Secrets of Spain Trilogy

by Caroline Angus Baker

  “¡Ven, ven!” a woman called.

  Luna turned to Cayetano with a smile. “Can we reject a request to come and dance with them? Can you dance?”

  “Of course I can! Mamá and Papá dance at home. They taught me and Sofía as children.”

  “Come on then!”

  “I’m double the age of the rest of these people,” Cayetano complained as Luna took his hands in hers.

  “Stop moaning! Do you understand the concept of fun?” she teased.

  Cayetano pulled Luna into him, and she squealed with surprise, and they began to dance to the quick tune.

  “You’re very talented!’ Luna exclaimed as she spun her.

  “Don’t be so surprised; I’m a gentleman after all and seducing a woman requires lively dance moves. You’re young and have so much more to learn.”

  “Really? I’m keen to hear what you have to teach me, señor.”

  “I’m not a cheap date, preciosa. You can’t liquor me up with a few drinks and expect me to come home with you.”

  Luna laughed as he pulled her against him. “I can assure, señor, I can seduce you without a single drop of anything, cheap or otherwise.”

  “Sounds like an invitation.”

  “Let’s just dance and pretend we have the stamina of twenty year- olds for a little longer.”

  27

  Valencia, España ~ Octobre de 1957

  José adjusted the belt around his waist. The heavy black leather pulled his Guardia Civil uniform tight against his skin, and though he could adjust the uniform all he liked, he felt no relief. Beads of sweat ran between the thin layer of hot skin and burdensome fabric. He would sell his soul for a cool drink. He stretched his neck and his collar seemed wet against his soggy skin. Consuela and Inés would be at home, asleep in their beds. He thought of his young wife, naked on their thick new mattress, lying there with the window open, the curtain limp in the breezeless night. Oh to be there at home right now, instead of patrolling the smelly warm streets. The air was thick with humidity, the city desperate for rain relief.

  “What’s your problem?”

  José glanced up, to see Fermín coming towards him. Across the street sat the Torres de Serranos, the old gate of the city. A dirty little bar sat between him and the gothic behemoth, still full with people out in search of cold drinks on the unusually warm autumn night. The street lights illuminated the dusty footpath, littered with torn bits of paper. The city was busy after Dia de Hispanola celebrations, and now everyone had to settle into another night of tossing and turning in a quest to avoid the heat.

  “I’m hot,” José complained as Fermín stopped next to him, and pulled out a cigarette from inside his jacket pocket.

  “No shit,” Fermín mumbled as he held the cigarette in his lips and attempted to light the end. “Everyone’s fucking hot, José.”

  “You shouldn’t smoke on duty.”

  “I shouldn’t do a lot of things on duty.” Fermín blew a lungful of smoke at his partner but José didn’t notice. “They’re saying it’s raining pretty heavy outside the city, up in the mountains. They think the river may rise here in the city.”

  “That doesn’t happen very often. Let’s hope the beer and heat will send everyone to sleep, and we don’t have to do anything tonight. Can you imagine dragging a drunk into the cells tonight?”

  “One died in the cells earlier. They removed him as I was coming on duty,” Fermín commented as he watched a young girl walk by. “The smell… I don’t know what happened in there, but Christ Almighty, what a state. Head wound, they reckon.”

  “I just want to go home.”

  “Look at the positive. It could be much hotter in Madrid. We get sea breezes in Valencia.”

  “Not tonight, we don’t. And no, Madrid is cool in October.”

  “But while we are both on duty tonight, how about we go and do a bit of baby-spotting? We haven’t taken a baby to Adán for stealing in weeks. Baby number seven was a smooth transaction. It’s time for a new victim.”

  “I don’t know if I want to do that anymore.” José paused; across the narrow street, the waitress outside the bar had a jug of something filled with ice. The back of his throat felt like sandpaper as he watched someone else get a cold drink.

  “Why not?” Fermín asked. “Think of the money. I need a top-up; I just got that new car.”

  “You couldn’t have spent 140,000 pesetas on a car,” José replied without looking at his partner. Instead, he watched a group of women being dropped off at the bus stop next to Torres de Serranos. It seemed late for the bus to be arriving. Across the street behind them, the river was audible; there was already more water than usual.

  “No, I spent the rest on women instead.”

  José snapped his gaze to Fermín. “You’ve blown all the money already?”

  “Haven’t you? I know you’ve been buying clothes, toys, flowers, restaurant dinners, furniture, trips to the beach…”

  “And I have 120,000 pesetas still hidden. You know my dream; get enough money to buy a farmhouse.”

  “If we liberate say, a dozen more babies, you will have any farmhouse you desire. Luxurious, grand, close to home…”

  “The only thing stopping me is my conscience.”

  Fermín chuckled. “That’s the first joke you’ve told in a while.”

  José didn’t hear Fermín’s response. His eyes fixed on the group of women making their way towards him. He recognised her in a heartbeat; Carmelita, the whore of his dreams and nightmares. She seemed fixed in conversation with another girl and hadn’t seen him.

  “Come on,” José said and grabbed Fermín’s arm. “Let’s go and keep the scum of the city under control.”

  The pair wandered down the tiny Calle Vall de Crist, past a bar filled with sweaty punters. They stopped in tiny Plaza del Ángel. Fermín crossed the tiny street and banged his fist on the wooden door at number two. “César, you old bastard. I’ll be coming for you one day.”

  “Leave the guy alone,” José said as he passed Fermín and wandered down into insignificant Plaza del Navarro with its dilapidated facades, and around into even smaller Plaza del Beneyto y Coll. “César is a grumpy old man.”

  “And former rojo during the war. Made a tidy profit on black market deals.”

  “And lost it all while rotting in a concentration camp for his sins,” José replied. “I know the measure of all the shitheads in the area.”

  “You must have a great memory.”

  José paused and could hear nothing but the sounds of their heavy boots on the broken cobbles as they walked. Each street seemed narrower than the last; José was able to reach out and touch buildings on both sides of the street with little effort. Streetlights were useless as they walked, more than half were broken.

  “Not all of Valencia is bad,” José uttered, his voice interrupting the echo of their footsteps. “In fact, this city is delightful little place. A little basic perhaps, but still, a decent place to live. It’s just that we have to see the sharp end of the problems, unlike so many others.”

  “Trouble is who is good and who isn’t?” Fermín replied. “People revere the church, but we know they are selling babies to order and make a profit. Yet people like you and your Consuela put money in the collection plate on Sundays.”

  “You sound so cynical.”

  “I am cynical. I’ve seen the city’s underbelly. How do we go back from that?”

  “Would you want to, Fermín? You’re one of the most evil people I’ve ever met.”

  “Why, gracias.”

  The officers paused as they saw a door open near the end of Calle de Frigola, an alley barely wide enough for a door to open. The faint interior light gave just enough illumination so they could watch a woman struggle with a pram as she left a building. She carried a child on her hip and another young child held onto the hem of her short dress.

  “Is that your whore, José?” Fermín asked. He tried to hide a laugh behind a cough. “It is! Let�
�s go and see her!”

  “No,” José said, but it was too late. Fermín jogged down the minuscule alley to help Carmelita get her pram over the lip of stone work in the doorway. José caught up to his partner as the tall thin man lifted the filthy old pram onto the cobbles.

  “Thank you,” Carmelita said without looking at either man. She closed the door behind her, and plunged them into almost complete darkness. Only a few stray lights from apartments above them gave them the chance to see one another.

  José glanced in the pram; an infant lay asleep under a dirty blanket. The child on Carmelita’s hip looked snotty and dirty, the slightly older boy looked afraid of the tall men standing over him.

  Carmelita glanced up at her helper, and the blood drained from her pretty face. José’s already high temperature rose further; he thought he had dodged her for the evening. The basic but clean dress she had been wearing was gone, now she wore a thin and short rag of a dress, no doubt easy for removal while she worked the streets.

  “You’re a whore, aren’t you?” Fermín asked. “We know you.”

  Carmelita swallowed hard and fixed her gaze on her sons. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Where do the children go, when you’re working in the brothel?” José asked.

  “I have someone to watch them.” Carmelita gestured at the closed door behind her. “But the woman who watches them is ill, so I have to…”

  “Take them to Mamácita’s on Calle de Portal de Valldigna?” José enquired. “That isn’t right. Why can’t you leave them at home with your father?”

  “What you did to Marta isn’t right,” she said and looked Fermín in the eye.

  Fermín scoffed, no doubt replaying the rape and murder in his mind. “You have plump lips. I know what you can wrap them around.”

  “Teniente Belasco,” José said. “Let’s just go.”

  “Thanks for giving her my real name,” Fermín said in a raised voice. He turned back to the young grubby prostitute. “I haven’t done anything, you little slut. You break the law every time you open your legs. You could spend a while in our cells for even speaking to us.”

  Carmelita sighed; José noticed bags under her eyes. He thought back to seeing her at the ice cream store; he thought of what her father subjected her to at home. She was just 19, but had the look of an abused woman triple her age. “Do you need help with your children, señorita?” he asked.

  “Señorita?” Fermín scoffed. “Try a mujerzuela. This whore doesn’t need help; she needs to get on her knees.”

  José watched as Fermín pulled his infamous baton from his belt. With one swift motion, Fermín smacked Carmelita around the back of her knee. She yelped in pain as she fell to the ground, thankfully still holding onto her child in the process. She let the boy go, who crawled away to join his older brother who cowered behind the pram. “Please,” Carmelita whimpered, “not in front of the children. They are innocent.”

  “You were going to take them to the brothel anyway,” Fermín said as he unzipped his pants. “Let them learn how much of a whore you are.”

  “Stop, Fermín,” José said, and Carmelita’s fearful eyes shot to him instead of the man now holding his erection.

  “What?” Fermín asked, “you want to go first? Make her rinse first then, unless you want her up the ass. That’s the only thing with this whore, she must get pregnant easy. Although, you shoot blanks!”

  “I do not!”

  “Prove it!’ Fermín let go of his hard cock and raised his baton at the girl before them. “Him first, you know how he likes it.” He gestured at José with the baton. “Make it quick, José.”

  José grabbed Carmelita’s hands as she reached for his pants. “Stop. This must stop now. I never accept anything from any woman because of my position of power.”

  Fermín’s bashed the girl across the face with the baton, catching her by surprise. She fell on her back, blood splattered on her pretty face. “I will get you back,” she muttered as she pushed her long black hair from the blood on her fat cheek. She was no stranger to abuse.

  “This one is feisty,” Fermín said, unbothered by the fact he still hung out of his undone trousers. “What will you do, whore? Call the police?”

  “Tell his wife.” Carmelita wiped blood from her lips and pointed at José. “I know you’re married. I saw you, sitting in church with her. I have seen you several Sundays.”

  “Please,” José scoffed. “You wouldn’t be at church; you would catch fire the moment you stepped inside the doors.”

  “I service the priests after mass, before I go home to El Cabanyal,” she replied, her voice steadier by the moment despite the situation.

  “You wouldn’t dare tell my wife.”

  “I would.”

  They paused as a drop of precious water fell on the cobbles between them. They all glanced up as the heavens opened, a torrent of water pouring over the city in a second, drenching the heat. The October rains had arrived at last.

  Carmelita scrambled to her feet and turned to her children. José grabbed her by her long black hair and yanked hard. She fell hard on her back, and José stood over her, one foot either side of her frail body.

  “Nice,” Fermín commented as he did up his pants.

  “You will not go near my wife,” José said and grabbed Carmelita’s throat. Any sympathy he had for the girl had gone. She had threatened the only thing that mattered to him.

  “I will,” she hissed as the rain poured over the pair. José would have admired her courage had she not been the enemy. “I will tell everyone. Girls like me can disappear in a second, and you won’t be able to do a thing.”

  José tightened his hands around her neck, but couldn’t hear her begin to choke over the sound of the torrential rain. He heard the faint sound of a crying child; no doubt the dirty children were upset at the falling relief from the weather. In the faint light, he watched fear glaze over Carmelita’s eyes, the fear of death. He pushed even harder, and her delicate windpipe began to weaken under his thumbs. He shook as he transferred his strength into his fingers, to steal her remaining will. Fermín stood unflinching as Carmelita struggled underneath José, her hands gripping his wrists, her legs shuffling and kicking in panic. In what seemed like seconds, but was much longer, José saw her eyes begin to darken; the blood vessels burst under the strain. Her face became a patchwork of different colours as the blood flow and oxygen struggled to give her life. Her little dirty hands slipped away from José’s, falling into the rapidly growing puddles on the path. Carmelita fell silent, and José stood up, wiping the water from his face.

  “Fuck, José,” Fermín said over the hammering rain. “Nice work!”

  José took a few breaths. He had strangled a prostitute on a public street. Thanks to the broken streetlights and thundering downpour, no one would have seen or heard a thing. José smiled; his biggest problem had been eliminated, with little effort.

  “We need to get rid of her body,” he shouted to Fermín. “Like she said, a girl like this can just disappear.”

  “No, we can just say we found her. Thanks to this rain, there won’t be many clues about what happened. We can explain it all away.”

  José turned; behind him, the infant boy in the pram wailed as he continued to be thumped by heavy rain drops. Under the old pram, his older brothers huddled together from the water, their little faces hidden among their embrace. Had they watched their mother die? José felt a pang of guilt, not for murdering a woman, but for harming the children.

  “We need to get rid of the children, too,” José said as he pulled off his sodden jacket. He placed it over the pram to protect the smallest child.

  “Could strangle them, too, I suppose,” Fermín mused.

  “No, I meant get them away from here. If they can’t find the woman or her children, they will just assume she ran away from being a whore and her father who liked to touch her.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Don’t ask.�
�

  “How old is the baby? We could sell it.”

  José peeked under his jacket, to the baby who continued to cry. “It’s young; perhaps we could make a profit. The other two…”

  “Church orphanage,” Fermín said and turned back to the body. “Let’s get her in the back of my car. We’ll go out of town and dump her somewhere far away.”

  “Like where?”

  Fermín shrugged. “Somewhere that no one will ever search, like up the mountains, by that old Porta Coeli monastery. Plenty of bodies got dumped out there as they finished off prisoners. One more corpse won’t matter. But we have to move, it’s a miracle we haven’t been seen already.”

  José looked up; the rain dropped straight into his vision. No one dared venture out in this downpour. But it was only a matter of time; people would surface sooner or later. “Where’s your car?”

  “Around on Calle de Caballeros.”

  José looked around; in the darkness he spotted a pile of rubbish, discarded clothes and broken plastic. “Stick her in there; we will have to find a way of getting her to a road where the car can travel down, and then stick her in the back.”

  Fermín’s grabbed the girl by the ankles and began to drag her. Her dress rode up, pulled by the wet cobbles. She was naked, soaked and strangled; a shell of the feisty woman of a minute earlier.

  “You still want to go first?” Fermín asked. “Won’t get her pregnant now!”

  José threw Fermín a look of pure disgust. “Tell me that was a joke.”

  “Why?”

  José grabbed a few old sacks left in the rain, and tossed them over the slight girl. He glanced back to the pram, to see the oldest boy staring back at him. These poor children, what hope did they have? Guilt began to pour through José, far stronger and profound than the rainfall.

  “Hey,” Fermín said, “I’ll fetch the car, you dump the children. Take the baby to Padre Nefando, and just drop the kids anywhere. They will be found and taken to the orphanage. I’ll fuck her in private if you prefer.”

  “Just wait until we are out of town, and then you can fuck her as many times as you like,” José replied with a shake of his head. There was little point in saying no. He watched Fermín run off down the wet alleyway and from sight. José approached the pram, to see both boys peek out at the wet policeman who stood over them.