Sergi couldn’t think how to tell his girlfriend he wasn’t going to be able to go on holiday. It was no use saying he was broke – Marisol knew he worked for his uncle and that he paid him a decent wage – or that work was preventing him from taking a fortnight off to get a tan on a beach with a backdrop that was rather more picturesque than the three cement chimneys of the old Sant Adrià de Besòs power station. Even Senyor Benito, Sergi’s uncle, had shut up shop and taken his wife to his village to get away from the muggy heatwave. And Marisol, who’d been waiting for weeks to show off the silvery bikini she’d bought in the sales, began to lose patience.
“I don’t get it, Sergi. There are some really great bargains on offer! And it’s stifling in Barcelona …”
Marisol lived in Gràcia in a flat-share with various friends from the faculty, psychology students like herself, and Sergi in Sant Adrià. They’d been going out for a couple of years, and were now at a stage in their relationship when they were starting to make plans to live together the moment Marisol finished her Masters in Clinical Psychology and got a job. Sergi was a musician – he played the sax – but, as he couldn’t live by music alone, he was forced to work for his uncle while he tried to build up a reputation by performing in bars and festivals with the jazz quartet he had set up with friends.
What Marisol didn’t know (Sergi hadn’t told her) was that her boyfriend was the favourite nephew of Senyor Benito, one of the old gangsters from the neighbourhood of La Mina. Experience had taught Sergi that going on about the criminal nature of the family business usually provoked a hostile reaction, and that’s why he’d told Marisol what he told everyone who wasn’t part of that delinquent scenario of intrigue on seedy side streets, in warehouses on the city’s outskirts or down-at-heel bars: he’d say his uncle had a transport company that did house removals and haulage, and that he worked occasionally for him as a driver.
The circumstances that were stopping Sergi from going on holiday went back to a casual conversation Senyor Benito had had with the lawyer who looked after his clan’s legal disputes. Sergi’s uncle had complained that a disadvantage of his business was the extraordinary amount of cash it generated that he couldn’t put in the bank, that he was forced to lodge bundles of notes in different hiding places, which was always stressful, because Sant Adrià was now full of gangs that did their own thing and didn’t kowtow to him. His lawyer, who thanks to the fees he earned from the frequent visits Senyor Benito’s employees made to Can Brians prison lived better than the Corleones’ consigliere, told him that the best way to avoid such headaches would be to open an account in a tax-free paradise, which was what most of his customers had done.
“You don’t even have to take a plane, because it’s all done anonymously by computer. In fact, if you’re interested, my brother-in-law would do it for a commission,” his lawyer said.
“If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it and pocket the commission?” retorted Senyor Benito, who never trusted lawyers when it came to money, least of all his own.
“You know, it’s easy enough, but you need to be up to speed with the internet and know how to navigate the dark web.”
“The what?”
“The dark web, the part of the internet that’s home to hackers.”
“Oh …”
That day, at the entrance to the courthouse, Senyor Benito told his lawyer he’d think about it, simply to put him off. He thought the idea was interesting, but, as he was suspicious by nature and didn’t want to depend on third parties who might take advantage of his ignorance to bamboozle him, he decided to bypass his lawyer and suggest to his sparkiest nephew that he ought to study computers with the aim of opening an offshore account for him.
Sergi was twenty-four and reputed to be smart. His father, one of Senyor Benito’s brothers, had died at the end of the nineties during one of those gang wars that contribute to the improvement of the species via the natural selection of weapons chosen to liquidate all rivals. From a young age, Sergi had needed to be a live wire when it came to earning his keep, and Senyor Benito soon saw that the future of his youngest nephew didn’t reside in his (non-existent) biceps or in his (scant) skills when it came to intimidating bad payers, driving second-hand Transit vans at top speed or using a knife without getting hurt, but in his ability to use his brain when it came to making decisions.
“So, Uncle, why exactly do you want me to study computers?” asked Sergi the day the patriarch suggested he should go back to reading books.
Senyor Benito prided himself on being a wily old bird, and preferred not to tell his nephew what he had in mind.
“Oh, you know, these computers are beyond me. But I can’t rely on Paco and Manel, as you well know. They may be my sons, but they don’t have your brains.”
“And in the meantime, what am I going to live on? Because if I’m going to be studying, I won’t be able to make any more deliveries …” Sergi replied, fishing.
“Don’t you worry, I’ll still pay you a monthly wage. You just make sure you get top marks, right?”
Sergi, unlike his relatives, didn’t have criminality in his blood and hated chasing around with his crazy cousins; he thought he’d won the lottery, and rushed to tell Marisol the good news. As the world of education was a remote, unknown galaxy for Senyor Benito, Sergi opted for a nine-month computer course in a backstreet academy in Badalona.
But Sergi soon discovered that he was even less interested in computers than in being a gangster, and stopped going to his classes. He was bored, and as he knew it was easy to hoodwink his uncle, who could barely switch on a computer, he decided to forget the academy and invest his monthly income in a giant TV, loudspeakers and a brand-new sax.
They were the happiest times of his life. Sergi pretended to go to his classes, and when his uncle asked him if he was learning a lot, he assured him that starting to study computers was the best decision he’d ever taken. In fact, he wasn’t lying. Sergi was delighted with the new lifestyle that put money in his pocket without having to join in with his cousins’ thuggish behaviour and gave him all the time in the world to play his sax and enjoy sex with Marisol.
Nine months later, Sergi showed his uncle a (fake) diploma that credited him with top marks in the exam. Pleased with the good return on his investment, Senyor Benito congratulated him profusely and then asked him to show what he had learned at the academy by opening him an account in a tax-free paradise.
“My lawyer says it’s very easy, that you only need the internet and to know how to work a computer,” he added, seeing the sceptical expression on his nephew’s face.
“You know, Uncle, it’s not so easy as that …”
“Come off it. They must have taught you this kind of thing on your course, right?”
“Well, not exactly …”
Sergi tried to explain to his uncle that tax evasion via a computer and internet connection was more complicated than he thought. It was one thing to be able to use Excel or Word, reboot your computer when it jammed or to use an anti-virus program and eliminate cookies and unnecessary files, but it was something else to open an offshore account in what his uncle called a tax-free paradise from your dining room, as if tax havens were like shopping at online Ikea.
Senyor Benito hadn’t a clue what Sergi was talking about, and lost his temper.
“So what the fuck have you been doing all this time?! Do you mean I’ve been wasting my money?”
“No, Uncle, of course you haven’t.”
Sergi was terrified. Senyor Benito didn’t realize the short course had cost him the equivalent of three years’ fees in the Faculty of Medicine, and if he ever found out that Sergi had pocketed the monthly instalments but hardly gone to any classes, he’d be so annoyed he’d give him a facelift and break every bone in his body. Sergi kept inventing excuses, but when it looked like the old patriarch would rush off to the academy with his shotgun and scare the life out of the director because his nephew was so clueless, he said he’d look into it and see what he could do.
*
A couple of days later, Sergi went to see his uncle, equipped with the MacBook he’d persuaded him to buy for him while he was (theoretically) attending his computer course.
“Where do you want me to open the account, Uncle?” he enquired as he switched his computer on. “Switzerland? Or the Cayman Islands?”
“Panama,” the old patriarch decreed. “I’ve heard that’s where the most important people keep their cash. Do you know what rate of interest you get in Panama?”
“These tax havens,” improvised Sergi as he keyed something into a document he’d previously prepared at home with a template and photos he’d found on Google, “don’t pay interest. They just keep your money. You don’t pay any taxes, obviously, and that’s the joy of it. In fact, it’s as if you were keeping your money in a mattress, but with someone keeping an eye on it 24/7.”
“Oh!”
Sergi printed out the document and gave it to his uncle. You could see a bank logo next to the heading, “El Panameño”, consisting of the silhouette of a pink flamingo. Underneath was what looked like an account number, and other figures that really meant nothing at all. Sergi hadn’t put himself out looking for a name and a logo. Looking online, he had discovered there was a small island by the name of Flamenco, and the name had immediately made him think of The Flamingo, the most famous of the casinos set up by the Mafia in Las Vegas. He just couldn’t resist having fun using the bird as the logo of a bank that didn’t even exist.
“When can I start putting money into the account?” asked Senyor Benito, his eyes flashing impatiently.
“Tomorrow. First, I’ve got to organize an appointment with a bank middleman, who’ll make sure the money reaches the branch.”
The old patriarch looked happy enough. “Let me know when you’ve got the meeting, and I’ll come and pick you up in the Mercedes.”
The following morning Senyor Benito stuffed seven hundred thousand euros in wads of used notes into a backpack and drove Sergi to a bar on Barcelona’s Carrer Muntaner. Senyor Benito rarely ventured into the city, and he knew that his appearance – his gypsy sideburns, imperial T-shirt, braces, straw boater and the oxygen bottle he was forced to cart around because of his emphysema – might catch certain people’s eyes in some parts of the capital. His nephew asked him to stay inside his car, shotgun at the ready in case there was a problem. Sergi had donned his Sunday best in order not to look out of place among all the executives in suits and ties, and walked into the bar, emerging a few minutes later without the backpack. He handed his uncle a sheet of paper in the form of a bank statement which recorded a deposit of €685,000, all certified with a signature and stamp.
“The missing €15,000 is down to the bank and middleman’s commissions,” Sergi told his uncle, watching for his reaction out of the corner of his eye.
“I expected there’d be a cost,” nodded Senyor Benito. “But, you know, I thought it’d be a lot more.”
Sergi cursed silently (he’d not been sure what to pocket in terms of fees) and asked his uncle to get going. He had to go back to the bar and tie up a few loose ends with the middleman, he told him, as regards future transactions, and then he wanted to go to Decathlon and buy Marisol a present. Pleased with a receipt which registered that he now belonged to the millionaires’ club with accounts in a tax haven, he blessed his bright idea of paying for his nephew to go on that computer course and told his driver (one of his brothers-in-law) to head off back to La Mina. Sergi, who’d told the bartender he’d gone out for a smoke, went back in, finished his beer and retrieved the backpack with the money. Then he caught a bus to Plaça de Catalunya and a train to Sant Adrià.
Back home, he put the €15,000 he’d decided to pocket into an envelope which he deposited in his bedside table drawer. He immediately picked up his backpack and drew the curtains. He used scissors to undo one of the seams in the mattress, gouged out a hole in the latex and stuffed in the rest of the money. Then he resealed the mattress with a stapler and eased it into the protective cover he’d had the forethought to buy in Carrefour to ensure Marisol didn’t see the repairs, should she ever change the sheets.
He’d given the matter a lot of thought, but hadn’t come up with a better place to hide the wads of notes. And he had eventually concluded that years ago people must have had a good reason to keep their savings in their mattresses.
For months Senyor Benito continued to transfer money into the account he thought he had in Panama. The procedure was always the same: the patriarch drove his nephew to a bar in the upper reaches of Barcelona (always a different one), and Sergi would go in with a backpack or sports bag. Once inside, he’d order a beer and leave his leather jacket and bag for all to see. A few minutes later he’d go outside, ostensibly for a smoke, and hand his uncle the statement accrediting the transaction and a copy of the bank details showing the account balance. After he had watched the Mercedes disappear into the distance, he’d return to the bar, leave a handsome tip and retrieve his jacket and bag with the money.
Sometimes, it was the reverse operation: Senyor Benito would need cash and Sergi would be forced to undo the mattress and extract the required amount. Extracting money was more complicated, because he had to make up little bundles of notes, tape them to his legs and around his middle and, once inside the bar, go into the bathroom, put the money into a backpack (that he also had to carry incognito) and hand it to his uncle with the corresponding statement. Luckily, cash transfers were more frequent than withdrawals, because the operation to remove the little wads was extremely painful and Sergi was hard pressed not to yell out in the bathroom.
Senyor Benito’s business was going so well that Sergi had to refurbish one of his rooms as a guest bedroom to have an excuse to justify to Marisol the purchase of a new double bed and mattress. The mattress of the bed where they slept had become too small to accommodate the envelopes his uncle kept passing on, to the point that Marisol complained the bed was so lumpy she found it uncomfortable. Marisol was surprised that Sergi had decided to dispense with the soundproof bedroom where he practised his sax, especially when she reflected that Sergi never had any guests to stay, but as she didn’t want to be a control freak or give him any reason to poke his nose into her affairs, she didn’t say a word.
From the day he was forced to open the phantom account in Panama for his uncle, Sergi was constantly on edge, nervously keeping an eye on his mattresses. He hardly slept a wink, and was so afraid he’d be burgled that he was always on the alert, since he never now slept in Marisol’s flat and rarely saw his friends. Sergi didn’t live in La Mina but on the other side of Besòs, and he’d realized that being related to one of the most feared gangsters in San Adrià was no protection against the foreign gangs that burgled flats in his area. He was scared stiff, and what with his lack of sleep, he was becoming paranoid.
Quite unintentionally, Sergi had become a bank. And the responsibility for watching over his uncle’s savings night and day was souring his life.
*
Marisol issued an ultimatum: “You either come on holiday with me, or we’re finished.” She had noticed something was wrong with her boyfriend, but she couldn’t get to the bottom of it. Sergi never wanted to go out, and, when they had a date, he always found excuses to stay in his flat, when she would grumble, “You know, you’re like an old man, always stuck in front of the TV!” Marisol couldn’t work out what was wrong, but she put Sergi’s lethargy down to the heat and hoped a holiday away from it all, with plenty of fucks and paellas, would clear the air and restore his spirits.
Sergi knew it was absurd to fall out with his girlfriend and to spend all August shut up without air conditioning in his flat because of those mattresses, and finally, after much agonizing, he agreed to go on holiday to Tenerife. While Marisol organized the hotel and flights and packed their cases, Sergi rang all his friends and acquaintances hoping that someone would do him a favour and stay in his flat while he was away, but at that time of summer he found no one. Feeling desperate, he almost asked his mother; but, as he knew his mother liked to scavenge and hoard, he realized that, on his return, he would find his flat had been redecorated with thousands of objects from rubbish containers, with their attendant insects, and quickly dropped the idea. Even so, before leaving he hung up a sign (that he’d previously stolen from a neighbouring house) to the effect that the residence was protected by a well-known security agency. The sign lasted a day and a half, the time it took his third-floor neighbours’ adolescent son to tear it down.
Their holiday, in a five-star hotel on Tenerife, was a disaster. Sergi was so worried about the money in the mattresses that he didn’t eat or sleep, and the mojitos Marisol forced him to gulp down upset his stomach and gave him palpitations. He didn’t dare tell her how he’d fucked up – he’d have to give too many explanations, from his criminal ancestry to the delinquent nature of the family business – and the stress was lethal. By the third day, nerves had brought on a rash and his skin was covered in red blotches. Finally, anxiety affected his libido, and that also irritated Marisol.
“It would be OK if you couldn’t get it up once, but we’ve had a week of no-shows, honey!”
When they returned from Tenerife, Marisol was more tanned and Sergi thinner. After they left the airport, Sergi accompanied Marisol home, where he didn’t even get out of the taxi but headed straight off to Sant Adrià, where he saw that his door had been smashed in. The stress that had prevented him from enjoying the exotic landscapes of Tenerife and Marisol’s caresses had been more than justified.
“You idiot, idiot, idiot …”
They’d broken in and burgled his flat. While he tried to stop his heart behaving like a second-hand clothes drier on full spin and got the air circulating through his lungs again, Sergi hoped against hope that the intruders had only lifted his plasma television, sound system, MacBook and the two thousand euros he’d barely hidden as a kind of bait to catch a putative thief (who would exclaim “Bingo!”). But what was on offer was far too tempting, thought Sergi, when he saw the mess in the dining room, and immediately realized he’d been visited by meticulous professionals who had scrutinized every millimetre of his flat from top to bottom. The TV, MacBook, sax and other valuable items had disappeared, and the mattresses had been ripped open and the money taken.
Sergi was in despair. At the very least, his uncle had lost some six million euros. And he knew that his uncle hadn’t got to be who he was in Sant Adrià by being merciful and magnanimous when his subordinates put a foot wrong. If he found out about the fraudulent computer academy, the non-existent account in Panama and the wretched mattresses, he’d end up kneecapped or disembowelled in some backstreet. He’d fucked up big time. It was all over.
For a moment, Sergi was tempted to grab his suitcase, beat it and catch the first train that was heading far, far away, but he had second thoughts. Apart from being broke, he didn’t know where to go. Besides, if he suddenly disappeared, his uncle would decide he had stolen the Panama money and would move heaven and earth to find him. His death would be a slow one, knowing his uncle; it would be preceded by a long, painful session with all kinds of pincers, saws, knives and soldering irons. Not to mention Marisol, who, in retaliation, might end up gagged and beaten to a pulp in some dark alleyway, being forced to answer questions she didn’t understand and to which she’d have no answer.
Scarpering wasn’t an option, thought Sergi.
But he’d have to invent something if he didn’t want to end up in the cemetery.
It was a few days before Senyor Benito got back from his village. He did so the first week in September, furious because he’d had to drag Paco and Manel out of the cells after they’d had a skirmish with some musicians at a rave. Though he’d been dreading his uncle’s call for days, Sergi’s heart sunk when he heard his gravelly voice at the other end of the line.
“Are you in Sant Adrià? You’re back from Tenerife?” he asked.
“Yes …”
“That’s great. Some Russians have asked me to join in an operation, and I need a quarter of a million from my account in Panama to invest in the job.”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to get mixed up with the Russians?” piped Sergi in a thin little voice.
“It won’t be the first time we’ve collaborated, and the Russians have always kept their word so far,” replied Senyor Benito, who added: “I know they’re an odd bunch, but so are all foreigners, right?”
“I suppose so.”
“Make the necessary calls. I’ll come to pick you up early this afternoon. Don’t keep me waiting.”
And he hung up.
*
At four on the dot, Senyor Benito’s Mercedes parked in front of the block of flats where his nephew lived. It was a muggy day, but the layer of arctic sweat coating Sergi’s body was because he was scared stiff, and had nothing to do with the weather. He saw two Asian-looking men in the back of the car and his brain switched into panic mode.
“Uncle, I … Let me explain …” he spluttered, convinced his uncle had found out about the break-in and contracted two killers to do him in.
“They’re Chinese,” interrupted his uncle, who had opted to sit in the front seat. “They have a little job to do in Sarrià, but first they’ve got to go via Santa Coloma and get one of our cars so they can drive around Barcelona.” (One of Senyor Benito’s lines was buying and selling stolen cars with fake number plates.) “Chong” – the leader of one of the gangs Senyor Benito had allied himself with in the neighbourhood – “has asked me to take them, because they can’t handle the metro and you can’t trust taxi drivers.” Before Sergi could say a word, he whispered: “I reckon they don’t understand Catalan, but just in case, better wait till we’ve dropped them in Santa Coloma before we talk about our business. You never know with the Chinese.”
“Fair enough.”
Senyor Benito seemed in a good mood. “So how did your holidays go? Did you and Marisol have a good time?” he asked.
“You know, Tenerife is very nice, but nothing to write home about.”
Senyor Benito cracked a joke, saying he didn’t look very tanned after a beach holiday so he guessed he’d spent the whole trip shafting Marisol. Sergi concealed the feeling of humiliation that particular suggestion triggered and stared blankly out of the window.
“Biutiful Barcelona, right?’ he asked the man with an equally blank expression who was sitting next to him.
It was a quarter of an hour’s drive from Sant Adrià to the abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Santa Coloma de Gramenet. The chauffeur stopped the car, the men got out and Senyor Benito took advantage of the change to sit next to Sergi.
“We’d better get a move on, because I’ve got to meet the Russians at six. Where do we have to drive this time?”
Sergi took two deep breaths.
“Uncle, I have to tell you something …”
“What’s the matter?”
“The money in Panama has gone. The bank took it.”
“What do you mean, ‘the bank took it’?”
“You know, banks are a load of thieves,” Sergi went on, apologetically. “It’s a bit like what happened with that pyramid selling, except it happened in Panama and investors have lost all their money.”
“Everything?”
“Brexit is clearly to blame,” Sergi added, grim-faced.
“Brexit?” Senyor Benito furrowed his brows. “What the hell has Brexit got to do with Panama and my money?”
“It’s all to do with the collapse of the City of London. The international markets have lost it, you know, as nobody knows what the repercussions might be when the UK leaves Europe. As all economies are now connected —”
“The fucking English … Never did like them! They come here, get drunk, get as pink as prawns, jump off balconies, and spend sod all … And drink so many pintas they don’t have time to sniff … I do very little business with Englishmen. Let alone Englishwomen, who all dress as if they were whores!”
“Maybe we’ll get something back over time …” Sergi suggested. “But for now, don’t get your hopes up, Uncle. Look what happened to the banks. They lost investors’ money, were given millions by the government and not a single director has ended up in jail.”
“It’s a scandal. Can’t trust a soul these days!”
“Too right!”
Senyor Benito was beside himself. He wanted blood and guts, people hung, drawn and quartered, but Sergi managed to persuade him there was no point catching a plane and turning up at his bank’s headquarters in Panama brandishing a shotgun. What’s more, he added, his contacts had warned him that his bank was in Interpol’s sights and if he personally went to ask for his money back, they’d arrest him for tax evasion and put him in the slammer.
“And, believe me, the clink in Panama is nothing like here …” Sergi was quick to add. “The Model was a five-star hotel compared to prisons over there.”
“So what am I supposed to do now? Where should I keep my money?” Senyor Benito asked, beside himself.
“If you like, I can look into opening an account in Switzerland …”
Senyor Benito hesitated a few seconds before he replied.
“You know what, Sergi? I reckon we should forget all this tax haven malarkey and go back to the old tried and tested system.”
“What system, uncle?”
“Stuffing our money in our mattresses.”