For a second, Paco couldn’t make sense of what the barman was saying. Then he understood. ‘You mean to tell me they’ll be coming back tonight?’ he asked.
‘Naturally. Why should they sleep out in the mountains when there’s comfortable beds waiting for them at home?’
Paco shook his head in despair. ‘Give me a wine, Nacho. No, better make it a brandy.’
The barman poured him out a large measure. ‘Have you heard the latest news?’
‘What latest news?’ Paco asked wearily.
‘They’ve arrested your friend Ramón.’
‘He used to be your friend Ramón as well,’ Paco said. ‘Who’s arrested him? And for what reason?’
‘It was the anarchist militia who took him.’
‘Are you sure of that?’
‘They were wearing red and black handkerchiefs around their necks – what else could they have been? As to why they arrested him, you know yourself that he has some very right-wing views.’
‘And since when has that been reason enough to deny a man his liberty?’
Nacho shrugged. ‘Not long. Only since the Montaña barracks fell.’
Chapter Forty
Through the blazing afternoon heat, Paco trudged the streets, looking for Ramón. At anarchist headquarters – where only a few days earlier, his red armband would have earned him a bullet – he was greeted as a comrade, but not given much help. They had never heard of the man he was looking for, they told him. Was he sure it was the anarchists who had arrested his friend? Yes, he was sure. Then perhaps he should try one of the branches nearer to his home. The situation was still very confused, and each group was using its own initiative.
The anarchist post nearest to Calle Hortaleza was housed in a sacked church. The man in charge took Paco down to the crypt and showed him the prisoners they had arrested earlier in the day. Paco recognized a few of them.
There was a coalman, still covered with black dust. ‘It’s true I once gave the fascists ten pesetas,’ he babbled, ‘but I didn’t know who they were. They were wearing suits, so I thought they’d come from the town hall, and it was some kind of tax they were after.’
There was the shoe-shine boy who normally worked on the corner of Gran Vía. ‘Let me out of here!’ he pleaded. ‘I had to clean the rich men’s shoes. They were the only ones who could afford to pay.’
And there was a shrunken old man in a dark-blue suit. ‘It’s my nephew who’s denounced me,’ he said sadly. ‘He thinks that this way he won’t have to pay back the money he owes me.’
All in all, there were around twenty prisoners – poor, shivering wretches, each loudly proclaiming his own innocence. Ramón was not among them.
‘Perhaps your friend was arrested by the branch closest to his ministry,’ the anarchist gaoler suggested.
‘Perhaps he was,’ Paco agreed.
But Ramón was not being held at that branch, nor at the three or four others Paco tried. So maybe it wasn’t the anarchists who’d arrested him after all. Or maybe they’d arrested him and then let him go. Or were lying when they said they didn’t have him. It was even possible that Nacho had got the story wrong, and he hadn’t been arrested at all. Whatever the case, as darkness began to fall Paco realized he’d hardly slept for four days and that he was too mentally and physically exhausted to do any more that night.
*
Paco dragged his aching body up the first eighteen of the seventy-two stairs which led to his apartment, rested for a moment, then ploughed on. He had just passed the second-floor landing when he heard a door click open, and a surprised voice behind him say, ‘Paco, is that you?’
He turned. Cindy was standing in her doorway. She had a towel wrapped around her head, and was wearing a blue cloth dressing gown which stopped just above her knees. He didn’t think he had ever seen her look more beautiful.
An amused smile played on her lips. ‘It really is you,’ she said.
He wondered what she found so funny, then realized that it must be the fact that, though he was now so used to them that they felt like a second skin, he was wearing overalls.
‘It’s good to see you, Cindy,’ he said.
‘It’s good to see you,’ the girl replied. ‘Where’ve you been? I knocked on your door several times, but nobody answered.’
‘I was in Seville. Working on a case.’
Cindy shook her head. ‘Isn’t that just like you? History’s been made right here in Madrid, and you were in Seville, working on a case as if nothing at all was happening. The militia stormed the Montaña barracks this morning, you know.’
He could have told her he’d been there himself, but he didn’t want to talk about it – was too tired to explain why he’d been there. So instead, he just said, ‘Yes, I know.’
Cindy held out her hand to him, and he took it in his, ‘Would you like to come inside?’
‘Very much.’
He followed her into her salon. ‘Would you like a drink?’ Cindy said. ‘A glass of wine? Or a brandy?’ Then she slammed her hand down on the table, as if she were angry with herself. ‘Oh hell, Paco, let’s forget the social crap. I’ve missed you so bad it hurts, and now you’re back all I want to do is go to bed with you. And isn’t that what you want too?’
Paco shook his head. ‘I’m too exhausted,’ he said. ‘I just wouldn’t be up to it.’
Cindy smiled, and ran her tongue over her lips. ‘You might think that now,’ she said, ‘but once I’ve got you in the bedroom, you’ll find the strength from somewhere.’
And he did.
*
Afterwards, lying in each other’s arms, they talked about the future.
‘When are you leaving for the United States?’ Paco asked, trying to hide his sadness.
Cindy propped herself up on one elbow. ‘Leaving for the States?’ she repeated. ‘Now whatever made you think I’d want to do a thing like that?’
Paco shrugged. ‘Isn’t it obvious? There’s fighting in the sierra, not more than thirty kilometres from here.’
‘I know. It was on the radio.’
‘The lads who left Madrid today think it will be all guts and glory, but it won’t. I saw how the army operated in Seville. The militiamen with their tortillas and bottles of wine won’t stand a chance against professional soldiers.’
‘Don’t underrate them,’ Cindy said. ‘They managed to take the Montaña barracks.’
‘Yes, but at what cost. There’s a limit to the amount of blood which can be shed in any cause – even in the cause of freedom.’
Cindy smiled. ‘Do you know, I’ve never heard you talk that way before,’ she said.
‘What way?’
‘So abstractly. “The cause of freedom”. Indeed! Whatever happened to the hard-headed policeman who only cared about his job?’
‘Like so many other things, my job no longer exists,’ Paco said. ‘But we were talking about you. You have to leave.’
‘And miss the most exciting event of the century?’ Cindy said. ‘Not a chance.’
Paco shook his head, as he seemed to have done so many times that day. ‘It isn’t a game,’ he said.
‘I know it isn’t. That’s why I volunteered my services at the hospital this afternoon. And maybe, when I’ve got a little experience of nursing, they’ll send me up to the Front.’
‘You won’t have to go anywhere,’ Paco said. ‘Within a matter of weeks, the Front will be right here.’
‘What about you?’ Cindy asked. ‘What will you do?’
‘Join one of the militias.’
‘Even though you think they’re doomed?’
‘Yes.’
‘But why?’
‘Because I’ve closed my last case, and it’s time to stop being Don Quixote. What Spain needs now is more Sancho Panzas.’
Cindy smiled. The smile was a little sad, as if she’d just realized she’d lost something of value. ‘What’s brought about this sudden change?’ she asked.
‘I was with Berna
rdo this morning, when he arrested a couple of gun-runners. One of them was screaming that he was innocent. And do you know what Bernardo said?’
‘No. What?’
‘He said that there are no innocents any more. And he was right. The fascists have done some wicked things – this afternoon I saw the bodies of three people who’d been killed by one of their snipers – but do you really think the left is going to come out of this without blood on its hands?’
‘No,’ Cindy said seriously. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘So all I can do is choose one side, and hope it’s less wrong than the other. And the side I’ve chosen is the left.’ He ran his hand through Cindy’s hair. ‘Let’s not talk about that any more. I’m glad you’re staying – even though I still think you should go.’
Cindy grinned impishly. ‘You’d miss me if I went home, would you, Paco?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what would you miss most? My conversation? Or taking me to bed?’
‘Both those things and much more,’ Paco said. ‘I think I’m in love with you.’
Cindy’s grin stayed in place, but it had become awkward and lopsided. ‘You don’t love me,’ she said.
‘How can you be so sure of that?’
‘You were in Seville, working on this case? Right?’
‘Right.’
‘Tell me honestly, Paco, while you were chasing this murderer of yours, did you ever – even for a second – stop to think of me?’
‘No,’ Paco admitted. ‘My mind was on the investigation, and nothing else. But I still think I love you.’
‘Just what I need,’ Cindy said. ‘A romantic-idealist-turned-practical-realist, who can be so single-minded that he doesn’t think of the object of his desires for days. A man who can offer me no future because he’s married, and, even if he wasn’t, will probably be killed within the month.’
‘Are you telling me you don’t want to see me again?’ Paco asked.
Cindy shook her head. The grin was more natural now, almost mischievous again. ‘No, I’m not saying that. We don’t have a real great basis for a relationship, but I’m sure we can work something out.’
Paco put his arms round Cindy and hugged her to him. He thought back to the horror of Morocco, and knew that worse – much worse – lay ahead of him.
He imagined fighting under the hot Castilian sun and in the cold snow of winter. He could already hear the noises of battle and smell the stench of burning corpses. Blood, rivers of it, flowed before his eyes and . . .
Cindy ran her hands up and down his back. ‘Don’t think about it,’ she urged, reading his mind. ‘For an hour or so more, let’s pretend none of it exists.’
She was right, he thought. He brushed his lips against hers, then hugged her to him. ‘I do love you,’ he said.
‘And I – God help me – do love you,’ Cindy whispered back.
There was a sound of distant shooting drifting, almost lazily, on the evening breeze. But they refused to hear it.
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