Death in the Sun (11 page)

Staffe identifies his quarry, steps into the fat man’s path, saying, ‘Amodor Piquet?’

‘Who the hell are you?’ says Piquet, outside the coroner’s office down by Almería port. Piquet is the same height as Staffe, but with a bulging sack of a belly and a rush of curly brown hair.

‘I saw you down in the plastic where the Dane, Hansen, was murdered.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘And I knew Raúl Gutiérrez.’

‘So?’

‘There wasn’t much blood in the car.’

‘Of course there was.’

‘Raúl’s car hit the other side of the bridge. Explain that.’

‘Who do you think you are?’ Piquet pushes past Staffe.

‘Hansen was no run-of-the-mill drug killing. They say there is antagonism, down in the plastic. The farmers aren’t getting their water; not since the golf courses.’

Piquet is out of breath from the short walk to his car. ‘I am a busy man.’

‘Strange, then, that they allocate you such disparate bodies to pronounce upon. Why are you assigned to a car crash in Almagen?’

‘If you have anything to say, talk to the
comisario
.’

‘Sanchez? Actually, I want to see the police reports and the autopsy photograph of the Dane. Can that be arranged?’ Staffe takes out his wallet.

‘Go fuck yourself.’

‘I have friends in the press.’

‘Believe me, you don’t want to see those photographs. And there’s no way we would ever let them get out. You wouldn’t believe the state that poor bastard was in. It’s a miracle we got an ID.’

‘But you did. And the farmers still have no water. And up the road they charge a hundred and fifty for a round of golf.’

‘All I can do is assign a cause. It is a pure truth, not like yours. They don’t afford me the luxury of speculation. I can’t flash my badge and bully people.’

Staffe steps aside, pocketing the new truth: Piquet knows he is police. How could he know that, when Staffe didn’t get as far as showing his warrant card? As Piquet gets into his car, Staffe says, ‘Is it true that the Dane was dead before they buried him?’

Piquet looks up at Staffe, his mouth open. He starts up the car and says, ‘You have proof?’

‘You have the proof.’

‘Precisely.’

*

Pepa is in the tiny
comedor
at the back of the Quinta Toro with Angel, the father of Jesús. He plies her with chicken livers in a rich, thick gravy with its hint of star anise.

She says, ‘You must be proud of Jesús.’

‘He is a bright boy. He will do well, but he could have had this.’ Angel places a hand on his shiny pate and gestures around him. ‘The way I had it from my father. Perhaps some day, if he does the right thing, it will be his. And there for
his
children.’

Pepa thinks of the way her brother, Hilario, followed his father into the sea. She looks around, thinks the Quinta Toro might not be quite what it was. There was a time when there’d be six staff on the go. Now, Angel seems to be managing with just one woman to help him in the kitchen.

‘There is something you wish Jesús to do?’ says Angel.

‘You know Manolo is missing?’

Angel shrugs. ‘He’s an independent one.’

‘You heard about the journalist who died?’

‘Of course – it was in Manolo’s village.’ Angel stops himself dead in his tracks. His eyebrows come to meet each other. ‘He was drunk, they say.’

‘He was a friend of mine.’

‘My God.’ Angel stares into nothing. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m not convinced my friend Raúl died the way the police say.’

‘But that was up in the mountains. Jesús is in Almería.’

‘You’re his father, Angel. Can’t you ask him to help me? Your nephew is missing. Sometimes, two plus two is four.’

‘That Dane, Hansen, who died in the plastic was a druggie. Bad things come to people like that. My Jesús didn’t join the force to save lost souls. No good will come of this.’ He stands. ‘But if Manolo is missing . . .’ He looks at his phone, clicks a button, and says, ‘I’ll tell Jesús. But now, I must get on.’

As Pepa goes, she can still taste the chicken livers. She will be back for more, some other day. In the meantime, she calls the Cuerpo headquarters, not content to wait and see if Angel bothers to trouble his son.

*

Staffe shades his eyes from the high sun and makes his way up the alleyway to Raúl’s flat, looks up at the room which bridges each side of the small street. What a place for a journalist to write about the world, looming above it like that, its people passing beneath.

His phone rings and he sees it is Marie. His heart stops for a moment. ‘Is it the baby?’ he says.

‘I’ve seen something,’ whispers Marie. ‘Can you come?’

‘I’m in Almería.’

The line falls silent.

‘What is it?’ he says.

Marie whispers so quietly he can almost feel her breath. ‘Can you come tonight?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘You must. But call first. I’ll make sure Paolo isn’t here. I can send him to the village.’

‘What’s he done? I’ll . . .’

‘Nothing, Will. I don’t think it’s him.’

‘Tell me what it is.’

‘It’s a body, Will.’

‘What!’

‘I have to go.’

He stares at the phone, sees she has gone. He tries to call her back but as he waits for the connection, someone comes out of Raúl’s building and he holds the door for them. It is a woman with a pushchair. He fusses over the baby, waves them off, and sidles in, stealing up the stairs. On the first floor landing, he reaches up to the lintel, feels for a key, pulls down the plum.

Staffe lets himself in quickly because someone is coming in through the main door. Their steps echo up the stone stairwell and he reaches up, replaces the key and holds his breath. Inside, he goes straight to the study and draws the curtains closed, checking as he does that nobody in the street can see.

*

Jesús is at the police compound up the coast on the road out towards Gabo. He looks at the red Alfa and immediately sees the two blue stripes on the passenger side that the journalist had mentioned. He has seen the photographs of the bridge up in the mountains, knows that anyone who cared could glean that the car must have hit the bridge on the opposite side and at the wrong end from where it had breached the bridge and plunged into the
barranco
.

‘What you up to?’ says a mechanic in overalls, ambling towards him with a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. He wipes a spanner on his thigh and looks at the tool, then at Jesús. ‘I’m going to crush that thing. We’ve stripped it for parts.

The wheels are off the Alfa and Jesús sees they’ve had the radio and the steering wheel.

‘I said, what you up to?’

Jesús wonders what he is up to, but the Englishman is his uncle’s friend, and now his uncle is missing. Last night, his father had sat in his chair rocking back and forth, looking at photographs of the family, some with Manolo as a boy. When he was done, Angel had said, ‘Jesús. You have to take care of this. For the family,’ and he had gone to bed, leaving Jesús to leaf through the album. He had forgotten what his father looked like with hair. Jesús has masses of strong, wavy hair and he wondered what his toll will be.

‘I need to look in the car.’ The window on the driver’s side is smashed and Jesús pokes his head in, jags of glass just inches beneath his throat. There is no splatter of dried blood on the pillar, where Raúl’s head would have impacted and no significant blood projections on the passenger seat, roof or dashboard consistent with the amount of blood that soaked Raul’s tattered shirt. ‘Did you clean this up? Was there more blood than this when it first came to you?’

‘I wasn’t told anybody would be round snooping.’

‘I only want to know the car’s condition.’

The mechanic taps the spanner against his leg.

Jesús says, ‘You were told to get rid of this car quick, right?’

The mechanic smiles, takes a step closer.

Jesús backs away, tips his cap, says, ‘It’s all right. I’ve seen what I came for.’ He turns his back and walks away, but as he gets into his car, the man with the spanner is onto the phone. Jesús sighs, wonders what he has allowed himself to become involved in.

He drives away, watching the mechanic fade in his rear-view mirror. Ahead of him, a few hundred yards away, the journalist waits. As he approaches, she raises her sunglasses, perches them in her hair. Her hair is glossy black and the breeze blows it across her face. She brushes it away and when she sees it is him, he could swear her eyes light up. It makes him fluttery in the stomach. But what should he tell her?

Jesús drops the glove compartment and puts the police report and the photograph of Hansen, the battered Dane, away.

‘What did you see?’ asks Pepa. She rests her bottom on the bonnet of his car and crosses her legs at the ankle.

‘Nothing new, I’m afraid.’

‘Were they pleased to see you?’

‘They’re only interested in what they can get for a wooden steering wheel.’

‘You didn’t stick around for long.’

He wants to ask if she would come to dinner with him. He wonders what her words might sound like, soft in his ear – further down the line. ‘The car has been scrapped.’

‘And what about the police report on Raúl?’

‘What about the report?’ She has a dimple on the top of her cheek, like the slash a baker puts in his dough.

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know anything about you.’

‘I’m a journalist. You will never be named. Not ever.’

‘I should know more.’ He shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

‘So take me for dinner.’

‘You’ll come out with me?’

‘Do you think I should trust a policeman? Especially a shy one.’

‘I’m not shy.’

‘Then you’re deceiving me.’ She stands up, reaches into the back pocket of her skirt, and pushes a piece of paper into his chest, presses her fingers on him as she says, ‘Call me and we can talk properly, but bring the report, and a photo of the Dane, if you can.’

When she is gone, he gets the report from the glove compartment, reads it again. Gutiérrez’s clothes were stained with significant spatterings of blood, yet there was very little blood on the fabric and frame of the car. He knows this because it was on the first report he read, but not the final, official report to which the coroner referred in his ultimate declaration.

And as for Piquet’s declarations, Jesús looked at the report for the other body – the Dane in the plastic. The man had a dislocated jaw, broken nose and a fractured eye socket. Six of his ribs were cracked.

Jesús thinks twice, concerned at the transparency of
when
the coroner’s report claims things happened.

On 15 August – the day of the
fiesta
of the Virgin of the Sea – the Dane’s body was found and Jesús was called down to the plastic. Most of his colleagues were on annual leave, or tied up on
fiesta
duties. Fortunately – or not – he was close by, having attended a family dinner not a mile from where the Dane died, but it was not until the early hours of the 17th that the body was eventually removed from the plastic and taken to the Coroner. Jesús’s instructions even when he arrived at the scene shortly after the ambulance, had been clear. Under no circumstances at all was the body to be interfered with until Comisario Sanchez had come back from Majorca. Sanchez was holidaying with his family and he got the first available flight. But that didn’t stop the coroner dating his report ‘15 August’.

*

Staffe scrutinises the Barrington on Raúl’s wall. From the little he has managed to learn, it hails from Barrington’s middle period: still figurative, but experimenting with colour – not as much as in his later works.

He thinks that this painting might have been painted around 1980, when Raúl would have been a junior reporter. Even then, Barrington was a known artist and his work was collectable. The painting would have cost him many months’ salary. Of course, he could have inherited some money. Or he could have received it as a gift – were he an acquaintance, or something more.

Staffe sits in Raúl’s chair, at the desk from where you can see the top of the colonial façade of the Maritime Building. He looks for something he might have missed last time. The desk is Dutch and the oak is light, the patina beautifully deep and unblemished. It is a desk that has been loved. He pulls out the top drawer and it slides easily, comes all the way out, banging into his shins. A ream of blank paper falls to the floor and Staffe curses, then something else hits him. The drawer is too short.

He runs his hand along the desk, the way you might a lover’s shoulder in their sleep. He places the top drawer carefully on the floor. Then he pulls the bottom drawer all the way out and places it upon the top drawer. The bottom drawer is six inches longer.

Staffe stretches, takes a firm hold of the lips of either side of the writing surface, and heaves the top of the desk from its pedestals. He twists, places it on the floor, and feels a tweak in his side, rubs it, looking down on the frame of the desk, seeing what he wants.

To the rear of the top drawer is a secret compartment. He slides his hand in and feels around, but there is nothing there. He leans right over and squints into the dark void, sees an unevenness in the surface and runs his hand along again. His fingers snag and he takes a grip, yanks away a cardboard folder which was taped to the back of the front surface of the void.

Staffe holds his breath as he opens the folder, removes a series of photographs. One, he has seen before, it is the image from the exhibition with Roberts and Barrington, Rubio and the beautiful, dark Astrid. There is another picture of her alone, her eyes heavy and her smile far away. She is wearing a
burnous
and there are mountains behind, a sugar-cube village nestled into the fold of a mountain which could almost be the Alpujarras – except the houses are painted the lightest indigo. Clearly, it is North Africa.

In another photograph, Rubio and Jackson Roberts stand with a matching pair of Bultaco scrambling bikes, the red petrol tanks faded by the years. In the background, Barrington looks on from beneath a wide-brimmed, straw hat.