Death on a Galician Shore

by Villar, Domingo

  ‘Are you sure there’s a carpenter here?’ Caldas asked Estevez, looking around as they mounted the steps to the building resembling a ship.

  ‘So I was led to believe.’

  A few seconds later they returned to the courtyard accompanied by a man who pointed to a sliding door at one end of the boathouse.

  They slid it open and found a smallish workshop, lit by fluorescent tubes hanging from the ceiling and separated by a partition from the rest of the building. A carpenter’s bench with two lathes fixed to it ran down the whole of one wall. Beside small boards all cut to the same size, the toothed blade of a circular saw protruded from a slot.

  By the door, beside the ribs of a boat in the making, a grey cat lay dozing. It opened its eyes for a moment, looked at them with indifference and then curled itself tighter.

  Estevez nodded towards the back of the workshop and, by the only window, Caldas made out the figure of the carpenter. He was sitting on a stool with his back to them, leaning over a small boat.

  As they advanced through the workshop, avoiding a boat with a hole in its hull, the smell of the sea gave way to the odours of wood, glue and paint.

  Caldas and Estevez stood behind the man leaning over the little boat, an old gamela that, despite having been thoroughly rubbed down, still retained a hint of blue from an original coat of paint. The carpenter reached into a bag and extracted a handful of fibres, remnants of old rope, which he inserted into the seam between two planks. He pressed the frayed bundle first with his fingers, then with a kind of chisel, which he tapped with a wooden mallet – one light tap followed by two or three harder taps, like drum rolls.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ whispered Estevez.

  ‘Caulking the boat,’ replied the inspector quietly.

  This explanation did not satisfy Estevez, who raised his eyebrows theatrically.

  ‘Oakum is pushed between the planks and tamped down so there are no gaps for water to leak in through,’ said the inspector. ‘Then it needs a coat of pitch to protect the wood.’

  The carpenter stopped hammering and turned slightly towards them.

  ‘That’s more or less it, isn’t it?’ Caldas asked him.

  The carpenter bent over the boat again.

  ‘More or less, though we don’t treat the wood with pitch any more,’ he said, pressing more oakum into a seam before striking it with the mallet from different angles. ‘You needed to know what you were doing when applying it, because if it was too soft it melted and if it was too hard it ended up cracking off. So now we use a vegetable tar.’

  ‘Right.’

  Caldas noticed that several fingers were missing on his right hand, the one he was holding the mallet with, and instinctively his eyes sought the circular saw on the bench. He wondered if it had been responsible for the injury. Then he turned back towards the carpenter, who continued pressing oakum into the seam until it was sealed. When he’d finished, he put his tools down on the floor and got to his feet.

  ‘Did you want something?’

  ‘I’m Inspector Caldas,’ he said, resisting the urge to hold out his hand. ‘And this is Officer Estevez. We’re from Police Headquarters in Vigo. Do you have a moment?’

  The carpenter nodded. His work clothes were as paint-spattered as the stool on which he’d sat. Medium height and thin, he had dark hair and a thick, untidy reddish beard, which made it hard to judge his age. Too young at any rate, thought Caldas, to have lost three fingers.

  ‘How can I help you?’

  The cat that had been dozing at the door suddenly appeared around the carpenter’s legs and started rubbing against them.

  Caldas thought of the brown dog greeting his father the previous evening. Though his father had claimed it wasn’t his, the dog had howled and leaped with such joy on seeing him that Caldas had feared it would pee from excitement.

  ‘Is it yours?’ he asked, gesturing towards the cat.

  ‘Of course,’ replied the carpenter.

  ‘Right,’ said Caldas, staring at the creature, which was still rubbing against its owner’s trousers.

  ‘Have you come about the cat?’ asked the carpenter, as puzzled as Estevez by the inspector’s interest.

  ‘No, no, we want to speak to you,’ said Caldas, feeling foolish.

  ‘It’s about Justo Castelo. El Rubio,’ added Estevez, getting to the point.

  ‘You knew him, didn’t you?’ asked the inspector.

  The carpenter nodded and with his maimed hand indicated the half-built boat by the entrance.

  ‘That boat was for El Rubio,’ he said.

  The inspector looked at the boat, his assistant looked at the hand.

  ‘When did he order it?’ asked Caldas.

  ‘It must have been a couple of months ago. He wasn’t in a hurry because he was collecting the parts to build the engine himself. I had other more urgent jobs but at odd times, well … If I’d known, I wouldn’t have started on it.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Caldas. ‘I expect you spoke to him quite a bit during that time?’

  ‘Not really, Inspector. We spoke when he placed the order and a few times after that. He was a quiet guy.’

  Caldas thought the carpenter didn’t seem too chatty himself.

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘El Rubio? He dropped in on Saturday at midday. But we didn’t say a word to each other. He arrived, had a quick look at the boat, waved at me from the door and left. As I said, he wasn’t the kind to stop and chat.’

  Caldas decided to stop beating about the bush.

  ‘We’ve been told that recently Castelo got you to remove some graffiti from his boat,’ he said, and noticed the carpenter’s expression change.

  The carpenter ran his mutilated hand through his hair and Estevez’s eyes followed it as if magnetised.

  ‘Is that right?’ Caldas pressed him.

  ‘Not quite. El Rubio wheeled the rowing boat here on his trailer and asked for sandpaper to rub down the wood and then give it a coat of paint. He removed the graffiti himself.’

  ‘Did you see what it said?’

  ‘On the boat?’

  Estevez cleared his throat and Caldas gave him a warning look.

  ‘Yes,’ said the inspector. ‘Did you read it?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘More or less?’

  ‘It was a few weeks ago,’ said the carpenter apologetically.

  ‘Try to remember,’ urged the inspector.

  The carpenter looked down at the cat, which was still twining itself around his legs.

  ‘It was a date.’

  ‘Can you remember it?’ Caldas asked.

  The man again passed his maimed hand over his hair.

  ‘The twentieth of December 1996,’ he said. ‘In figures: 20/12/96.’

  It couldn’t be a coincidence. The twentieth of December was the day the Xurelo had foundered. El Rubio and the other crewmembers had survived, but it was the date of Captain Sousa’s death.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, and the carpenter replied with a small nod.

  Caldas recalled that the fishermen Estevez had spoken to had mentioned a threatening message supposedly written by Captain Sousa on the rowing boat. Could a date alone constitute a warning? Numbers daubed on a boat would mean something to someone like Castelo, who had that tragic winter’s night branded on his memory, but after all this time Caldas wasn’t sure the other villagers would see them as a threat.

  There had to be something else, so he decided to nudge the carpenter towards the right path.

  ‘That date wasn’t the only thing painted on the boat, was it?’

  The carpenter looked straight into the inspector’s eyes, but his beard prevented Caldas from fully reading his expression.

  ‘What else was there?’ he pressed. ‘A sentence?’

  ‘I only saw it for a split second,’ replied the carpenter, glancing towards the closed door of the workshop.

  ‘No one will know we’ve spoke
n to you about this,’ Caldas assured him. ‘Anyway, I get the feeling you weren’t the only person who saw what was painted on the boat that morning.’

  The man thought for a moment longer before finally muttering: ‘It was one word.’

  ‘Just one?’

  The carpenter nodded, again looking down.

  ‘Do you remember what it was?’ asked Caldas, already knowing the answer. If he remembered the date painted on the boat so clearly, he couldn’t have forgotten the word that went with it.

  ‘“Murderers”,’ said the carpenter, sighing as if a weight were being lifted from him.

  ‘“Murderers”?’ asked Caldas.

  The carpenter nodded slightly.

  ‘“Murderers” in the plural?’ pressed the inspector.

  The man nodded again.

  ‘I didn’t tell you anything,’ he said.

  As they left the carpenter’s workshop they were once again overwhelmed by the smell of the tide, which was now rising.

  ‘Who the hell did you think it belonged to?’ asked Estevez.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The cat, of course. Who did you imagine its owner was?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ mumbled Caldas, walking on. ‘It could have belonged to anyone.’

  He stopped at the door to the Refugio del Pescador and glanced inside. There were a few customers leaning on the bar, while another was at a table reading a newspaper. Caldas looked at his watch and clicked his tongue. José Arias would be sleeping by now. The inspector needed to speak to him, but he’d have to wait a few hours. He crossed the street to the car and looked out at the boats moored in the harbour. The boys from Forensics hadn’t yet come to collect Justo Castelo’s rowing boat to examine it.

  ‘Incredible how someone can work like that, isn’t it?’ remarked Estevez, joining him.

  ‘Like what?’

  Estevez pressed three fingers of his right hand against his palm.

  ‘He had almost three whole fingers missing. Didn’t you notice?’

  ‘Oh, yes, right,’ replied Caldas absently.

  His gaze was fixed on the boats and his thoughts were very far from the carpenter’s hand.

  Horizon

  Caldas took out his pack of cigarettes and lit one. They were leaning on the handrail at the Playa de la Madorra, watching the waves break on the dark strip of seaweed along the shoreline.

  ‘Where did you say they found him?’

  ‘Over there, in the seaweed,’ replied Estevez, pointing.

  Caldas looked at the spot his assistant had indicated and then to either side of it. To the left, a small spit of land sheltered the bay. On this, beyond the reed bed that they could see from where they were standing, were the fish market, the yacht club and a few houses. Panxón’s huge expanse of sand extended beyond but was hidden from sight. To the right, at the end of the beach, rose Monteferro. That morning, the silhouette of the mountain was as grey as the sky and sea, and the monument at its summit was almost obscured by mist. Off the tip of the promontory, the two dark humps of the Estelas Islands emerged from the sea.

  ‘There was foam coming out of his mouth,’ added Estevez.

  ‘Yes, you said,’ replied Caldas, reflecting that Castelo’s body could have been dragged there from anywhere, like the seaweed whose smell was almost stopping him enjoying his cigarette.

  He descended the steps to the beach and headed towards the water. The rain had formed a dark layer on the sand, a crust that cracked with every step. Caldas stopped a few metres from the water’s edge and stood contemplating the waves, with the cold sea wind making the tip of his cigarette glow more brightly. He pictured the fisherman’s dead body caught in the tangle of seaweed, buffeted by the same waves now breaking before him.

  They’d spoken to several locals after their conversation with the carpenter, all of whom described Castelo as a calm, quiet man, too reserved to have enemies among the people of the village. No one had ever seen him with any women other than his sister and mother, or knew of any friends apart from Arias and Valverde, the fishermen he’d broken off contact with after the shipwreck of the Xurelo. Although he sometimes spent evenings at the Refugio del Pescador like the other fishermen, El Rubio neither played cards nor drank too much. There seemed to be nothing in his life apart from fishing, the contraptions in his shed and his visits to his mother.

  Caldas had been surprised not to hear the kind of excessive praise usually heaped upon the recently deceased, but there hadn’t been any criticism either. He got the impression that they were neither sorry nor glad that Castelo was dead. The inhabitants of Panxón maintained the same cautious distance from the dead fisherman that he had kept from them in life.

  However, like the damp crust cracking beneath his feet to reveal the white sand beneath, the civility that had surrounded Justo Castelo’s life had been fractured by superstition upon his death.

  No one in Panxón doubted that El Rubio had taken his own life and, though they didn’t say so openly, they all sought culprits in the past, in the fear of the ghost of a skipper drowned years before, whose mere mention made seafarers touch metal and spit on the ground.

  The word and date painted on the dead man’s rowing boat also pointed to the sinking of the Xurelo. The carpenter had remembered the word and date daubed on the wood even though he’d only glimpsed them fleetingly. Caldas was waiting for confirmation from Forensics, hoping that some trace on the paintwork, the shape of the letters and figures, or some other clue might lead to the culprit.

  He drew on his cigarette one last time before bending down to bury it in the sand. He remained crouching, admiring the waves. He could watch the sea, hypnotised, for hours, just like a fire. He loved watching the waves rise as they approached the shore and then collapse violently and continue towards the beach as a line of foam. He found it unspeakably cruel that someone had thrown the fair-haired fisherman into that same relentless sea, after striking him on the head and tying his hands.

  Apart from Hermida’s wife, no one had seen Castelo set out on Sunday morning. Most people were sleeping late on their day off, and the few awake at that early hour had been deterred by the wind and rain from leaving their houses before mid-morning. Hermida’s wife had watched the fisherman from her window, as he rowed out to his boat. Then she’d seen him put out to sea, alone and with the boat’s light on, at around six thirty.

  The yacht club caretaker hadn’t seen Castelo depart as he was only on night duty during the tourist season. His shift hadn’t started till seven in the morning and no boat had left the port on that sad, grey October morning after that hour.

  Estevez had telephoned the port of Baiona, across the bay, and there had been no activity there either. The weather had been too bad for leisure craft to set sail, and fishing boats were banned not only from catching fish but even from putting out to sea on a Sunday.

  Caldas looked up from the crest of a wave to the horizon. It was just a blur between sea and sky. He couldn’t believe that, on the morning of the murder, Castelo’s boat – with no one but himself on board – had been the only vessel out in that area of ocean. The fisherman’s body had been dragged by the tide on to that beach, but where was the boat? Forensics officers were searching every inch of the coast. It had to turn up sooner or later.

  Caldas made his way back to the road across the crusted sand. His assistant was still leaning on the metal handrail.

  ‘Find something, Inspector?’

  Caldas looked at him grumpily. What did Estevez have in mind? Buried treasure?

  ‘You were crouching there for some time,’ Estevez said defensively.

  ‘No,’ said Caldas, ‘I didn’t find anything. Did you find out where that other fisherman lives? Valverde?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think you can get us there?’

  ‘Of course, it’s right nearby.’

  ‘Come on then.’

  ‘Have you seen the state of your shoes?’ said Estevez before getting into the car.<
br />
  ‘Yes,’ Caldas replied without bothering to look.

  Straight Lines

  Estevez left the Playa de la Madorra behind, took the turning to Monteferro and then, a little further on, turned on to a narrow lane that descended steeply between tightly packed houses. The lane came to a dead end before a large gate.

  ‘This must be it,’ said Estevez.

  They got out of the car, walked up to the dark wooden gate and rang the bell several times. There was no response. At the side, on the pillar to which the gate was hinged, there was a letterbox, but the space left for the owner’s name was empty. Caldas couldn’t see any letters inside.

  Estevez, who had been peering through a gap between panels in the gate, grasped the top as if about to vault over.

  ‘I don’t think there’s anyone here,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to go in?’

  Caldas looked at him aghast. ‘We’re not here to burgle the place,’ he said. He sighed, convinced he’d never understand how Estevez’s mind worked, and returned to the car.

  There was no room to turn the car around so Estevez had to reverse up the hill but, after a couple of minutes, despite the racket from the engine, they’d only managed to back up a few dozen metres.

  ‘Sure we’ll be able to get out?’ asked the inspector.

  Estevez jerked his chin towards the rear-view mirror.

  ‘We will if that car moves.’

  Caldas turned around in his seat. There was indeed a red car behind theirs. The inspector lowered the window and stuck his head out.

  ‘There’s no exit,’ he shouted.

  He thought he saw the driver of the red car gesturing for them to drive forward, so he told Estevez to return down the lane to the house.

  As they neared the gate, it opened automatically. Estevez drove through and pulled up in the courtyard beyond.

  ‘Is that a house?’

  ‘What do you think?’ replied Caldas, staring at the façade that gave on to the courtyard. It was a smooth, blank concrete wall.

  ‘I don’t know. It looks like a nuclear bunker,’ said Estevez.