The Wrong John

'Please...' she said.

Her face had melted: probably from alcohol or a crying jag – or both. She might have looked 30 before the make-up had disintegrated. Now she looked a ruin. I looked around, wondering why she'd picked me. The bar was almost empty: happy hour too far off to be looked forward to. The ambient light might have been cosily dark in the evening; at eight in the morning, it was gloomy. I watched her struggle to get up on the bar stool, the nylons laddered and the skirt too tight.

'Drink?' I blew smoke across the bar. Smoke signals for the barman.

'Cranberry juice,' she gave a half-smile and squirmed on the stool. It looked uncomfortable.

'You'll be lucky,' I said. Besides, I'd no idea what it was in Spanish.

'Orange, then.'

That I could do, so I did.

The glasses crashed onto the wooden bar, my gin stayed in the glass, but the tonic didn't. The woman's orange juice survived intact.

'Gracias!' I said to the barman's back.

'Rough was it?' It looked it.

'Just one of them,' she looked down at a scrape on her knuckles.

'It only takes one.'

The bar was no more than a shed. On the edge of the Guadalhorce industrial estate, far enough out of the way to discourage all but the most determined lorry driver. Later in the day workers from the units might come in for tapas and a beer, no wonder the guy behind the bar was miserable.

'I didn't know - ' I began, but she cut me off.

'English girls?'

She was pushing it with 'girls' but I knew what she meant.

'Is it worth...'

Her laugh interrupted me this time, 'I can make 3 mil a week.'

She hadn't just stepped off the Liverpool Easy Jet flight.

'Three thousand euros?' I whistled. 'You earned it tonight though, eh?'

She brushed at the blouse, as if the blood would wipe off.

'You look overdressed, if you don't mind me saying.'

'At least there's some doubt in the Guardia's mind if you're not dressed in a bikini and high-heels.'

She motioned lighting a cigarette. I gave her a Ducados and lit it for her. She smoked it like a fifties deb, filter grasped between middle and ring finger. Her nails were all broken. She blew out 'thanks' with the smoke, looked over her shoulder at the door.

'Coming for you, are they?' I asked.

'Oh yes,' her eyes shone too brightly, ' yes, they are.'

'A knife was it?'

'Got to look after yourself, haven't you?'

She flicked a hand toward my glass. I gave her the gin, waving for another two. The barman sighed, but placed both gently on the bar, this time.

'Anything I...'

'You don't look stupid,' but she gave half a smile and I thought that at the start of her shift people would have been tempted.

'But how do you know they're coming? The Guardia Civil, I mean?'

'They're bound to come. For one of their own.'