“Go on, soldier,” said the commander.
It was an order. Armada had no choice. He was helpless to resist such authority.
And he let go of the arrow.
Armada’s eyes shot open and he sat bolt upright in bed, gasping for air and covered in sweat.
A memory. Just a memory. One of many that plagued his sleep. This one had been especially vivid, the worst in a long time. He looked over toward Lucas’ bed to see him already awake and looking at him, trying to hide his concern.
Armada swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. A glance out the window told him it would soon be sunrise. There was no need to leave this early. Armada just wanted to be out of this room, out of this town, and away from the shame it brought out in him.
“Well, since we’re both up, let’s get ready, shall we?” Armada said.
After Lucas loaded their wagon with provisions, and Armada settled the bill with the innkeeper, the two set off through the plaza along the road that would take them back down to the delta. People gawked at them as they passed, just as they did when Armada and Lucas had arrived.
Yet behind the gawking was scorn. There was pity. They were leaving in shame and the entire town seemed to know it. Every constable took this risk whenever he arrived in a strange place to investigate a new case. Armada and Lucas’ ears rang with taunts of “a buenas horas, mangas verdes” from every corner.
Failure was part of the job, but this was different. Armada had gotten so close. And he had every reason to believe the real killer was still in town. No one had fled. This was just a matter of petty politics, against which he had little defence. And it burned Armada up as they reached the edge of the delta and took one last look at Salobreña.
It was majestic this early in the morning, with the blazing orange sun lighting up the whole of the western side, and the backdrop of the green and brown hills surrounding it. The glowing orange town stood almost in defiance of the serene landscape around it. This hill that didn’t quite fit, with a town and a castle that shouldn’t be there, spoiling the otherwise perfect flatness of the delta itself. As Armada stared back at it, it seemed to glow hotter and hotter until it was almost too bright to look at. And after he closed his eyes, it continued to glow, lines of blue and red and purple, behind his eyelids, and now he knew— in his memory. One more vivid memory to keep him up at night to add to the list.
Once the town slipped from view behind the summit of the foothills, time seemed to slow to nearly a crawl. Neither Armada nor Lucas could speak, and instead listened to the sound of the wooden wagon wheel as it bumped along the pebble-strewn road, occasionally shaking back and forth as it navigated yet another pothole. The mule brayed in protest occasionally, but was happy to not be hurried, for the trip would be difficult enough. Granada was far up in the Alpujarras mountains, and from the beach it would be two days of pulling the wagon uphill along eroding goat tracks and through soft sand and mud.
The road they followed took them east toward Motril, but before it got there, just as one entered the outskirts of the tiny village of Lobres, the road suddenly turned north, following a gentle slope that would take them deep into the peaks of the Alpujarras mountains. By nightfall, they would be at Órgiva, the little mountain town that lay halfway between Granada and the sea and did brisk business with all the travellers who passed through while following the main road. There, they would procure a room at the inn and some food for the final leg of the journey tomorrow.
This was a road Armada had taken many times in his life, and yet this time, it seemed especially arduous. At this pace, it seemed that it would take a week and that bothered him. He was tempted to tell Lucas to hurry things along, but stopped himself. He wasn’t angry at Lucas, or the mule, or even the mountains.
Armada found he was angry at himself, angry for missing something. In his mind he went over and over the facts of the case, just as he’d laid them out for Lucas. Somewhere in there was a piece he’d missed. He could feel it, even though he couldn’t see it quite yet. And it made him grumpy as they passed through Lobres, along its cobbled streets and ferocious winds for which it was so famous. Gusts of dust and debris were everywhere; how could anyone live their life in such a place?
They followed the main road through town as it curved northward and took them toward the dry riverbed. They were surrounded by cane fields again, as the landscape was quite flat here as well until they reached the entrance to the mountain pass, just another hour or so ride away. The wind gusts became stiffer as they left the protection of the village walls and returned back into the fields. Armada was forced to hold his hand up to protect his eyes from the dust that swirled around him now and threatened to blow him out of the cart entirely.
He peered at the cane fields that they passed and noticed a wide lane that had been cut down the middle between two rows of cane. Here, as the cane was as yet to be harvested, there would be shelter from the winds and a bit of relief. And after what he’d been through, relief was what he deserved.
“Lucas, can we not cross through the cane field there?” Armada asked, pointing to the clearing.
“It doesn’t look wide enough, sir. It would be very difficult to pull a cart through that cane.”
Armada suddenly pictured him and Lucas helping the mule to pull the cart through the cane as the wheels grazed the stalks. Then, for some reason, the image of the cart changed to one of a body. A dead body.
Armada’s mind then drifted to the clue that Lucas had found when they’d first arrived. Something he hadn’t given much thought to until now.
“How hard would you say it would be to pull a body through that cane, Lucas?”
Lucas gazed at the field. “Very difficult, sir. Especially when it’s that mature. The stalks are quite thick at the bottom. Unless you follow the walkways between the rows.”
“But what if you didn’t? If you were one to pull the body across the rows? Thus, having to pull down the cane as you went to get through it?”
“It’s hard enough just to walk through there yourself, sir. I couldn’t imagine pulling someone else along.”
“Nor could I, Lucas. Nor could I!” Armada said. His mind raced.
“What is it, sir?”
“Stop the cart!”
Lucas had barely brought the cart to a halt when Armada hopped out and ran to the edge of the field. Lucas followed to where Armada was now running his hand up and down the edge of the cane. At the base, the cane was mature enough to turn from its young green colour to a solid wooden brown, indicating it was ready for harvesting. At the risk of angering the farmer who owned the field, Armada took one stalk near the base and attempted to push it over and break it. But he found it quite difficult, as it was too big for him to wrap his fingers around.
“Damn near impossible, I would say,” Armada said.
“To what?”
“To drag a body through here. You remember that path you found, Lucas? The one that ran through Jose’s cane rows, crosswise, from where Amparo was supposed to be working to where he was killed?”
“I do, sir.”
Armada was finally able to break the stalk of cane off and held it up, examining its thick wooden base.
“Jose’s cane was similar to this before he cut it. How on earth could someone have pulled a dead body through it? And why go through so much trouble? Why not leave Amparo to die where he was working? All that to implicate Miguel? Seems like a lot of work just for that, don’t you think?”
Armada put his hand to the wall of cane and pushed on it. It bent under the force of his strength, but not by much. It was quite solid.
“We’ve never considered the alternative,” Armada said. “What if Amparo’s lifeless body wasn’t dragged through it? What if he made his own way through the cane?”
“Why would he do that, sir? It wasn’t where he was supposed to be working.”
“Exactly. Which was why he took so much trouble to hide his movements. You said the path was a route tha
t couldn’t be seen by anyone else who was working that day.”
“That’s right, sir,” Lucas said.
“Of course it was!” Armada cried out. “Suddenly this all makes sense! If only I’d thought of it last night. It would have saved us the trouble of coming out here.”
“What makes sense, sir? I don’t understand.”
“I’ll explain on the way. We need to get back to Salobreña. Quickly! Before anyone else figures it out.”
Armada raced off back toward the cart with Lucas a few steps behind. They quickly turned the wagon around and rushed back toward Salobreña.
“Can I ask why we’re heading back, sir?”
“To get the proof we need, that’s why,” Armada said as he felt the wind at their backs, almost as if it were pushing them along, trying to hurry them back to the delta. “It all goes to motivation, Lucas! It’s always about motivation. And we should not have let ourselves get distracted from that.”
“Whose motivation, sir?”
“Amparo’s! What would motivate him to move across Jose’s field like that, in the middle of a work day, without wanting to be seen? We always assumed the killer moved him, but we were wrong.”
Lucas thought about it for a moment. “Maybe he was going to meet someone?”
“Or he was going to collect something. Something he didn’t want anyone to know he had.”
Lucas’ eyes went wide. “The bones?”
“Exactly. And what would motivate him to hide those?”
“Blackmail, sir.”
“Now you’re getting it, Lucas. If Amparo was blackmailing Pablo Ortega, he would hardly want to leave the bones where they’d found them. He risked Jose, Ortega, or possibly even Miguel digging them up, thus losing his leverage. So it was Amparo himself that must have dug them up and hidden them.”
“Are you saying, sir, that he hid them…”
“Let’s go find out, shall we?”
Armada and Lucas sped across the delta. Suddenly time was moving very fast, and Armada felt it was rushing past him too quickly. The endless fields of cane whooshed past them as they left a wake of dust and pebbles behind, annoying the occasional donkey train with large bushels of cut cane strapped to their backs.
As they reached the road that would take them back up to town, Lucas turned off it just before and took a smaller road, the one that led down to the beach toward El Peñon, which could be clearly seen now as the cane that once hid it was gone.
They reached Jose’s land and had little trouble cutting across the bare earth, the wheels clattering loudly over the cane roots that mottled the ground. They soon reached the very spot where Amparo Rodriguez had lost his life.
Armada leaped out and kicked the soil about with his foot, looking for the spot. It was harder to find now as the cane had all been cut and taken away. There was only now a thick carpet of dead cane leaves and other debris, turning brown and brittle in the hot sun.
Lucas brought the spade over, which he’d retrieved from the cart, and began to dig. Furiously at first, stripping away the topsoil that had dried and was turning from a dark brown to a light beige. The top layer was the most difficult, as it had dried and turned hard and compacted. But soon he was through into the softer, more moist earth below.
It didn’t take long to find it. Lucas had only dug a short distance down when the spade became entangled in a bit of rotted linens. He carefully dug them out and lifted them from the hole.
Armada stepped forward and threw back the corners of the linens until they lay flat on the ground, revealing the contents that had been carefully wrapped inside.
Human bones. They were brown and black, greasy with mould and the stench was awful.
But to Armada, the bones meant the fight had not yet been lost.
“I believe we’ve solved the mystery as to the disappearance of Cristina Lopez,” Armada said.
“So Amparo moved the bones here. And he must have been coming to collect them the day he was killed.”
“Yes, it seems that way, Lucas. Only the killer got to him first. And that killer made the same mistake we made, and didn’t think hard enough about why Amparo had come to this spot in the first place.”
“So, the killer—” Lucas began.
“Had no idea these bones were here.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Miguel had gotten very little sleep with the events of the night before playing out in his mind. What could he have done or said that would make him feel better?
But it was always the same conclusion – nothing. He had been a spectator. That was all. None of it was his fault, really. So why did he feel so guilty? He’d made the hard decision, just like Jose had said. Had he not been a man? Had he not helped to protect the village?
Yet Miguel was still afraid of what Jose might do. He should have known things had gone wrong when he saw Jose with the harquebus. Guns had always made him nervous and he avoided being around them. They were loud and they were fast. One moment someone was all right, and the next moment he was dead. At least with a knife you could defend yourself. But not from a harquebus shot. Once someone pulled the trigger, there was no defence.
And Jose had very nearly pulled the trigger on Madalena. That was the most frightening moment for Miguel, and the one that stood out in his memory. And it still wasn’t over. What if Madalena refused do what Jose had wanted her to?
So, of course, Miguel hadn’t been able to sleep. He’d spent the whole night at Jose’s cortijo tossing about in bed. Jose had been very nice to offer him a place to stay. And it had been quite comfortable. The cortijo itself was very quiet, with no one else around, and he’d been given the back bedroom all to himself since Jose said he always preferred to sleep in the front room. He didn’t like to be closed in when he slept, or locked in a room. It was something to do with his time in the army.
And normally Miguel would have slept well. It was rare when he had his own room. He’d grown up always sharing a bed with his parents, or with various cousins and other family that were always visiting. Even by the time when he was twelve or thirteen, there had only ever been one bed in the house.
At the first sign of morning light, Miguel rose and cautiously listened through the door. He didn’t hear anything, so he opened it just enough to peek through. He could see Jose sleeping in his bed in the far corner, rolled up tight in a white sheet, his back to Miguel. His breathing was slow and rhythmic, and with a slight snore. An empty bottle of spirts lay on the floor just under where Jose’s hand draped over the edge of the bed.
Miguel knew that sight well from his own father. It meant Jose would probably be asleep for some time yet. He quickly dressed and slipped out of the cortijo, being sure to grab an old large-brimmed hat of Jose’s in order to hide his face just in case he came across the new constable. He wasn’t sure what he would tell Jose about why he left, but he would figure that out later. For right now, there was something else he needed to do.
Miguel crossed the delta and was soon back in Salobreña in time to see many of the farmers on their way to the fields. With hand tools slung over their shoulders, the farmers pulled along sleepy donkeys, all the while discussing the harvest and how it had gone. As Miguel passed by, he pulled his hat down low, covering his face so that he wouldn’t be recognised, keeping an eye out for anyone wearing the green sleeves. It was just one more reminder that he would never truly be welcome in this pueblo.
But Miguel had bigger things to worry about. He had made a decision the night before and it hadn’t been an easy one. In the dead of the night, when there was nothing around him but darkness and his own feelings of guilt, he had decided to go against Jose’s wishes. He had thought long and hard about what he was risking. Jose might never respect him. And that would hurt Miguel. And maybe Miguel was acting like a child. He couldn’t tell.
All the same, Miguel felt he needed to see Madalena. He needed her to know that he was sorry, and that he hadn’t meant for everything to happen the way it did. Migu
el didn’t want her to think he was the kind of person that ran around with a harquebus, or threatened people. And he would help her run away, so that Jose wouldn’t shoot her. He didn’t want Jose to kill her. She didn’t deserve that. Nobody did.
Jose would call him a child. He was only doing this because his mother had always said you should apologise when you did something bad. His mother had always been there to help him through tricky situations like this. He should tell Madalena he was sorry. And then take whatever consequences Madalena thought were necessary to make sure he never did it again. Miguel knew that was the thinking of a child. But he couldn’t help it. He wasn’t strong like Jose. He couldn’t fend off the bad feelings and do things the way Jose did. Maybe he could never be a man like that.
It was still early morning when Miguel arrived, and the one time all day when La Loma received direct sunshine. Laundry had been put out the night before to catch as much of the morning sun as possible, and now it rolled and occasionally snapped as the wind caught it. When Miguel heard the sound, he imagined the jaws of some great serpent snapping shut. It was silly, but it still made him nervous.
Finally, he approached Madalena’s door, yet something was wrong. The lock was undone, and the door was left slightly ajar. Madalena was not someone to leave things like that. And then Miguel noticed it, there at the bottom.
A tiny splotch of blood he hadn’t seen before.
Miguel cautiously pushed the fabric aside and entered Madalena’s house. Direct sunlight was pouring in through the single window now, creating a square of white hot light on the plaster of the wall, and lighting up much of the house. What first caught Miguel’s eye was the splatter of blood across the back wall.
Something was definitely wrong and Miguel began to panic. Should he just run now and get someone to help? But he had to be sure. He had to see for himself before showing his fear.
He glanced over toward Madalena’s bed. It was empty, and the sheets were ruffled up, spilling out over the floor, as if she’d been dragged out of bed. And as Miguel got closer, his worst fears came true.
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