Page 9 of His Worst Crime

“This is Barcelona, Catalonia. They think of it as separate from Spain.”

“Still Spain though isn’t it! Don’t change the subject. Why’d you come here?”

David let the Spain thing go. Since he’d come here, Carme and everyone else at the stables had been informing him every second minute that Catalonia wasn’t Spain. It would be wasted breath to try and teach Ned that point of view. The fact that Ned was asking him this question meant that he couldn’t have heard about what had gone down back home. So David needed not to blow it, and somehow get Ned to shut up about having bumped into him here. That’d be a tall order.

“I needed a change,” was all he said.

“A likely story,” Ned leered. “What, get some girl up the duff or somat?”

“No, of course not.” Then he kicked himself. That would have made the perfect alibi. And have kept Ned from blabbing. “Well, she… didn’t think she was. But then she missed her period.”

There, he’d told a lie. But it was one of those little white ones, not a bad one, surely.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” hissed Ned in a stage whisper, leaning close with one finger against the side of his nose and winking solemnly.

David hoped so.

“Anyway, here’s to us meeting!” David raised his beer—the last thing he felt like drinking so early in the morning, but he needed to move the subject along—and clinked Ned’s glass. “So how’s Owen?”

“Your brother…” and Ned howled loudly to express whatever it was about David’s brother he just couldn’t put into words. Again everyone in the café stopped and looked over at them. “Is he a one! Chip off the block of your dear old man, I tell you!”

And Ned was off, regaling David with a long-winded tale about one of his brother’s latest exploits. David breathed more easily. He seemed to have done it, put Ned off the scent, and now he just had to be nice to the guy, play along until he could say goodbye and get back to his stables.

But after the second beer and another tequila chaser, that was proving trickier to do. He suggested a change of bar, hoping to take Ned to some less conspicuous drinking hole. The thing was, Ned was tall, larger than life, and loud in more ways than one. Everywhere he went he became the center of attention—exactly what David was hoping to avoid.

They ended up in Bar Kentucky, down the narrow alley that was l’Arc del teatre, some way off the Rambla, barely after it had opened at midday. This was a long low bar that came into existence for the sailors from the US Sixth Fleet who used to dock in Barcelona even as far back as the fifties. The wall behind the bar was hung with memorabilia and autographed photos of the seamen who used this hole in the wall as a safe port in a storm, and a place to meet the locals—of both sexes.

“There’s something a bit gay about this bar,” Ned declared, downing his shot.

The tequila chasers had turned to bourbon, and they were now on their third beer. So much for a quick coffee and get back to the stables.

“Well, you know sailors,” David murmured, shrugging.

Personally he liked the place. Maybe that was why. It was family-run, but the clientele were a mixed bag, everyone from streetwalkers to student rockers and tourists looking for an edgier experience. It was a place where Ned wouldn’t stand out so much, as almost everyone who drank here was eccentric in some way. But not having done any power drinking like this in weeks, if not months, David was getting quickly drunk. Whereas for Ned, the alcohol hardly seemed to touch the sides as it went down, just adding to his natural gregariousness.

David had horses to work. Carme would be pissed at him. But he could hardly head back to the stables in the state he was now in. He should have thought that one out better. That policeman was supposed to be coming back to look at his horse today too—another reason for David to make himself scarce. Perhaps he could hang out with Ned today, and then slip back into the stables in the evening, after Carme had gone home, and sleep it all off. He’d get hell for abandoning the horses for a day, but it was Saturday, after all. And he’d worked hard enough, six days a week since he’d got here. There were Maria and other hands to do the feeding and watering. Him being absent a day wouldn’t bring the world crashing down.

At least hanging out with Ned, you didn’t have to say much, as he did most of the talking; all he needed was an audience. And David had good practice at that, nodding and chuckling where needed and letting Ned go on. Strangely he was wondering if that policeman had turned up at the stables yet. Probably. Would he try and seek David out? Probably. There was something… It had been weird, the way they’d touched… and those intense eyes, almost black, they kind of bored into you. He was quite unsettling. A good looker though. Powerful legs and a muscular ass… all that riding probably. He snickered at the double entendre, wondering what his dick was like.

“What?”

“What what?”

“What are you chuckling away about? You was miles away. Spill. Is she cute?”

“Nah, it’s nothing. What were you saying?”

“I was asking you the name of this secret lassie you’re mooning about.”

“There’s no one.”

“Come on, spill, you dark horse.”

“It’s… she… Her name’s Carme.”

“Calmer? What sort of a name is that?”

“No, Carme, like good karma, bad karma, you know? It’s a Catalan name.”