by Lex Lander
In the event our unlawful entry was painless. We walked in on the owners of the house while they were still abed. We allowed them to get dressed under nominal supervision, sat them down at the kitchen table. They were in their sixties and they were scared, but not scared witless. We didn’t terrorise them. Luis let them see the gun, then stowed it away, making no threats. No need.
They were Dutch and retired, seekers of an inexpensive place in the sun. Name of Sloothaak. Anneloes and Maurits. They spoke little Spanish, rough and ready English, so we conversed in that language. How long would we stay, please? Not long, I assured them, a day, maybe two.
The interior of the house was spick and span but poorly furnished, with Ikea well-represented. Two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, bathroom. The shower worked fine and we used it in turn, consigning our muddy garments to the washing machine. Borrowed dressing gowns served to keep Elena and me decent; Luis wrapped a bath towel round his waist.
A phone was my next urgent need. The house had a land line but it was disconnected or out of service. Sloothaak confessed to have been unable to pay his Telefonica account for three months. Cell phone reception was no better here, and in any case the battery in mine had died along the route.
‘Why don’t we take their car and leave now?’ Elena suggested as we breakfasted on slightly stale bread rolls and an assortment of jams. The Sloothaaks had been banished to the living room, leaving the door open. ‘They’ll be looking for a jeep.’
‘Ever heard of road blocks?’ I returned. ‘They’ve probably called the police. You can’t kill four soldiers in peacetime and expect them to be written off as battle casualties.’
Later that morning a chopper came over, circled the house at scarcely more than roof height. The palm tree fluttered like a ragged flag and the whole building vibrated, rattling the knives on our plates. A tortoiseshell cat came in through a cat-flap in the kitchen door as if a firework were tied to its tail and streaked across the room, presumably en route for its favourite bolthole.
The chopper zoomed away abruptly, maybe satisfied, maybe not. Luis laid the automatic on the table. It was as I had thought, a Heckler & Koch, the USP model, a pattern designed for military use. I toyed with the idea of disarming him but let it go. Making an enemy of him wouldn’t get us out of this mess.
‘You will not stay long please,’ Mrs Sloothaak said worriedly, as she cleared away the dishes. Less philosophical than her husband, she was red-eyed from weeping.
‘Not long,’ I assured her for the umpteenth time.
In the event we stayed for seven days. After twenty-four hours a routine was established. We took it in turns to keep the Sloothaaks company. Contact with the outside world meant a ten minute drive. No visitors came that first day. The Sloothaaks had no television either, and no computer, only an ancient transistor radio and a CD player. We tuned in to national and local stations for the news. No mention of any multiple killings. A security clampdown? Always possible. The Spanish authorities wouldn’t be keen to advertise any incidents that might alert the British to the presence of a large military force next door to Gibraltar. The obvious explanation didn’t hit me until much later.
The sleeping arrangements were easily sorted. Elena slept in the second bedroom while Luis and I shared the living room. Luis, being slightly smaller, took the two-seater couch. I wallowed in the luxury of a wobbly Z- bed the Sloothaaks exhumed from sundry junk in the garage.
The second morning, late, we had a postal delivery. We watched from behind the thin net curtains as the postman shoved a solitary envelope in the box on the gate post, and roared off in his little yellow van as if he couldn’t wait to get away from the place.
Otherwise our isolation was undisturbed. The radio stations remained mute on the subject of the killings.
The weather was settling into its spring regimen. The sun shone uninterruptedly during our second day at the house. After a sleepless, uneasy second night I rose early ahead of it. Went out to sit on the log pile in the garden. Still wondering and worrying about Linda and whether she had made it back to the safety of Gib.
‘You couldn’t sleep either?’ Elena emerged from the kitchen door, tartan patterned dressing gown a size and a few too large, bare ankles protruding below. She lit a cigarette, eyed me coolly.
‘Luis thinks we should leave,’
‘I know. I disagree.’
‘There were no helicopters yesterday,’ she said, meandering about the lawn. The grass stubble was damp with dew, making her feet glisten.
‘It’s too soon.’
‘You are too cautious.’
For a while she said no more. The sun appeared over the mountains, splitting the sky. Elena, standing back to it, became a featureless cut-out. I shaded my eyes.
‘Why don’t you sleep with me?’ she said, with her usual lack of subtlety.
My commitment to Linda was the reason. So as not to hurt Elena’s feelings I came up with a different one.
‘Luis might not like it.’
‘Luis? Hah!’ Her tone was scathing but, tellingly, she didn’t dispute the point, so maybe I was on the mark.
‘How old are you, Elena?’
‘Twenty-four. Why?’
‘You know how old I am?’
She made a show of studying me, head cocked, eyes appraising.
‘Thirty-five?’
My laugh was hollow.
‘Not since quite a few years.’
‘Age is unimportant. I prefer mature men to boys like Luis.’
Signals of a familiar kind were flashing again. I steered the conversation away from them.
‘Aren’t you afraid?’ I asked,
She flipped her cigarette into a bare laurel bush. It continued to smoke, a lazy spiral in the windless air.
‘Of?’
‘Being caught. Imprisoned.’ I paused to let it penetrate. ‘For life maybe.’
‘There are worse things than prison. Dying, for instance. And loving. Loving is a form of dying too.’
That was too esoteric for me. Another change of topic seemed due.
‘Why did you get involved in this invasion business? You didn’t make it up, did you?’
‘Maybe. Who knows? Luis believes it, but then Luis is a hothead.’ Her laugh was uncertain. ‘As you have seen for yourself.’
She left me then. Proud, head erect, the daughter of a general, rising above the ill-fitting, shabby dressing gown.
A sparrow fluttered down to perch on the top strut of the Sloothaak’s rustic fence. Chattered at me friendly-like.
I went inside.
* * * * *
‘We must buy some food,’ Luis said, throwing open cupboard doors, one after another. ‘We cannot live on sugar and butter and herbs.’
‘Every week we shopping go.’ Sloothaak spoke timidly, as if fearful of retribution.
‘Ja, every week we go,’ his wife concurred, nodding.
So shopping we went. Sloothaak and I, in the Citroën, to the little market town of Casas Viejas. We bought fresh fruit and vegetables, fish, bread, milk, bottled water, and a welter of canned and dried food for the longer term.
Sloothaak became increasingly agitated as the pile in the supermarket cart grew.
‘Why you buy all this? You say you going away soon.’
‘Just in case.’ My disarming smile didn’t work. His worried frown stayed in place. ‘We’ll leave whatever we don’t eat. Just think how much you’ll save. There’s enough here for two people for a month.’
‘Please?’ I had spoken too quickly for him.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. But he did worry. He spent the whole thirty-minute ride back gnawing at his knuckles. I concentrated on my driving.
A helicopter had been prowling over the house in my absence, three passes and a close scrutiny. The cat hadn’t stopped shaking since.
‘See what I mean,’ Elena said to Luis. ‘It is too soon. They are still searching for us.’
That was Day Three. No more helicopte
rs came after that and by the seventh day I was ready to concede we could up sticks, provided we moved by night.
‘We’ll have to borrow your car, I’m afraid,’ I told the Sloothaaks. Hands were wrung.
‘But what shall we do without our car?’
It was a moot point. The jeep had been left in a wood, some distance from here, so was no use to them. I gave Sloothaak a few hundred euros from my shrinking store of cash. Luis made some vague promise about paying someone to bring it back.
Elena snorted. ‘And tell the world we were here?’
‘They’ll tell the world anyway,’ Luis said. ‘The postman at least.’
‘Let’s take them with us,’ I proposed.
‘And afterwards?’
Luis settled our dilemma that very evening, and his solution was pure in its simplicity.
It happened at dusk. It was a peculiarly still evening, the landscape reddening in the sunset, an atmosphere of expectancy cloaking the shabby little house and its square of garden. The slightest sound carried across the valley and beyond. It was a desolate spot all right. At a certain level the Sloothaaks were to be admired.
Traffic was scant on the track that served the house so any hint of it put us on immediate alert. Apart from the postman we had seen only a couple of motor vehicles during our stay. Once, a tinker in a flat cap had shambled past, leading a very old mule laden with assorted ironmongery. We didn’t answer his knock on the door. On another occasion a boy of twelve or thereabouts had cycled by, a fishing rod strapped to the crossbar, to return just ahead of nightfall.
‘From the plantation,’ Mrs Sloothaak told us dolefully. According to them the orange plantation was the nearest habitation, three kilometres away on the road to Casas Viejas.
Luis and I were outside, debating the fate of the Sloothaaks, when the burr of an engine broke the stillness. We listened to it, half expecting it to fade. But, no, it came on, not even slowing for the bends, of which there were many.
‘Inside,’ I said with quiet urgency to Luis. He nodded, pulling the automatic from his belt as we hurried indoors. More killing wasn’t on my agenda. Once again I considered relieving him of it, and once again I let it go.
Elena met us at the door. ‘There’s a car coming …’ Then she noticed Luis’ gun, and saved her breath. ‘What shall we do with the Sloothaaks?’
I thought fast. ‘It may not be coming here. Put the old woman in the bathroom and stay with her, hold a knife at her throat or something. Mr Sloothaak can answer the door. Luis can be a guest of the family, I’ll stay out of sight.’ I grabbed the fearful Sloothaak. ‘You may have a visitor. Act naturally and you’ll come to no harm. We’re leaving tonight, remember. Just act naturally,’ I emphasised, ‘and we’ll be gone for good in a few hours.’
I wasn’t sure he understood. I could only hope.
Through a crack between door and jamb in the Sloothaak’s bedroom, I could observe the hallway and the front door. Sloothaak’s co-operation was the key factor. The gun at his back and the knife at his wife’s throat ought to keep him cooperative. But under stress people are unpredictable creatures. All too often they don’t play the parts you cast them in.
Through the bedroom window I saw the car drive up. My heart lurched. It was the Guardia Civil, the country police. Not so quaint in appearance as they used to be since they abandoned their tricorn hats in favour of French-style kepis, they were unquestionably the law in these parts. To back up their authority, they carried guns.
The engine cut out. Doors slammed. Footsteps, voices, then the rap of knuckles on wood. Sloothaak shuffled past; Luis would be covering him from the living room, the door ajar like mine. Please, God, let both of them keep their heads.
The hinges creaked as Sloothaak opened the front door.
‘Buenos tardes, señor.’ The greeting reached me quite distinctly. ‘Siento hablar molesto. Ha visto …’
Sloothaak couldn’t go through with it. His terror must have communicated itself to the policeman. I saw him stiffen and reach for Sloothaak.
‘Señor! Qué pasa?’
The second policeman swore – ‘Mierda!’ His hand flashed to the gun at his waist.
From behind and to my right Luis fired. Sloothaak caught the first bullet. The centre of his back grew a red-bordered hole and he crumpled, dead before he touched the floor. The policeman who had spoken first took a bullet in the chest. It mashed him into his colleague who got off a single shot that thumped into the wall outside. Luis came out, running, still firing at the fallen policemen.
‘Luis!’ I blundered into the hall, catching a handful of his jacket. ‘No more …’
He tore free of me. For a fleeting, gut-emptying moment I though he was going to shoot me too. He pointed the gun at me, his hand shaking, his features contorted, unrecognisable. I backed off. He uttered a few jumbled words that made no sense to me, and ploughed on to where the policemen lay, one motionless, the other alternately groaning and coughing blood. Luis put a stop to all that. At point blank range he put a bullet in the brain of each man. Economic, you could say.
The killings themselves were no shock to my system. I was even beyond grieving for lives unnecessarily ended. It was Luis’ eagerness to kill that was so sickening. Compared with him, Peter Vitale, self-styled Action Man and proponent of violence, was an innocent babe. Luis was deadly in a way Peter, for all his fanaticism, could never be. Luis was a true psycho.
Nor was it over yet. He strode back towards the living room, no sign on his face of pity or remorse. I watched him dully. Woke up too late to his intent. Woke up to a woman’s terrified screech and the now familiar crash of the automatic – once, twice, rattling windows in their frames.
‘Christ, no!’ A surge of dread propelled me through the living room with its tacky laminated furniture, to the bathroom.
Elena was splayed against the wall as if she had been hurled there. She looked dazed, but was apparently unhurt. Luis was standing legs apart, gun held stiffly, still smoking, the stink of cordite sharp in the confined space.
As for Mrs Sloothaak – poor, terrified Mrs Sloothaak – her husk was sprawled messily at the feet of her slayer. Her heart must have stopped instantly for there was only a small seepage of blood from the hole in her scrawny chest.
The top half of Luis’ slim body was rotating towards me when I hit him. My punch landed on his cheek bone, tearing the skin. He reeled the length of the bathroom, cannoning into the wash basin and bouncing off. He tripped over his victim, cracked his skull on the rim of the bath and subsided to the floor. Out cold. The gun came to rest under the wash basin; Elena only had to stoop to retrieve it.
But she wasn’t interested. Her stare was blank.
‘I t-tried … to stop him,’ she croaked.
I massaged my hand. It was my first experience of tackling a killer dog with bare knuckles.
‘I’m leaving,’ I said flatly, coldly. ‘Coming?’
Her dazed look faded, her eyes acquiring focus.
‘I … can’t. What about Luis …?’
‘Suit yourself.’ The bond between twins is often said to be almost supernaturally strong. I didn’t stick around to put it to the test.
Apart from a few toilet items I had bought in Casa Viejas the house contained nothing of mine. I collected my windbreaker, and with it the keys to the Citroën, from the coat rack in the hall, stepped over a fresh corpse or two, and got clear of that place just as fast as deux-chevaux could transport me.
Chapter Twenty
The Cessna’s undercarriage skipped lightly on the tarmac, the impact barely felt. Then we were freewheeling along the runway, the pilot letting the speed fall off without braking.
‘Thanks for a smooth flight,’ I said as we parted company at the cabin door. I was his only passenger.
‘Pleasure, Mr Warner,’ he said. He spoke with an Afrikaner accent.
I stepped onto the apron of Gibraltar airport into the unwelcoming arms of Major Ribble.
‘A fine
mess,’ he said. ‘A fine mess.’
No hello, no enquiry after my health.
‘Good of you to come, Major,’ I returned. Civility costs nothing.
I was excused the usual immigration formalities. Ribble drove me to the Caleta Hotel in a Navy Land Rover. As we travelled east on Devil’s Tower Road, passing the Holiday Inn on our left, the Rock on the right casting its shade over us, he demanded an explanation for my absence.
‘What the fuck were you doing in Spain? Do you realise what it cost to smuggle you out? False documentation can’t be provided at a moment’s notice, you know. And pilots who make a living out of illegal transportation don’t grow on trees.’
‘Then why didn’t you leave me to rot?’
He honked through his nose. ‘My orders were to place myself and all facilities at your disposal. I took that to mean I was to rescue you if you needed rescuing.’
‘I needed rescuing,’ I admitted with feeling.
The speed at which the machinery for my removal from Spain had been activated, once I had telephoned my plight to Ribble from a payphone, was heart-warming. A follow-up call to Linda’s cell phone was less productive. I was asked to leave a message, and that’s what I did. With my cell phone’s battery dead she wouldn’t have been able to call back.
Ditching the Citroën in a supermarket parking lot in the town of El Puerto de Santa Maria to confuse any pursuit, I took a bus to Jerez and found a greasy hotel whose proprietor was induced with most of my remaining euros to overlook the usual reporting procedures and let me hang on to my passport. Next morning, shortly after sunrise, I was met by a Man with No Name outside the Cathedral, who exchanged my current phoney passport for a new phoney passport in the name of Eric Donaldson, a wad of money for emergencies, and verbal instructions to be at the airport at five o’ clock that afternoon. My old passport, still needed in Gib, would be returned via the diplomatic bag.
Easy when you know who.
I had blown some of the money on new clothes. Afterwards I took in a movie – Brad Pitt and Leo di Caprio in 1960s LA, speaking fluent Spanish without moving their lips – and was at the airport at a quarter to the hour. The rest was anti-climactic.