Southern Seas Read Online Free PDF Page B

and craftsmen on the verge of retirement. Others merely provided storage space in which leather pelts, cardboard boxes and other bits and pieces were piled high. Stopping in front of a door painted with optimistic patterns of foliage coloured in green and lilac, Carvalho rang the bell and waited for an answer. A little old man, his apron covered with marble dust, opened the door wide with slow, silent gestures and nodded for the detective to enter.
    ‘Do you know who I’m looking for?’
    ‘It’ll be Francesc. No one ever comes to see me.’
    The old man disappeared into a little cubby-hole carved out of the vastness of the artist’s atelier. Carvalho advanced a couple of steps, and found Artimbau engaged in painting a girl in the act of removing her jumper. The painter turned round, surprised, and took time to read the past in Carvalho’s face.
    ‘You! Well I’ll be damned!’
    The dark, babyish face, circled by a black beard and a receding hairline, seemed to emerge from the tunnel of time. The modelhad lowered her jumper to conceal her white, waxen breasts: two firm, solid hemispheres.
    ‘That’s all for today, Remei.’
    The painter touched Carvalho for a moment, and then clapped him on the back, as if he had just rediscovered a part of himself.
    ‘You’ll stay and eat. If you like my cooking, that is.’
    He pointed to a covered earthenware casserole simmering on a butane cooker. Carvalho lifted the lid and was assailed by the aroma of a strange, potato-less stew in which vegetables vied with meat.
    ‘I have to watch my weight, so I don’t put in potatoes. And hardly any fat either. But it tastes OK.’
    Artimbau patted his paunch, which jutted out from his relatively slender body. The model murmured a goodbye and cast a long, slow look at Carvalho.
    ‘I wish I knew how to paint that look,’ laughed Artimbau when the model had left. ‘Nowadays I busy myself painting gestures. Body movements. Women dressing and undressing. I’ve gone back to the human body after spending a lot of time on society, social things … Spending time as a painter, I mean. I’m still in the Party. I go out and paint murals before elections. The other day I did one at the Clot. What about you?’
    ‘I don’t paint.’
    ‘I know. I meant are you still involved in politics?’
    ‘No. I don’t have a Party. I don’t even have a cat.’
    It was a stock reply which once upon a time might have been true. But not any more, Carvalho thought to himself. To start with, I’ve got a dog now. Am I going to end up with as many things as other people? Artimbau had things. He was married, with two children. Maybe the wife would come and eat with them, and then again maybe she wouldn’t. Artimbau showed him his paintings, and a book of drawings on the death agonies of General Franco. No. He knew that the climate still wasn’t rightfor it to be published. He tried to get Carvalho to reciprocate with some news about his own life. Carvalho summed up his last twenty years in one short sentence. He’d been in the United States, and was working as a private detective.
    ‘That’s the last thing I’d have expected. A private eye!’
    ‘In fact I’ve come to see you about a case. A client of yours.’
    ‘Somebody complaining that I’ve plagiarized a painting?’
    ‘No. He’s dead. Murdered.’
    ‘Stuart Pedrell.’
    Carvalho sat down and prepared to listen. But the usually talkative Artimbau became rather reticent. He laid plates and cutlery on a little marble table and produced a bottle of Berberana Gran Reserva. As always, Carvalho was happy to discover a new example of gastronomic corruption. The painter carefully removed the casserole from the stove. Then he phoned his wife. She wouldn’t be coming. He filled the plates with the low-calorie stew and was plainly delighted at Carvalho’s favourable comments.
    ‘It’s excellent.’
    ‘The green vegetables—artichokes, peas and so on—give off their own moisture, so you