“Drizzle?”
“Plugim.”My Catalan was just about enough for this job some days. I watched him start again, keeping an eye on Tia, who was knocking back the first Zombie like it was water in a desert. She was another good kid, but she’d just split with her girlfriend and it seemed like she was finding an escape that was only going to lead to the hangover from hell.
I knew all about those. I didn’t recommend them.
I watched Rico as he made the next Zombie, the proportions of the four types of rum needing to be balanced, then the lime and lemon juice enough so that the drink wasn’t sweet, but the tartness wasn’t there. We hadn’t gone for the cheap spirits that some bars on Sunset Strip would. Any cocktail could taste okay with a bit of fruit juice and okay mixers, even if your spirits were no more than paint stripper. But the better quality alcohol would always be smoother, a head that didn’t thump quite as much, and the buzz would be more mellow. That was what got you the repeat customers. That was what built a business.
That, and the showmanship of your bartending, which Rico would have, once he’d mastered the art of mixology. He had the pretty-boy looks that would attract the young girls and the gay men, and a grin that looked dirty enough to give one of the princesses who’d been here earlier a good time.
He put half a pomegranate on top, added a half spoon of demerara sugar and set it alight, a slight cheer going up at the other end of the bar.
Rico passed it to me. “Better?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” I waited for the flame to die down before knocking the fruit out of the way with my finger and taken a mouthful. “Good. You’ll pass. That’s another five knocked off your list.” I kept hold of the almost-perfect Zombie rather than giving it to Tia. Another two drinks and she needed cutting off and taking home, her phone removed from her until the morning so she didn’t make any bad decisions.
I wasn’t usually this bothered about the people who worked for me. Còctels had nothing to do with my other interests, apart from that it involved me. This was a nice bar, in a nice part of the island, where nice people would come to drink and enjoy life. I could teach a few of the kids some skills around mixology and they could do with those skills what they wished. Some would go and work elsewhere on the island, where the tips were better and there was more prestige. Others would leave Ibiza. There would be a few who got involved with the dark side of the White Isle, because every place that looked like this had a dark side.
I knew it well.
“Maura, you good to lock up?”
My bar manager nodded. She was serving at the other end of the bar, her Zombies having already been perfect from the day she got the job. I paid her well, and she coped with my irregular shifts.
I leaned over and grabbed my helmet and keys, my bike coated in the day’s dust outside. I knew how to drive on the island but too many other people didn’t have a fucking clue.
Playa d’en Bossa was on the south-east of the island and was one of Ibiza’s party centres. May was when the island woke up from its hibernation and clubbers from all over the world started to migrate to the place where you partied all night and slept on the beach all day. But there was more to the island than that and you didn’t have to look that hard to find it, if you were sober.
Fifteen minutes from leaving Santa Gertrudis, a cloud of dust was coughed up when I pulled up outsideEl Jove i Bell,a hotel, restaurant and club that ran onto the beach at Bossa. I took the back entrance, having no fucking intention of giving anyone the heads up that I was here.
The art of surprise wasn’t something I was known for.
Colm Kelly was sitting with his fat arse at his desk, his trousers undone and a hooker with her mouth wrapped round his cock when I opened the door to his office.
He should’ve learned by now to lock the thing, especially as his wife was currently looking for an excuse to divorce him and bleed him dry – just not in the same way the hooker was.
I waited. He had his eyes shut, there was heavy breathing, and he was clearly on the verge of getting his money’s worth.
This was nothing I hadn’t seen before.
I saw the hooker clench her fist as my uncle came in her mouth, and I looked away at that point. Some things you couldn’t unsee and I didn’t need to see this again.
Hookers weren’t my thing. Weren’t needed and were a step into a world that I didn’t want a part of. On a party island, anything went. If there was money to be made, people would want a piece of it. All of these were true of where I stood right now.
Out of the huge window I could see the start of sunset, the Ibizan sky turning that hazy blue, streaks of yellow staining it.
Too good a background for Uncle Colm.
I heard him doing up his zipper, then a forced giggle from the girl.
“You want to use her services? My treat?” Colm’s tone suggested this was perfectly acceptable behaviour. For him, it was pretty fucking polite.
“I’ll pass, but thanks for the offer. You need a few minutes to clean up?” The room stank.
He shook his head, standing up and doing up his belt. “We’ll take a walk. See what’s happening.”
“Sure. But I’ve not come for a tour.”
Colm shook his head and straightened his suit jacket. He was only fifteen years older than me, still had a trainer two or three times a week, looked not that much older than my thirty-one. Mainly because of the Botox and dermal fillers that we all pretended not to notice, because Colm would be pissed if we did. A pissed Colm was not a nice one.
