A Murder of No Consequence

by James Garcia Woods

  ‘And does her family live in the village?’

  The old woman clicked her tongue again, as if amazed at the depth of his ignorance. ‘The family lives in the house next to the shop,’ she said. ‘Always has.’

  ‘And where’s the shop, señora?’

  Was there no end to this man’s ignorance? The old woman raised a shaky arm and pointed further up the street. ‘Two doors beyond the bar,’ she said. ‘You know where that is, don’t you?’

  ‘I expect I’ll find it,’ Paco told her. ‘Thank you for your help, señora.’

  As he walked along the dusty street, Paco was conscious of eyes following him from behind every window grille. But that was only to be expected; in a place like Villaverde, strangers were always going to be suspect.

  He reached the shop, which was no more than the front-room of an ordinary house. Cheap pans and brushes hung from nails outside, and through the open door he could see a few tins of canned food, each one looking uncomfortably isolated on the wide wooden shelves. You could tell how well a village was doing from the state of its shop, he thought – and this one wasn’t doing very well at all.

  He knocked on the door of the house next to the shop and waited. When a minute had passed, and still no one had replied, he knocked again.

  ‘Marisol isn’t there,’ called a voice from across the street.

  Paco turned around. A middle-aged woman, with thick peasant arms and legs, was standing in a doorway. ‘Do you know where she is?’ he asked.

  ‘She and her daughter have gone to see her brother in Navalcarnero.’

  ‘Her daughter? María?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘No, not María. She lives in Madrid. It’s Paz I’m talking about.’

  ‘Have you any idea when she’ll be back?’

  ‘She said she’d be on the one o’clock bus.’

  Paco checked his watch. He had over an hour to kill. He might as well visit the village’s one and only bar.

  *

  The bar was a square room with a rough wooden counter at one end. A dozen or so rickety tables lined the walls, a battered billiard table filled the centre of the room. Though it was the middle of the working day, the place was packed.

  As Paco walked up to the counter, the place fell silent. ‘I shouldn’t have worn a suit,’ he thought. ‘Old trousers and a worn shirt would have fitted in better here.’

  The barman was a fat man with copious hair growing out of both his ears and his nostrils. He looked at Paco with distaste. ‘The casino’s up the road, by the church,’ he said.

  ‘I know that. I’ve seen it for myself,’ Paco replied. ‘And I’d rather have a drink here.’

  ‘Get back to your own kind!’ someone shouted from one of the domino tables.

  Paco turned round, and tried to work out which of the men had spoken, but all of them were staring at him with equal hatred. They were just looking for an excuse to pick a fight, to give vent to their frustrations by pounding hell out of the man who’d dared to enter their bar dressed like one of the enemy. They’d probably let him make it to the door, if he left now – and that would undoubtedly be the wisest course. But he didn’t want to. He’d taken shit from Mercedes Méndez, and from that little arsehole of a Ministerial private secretary. It was time to draw the line.

  ‘As I said to the barman, I’d rather have a drink here,’ he told the hostile villagers. ‘And as for being among my own kind, I already am. I was brought up in a village just like this one.’

  ‘You don’t look like one of us,’ said another anonymous voice from the corner of the room.

  Several other men growled in agreement, and it looked as if half a dozen of the peasants were on the point of jumping to their feet and rushing the intruder.

  ‘It’s not what a man wears, but what’s in here,’ Paco said, thumping his heart. ‘I’ve tilled the fields just like you have, I’ve done the same stretch in the military—’

  ‘Were you an officer?’ interrupted a big man with dark hair and a weather-beaten face.

  ‘No, I was a corporal.’

  ‘Did you serve in Morocco?’

  Paco shrugged. ‘Who didn’t?’

  The big man took a sip of his wine. The eyes of all the other men were on him now, but like many natural leaders, he didn’t seem to notice. ‘When were you in Morocco?’ he asked.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  The big man nodded. ‘Yes, it does. At least to me.’

  ‘I was there from 1919 to 1921.’

  ‘Were you in the column which relieved Melilla?’

  Why did that always have to come back to haunt him? Paco wondered. ‘Yes, I was there,’ he said.

  The big man nodded. ‘So was I.’ He turned his attention to the barman. ‘Give my comrade a drink, Jesus.’

  The barman did not look happy. ‘But Javier, how do we know he’s not a spy for the cacique?’ he asked.

  ‘What if he is a spy?’ Javier demanded. ‘Have we all got so little spirit left in us that we no longer dare say what we think for fear it will be reported to Don Alfonso! Give the man a drink, I say. I will pay for it.’

  Reluctantly, the barman poured a glass of rough red wine out of the goatskin. Paco picked up his glass, and made his way over to the man who had probably saved him from a severe beating.

  There were three other men sitting at Javier’s table, all of them with strong peasant bodies and leathery skin. Javier introduced them as Moncho, Kiki and Curro. They each grunted their own greeting to the man from the city.

  ‘What shall we talk about?’ Javier asked, and Paco noticed a cunning look had come into his eyes. ‘Shall we discuss old times? The siege of Melilla, perhaps?’

  Paco shook his head. ‘That’s something that I never talk about,’ he said firmly.

  Javier nodded. ‘At first I thought you might have been lying about having been at the siege. But now I know you were telling the truth.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Paco asked.

  ‘Because you refuse to talk about it. And that is how it should be. It is only those who have never seen true horror who have any pleasure in discussing it.’

  Moncho had been looking at Paco suspiciously since he sat down. Now he said, ‘Why are you here?’

  Tell them he was a policeman, and all the goodwill he had built up with Javier would be gone in an instant. ‘I’m just passing through,’ Paco said.

  ‘Passing through to where?’

  ‘If he wishes to tell us his business, he will do so,’ Javier said. ‘If he does not, well, it is his business.’ He turned to Paco. ‘Isn’t that so, comrade?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Paco agreed.

  He looked around him. The domino players had resumed their games, and conversation had once again reached the level it had been at when he entered the bar. For the moment, at least, he was safe. ‘Is the village in fiestas?’ he asked Javier.

  ‘Why do you ask that? Because we are all here?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The big peasant shook his head. ‘No, we are not in fiestas. We are here because we have nothing else to do.’

  ‘Careful, Javier!’ Moncho warned.

  ‘I will not be careful!’ Javier said vehemently. ‘We have been quiet long enough. Perhaps too long.’ He turned his attention back to Paco. ‘You must understand our history. Most of us here in the village are anarchists, and when the Republic was declared, we greeted it with enthusiasm. Now we could force the landowners to pay us decent wages, we said.’

  Paco remembered his own village, and the two or three landlords who had acted as if they owned everything and everybody – which they almost did. ‘The landlords refused to pay more?’ he asked.

  Javier nodded. ‘We soon discovered that they would rather let their land fall into disuse than improve our conditions.’

  ‘But surely you have land of your own which you could work,’ Paco said.

  ‘Some of us,’ Javier admitted.

  ‘Then why . . .?’

/>   ‘Half of us lost it in the first year of the Republic. Don Alfonso, the cacique – the political boss – is also the village money-lender. When we started to cause trouble – as he saw it – he demanded that all outstanding debts be repaid in full. Those who couldn’t pay had their land taken off them.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘There is no point in growing things if you cannot sell them,’ Kiki said gloomily. ‘And who has the money to buy around here?’

  ‘If you organized yourselves into a co-operative, you could hire a lorry and sell your products in Madrid,’ Paco pointed out.

  Javier laughed. ‘The only lorry in the village is owned by Don Alfonso, and he has no wish to see us prosper.’

  ‘Then hire one from someone else.’

  ‘We did. We tried to hire from Escalona first, but Don Alfonso has political influence there, and no one in the town would do business with us. So we got one from Madrid. But Don Alfonso was one step ahead of us.’

  Landlords usually were, Paco thought. That was how they managed to hold on to their positions. ‘In what way was he one step ahead of you?’ he asked.

  Javier drained his glass. ‘Do you know how the fruit and vegetable markets function in Madrid?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Paco said, signalling to Jesus, the barman, to fill up everyone’s glass.

  ‘All the growers deal through allocators,’ Javier explained. ‘There’s no other way.’

  ‘How does that work?’

  ‘The grower delivers the crop to the allocator, and he distributes it to the various stalls. Then, at the end of the day, he gives the grower the money he has made, minus his own commission.’

  ‘Go on,’ Paco said.

  ‘We had a lorry load of green peppers. Beautiful green peppers. But every allocator we went to said there was no demand for peppers. It was a lie, of course, but there was nothing we could do but wait around until one of them decided there was a demand.’

  ‘And did one?’

  ‘At the end of the first day, an allocator came to us and said that he would buy the peppers outright. It was a pitifully small sum he was offering us, so naturally we refused. We hired warehousing for the peppers, while we slept on the street, like dogs. The next day, it seemed there was no demand for peppers either – even though we could see the allocators accepting them from other lorries. That night the same allocator returned and offered us even less for the peppers. Well, to be honest, they were worth less by then.’

  ‘You refused him again?’

  ‘We did. But by the end of the third day we knew that if we did not sell them, we would get nothing for them. So we let him have them practically as a gift. We only just covered the cost of the lorry and the storage.’

  ‘And you think this Don Alfonso was responsible for that?’

  ‘We know he was. He told us so himself. “You sell to me, at the prices that I am prepared to pay you,” he said, “or you do not sell at all”.’

  ‘He’s trying to starve us into working for low wages again,’ Moncho said.

  ‘Then there’s the school,’ Javier continued. He looked at Paco’s suit, which the woman in the dress shop had examined with disdain, but which, to these villagers, identified him as a rich man. ‘You must have gone to school,’ he said.

  ‘I did,’ Paco replied, ‘but I had to walk ten kilometres there and ten kilometres back every single day, because there was no school in my village.’

  ‘There has never been a school here, either,’ Javier said. ‘But after the King left, the Republic offered us one. It was to be a fine building, with a playground in front. But before they could build the school, they had to buy the land. And the land they bought was so expensive that there was no money left for building.’

  ‘It was Don Alfonso’s land,’ Paco guessed.

  ‘Of course it was. But he’ll pay for it in the end. When the day of retribution comes – and it is not far away – all the landlords will pay. That fat old priest, too.’

  ‘The priest is not such a bad man,’ Kiki objected.

  ‘He drinks in the casino,’ Javier pointed out. ‘That makes him one of them, and . . .’ he slid his finger across his throat as if it were a dagger, ‘. . . he will suffer the same fate as the rest.’

  There was a rumbling sound which grew louder and louder, then an old bus passed the bar, rattling the windows. In a few moments it would stop on the square, and María Sebastián’s mother and sister would get out of it, suspecting nothing.

  Paco stood up. He was glad he’d had a drink before having to break the tragic news.

  ‘You’re leaving?’ Javier asked.

  ‘I have to,’ Paco told him. He took a five peseta note out of his pocket, and laid it on the table. ‘Have a drink on me.’

  Javier scowled. ‘Here, that will buy much more than one drink,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Then have more than one.’

  The scowl still in place, Javier shook his head. ‘We do not take charity in this village.’

  ‘Between comrades, there is never any question of charity,’ Paco countered.

  Javier nodded. ‘We will accept your money today,’ he said. ‘But the next time you come here, it will be a different matter. Then we will own the village and will be able to show you the true hospitality of Villaverde.’

  They shook hands, and Paco walked to the door. In Madrid, just wearing a socialist armband or a Falangists blue shirt was enough to invite death, he thought. But the armband and the shirt could be discarded, and the threat removed. Out in the country, there was no such escape. Here, people were cloaked in a century of hatred, and when Spain finally fell apart – as it must – people like Javier would spill the blood of their enemies without a second’s hesitation.

  Chapter Sixteen

  From his position in front of the bar, Paco watched the two women walk down the dusty street. One of them was in her forties, and dressed in widow’s black. The other, who was little more than a girl, wore a faded green dress. Each, in her own way, reminded him of the photograph in his pocket.

  The women reached their front door, and Paco made his move. The older woman watched the approach of the well-dressed stranger with alarm, her expression seeming to say that if he thought he had any business with her, he was sadly mistaken. Her daughter, in contrast, seemed mildly interested, as if any break in her dull routine would be welcome.

  Paco drew level with them. ‘Can we help you in some way, señor?’ the girl asked.

  ‘I believe so,’ Paco replied. ‘I’m a policeman and—’

  ‘We haven’t done anything wrong,’ the mother said. ‘I swear by the Virgin that we haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘I’m sure you haven’t. I need to ask you some questions about your daughter.’

  The woman looked anxiously at the girl in the faded green dress. ‘Paz . . .?’

  ‘Not Paz,’ Paco told her. ‘María. I’ve come from Madrid.’

  ‘Is . . . is María in trouble?’ the mother asked.

  ‘I think it would be much better if we talked about it inside,’ Paco said.

  ‘She’s always been a good girl. She’s never done anything that might land her . . .’

  It was pointless talking to the mother. ‘It really would be better if we went indoors,’ Paco said to the girl.

  Paz nodded, turned the door handle and ushered her mother into the house.

  The front door led straight into the main room. Running along the far wall was a cooking range, closer to the door a table and four straight-backed chairs. The only other furniture was a tall cabinet containing glasses and kitchen utensils, and a rag rug which covered about a quarter of the flagstone floor. Paco’s first impression was shabbiness, but scrupulously clean shabbiness.

  The mother seemed even more flustered now than she had been out on the street. ‘Would you like a drink, señor?’ she said, retreating into ritual. ‘You must have a drink.’

  ‘That’s not necessary,’ Paco told her.

&n
bsp; ‘It’s no trouble,’ the woman insisted. ‘Paz, give the gentleman some wine.’

  The girl went over to the cabinet and extracted one glass and a flask of wine.

  ‘Please sit down, señor,’ the mother said – and because Paco knew it would make her sit down, too, he did.

  The daughter placed the glass of wine in front of Paco. ‘I don’t like to drink alone,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you bring a glass for your mother, too?’

  ‘I don’t want . . .’ the mother began.

  But Paz, who had read Paco’s eyes said, ‘The gentleman’s right, Momma. A glass of wine would do you good.’

  While she went to fetch the extra glass, Paco examined the mother. The woman was becoming more agitated by the second, and was now twisting her handkerchief tightly in both hands. She knows, Paco thought. They tell themselves they don’t believe it, but somehow they always know.

  Paz returned with a second glass of wine. ‘What’s happened to María?’ she asked.

  Paco took the photograph out of his pocket, and laid it on the table between the mother and daughter. ‘Is this her?’ he asked.

  The mother squinted at the picture. ‘Yes, it is,’ she said. ‘But she looks so . . . so . . .’

  She twisted the handkerchief tighter, and Paco couldn’t help thinking of the hands around María’s throat.

  ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ Paz said.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid she is,’ Paco replied, speaking as gently as he knew how to.

  *

  Paco heard the footsteps, and looked up. Paz was coming down the wooden stairs. Her face was pale and drawn, yet there was a determined look in her eyes which said that someone in the house had to manage to hold themselves together.

  ‘How’s your mother now?’ Paco asked, as Paz reached the foot of the stairs.

  ‘She’s a bit quieter, now. Señora Gomez says that she will stay with her.’

  ‘If you need more time with her . . .’

  Paz shook her head. ‘Señora Gomez trained as a nurse. She will make a better job of calming Mama down than I ever could.’ She walked across to the table, and sat down. ‘Besides, it is important that I answer your questions.’

  ‘Yes,’ Paco agreed. ‘It is. Tell me just what kind of girl your sister was.’