end, apart from a projector screen on one wall. Ana imagined the decisions that might have been taken in this room, as she pulled a chair out and took her seat at the table. Harry was wondering, instead, what prevarication might have taken place there since, if he knew civil servants, they were better at that than decisions.

“Let me fill you in on a little of our country’s history, Mr McFry,” Snr Guttierez said, standing at the opposite end of the table where Harry and Ana sat, so that they both of them almost felt they were students again, attending a lecture. “Forgive me if you know some of this already…” he added.
“You know, of course, that the Nationalists won the Civil War – that is, if you accept that there was anyone who really ‘won’ that war.” Harry knew that a ministry official was paid to choose his words carefully, but nodded as the man continued his lecture.

“After the Second World War, there was an ill-fated attempt to establish a republican government in exile, in Mexico. The people who tried to do this had issued a series of bonds to attempt to finance the resistance movement in the years after 1939. They were actually quite successful. Apart from the peasants and the labourers and the factory workers who contributed small amounts – actually quite large in today’s terms, we mustn’t forget - many left-wing sympathizers the world over contributed quite large sums of money to the cause.
“It came to nothing. We know that some of the money collected was used to repay the so-called ‘debt of honour’ to the Soviet Union, who were still claiming well into the 1950’s that the Spanish people owed them $50 million. The rest – well, who knows? I suppose running a quasi-government, with its ministers and ambassadors all living outside of the country might have been expensive.”
Here, Snr Gittierez paused for a moment, and then smiled. “You know, Mr McFry, I have one of the best jobs in the world. It falls to me to locate all the surviving bondholders, and to arrange for the redemption of those same bonds.

“Three years ago, our Government determined that it would repay the debts as a matter of honour. Since then, we have successfully redeemed bonds worth over £90 million. In the case of the bond you say you have, this was purchased for the not insignificant sum of £70,000 at the time. It was easily the biggest purchase – by far – of any individual bond.

“I have personally spent some two years, working with my team, trying to locate anyone who might have a claim on the bond. Our records show…” and here, he sat down and opened his document holder, “that it was issued in the name of Stuart McFry.”

Harry was hanging on Snr Guttierez’s every word. So! Stuart McFry – the eldest of the McFry brothers – had purchased the bond.
“Stuart McFry was one of three brothers who were heirs to a fortune,” Harry said. “McFry’s were a successful clothing manufacturers in Britain,” he added, by way of explanation.

“Yes – I realize this. And may I ask what your connection to the family is?” Snr Guttierez was looking seriously at Harry.
“None. I’m not related in any way to them,” Harry said, crisply.
Snr Guttierez considered Harry’s response. “Then, I do wonder how you have come to have the bond in your possession. Do you think I could see it?”

Harry nodded. “Of course – here…” he said, pulling it from his jacket pocket and holding it across the table. The ministry official stood up and walked to where Harry and Ana were sitting, and plucked the bond from Harry’s hand. He sat down next to them and opened the paper out on the table in front of them.
For a moment or two he studied it.

“There is no doubt whatsoever that this is our missing bond. It tallies with the file records we have. And here is ‘the nub of it’, as I think you would say in England…” He pointed to a line or two of the text.
“It says here quite clearly that in the case of the death of the person who has subscribed the bond, then it shall revert to a one Lillian Blyth and, in the case of her death it should revert to her daughter, and similarly to the daughter’s daughter.

“Now. We know that Stuart McFry did die. We have seen his death certificate. We have also seen that, although he married, he was childless. We simply haven’t been able to locate a Lillian Blyth anywhere in the world. That isn’t surprising, of course. Whether she was Stuart’s lover, his sister who had married, his mother or merely just a casual acquaintance, there seems to be no Lillian Blyth alive. Or any record of her marriage.”

Snr Guttierez sighed. “So, I am left wondering, still, how you came by this bond?”

Harry told him all about Lillian, and watched as the official’s eyes widened with growing incredulity at the story.

“Wait a minute, Mr McFry! Are you telling me that Lillian Blyth is still alive? That is just amazing!”
“Well, she’s an amazing lady, Snr Guttierez. She was issued with medals by the republican government in exile, you know,” Harry replied, “and yes – she’s very much alive. At least she was, when I saw her on Friday. She’s made of strong stuff, that woman.”

Snr Guttierez thought for a second. “I still cannot believe that someone who fought in that war is still there, all these years later. But, tell me … do you think that even a woman of her strength could survive the shock of being told that the piece of paper here in front of us is worth around £20 million?”