“Why are you asking?” responded Jack impatiently.
“I’ve already told you. I’m taking a statement in a murder investigation. We haven’t got time to listen to your memoirs.”
“And I’ve told you,” shouted Jack, his face turning red, “I’m struggling now to put these events into some sort of coherent order. I’m bringing out all the filth and the pain I’ve been keeping inside for decades to try and help you, and you’re constantly working against me. It’s got to the point where you’re wasting more time than I am. And if you must ask, there is a point to this.”
Jack looked down at the floor, suddenly quiet again. “There was something I’d been planning to do for years if I ever made it down to southern Spain—somebody I’d been planning to visit. The troubles I’d been through had put it out of my thoughts, but after a superb week in Córdoba and an even better couple of days in Granada I was in the mood to go ahead with it.”
“Fair enough’” answered Miguel, still a trifle grudgingly. “But you can spare us more of the love story.”
Jack looked back at him with ill-concealed anger, but continued. “The Alhambra Palace is the most beautiful and serene place I’ve ever seen. It’s all about light and shadow. Every tiny shift in the angle of the sun reveals fresh new detail in the carving. There’s womb-like sound and unceasing movement from fountains and streams. And as you look beyond the castle walls, the sky and the surrounding hills and even the mountainous horizon seem part of the architecture. He paused, watching the detective’s reaction. “Don’t worry,” he continued when he saw that a further interruption was imminent. “That’s the end of the travelogue. But again it’s relevant, because the magic of the place is part of the story.”
JAMES
It was the second and last full day of my stay in Granada. Ursula and I returned from a second breath-taking visit to the Alhambra to find something that seemed out of place in the heat and dust of ancient Granada. A big, dirty, greasy, rusty British bike was standing in the shade of the male dormitory block. And over in reception stood the Bikers from Hell, struggling to fill in registration forms as the English-speaking clerk grappled with their Glaswegian dialect. Taking Ursula by the arm and beckoning her to come with me, I went over to offer any help I could.
One of the bikers was male and the other female, but without the former’s beard and six feet of iron-pumping sinew it could have been difficult to tell which was which. Their hair was plastered down with sweat. Their skin was black with sun burn, wind burn, road dust and engine oil. Their voices were cracked with thirst and fatigue. He introduced himself as Dougal, and I think she was Sandy. They were very much in love, and it quickly became clear that they were on their honeymoon.
For all their terrifying appearance, they turned out to be terrific company and younger than they’d seemed at first sight: he was in his mid-twenties and she might have been a couple of years older. However, the camarero at the poolside bar took an instant and visible dislike to them, and after one drink we strolled off in search of a friendlier atmosphere. “Ah, you two look as much like newlyweds as me and Doogie,” giggled Sandy, as Ursula and I sat holding hands across from them.
To save further interruptions I’ll skip the rest of the evening, and now we’re getting to the interesting part. As soon as Ursula disappeared into the women’s dormitory for the night, the manager came over and drew me aside. “I know you have to leave tomorrow,” he began, “but let me tell you something. I had a phone call earlier, asking me to describe the appearance of a certain Señor Echeverría. Do you know anybody by that name?”
I shook my head in denial, startled at the mention of a Basque surname so far south. A moment later, my heart sank as I realised that I had given myself away. Echeverría was Carlos’ surname—the name under which I’d registered.
“I thought not,” said the manager as he handed me the incriminating identity card, which had been lodged in the safe. “I’d already spotted that this isn’t you, but you’d better take it. I doubt if you have any other means of identification, and I don’t think you’re the type to deserve trouble.”
“Thank you. If you only knew. Did you tell them I was here?”
“There was no point denying it; they had your registration card. I’m sorry.”
“I suppose I’d better leave now, then. Thank you for telling me.”
“There’s no point in going this late; there’ll be no transport. My advice is to leave very early tomorrow, at five o’clock or six at the latest. And don’t follow the road any more than you have to. Go down the hill and you'll come to a gate in the goods yard. Go in through the gate, follow the railway line, and you'll come to the station from the inside. Stay on the platform with people around you until your train comes in."
I thanked him again and turned to go to the dormitory, but he hadn’t finished. He put a hand on my arm as he continued. “And will you do me a favour? If anyone should ask why you’ve taken that route, will you please not mention me? Just say that it looked like a good shortcut.”
And so I went to bed in my already rank clothes, barely sleeping for fear that I would oversleep, and crept out into the fresh dawn air while everyone else was still enjoying their rest. The gates were already open, and I was about to step out onto the roadway and head for the station when I saw a black saloon parked just a few metres along the road.
As I dodged back into the grounds I heard doors slam. I sprinted back towards the hostel buildings, intending to cut across the playing field. But as I rounded the corner of the dormitory block and glanced over my shoulder to see how much of a head-start I had, my feet struck a solid obstacle and I flew headlong to the ground. My palms and chin made contact with the sun-baked earth, and the wind came out of my lungs in a rush.
As I stood up groggily, fighting to get my breath back, there was a grunt from behind me. I looked back to see Dougal and Sandy lying naked on the ground beside their bike. There was an opened-out sleeping bag beneath them and there had evidently been another preserving their body heat and modesty until my foot dragged it off them. Dougal propped himself up on one elbow and roared an incomprehensible question at me.
“Sorry,” I stammered, “I didn’t expect anybody to be lying out here on the ground.”
“How else are we supposed to have a honeymoon?” he countered, this time making more of an effort to be understood. “Why the hell can’t they provide married accommodation in these places?”
“I’ve got to run,” I said desperately, glancing back the way I had come and expecting my pursuers to appear round the corner at any moment. “Some guys are after me.”
There were several seconds of quiet, during which Sandy woke up and threw an arm across her torso, the half-awake Dougal struggled to make sense of the situation, and I backed away towards the open field. Then the near-silence was broken by the all too familiar sound of a revving engine followed by a scuff of rubber on loose, dry ground as the car skidded to a halt. Before it was at a complete standstill, the two doors on the side facing me swung open and a pair of dark-suited, heavily built men climbed out. The driver stayed in his seat. He was smaller than his two passengers, but could clearly have manhandled me into the car single-handed.
The two big men advanced side by side. “Cover yourself up, slut,” one of them said as they bypassed the two people still on the ground. I turned and sprinted out into the field, knowing even as I did so that I could never outdistance the heavies who were advancing with such grim determination. After a hundred metres, however, I still hadn’t felt a beefy hand on my shoulder and I risked a glance behind me.
There was no one there. The only person I could see was Dougal, standing naked and proud beside the dormitory block. The bike was still there accompanied by the large, pale, horizontal mass that was Sandy. And on the ground nearby were two darker shapes. The car was nowhere to be seen. As I began to trudge breathlessly back the way I had come, I saw that there was something long and black hanging from Dougal’s ri
ght hand. As I drew closer, I could see that it was a motorcycle drive chain.
JACK
“May I speak now?” asked Miguel. Jack nodded, completely missing the irony, and the detective continued. “It’s finally getting interesting. You see, this is the first time since leaving San Sebastián that you were traced through the paper trail. At the inn near Lóyola, they were lucky enough to get a tip-off—probably the payback from a local canvassing operation.”
“Yes,” agreed Jack. “And after that, the monastery itself was the logical place to come looking.”
“I imagine that your big jump south to Córdoba threw them off the scent,” continued the detective, “at least for a time. But two days in Granada and, bang, they were on the phone to the hostel.”
“I see now where you’re coming from,” said Jack. “I guess better people were on the job. And by then they knew the name I was travelling under. I’m afraid that means they must have tracked down somebody who helped me and put pressure on them. I’m gutted about that.”
“Forty years on, there’s only one thing you can do for them,” responded the detective. “In all probability the guilty ones are still alive. And now we’ve got a justice minister who’ll rip them to shreds. Help us crack this case, and you’ll live to see them in chains.”
Shreds. Chains. Jack grunted an acknowledgement, but as he resumed his narrative Julio could see that something was wrong. The Englishman’s face had gone grey, his eyes blank, his speech hesitant and vague. He only just got through the story of his departure from Granada.
As far as Miguel could decipher from an increasingly distracted and incoherent account, Jack had already purchased his seat on the eastbound service to the Mediterranean. But on arriving at the station early in the morning, after his narrow escape at the youth hostel, he had bought second ticket to the important railway junction at Bobadilla—two hours’ travel time in the opposite direction. Having made sure (by the simple process of insulting the station clerk) that his face and appearance would be remembered, he had boarded the first train heading west. Getting off at the first stop, he had waited for the shops to open and given himself a thorough makeover – haircut, change of clothes and a garishly coloured holdall. Finally, he had caught a train back to Granada and discreetly waited at the end of the of the platform until his train to the coast arrived.
“Are you still such a crafty person, Jack?” asked Julio, watching the Englishman carefully as he spoke. “Those were great moves for a guy barely out of his teens. You made sure the clerk would remember you getting on a train towards Bobadilla, where there are connections to most of the country. In short, you pointed them to everywhere but where you were actually going, and you made it unlikely that they’d recognise you even if they saw you. That was some going.”
Jack made no reply, and when Julio complimented him again in yet stronger terms he was still slow to respond. “I was twenty,” he answered at length, his voice slack and expressionless, his view of the room eclipsed by a sudden vivid mental picture. Carlos, a trickle of blood running down from his mouth. “Twenty years old. But I had some training, did I tell you that? Firearms and manoeuvres with the Air Cadets and Army Reservists. Personal security with Father Ignacio.”
Julio tried to catch Miguel’s eye, but the detective did not seem to notice; he was busy planning the next question. “I’d like you to think,” he said, “of all the bad people you met on your travels. Have you seen any of them again since?”
Kaixo, my little friend James. Now Jack was struggling to hear the detective’s words above the cacophony of voices and background noise inside his head. But Miguel carried on regardless. “I think they were minions,” he said. “Up to and including the raid on the monastery. Then they lost you, and I think at that point the principals got directly involved. My guess is, they found out the name of the kid who got shot and put two and two together regarding his missing ID. Then they’ll have found his name on registration cards from the places you stayed in Madrid and Córdoba. That probably took them a couple of days, but once they had your travelling name confirmed they’d have traced you within hours.”
“Hmm. That adds up,” agreed Jack distractedly. “And it fits with what happened… (striped shadows). What happened when…(blood). What happened when…(severed, gaping).”
He stopped in mid-sentence. Miguel and Julio waited for him to continue. After two or three minutes had elapsed, Julio asked him if he was OK. There was still no reply. Not when Julio shook him firmly by the shoulder. Not even when Miguel slapped him hard across the face, first one way, then the other. Before the third blow could land, Julio’s long, sinewy arm snaked out and grasped the detective’s wrist on the backswing.
“You seem to have taken Señor Burlton somewhere he doesn’t want to go,” pronounced the young female doctor after examining Jack and hearing an outline of the interrogation. She and the detective were standing outside Jack’s room in the witness protection house, where she had spent half an hour on a physical check-up and as long again trying to interact with him. “It’s not catatonia as such. He’s just in deep shock. I would judge that you’ve induced him to relive something horrific, and now he’ll be in much the same state as he was after going through it the first time—perhaps worse.”
“Are you saying he had some kind of amnesia? That we reawakened lost memories?”
“Not necessarily. From what you’ve told me, there may be a history of functional amnesia in relation to past events. Memory loss is more often caused by a physical injury to the brain, but we all have memories that we’re loath to revisit. And if we constantly shrink away from examining those memories we can eventually construct a wall around them. We know in outline what’s behind the wall, but we stop interacting with it and forget all the associated pain and outrage. But behind that wall is a ticking time-bomb.”
“And we’ve detonated it?”
“Possibly. People are all different. He may be chatting away happily by this time tomorrow, or it might take another… How long ago did you say this was? Thirty years?”
“Forty.”
“It could take him another forty years, either to integrate what happened into his life narrative or wall it off again. Which in his case would be the rest of his life. This is largely speculation of course; I’m not a mind reader. But it gives us a way forward.”
“And that is?”
“The most immediate problem isn’t amnesia. Amnesia victims can usually hold a lucid conversation, as I gather he was doing until your questioning reached a certain point. As I said, he’s in shock. He needs mild sedation, a period of psychotherapy and time with his family. Give it a month, a year, possibly longer, and under the supervision of a good counsellor he may be ready to help you further with your enquiries.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Detective, Señor Burlton is my patient now. He’s highly stressed already, and I can’t allow you to expose him to any more pressure. It sounds melodramatic, but you could utterly destroy him. He needs help before he can help anybody else.”
“Let me remind you, he chose this in full knowledge of the risks. I guess none of us understood quite what the risks were, but that doesn’t change things.”
“He needs help.”
“He wants to help. And we’ll take care of him.”
“You know, I very much doubt that. And if I sign him off as mentally unstable, any testimony he gives you will be worthless.”
Miguel saw that this was a battle that he could not win outright, and he adopted a more conciliatory tone. What would we have to promise for you to entrust Señor Burlton to our care?”
The doctor looked at him steadily, knowing it was not a battle either of them could win. ”Patience. Lay off the pressure. Get him out of this prison. Lay on plenty of sensory stimulation—and I do mean the pleasant kind. He knows what you need. You just have to let him bring it out in his own time and his own way. He’s like a fresh trauma victim, and if you don’t trea
t him like one you’ll do incalculable harm—to him and probably to your investigation. Is that a promise?”
“Promise,” answered Miguel.
The doctor did not really believe him. She had silently noted the bruising on the patient’s face and a recent laceration to his cheekbone. But the bulky detective made her nervous, and she thought she could do more good in the world if she fought battles that she had a hope of winning.
“Do you think we’re wasting our time, Chief?”
“Perhaps,” answered Miguel. “But I don’t see any alternative. We can’t let the case fizzle out, and we’re sort of giving him what the doctor ordered.”
“But the place?”
“I’ve run it by you twice. He never said where he was going, but I think the evidence narrows it down to this godforsaken place. He said he was travelling eastwards to the coast. This is where the train would have taken him. And remember, he’d booked his seat before they tracked him down and no doubt punctured his euphoria. He’d been planning to pay somebody a visit, and I imagine he went ahead with it in the hope of a few days off the grid.”
“Somebody else to draw into the web.”
“Quite so. I’m constantly impressed with the old guy, but I don’t think I’d want him as a friend, do you?”
“No thank you. He does what he has to do. He’s a survivor. Or has been. Do you think he’ll get himself together again?”
Miguel was quiet for several seconds before replying. “As I said when we talked it through, I’m hoping that this place will provide the sort of stimulation the doctor ordered and spark off some memories. But if things comes to the point where it’s between him and the case, I’ll have him drugged to the gills. I’ll strap electrodes to his nuts myself if I have to. But we can play nice for a little longer.”
Julio refrained from answering. He gave himself a painful crick in the neck, twisting round in his seat and leaning across the passenger in the window seat to take in the bird’s eye view of Almería that stretched away to a distant but hazy horizon. Even the hundreds of square kilometres of plastic sheeting that radiated out into what had once been virgin desert – now the market gardening capital of Europe – could detract from the magic of blue sea and traditional white architecture, set against the most isolated and exotic of all European landscapes. “It’s grown,” he said at last. “Upwards as well as outwards. But I’m glad to see that the heart of the city hasn’t changed much.”
THE ENGLISH WITNESS Page 11