by Adam Creed
He recalls something that Sylvie had said to him. Sylvie – probably the love of his life if there is such a thing; a quarter French and wholly Catholic – once said that he was an irredeemable Protestant who had to constantly strive to impose a sense of what was right, what was just. ‘It has nothing to do with your job, Will,’ she had said. ‘That’s simply a convenience for you. A pain in the arse for the rest of us. If only you could be like us. You could do your bit, fail, still see yourself as noble, and move on – get on with your life.’
It has been many months since he felt the warm press of flesh on his, and he settles for his Monsignor Quixote and his fellow traveller, the deposed Communist mayor: estranged, but utterly placed in his deity.
In the very first stage of sleep, he hears the book fall onto the cool floor, and visions of Manolo enter his dreams, like bleeding watercolours.
Thirteen
Manolo’s cortijo is the summer station for the goats to escape the blistering heat. It is up by the highest spring and the first throe of pines. Behind it, the Silla Montar, mountain gateway to Granada, swoops between the two highest peaks. Far away, Staffe can hear goat bells, but otherwise, the place is deserted, and he feels ridiculous looking over his shoulder to make sure that nobody can see him as he pushes open the door to Manolo’s mountain dwelling. It’s a healthy instinct, perhaps.
The door swings free. There would be no point locking it and all that seems to be inside is a couple of butane bottles, flour and yeast‚ two pots, a knife, and a large bull whip hung above the fireplace.
Staffe checks all the corners of the main room and opens all the cupboards, then goes into the other two rooms. The first is full to waist height with chopped pine. Two mattresses take up most of the floor of the other room, and Staffe sniffs at something sweet in the air, steps over the mattresses to get to a chest under the tiny window. The chest is made from the local pine. Cleverly done, it is finished to the standards of a keen amateur and as Staffe runs his fingers over the grain, he can picture Manolo sitting in the shade of a canopy of pines, his goats grazing, chiselling joints and sanding them smooth.
He opens the shutters fully and sees where the smell is coming from. A goat carcass, strung up by its hind hooves and with its head seemingly twisting round to face Staffe, has been hung too long. It is past its best – good only for its hide now. He gets the knife, which has a carved handle of a goat’s head – the knife Staffe has seen Manolo using. Or a perfect copy. He returns to the bedroom and upturns a log, stands on it, stretching, cutting down the goat.
When he is done, he douses himself from the outside tap and returns to the bedroom, kneels by the chest and opens it. Amongst the brightly coloured woven blankets and sundry headwear, he finds a copy of Gulliver’s Travels. Inside, a small stack of postcards, all addressed to ‘Astrid Cano’ in an elegant, long and educated hand, and signed ‘Your Son, Agustín’. They are postmarked Tangier, Bavaria, Chefchouen, Amsterdam, Marrakech, and London for the years 1996 to 1999. They are written in German and extremely succinct.
Staffe delves deeper into the chest, finds a few papers scattered in the bottom. The writing is scrawled and difficult to read and he sits at the table in the main room trying to translate. When he is done, he reads over what he has written in his own notebook.
As the mountain skies are blue
So are your eyes
And the snow in spring, still,
Your smile shines.
And the autumn of the cherry
Sheds its blossoms,
So my heart bleeds.
He squints at the missing word, can’t make it out. He returns the papers to the chest and rummages in the bottom to see if he has missed anything. When he gets his head right inside, he can see that there are two photographs, stuck where the side panel joints to the bottom. He pulls them out, sees a young Rubio and a dark-haired, large-featured woman with sixties lips and big hair in a short, crocheted mini-dress. She and Rubio are sitting by a river. A picnic is spread out in front of them and Rubio is holding a dark young boy with big limbs and a soft smile: clearly a young Manolo, maybe five years old. The dark-haired woman has another child on her lap: younger and frail; fair and mischievous, pouting into camera.
The second photograph shows a younger Edu and Jackson Roberts carrying a coffin. Behind them are two other figures: Rubio and someone totally obscured. In the background, Almagen’s white houses slope away up the hill, like dropped cubes of sugar. A long train of people follow the coffin and, turning the photograph over, he says, ‘Barrington?’ There is a date of processing on the back, in faded blue ink: 21 June 1999. He looks at the photograph again and says aloud, ‘Edu?’ realising that his friend claims to have had no time for the English painter. And he wonders who took the photograph.
Staffe closes the cortijo’s main door behind him, sets out to walk down the mountain, feeling that he has violated a privacy. Manolo’s Bultaco leans against the animal shelter and Staffe wonders how far away Manolo might be by now. He listens for the sound of goats, hears nothing now.
*
Sweat drips from Paolo’s nose and chin. He watches Marie all the way as she goes into the wood to get beers from the acequia in the woods which they use as a fridge. ‘You pissed Jackson off,’ he hisses, to Staffe.
Staffe says to Paolo, ‘If I find you’ve been cheating on her with those sad hippy tarts, I’ll . . .’
‘I had to get a bus back. Jackson took off after you stuck your oar in.’
Marie comes back, hands them their bottles and rubs her tummy. ‘Next week, so they reckon.’
‘You should come down to the village and stay with me until the baby is born. Just in case.’
‘We’re happy up here,’ says Paolo.
Marie says, ‘All they can talk about in the village is that poor man who was killed. I went down with Harry today and it turned me right off – so morbid! And that cow in the bread shop was talking about Manolo. I couldn’t make it out, just heard her say his name, and that curl she puts on her nasty mouth.’
‘Do you ever hear them talk about Barrington?’ asks Staffe.
‘I get the impression the locals can’t stand him. He got a couple of the girls in the way, so they say. You should ask Jackson. He must have known Barrington.’
‘What about Edu? I heard he had a sister who had a thing for Barrington,’ says Staffe.
‘A thing for him? She had his child.’
‘What!’
‘That’s what I heard in the doctor’s surgery. She’s not so well.’ Marie shakes her head and puts the palms of her hands flat to her tummy. ‘I’m so excited. So pleased you’ll be here when the baby comes.’
‘Will you?’ says Paolo. ‘I thought you were better. Isn’t that why you went to Almería?
‘I’m sticking around,’ says Staffe, thinking about Edu, uncle to Barrington’s bastard child, and when Marie goes up to the balsa behind the cortijo, calling Harry to come for something to eat, he says, ‘Jackson knew Barrington all right. He carried the coffin at his funeral.’
‘It was probably because they were both guirris.’ Paolo looks at Staffe from the corner of his hooded, dopey eye. ‘A fellow guirri – when all you want is to get away from them.’
‘Are you fed up of me being around, Paolo?’
‘I didn’t know you were so interested in art.’
‘Paintings record history.’
‘They decorate walls.’
Up by the balsa, Marie hugs Harry. He rests his face on her swell. The sun dapples them, in a way Camille Pissarro might relate to.
Staffe says, ‘It strikes me that Barrington is like the war round here. Nobody wants to talk about him.’
Paolo laughs. ‘You can take the policeman out of the station . . .’
‘Just tell me what you know, Paolo. We’re family, for God’s sake.’
‘I can assure you, in all the years I’ve known Jackson . . .’ Paolo lets his words drift.
A long plume of dust wa
y below catches their eye. Ahead of it, a small red car kicks up the dust. It stops outside a cortijo. ‘Whose place is that?’
‘Some English. The Harbinsons. Not our cup of Darjeeling,’ says Paolo and he chuckles to himself again. ‘They’re in deep shit. Gonna have to tear the play-house down, so everyone says. It’s illegal.’
Staffe churns over what Paolo said earlier. ‘In all the years I’ve known Jackson . . .’ How would Paolo have known Jackson before he came out here? Did Jackson find this cortijo for Paolo? Why would it suit Jackson to have Paolo here? He goes across to the telescope at the end of the terrace, turns it on the small red car.
Beneath, at the Harbinsons’, a young, dark-haired woman with over-sized sunglasses knocks on the door, seems to get no joy. Pepa paces around the property and stands on the edge of a deep ravine, where a crop terrace has collapsed. She starts punching away at her mobile phone.
By the time Staffe gets back to the table, Marie has come back and she and Paolo are having a row. It hushes. Marie says, ‘We should ask Will.’
‘No!’
‘It’s my land, too. And he put the money up.’
‘Why do you undermine me?’ says Paolo.
Marie says, ‘The water in the balsa is low again. Too low.’
‘But you’re entitled.’ says Staffe.
‘It’s not coming through properly.’
Staffe says, ‘You think someone’s up to no good?’
‘No way!’ says Paolo. ‘In any case, there’s a stream runs through the wood and it only needs a short channel to get it to the balsa. I could fill up and then shut it off again.’
‘Isn’t that illegal?’
‘We’re entitled. You said it yourself.’
‘You can’t touch the water,’ says Harry through the grilled window of his tiny bedroom. ‘Rubén’s father is chief of the water. They’ll kill you. The water belongs to the village and to God.’
‘In that order,’ says Marie.
Fourteen
Frog and the rest of the old goats at the bar stare at Pepa. She is distinctly not of the village, with her shiny, black hair and glossy make-up; her tailored suit and stiletto heels.
She and Staffe are at a table by the unlit fire in Bar Fuente’s comedor, sharing plates of clams in saffron and sautéed squid with cumin.
‘Have you got hold of the coroner’s report for Raúl yet?’ he says, softly.
‘I’m here to check on a denuncia, for a series on the demolitions. You might be having one here.’
‘Aah, the English.’
‘You know about them?’
‘I saw you at their cortijo.’
‘How?’
‘What about the coroner’s report on the body in the plastic?’
‘You know these English?’
‘The Harbinsons?’ He nods sagely. ‘I need to see a photo of that body in the plastic.’
‘I have my notes on Raúl’s death.’ She delves into her bag, produces an A5 notebook, and shifts her chair to his side of the table. Finding the page, she reads her shorthand to him, as quiet as if they were lovers. ‘The deceased suffered a heart attack which might have caused the crash, but more probably the crash precipitated the heart attack.’
‘Did he have any other injuries, not consistent with the crash?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
Staffe will not tell her about the two breaches of the bridge‚ nor the bloodied rag. Not yet. ‘I have a suspicious nature, that’s all.’
‘He had a cut to the head and his skull was fractured to the rear. The coroner said it was certainly caused by the crash.’
‘The coroner said “certainly”?’
Pepa refers to her notes. ‘That precise word.’
‘You’ll have spoken to coroners many times, Pepa. In England, “certain” is a word you have to drag from them.’
‘And here, too, usually. And another thing is odd. It’s the same coroner for Raúl’s death as it is for the corpse in the plastic.’
‘This is beginning to smell quite bad,’ says Staffe. ‘There would be blood inside the car if his head injuries were caused by the crash.’
‘There is no mention in the police report.’
‘How happy are you with the investigations into the death of your colleague?’
‘There’s no doubt he was full of drink.’ She leans forward, whispers, ‘Are you suggesting that something happened to Raúl before the crash?’
‘Later, I’ll show you the car.’ As Staffe says this, Quesada, the local Guardia captain, comes in. Staffe lowers his voice. ‘Raúl was used to driving full of drink, wasn’t he?’
Salva pours Quesada a long drink of Pacharán, without needing to be asked. The old goats suck up to him and he holds his head high, his Roman nose raised and his greying moustache meticulously waxed. This is a man who squeezes the last drop from his rank, wears his brigada’s emblem with considerable might.
Pepa says, ‘These roads are dangerous. He didn’t know them.’
‘He knew them all right.’
Pepa says, ‘I’m not sure this is a road I can go down.’
‘Can you let me have the code, to get into La Lente’s archive?’
Quesada makes his way around the bar, almost to within earshot. From where they sit, Staffe can already smell Quesada’s cologne. He recognises it as 4711.
Pepa hands Staffe a slip of paper. ‘You’ll tell me everything you discover?’
‘Of course.’
‘Now tell me about the English living up the mountain.’
‘Is that really why you came?’
‘Why else would I?’
‘All I know is that they are called the Harbinsons and their days here are numbered, but of course I can discover more. They live just below my sister.’
‘You didn’t tell me your sister lives here.’
Quesada waves at Staffe. ‘Wait here for a moment.’ He goes across to Quesada, shakes his hand, and tells him that there is someone he would like to introduce: a colleague of the murdered journalist.
‘Murdered?’ says Quesada.
‘I’m sorry. My Spanish could improve.’
Quesada pulls up a chair, unable to keep his eyes off Pepa.
‘Pepa and I were talking about the English artist, Barrington.’
Pepa raises her eyebrows, quickly nods. ‘Did he ever get up to any nonsense, Brigada?’
‘Barrington?’
‘You would have been a young man,’ says Pepa. ‘But you were stationed in Almagen when he was here, building quite a career, I think.’
Quesada is flattered to be known by the beautiful young woman and Staffe leans back, admires her work. On the hoof, she continues, ‘I’m here to do a piece on Barrington. He would have been ninety this September, so the English papers are hot for him. Very hot.’ She puckers her mouth. ‘I could do with all the help I can get – from someone who knew him. It’s the real him that I want to uncover. Something new.’
‘We could start with his funeral,’ says Staffe.
‘I don’t recall,’ says Quesada, trying to make a poker face, but his jaw slips a little. ‘It was a long time ago.’
*
Pepa drives fast up through the narrow and winding, steep Almagen streets and Staffe reaches for his seat belt. She taps his arm, says, ‘Not in Spain. We don’t wear those things.’ She laughs. ‘If you don’t like my driving, you can walk.’
Staffe leaves the seat belt where it is, watches the village flash by, thinking about Raúl.
Pepa puts on the CD player and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ blasts out. Staffe reaches forward, turns it down, says, ‘They had to cut Raúl’s seat belt.’
‘What?’
‘Down the barranco, they had to cut through his seat belt to get him out.’
‘No way. Raul never wore a belt.’ Pepa turns onto the carretera without slowing and speeds along, switchbacks onto the mountain track.
‘That’s what I thought. But I know what I saw.’ He
turns the music back up, says, ‘Do you have any Stone Roses? For old times’ sake.’
‘Sure.’ She pulls a CD out of her glove compartment and he looks at the list of tracks, puts on ‘She Bangs the Drums’.
‘This is my favourite.’
‘He was playing this the last time I saw him.’ Staffe looks at the CD sleeve and Pepa swerves left and right as she powers up the track, avoiding the worst of the boulders and potholes.
By the time they get to the Harbinsons’, ‘She Bangs the Drums’ is still playing.
Each side of the Harbinsons’ front door, roses struggle into the bleaching sun. Atop the flat roof is a satellite dish the size of their ailing front lawn.
Staffe raps the door with two heavy police knocks. Within, a dog yaps and sets off another and when the woman of the house opens the door, the dogs run out, one a Yorkshire terrier, the other a bulldog. The woman has puffy, cried-out eyes but her hair is done just so and she is wearing a silk kaftan. ‘Sandra Harbinson.’ She has a South London twang, somewhere between Bromley and Croydon is Staffe’s guess. ‘Are you from the Junta?’
‘I’m from the village,’ says Staffe.
‘You’re English! How lovely.’
‘And this is my friend, Pepa. She’s a journalist. She’s interested in your case.’
‘We can’t afford to upset anyone. But come in.’
Sandra leads them into the lounge, which is small, but with a forty-two-inch television. In front of it, glued to a frozen picture of The Weakest Link, is a white-haired man in a striped cotton shirt and polyester trousers. He says, ‘I had it a minute ago.’
With four of them in the room, there is barely space to move.
‘Terry, this is an Englishman from the village. He’s new. His friend is a journalist.’
Terry doesn’t turn round, just says, ‘You’ve not come to knock us down, then.’ He says it with no irony, just a soft seam of relief.
Sandra sits them at the drop-leaf dining table and begins to tell the story of the denuncia and the demolition order and as she does, her eyes turn red and her lips tremble, but she doesn’t cry. ‘We’re at the point now, where there’s nothing left to lose. It’s all gone on lawyers and architects. Terry does a bit of decorating for the English but they have no money now, what with the euro and everything.’