by Adam Creed
‘Don’t move.’ The voice is whispering now, hot and urgent in his ear and he can smell oil and garlic and peppers on the man’s breath. ‘Your answers are in the mountains, and by the sea. You must think about what they buried. The dead aren’t what they seem, but they are your allies. They can’t ever be buried. Not truly.’
Staffe wants to speak, but fears the blade of the knife in his mouth.
‘Now, lie with your face to the floor. Count fifty and don’t bother to look. You can’t find us.’
The metal blade presses against his tongue but the pressure on his throat and chest seems to abate. A light, rhythmic tap on the door and light floods the room. He doesn’t move. The door shuts again and all is dark.
He opens his mouth wide and slowly pulls the blade from his mouth. He sits up, waits. And waits. Eventually, the light floods in again. Pepa rushes in, kneels by his side. ‘What happened?’
‘Where did you go? I called for you.’
‘I went for a smoke.’
She smells of smoke. He wants to believe her.
‘What’s that?’ she says.
He looks down, and his heart misses a beat. The knife’s handle is hand-turned from chestnut and has the head of a goat carved into it. He has seen one just like it.
‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’
‘You know as much as me. Someone here doesn’t like me.’ But he wonders if he might be wrong about that – amongst other things.
They weave through the dense crowd, to stand at the bar where they were before. The crowd distinctly, and quite deliberately, do not look at him.
A mournful soleá begins. Staffe recognises the words from his night on the tiles with Gutiérrez. He says to Pepa, in English, ‘I was a stone and lost my centre, and was thrown into the sea, and after a very long time, I came to find my centre again.’
‘What?’ she says.
‘It’s the song. The Soleá de Sernata. Come on. Let’s go.’
As they go, the lament soars and falls, like a gull.
On the balcony in Pepa’s room, looking down on the courtyard of the Ladrón del Agua, she says, ‘That song. Were your parents the centre that you lost?’
‘Too much happens in life for one thing to make us who we are.’
‘Don’t you think we are always the same, at our centre?’
He smiles at her. ‘That’s a good thought, but I wasn’t always the kind of person I’d want to be.’
‘You seem fine to me. Come inside.’ Pepa goes to her wardrobe and sinks to her haunches, reaching in. ‘I’m not sure I should be doing this.’ Her voice resounds in the old wood and she pulls out a buff-coloured file, turns to face Staffe, standing awkwardly, looking down on her. ‘Sometimes, you have to trust someone. Don’t you?’
‘It’s one of God’s cruel jokes: such a good thing as trust – he made it so dangerous.’
Pepa removes some papers from the file, tosses them on the bed. ‘That’s you,’ she says.
Staffe sits on the edge of the bed and begins to flick through. It takes several minutes for him to absorb the content. ‘How did you get all this?’ he says.
‘They are all public documents, from here and there. It’s easy when you’re in the game.’
Staffe taps one of the papers – a photocopied cutting from a Basque newspaper, the day after his parents were murdered. ‘Is this Raúl’s handwriting?’
Pepa nods.
He reads the date stamp on its back. ‘This was taken from the archive a week before I even met him; before I went to Almería with Manolo; before there was a body in the plastic. I didn’t even know I would go there or speak to Jesús and discover Raúl was covering the case.’
‘There must be something to have connected you to Raúl. Or do you believe in coincidences?’
‘There’s a reason for everything.’
Pepa nods, sits beside him. ‘Everything has a motive. Everything we do affects someone else. That’s why I couldn’t trust you.’
‘You can’t trust me!’
‘Think about it. You knew Raúl before you said you did. And you brought him up to the mountains. You were there when he died.’
‘I wasn’t. And I didn’t know him.’
‘He knew you.’
‘Look! This is nothing to do with me; nothing whatsoever. I went to Almería to have my wounds tended and Manolo took me to see his tio, Jesús’s father, and we took a ride out to the sea, where the body was.’
‘What would you give, to catch up with Santi Etxebatteria?’
Staffe feels his breath get trapped above his chest. He feels light in the head.
Pepa goes to her handbag, pulls out a torn scrap of paper. ‘You’ve seen Raúl’s handwriting. Now, look at this.’
‘What is it?’
The paper is torn from a diary. In the space beneath the date after Raúl Gutiérrez died, and in his own hand, he was to meet Santi Etxebatteria, the man who killed Staffe’s parents.
‘What is Cabeza de Toro? A bull’s head?’ says Staffe, remembering he had seen something similar before, in Raúl’s study.
‘It’s a place,’ says Pepa. ‘In Extremadura – it’s the other side of nowhere. But forget it, I’ve checked. He’s gone without trace.’
Staffe slides down, to the cool, hard floor and wraps his arms around his knees.
Pepa crouches beside him, pulls him towards her, and she holds him.
‘They’ve got me,’ he says.
‘Who are they?’
He looks at the fragment of Raúl’s diary and shakes his head, then looks up at Pepa. ‘In the peña, they said the dead aren’t what they seem. They are our allies.’
‘Who knew about your parents?’
‘Manolo.’
‘Did you mention the name Etxebatteria to him?’
He nods again.
‘And Edu?’ says Pepa.
‘Just them.’
‘And your sister, of course. And her husband? Four people know something in a place like Almagen – you may as well have taken a quarter page in La Lente.’
‘But it came from them. One of them.’
Twenty-four
The art historian painstakingly clips the canvas to the board, having closed the shutters to the room and finessed the lighting overhead. In this light, from this perspective, the painting takes on an even finer dimension. Pepa can feel the tow of the sea, can comprehend its horrific depths, the scale of its swell, engulfing the boat. She is amazed by the light within the painting: dawn and a new day beckoning. There is a sense of deep sorrow and foreboding. Each of the three characters is distinct. Two lovers and an outsider.
‘It is definitely a Barrington‚’ says the historian. ‘The strokework and the palette. They are identical to the few examples of his late work that I have witnessed. As I said, all of those late pieces are now in private collections, in Japan and America. But this is so superior. So very superior. I must know where you discovered it.’
‘I cannot say,’ says Staffe.
‘You must tell me. This is a national treasure. Barrington became a Spanish citizen and some say he has a Spanish daughter. My God! This would keep her in pearls and fur for several lifetimes.’
‘We represent the family,’ says Pepa.
‘Family?’
‘We are investigating the provenance of this piece,’ says Staffe.
The historian pleads, ‘Don’t you see how special it is? It tells us what we never knew, for certain, about Barrington. You cannot take it away.’
As carefully as he can, Staffe unclips the canvas from the easel. He places it flat on a table, ignores the wincing moans of the historian as he rolls it up. When they reach the door, the historian calls out, like a spurned lover, ‘What do you call it?’
‘Nothing, yet. Would you like to name it?’
The historian nods and seems to drift away, as if hooked on a memory. ‘It must be “La Sernata”.’
‘My God,’ says Pepa.
A shiver s
hoots through Staffe. From the nape of his neck to his Achilles heel.
‘Can’t you see? Him, the one standing up, he has no centre.’
*
‘He has to take his medicine in fifteen minutes. That’s all the time you have,’ says Sister Anna.
Rubio is in his armchair between his bed and the desk beneath the window. Sister Anna whispers to Pepa, ‘Watch him. He has the devil in him.’ She lowers her eyes as she says it.
The minute the nun closes the door behind her, Rubio’s eyes soften and he taps two cigarettes from the soft packet of Ducados, offers one to Pepa who walks towards him. He watches all the way, lights up and she bends to catch the fire. She is wearing a polka-dot mini-dress. Her legs are bare.
‘I don’t know you.’
‘We never met, Señor Cano.’
‘I would remember.’
He has all his own teeth, which is unusual for a man from his world. His hair is golden and quite long, combed back in well-behaved waves. His eyes are blue and his cheekbones are like axe heads. Were it not for the battering his skin had taken, he could pass for forty-five. She thinks he must have been a magnificently handsome young man. ‘And so would I.’
‘You’re a friend of Manolo’s, you say.’
‘That’s right, but I’ve lost track of him.’
‘He should be with his goats.’
‘But I’m more a friend of Tino.’
‘Tino?’
‘His brother – Agustín. We met in Morocco.’
‘My God. You’ve seen Agustín?’
Pepa opens the window‚ flicks her cigarette out and registers the notebook on the desk. She sits on the edge of the bed, leaning towards Rubio, trailing cigarette smoke from her mouth.
He eyes her.
She crosses her legs, looks around the room, sees a line of journals on a small bookshelf in the lee of the door. ‘You want anything while I’m here?’
‘Is Agustín all right?’
She leans across, takes another cigarette from his packet. ‘I haven’t smoked black for years.’
He smiles, leans back, weaves his fingers together above his lap. ‘Why are you really here? You don’t seem his type.’
‘I met Agustín in Chefchouen. It’s where he got his nose done.’ She taps her left nostril.
‘He could always knock them dead, my Agustín, but I never saw the point of men having jewellery.’
‘I bet you think I’m a gold-digger, don’t you, Rubio? Old man Hesse dead, and now Manolo is missing: the grandson and heir.’ Pepa stands and takes a deep draw on the cigarette. ‘He told me.’ She walks the other side of Rubio and perches on the edge of the writing desk beneath the open window, her knees a foot apart. ‘You didn’t love Astrid the way she wanted?’ She feels behind her for the notebook. Just inches above his eyeline, she takes its firm spine between her fingers.
Rubio tries not to stare, but fails himself.
‘I loved her well enough.’
‘What happened?’ Pepa raises her foot, puts it on the arm of his chair.
‘Have you found her?’
‘Was she lost?’ Pepa raises her other foot and rests it on the other arm of Rubio’s chair and he gasps. ‘Can she be found, Rubio?’
She flicks her wrist, releases the book through the window and into the late morning. Now, he looks her in the eye again. ‘I loved her. So much.’
She calls, ‘Sister!’
‘Can you love someone too much?’
Pepa stands and smooths herself down. The door opens and a new, older sister comes in, sees Pepa looking demure and aghast.
They each look at Rubio, unable to resist staring at his erection. He says, to Pepa, ‘I loved her too much.’
The sister is livid, says, ‘Did he touch you?’
Pepa manages a faint flutter of the eyes, like a broken-winged bird.
The nun grabs Rubio by the hair on his temple and eases him out of the chair, holding him at arm’s length – as if she might catch something off him. And he takes his punishment, like someone grateful for any human contact. She calls‚ ‘Sister Anna, get a cold bath going. It’s Rubio!’ Then she says to Pepa, ‘Stay here. I will come back and escort you out.’
The moment they are gone, Pepa rushes to the bookshelf and drops to her knees, pulls off the first volume and flicks through the pages. As she does, her heart grows heavy at what she reads. She replaces the first volume and flicks through the second. The same. And the third, then the fourth, until she hears footsteps. But already, she has the message.
As they walk down the airy, wide staircase of the Hospedería with the breeze wafting through the open windows, Pepa confesses to Sister Anna that she and Rubio had smoked. When they get outside, she insists on picking up the cigarette butts. Beneath his room, reaching into the roses, she draws blood from a thorn but she leaves the cigarette stubs, is intent only on picking up Rubio’s notebook. She reaches up her dress and slips the volume into her knickers, allows herself to be led from the garden by the fragrant Sister Anna.
*
The notebook lies open on the desk in Staffe’s hotel room. ‘This is what he wrote in his book in his cortijo. I saw it,’ says Staffe. Down the page’s centre, with wide margins left and right, and in the neatest, swirling fountain hand, are two seven-lined stanzas and the pattern repeats across each page in the book and in each of all the many notebooks on Rubio’s bookcase in the Hospedería.
‘He loved her – that’s for sure,’ says Pepa.
‘He still does,’ says Staffe.
‘Does that mean she’s not dead? If she is, he can’t have killed her,’ says Pepa.
Staffe reads from the book, aloud.
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 wretched heart bleeds.
‘This isn’t love,’ she says. ‘It’s a penance.’
‘And it’s wretched.’
‘Wretched?’
‘His heart. I couldn’t read it properly when I found the poem in his cortijo. His handwriting has improved. Maybe practice has made him perfect.’ He closes the book and takes a step back, looks at her, smiling. ‘He’s only flesh and blood.’
‘A rush of blood.’
‘Did he know who you were?’
‘I said I knew Agustín. I’m pretty sure Agustín is his favourite.’ Pepa loses herself in a moment.
‘Is something wrong?’
‘I don’t think money is important to Rubio.’
‘It’s paying for him to stay in that grand old place.’
‘That’s not what I meant. I don’t think he’d do anything for money. I think he’d rather be poor and back with his old life. I can’t work out why he is in the Hospedería.’
‘Because the world has to believe he’s mad.’
She nods. ‘You’re right. He’s as horny as the bull walking down the hill. But mad? I don’t think so.’
*
Cortes loosens his tie. Dirt is ingrained on the inside of his collar. He has a red mottle to his eyes, and recent drink hums off him. He is at a desk, surrounded by a bank of screens and flashy-looking hardware. There isn’t a piece of paper in sight. His office is as kempt as he is dishevelled.
‘I thought you’d give up the ghost,’ he says.
‘But it’s not a ghost, is it?’
‘And you know what it is, I suppose.’
Staffe places the newspaper cutting of Astrid down in front of Cortes, and for a glimmer, life shines brilliantly in Cortes’s eyes; then quickly burns itself out.
‘I told you, I don’t think it’s a woman.’
‘She is tall and large-boned; German.’
Cortes picks up the photograph and lifts the lid on a scanner, plonks it face down on the glass. He taps at his keyboard and an electric-blue light glows. Cortes taps some more, says, ‘A
magic piece of kit. Takes all the heartache away – all the reasons to be glad you’re alive. I hate the fucking thing.’ He lights a cigarette. There is a ‘No Smoking’ sign on the wall behind him. The cigarette wiggles as he talks. ‘I pick out three trig points and input just one cell whose dimension I can identify.’
With a dirty fingernail, he taps the digitised image on the screen, covered in hundreds of faint gridlines. ‘These tiles are thirty centimetres.’ He taps again and a lifelike image of Astrid appears, alone, with her vital statistics written beneath her, detailing her age band, her precise height and a probable weight. A list of options regarding her likeliest provenance, based on her face, limbs, shoulders and colouring. Cortes looks at the original and reads the date at the top of the newspaper, inputs the date and the data re-churns.
‘Northern European, she’d be sixty if she were alive now. When this was taken, she was one metre seventy and sixty kilos.’
‘Could she be the body in the forest?’ says Staffe.
‘You were there. I had no time to properly appraise, and I only had the rib cage and shoulders to go on, but everything I know tells me no.’
‘But if you had a sample of that skin from under the skeleton’s arm and I could get some hair – from a brush or from her clothes in the house in Almagen, you could run a DNA test. That would be proof.’
‘You learn fast, Guirri, but I can’t work on this case.’
‘You could run a DNA test for me.’
Cortes shakes his head. ‘My edicts come from on high. You’ll have to be satisfied with speculation.’
‘You can’t let them write the wrong history. Isn’t that what they did all those years?’
‘I need authorisation to run any test. Everything is logged. So, it becomes impossible for me to help you, Guirri.’
‘You’d let Comisario Sanchez impede you?’
Cortes taps at his keyboard again and turns the screen towards Staffe. ‘This, I can process.’
The image of the lantern is highly pixellated. Staffe says, ‘Peralta sent this to you? Can you make it bigger?’
‘This is optimal. Bigger, and you see less.’
Staffe leans in. ‘Sanchez?’
‘An ambitious police officer in a room with the famous artist and your American; the mad shepherd and your missing woman – what a pretty picture,’ he laughs.