Death on a Galician Shore

by Villar, Domingo

  The road kept the ria – the estuary – to the right and ran past all the small ports along the coast. The tarmac had been laid over the rails of a tram, which an enlightened mayor had decided to pension off decades earlier, replacing electric trams with modern diesel-powered buses.

  They passed the island of Toralla, with its skyscraper guiding ships in the darkness like a lighthouse, and drove on until a black shape loomed up over the sea. Beyond the mountain of Monteferro lay Panxón, the end of the journey.

  Low Tide

  When they reached Panxón, just before seven fifteen by the inspector’s watch, they found the fish market closed with no signs of activity.

  ‘Are you sure we needed to arrive this early?’ muttered Estevez, looking around. ‘The place is deserted.’

  Caldas didn’t reply. It was the third time his assistant had complained about the same thing and, if Estevez had got it into his head that they’d arrived too early, nothing would make him change his mind. He seemed to be right, though: there wasn’t a soul about.

  The market stood in a dead-end street which led to a small yacht club; houses ran down to the right and the sea was on the left. Beyond, stretched the stone jetty that protected the harbour.

  ‘Someone’ll turn up soon,’ said the inspector. ‘Pull up over there.’

  Estevez drove forward and parked facing the sea. It was still raining so they stayed in the car, with the wipers on and headlights off, staring out at the few boats slumbering in the harbour.

  There were no floating docks in Panxón and vessels were moored to buoys fastened by chains to concrete blocks sunk on the sea floor. They were mostly gamelas, the shallow wooden boats used in and around the estuaries of that part of the Galician coast, and other small fishing boats, though the occasional mast was just visible in the darkness.

  Caldas recalled that, in summer, when the water was crowded with motor boats and yachts, a boy in a dinghy shuttled people out to their boats and back to dry land. But now, in the rain, many buoys swayed empty, bereft until summer, when holidaymakers would once again moor their leisure craft to them.

  Opposite the market building, a stone slipway ran down from the street to the water’s edge. Near the top, by the parked cars, a few wooden boats lay beyond the reach of high tide.

  Past the slipway, the beach stretched away to the lower slopes of Monte Lourido, forming an immense arc broken only by a creek that flowed into the sea, dividing the beach in two.

  Monteferro and the Estelas Islands provided the harbour in Panxón with natural shelter. The beach there was protected and calm, but as it left the village it became exposed, so open to the Atlantic that old seafarers claimed that, sailing west in a straight line, America was the first obstacle one reached. For this reason, the stretch of sand beyond the creek was no longer called the Playa de Panxón but the Playa America.

  There, away from the lights of the village and the street lamps of the promenade, the outline of the coast was only distinguishable by the white trail of foam from waves breaking on the shore.

  Caldas remembered one August when they’d come here often. If the tide was out, Alba would walk the entire length of the beach, at the water’s edge, insisting on placing a hand on the wall at either end, as if the walk were not complete unless she did so. He went with her, but stopped before reaching either end, defeated by the seaweed that covered the damp sand near the wall of the Playa America, and the seashells that scraped the soles of his bare feet by the slipway in Panxón.

  Caldas was surprised to see how many other visitors shared Alba’s quaint insistence on touching both walls, as if they thought their prints would remain on the stone for ever.

  ‘Are you sure it’s a market day, boss?’ grumbled Estevez after a few minutes, bringing the inspector back from summer walks to a wet autumn morning.

  Looking around the empty harbour, Caldas suddenly had his own doubts. What if the market was closed for the day out of respect for the drowned man? It had only just occurred to him, but now it seemed obvious that a small place like Panxón would cease trading when one of its fishermen died.

  ‘Of course I am,’ he replied, sinking into his seat. He tried to find a convincing excuse to give his assistant but ruled each one out as it came to him. He had just resigned himself to enduring Estevez’s complaints all the way back to Vigo when, almost simultaneously, two lights doubled the jetty and entered the harbour.

  The first boat switched off its engine as it approached a buoy where a small wooden rowing boat was moored. The fisherman on board leaned over the gunwale and plunged a boat hook into the water to retrieve a rope.

  A lightbulb hanging like an oil lamp over the deck illuminated the man’s wizened features. A few wisps of white hair protruded from the dark cap he wore to ward off the cold and rain.

  Caldas remembered a crime novel by a French writer that Alba had given him a couple of years before. He’d forgotten the plot but remembered one of the characters, Joss, a former sailor who earned his living as a town crier in a Paris square. He read out the messages given him by local residents and, after each one, recounted the tale of a shipwreck. He’d describe the boat and the conditions at sea, and people held their breath as they waited to hear the number of victims. Caldas liked to imagine the sigh of relief from Joss’s audience when he concluded: ‘No dead or missing.’

  After mooring the boat to the buoy, the fisherman began emptying the contents of his traps into a basket to transfer his overnight catch to dry land. The same operation was taking place in the other returning boat.

  Seagulls wheeled above them and, through the open car window, the inspector could hear their cries as they clamoured for fish, and smell the pungent odour of low tide.

  ‘His name’s Ernesto Hermida,’ said Estevez.

  ‘The old man?’ asked Caldas.

  ‘No, the seagull,’ muttered Estevez. ‘What a question.’

  Caldas smiled and watched the fisherman work. As he cleared out the traps, he placed them in order so as to make it easier to set them the following day. When he’d emptied the last one, he turned off the light and the boat was shrouded in darkness.

  ‘Well?’ asked Estevez.

  ‘Well what?’ said Caldas, wondering what his assistant meant.

  Estevez indicated the old man’s boat with a flourish.

  ‘What now?’ he asked.

  Caldas looked at him out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘Did you think he was going to let off fireworks at the end?’

  ‘Bloody hell, of course not,’ Estevez replied. ‘But if he leaves the boat tied to the buoy, how is this Hermida going to get here? Swim?’

  ‘Ah,’ shrugged the inspector. There was no sign of the boy who ferried holidaymakers to and from their boats, or of his dinghy. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  They next saw Ernesto Hermida rowing towards the slipway in the little wooden boat that had been moored to the buoy. A woman who looked as old as him was waiting by the water’s edge, standing on the dark stone exposed by the tide. She wore a white apron over her clothes and held up a black umbrella against the rain. Some of the seagulls had settled on the slipway and stood around her.

  As he drew level with her, the fisherman handed her the basket containing his catch. The woman took it from him with difficulty and dropped it to the ground, beside the open umbrella. The old man then jumped ashore and they carried the basket up the slipway, each holding a handle.

  ‘Are we going in then?’ asked Estevez, indicating the market, which was now lit up.

  Out on the water, the other boat had also switched off its light. Caldas looked at his watch. There were still twenty minutes to go before the start of the auction and he thought he’d rather wait in the car.

  The second fisherman’s rowing boat appeared among the other craft soon after. It looked smaller than the old man’s, like a toy.

  ‘That one’s called Arias,’ said Estevez, and added: ‘He’s taller than me.’

  Arias needed
no help transferring his catch. Seemingly without effort, he started up the slipway with a basket in each hand.

  The policemen watched him cross the road and enter the market, then got out of the car.

  The Fish Market

  The sign above the entrance to the market read in letters set in relief: MUNICIPAL MARKET, 1942. Inside, the single-storey stone building consisted of a light and airy hall with a green-painted cement floor. A long metal table ran down the middle of the hall, beneath a notice that cautioned: No eating, drinking, smoking or spitting.

  Beside the scales, José Arias was kneeling next to one of his baskets. As the policemen approached, they saw that it contained dozens of crabs. The huge fisherman was taking them out, one by one, grasping them firmly by the back legs to avoid being nipped by the claws. He laid them out on various plastic trays according to size and condition – larger ones on one tray, smaller ones on two other trays and the less valuable crabs (skinnier ones or those that had lost a leg) on yet another. He set a few aside in a plastic bag which he knotted and placed on the floor, resting against the wall. Caldas assumed these were the ones he’d be taking home.

  After sorting the crabs, Arias went to the other basket, which was full of hundreds of squirming shrimp. He tipped them out on to three trays and went through them carefully, discarding the dead ones and removing seaweed, small crabs and starfish. As he finished, he placed each tray on the scales for the auctioneer to mark them with their weight. Finally, he set them out on the metal table.

  A few feet away, Ernesto Hermida and the woman in the apron were also sorting through the catch, but his traps contained only crabs. They graded and weighed them and then placed them on the table alongside Arias’s. Hermida had also caught some fish – six pollock and a couple of mackerel – which he laid on another tray, before standing aside with the woman to wait for the auction to begin.

  A man with long grey sideburns and two women were leaning over the table, carefully inspecting the catch. Caldas assumed they were choosing which trays they would bid on.

  Another two men, about the same age as Hermida, stood at the entrance, looking out at the rain and the sea, with little apparent interest in the auction.

  In the course of his work Caldas had been to the fish market in Vigo a few times. He’d always been struck by the noise of the auctions, the hustle and bustle of boats, lorries, people and crates. He’d enjoyed listening to the shouts and laughter of these men of the sea, aware that the city slept beyond, indifferent to the wakefulness of these nocturnal beings. That morning, however, at the market in Panxón, the only sound disturbing the silence was the rumble of waves breaking on the shore, and Caldas assumed that it must be Justo Castelo’s very recent death that was silencing the place.

  The auctioneer approached the table, ran a hand over his black goatee, and indicated the trays on which the shrimp from Arias’s traps wriggled.

  ‘Excellent shrimp,’ he announced. ‘I’ll start at forty-five euros. Forty-five, forty-four and a half, forty-four, forty-three and a half, forty-three …’

  Panxón was a small port, with few fishermen or buyers. No one had deemed it necessary to modernise the auctions with electronics, as they had done in most ports in Galicia. Here, the auctioneer still called out the prices.

  ‘It’s going down,’ whispered Estevez.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Caldas.

  ‘Some system. You just have to wait …’

  The two women and the man with the sideburns seemed to confirm Estevez’s theory, remaining silent as the auctioneer called out ever-lower prices.

  ‘Thirty-two and a half, thirty-two …’

  One of the women raised a hand. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  The auction stopped and the woman inspected the trays of shrimp again, choosing which to buy at the price.

  ‘I’ll take them all,’ she said. Beside her, the man with the sideburns flashed her an annoyed look.

  ‘See?’ whispered the inspector. ‘If you wait too long, you can end up with nothing.’

  The auctioneer pointed towards the crabs and began his chant again. Then he auctioned the fish. When it was over, the man with the grey sideburns and the women went to a small office at the side of the hall, where the auctioneer took payment and issued receipts.

  At the door to the office, Caldas heard them exchange brief words of regret over Castelo’s death. He wanted to speak to the auctioneer before he closed the market until the following day, and ask if he’d noticed anything odd about Castelo’s behaviour. He’d have time to question the two fishermen later.

  He looked round to check that they hadn’t left. Hermida was over in the corner, removing his waterproofs, but there was no sign of Arias.

  ‘Where’s the tall one?’ he asked Estevez.

  ‘He was here a moment ago, carrying his plastic bag. He must have gone outside.’

  Caldas was afraid he’d gone home to bed after the night’s fishing.

  ‘Make sure the other fisherman and the auctioneer don’t leave until I get back,’ he said to his assistant. ‘I want to speak to them.’

  He walked quickly towards the entrance, where the two old boys were still silently staring out to sea.

  Emerging from the market building, Caldas looked around for Arias. Dawn was breaking and, with the tower of the Templo Votivo del Mar looming above it, the village was waking up. He saw a couple of people in the distance, walking along the promenade, but the fisherman hadn’t had time to get that far.

  He turned back towards the old men. Before he’d even asked, one of them jerked his head towards the slipway, and Caldas saw Arias crouching at the water’s edge.

  A Tall Man

  Caldas hunched deeper into his cagoule as a fine rain fell on his head. A few paces away, the fisherman, in a waterproof hat, turned the plastic bag inside out to release the crabs. They dropped on to the stone slipway and, now free, scuttled down to the water and disappeared.

  One of the crabs fell upside-down and Caldas saw that it was a female, its abdomen covered with roe. He noticed the same coral patch on all the crabs the fisherman was returning to the sea. They were females about to spawn, loaded with hundreds of tiny eggs the same colour as the fishermen’s waterproofs.

  ‘Not everyone does that,’ said Caldas. He’d found crabs on his plate just as full of roe on too many occasions.

  The man shrugged and shook the bag gently with his great big hands, emptying the last few stragglers. ‘It’s none of my business what others do,’ he said in a voice that sounded as if it came from the bottom of a cave.

  The last crab fell out of the bag and disappeared into the sea. It was dark, but Arias remained crouching for a moment, staring at the water as if he could see them crawling away on the sea floor.

  When Arias stood up, Caldas realised that Estevez had been right: the fisherman was even taller than his assistant and, though he didn’t have Estevez’s bulk, he too was solidly built. He had dark skin and eyes, and the stubble on his chin was flecked with grey.

  ‘José Arias?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘Do you have a moment?’

  ‘I was about to bring the boat up on to the slipway,’ he said, gesturing towards the small wooden craft in which he’d rowed back to land. It sat in the water beside Hermida’s, a few metres from the slipway. Both vessels were moored to the same metal ring embedded in the stone.

  ‘Is it OK if I hang around while you do that so we can talk? I’m Inspector Caldas, with the police. I’d like to ask you a few questions.’

  The fisherman shrugged. ‘Fine. If you don’t mind the rain,’ he said, and pointed to a platform on the slipway where other small boats like his lay. ‘I’ll go and get the trailer.’

  It was too late to back out so the inspector unzipped the neck of his cagoule, and drew out the hood.

  Arias returned, pulling a small, two-wheeled metal trailer. He left it by the water’s edge.

  ‘It’s about your colleague Castelo, as you can g
uess,’ said Caldas, and he saw Arias wrinkle his nose.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, untying the end of the rope. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Did you know each other well?’

  ‘As you can see, there aren’t many of us fishing here. But we weren’t friends, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  Caldas wasn’t particularly close to any of his colleagues at the station either.

  ‘I still can’t believe he’s dead,’ added Arias. ‘Is it true that his hands were bound?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The fisherman pulled on the rope, hauling in the boat until it was lined up with the trailer.

  ‘When did you last see Castelo?’

  ‘Saturday. In there.’

  ‘At the auction?’

  ‘That was in the morning,’ said Arias. ‘I saw him later on at the Refugio.’

  ‘Where?’ asked the inspector.

  The fisherman pointed a huge finger at the promenade. Next to the fish market, outside the last building before the yacht club, hung a sign: ‘El Refugio del Pescador’.

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘In the evening.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘It must have been seven or eight. I can’t give you a precise time.’

  ‘Was he alone?’

  Arias nodded. ‘He was at the bar, talking to the waiter. Then he left.’

  ‘And you didn’t see him again?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  Arias shook his head and crouched down by the boat, holding it by the bow. He removed the oars and dropped them on to the seaweed-covered stone.

  ‘How about at the auction, in the morning?’

  ‘No, not then either.’

  ‘Did he seem worried?’

  Arias looked up. ‘I didn’t speak to him,’ he insisted in his deep voice.

  ‘Even so, did he appear anxious?’

  ‘You didn’t know him, did you?’

  Caldas shook his head.