A Murder of No Consequence

by James Garcia Woods

  The three of them crossed the lobby and took the lift up to the third floor. The blue corridor carpet had gone, leaving the bare parquet exposed. Who had taken it? The socialists or the fascists? Whoever had been responsible, the reason behind it was bound to be political, because, as Bernardo had rightly said, everything was political.

  They had reached Herrera’s door, and Paco rang the bell.

  ‘They’ll be long gone,’ Antonio said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Paco agreed.

  There were footsteps in the hallway, then the sound of bolts being drawn back. The door opened, and Luis the valet was standing there, dressed, as always, in an immaculate striped waistcoat.

  The servant ran his eyes over the detective’s boiler suit, somehow making Paco feel as if he was not only dressed shabbily, but had also done something shabby. ‘You again!’ he said contemptuously.

  Paco felt a sneaking admiration for the man. The world in which Luis had lived – the values to which he had dedicated his entire life – had collapsed before his eyes. Yet he knew that he still had his master’s approval and trust, and could continue to be as haughty as if nothing had changed.

  ‘Do we arrest him, comrade?’ Antonio asked, his voice filled with youthful enthusiasm.

  ‘No, we don’t,’ Paco said. He turned his attention back to Luis. ‘Who else is here, apart from you?’

  ‘No one. The other servants have all been sent to their villages. They will not return until order is restored.’

  He meant military order, Paco thought. ‘And what about the family?’

  ‘The master and mistress have gone to Burgos.’ Luis paused, as if he thought Paco might have gained the wrong impression of their motives. ‘The master will be of more use to the Cause in the north, under General Mola’s protection, than he could be here,’ he explained.

  ‘That’s treason!’ Antonio exploded.

  ‘Shut up!’ Paco told the young militiaman.

  So the Herreras had fled. Well, that didn’t really matter to him one way or the other. But there was one other member of the family who mattered very much indeed. ‘What about Méndez?’ he asked, dreading the answer. ‘Has he gone north as well?’

  Luis shook his head. ‘No, Don Carlos is still in Madrid,’ he said, pronouncing Méndez’s first name with a respect which would have taken the policeman by surprise a few days earlier, but which now seemed like only the señorito’s due.

  ‘If he’s not at home, where is he?’ Paco said.

  But even as he was asking the question, he realized that he already knew the answer. There was only one place where Méndez could be – a place which had been haunting Paco’s thoughts and dreams for half a lifetime, and a place fate seemed to be pointing him towards however much he resisted it.

  Luis had still not spoken.

  ‘He’s in the Montaña barracks, isn’t he?’ Paco said. ‘Come on, man, you might as well admit it.’

  The servant nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘Don Carlos is in the Montaña barracks.’

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The shots being fired around the Montaña barracks were little more than gentle pops in the air from the Gran Via, but by the time the three men had reached the Plaza de España, they sounded more like the distant explosion of fireworks.

  Paco parked the Fiat, and, flanked by his escort, walked across to the obelisk which dominated the square. He stopped directly in front of it, and looked up at the seated statue of a bearded man in a ruff. Miguel de Cervantes. How wise the old man looked, how well aware of human weakness and fallibility.

  The shooting had intensified, and Paco sensed Antonio twitching by his side.

  ‘We’d better go and see what we can do, jefe,’ the young militiaman said excitedly.

  ‘In a minute,’ Paco said, lowering his gaze from the great man to the smaller statues of his two most famous creations – Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. The knight sat on his bony horse, holding his lance in his hand and ready to charge the windmills he believed were giants. His squire, by contrast, was astride a donkey. His broad peasant face said more clearly than words that he wasn’t about to mistake flocks of sheep for armies, or galley-slaves for oppressed gentlemen.

  The visionary idealist and the practical realist – there was a bit of both of them in all Spaniards. Paco rested his eyes on the knight’s right hand, which was raised in the air and seemed to be pointing him towards the place he dreaded – the Montaña barracks.

  ‘Shall I follow you one last time?’ he asked the statue.

  *

  Paco remembered sitting at the pavement café, with Felipe, and looking up the grassy slope which led to the Montaña barracks. That had been only a few days earlier, but it had also been in a different world. Then, the only people in the park at the bottom of the hill had been strolling gentlemen of leisure, and uniformed nannies pushing prams. Now, the park had been overrun by a mob of workers in overalls.

  There were thousands of men here. Some hid behind park benches or trees. Others just crouched close to the ground. There were men with rifles, men with knives, and men with nothing more than fists to shake at the fortress.

  The air was filled with the sharp crack of shots – both from and towards the barracks – and by the reek of cordite. Paco brought his escort to a halt just short of the park – close enough to watch the drama, far enough away to be comparatively safe. He looked up at the fortress. There was a rifle at every window.

  ‘What do we do now, jefe?’ Antonio asked.

  What should they do? Climb the steep steps up to the barracks main entrance and ask to see Carlos Méndez? They wouldn’t get half-way there before the fascists – or the socialists – cut them down.

  ‘Jefe . . .?’ said the young militiaman.

  ‘Now,’ Paco said, trying his best to ignore the knot of tension in his stomach, ‘we wait.’

  A low-flying plane appeared in the distance. A murmur of unease ran through the mob at the foot of the hill. Was it the fascists? Were they about to bomb the park? Then someone shouted, ‘It’s one of ours!’ and everyone cheered.

  The plane swooped lower over the fortress. Paco did not see the bomb drop, but he heard the explosion and felt the ground under his feet shake. There was more cheering from the men in the park, but as the plane flew away again, the fortress looked as invulnerable as it ever had.

  The cheering continued anyway. Some of the men in the park, forgetting caution in their excitement, stood up and began to dance around. Fresh shots rang out from the barracks. One of the dancing men clutched his stomach and fell to the ground – and the atmosphere was sombre once more.

  ‘Should we get closer, so we can take a shot at them, jefe?’ Mauricio asked.

  Paco shook his head. ‘It’d only be a waste of bullets.’ He lit a cigarette. The man who’d just been shot had thrown his life away. How many more men would do the same thing before the day was over?

  A group of Asaltos arrived in a lorry, bringing with them a single field-cannon. In their eagerness, hundreds of people swarmed over the back of the truck, trying to help with the unloading. Once it was on the ground, the cannon shot a few shells at the barracks, but it seemed to have no more effect than the aeroplane’s bomb had done.

  The rifle fire continued. Sometimes a bullet would hit its target, and a man on one side or the other would jerk violently backwards; but most of the shots were wasted, doing no more than chip the brickwork of the fortress or thud harmlessly into the thick trunks of the park trees. Paco lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the one he’d been smoking, and wondered if Carlos Méndez was feeling as frightened as he was himself.

  *

  At exactly eleven o’clock, the firing from the barracks suddenly stopped, and the rifles were withdrawn from the windows. A wave of anticipation ran through the crowd.

  ‘The fascists have stopped shooting!’ somebody shouted, though it was already obvious to everyone there.

  ‘They’ve given up!’ a second man baw
led.

  ‘Victory is the People’s!’ called a third.

  All eyes focused on the flagpole. The Spanish flag was being lowered. The mob scuffled and fretted, wishing whoever was winding the flag down would work faster.

  Perhaps the right-wingers inside had given up, Paco thought. Perhaps fate was letting him off the hook. But he didn’t really believe it. He couldn’t force into his mind an image of himself still climbing the seventy-two steps to his apartment when each step represented a year of his life gone.

  The flag had disappeared completely. The crowd continued to stare at the space it had occupied. No one seemed to be breathing. And then a new flag began to climb the pole – a white one. The mob in the park roared. Instantly, men who had been lying on the ground were jumping to their feet, and those who had been sheltering behind trees broke cover. Paco threw his cigarette to the ground and, before he could give himself a chance to change his mind, joined in the rush towards the Montaña barracks.

  The advance took on a life of its own. It was a great, inexorable wave, in which each individual who helped to compose it played only a small, helpless part. Men fell, sometimes in heaps of four or five, and were trampled by those who followed them. Nothing, it seemed – neither divine nor man-made – could stop this huge force whipped into being by the sight of the white flag.

  Paco gasped and strained and told himself he smoked too much. He had no idea how deep or wide the crowd was, but it filled his whole world. He looked up at the Montaña barracks, which was getting closer by the second. It seemed a hundred years since he had examined the body of the girl in the Retiro, but soon, one way or another, it would be over.

  The slope slowed the advance down a little, but still the mob pressed on relentlessly. Those in the lead had now reached a high stone parapet separating the barracks’ upper terrace from its lower one. Men in danger of being flattened against the parapet pushed and shoved to reach the steps which ran up the centre – and all the time the pressure from behind continued unabated.

  Paco was half-way up the steps when the machine-gun opened fire. At first the people around him couldn’t believe it. The garrison had surrendered! they shouted. They’d seen the white flag for themselves, so the gun couldn’t be shooting at them! But it was: its unmistakable rattle continued, spraying terror even faster than it could spray its lethal bullets.

  Retreat was impossible. The front lines were both hemmed in from the sides and being pushed from behind. So there was no way but forward, even if forward meant death.

  Dozens of men fell, some dead before they hit the ground, others merely wounded. They were all, alive or dead, trampled by the advancing mob behind them.

  There were rifles at every window of the fortress now, making their own contribution to the carnage. People were screaming and clawing in the air. Begging for mercy. Praying that the bullets would miss them. And still the attack moved forward.

  Paco ploughed on through the nightmare, his mind focused on the next steep step, then the one which followed. And suddenly, he had reached the top of the parapet and was free of the narrow confines of the staircase.

  Ahead of him, the surviving part of the front line had already reached the barracks door, and fifty or more men, blind with rage, were battering at it with their fists, or else throwing their bodies at this one last barrier between them and their enemies.

  The door splintered and gave way. The mob streamed in. Paco weaved his way forward, skidding on pools of blood, almost tripping over bodies, yet somehow managing to stay upright.

  By the time he reached the barrack yard, the shooting had stopped and militiaman occupied all three tiers of the galleries which ran around the square. The air was filled with madness, excitement, fear, despair, and the stench of death. Paco saw a terrified soldier running around the second tier, pursued by half a dozen men. When he fell, they were on him like mad dogs – kicking, punching, hacking at him with knives. He could not possibly have survived more than a few seconds of such an attack, yet they slashed and pummelled for over a minute.

  A huge militiaman appeared on the top gallery. His thick arms were extended over his head, and in his hands he held a soldier who looked little more than a boy.

  ‘Here the son-of-a-bitch comes!’ the big man shouted to his comrades below.

  He swung his arms, and the soldier was flying through the air, then plummeting towards the ground. He hit the courtyard with a sickening, bone-crushing thud.

  ‘Wait there, and I’ll get you another one,’ the big man promised, disappearing through a doorway.

  Guns were being handed out from the armoury – old rifles, and pistols so new they were still in their boxes. Men danced and sang and shot their weapons pointlessly into the air, drunk on blood and the miracle of their own survival.

  Two militiamen appeared at the edge of the square, dragging a bloody, beaten Carlos Méndez between them. One of them slammed him against the wall, and the other took a few paces backwards and raised his rifle.

  Paco stepped between Méndez and his would-be executioner. ‘Don’t kill him, comrades!’ he shouted.

  A dangerous, half-mad look came into the second militiaman’s eyes. He drew his pistol and pointed it at Paco’s head. ‘Why shouldn’t we kill him?’ he demanded. ‘Friend of yours, is he? Because if he is, you know what that makes you.’

  ‘Do I look like a fascist?’ Paco asked.

  ‘There’s a lot of fascists who don’t look like fascists any more,’ the militiaman growled, his finger tightening against the trigger of his weapon.

  Paco felt the now-familiar sensation of his heart thumping against his ribs. The militiaman intended to shoot him, he was sure of it, and with all the killing going on around them, no one was likely to object to one more death. He felt a sense of loss. He didn’t think he was afraid to die any more, but it would be tragic to have come so far only to be killed before he could achieve his objective.

  The militiaman’s eyes said, as clearly as any words, that he was within a second or two of giving the trigger the final squeeze. Strangely calm now that his moment had come, Paco wondered if there was anything he could do to save himself. And then he realized that while he couldn’t do a thing, there was a person who could prevent his death – Carlos Méndez.

  ‘Am I a friend of yours, Méndez?’ he asked the man who was leaning against the wall.

  Carlos Méndez wiped a trickle of blood away from the corner of his mouth. ‘I should have killed you myself, instead of putting my trust in others to do the job,’ he said contemptuously.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ the militiaman with the pistol demanded.

  ‘You heard him,’ Paco said. ‘He tried to have me knocked off. Not something you do to your friends, is it?’

  The militiaman lowered his pistol, though he did not put it back in his holster. ‘Why did he want you dead?’ he asked Paco.

  ‘Because he knew if he didn’t get me, I’d get him. His name’s Carlos Méndez. He’s a rich fascist from the Barrio de Salamanca . . .’

  ‘So why’d you stop us shooting him? That’s enough reason to kill him a hundred times over.’

  ‘He seduced my sister . . .’ Paco said.

  ‘That’s a complete lie,’ Carlos Méndez screamed. ‘I would never have anything to do with—’

  The militiaman with the rifle stepped forward and slapped him across the face. ‘Shut up, you bastard!’ he growled.

  ‘He seduced my sister,’ Paco repeated, ‘and if my family is ever to regain its honour, it is I who should take revenge, not you.’

  The two militiamen exchanged a quick glance, then the one with the pistol said, ‘If you want him, he’s yours. He wasn’t much fun, anyway. No fight left in him.’

  The militiamen who’d hit Méndez, grabbed his prisoner roughly by the shoulder and swung him into Paco’s arms. ‘Let’s go and find ourselves another one,’ he said to his partner, and the two men disappeared back inside the building.

  Méndez’s knees had buc
kled slightly when Paco had taken hold of him, but now he seemed to be finding his feet again.

  ‘Can you stand up on your own?’ Paco asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Paco released his hold, took a set of handcuffs out of his pocket, and clicked one of the cuffs on Méndez’s right wrist. ‘Carlos Méndez Segovia, I am arresting you for the murder of María Sebastián,’ he said.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Outside, in the street, there was the pandemonium and excitement of Carnival and the Festival of San Isidro rolled into one. Guns were being fired into the air as a salute to the victory. Complete strangers embraced or danced wildly in the centre of the road, holding up traffic which was only too glad to stop and watch the spectacle. The Montaña barracks had fallen! The right was vanquished and, finally, the workers were in control of their own destinies.

  Inside, in a small room at the back of the casa del pueblo, two men sat facing each other across a plain wooden table. One had a battered face which had recently been bathed and then had a sticking plaster applied to it in a haphazard, uncaring way. The other chain-smoked, as if he had carried out all his labours of Hercules, and now didn’t know what to do with his hands.

  ‘We’ll win in the end, you know,’ Carlos Méndez said.

  Paco took a long, deep drag on his cigarette. ‘Perhaps you will,’ he agreed.

  ‘But I won’t live to see it, will I?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve been told you’re to be tried by a revolutionary tribunal.’

  Méndez laughed. ‘A revolutionary tribunal! What fine names these working-class rabble give themselves once they’ve got the power. And what do you think the verdict of this so-called revolutionary tribunal will be?’

  ‘You’re to be charged on two counts,’ Paco explained. ‘One: that on July 9th you murdered María Sebastián. And two: that you attempted to smuggle weapons into Madrid to arm the fascists who have remained. There should be a third charge: that you had my partner, Felipe Fernández, gunned down. But I can’t prove that.’