A Murder of No Consequence

by James Garcia Woods

  Yes, but Herrera was a dangerous bag of piss and wind, he reminded himself – a poisonous bag, with the power to issue orders which got people killed.

  He turned to look at Isabel Fernández. Felipe’s wife more than ever seemed to resemble Our Lady of the Sorrows, and if she had heard his angry exchange with Herrera, she gave no sign of it.

  Paco lit another cigarette. The acrid smoke raked at his throat. He considered stubbing it out, but then what would he do with his hands?

  The door opened, and a young doctor entered. ‘Are you Señora Fernández?’ he asked Isabel.

  Isabel stood up. ‘Yes, that’s me,’ she said, with considerable dignity. ‘How is my husband?’

  The doctor placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘We’ve done all we can,’ he said. ‘Now it’s up to him. If he can somehow summon up the strength to . . .’ He trailed off, knowing his words were inadequate, but having nothing else to offer.

  ‘He’s going to die, isn’t he?’ Isabel said.

  ‘I’m afraid we must brace ourselves to expect the worst,’ the doctor replied.

  Isabel bent her head in meek obedience to God’s will. Paco could have slapped her.

  First an innocent girl had been murdered, he thought, and then his partner was at death’s door. He would probably never find the man whose hands had choked the life out of María, nor the three who had gunned his partner down. And he didn’t really care if he didn’t, because they were just the instruments of the attacks – no more important than the pistols they had used. What he wanted was the man who had given the orders. And whatever it took, he would have him.

  Part Two

  Seville 16–18 July 1936

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The afternoon sun was at its height, and the countryside shimmered in a sickly heat haze. Paco took one hand off the steering wheel, and wiped the sweat from his brow. It was crazy to drive to Seville, he thought for the fiftieth time. So what if María had visited the city on several occasions. How was that going to lead him to her murderer? Yet if the solution didn’t lie in Seville, where did it lie? Not in Madrid. And not in María’s village in the mountains, either. He had got all he could out of those two places.

  ‘I’ll find the answer in Seville,’ he told the parched fields which lay ahead of him. ‘I have to find the answer in Seville. I owe that much to Felipe.’

  He made good time on the first forty-seven kilometres of his journey, because he was travelling on the royal road, built at the time of the monarchy to connect the capital with the palace in Aranjuez. After Aranjuez, it was a different story. The road deteriorated almost immediately after he had left the town, and the further he drove into the open countryside, the worse it became.

  As he avoided pot-holes and swerved across the road to overtake farm carts, Paco found his mind drifting back, inevitably, to Felipe. They’d been a good team, he thought, complementing each other’s strengths, compensating for each other’s weaknesses, and making – between them – one perfect investigator.

  And now Felipe was as good as dead. Though Paco still found it hard to believe, the man who had been enjoying his coffee and bun only a few hours earlier was probably now lying on a cold morgue slab.

  ‘I miss him already,’ he said softly.

  But there was more to it than that. Whatever was waiting for him in Seville, it was sure to be both complicated and dangerous, and without the reassuring presence of Felipe by his side, he was more frightened than he cared to admit.

  *

  It was evening by the time he reached Valdepeñas, but even the lethargic descent of the sun didn’t do much to relieve the suffocating heat inside the Fiat. An inn loomed ahead, surrounded by fields of vines. It was an old squat, stone building, which must have seen much history, yet seemed untouched by it. If Paco had had Felipe with him, he would have asked the fat constable what he thought about staying there for the night. As it was, he simply pulled up by the front door, and went inside.

  The main room of the inn had a flag floor, covered with straw. A tap dripped continuously into the enamel sink, and the air was filled with a mixture of frying olive oil, cigarette smoke, and cow dung from the boots of the drovers who made up most of the clientele. Paco walked across to one of the tables and sat down, aware that every other man in the room was watching him.

  A scrawny waiter with a wall eye and bad teeth appeared. ‘Can I help you, señor?’ he asked, giving Paco’s smart suit a close inspection as he spoke.

  ‘I’d like some food now, and after that I’d like a room for the night,’ Paco told him.

  ‘The food we can manage – rabbit with garlic – but we have no rooms spare,’ the waiter said unconvincingly.

  ‘None?’

  ‘None.’

  Paco reached into his pocket and pulled out the UGT membership card Bernardo had given him that morning. ‘Are there any rooms free now?’ he asked.

  The waiter examined the card as if he suspected a trick. ‘There might be one free,’ he admitted.

  ‘And can I have it?’

  The waiter grinned. ‘Of course, comrade. And now I will go and get your food for you.’

  The waiter disappeared into the kitchen, and returned with a plate of rabbit, a flask of wine, and two glasses. After he had put the plate in front of Paco, he sat down and poured them both a drink. ‘Where have you come from?’ he asked.

  Paco looked down at the rabbit. It smelled good, as country cooking always did, but there was not much meat on it. Still, it was better than nothing. ‘I’ve come from Madrid,’ he said.

  The waiter took a sip of his wine. ‘And how are things in the capital?’

  ‘Things are very confused. No one really seems to be in control any more.’

  ‘Are there many fascists there?’

  Paco thought of the three young men in blue shirts who had attacked him outside María’s apartment, and of the other three who had gunned down his partner. ‘Oh yes, there are plenty of fascists,’ he said.

  The waiter nodded, as if that were the answer he had expected. ‘There are fascists here, too. Not so many as in Madrid, but they swagger around as if they owned the place.’

  Paco laughed. ‘And don’t they?’

  The waiter looked at him suspiciously for a second, then joined in his laughter. ‘I suppose the do own it – legally,’ he said. ‘The law has always been on the side of the rich. But their time is running out. We – the people – have suffered long enough. It is our country, and very soon we will take it back.’

  Paco slipped another piece of the skinny rabbit into his mouth and wondered what the señoritos who controlled all the land around the inn would be eating that night. Wondered, too, what they would be wearing in the morning, when they rode around on their thoroughbred horses, watching the ragged peasants work their fields for them. ‘They won’t give up without a fight,’ he warned.

  ‘Joder! We know that,’ the waiter exclaimed.

  ‘And they will be better armed than you are.’

  The waiter nodded gravely. ‘It is undoubtedly true what you say. We’re sure they’ve got weapons stored all over the place – in barns, bodegas, even buried in orchards – but our cause is just, and we are courageous.’

  Paco sighed. How many times had he heard such brave, foolish talk in the army? ‘You should tread carefully,’ he said. ‘I served with men in Morocco who thought it was a glorious thing to rush into battle. Most of them died there.’

  The waiter poured him another glass of wine. ‘What are you saying?’ he asked, with a touch of hostility creeping into his voice. ‘That we shouldn’t fight?’

  ‘It’s always better not to fight if you don’t have to,’ Paco replied. ‘But if you must fight, then at least plan in advance how you are going to do it. You can be sure that the fascists will.’

  One of the drovers sitting near the door banged his glass on the table. ‘More wine, Julio!’

  ‘Coming,’ the waiter replied, standing up.

&nb
sp; ‘Remember,’ Paco said, ‘plan it in advance. Martyrs may have candles lit for them, but they never get to plough their own fields or see their grandchildren grow up.’

  *

  He was back on Calle Fuencarral with Fat Felipe. They’d just left the Galician bar, and were walking towards the Red de San Luis. The shoe-shine boy was there. So was the knife-grinder who wasn’t a knife-grinder at all. Paco wasn’t going to be taken by surprise this time. Even as he spun round to face the Hispano-Suiza, he was reaching for his pistol.

  Then he saw them! Reyes, his long-dead love from Melilla. And María, the girl who he’d never have known about if she hadn’t been murdered. They were walking along arm-in-arm. And they looked so much alike that they could have been sisters!

  Just over their shoulders, he could see the menacing black car with the two gunmen leaning out of the windows. He knew he should fire on it, but he couldn’t. His hand was frozen above his shoulder holster, and though he tried to scream out a warning, the words wouldn’t leave his mouth.

  The black car drew closer and closer. Suddenly there was a hail of bullets – far more than could have come from just two pistols. María and Reyes began to jerk, as if they were being manipulated by a crazed puppeteer. Blood gushed from their bodies in jets. Paco felt the bullets whiz past him, but though there were hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands, none of them struck him.

  The car was gone. The two girls lay in a tangled heap on the pavement. Fat Felipe had fallen just a couple of metres further on. A crowd had gathered, and accusing fingers were being pointed at the one person who had not been hurt in the attack – a man standing alone, up to his ankles in blood.

  *

  Paco awoke in an unfamiliar bed, drenched in sweat. Through the window he heard the sound of cows lowing, and men clearing their throats of early morning phlegm. Up the stairs wafted the smell of freshly roasted coffee and warm bread. For a second, he didn’t know where he was. And then it all came back to him.

  As he climbed out of bed, he realized that he was still shaking from the nightmare. It would come back to haunt him again, he was sure of that. And each time it did return, it would have the same ending – with his failure to protect the ones he loved – because it could have no other.

  *

  In the mountains north of Jaen, Paco’s progress was halted by a flock of sheep. For over half an hour, the seemingly endless stream of animals formed a vast wave of dirty white fleece across the road. Perhaps if he’d blown his horn, the shepherds might have made a gap in the flock through which he could pass. But he didn’t think so. They were wild, mountain men, almost as dirty as their charges, and to them, anyone wearing a suit and driving a car was their natural enemy.

  Outside Montoro, he heard a bang, felt the Fiat lurch to the right, and realized he had a flat tyre. Under the blazing sun, he struggled with the tight wheel-nuts and pondered on what the third disaster might be.

  The third disaster came on the edge of Cordoba, at the hottest part of the day, when his radiator boiled over. It took fifteen minutes to walk to the nearest house, where he was given an olive oil can filled with water. As he returned to the Fiat, he wondered what comment Felipe would have made if he’d been there.

  He could picture the fat constable, watching him pour the water into his radiator, then scratching his backside reflectively, and saying, ‘You don’t perhaps think that somebody’s trying to tell us something, do you, jefe?’

  And Paco, in return, would have said, ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

  ‘Well, it’s obvious we were never meant to get to Seville, so why don’t we just turn around and go home?’

  Paco grinned for the first time since he’d had his nightmare. Yes, that was what Felipe would have said all right. He would have expressed the doubts, and allowed his chief to take the positive attitude. But now there was no one to react against, and any doubts Paco felt – and there were many – had to come entirely from within himself.

  ‘I’ve no choice but to go to Seville, Felipe,’ he told his colleague.

  ‘It’s the only chance I have of ever getting a good night’s sleep again.’

  *

  It was early evening when he finally reached the outskirts of Seville. Ahead of him, dwarfing the rest of the city, was the Giralda Tower, a Moslem minaret which had been transformed into a triumphant acclamation of Catholicism by Hernán de Ruiz – who, for all Paco knew, could have been a long-dead ancestor of his. In the shadow of the magnificent tower stood the cathedral, looking as much a fortress as a place of worship. There were orange trees everywhere, and lush green palms which swayed gently whenever a little breeze blew up.

  The streets were bursting with life. Dashing men and dark-haired women walked around in a way which said that though Madrid had the government, Seville had the style. Gypsies sang and danced on street corners, hoping to earn a few centimos. Gentlemen in black riding sombreros and fancy waistcoats trotted by on magnificent Andalucian horses. Dogs, worn out by the heat of the day, lay sleeping fitfully in gutters.

  Paco booked into a cheap fonda on the Calle de Santiago. Outside in the street, life still called, but he wanted no part of it. He drank two brandies and went straight to bed.

  Chapter Thirty

  The mercury in the thermometer fixed to the bar wall had climbed up to thirty-five, but Paco was sure the real temperature was six or seven degrees higher than that. This was heat, he thought. This made Madrid seem almost temperate.

  He looked around the bar. It was a long, narrow room with entrances both at the front and the back. There was a chipped gilt-framed mirror behind the counter, and fading bull-fighting posters hanging on the walls. The barman, who had volunteered the fact that his name was Alvaro, was somewhere around forty. His face wore a permanently aggrieved expression, and his hairline was receding. Paco was his only customer.

  Paco turned to examine the building on the other side of the road – the main reason he’d come into the bar in the first place. It was a square structure with high, arched windows. And though it was smaller than the tobacco factory where Bizet’s Carmen had worked and sung her arias, it shared some of the more famous building’s neo-classical grandeur.

  ‘So that’s the silk factory,’ Paco said.

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ Alvaro agreed sourly.

  Paco counted the guards. There were two permanently stationed at the front door, and four more on patrol around the perimeter. It seemed excessive security for an industrial unit, but perhaps when you were as important as Don Eduardo Herrera Moreno, it was necessary to protect all your property from your powerful enemies.

  ‘Another wine?’ Alvaro asked.

  ‘Might as well,’ Paco agreed. He swung round so he was facing the bar. ‘Could I ask you a question, Alvaro?’

  ‘Depends,’ the barman said, without enthusiasm. ‘What kind of question have you got in mind?’

  Paco reached into his pocket, took out the photograph of María, and laid it on the counter. ‘I was wondering if you’d ever seen this girl around?’

  Alvaro squinted at the picture, but did not pick it up. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘Some kind of cop?’

  ‘I used to be a policeman,’ Paco admitted. ‘But that’s all over. Now, I work for myself.’

  Alvaro took the picture between his thick finger and thumb and held it closer to his eyes. ‘What kind of work do you do?’ he asked. ‘Confidential inquiries?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The barman shook his head doubtfully. ‘It’s easy for you to say that. Anybody can claim to be anything. But how do I know you’re not still a cop? Or, at least, working for them.’

  ‘You’re a cautious man,’ Paco told him.

  Alvaro scratched his chin. ‘In times like these, I’d be a fool to be anything else.’

  Paco took out the UGT card, and held it up in front of him. ‘Ever seen a policeman with one of these?’ he asked.

  The barman examined the card for quite a while. ‘It would appe
ar that you really are an honest working man,’ he said finally.

  ‘And the girl?’ Paco prompted. ‘Have you seen her?’

  ‘Might have,’ Alvaro conceded. ‘Why? What’s she done?’

  ‘She hasn’t done anything,’ Paco lied. ‘I’m just trying to trace her for someone.’ He lowered his voice, even though there was no one to overhear. ‘I can’t go into all the details, of course, but it’s a question of a legacy.’

  Paco could also see the peseta signs light up in Alvaro’s eyes. ‘And if I help you find her, will there be anything in it for me?’ the barman asked.

  ‘There’s a finder’s fee of one hundred pesetas for every single person who has provided useful information. But, naturally, it’s only payable after the girl has been located.’

  The barman hesitated for a second, then said, ‘She looks a little bit different in the picture, but if she’s the girl I think she is, she’s been in here for a coffee several times over the last year or so. A nice girl, she is. No swank to her.’

  Paco lit a cigarette. ‘And did she tell you what she was doing in Seville?’

  Alvaro’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s her reason for her coming here got to do with finding her?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious,’ Paco responded. ‘The more people I meet who’ve had contact with her, the more chance I have of finding her.’

  ‘And the reward?’

  ‘You get the same hundred pesetas whether you’re the only person I talk to, or if I see fifty more.’

  ‘She told me she was here on business,’ Alvaro said. ‘Didn’t look like a business woman to me – more like a girl from the village who’s had a few of the rougher edges rubbed off her. But there you are, that’s what she said.’

  ‘You don’t happen to remember the last time she was here, do you?’ Paco asked.

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact. It was my birthday, you see.’

  ‘And when exactly was that?’

  ‘A week yesterday. The eighth. She was here in the morning.’