Death in the Sun

by Adam Creed

  ‘My hands are full,’ says Edu, motioning with his bloody cleaver.

  ‘He’s got some nerve,’ says a man Staffe doesn’t know.

  Staffe slowly looks each of the thirteen men in the eye. He says, steady as he can, ‘What was I supposed to do – let it lie? Fill it back in and pretend it never happened?’

  ‘You could have waited.’

  ‘And how long were you going to wait, Edu?’

  ‘Wait for what?’

  Staffe wants to ask him about his niece and how he came to be a pall-bearer at Barrington’s funeral, but he knows this is not the time. ‘I’m not going to conceal the truth. I thought those days were over.’ In these parts, plenty of folk got lucky from the war and its aftermath under Franco, some building a wealth first hand; others growing fat on the bacon their fathers cured – like Edu. But, again, Staffe realises this is not the time for home truths. He wonders how many of this thirteen might know already exactly what happened in those woods. ‘And anyway, if discovering that body is going to jeopardise the Academy, that should suit you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ says Edu, lowering his voice.

  ‘That’s what you said. You didn’t want people coming here, disturbing the way things are.’

  Edu regards his one-time friend like a firework that has fizzled and not gone off. He takes a step towards him. ‘I think you got me wrong.’ He reaches out to Staffe, dropping his bottle. It smashes at his feet, but he keeps hold of the cleaver. With his free hand in a fist, Edu takes a final step, all the time looking Staffe in the eye; a look Staffe hasn’t seen before. He brings the hand down, opening its fist and slapping the Englishman on the shoulder: heavily, decisively. ‘Let’s drink. Today is a day for forgetting,’ says Edu, taking the Laphroaig from his English friend.

  ‘Tomorrow, we remember,’ says one of the men. One by one, the thirteen laugh, smoothly reprising their drunkenness. They forget well up here.

  *

  Pepa presses ‘Send’ and feels the tug as her copy is spirited into her editor’s inbox. The story is out of the bag and has ceased to be truly hers. But this tug is not so great. This article, on Barrington’s Alpujarran legacy, is the thinnest crust to the real story and she doesn’t care what the editor does with it.

  The clerk comes across with a glass of tea and for a while, Pepa relaxes, lets recent events ebb, flow, and soon her fingers bring up the La Lente archive and she types ‘Wagstaffe’ and ‘Gutiérrez’ into ‘Search’. She thinks what good friends those two men might have been had they known each other better. The search is entered and to her astonishment, there is a result. No, two results.

  These men, whom the Englishman swears came together entirely by chance, are united by two pieces which Raúl Gutiérrez had written. The first is from the day after the Omagh bombing by the IRA, which claimed Spanish lives. She remembers it being on the news. The piece is a double-spread feature on terrorism and the flimsiness of the Basque case for nationalism. The killing of the Spaniards in Omagh resulted in a reappraisal of ETA’s activities, and the main body of Raúl’s piece is an assault on the duality of these campaigns for national identity. As the IRA drew innocent Spaniards into their bloody activities, so had ETA, killing three British tourists in an attack on a restaurant in San Sebastian.

  On the right-hand page, there is a picture of Paul and Enid Wagstaffe together. The father wears a panama hat, smiling straight into camera. The mother makes a faltering connection with the lens. Part of her seems to be elsewhere. Pepa thinks how much Will is like his mother.

  Raúl makes a passing reference to the children: Marie, a gifted musician and William in his first year at Oxford. Both William and Marie abandoned those paths.

  She clicks on the second article. Santi Etxebatteria held a junior position on a council for the Basque Nationalist party, then stood for election to the Regional Congress. He failed by a narrow minority and a month later, his cousin, Justo, died in police custody. Justo was a schoolteacher with a young family and was also a party activist. The day after Santi buried his cousin, he resigned his post on the council and retreated into the hills – to get trained.

  Santi Etxebatteria’s pièce de résistance was the Donostia bombing. Apart from the Wagstaffes and another English tourist, Santi’s expertly crafted bomb killed a group of four students from Austria, an elderly couple from Burgos and two waiters, one a Spaniard from Galicia and the other an Euskadi. One of his own. A fully paid-up party member.

  After Santi’s day in the sun, he was never seen again. Family, party, ETA and the police all deemed him inactive; disappeared, though he was on Prime Minister Aznar’s list of people to talk to after the March 2004 Madrid train bombings. Nobody knows where Santi Etxebatteria stands these days, let alone where he lies low, but for some reason, Raúl Gutiérrez seemed to have his number.

  ‘Can I print this, please?’ Pepa asks the clerk.

  The clerk nods enthusiastically, eager to please. She is only twenty, and has all her life ahead. Pepa isn’t even thirty, but today she feels old.

  ‘Are you finished yet?’ asks the clerk.

  ‘One more thing,’ says Pepa. ‘I might be a while. Is that OK?’

  The clerk beams a broad smile, says she will make more tea. It is as if she has all the time in the world.

  Twenty-seven

  This year’s lomo al horno has been butchered, cooked and eaten and last year’s old wine, too fermented, too damn strong, is drunk. The thirteen men have found shade, and siesta. Staffe and Edu are the last ones sitting; Edu carving off chunks of his cousin’s ewe’s cheese. They have it with a Contraviesa reserva that Staffe knows is thirty euros a pop.

  He also knows Edu doesn’t work and because he signs on, he has to do a bit of work on the roads when they fall into disrepair. At Christmas and fiestas, the council put him in a gang to erect the lights. He sells the odd bean to the co-operative, too, and he drives a brand-spanking Land Cruiser, favours Anejo rum in his cuba libres. Even without his visits to the Russian girls down on the coast, it doesn’t add up. Staffe remembers what his bastard niece, Guadalupe, had said about Edu not having anything to do with Barrington because he couldn’t make any money out of him. And how he parks the blame for where his life went wrong: the shame that was visited upon him, courtesy of Barrington.

  ‘This is fine stuff,’ says Staffe, sipping his wine respectfully.

  ‘I know the grower. He does me a deal. It would be wasted on this lot.’

  ‘You lead a grand life for a peasant,’ Staffe jokes.

  Edu laughs. ‘You are a friend, Guilli. But you need to tread more carefully. The people here will forget, but you have to meet them half way.’

  ‘You’re right, Edu. Wise words. Friends and family are important.’

  ‘The most important thing.’

  ‘I told you about my parents, didn’t I?’

  ‘A terrible thing.’

  ‘I told Manolo, too.’ Staffe cuts off a chunk of ewe’s cheese with the goat’s-head knife, the one that was shoved into his mouth in Sacromonte. He offers it to Edu, off the blade.

  Edu stares at the knife, says nothing and takes the cheese.

  ‘That journalist, Raúl, who drove past here just a few minutes before he died, was going to see the man who murdered them.’

  ‘My God, it can be a small world.’

  ‘He tracked him down to a place in Extremadura.’

  ‘Have some more wine.’

  ‘You didn’t tell Raúl about my parents, did you, Edu?’ He takes a sip of the wine. ‘I’m sorry. You didn’t know him, did you? I must be getting drunk.’

  Edu wraps his hand around the goat’s head of the knife. ‘How is Manolo? We feared he might have done something stupid.’ He cuts a slab of cheese, hands it to Staffe.

  ‘You’re not exactly friends, are you?’

  ‘We got along all right. In small villages you can know too few people. Know them too well.’

  ‘How well did you know his m
other?’

  ‘I didn’t care for the way she carried on.’

  ‘I’ve heard some ripe old tales about what went on up here with Barrington and the American.’ He nods up towards Jackson’s cortijo. ‘I don’t suppose that reflected too well on you and the family.’

  ‘It was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘I suppose they kept it secret.’

  ‘You and your secrets! Just because you don’t know something doesn’t make it a secret.’

  ‘I saw Immaculada the other day.’

  ‘She doesn’t see anybody.’

  ‘You must have hated Barrington.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘So you have forgiven your sister?’

  ‘It’s not a question of that.’

  ‘But you carried his coffin.’

  He says, quick as light, ‘Immaculada was too small to carry, so she asked me. What was I supposed to do?’

  ‘How long is it since you have seen her? She’s ill, Edu. Very ill. I know what it’s like when we leave things unsaid.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  ‘It’s terrible when the words are trapped and the people who they are meant for aren’t here any more. It must be like that for Rubio.’

  ‘His wife’s not dead. She was never found.’

  ‘Found?’

  ‘She left, that’s all. She should never have come here in the first place.’

  ‘You must wonder what happened to Astrid. Such a beautiful woman. I bet someone knows where she went.’

  A car grinds up the hill, throaty.

  Staffe puts down his empty glass, stands up and stretches, theatrically. ‘Funny, Raúl coming up here, and planning to visit Extremadura to see the man who killed my parents. It’s strange, how things connect.’

  ‘Maybe they are just two actions.’

  ‘It would establish a hold over me‚ keep me in my place,’ he laughs, ‘if there was a chance I could catch up with that murderer, Etxebatteria.’

  Edu looks over Staffe’s shoulder and his face slips a little. The Guardia Land Rover comes to a halt and Quesada gets out, tweaking his moustache. ‘Here. Have your knife back. I’m going to make coffee for this herd of old goats.’

  *

  Pepa is out of the loop. There is finite information in the world and this is what journalists are up against: chasing the same things as each other. Every now and again, you get a step ahead. That’s what Pepa has done, but now she must look through the other end of the telescope: see what everyone else has seen while her eyes have been focused on the past.

  She is reading the news agencies’ feeds for the last week, and keeping a particularly keen eye on anything to do with the death of Raúl Gutiérrez and the murdered Dane.

  Nothing tasty emerges. Most of the ‘noise’ around Almería focuses on the council’s inability to borrow funds. Talk is of rubbish piling up on the streets and no fiesta lights at Christmas. Perhaps Pepa chose a good week to be away.

  She clicks on ‘Today’s streaming’ and waits for the files to load. The clerk smiles at her. All morning, Pepa is the only person who has been in the Ayuntamiento.

  Pepa has one finger on the function key, another on ‘Page down’ and the minutes fly by. She pauses briefly to read that fifty-seven minutes ago the head of the council in Roquetas del Mar called for the acceleration of legalising illegal homes. She presses her finger again and the headlines flurry.

  Then her fingers pull away from the keyboard, as if they are scalded. Pepa catches her breath, double clicks on the headline, gets a one-paragraph summary.

  Forty-four minutes ago, police in Mojácar reported the death of a foreigner. Unidentified, the body was washed up onto rocks between Mojácar and Garrucha. The local brigada said the body was handed to the police in Almería as they had received fresh intelligence about hashish trafficking from Africa and were liaising with forces all along the coast, as far as Algeciras.

  Pepa asks the clerk if she can print again, and the clerk leaps into action, hovers over the printer and hands the pages to her precious client.

  Going down the stairs, intent upon collecting the Englishman, Pepa considers whether she has missed the real story here: another foreign body on the coast. Narcotics are in the air, and foreigners, too. The farmers are fighting back against the golf developers. Should she be down there; not up here?

  *

  The clerk sits at the work station. The journalist’s seat is still warm and she looks out of the window‚ watches her car rollick over the speed bumps, then clicks the computer’s ‘Print history’ icon. She hits the print command and back at her own desk, Señorita Sanchez reads each of the pieces once, then calls her uncle, returning to the warm seat in the window, waiting for him to pick up.

  *

  ‘As I remember him, Agustín was everything Manolo was not,’ says Quesada, accepting a glass of Laphroaig.

  ‘You talk as if he is a thing of the past,’ says Staffe.

  ‘That boy is a thing of the past, as far as we are concerned. He went back to Germany to live with his grandparents. They wanted him to go to a German university. Once Rubio went to the funny farm, he was never coming back.’

  ‘Wasn’t he here a few weeks ago?’

  ‘If he was, he behaved himself. I didn’t see him.’

  ‘What do you think happened to Astrid Cano, brigada?’

  ‘She was out of her element here. She found something that suited her better.’

  ‘And left her sons?’

  ‘She was a strange woman.’

  ‘Comisario Sanchez would have known her. Wasn’t he in Almagen in those days?’

  ‘He lived in Mecina, but he was based here for a while.’

  ‘So he’d have known Raúl.’

  ‘You should ask him about it.’ Quesada smiles, as if he has won a point.

  ‘And he left soon after Astrid disappeared.’

  ‘People come and people go, Señor Wagstaffe.’

  ‘Why exactly did Sanchez leave Almagen?’

  ‘Look where he is now. That kind of ambition needs a bigger cage.’

  Staffe thinks that ‘cage’ is a strange word to employ. He studies the unflappable, small-town Quesada. ‘Was Sanchez in on the paintings, brigada?’

  ‘You shouldn’t ask me such things. A comisario “in” on something? Please. I like you, Inspector, but you shouldn’t place me in such a position.’

  ‘Barrington reinvented himself late in life and produced his best work. That would attract Astrid; and Jackson, too. Almagen must have been quite a place back then.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I know, Inspector.’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘I know Jackson Roberts trafficked drugs.’

  ‘He gave you information, and you turned a blind eye to him and built a career . . .’

  ‘Please!’ Quesada takes a deep breath. ‘How do you get on if you never listen? I said I know Roberts dealt drugs and I know your brother-in-law was here years before you paid for your sister’s place. Paolo de Venuto could be in custody like that!’ He clicks his fingers. ‘I have a file on him this thick.’ He holds his hand out, as if placing it on a child’s head. ‘And he’s growing weed up there now and your pregnant sister knows all about it.’

  ‘You haven’t arrested him.’

  ‘Maybe he and Jackson knew what was in those woods when Jackson got him to buy the land. Maybe you knew. But the important thing for you to understand is if I know these things, then others do, too.’

  ‘You mean Comisario Sanchez.’

  ‘I can’t answer that,’ says Quesada, closing his eyes and crossing his hands in front of his face, signalling that his patience is exhausted.

  They each take another draught of the good stuff. Staffe waits, eventually says, ‘With your contacts – would you be able to find out where Santi Etxebatteria is? Could you help me?’

  ‘That’s a very uncertain world you’d be entering, Inspector.’ He smiles, points at Pepa, walki
ng quickly towards him. Knowing that she comes bearing news, Quesada walks past Staffe, says under his breath. ‘There’s another body. Be careful, Inspector.’

  Twenty-eight

  Pepa is looking across the sierra through the telescope on El Nido’s terrace. She breaks off to call Staffe to hurry up. ‘We have to get to Mojácar.’

  Inside Marie’s cortijo, Staffe watches Harry pack his small world into a medium-sized suitcase.

  ‘I don’t see why we have to move down to the village,’ says Marie.

  ‘The baby is coming. What if there are complications?’ says Staffe.

  ‘Complications? You think I’m in danger up here, don’t you? Why would I be in danger in my own home?’

  Paolo sits on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor. Marie knows something is wrong because Paolo isn’t high and he seems happy they’re going down to the village. She says, ‘Are you packing, Paolo?’

  ‘I have things to do here. I’ll follow you.’

  ‘You have to come, Marie,’ says Staffe, kneeling beside her. He wraps his arms around her. ‘Please just do it. All I want is for no harm to come to any of you.’

  ‘You’re going to have to tell me what’s happening, Will.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Then I won’t go.’

  ‘I want to go!’ shouts Harry.

  Staffe reaches into his pocket and unfolds the printout of Raúl’s article on the Omagh and Donostia bombings. He hands it to Marie.

  She gasps; puts a hand to her mouth, and slowly, her eyes become glassy and red. But she begins to smile. ‘I haven’t ever seen this photograph before. Mum looks like you, Will. I always thought you looked like Dad. But you were hers, weren’t you?’

  ‘Was I?’

  Marie reads the piece, says quietly, so Harry can’t hear, ‘Gutiérrez. He’s the one who died. He wrote this years ago and then he comes up to our mountain and he drives his car off a bridge. Christ, Will. And there’s more, isn’t there? He was up here while you were ill, I told you I’d seen him snooping. And that body in the woods. It’s not from the war, is it?’