It was all coming back to Paco now. ‘Your name wasn’t Pérez back then, was it?’ he asked.
The private shook his head. ‘No, I was calling myself Pepe Delgado at the time. I’ve had a number of different names over the years.’
Pepe Delgado! Yes, now Paco could remember the case quite clearly. ‘We had to let you go in the end, didn’t we?’ he said.
‘That’s right. She was one of my whores, and I never denied that fact, but there was no hard evidence to link me with her murder. And as a matter of fact, I didn’t kill the girl.’
‘They all say that.’
‘True,’ Pérez agreed. ‘But why should I bother to lie to you about it now? Even if I confessed to the crime, there’d be nothing you could do about it out here, is there?’
‘You don’t seem to hold a grudge over the fact that I arrested you,’ Paco said, intrigued. ‘Why is that?’
Pérez shrugged. ‘I’m a businessman, and it’s not good for business to waste your time holding a grudge. After a couple of days, I was released, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s the whole matter over and done with. Besides,’ he added, slightly self-consciously, ‘you treated me a damn sight better than most of the cops who’ve ever taken me in. You didn’t hit me once.’
‘What I don’t understand is what a “businessman” like you is doing in the army,’ Paco said. ‘I can’t quite figure out what your angle is.’
‘I haven’t got an angle,’ the soldier told him. ‘I was in hot water, and the military seemed a convenient place to disappear to for a while. But if I’d known that war was about to break out, you’d never have got me anywhere near the recruitment office.’
Paco reached into his pocket, and pulled out a couple of the one-peseta notes which Major Gómez had so reluctantly handed over to him. ‘You want these?’ he asked.
Pérez eyed the money hungrily, yet there was also a look of suspicion in his pinched features. ‘Nobody gives money away as easily as that,’ he said. ‘What do you want in return?’
‘Very little,’ Paco assured him. ‘Just tell me what you know about your officers.’
‘Why should you be interested in hearing about them?’ Pérez asked guardedly.
‘Why shouldn’t I be interested?’ Paco responded, rustling the notes between his fingers.
‘There was a day when I’d have laughed in your face if you’d been insulting enough to offer me a miserly two pesetas,’ Pérez said sadly. ‘But times change, don’t they?’
‘Indeed they do,’ Paco agreed. ‘Why don’t you start by telling me about the general?’
‘From what I’ve heard, he’s never been a very good soldier, but now he’s no use at all.’
‘Why should that be?’
‘Because he’s so obsessed with that pretty wife of his that he leaves most of the real work to Colonel Valera, and spends his time shopping for things for her to wear. It’s my belief that’s the only way he can get his thrills – dressing her and undressing her as if she was some kind of china doll.’
Paco grinned. ‘You’re just guessing now,’ he said.
‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen some of the underwear he’s bought her,’ Pérez replied, sounding stung.
‘How would you know about the underwear he’s bought her?’ Paco asked sharply.
It was Pérez’s turn to grin. ‘Even a fine lady’s underwear gets dirty sometimes. And when it does, it has to be washed, doesn’t it? And once it’s been washed, it’s hung out to dry. A lot of the boys get a kick out of seeing it hanging out on the line.’
‘And do you?’
Pérez shook his head. ‘No. One way or another, sex has been my business since I was around thirteen years old. Where there is no money to be made out of it, I’m not interested. But that doesn’t mean to say I don’t hear the others talking about what they’ve seen.’
‘And how about the general’s wife. Is she as obsessed with him as he seems to be with her?’
The private laughed. ‘You’ve seen him with your own eyes. What do you think?’
‘So why did she marry him?’
‘Because he’s rich. I used to run whores just like her – girls willing to do anything with any man as long as it gave them the money to buy artificial silk drawers and cheap jewellery.’
Paco lit a second cigarette from the stub of his first, and again handed the pack across to Private Pérez. ‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some more in my other pocket.’
‘Oh, to be rich again,’ the private said, quickly palming the cigarettes into the folds of his cheap uniform.
‘What do you think about the rest of the officers billeted in this village?’ Paco asked.
Pérez pulled a face. ‘They make me sick – the whole bloody pack of them. Look at the difference between the way they live and the way we live. They stay in nice houses and sleep between clean sheets, while we have to make do with tents, sleeping head to toe. They have their fine mistresses, and we’re forced to settle for poxridden whores. I tell you, things were different in the old days. Back then I had a motorbike and three good suits.’
‘Does Colonel Valera have a mistress?’ Paco asked, remembering the naked woman’s foot he had seen disappear round the corner of the stairs only half an hour earlier.
‘Most of the people I’ve talked to seem to think he has, but if it’s true, he’s certainly very discreet about it – so nobody really knows for sure.’
‘And Major Gómez?’
Pérez laughed. ‘He’d like to have one, but he can’t afford the luxury. He’s not from a rich family like the general is, you know. His father’s a baker in Valladolid – spends his days up to the elbows in dough – so for all his airs and graces, the major’s no better than the rest of us.’
But he wanted to be, Paco thought. Major Gómez had a burning ambition which shone as brightly as the noonday sun – an ambition so compelling that he was probably prepared to risk everything he already had in order to gain more. The first stage of his plan was to step into the colonel’s position, and then perhaps into the general’s. By the time this awful war was over, he could be one of the most powerful men in the country – and if he had to kill an ex-inspector of police on the way, it wouldn’t bother him at all.
‘Tell me about the general’s dog,’ Paco said to Pérez.
Pérez’s eyes narrowed. ‘What about it?’
Paco took a deep drag on his cigarette. ‘I’m only interested in finding out who killed the animal,’ he said. ‘Whatever you did with the collar is your business and no concern of mine.’
‘I’ve told you before – we never even touched the bloody collar,’ Pérez protested.
Paco shook his head disbelievingly. ‘Of course you did. You did more than simply touch it. You lifted it over what was left of the dog’s head and slipped it into your pocket, just as you did with my cigarettes just now.’
‘Not true!’ Pérez said obstinately.
‘A man like you – a man who got used to the finer things in life, like having a motorbike and three good suits – isn’t going to pass up the chance to grab a small fortune when fate suddenly lets it fall right into his hands. But as I said before, I don’t give a damn about the collar. What I’d be interested to find out is why the dog was killed.’
‘Well there’s no point in asking me,’ Pérez told him. ‘I’ve no idea why the brute was shot. But I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned in my life – no man stirs up a pond unless he has something to gain from making it murky.’
Perhaps that was it, Paco thought. Pickpockets on the Puerta del Sol often worked in teams of two – one creating some kind of scene to attract attention, while the other went around the square lifting the spectators’ wallets from inside their jackets. Was it possible, then, that the killing of the dog had been much along the same lines – had it been nothing more than a clever stunt aimed at shifting the focus away from what was really important?
He handed the one-peseta notes to Pérez. ‘Ke
ep your eyes and ears open, will you?’ he said. ‘If you hear anything that might help me, I’ll pay well for the information.’
The church door opened, and Private Jiménez stepped out. He seemed surprised to see Paco there – almost frightened – but then these country boys were always intimidated by anyone wearing a suit.
‘So you’ve finally stopped talking to God, have you?’ Pérez said contemptuously.
‘I . . . um . . .’ Jiménez mumbled, then fell silent.
Pérez stood up, his hand in his trouser pocket, his fingers touching the two peseta notes Paco had given him. ‘Well, come on!’ he said to the big, slow peasant. ‘Let’s go and have a drink. But remember, Jiménez, you’re buying tonight – because I haven’t got any money.’
Paco watched the two young men walk towards the nearest bar, then pushed the heavy door open and entered the church. It was much cooler inside than it was out on the street. Much quieter, too, without the incessant noise of the carousing soldiers. And though he had long ago lost his own faith, he still felt the soothing effect of the centuries of belief and certainty which pervaded the building.
He walked up to the statue of the Virgin. The wooden tears which she cried over the death of her beloved son had not moved even a fraction of a centimetre since the moment they’d been carved – but the world which surrounded the church had changed immeasurably in just a few days.
‘They’re killing your priests, Madonna,’ he said softly to the statue. ‘Did you know that?’
It was true. The priesthood was so closely associated with the old order – with the landlords and the bosses – that the backlash had been ferocious. Priests and nuns had been murdered all over the Republican-held territory. Paco himself knew of one case in Madrid where the priest had been shot by the militia for no other reason than that while he always took care to wear a clean collar when he was officiating at a rich man’s funeral mass, he had considered a soiled one good enough when the deceased was poor.
The Virgin looked down on him with the fixed expression of piety and grief she had held since the master craftsman had finished his work – and was silent.
‘But none of it would ever have happened if the Army hadn’t risen,’ Paco told her. ‘There is blood on everyone’s hands now, but it has stained some more than others.’
He turned, and walked down the aisle to the door. Once out on the street again, he lit a cigarette, and looked around him. He could see big slow Jiménez and wily little Pérez leaning against a barrel-turned-table, and drinking away what was left of the country boy’s pay.
He understood now why Pérez had felt it necessary to insult Jiménez’s mother. And from that insight, it was no great trick to reconstruct the heated conversation he’d seen them having outside his office.
I had to say something, Pérez would have explained to the slow-witted Jiménez. If I hadn’t, you’d have been bound to give the game away.
‘You said very bad things about my mother, Jiménez would have whined in reply.
Yes, I know I did, Pérez would have countered, doing his best to keep the exasperation out of his voice. But I didn’t mean it. You know that. It was the only thing I could think of to shut you up.
The two young soldiers drained their glasses, and left the bar. Paco watched them until they had been swallowed up by the crowd, then turned his mind back to his more pressing problems. He needed to get his hands on some weapons, he told himself. Not just guns – though he would feel a great deal safer if he had one in a snug shoulder holster under his armpit. No, what he really needed were psychological weapons – levers which he could use to exert pressure on the people who mattered: a threat he could employ against Major Gómez; a secret of Valera’s he could threaten to expose unless the colonel agreed to co-operate with him. It was only through the skilful manipulation of such instruments that he and his darling Cindy had any chance of surviving.
A few minutes earlier he had felt as if he were facing an impossible task, but now he was experiencing the faintest pulse of hope. He finally had one of the weapons he needed. True, it was only a tiny one – a penknife, when what he would have preferred was a machine-gun – but at least it was a start. He had finally discovered what had happened to the dead dog’s collar.
Chapter Fifteen
The smell of freshly brewing coffee had always been enough to wake Paco from even the deepest sleep, and the morning after the attempt on his life was no exception. His first instinctive reaction was to groan, and wonder if he could get back to sleep again. His second reaction, a more recently acquired one, was to reach across for Cindy Walker, only to find that she wasn’t there.
‘Of course she’s not here,’ he told himself irritably, as he threw off the sheet and swung himself out of bed. ‘Coffee doesn’t make itself, does it?’
He put on the overcoat he’d been using as a dressing-gown, and made his way downstairs. Cindy was wearing nothing more than one of his shirts. He let his eyes play on her long, slim legs, and marvelled that anyone could be so totally unselfconscious as this blonde Yanqui seemed to be.
She heard his footsteps on the stairs, and turned to face him. ‘Just in time,’ she said with a smile. ‘The bread’s still hot, and whatever jelly they’ve brought with it smells just delicious.’
She looked tired, he thought, but it was a tiredness born more out of an emotional exhaustion than anything else. In a way, he was having a much easier time of it than she was. Certainly, he had to venture out on the streets, never sure when someone would take a pot shot at him. But at least he was investigating both the case and their possibilities of escape, while she was confined to the house all day, with nothing to occupy her mind but worries about their future.
‘What happened last night?’ Cindy asked. ‘The last thing I remember was sitting in the chair, waiting for you to come back. Then it was morning, and I woke up in bed.’
Paco kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘You were asleep when I got back,’ he said. ‘I carried you upstairs.’ He grinned. ‘You’re getting fat. Did you know that? It’s time you went on a diet.’
‘The hell I am! And the hell I will!’ Cindy replied. ‘So what did you do yesterday, Ruiz?’
Paco sat down at the table and spread some mermelada on the bread. Cindy had been right, he thought. It did smell delicious. ‘I don’t want you to get too worked up about this,’ he said, ‘but last night, someone tried to kill me.’
Cindy took a deep breath, and he knew she was making a tremendous effort not to scream – or at least burst into tears. ‘Well, I suppose you’d better tell me about it,’ she said in a shaky voice.
He described his confrontation with the assassin on the Calle Belén, leaving nothing out except the depth of his own fear. ‘But that’s awful,’ she said when he finished. ‘You’re a sitting target.’
‘Not quite that,’ Paco said, unconvincingly. ‘Besides, getting shot at is an occupational hazard. People are always trying to kill me – and not one of them has succeeded even once.’
But Cindy refused to treat the matter lightly. ‘I feel so useless,’ she told him. ‘If only I could be out there with you. Or if only there was some other way I could help.’
‘There is,’ Paco assured her. ‘After last night, I’m not sure I can trust Major Gómez any more, which means that if anyone’s going to take Fat Felipe’s place, it’ll have to be you.’
‘What an honour,’ Cindy said, regaining something of her fighting spirit. ‘OK, Ruiz, give me the low-down.’
He described the murder of Lieutenant Anton, the interview he’d had with Colonel Valera, and his argument on the square with Major Gómez. He told her about his conversation with Private Pérez, and his sudden insight into what had happened to the dog’s collar. She listened seriously; her chin tilted forward, her eyes set deep in concentration.
‘But can you be absolutely sure that the murderer is an officer?’ she asked, when he finished.
‘He took Anton’s gun,’ Paco reminded her. ‘W
hat else can he be if he did that?’
Cindy frowned. ‘Say that instead of an officer, he was one of the enlisted men or a villager,’ she argued. ‘Someone with a pistol which can’t be traced. Someone like your Private Pérez, for example.’
‘Pérez had nothing to do with it,’ Paco said firmly.
‘You can’t be sure of that,’ Cindy countered. ‘So say it’s Pérez who follows you up the alley, gets into the fight and loses his weapon in the process. It doesn’t bother him, as he’s running back to the Plaza de Santa Teresa, that he’s had to abandon his pistol. Why should it? It’s never going to be connected with him.’
‘But . . .?’ Paco said.
‘But then he sees this Lieutenant Anton standing near the fountain, and he comes up with a brilliant idea.’
‘And what idea is that?’
‘That if he kills the lieutenant and takes his weapon, you’ll reach the very conclusion you have – that the man who tried to murder you was an officer. In other words, he kills Lieutenant Anton not because he wants the pistol, but to make you think he wants it.’
It was certainly an interesting theory, Paco decided. A very interesting theory. And he found himself wondering why Major Gómez, who was always trying to deflect his attention away from the officers, hadn’t come up with something similar the night before.
*
The Calle Belén did not hold the same terror for him in the morning sun as it had under the cover of darkness, and the Plaza de Santa Teresa, which had seemed so sinister in the bobbing light of the two dozen officers’ lanterns, was once again nothing more than a pleasant residential square.
Paco walked over to the fountain in the centre of the plaza. The bloodstains were still clearly visible in the dirt. He examined the ground, and sighed with disgust. From the way the body had been lying, he could work out where the killer must have stood when he committed the act. And given that he would have been bracing himself to hold his struggling victim in a tight grip, there should have been footprints in the dirt. And there were! Far, far too many of them!
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