The spiral staircase curved gracefully round, and as they climbed it Paco felt his mind being catapulted back to his early days in Madrid ...
Young Paco Ruiz, only recently discharged from the army and now a probationary police officer, sits in a cramped seat in a dark cinema, and gazes with awe at the flickering images on the screen. A fifteen foot high Douglas Fairbanks is standing half-way up a wide staircase, his sword flashing first to the left and then to the right, as he fights off the attacks from half a dozen enemies.
Paco is thrilled, yet even as he cheers along with the rest of the audience, he is aware that there is at least a part of him which is holding back. He cannot immerse himself as completely in the fantasy as he would have been able to a few years earlier, because he has served in Morocco and knows that naked steel kills, and that even a master swordsman would eventually succumb to any two other men who were even half-way competent.
“What’s on your mind, Paco?” Dolores asked, noticing the far-away expression on his face.
“I was thinking it might have been nice to remain a child forever,” he confessed.
Dolores shook her head, and her jet-black hair cascaded over her shoulder.
“Weird,” she said.
What was weird about wanting to remain innocent? Paco wondered. And what was so good about seeing the world as it really was – especially through the eyes of a homicide detective.
They reached the top of the staircase and turned left. Dolores counted off the doors.
“This one,” she announced.
There was no sign of the four-poster bed which had probably once occupied the room. Instead, a dozen metal cots lined the walls.
“The beds came from an abandoned convent,” Dolores explained. “I wonder how the guys like lying in the dips in their mattresses which were dug by the butts of genuine virgins?”
There was no air of expectation about the journalist, Paco thought – none of the tingle which he felt as he was approaching the climax of an investigation. But that was easy enough to explain. Dolores felt no anticipation because she did not expect to find anything of any importance during this search. And perhaps she was right.
He glanced at the row of cheap cardboard suitcases which had been lined up, military-fashion, exactly parallel to the edge of the beds.
“I don’t know which of these cots is Ted’s,” Dolores said. “I guess you’ll just have to keep opening the suitcases until you find the right one.”
Paco and Felipe had opened three or four cases each when the fat constable said, “This is it.”
They spread the contents of Donaldson’s suitcase out on his bed. There was not much there to sum up a life: one cheap suit which had gone shiny at the elbows and knees; a couple of changes of underwear; a few crudely printed handbills announcing union meetings at which Donaldson was one of the principle speakers; a copy of Das Kapital in English, a basic Spanish grammar and a third book with the name ‘Lincoln Steffens’ on the spine.
Paco handed the hook by Steffens over to Dolores.
“What’s this about?” he asked.
The journalist glanced at the title.
“It’s the first volume of his autobiography,” she said.
“And does this Steffens man have any known connection with the Ku Klux Klan?”
Dolores laughed loudly.
“You really do have the Klan on the brain, don’t you. Paco?”
“Well, does he have a connection?” Paco persisted.
“No, not even close. Lincoln Steffens was a journalist from what we call the ‘Muckraking’ school, back in the States. He wrote about corruption. Big city corruption, mainly. He was a bit too liberal for my personal taste, but you gotta say, the man was a gutsy investigator.”
“So he wasn’t a communist?”
“No,” Dolores admitted, “but he certainly wasn’t the kind of writer who a member of the Party would get censured for reading, either.”
She was holding the book loosely between her thumb and forefinger, and a single sheet of paper, which had been stored inside the autobiography, fell from it and floated gently to the floor.
Paco bent down and picked it up. It was an ordinary piece of cheap writing paper, the sort which could be purchased from any papelería. From its layout, it was obviously a letter, and – not surprisingly – it was written in English.
But it was what was at the top of the letter which caught Paco’s attention.
“2.28.71,” he read.
“What is that? Some kind of date?” Dolores asked.
“Seems to be,” Paco said. “Are you yanquis so far advanced of us Europeans that you need to have twenty-eight months in your calendar?”
Dolores giggled.
“No, we don’t. We just write the month and day the other way round to you backward folk.”
“So that would be the twenty-eighth of February?” “Yeah. What did you say the year was again?” “Seventy-One.”
“Eighteen Seventy-One?”
“No, just seventy-one. And unlike the rest of the date, it's written in Roman numerals – LXXI.”
Dolores suddenly turned very pale.
“Give me that,” she said, almost snatching the letter from his hand.
“Is it ...?” Paco began.
“Shut up! I need to think,” Dolores said curtly, cutting him off. “I’m pretty sure that 1923 was Year Fifty-Seven, so this year would have to be ...” She frowned as she did the mental arithmetic, “... yes, 1937 is Year Seventy-One. There’s no doubt about it.”
“But Year Seventy-One of what?" Paco asked.
Dolores shook her head from side to side, as if she were having difficulty accepting what was before her eyes.
“Year Seventy-One of the Klan,” she said heavily.
“Do you want me to translate the letter for you?” “Yes,” Paco agreed. “I think you better had.” “It’s addressed to the Exalted Cyclops.”
“The what?”
“The head of the local chapter of the KKK. It reads, ‘Greetings to the leaders of the Invisible Empire. As was ordered by the Klonvocation, I have begun the work of destroying this rabble of niggers, Commies and yids. And I have already had some success – there is one nigger now who is no longer able to cast his lascivious eyes over our pure white womanhood ...”
“Go on,” Paco said.
“That’s all there is.” Dolores’ hand suddenly went limp, and the letter floated back down to the floor. “I don’t believe it,” she gasped. “I simply won’t believe it.”
“Do you have any logical reason for saying that?” Paco asked.
“No, but ...”
“Look at this, jefe,” Felipe said.
He was holding up a gray woolen sock with a hole where the big toe had forced its way through the fabric.
“What about it?” Paco asked.
Felipe pointed to the part of the sock where the anklebone would project when it was on a foot. There was a stain there – a reddish brown one.
Paco had no doubt that it was blood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
There were four of them in the town hall committee room – Felipe standing by the door, Paco and Dolores sitting at one end of the table, and Ted Donaldson facing them from the other end.
Paco studied the big stevedore. In his time as a police officer, he had interrogated hundreds of suspects. Some of them had exuded a powerful air of defiance, and it had been obvious right from the start that they would still deny their guilt even in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Others merely thought they were tough, and after half an hour or so would break down and confess. There were those who would immediately try to make a deal, and those who would willingly admit to scores of crimes they could not possibly have committed. There were the weepers, and there were the screamers, the comedians and the would-be orators. Ted Donaldson, he decided, fitted into none of these categories. The stevedore merely looked bewildered.
“Ask him about the gray sock,” Paco told
Dolores. “Does he deny that it’s his?”
When the journalist had finished relaying the question, Ted Donaldson shook his head.
“No, he doesn’t deny it,” Dolores confirmed.
“Where did the bloodstain on it come from?” Paco said.
And he was thinking to himself, ‘Did it come from my Cindy's wound, you bastard? Did you make the mistake of accidentally brushing against her when you’d knocked her to the ground? Did your ankle touch her poor bleeding head?’
“He says that he cut himself when he was out on maneuvers, but he didn’t even realize he’d been bleeding until he returned to the barracks and took the sock off,” Dolores translated.
“When was this?”
“A while ago. Three or four days. He’s vague about the exact date.”
“Can he show us the scar?”
Donaldson shook his head again.
“He says that it wasn’t really a very deep cut to begin with, and anyway, he’s always been a quick healer.”
In the old days, back in Madrid, he probably wouldn’t even have started interrogating Donaldson until he’d been armed with a report on the blood, Paco thought. But this wasn’t the old days. Even if there were still technicians in Albacete who could do the work, there simply wasn’t time to consult them.
He lit up a Celtas and sucked the smoke greedily into his lungs.
“Ask him about the unfinished letter,” he said.
“He says he knows nothing about that.”
“But it’s in his handwriting, isn’t it?”
“He says it’s similar to his handwriting – very similar – but it’s not exactly the same.”
“So it’s a forgery?”
“That’s what he claims.”
A handwriting expert would have been able to rule on the question within a matter of minutes, Paco thought – but as in the case of the blood technicians, there wasn’t one available.
“Does he know what’s meant by the term ‘Exalted Cyclops’?”
Donaldson nodded emphatically, then spoke passionately for perhaps a minute and a half.
“He says that of course he knows what it means,” Dolores translated. “He was once an active member of the KKK – he hasn’t denied that – so he’s familiar with all the terms and modes of address. But he claims that you don’t have to be a Klansman to know how to use the terminology. It’s been in the newspapers – there have even been books about it.”
“Is that true?”
“About the books and the newspaper articles?” “Yes.”
“I guess so.”
Donaldson spoke again, this time looking Paco unflinchingly in the eye.
“He swears he didn’t kill Samuel Johnson, and nor did he attack Cindy,” Dolores translated.
“Did I mention Cindy, you hijo de puta?” Paco demanded, speaking directly to Donaldson, even though he knew the other man would not understand. “Did I even suggest that the two cases were connected?”
“No, you didn’t,” Dolores replied. “But he says he’s not a fool, and it’s obvious to him that the two are not only connected, but are just one part of a much larger conspiracy.”
“What kind of conspiracy?”
Dolores posed the question, and as Donaldson answered it Paco saw a look of pure horror start to spread across the journalist’s face.
“I had no idea – no idea at all – that anything like that was going on in his mind,” Dolores said, when Donaldson fell silent.
“Anything like what?”
“He says ... he says it’s a Zionist conspiracy. He knows all about it because he’s seen a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in which the Jews have laid out their aims for world domination. He claims that the Jews want Republican Spain to lose this war.”
“Why?”
“Because that will make European fascism stronger – so strong that the other European powers will have no choice but to go to war with it themselves. It will be a long and bloody war, and when it’s finally finished, the whole of western civilization will have been destroyed. Then the Jews will step in and take over.”
“But that’s totally insane!” Paco said.
“I know it is. The Times of London exposed the Protocols as a complete forgery as long ago as 1921. But it hasn’t stopped Adolf Hitler from using them for his own ends – and it hasn’t stopped people like Ted Donaldson from still believing that they’re true.”
Donaldson had been listening intently, as if he’d been trying his best to understand what was being said. Now he pointed his thick index finger at Dolores, and started to shout.
“What’s he saying?” Paco asked.
“That he knows I’m not translating his words properly. That I’m probably a dirty Jew myself.”
Donaldson could not have understood these words any better than he’d understood the previous ones, yet they seemed to infuriate him more. With a roar he rose to his feet, and flung himself across the table at Dolores.
His big hands formed claws as he reached for her slender throat. His eyes blazed with a killing rage. Then, suddenly, he grunted and fell face down on the table.
“That should keep him quiet for a little while,” Felipe said, matter-of-factly, as he examined the butt of his pistol to see if its collision with Donaldson’s head had done it any damage.
“Are you all right?” Paco asked Dolores.
Though Donaldson’s powerful fingers had not had time to so much as brush against her skin – though he was now lying harmless and unconscious – the journalist still had her hand protectively over her throat.
“I’m ... I’m fine,” she said, unconvincingly.
Paco looked down at Donaldson.
“How long will he be out for?” he asked Felipe.
“A man as tough as him? Half an hour. Maybe a little longer.”
“He needs to be tied to a chair before he comes round,” Paco said. “Can you manage that by yourself, Felipe, or will you need help?”
“I can manage it well enough,” the fat constable said. “Why don’t you take a break, jefe – you certainly look like you could use one.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Standing with his back to the town hall, Paco watched the two old men cross the Plaza Mayor. They walked as most old men did – slowly and carefully – well-aware that their own bodies were making the world an increasingly hostile place for them to inhabit – but though they were heading for the far corner of the square, they kept turning their heads towards the ayuntamiento.
The word had spread already. Paco thought. The old men had somehow heard that an arrest had been made, and though they knew they would see nothing but the solid walls behind which Donaldson was being held, they still could not stop themselves from looking.
That kind of curiosity was not confined to obscure villages in the quinto coño. In Madrid, in the old days, it had been quite common for a small crowd to gather outside a police station when it had become known that a suspect in a particularly sensational murder was being held there.
Paco remembered people in these crowds shouting questions at him as he left the building – not because they knew he was one of the officers involved in the case, but merely because he was one of the privileged who had been inside, and might possibly have heard something.
Have they charged him yet?
Has he confessed?
And behind those hoarse pleas for information there had always been one basic assumption – that because the suspect had been taken into custody, he must be guilty of the crime.
Why was it, Paco wondered, that people who came into contact with policemen in their daily lives – and were well aware that those officers had their flaws like anybody else – still endowed the force with an infallibility when it came to a murder investigation?
“Do you mind if I join you for a few minutes?” asked a woman’s voice immediately to Paco’s left.
He turned. Dolores McBride was standing a few tentative feet away from him, still loo
king shaken after Donaldson’s attack.
“I asked if you’d mind if I joined you,” Dolores repeated.
“Of course not,” he replied.
But he’d wanted to say, “Yes, I do mind!”
Wanted to tell her that he’d rather be alone with his thoughts – with his doubts!
But after all she’d been through to help him, it would have been churlish to dismiss her like that.
Paco offered her a Celtas, but Dolores shook her head and took a packet of American cigarettes from her breast pocket.
As Paco was lighting it for her, her free hand went instinctively up to her neck.
“He didn’t actually touch me, did he?” she asked.
“No, he didn’t,” Paco assured her.
“But it feels as if he did.” She ran the hand softly over her throat. “You didn’t try to defend me, did you?” she asked accusingly. “When Donaldson was trying to attack me, you just sat there.”
“You’re right,” Paco agreed.
“Why?”
“Because I was sitting, and Felipe was on his feet. He was in a much better position to handle the situation, and I didn’t want to get in his way.”
“So you knew that Felipe would handle it?”
“Of course. We’re a team. We both know what the other’s thinking. I know how he’ll react almost before he does himself.”
“It must be wonderful to be in that situation,” Dolores said wistfully. “I thought I was in it myself until a few minutes ago.”
“Did you?”
“Oh yes. I thought every member of the Party was as much a comrade as every other member of the Party, and I could trust them all absolutely. I guess that now you see me as some kind of fool.”
“Not at all,” Paco assured her.
Dolores grinned ruefully.
“You’re being very kind, Inspector – but you’re not being very honest. I am some kind of fool. A prime example of one, in fact. If there was a blue ribbon for idiots at the county fair, I’d walk away with it every time.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Paco told her.
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