“I only want Katz.”
"The window.”
“Where is he?”
“I can’t stand the light.”
“Where is Katz?”
I opened the other two windows violently, slamming back the shutters. The noise crashed round the room against the background of Morena’s whimpering. The light cut the darkness totally.
He stumbled to his feet, banging the table. The bottle rocked and fell over, the brandy spilling out stickily and dripping onto the carpet. I gripped his shoulder and pulled him back onto the chair. The flesh beneath the shirt was flabby and moist. He smelled like a distillery drain.
"You must not see me,” he whined. “Nobody must see Rafael Morena like this.” He burrowed back into the chair. “Not like this.” He couldn’t get far enough away like that so he clawed himself round, grabbed for the bottle and poured what was left into the glass which was already full. It spilled over the sides but Morena lifted it and poured it all down his throat. That was the only way he could get far enough.
“For the love of God, kill me now.” And that was the final way. He threw the glass across the room and it smashed into tiny clear segments. It had been a good glass. “I want to die. I want to die like a true Spaniard.”
“In the dark, drunk – like a true Spaniard? Unwashed, in this pigsty, like a true Spaniard?”
Morena waved a podgy finger in the air. His eyes were desperate. “I was born in a pigsty. Cockerels scratched on the kitchen floor. In winter I slept with the goats for warmth. I shall die like that.” The memory trace of childhood gave his voice strength. “I who have built bridges and roads, hotels, houses, whole villages, have lived in the finest hotels, dined with famous people, Rafael Morena from Algodonales, the son of a shepherd, I shall die like I was born."
He hooked his hand under the table and clawed it over, the bottle rolling across the carpet. The violent gesture appeased him. He spoke more sanely. “What we were going to do was evil, may God forgive me. I was a simple builder. I worked with my hands.” He spread them out and looked at them. “I was a good craftsman.” He opened and clenched his fingers, squeezing the memory of his youth to life. “I was always in demand. Everyone wanted Rafael Morena to work for them. Gonzales Corominas made me his partner. Gonzales Corominas. From Málaga, you know. The builder. But it was not enough.” His hands stopped moving. His eyes were oiled with tears. “Famous people, dukes, generals, matadores – I knew them all.” His voice was thick with a sad contempt for himself. “Doña Ilse and Señor Katz, I listened to them. Now she is dead and you will kill me and Gunter and that will be the end.”
“Where is Katz?”
“Istán. The house of Ignacio Torcal. He was good carpenter until he broke his wrist. I have looked after him for five years."
I wrestled the Luger into my trouser pocket. Istán. Literally and metaphorically the end of the road.
“What about me?” He twisted in his chair to follow me. “How can I live?"
“In jail.”
“I would rather die," he said theatrically.
"Then die.” I was a touch theatrical myself.
I whistled as I walked out. The theme from Schubert’s piano sonata in B flat.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I knew where Katz was now and I was no longer in a hurry. There was nowhere to go from Istán.
I ran out of Schubert, so I sat behind the wheel and eased the little car round the bends feeling at peace with the world. It was a single-track road now, scratched along the contours. The yellow of cistus and mauve of rock rose smeared the dusty green of the forest. On my right and above it the naked chiselled peaks of the Sierra Blanca glared at me. The road climbed. Then I saw Istán, a stepped huddle of white cubes on the shoulder of a spur cutting off the huerta at the source of the Verde. It disappeared and reappeared a dozen times as the road coiled its way along the hillside.
One last hairpin bend, then a dirt track on my right and finally the road opened out in front of a glass-fronted café. I left the 600 there. The streets ahead weren’t wide enough to take a car.
The road led into a square with the ayuntamiento facing the church. Narrow roads led off it. Some boys used the church door as goalposts. Black-hatted men in waistcoats and heavy working boots talked to each other. I stopped a man on his own.
“Dónde está la casa de Ignacio Torcal, por favor?"
“Heh?” He screwed up a leathery grizzled face and pushed a greasy felt hat back from his forehead.
“Dónde está –”
“Sí, Ignacio. The road opposite. Follow it to the town wall, turn right up some steps, the house with the chickens at its side.”
It was a narrow street. I could touch the house walls either side. The road was cobbled over outcrops of rock. The house doors were all open. Women sat in the doorways and chatted to each other. They stopped as I approached and started again when I had passed. I reached the town wall.
There was a flight of worn limestone steps leading to a triangular cobbled area. There was as a house at the apex of the triangle with a chicken run beside and behind it. A man was sitting on a hard-backed wooden chair outside the house. He wore thick, unpressed grey trousers, a black sweater and a black beret. He needed a shave. He could have been asleep.
“Señor Torcal?” I had my hand on the Luger butt. The silence ticked by. My hand twitched on the butt. A fly buzzed me then lost interest.
He raised his head to look at me. Dark stone-dead eyes stared out from a solid cragged face.
“You have a guest."
“I live alone.”
“Señor Morena said you have a guest.”
That didn’t change his answer. "Then Señor Morena is wrong. I live alone.” He didn’t ask who Señor Morena was. He picked up a coca-cola with a geranium in it and deadheaded it. I stood and waited, feeling the sweat gather on the Luger butt as I watched the house. Torcal felt the leaves gently between finger and thumb then set it down, picked up another and repeated the performance. Chickens scratched and squawked. He gave me his stone-dead eyes again. “Why do you wait? There is no-one here.”
"Pardon me, but I must look.” Torcal shrugged and picked up another geranium. “I am sorry to intrude.”
The door of the house was open. I stopped and looked back at Torcal. He was busy with the geranium. I had to use both hands to wrestle the Luger from mine. Then I stepped in quickly and crabwise. It was a small room, just big enough to hold a table and four chairs. There was a mug on the table, half full. I felt it. Warm. There was a door at the far end of the room and one on my right.
I took it and shouted “Katz”. Crashed it open but it was empty. A bedroom. Two beds, both unmade. A sad and grimy statue. Clothes on a chair. Candle on a saucer on a table looking like it had been an orange box once.
I felt rather than saw the shadow. I swayed left, turning from the waist and the stick grazed my arm. I backhanded Torcal and it was like hitting a tree trunk. His arm swung again and the Luger I showed him only made him hesitate. He swung it in a diagonal scything blow. I twisted sideways and left, cracking the butt hard on his arm. He grunted and staggered forward slightly but he didn’t let go of the stick. I flashed my left hand into his face, fingers and thumb pressing in deep just in front of the jaw muscles, forcing the head back, mouth open, flesh crushed against his teeth. The stick swung again but he had lost his co-ordination. He hung on the end of my braced left arm and then he went backwards. His head cracked the wall and a piece of plaster fell. I released him and stepped back, showed him the Luger again, and said, “No, Ignacio, no.”
Torcal lowered the stick. He spat on the floor and there was blood in it. He looked at it and then at me: I saw a lifetime’s weary sadness in the look. I felt bad, then angry, angrier than ever at Katz.
“Go and sit in the sun, Ignacio,” I told him. "The señor is an evil man. He is no concern of yours.”
“Señor Morena said I should look after him.”
“That is alrig
ht,” I said patiently. “Señor Morena knows.”
Torcal rubbed the spit in the floor and went out.
Then I was hit by a chill that went down to my ankles. The other door. I pivoted. It was still shut. Opening it, I found a tiny kitchen but it was empty. The kitchen door opened onto a tiny walled-in triangular yard containing a few hens. That was why they had squawked. He had gone that way.
I looked over the wall. There was a twenty-foot drop. The land sloped to the left in terraces. In front and to the right it climbed upwards in the same terraces. I swung my eyes back and forward through 180 degrees looking for a sign of movement. Several times.
Then I saw him.
About four, five hundred yards away, scrambling up a terrace wall, heading for the trees. I watched him. He got himself up on the wall and stood. He looked back towards the house. I shouted “Katz”. My voice echoed round the slopes and he started to run. I laughed and shouted again. “Katz, es ist nur du und ich."
He wheeled and I saw his hand rise. There was a puff of smoke and simultaneously with the sound of the shot the plaster a yard away splintered. The bullet whined off up into the air.
He had better artillery than I had. Or he was luckier. A handgun is useless at that range. Certainly a Luger is. But not among the trees.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Twenty feet was a long drop. Katz had done it. I could do it. I hit the ground and it practically jarred the head off my shoulders.
Katz was out of sight. I scrabbled up the wall onto the next terrace and ploughed my way along that level until I reckoned I was below where I’d seen Katz leave the fields. I started to climb upwards. I had seven walls to get over and then I had problems. I couldn’t tell one pine from another. They all looked the same. It could have been any damn place Katz had crunched into the maquis. Looking back to Istán didn’t help. I scouted several hundred yards to the right and then to the left before I saw it. A tiny golden cylinder. The cartridge from the shot Katz had fired.
I picked it up. A .44. I didn’t know who had been lucky.
I peered upwards and there was nothing but trees.
Now what?
I tried to put myself in his mind. He wasn’t running anywhere. He didn’t have a refuge. It was sheer panic flight. So he would keep on going. Until something stopped him. The terrain. Fatigue. A sudden feeling of hopelessness and despair. Then he would turn and fight.
So I was psychologist now. Now I was an expert on fugitives. So which way?
I started into the maquis. The trees closed round me but there was nothing, No birds, no insects, no sound of anything, but very cool. The ground was soft with fallen needles. A dry valley with tumbled stones formed a slight V. There I saw the marks, scuffmarks on the slope on the left of the valley where he had slipped.
I knew which way now.
I looked up trying to read the lie of the land. The two sides of the valley would meet on the ridge top. There the land would drop before rising again, the pattern repeating itself until the summit. Katz might be forced left or right by the ridge or the land itself but his aim would be to get ever higher.
I thought.
I took the right-hand side of the dried-up stream bed. I wasn’t directly below him and if he crossed the stream to his right, I would see his tracks. If we made the same progress, I’d be no further behind him.
It was easy going at first but gradually it got steeper and I had to use the tree heather and juniper as handholds. The Luger had to go back in my pocket. I was sweating now.
I came out on the ridge without having seen any sign of Katz. Or heard any sound. I stopped to let my breathing get back to normal. The sweat chilled on my back. I was in no shape for climbing mountains.
I began to feel lost. The whole landscape was tossed and wooded, patternless. I also felt worried. There could have been a thousand Katzes in the trees and I wouldn’t have been able to find one of them.
I went left to see if I could pick up any trace of him on the crest. He may have been older than me but I had the feeling he was a damn sight fitter. He would be making better progress.
So assume he crossed the ridge here. So what? The ground told me nothing. A bare outcrop of limestone, weathered silver smooth, and a lily growing in a pocket of soil. Why not? It meant easy access to the next section of maquis.
I crossed the rock and there was almost a path, following the contour to the right, less than a foot wide, maybe a deer trail. I followed it. I was right. The edge was broken away slightly where a foot had slipped and it was fresh. Katz was ahead of me.
I had my usual wrestling job of getting the Luger out and took off after him. I walked quickly, almost bouncing off the balls of my feet. I wasn’t tired any more.
The trail followed the ridge, climbing gently upwards. It was easy going as long as I kept one foot directly in front of the other. It was no more than a few inches wide in places. Branches scratched at me and I had to keep turning sideways. Here and there I saw signs where Katz had slipped off the trail or snatched at a branch to keep his balance and had broken it.
The trail ended where the ridge ran at right angles into another one that climbed left, higher still towards the garrigue above the treeline of the maquis. Turning right would take me back, somewhere in the direction of Istán. In front, twenty yards or so, I could see broken trees and a pile of boulders. It was a dirt road.
I stood in the middle of it. Now what? Had he aimed to get to Istán? It might make sense. I peered at the ground but it didn’t give anything away. Dry broken clods of yellow earth, deep ruts of lorry tires. Not a footprint. Not even my own.
I started downhill and a shot whanged past, splintering off a rock and screaming high-pitched into the air. The only thing moving was me and I’ve never run so fast in all my life. I was over the piled up earth and broken rocks at the side of the road and pasted to the ground, but I didn’t know how I’d got there. I lay still, listening to my heart thudding like a woodpecker and feeling the dust creep into my nostrils.
Then there were footsteps, running, the sound of scratching rolling stones. Uphill.
I waited until the sound had stopped and my pulse was down under a hundred and kept quiet. I rolled onto my back, slowly pushed myself up against a loose rock and sneaked a quick look. Nothing. No shots. I tucked my heels under my backside and sprinted for the trees, running into them for about ten yards. I kept within the trees, parallel to the road and trod like a feather falling. Branches drifted across my face but I didn’t feel them. I stopped as the road curved right . I did my mind-reading act again.
The road ran straight for several hundred yards but the footsteps hadn’t sounded as if they’d travelled that sort of distance. It was even money he was waiting for me to come round the bend. And if so, he would expect me on the left. Therefore he would be on the right to give him a better angle of fire. That made sense. Or did it? It was the only sort of sense I could make.
The sun was still, while in the cleft of the hills there was no breeze. The sweat poured off me. I backed away cautiously. When I was well down the road I found a small stone. I threw it high and far up to the left. A tired old trick. I had a brain to match. It made a brittle sound landing. Maybe it would convince Katz I was still that side. Maybe not. Then I crossed the road.
I scrambled over the barrier of earth and rock, not caring about my hands. A stone slipped but rolled noiselessly. Up the slope and into the trees. I went cautiously, stopping every few yards to search out each pile of rocks. Then I saw him, just his head and shoulders. Leaning forward on a grey rock. His face matched the rock and he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. I could see everything very clearly. I saw the lines on his face and the blue of his eyes which stared over the .44 Smith and Wesson Magnum and across the road. It took a lot of muscle to handle a handgun of that size. He wouldn’t be good for more than one accurate shot. I saw the veins on his hands and the whiteness of his knuckles. The upper lip pulled back from his teeth. His adam’s apple jerked
, a tongue coming out and touching his moustache.
I leaned back against a tree and used both hands. He filled the sights. Absolutely motionless, concentrating on the other side of the road, waiting for me. I wanted to shout, to tell him he had been outsmarted, that this was the end of the road. I squeezed the trigger gently and I had all the time in the world. The silence blasted. The rock behind and above Katz shattered and he jumped and turned and fell sideways out of sight.
I swore. I wasn’t that bad a shot. It was sighted badly, wasn’t it? Shot high and right, didn’t it? I should have remembered.
I heard him on the road, running, so I stepped out of the trees. He was doubled over from the waist, stumbling in and out of sight behind the rocks. I tried off two shots hopefully then let him get out of sight before moving on myself. No point in wasting ammunition. We were high up now, almost above the tree line, coming out of the trees above the pines and quite far from the road. The land was bare limestone, tufted with sage and hyssop. There was a freshly-cut cliff in an almost complete circle. A quarry. That was where the road led to. If he’d gone into the quarry, I had a second chance.
There was no shelter on the open ground. I doubled back to the road, scuttled from rock to rock to the final bend, cranking my head out to peer at it. And I had my second chance already.
The last stretch of road was under water and then went through a tunnel, solidly made of well cut blocks of stone, and on into the quarry. Only no light showed at the end of the tunnel. The exit was blocked.
Katz was at the other side of the water, back to me, working at whatever blocked the tunnel. I could see the sweat on his shirt, the back of his neck.
So, remember, low and left; hip high would be about right. Left hip. Plenty of room for error. Only thirty yards away. I wriggled my weight onto the rock, forearm resting on it. I was standing too high to sight correctly. So feet back to lower the body. Careful, one foot at a time. Left foot sliding over grit, wedging it against a stone. Good, now the right. Breathe easily. Careful, Christian. Quiet.
Not With a Whimper Page 17