A Prison in the Sun

by Isobel Blackthorn

  Having made the decision, I flew around the farmhouse packing up my things, making sure to remember the bottle of Clenbuterol. I snatched a few perishables from the fridge, leaving the rest thinking I might return for them tomorrow. If I felt brave enough.

  I had the presence of mind to stuff the rucksack in my suitcase, using a large plastic bag for my surplus clothes. I didn't stop to think until the car was loaded and I was on my way again. This time, I pulled up at the eco-museum to make the call to Claire.

  'Trevor. How's it going?' She sounded hesitant, surprised.

  'Is this a bad time?' I asked, remembering my manners.

  'No, no. Go ahead.'

  'Only, I could do with staying at yours tonight.'

  'So soon? I thought we agreed to wait a few days.'

  'Something has come up.' My mind raced on, scrambling for an excuse.

  'May I ask what?'

  'Rats.' I cringed. There was every chance no rat had ever set down its tiny feet on the island.

  'Rats!'

  She sounded genuinely shocked. I held my breath. There was nothing for it, so I went on.

  'The place is infested. I honestly don't know where they've come from.'

  'The island has had a bit of a rat problem.' There was a long pause. 'You can't stay there, so you best come.' She didn't sound too happy about it.

  'Are you sure? Are you there now? I can be there in under an hour. Will that be alright?'

  'Sure.'

  'Thank you so much. You've saved my bacon.'

  'No bother. The flat is already prepared.' She hung up.

  I opened Maps on my phone and checked out the route. It was simple enough. Head south through Antigua and keep going. On entering Tiscamanita, turn left, and Paco and Claire's was halfway down on the right.

  More flat, rock-strewn plains, more naked mountains, and I was crawling down Calle Manuel Velázquez Cabrera about half an hour later. It wasn't possible to miss the house. After the usual array of old and new cuboid abodes and a smattering of ruins, there it stood, grand as a mansion set back on its own large block, replete with massive shuttered windows in Spanish colonial style and a terracotta tiled roof. The front door belonged to a castle.

  I pulled up in the street opposite, hoping I would later be directed to the garage at the side or at least to the adjoining carport, but there were already cars parked there. Then again, what were the chances of the behemoth or Juan's uncle driving down this street? Close to zero. I got out of my car, crossed the street and pushed open a gate centred in a low stretch of rendered stone wall. The wall rose to two metres where it aligned with the southern corner of the house and met with a perpendicular wall of similar height, screening the side garden from the street. Privacy.

  Ten paces through a neat arrangement of succulents in black gravel and I hammered on the door wondering if anyone would hear me and thinking a bell pull in order. I thought I heard a dog barking somewhere inside. Eventually, I heard footsteps and the door opened, revealing a welcoming if somewhat distracted Claire. There was no sign of Paco.

  I thought I would be ushered inside, but without a word she stepped out and drew the door closed behind her as though keen to obscure the interior from my view; then she led me to the southern corner of the house where a white-painted door in the high, white-washed wall – barely visible at a glance – led through to a sheltered patio. We crossed the patio to another door in a wall set at right angles to the main house: my quarters.

  'We added an extension to the original back corner,' she said, throwing open the door and stepping inside. 'I hope you like it,' she added, showing me around.

  To the left of a square living room – furnished with ultra-modern, ultra-plain furniture, the predominant colour pale grey – was an equally square kitchen. White granite bench tops and stainless-steel appliances had been arranged in the far corner. The centre of the room was occupied by a round table and four chairs in keeping with the living-room furnishings. A wooden staircase set against the near wall led up to a large, square bedroom. Below the vaulted, wood-panelled ceiling, the bedroom furniture appeared to have come out of the same Ikea catalogue. The contrast of new and old seemed to work, although I wondered why they had not chosen to go vintage.

  I went over to the window which looked out over the rear garden and the fields beyond. The standout feature was a volcano, staunch and spent with its decapitated cone. I noted the small desk positioned under the window, perfect for a writer.

  'The bathroom is through here,' Claire said, and I followed her down a short passage. A door on the left led to the bathroom. At the end of the passage, another door led out to a private roof patio. We stood outside for a brief moment. I remarked on the view.

  'We have the same outlook in our bedroom,' she said. 'And in the kitchen.'

  Impressive.

  We headed back downstairs. Claire was plainly preoccupied, and the smile she wore was weak. Perhaps Paco was stricken with grief or consoling those who were. Or both. And Claire had to step into a carer role. Or they were caught up with the funeral arrangements. A sudden death like that of a young lad couldn't be easy. I felt bad for imposing.

  'I'll show you around later,' she said. 'Do you have everything you need?'

  'I do.'

  'Then make yourself at home.'

  She held up a key, then put it on the kitchen bench. I thanked her and followed her back across the patio. She was about to enter the main house through a glass door when she turned and said, 'Make sure you close and bolt that gate when you are done.'

  'Sure,' I said, and I would have barricaded it too if she had wanted.

  I ferried in my things, lugged my suitcase up the stairs and slung it on the bed. Not wanting to be caught with the rucksack, I went and locked myself in before unpacking.

  In the spacious, if confined space of the one-bedroom apartment, I felt a touch less vulnerable and considerably more secretive than I had up in Tefía. I was taken back to my childhood, doing sneaky things in my bedroom while my sister, mother and aunt went about the rest of the house, calling out and yelling at each other. I opened the suitcase and yanked out the rucksack and left it on the bed while I attended to my clothes. When the suitcase and my other bags were empty, I made to return the rucksack to the suitcase when curiosity got the better of me, and I sat on the bed and opened the rucksack, emptied it and checked through all the pockets again in case I had missed something. Finding nothing, I switched on the phone. There were two missed calls that must have come in not long after I had switched the phone off. Neither call was from one of the two stored numbers, and it was a withheld number, too. I turned off the phone again to save the battery.

  Next, I took out the money and unwrapped the cloth to examine the bills. It was a luxury even to behold such a vast sum. Temptation fluttered in my belly, but I resisted extracting even one note.

  I was about to fold it all back up when some paper caught my eye. It had been placed in the middle of the bundles of cash. I extracted the paper and found it was ten sheets of foolscap folded in half and half again. On each side of the ten sheets was the smallest, most compact writing I had ever come across. My editorial eye estimated a thousand words on each side of a page, amounting to twenty thousand words all up.

  A novella? I had no idea if the writing was fact or fiction. It could be anything; the writing was in Spanish. What I did know was whoever had hidden those pages had done so for a reason. Those words were important, as important as that cash. More so, perhaps. Maybe whatever was written had some sort of value, or the words were private or libellous or scandalous in some way.

  Leaving the pages on my pillow, I re-packed the rucksack, plonked it in the suitcase and shoved the booty under my bed.

  My heartbeat quickened, this time not out of fear.

  A Translation

  My first thought was to ask Claire to translate the pages, or at least the first few sentences. It didn't take long for me to dismiss the idea. Those words belonged to Paco'
s relative. Then again, they might not be his. Like me, he might not have known those pages had been shoved in amongst the cash. Come to think of it, there was no proof the rucksack even belonged to him. Paco and Claire didn't seem to think so, or surely they would have said something by now. Regardless of all my suppositions, I could not tell my hosts about this latest find. Not until I knew what the words said. I couldn't tell anyone for that matter. Not even, or especially not Angela. I would risk losing control. And I wanted control, at least temporarily, at least until I found out what revelations those pages contained.

  If these were the words of a dead man washed up on a beach, words that had been wedged in a stash of cash hidden in a sea cave, then the chances were high no one else knew of their existence. If anyone did, the words would be of no use to me, the new owner, except as a keepsake. Or, if the pages proved valuable, said new owner, me, would be obliged to declare the source.

  The writing was probably rubbish, the ramblings of an angst-filled young man tormented by guilt and fear, mentally unstable, reckless, foolish, about to break his mother's heart. The sort of writing that belonged in a private diary and not unleashed on the world, as far too many were wont to do these days.

  Then again, I could be wrong. I could be staring at literary treasure. It was possible I was staring at paper far more valuable than the cash it was buried in.

  Out of the plethora of online translation tools, I searched for the best that came free. I chose one that seemed classy and made a lot of grand claims about itself. Not that I believed the hype. It was the sort of blurb I trotted out for companies every week.

  Aware of the potential shortcomings and the tendency to offer a word for word literal translation, I typed in the first sentence of the tiny spidery prose – which was short – and then added the next. The translation came out in a reasonably coherent fashion. I pasted the English version into a new document. Word by word, phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence, I soon had about three hundred words of text.

  As anticipated, the translation was for the most part literal, but even so, I could tell the writing was both heartfelt and perhaps even inspired. I would need to cross-reference some of the words using an online Spanish-English dictionary, but overall, I found the text workable. If I were to craft that prose, polish it, if I mimicked the emerging style yet elevated it with my own literary flair, I might even have discovered a real gem.

  An obvious question began playing on my mind. What was this story about? That, I couldn't tell. All I knew was the prose had a narrative style and carried the flavour of memoir.

  A rap on the door below broke my concentration. I hid the pages under my pillow and closed my laptop before heading down in the dim of the evening light to answer it. I hadn't realised it was that late.

  Opening the door, I found Claire pulling out a weed between the pavers on the patio. Behind her, the house spilled bright light through the glass-panelled doors. To the southwest, the remains of the sunset – tones of a deepening red – were rapidly fading to black. Aware of my presence, Claire straightened, tossing the weeds into the garden.

  'We thought you would like some dinner.'

  I wasn't the least bit hungry. To be polite, I followed her through the patio doors into a large, formal sitting room. The décor was elegant, the furnishings vintage-looking and comfortable. Claire crossed the room where another door led to an internal patio.

  I stopped and looked around, impressed. A balcony ran along three of the walls, shading the rooms beneath. An awning over the balcony shaded the upstairs rooms. In the patio centre, was a raised bed filled with leafy plants. A rich meaty smell infused the air.

  Paco appeared in a far doorway and greeted me with the semblance of a smile and a tilt of his head. For a reason that was inexplicable, he didn't seem to like me. At least, that was the impression he gave. Claire joined him, and I wandered over, soaking up the grand historic atmosphere.

  Beneath its grandiosity, the house had a definite vibe I couldn't quite place. I put it down to the age of the building and my overwrought mind, yet as I rounded the stand of plants, I couldn't help looking over my shoulder, as though to catch someone coming up behind me.

  When I looked back, Paco was gazing at me intently. 'See, Claire. I told you,' he said.

  Told her what?

  She didn't answer. A string of paranoid thoughts raced through my mind. Paco was still staring at me.

  'I keep telling Claire we still have a ghost, but she refuses to believe me. You felt it, didn't you.'

  'Take no notice,' Claire said to me, and she turned and walked into the kitchen. Paco followed, and I did the same.

  The kitchen, in contrast to the rest of the house I had seen, was ultra-modern with shiny appliances. Paco poured me a glass of white wine, and Claire invited me to sit at the table, laid with attractive plates and fine cutlery and napkins. I wondered if they had gone to all this trouble just for me. Or perhaps it was just a regular meal for them.

  'How are you settling in?' Claire asked, sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar. 'Cosier than the farmhouse?'

  'I prefer it.'

  'A better atmosphere here,' Paco said, and I was reminded of his earlier remark about the ghost and then his comments about Tefía.

  I couldn't exactly agree after crossing the patio, but to be polite, I raised my glass. 'Sure is.'

  They both smiled and sipped their wine. An undercurrent of tension resurfaced for a moment. The strained silence was broken by the light and hurried tapping of claws on concrete and marble and a dog, a large hound with enormous ears, came bounding in and headed straight for me. Not being a dog lover, I braced and held out my arms to keep the thing at bay.

  'Come here,' Claire said sharply. The dog obeyed. She patted the thing with much affection and told it to sit. It was then I noticed a large fluffy rug covering a padded bed in the back corner of the room. The dog's bed.

  'Not a dog lover, then.'

  'Jackie, my wife, always wanted a dog. But I'm allergic.' It was the simplest of lies.

  'That's a pity.' Her next sentence she directed at her pet. 'Zeus, go to your bed.'

  The dog, Zeus, obeyed. Zeus? Claire was a serious dog lover, then.

  'He's a handsome, um, animal.' I almost said “beast”.

  'A rescue dog,' Paco said. 'We've given him a home.'

  'There are a lot of strays on the island. Abandoned pets.'

  Claire looked over at her canine progeny. Thank goodness I never let Jackie, or Ian and Felicity for that matter, pester me into getting one. The hamster was bad enough.

  'Good of you to take him,' I offered, keeping the conversation on track. It seemed easier than another awkward silence. I received no reply. I took a gulp of my wine. Claire did the same.

  'We were wondering what you did with the rucksack,' she said, idly brushing a strand of her hair from her face.

  I had wondered when that topic would come up. I braced myself as I sipped my wine, forcing a bland expression on my face as I said, 'I handed it in.' I offered a cringe by way of reinforcing the truth of my statement, but I didn't anticipate the reaction that followed.

  'You did what!' Paco yelled. Zeus reared up in alarm. Claire gave the pet some words of reassurance and told him to lie down.

  Paco was shaking his head in disgust. He lowered his voice and said, 'You're crazy.'

  Claire shot Paco a censorious look before turning to me with a pleasant and decidedly false smile on her face.

  'And you told them where you found it?'

  I thought fast. 'No,' I said. 'Casillas del Ángel. Under a pew in the church.'

  'Why lie?'

  'Instinct.'

  'Probably best.'

  There was an elephant in the room. I could feel it. And I decided my previous conclusion was wrong. Like me, Paco and Claire also assumed the rucksack had belonged to Juan. They must think that. It came down to basic logistics.

  'What did the police say?' Claire said, keeping her tone light.

/>   'Not a lot.'

  What choice did I have other than to be evasive? I had never been in a Canary Islands' police station in my life. I had no idea if the officers even spoke English. I watched her take a sip of her wine as my palms broke out in a sweat. I kept staring. I had to keep my eyes from darting around the room. I hoped she didn't pursue the matter.

  Paco took one look at me, scowled and turned away to fiddle about with things over by the stove.

  'Better he did hand it in,' Claire said to Paco. 'It will be better for Juan.'

  'I'm sorry?' I said, all innocence, seizing on the chance to push the conversation in another direction. 'I don't follow.'

  'We think that rucksack you found belonged to Juan.'

  'Really!' I made myself look shocked.

  'He must have gotten himself into some big trouble.'

  'Typical,' Paco muttered.

  I gasped and covered my mouth. When I had two pairs of eyes fixed on my face, I moved my hand away and said, 'Then that cash really belongs to the family. I mean, to you. I am so sorry. I had no idea.'

  'It's alright. We would have done the same.'

  'Would we?' Paco said grimly.

  'Drop it.'

  An awkward silence descended, masked by Paco, who brought the food to the table for us to help ourselves. I expected Zeus to leap out of his bed, but he remained where he was, nose twitching, watchful.

  'Smells incredible,' I said enthusiastically, not the least bit hungry.

  'Paco is an amazing cook.'

  The food eased the mood in the room, helped along by my demonstrative reactions to the flavours – a robust goat stew served with an elaborate salad and spicy potatoes. I occupied myself with eating, despite having no appetite. I had the impression they wanted me to lead the conversation, yet I was too preoccupied with the secrets hidden in my apartment to come up with a topic.

  'You've caught the sun again,' Claire said eventually, drawing together her knife and fork on her plate. She had hardly eaten a thing.