Authors: Adam Creed
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #FF, #FGC
Death in the Sun (13 page)
Pepa looks out through the window of what used to be the animal quarters at the bottom of Staffe’s house. The room she is staying in is mainly below ground and its window affords a view of the forelocks of the neighbouring mules as they are loaded up for the trip down to the
campo
.
She hears Staffe ease his front door closed and wonders where he is going at this hour, but she has her own agenda and his absence suits her fine. She watches the frayed hems of his jeans
fandango
between the mules.
Manolo has been gone four days now and Staffe checks his friend’s front door. Satisfied that nobody is home, and checking around him to make sure he is not seen, he backtracks and clambers up onto the track along the back of Manolo’s house, which nestles into a slope and from here, he can see onto the terrace at the back. It is where Manolo dries his peppers; his clothes, too. The wall at the back of the house is old, unrendered, and pitted with eroded stone.
Staffe sticks his boot into a hole in the blockwork and lifts himself off the ground, reaching for another crack with his hand, and then another for his free boot. Two more moves and he feels the lip of the flat roof. As he stretches, he feels a zag of pain across his chest. He hauls himself up onto the roof, scratching his stomach and hooking his leg up over the slate edging and onto the mud and shale roof.
From here, he can see across the roofs and terraces of his neighbours. He picks out his own, thinks he sees something on his terrace. Could it be Pepa? When he had left, there was no sign of life from her.
Staffe steps carefully between the racks of drying peppers on the roof – propped up with rocks to make the best angle to the sun – and tests the hatch that leads into the house. It is closed from inside, but through its gauze he can see it is only held by a flimsy hook into an eye, so he puts his boot to the frame and the hatch swings inward.
He goes in backwards, feeling with his feet for stairs that lead down. There are no windows in this room and it is cool, dark. The smell of
jamón
and fried peppers is ingrained; sweet and deep.
The house is sparely furnished, with nothing on the walls in the hall and stairwell. Throughout, the tiled floors are highly polished. The place is brilliantly clean and as Staffe enters the main salon, he is astonished to see a fully loaded bookcase of novels and reference books.
A fine shotgun leans against the bookshelf and Staffe takes it in hand, breaks it, sees it is unloaded and he snaps it back, weighing it up for balance. When he lines up the sights, something feels wrong. Perhaps it is not as fine a weapon as it appears. He places the stock on the floor again and rests the barrel against the bookcase, then sits in an armchair draped in a brightly coloured, woven throw. It is the only chair in a room not furnished for company.
He regards the books on Manolo’s shelves. Lorca and Cervantes are here, and a giant, two-volume Collins Spanish–English dictionary. Amongst the prints on the walls is a framed certificate from the convent school in Mecina.
Staffe stands, inspects the certificate, sees that Manolo had passed his
obligatoria
with distinction, gaining a
bachillerato
scholarship to the College of the Sacred Heart in Granada. From everything that Staffe knows about Manolo, he never attended Sacred Heart. He considers what he knows, for sure, about Manolo: how he came to be his friend. Certainly, the first meeting was at Manolo’s instigation – coming across to him, asking him about his background and soon discussing the English police he knew from the television, offering him drink after drink and producing proudly from a pocket his own, home-made black pudding. The friendship was truly cemented when Staffe had defended his new friend in that fight in Mecina.
He looks across to the Bargueno desk, a beautifully carved chest on high, turned legs. He pulls down the wooden leaf to reveal a three-tiered bank of small drawers. In the left-hand drawer on the bottom row, Staffe removes an elegantly written invitation, embossed in gold leaf, inviting Manolo Cano to the funeral of Gustav Hesse.
Gustav Hesse? The name is familiar. It is the same as on the document Staffe had concealed in Raúl’s roof. Manolo invited to the funeral‚ and Raúl hiding a copy of the last will and testament‚ of Gustav Hesse.
*
As soon as Pepa saw Staffe disappear through the hatch into Manolo’s house, she descended swiftly from his terrace and left, walking quickly along the edge of the lower
barrio
. She kept her head down and made her way along the
acequia
in accordance with the instructions she was given. The spiky reeds along the irrigation channel scratched her legs and twice she nearly fell, cursing aloud.
Where the
acequeia
curves down and away towards the
campo
, Pepa makes an arc, through the olive grove, back into the village. Sure enough, a large house with a grand portal stands high, fitting the description. It has no number. The doorway is neoclassical and out of place, cracked down its plinth; the entire façade is flaked away. On the top floor, the rusted balcony sports fresh geraniums – the only clue that it may not be derelict.
Again, as instructed, Pepa knocks once and waits; then knocks twice and steps back, looking up. A key descends, lowered on baling twine from the ironwork balcony.
She lets herself in, smells cured, sweet animal fat, and the ingrained pall of burnt wood and thyme. She climbs the eroded, stone stairs.
‘To the top!’ calls Immaculada.
‘I’m coming,’ responds Pepa, and by the first landing, the mustiness has diminished. The stairwell becomes lighter and the house floods with the smell of fresh flowers. The walls are hung with woollen rugs and Moorish plates.
‘Here!’ calls Immaculada and Pepa gets her breath, looks around, following the light into an
acotea
where the old woman is rocking in a chair by the opening which looks across the wide valley to the Contraviesa mountains. To the left, Mount Gador reigns, like an autocrat.
‘You’re a skinny little thing,’ says Immaculada.
Pepa puts down her bag and instinctively dips into the side pocket for her notebook and pen.
‘No,’ says Immaculada, placing her hands slowly to her head, running them deliberately around her face. ‘Nothing official. Not ever, you hear. This is purely for your understanding.’
Pepa nods, replaces the tools of her trade.
Immaculada is extremely thin and her hair is white and thick. Her eyes are watery but they glimmer. She is dressed in black – not the way the village widows dress but in a pinafore top and linen trousers. ‘I have made
gazpacho
. You will take some?’
‘Yes, please,’ says Pepa, taken aback. She thought Immaculada would be living up here in some kind of squalor – a woman in mourning, withdrawing into a dark past. Looking out of the
acotea
, she sees how verdant the
campo
is, despite the long, scorching summer. When Immaculada returns with the
gazpacho
, Pepa says, ‘You have a wonderful view.’
Immaculada puts the tray down. ‘Of the future and the past.’ She hands Pepa a tumbler of the chilled soup and breathes heavily. ‘Hugo is out there.’ She says ‘Hugo’ like ‘You-go’, and points to a V-shape in the landscape where the sea comes and goes. ‘This lot’ – she stabs a thumb over her shoulder – ‘they live in the past. I don’t shy away from my future. I know what happens beyond this valley. Spain is new and the world is bigger than it ever was.’
‘Did he show you that?’
Immaculada smiles. ‘He showed me everything.’
A landscape painting hangs on the wall. The frame is splintered and the canvas is bleached by the weather. Pepa recognises the period it is from and knows that, whilst it is not the very best Barrington painted, were it well conserved it could fetch sufficient to buy an apartment in Gabo or San José and maybe enough left over to keep a maid.
‘It’s a beautiful painting. Were you together then?’
‘We were always together. And never. He needed space, and I never liked it up there or that awful Tangier.’
‘Up where?’
‘In those
cortijos
. That’s a man’s world.’
‘Did you go to Tangier?’
‘I went once.’
‘With your daughter?’
Immaculada’s eyes glaze over and she looks up towards Gador. ‘His later work, I’m not so sure about. They say it is magical. So magical it disappeared.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘For a foreign market. He said he was painting one for me, but it never materialised. He never lied to me. Not once. I knew everything he was up to when he and Rubio went off.’
‘It would be worth a fortune, if there was another painting. A last Barrington,’ Pepa ventures.
‘For what purpose? I won’t be here for ever.’
‘What about your daughter? She is your one and only?’
‘The first and last, poor thing. I devoted myself entirely.’
‘To your daughter?’
Immaculada smiles, with sadness in her glimmering eyes. ‘When you say “no” all your life – that is a pure love. And Guadalupe is a pure love. His legacy.’
Pepa wants to ask about Barrington’s other lovers, wants to know how he coped with being so adored. Instead, she says, ‘You must love Guadalupe very much.’
‘I am not a good mother. In fact, I am something of a bad witch when it comes to family.’
‘Your father was mayor.’
‘He deserved better than the children he got.’
‘Your brother, Edu, didn’t get on with Hugo?’
‘Edu was too busy trying to fill my father’s shoes to give Hugo a chance.’
‘He wants to be mayor?’
‘He thinks sitting under a tree with an olive net and a bottle will do it. The things we crave can be our greatest curse and he blamed Hugo for his own failings.’
‘Perhaps Edu was being protective. You know what brothers can be like.’
‘He was ashamed of me and I’m sure he still is. Sometimes I think it’s because he couldn’t find a love of his own, he tried to destroy mine. But you came to talk about Hugo. Did he do something terrible? What made you come now?’ Immaculada plays with her crucifix, which is white gold and like a tiny Modigliani – a wiry Jesús nailed to his cross. She seems to drift away, to another place. ‘Hugo didn’t believe. The only bad thing he ever did was to question that. I think he might have been a little jealous of my faith.’ She dabs her eye with the cuff of her pinafore top. ‘So I forgive him.’
‘For what?’
Immaculada purses her lips and sets her jaw, looks straight at Pepa. ‘I stopped believing for a while. A short while, but that’s when everything went wrong. I have made my peace.’ She drinks her
gazpacho
in small swallows, keeping her mouth to the lip of the terracotta tumbler and slowly tipping it higher and higher. She deliberately sets down the tumbler on an inlaid, Moroccan coffee table, wipes her mouth with the back of her index finger, and says, ‘I’m not long for the world.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ says Pepa.
‘I only hope I can be forgiven.’ She hands Pepa a piece of paper‚ makes the pass with trembling fingers, suddenly looking weak, as if she is running out of fuel. ‘You know, I remember Raúl. I would have spoken to him if I could. There’s not many you can trust. I hope you are the same, and I will never see my name in black and white.’
Pepa says, ‘All I want is to find out how he died.’
‘I remember him as a boy. He was the head of the house as a young man when his father abandoned them.’ Immaculada coughs and her eyes water. ‘Pass me those.’ She points to a blister pack of pills. ‘Give me two and go.’
‘Can I get you some help?’
‘God bless you. No.’
Pepa rinses out the tumbler in the makeshift kitchen and fills it with water. She waits with Immaculada until she has swallowed her tablets down. It takes several attempts and when she is done, Pepa takes back the tumbler. ‘Before I go, could I ask what first drew you to Hugo.’
Immaculada’s mouth spreads almost into a smile. ‘When he was there, the world wasn’t. It was worth it.’
‘Worth it?’
‘When he was away, I was empty.’
‘He was a good father?’
‘Guadalupe was his gift.’ Immaculada looks down into her lap, as if she might have something to be ashamed of. ‘A gift to me, too. You know where to find her now, so you must ask Lupe what a father he was.’ She beckons Pepa with a wavering finger, signifying it is time to go. ‘Whatever she says, I don’t want to know.’
Pepa kisses Immaculada on the forehead.
‘What we feel – ’ she puts her hand on her breast ‘– chooses us. We can’t help it.’
‘You stayed here after he died. I bet they didn’t make it easy for you.’
‘In all my life, I was touched by one man. Just him. Not many of them can say that.’
‘You could have made a new life.’
‘Some things, you don’t change.’
‘But Guadalupe moved away. You could have gone with her.’
‘My place is here. It always was.’ Her eyes close.
Pepa waits for the sleep to gain depth, then removes Immaculada’s shoes, lays a shawl across her lap, and leaves, reading the note she gave her, knowing exactly where to find Guadalupe.
Professor Peralta’s battered yellow Seat Bocanegra is parked up outside the
hostal
on the Mecina road. He calls to Staffe, ‘Climb in!’
The car is airless and stiflingly hot. Staffe asks, ‘Where is your friend from the Cuerpo?’
Peralta prods a thumb over his right shoulder. On the back seat, from within a bundle of blankets, a mop of unruly brown hair emerges, then a tortured face. ‘He has bad guts and drinks too much and he has the temerity to blame it on your mountain roads. This is Cortes. Would you believe he is an inspector in our esteemed Cuerpo Nacional, and a fine scholar in his time. Now, merely a common drunk.’
‘Fuck off, prof,’ says Cortes, pulling the blankets back over his head.
Peralta spins the wheels, veering off onto the dirt track, kicking up high, red dust. After ten minutes of switchback driving and cursing from beneath the blankets, Staffe points to the wood. Peralta screeches to a halt, jabs Cortes where his head appears to be, and says, ‘Get your tools out, you drunken cunt. We’re here!’
Cortes gets out, shakes himself down, slicks back his hair, and applies his cap. Amazingly, stood perfectly erect, Cortes now looks as though he was born to fit the uniform. The power of permacrease. He lifts open the boot and pulls out a long, silver tool case and a camera bag, which he hands to Staffe, then a shovel, which he hands to Peralta. ‘Mightier than the pen,’ he laughs, and they all tramp into the woods‚ Cortes leading, walking directly towards the site.
‘You know where it is,’ says Staffe. ‘How?’
‘Where would you plant a body in this wood?’
‘As deep as you can get, and away from the stream.’
‘That is why you and I are entrusted with the law.’ He gives Peralta a dirty look, ‘And other pricks simply fuck about with the truth of the matter.’
At the grave, Cortes chucks down his cap and his jacket, rolls up his sleeves and takes the spade from Peralta, stabbing away at the ground around the bones until he is close enough to the bone to switch to a trowel, deftly revealing the ribs. He is like an artist at an easel and is soon brushing away the earth to show three-quarters of the circumference of the bones. ‘If I do any more, the bastards from the War Legacies will have my bollocks. And there’s a danger he’ll collapse.’
‘He?’ says Staffe. ‘It couldn’t be a woman?’
Cortes looks closely at the skeleton. ‘Do you want it to be a woman?’
Staffe considers Cortes’ question, says nothing.
‘It would be easier if we could appraise the pelvic bones. I can’t really tell from the brow.’ He leans even closer. ‘It’s not
too
pronounced.’ He taps the small bump at the back of the skull. ‘But this suggests it is a man. And we have a small fracture here. See?’
Staffe steps forward, sees a fine crack in the cranium.
‘But that looks as if it happened prior to death. A few years. This looks like trabecular bone.’
‘You mean healed?’
‘I can’t be sure. But look at the slope of the shoulders, the depth of the rib cage . . .’ He stands, puts his hands on his hips. ‘It would have to be a big woman.’
‘She was tall.’
Cortes shoots Staffe a look. ‘You know who this is?’
‘They want it to be a war crime, but it’s not.’
‘Now you’re doing my job for me. It’s too early to say what it is.’
‘It’s buried vertically. Probably kneeling – to look like a
ladrones
execution?’
‘Be careful, inspector.’ Cortes gives Peralta a dirty look. ‘There’s no such thing as a
ladrones
.’
‘It’s entirely consistent with what is known as a
ladrones
,’ says Peralta.
Cortes picks up his shovel, starts to fill in the body.
‘What are you doing?’ says Staffe.
Cortes says, ‘It’s not a war crime. So it’s beyond my terms of reference.’ Cortes places his forefinger on a tissue of skin beneath the skeleton’s arm. ‘They died a long time ago, but I don’t think it’s seventy years.’
When Cortes is done, Staffe asks the question again. ‘How old do you think it is?’
Cortes looks over Staffe’s shoulder. ‘Ask him.’
Staffe turns to see the slight figure of Comisario Sanchez approaching from the southern fringe of the wood. Alongside him is Pepa. When Staffe catches her eye, she looks quickly away, lets Sanchez move ahead.
Comisario Sanchez regards Peralta and Cortes with suspicion, but when he shakes Staffe by the hand, he puts on a broad smile. In the cool shade of the mountain copse, an aura of cologne surrounds Sanchez. It is 4711, he thinks.
‘What are you doing here?’ says Staffe, relaxing the pressure of his grip within the handshake.
Sanchez smiles. He maintains his grip. ‘Shouldn’t I be asking why you are here?’
‘I live here.’
‘On borrowed time, so people are telling me.’
‘You’re a long way from home,
comisario
,’ says Cortes. ‘But I suppose this is a kind of homecoming for you.’
Sanchez moves away, stands over the buried body, taking in every detail of the head and shoulders. He removes a Cohiba cigar from its case and discards the gold and black paper ring. Without looking up, he says, ‘Cortes, if you’re here, this must be a ghost.’
‘I’ll write my report.’
‘And I’ll read it. Now cut the shit and tell me what we have here. A ghost, right?’
Cortes says, ‘We can’t be sure. It might be too recent. We’ll need to test, but talking of the past, do they still welcome you back in these parts,
comisario
, after you left in such haste?’
*
Quesada arrived soon after Sanchez called him, bringing two
guardia
who have now cordoned off a twenty-metre radius around the body. Watching the
guardia
taking over the body, Cortes says to Sanchez, ‘I see you and Quesada have made your peace, but I still don’t understand what brings you up here?’
‘One of my citizens died in this village last week. And now a body is found. I am just making sure it is coincidence; that everything is as it appears to be.’ Sanchez takes two steps closer to Cortes, lowers his voice. ‘This is a shameful execution from a terrible time for Spain. Unless you have evidence to prove another crime was committed, it will be documented as a ghost. Correct?’
‘I will write my report,’ says Cortes.
‘And I will see it finds its rightful place in our body of evidence. Give my regards to your
c
omisario
.’
Cortes tramps off, downcast, and Peralta follows, saying to Staffe, ‘Watch yourself up here – there’s snakes.’
Staffe keeps his eye on them, sees Cortes toss his camera onto the passenger seat and get into the back of Peralta’s Bocanegra. As they drive off, Cortes catches Staffe’s eye, throws a scrunched-up ball of paper out of the car and Staffe immediately makes his way across to where it fell and plants his boot on it, waiting for Sanchez to drive past in his Jeep. Sanchez pulls up and Staffe says, ‘Regardless of the truth we get, Cortes’s report will make interesting reading.’
‘Who do you think you are? How could you possibly get to see that report?’ And with that, he drives off.
Quesada says to Staffe, ‘Death seems to be following you around.’
‘It’s vice versa. And we’re policeman. That’s how it is.’
‘You’re no policeman. Not in my country.’
‘You told me you didn’t go to Barrington’s funeral.’
‘What makes you think I did?’
‘I saw you in a photograph, watching proceedings.’
‘I was in the vicinity. But I wasn’t
at
the funeral,’ says Quesada, turning his back, following Sanchez down the mountain.
Before the clouds of dust have dispersed, Staffe kneels down, picks up the scrunched ball of paper and makes his way up to Marie’s terrace, where she and Pepa are talking.
‘What was that?’ Pepa asks as Staffe slumps into a deckchair.
‘You came here with Sanchez,’ says Staffe, straightening out the scrunched notes that Cortes had discarded.
Pepa shakes her head. ‘I was on the road and he offered me a lift. I was coming here anyway.’
‘On your way to a good story, hey? Will Sanchez dictate it for you – like he did to Raúl for Jens Hansen’s murder story?’
‘If I don’t write it, somebody else will.’
‘How did you know there was a body up here?’
‘I didn’t. Sanchez asked where your sister’s
cortijo
is. What was I supposed to do – let him come here on his own, with his own devices?’
‘Such a good Samaritan all of a sudden.’
‘What did you pick up off the road before?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Those are his notes – that
cuerpo
from Granada.’
‘Why were you coming up here anyway?’
‘You know Barrington had an affair with a woman in the village?’
‘The consensus is that there was more than one, but I presume you’re talking about Edu’s sister.’
‘Immaculada.’
‘She lives like a hermit in a big old house in the middle of the village. She won’t speak to anyone.’
‘Well, she spoke to me. She has a daughter, Guadalupe.’
‘With Barrington?’
‘And the daughter is living in Granada.’
‘How the hell did you get that out of her?’
‘
La Lente
is an old and trusted organ, feeding these people the truth since before Franco.’
‘We can’t be sure the daughter is Barrington’s.’
‘Immaculada is not a sentimental woman. She is bruised and she has the daughter on her conscience. I think she is dying.’
‘What exactly would be on her conscience?’
‘That she loves the man who shamed her – even though he didn’t stand by her. That she loves him more than she loves her own daughter. That she was not a good mother.’
‘And how does telling you make it any better for her?’
‘I think she was rather fond of Raúl, and she is running out of time. Everyone here thinks she is a harlot and her daughter is a bastard. If she waits much longer, other people will tell her story; and his.’
‘It’s all right for her to say her daughter is in Granada. That’s hardly a story. Granada is a big place.’
‘I have an address.’
‘No!’
‘What’s happened?’ says Marie, coming out of the
cortijo
with olives and almonds and a chunk of sheep’s cheese.
Pepa takes off her sunglasses. Her dark eyes glisten. ‘Guilli wants me to do something, but I can’t.’
The three of them eat and make small chat about the view and the end of summer. Pepa compliments Marie on the cheese and they discuss how to make
papas a lo pobre
until Paolo’s truck comes rattling up the track.
‘Did Edu ever mention a last Barrington?’ says Pepa. ‘Immaculada says he painted it for her, but it never materialised.’
Paolo stops his truck. He looks as if he might turn around and go straight back down the mountain, but when the two
guardia
overseeing the body stand up, he thinks twice, gets out and walks slowly towards the house, head bowed. ‘What’s happened?’ he asks, looking briefly at Pepa but avoiding the admonishing looks from Marie and Staffe.
‘I think you know,’ says Marie.
He looks across to the cordon of crime tape around the wood. ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’
‘Not telling me is enough to make me worry. It was your idea to come and live here, remember? You’re supposed to protect me from harm.’
‘Did you discover the body?’ asks Pepa.
‘This is a family matter, if you don’t mind,’ says Marie, trying to be polite.
‘I should go. I need to get to Granada.’
‘We need to talk,’ says Staffe, following Pepa down the track as Marie lays into Paolo. At the edge of the first
bancale
, Staffe says, ‘You’re going to Granada? We can help each other.’
‘I can help you is what you mean.’ Pepa looks down the mountain, picks out the track that will take her to the village. ‘I’ll leave your key with Salva. Thanks for putting me up.’
‘Let’s go together.’
‘You said we could help each other. I told you about Immaculada’s daughter and the last Barrington‚ so tell me what Cortes left for you.’
Staffe pulls out the crumpled note which Cortes threw from the car. He hands it across and Pepa reads:
This body is most definitely not a ghost from the war
.
‘This brings it home,’ says Pepa.
‘Brings it home?’
‘If Cortes is right, it brings it home that Sanchez is covering something up. You should stay here, look after your own side of things. You know Sanchez is from Mecina. He left the mountains in a hurry and nobody wants to talk about why.’
Paolo fires up his truck and Staffe says, ‘We should go to Granada together.’
‘I have to pack, but I’m not hanging around. I’ll give you an hour and then I’m going.’
Staffe watches Pepa go down along the goat’s trail that leads straight to the village, and hears Paolo coming down the main track. They look each other in the eye as the truck trundles towards Staffe and Paolo sounds the horn, doesn’t slow. The track is too narrow for Paolo to steer around Staffe and Paolo hits the brakes but the wheels seize and the truck slides, lurching and kicking up large stones and Staffe has to take two quick steps back. The truck shudders and stalls, jolting a final time and scraping its bumper down Staffe’s thighs. He staggers back, grimacing.
‘What the fuck!’ shouts Paolo.
‘You really don’t want to talk,’ shouts Staffe. ‘Why is that?’
‘Get out of my way!’
The two
guardia
stir into life, are ambling down to see what is going on. ‘Do you want them involved?’ says Staffe, walking around the truck, climbing up into the passenger seat. Paolo lets the truck start rolling and the engine rattles up. ‘Why didn’t you tell Marie about the body?’
‘I’ve given her my reasons.’
‘Now tell me.’
‘Why are you always sticking your nose in?’
‘I spoke to the people in CasaSol. They told me Jackson Roberts found the buyer for El Nido.’
‘What if he did?’
‘That means you knew Jackson before you came out here.’
The track is heavily bouldered and narrow, with sharp turns and steep dips. Time and again, Paolo mounts the verge to avoid the largest of the rocks, precipitous drops on the passenger side. He does it deftly and rolls a cigarette as he goes. Staffe can’t help but admire his style.