THE ENGLISH WITNESS (5 page)

“We thought it was alright with friends,” blustered
Steve, looking at me for support.

“We are friends of a sort, all the kids,”
replied Pablo. “We do things together, and we don’t let our parents’ politics
spoil things for us. But they’re not all Basques. And some of them, if they
were to talk at home…” He left the rest unsaid.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “And Steve…”

“I know,” he interrupted miserably. “I
started it, talking about the…”

“Don’t say it,” warned Pablo. “Not even
here. But if you want news of…your friend, then be at Kuba tomorrow evening.
And dress cool.”

We broke up, Pablo heading
back into the lanes while Steve and I went south towards the
ensanche.
Nothing was said for the first few hundred metres, but before turning the
lights out we agreed to keep the appointment with Pablo. As I lay awake
listening to Steve’s usual wet snoring I started to have strong misgivings, but
in the event pride and curiosity got the better of me.

Kuba stood by the roadside in splendid isolation, commanding an
impressive view over the serried ranks of hills that march south and west from
the nearby Pyrenees. It was the best nightclub in San Sebastián, and according
to some the best in northern Spain. To be honest it offered little that I
hadn’t seen in Manchester or Sheffield, but the desert island theme had been
carried through with obsessive attention to detail, the lighting was
extravagant and the sound system unusually large. All the same, the most
noticeable and disturbing feature was that the boys were dancing together at
one end of the floor and the girls at the other.

 Steve and I took part enthusiastically
at first, even managing to dance at arms’ length with a couple of the girls
before their own peer group called them to order. But we were out of it long
before we saw any sign of the people we’d come to meet. The volume had
increased to the point of physical pain. The gyrations of the boys and some of
the girls were more desperate, all self-consciousness blown away in the
drunkenness of adrenaline and dehydration. Songs with simple choruses had
become religious anthems as they chanted the words with their faces upturned in
ecstasy.

I didn’t begrudge them their fun. The
chance to flirt with the opposite sex from a distance, and to bond in an
innocently homoerotic way with their mates, was the most exciting thing most of
them had to look forward to. All the same, Steve and I drifted out of the
building. We were glad to get away from the noise, and we were not alone. Even
as the true worshippers poured themselves out on the dance floor, a number of
agnostics were standing outside on the forecourt in various states of boredom
or catatonia. And out here I noticed that the gender segregation was breaking
down, with a steady trickle of couples walking in and out of the darkness. The
night air was fresh and sweet, the stars brilliant and seemingly within arm's
reach, and as I stood gazing up in appreciation I became aware that someone
else had drifted over to join us.

I turned to see Pablo holding out his
hand, and I shook it. Without uttering anything but a curt greeting, he led the
two of us back into the club and up to the far end of the long bar. Once there,
our heads huddled together in order to hear one another above the bone-shaking sound
system, we made small talk for a couple of minutes. Then someone came over to
join us whom I had never seen before. He was a friendly enough guy, about my
age and build, and Pablo introduced him as Carlos. At first I assumed this to
be a chance encounter, but after a couple of minutes of strained head-to-head
conversation the stranger suddenly said, “So, you’re the heroes who helped
Txako get away. It’s an honour to meet you.”

It is not easy to gloss over it when
somebody calls you a hero. I imagine I blushed a bit. Then Carlos bought a
round of drinks, and, barely able though we were to make out one another’s words,
we raised our glasses in a series of toasts: to Txako, to us, to
osasuna
and one or two other Basque words that we didn’t recognise. It was all very
cheerful, but with our new acquaintance’s next words I crossed some kind of
threshold: “I’ve heard our friend is being well looked after, but if you want
to know more you’ll need to speak to Gato.”

Carlos wouldn’t say any more about this
Gato, but I could see no harm in accepting another drink – hopefully in a
quieter setting – from someone else who thought we were heroes. I said that
would be great and assumed Steve had done the same.

At the first chance, I left the heat and
noise of the building behind and stood beside the dark and empty shuttle-bus. I
climbed inside the moment the door was opened, and occupied an aisle seat until
Steve appeared and I slid across to the window. The journey back to the city
passed in a blur, but three things stand out in memory. The first is the smell
of sweat and hormones that filled the vehicle as the passengers boarded; the
second is the sight of Steve staring straight ahead throughout the journey as
if I wasn’t there; the third and most vivid is the statue of Jesus bathed in
floodlights on top of Monte Urgull—distant but clearly visible across the curve
of the bay as we reached the crest of Igeldo. His arm seemed outstretched
directly towards me, and I remember thinking about the symbolism as we began our
final descent into the city. I couldn’t decide whether it represented a warning
or a summons. Perhaps it was both. But that night nobody was listening, least
of all myself.

JACK

“So there were just the two of you involved at this point,” commented
Miguel, flicking back through his notes. “The girl you mentioned earlier, Gina,
does she have any further involvement?”

“Not directly. Nothing that would have a
bearing, I think.”

“But the guy, Steve, he was up to his neck
in this business. What’s he doing now?”

“No idea. We haven’t stayed in touch.
There was an atmosphere between us by this time, and we hardly said another
word to each other right up to the time we graduated. I blamed him for dragging
me into Txako’s affairs in the first place, and for chickening out when things
started to get weird. And I imagine he blamed me for not knowing when to quit,
although he can’t have any idea just how dangerous things got. The last I
heard, he was a successful stand-up comedian in Manchester. Very political. Not
very funny.”

“And did he have a role in the way things
developed from this point?”

“No. We carried on sharing lodgings until college
finished at the end of June, but as far as possible we avoided each other.”

“So at this stage the actors are you, a
casual acquaintance named Pablo, and a third person named Carlos to whom Pablo introduced
you in a nightclub. Then there’s a fourth man called Gato whom Carlos wants you
to meet. Do any of these people take on a significant role in your story?”

“Yes and no,” answered Jack after a
moment’s thought. “It’s complicated. Can I just tell it the way it happened? This
was a difficult time and it was forty years ago. You can see clearly enough what
you’re putting me through, and yet you keep interrupting the flow with
questions that could easily wait for a natural break. If you’re not careful I’m
going to lose the thread.”

JAMES

I’d taken quite a liking to Carlos during our few minutes together at
Kuba, but over the next few days I was too concerned about Steve’s state of
mind to give any thought to him or to the mysterious Gato. Then, as I emerged
from college one afternoon, I was pleased to see my new friend waiting for me a
little way along the road. He was slouching on a low wall looking more
suspicious than he can possibly have imagined, with his chin tucked into his
chest, his upper face obscured by mirrored sunglasses and a shapeless hat pulled
low over his forehead.

Amused by his appearance, I clapped him on
the back and began to ask how he was doing, but he cut me off and gave me some
brief but unsettling instructions: “Don’t talk, listen,” he urged. “Wait here
for two or three minutes, then follow me. Keep your distance. When you see me
go into a bar, you need to walk round the block before joining me there. And if
you see anyone suspicious, take off in the other direction.” He made me repeat
the instructions, then his back was receding from me at a brisk pace. I
wondered once again about Steve, but after waiting for exactly two and a half
minutes I set off in pursuit.

I followed Carlos from a distance of about
a hundred metres as he made his way down through the appropriately-named Gros district
and slipped into a dingy working men’s bar. Then I spent seven or eight minutes
strolling round in a circle as instructed.

On stepping into the grubby and
dilapidated bar, I was ushered to a corner table behind which sat a young
priest with a thin, sad face. I expected him to make the sign of the cross, but
he simply stood up and stretched out his hand.

 “Good morning, Father Gato,” I said as
we shook hands, assuming him to be the man I’d agreed to meet. Neither of them corrected
me, and the priest simply returned my greeting. We continued to chat for
several minutes over coffee – about my course, my friends and my plans for the
future – without him giving anything away about himself.

In the end, however, he got down to
business. He lowered his voice before explaining that he was not Gato and neither
would he wish to be. “I’m not even a close friend of his—just someone he trusts
and thought you would trust. But he would be enchanted to meet you. Are you
free tomorrow in the middle of the day?”

“Not free exactly; I should be at college
until early afternoon. But yes, if I miss it they’ll just mark me down as
sick.”

The priest was about to reply when Carlos suddenly
leaned across and spoke to him. It was little more than a whisper, but I caught
the beginning of it clearly enough: “Goyo, he’ll have to go by himself. I can’t
be…”

A crash from the direction of the bar cut
off the rest of his words, and then the priest was speaking. “OK. I’m sorry
your friend Steve declined to meet us. It means you’ll have to go for quite a
long walk by yourself. Gato would prefer not to come into the city just now.
And the less time you spend in the company of his…”  (there was a
noticeable pause as he flicked his eyes towards Carlos) “…friends, the better.
He’s a good man, but not popular with…”

The priest glanced around the almost empty
bar, and I waited for him to continue, but this time he did not complete his
sentence. Instead he gave me some simple directions and checked that I’d taken
them in: I was to take the funicular railway to the top of Monte Igeldo at
about midday, walk past the hotel and follow the track down the far side of the
headland. I would find Gato among the rocks.

Within five minutes of leaving the bar,
the conversation seemed unreal. I wondered what I was getting into, but pride
and curiosity pushed me on. I was no lover of violence, but I’d come to love
the Basque people, and the more I learned about their past the more I found
myself in sympathy. The thought of being on the inside – of being able to say
that I’d hobnobbed with a wanted activist – exerted a powerful draw. And what
about my degree dissertation? I’d been planning to write about the Basque contribution
to modern Spanish culture. What excellent field research this would be.

JACK

Jack
noticed Miguel frowning at this point, and he paused with a quizzical look on
his face. But Miguel ignored him and shot a glance at Alonso. “Do we have
anything on a paramilitary or organised crime figure named Gato?” asked the
detective.

“Not by that name, at any rate. I’m certain.”

“I didn’t have any other name for him,” said Jack. “Not
at the time, anyway. But I put two and two together later on, and I have one or
two other bits and pieces of information that might help you—when I get to that
part of the story.”

“I think you’d better spit that information out now,
my friend.”

“Look, you’re going to have to trust my judgement on
this. If I just tell you what you think you want to know, you’re likely to get
a distorted picture. You’ll start jumping to premature conclusions, and…”

“Hey,
coño
,” interrupted Alonso. “Watch who
you’re talking to. You want me to loosen him up, Chief?”

Miguel held up a hand and shook his head
dismissively. “No need. We can play it his way. For now.” He looked fixedly at
the Englishman before adding, “I’m sure he’ll get to the interesting stuff
quite quickly.” Alonso simply grunted in response.

“Do you have any update on the location of Red Leader
or his vehicle?” Captain Gómez was a thickset man of only medium height but with
a distinct military bearing
. Clean-shaven,
brown-eyed, hair steel-grey, he had a commanding presence and was known as a brutal
disciplinarian. The displeasure with which he greeted the response to his
question was thus a source of considerable distress to Seve Torres, call-sign
Red Two.

Torres scarcely knew what to hope for as he clipped the
radio handset back onto the dashboard of his car. He disliked the missing
Serrano intensely and he feared Martí, the squad leader’s hulking partner. Just
as importantly, promotion in the Legion tended to involve filling dead men’s
shoes, and nothing would improve Torres’ prospects more than Serrano’s
elimination. But on the other hand, the Captain had ordered him to locate the
current Red Leader and failure would weigh heavily against him. He reached
forward to pick up the microphone again, but before he could reach it a burst
of static broke the silence. Then a voice issued from the loudspeaker suspended
under the dash—a male voice, high-pitched with stress: “We’ve found Red Leader.
Repeat, we’ve found Red Leader.”

Torres’ immediate reaction was disappointment that his
immediate superior was still in action, but then he noticed the tension in the
speaker’s voice. A follow-up transmission a moment later confirmed that his guesswork
was accurate: “Red Leader is down. Repeat, Red Leader…” He ignored the rest of
the transmission as he feverishly calculated how this development affected his
prospects. Was he actually next in line to lead the squad? Or was Martí ahead
of him in the promotion stakes. And if Serrano was dead or injured, where the
hell
was
Martí?

Martí
was lying in a rank, derelict barn trying to sleep. He was exhausted and in
shock, and as he gazed up at the sagging timbers and rusty corrugated iron his
heart was still beating much too rapidly in his chest.

In a grudging way, he was grateful to the middle-aged
detective for turning him loose once they were up in the hills. Martí had seen the
police at work often enough to grasp that something unconventional and possibly
quite dark was going on here. And so he had not expected to be taken to a
police cell (from which the Legion would have procured his release within the
hour), and when the car stopped in the middle of nowhere he had anticipated a
bullet to the head. But in the event he had simply been let out of the car on a
remote hillside, still in handcuffs, and had watched as it accelerated away
into the night.

And so Martí’s gratitude was real, but there was a
cost: he dreaded the repercussions of allowing himself to be captured alive,
and was sure the cruel and unpredictable Gómez would accuse him of buying his
life with information. And the irony was that there had been no interrogation. In
fact, what disturbed and humiliated him most was the condescension with which
he had been treated. He had not been seen as a threat or an enemy asset, just
an inconvenience to be side-lined from the action for a few hours.

In the end, he gave up trying to sleep and focused on
getting back to San Sebastián as quickly as possible. In the dark it had been
difficult to track the progress of the SUV in which he was held prisoner, but
he did not think he could be more than fifteen or twenty kilometres out of the
city. Under different conditions he would have walked or even jogged that
distance. But handcuffed, with his muscles cramped from confinement, and with
the need for haste, transport was a necessity.

Clumsily staggering to his feet, the strongman
retraced his earlier route across the barn. He picked his way carefully between
sharp, rusted implements and crumbling wooden enclosures. Very cautiously,
knowing the danger of even a small open cut in a place like this, he worked his
way out via the same jagged rust hole through which he had entered. Once out in
the open he stopped and listened carefully, relishing the sweet night air as it
purged the fetid miasma of mud, mould and old animal dung from his airways. A
moment later, he was stalking away from the building and looking around for
signs of habitation.

Jack
Burlton slumped on the bed and wearily kicked off his shoes. It was gone
midnight, and he had not fared well on the misleadingly named sleeper train
from Paris. He could not believe that so much could have happened in one day, and
it still bewildered him that events from before the start of his working life
could be catching up with him in retirement.

He cast an eye around the room that had been assigned
to him. It was cramped and airless, musty from disuse but reasonably well
appointed: a firm double bed, a tiny en-suite shower room, a wall-mounted
television, a matching pair of bedside cabinets, and a heavy modern dressing
table positioned in front of the window recess. There was nevertheless the same
institutional feel that he had noted in the communal area. For all the effort
that had gone into making it physically comfortable, the establishment was drab
and austere—a training facility, perhaps, or a conference venue. He went to
open the window for the sake of some fresh air, but steel shutters stood
between him and the glass, and with the heavy dressing table in the way he
could not get near them.

Tired though he was, Jack retrieved the TV remote
from the bedside table and began to flick through the channels. There was
nothing of any real interest to see, but he stayed with a late night news
bulletin. The usual international events unfolded: conflict, persecution,
famine—all familiar but with a slightly different spin compared to home. Then
the national news came up, and even this was familiar in flavour if not the
specific content: a succession of minor disasters, pouting celebrities and
posturing politicians followed by the inevitable human interest story.

Just one item stuck in Jack’s mind: the
appointment of a new Justice Minister named José María Gallego. Elderly but
charismatic, hairless but largely unlined, wheelchair-bound but still vigorous,
there was a disturbing but attractive quality about him—not unlike Patrick
Stewart in that movie series about kids with superpowers. Perhaps it was Jack’s
own recollection of suffering at the hands of the legal establishment that
touched a nerve, perhaps it was the airlessness of the room, but something kept
him awake for over an hour after he had put the lights out.

Juana
Echarri peered anxiously through the windscreen of her elderly Clio, looking
for the lonely farm cottage to which she had been summoned. She was sure the
caller would have rung in plenty of time, but as a midwife it was her perpetual
fear that she would not reach a patient in time to assist with the birth. She
chugged along in second gear with the windows open, looking and listening for
any sign of life. Then suddenly she saw in the beam of her headlights exactly what
she had been expecting: a distraught looking man frantically beckoning her over
to the side of the road. Relieved, she pulled over, tugged on the handbrake and
shifted into neutral. 

As soon as the man was within speaking distance,
Juana knew something was wrong. He looked more like a TV wrestler than a
farmer, and the cuts and bruises to his face filled her with horror. But it was
the handcuffs that cemented her fear, and she tried frantically to get the car
into gear before he reached her.

She was too slow. Two beefy arms snaked through the
open window and grasped her round the neck. Then, over the rising whine of the
engine, the man spoke in a surprisingly girlish voice: “This car moves, your
head’s staying right here with me.”

A minute later, the Clio was bowling down the road
towards San Sebastián. The petrified midwife was driving, while Martí’s massive
frame was squeezed into a passenger seat that had been pushed back to the limit
of its travel. His cuffed hands lay in his lap and his chin rested on his
chest. But he was not sleeping; he was browsing Juana’s smartphone and making
plans.

Meanwhile, Juana knew better than to try anything
foolish. Behind the obvious anger and fear she did not think the hijacker was a
truly bad man, and she believed that with a little intercessory help from the
Holy Mother of God she would survive the night. Her main worry was that somewhere
out in the darkness an anxious family was wondering when she was going to turn
up.

“So,
Jack,” began Miguel after a breakfast of fresh bread and croissants that had
materialised from somewhere, “you explained last night how pride and
inquisitiveness dragged you into a rendezvous with a self-styled gangster kid
called Carlos, and how this Carlos set you up on a blind date with a Mister Big
who went by the street handle of Gato, or Tomcat in your language. It’s all a
bit fanciful sounding, isn’t it? I mean, there’s nothing verifiable, nothing
documented, nothing that relates to any event on record.

“It means I’ve no way of knowing if you’re telling me
the truth. In fact, the only evidence I have that’s worth a bean is your
friend’s dying words and a cryptic note in some old paper archives. It seems that
in 1973, a foreign national named James Burlton came to the attention of one of
Franco’s many security agencies. The agency in question has long since been
disbanded, and there’s no further information on file. I suppose that was you.”

“Of course. I’ve already told you that I was known as
James in those days. It was only when I went on to study in France that our
tutor insisted on calling everybody by a French name. I chose Jacques, the
French equivalent of James. And apart from family and a few old school-friends
it’s stayed with me ever since.”

“Don’t misunderstand me, Jack. I believe most of what
you’ve told me and I want to believe all of it. But at the moment, all I have
is a story of underemployed youngsters playing urban guerrilla games. Somehow,
somewhere along the line, things suddenly turned really nasty. I’m still not
clear why and how they took that turn, and I believe that information is the
key to why people are still dying today. So come on, make it all clear to me.”

“We’re getting there,” said Jack. “Slowly.”

JAMES

The funicular ride up the cliff the following morning was quite
ravishing, as was the hike down the far side of the headland. The steep slope
down to the sea formed a lightly wooded semi-circle, lush and green in the
morning sunlight. The sound of the waves on the rocks drifted up from below,
accompanied by birdsong all around and the gentle, rhythmic chinking of beer
bottles in my little backpack. It was almost an anti-climax to emerge from the
stunted, scrubby trees into the rocky cove where I had arranged to meet the
infamous Gato.

I called out two or three times in
greeting, but I was wasting my breath. My voice was completely drowned by the
thunder of the Atlantic breakers as they rolled in from the Bay of Biscay and
smashed against the rocks just yards from where I stood. In any event I seemed
to have the rocky cove to myself, but as I picked my way through the jumble of
boulders and outcrops that littered the shoreline my eyes were continually
sweeping the middle distance for any sign of the man I’d come to meet. Perhaps
that’s why I stumbled two or three times in the first few dozen yards, and it’s
almost certainly why I tripped over the corpse before I saw it.

I was overcome with nausea at my first
sight of a dead body. Not that there was a lot of blood—in fact I thought for a
split second that I’d stumbled over a sunbather. Words of apology were already
queuing up on my lips before I realised the significance of the reddish-brown
stains on his white shirt. Even then my first impulse was to see if I could
offer any assistance, but it took only a moment to see that the victim was far
beyond any help I could give. And it was when I looked into the inert, staring
eyes that my stomach heaved.

Once the gagging had run its course I was
able to examine the body more closely. It was clearly Gato. This was my first
sight of him, but even in death he closely matched the description I’d been
given. He’d been a big man: unusually tall for a pure-blooded Basque but
characteristically broad and well-muscled. The splayed nose and crumpled ears
spoke of his past as a prize-fighter, but his close-cropped hair had been thinning
on top and he exhibited the round belly so common among men of his ethnic
group. He appeared to have been shot twice: once high up in the right shoulder
and once just to the left of the breastbone.