I finally got down from the bus in a small but colourful seaside village whose name I’ve long-since forgotten. There were lots of holidaymakers milling around: mostly local people by the look of them, but a few paler-skinned visitors which meant that I’d stand out less. I had time to kill, so I bought a cheap pair of shorts and flimsy towel from a seafront kiosk and sat on the beach until evening.
After a makeshift meal I began to scout for a place to sleep, and to my pleasure I quickly found the ideal place. On a deserted patch of beach, well away from the bars and souvenir shops, a small, flat-bottomed boat had been pulled up clear of the tide. It was loosely covered with a sky-blue tarpaulin, and lifting this up on one side I could see a scatter of faded cushions in the bottom.
As soon as it was dark I went over to the boat and pulled the tarpaulin part way back. My colourful holdall went under the wooden bench seat, and I stretched out full-length on the cushions. I could have wished that the boat had been sitting level, but it was a pleasant having my lower body sheltered beneath the tarpaulin while my head and chest were exposed to the stars. I was lulled into a peaceful sleep by the sound of the waves.
I was rudely awoken by a sharp tug on one of my arms. In the grey light of dawn two uniformed men were pulling at me. As I came to, they managed to get enough purchase to drag me upright, and one of them began barking at me in thick Andalusian dialect.
An hour later I found myself sitting across a table from a more sympathetic policeman and reflecting on the downside of sleeping rough in a tourist resort. I offered up a prayer of thanks that my holdall, which contained my ‘borrowed’ identity card and the illegal weapon rolled up in a towel, seemed to have been overlooked. I hoped it was still lying hidden in the boat.
“You are clearly a British tourist,” announced the policeman in good Spanish, with a polite smile. “We see hippies like you all the time. Tell me, what is your name? And where is your passport?”
I went through the motions of feeling in my pockets and tried to look surprised at my failure to find a passport there. “I’m sorry,” I answered. “I don’t know.”
“Do not play games with me. There is no passport. It was not with you when you were brought here from the beach. We can work two ways. You can be formally charged with vagrancy, in which case you will be here for days, perhaps weeks. And in your case that would be extremely bad news. Or you can convince me that you are simply a foolish student who has got drunk and had his belongings stolen. Then I will do all I can to find you help.”
I sat looking down at my lap for what must have been a full minute, during which neither of us spoke. Then I looked up and nodded. There were tears in the corners of my eyes as I told him my name. His face softened slightly when he saw that I was telling the truth, and he called out in dialect to a colleague.
The grey-haired, ruddy-faced Englishman who walked into the police station half an hour later introduced himself as Derek. He explained that he was the unofficial translator for a tiny enclave of British expatriates living nearby. “I do what I can to keep the bureaucrats off their backs,” he explained, “and they keep me supplied with Scotch. If anything crops up that I can’t handle, I’ve got a friend in Almería who speaks English and whose father-in-law is a top-notch lawyer.”
As we left the police station together I began to say something about myself, but Derek held up his hand. “Not here,” he warned. “They understand English better than they let on.” He led me a little way along the road to where an ageing Renault 4 was parked with one sharply angled wheel up on the kerb. He drove sedately down towards the sea front, barely speaking as we made a detour to recover my belongings from the boat. Not until we were a couple of kilometres outside the town did he pull into a parking bay and turn to look at me.
“What’s going on, young man?” he asked quietly.
“What do you mean?” I replied. “I’m just a British student who…”
“Cut the crap, James. You haven’t got any time to waste. I get a call from my friend Paco at the police station to say that he’s holding a British student who’s in some kind of trouble. He should inform the regional HQ in Almería, he says, and he’s taking a risk keeping quiet. Do you understand what I’m saying? He knows you’re a special case and so do I. I don’t need chapter and verse, but I do need to know the lie of the land.”
Reluctantly I opened up to this stranger, not in detail but enough that he knew the risks he might be running by helping me. It must have taken about twenty minutes to tell the story. When I’d finished, he sat in silent thought for several minutes then asked me a few questions. Finally he restarted the car, and drove a mile or two further before turning off the main road towards a small cluster of white houses set among the dunes.
Down on the coast, hemmed in by the desert and the sea, stood a tiny village of chalets inhabited by a motley collection of Brits: retired gentlefolk, struggling artists and probably one or two wanted criminals. Many of the homes were empty, their occupants having returned to Britain for the summer months. Others had been rented out to holidaymakers, a few of whom dotted the almost deserted beach.
As Derek and I sat on canvas chairs in the shade of his front porch, drinking ice-cold San Miguel, we were joined by a slightly younger man named Jerry who I quickly realised was Derek’s life-partner. Jerry listened patiently while we gave him a word-sketch of my situation. Then he went off by himself, and when half an hour had passed I began wondering if he’d gone to the authorities. Then he came back, waited until Derek had brewed coffee, and gave us a brief but shrewd analysis of my situation.
“What you’ve failed to realise, James, is that you haven’t just fallen foul of some blood-spitting faction up in the Basque Country. I think you must have troubled the counsels of someone in the dark network of movers and shakers that keeps the Franco regime in power. I’ve no idea what you can have done, but running away from San Sebastián was never the answer. Up there you were surrounded with sympathisers, even if most of them were too scared to help. Down here your sympathisers number exactly zero. Apart from Derek and me, that is. And Paco, but his hands are tied.”
“So what should I have done? I couldn’t stay there.”
“Your priest was right. You should never have come back after your trip home in July. But failing that, you should have stayed in San Seb. You’d have been less isolated than you are here, and a lot closer to safety.”
I sat in silence for a while, letting it sink in. “The priest said it would be safer for me to leave the region and cross the border on the other side of the country.”
“I’m sure he’s a good man, but he has his own delicate community to think of. He probably felt that the higher good was served by getting a lighted match like you away from the powder keg. But in his defence, he probably imagines that this country is safer and more peaceful outside the Basque region than inside. And in reality it's swings and roundabouts. Sure, the people down here are peace-loving and hospitable, but they don’t suffer from an identity crisis the way the Basques and Catalans do.”
“I haven’t seen the number of police down here.”
“They’re not needed. You may think the police up there are heavy-handed, but they have to be careful or they could have a riot on their hands. Down here, most people know their place and do as they’re told. And there’s a whole lot of Spain between you and the border.”
I could feel my skin prickling, the colour draining from my face. Jerry could see that he’d frightened me and began to focus on the way forward. I had to get out of Andalusia, he said, where fair-skinned outsiders stood out so clearly and where roads and railway lines were few and far between.
Jerry finally asked a question that would have far-reaching consequences: “Do you have friends anywhere between here and the border? Anyone who would put you up for a couple of nights and keep schtum? It would help you time your arrival at the border for the middle of the weekend stampede—ideally Saturday lunchtime when they’re at maximum stretch and
minimum staffing. That means killing time, preferably in a big, anonymous city. Think. Is there anywhere on this side of the country you could go to ground until towards the end of the week?”
I didn’t need to think. Three years earlier, I’d spent a fortnight as a paying guest with a family in Valencia. It was directly on my route to the border, and now my head filled up with pleasant memories: warm sea, fragrant orange groves, paella… and Trinidad.
Trini had been my landlady’s daughter. In the course of my stay we’d formed a close friendship with just a hint of romance. As I thought back to that summer of innocent pleasures, the thought of seeing her again was irresistible. Jerry responded with relief to the idea, and no more time was spent exploring alternatives. The remaining discussion was all about getting me to Valencia.
CHAPTER 10
JACK
“I think I ought to track down his family and pay my respects,” announced Jack as he stood on the open landing in front of Antonio’s apartment.
“What family?” asked Miguel, more brusquely than was called for. “We’ve been in touch with his kids. One’s a doctor, the other’s in real estate. Neither of them kept in touch with him, and his wife died years ago. Sorry, I assumed you knew as you’d been in touch with him through this Faces Books thing. It seems he lived by himself, mainly on his savings. But he coached people in English, among other things.”
“What do you mean, other things?”
“We were hoping you’d be able to tell us.”
“What on earth makes you think there was anything more to Antonio than meets the eye.”
“You mean, apart from the manner of his death? No, sorry, that was below the belt. But these Legion heavies must have been onto him for a reason. And there’s more. Neighbours say he was away for days at a time. And when he was here, get this, he used to spend time in his garage.”
“Oh, wow. His garage, eh? That’s a dead giveaway. What do you think? CIA? Mossad? Come on, Miguel, he was probably plinking at beer cans or working on an old car. Why don’t we take a look?”
“That’s already been done.”
“I’d like to see for myself, if you don’t mind.”
They waited for Julio to finish securing the apartment, then tramped down the stairs together and across the open area behind the building. The larger row of garages faced them with a second row at right angles on their left. Jack walked straight across to one of the units and attempted to open it, but the handle would not turn.
“Your memory’s playing you tricks, Jack,” announced Julio sadly. “It’s this one.” He was standing in front of a unit in the other block. He reached into his pocket for a key, unlocked the door and raised it to horizontal.
Sheepishly, Jack ambled over and saw that the open unit was indeed empty. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s been forty years.” He stood staring into the dark, oblong, empty space for a few seconds, shielding his eyes from the late morning sunshine. Then, leaving Julio to lock up, he wordlessly headed back to the car.
Miguel was sitting in the front passenger seat with the engine running and the air-conditioning at full blast. “It can’t be easy after forty years,” he said.
“You’re right,” agreed Jack, still standing by the window. “It’s not easy. But I’m still sure that it’s not right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I‘m sure that’s not the garage I went to, where he kept his car and his pile of beer cans. It was much the same time of day as this, and we didn’t have the sun in our eyes. We couldn’t have hit the targets if we did.”
“Well, that’s definitely his garage; I’ve checked the lease. Memory can play tricks after half a lifetime.”
“I’m sure I’m not mistaken. It’s the one I tried to open.”
“Can’t be. As I said, we’ve checked the lease. And get this: we’ve even counted the number of garages, and it tallies with the number of apartments.”
“Look, can you just humour me on this? I think we need to check it out.”
“We have a meeting with the local police in fifteen minutes.”
“It won’t take a minute. You want my help, then humour me.”
In a less than gracious manner the detective released his seat belt, threw open the door and climbed out. Julio secured the car, his face a study in neutrality, and they followed Jack as he marched across the yard to the unit in which he had already shown an interest. “Do you want to try the key?” he asked. “I don’t suppose there are many different numbers.”
Julio took out the key with which he had opened the first garage, and put it into the lock. Initially it would not turn, but it was a cheap system. Jack could see how the versatile driver kept a turning force on the key while gently sliding it back and forth in the lock. After a few seconds it turned slightly. Julio emitted a little sigh of satisfaction, turned the key through a hundred and eighty degrees, and twisted the handle without the slightest effort. But that was the sum total of his success. He went red in the face tugging at the closed door, and then both Jack and Miguel tried in turn.
“It’s hopeless,” panted Miguel. “It’s not locked, but it won’t budge. There’s something going on here. Julio, get on the phone and tell Velasco we’ll be delayed. On second thoughts, give me your phone and I’ll ring. You try and unlock the adjacent doors the way you did this one. And Jack, you see if there’s another way in round the back.”
Jack glanced at Miguel as the detective squinted at the phone’s display. Had Julio been carrying the device all the time they were on the run in San Sebastián? If so, why had he denied having it, and why was he not more secretive about it now?
In the entire length of the garage block’s rear wall there was only one door. It looked quite recent and very stout, but Julio had found a sledgehammer in one of the adjoining units, and with a solid blow to the lock it burst open. Immediately Miguel was on the phone explaining the illegal forced entry to an irate senior detective from the nearby city centre. Suddenly he put his hand over the microphone and shouted at Jack, “Stop, you can’t go in. I’m in enough trouble already. We have to wait for Velasco.” He took his hand away again. “Sorry, my friend, just a bit of damage limitation… Yes, I know it was my damage in the first place… Look, I have to go. An hour, yes? See you then.”
Miguel hastily ended the call and strode over to the rear door of the garage, where Jack was standing with one impudent foot over the threshold. The detective laid a restraining hand none too gently on his shoulder and span him round. “You want to lose me my job, Jack?” he growled.
“Just take a look, Mr. Detective. What do you see.”
“Yes, I saw the computer when we knocked the door in. It’s a computer, big news. Your friend had to have a study somewhere.”
“Take a proper look, Miguel.” With that, his hand flicked a recessed switch just inside the door and the narrow space was bathed in light. A few feet inside the door, placed so that anyone casually glimpsing the interior would see it, was an elderly desktop PC with a dusty inkjet printer sitting next to it. At the far end, where the inner face of an up-and-over door should have been, was a solid wall of brick and mortar. But the real revelation was against the long sidewall, shielded from casual view by the open door.
A polished wooden work surface ran the whole length of the unit. Spaced along it were three Mac Pro workstations and a multi-function laser printer. Mounted above them on the wall was a horizontal grey metal structure that could only be a gun locker. It took all of Jack’s self-control to refrain from rushing in, and all of Miguel’s will power not to let him. The two of them stood there immobile for nearly half a minute. Finally, Miguel turned away. “We don’t even know for sure that it’s his,” he whispered.
“I think we can be fairly sure that it is,” answered Jack. “Look over there. What do you see?”
Miguel turned back, squeezed alongside him, and craned round the door to where the Englishman was pointing. Affixed to the bottom corner of the gun locker was a small,
faded colour photograph. It showed a little blue and white Renault standing in front of a row of garages. But it was not the car that held Jack’s attention. Before Miguel could restrain him, he had stepped into the room and gently peeled the photograph away from the steel panel. He retreated quickly to the door afterwards, and held the snapshot in front of the detective’s eyes.
Miguel was getting long-sighted and had to take a step back just as they heard a car pulling into the yard on the other side of the garage. He lowered his eyelids and squinted at the picture. Beside the car stood a figure in blue jeans and a dark T-shirt. Even in such a tiny, faded print he could make out the wiry hair, high forehead, square jaw and mischievous blue eyes.
“Who the hell is that?” he asked, unnecessarily.
“Actually, it’s me,” replied Jack. “This is mine, OK?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t let you do that.” The detective went to reach for the picture, but at that moment there was a blast on a car horn from the other side of the garage block, and Miguel obediently headed off towards the corner. Jack slipped the photo into his wallet and hoped it would be forgotten.
An hour later Velasco had been and gone, having spent most of the time yelling about procedure. He had taken Antonio’s keys from Julio, warned Miguel not to re-enter the apartment or any of the garages, and told them all to remain at the scene pending a visit from the I.T. forensics team.
An hour later, the Englishman and the two officers were sitting on abandoned blocks of concrete behind the row of garages when they heard another car pull into the yard. Shortly afterwards, two men appeared round the corner. They flashed ID at Miguel, put on white overalls and masks, and vanished through the broken door with a bulky aluminium case.
Nothing happened for several minutes, then there was a warning shout from inside. Five seconds later, the two men came stumbling out, one of them clutching an open aluminium case from which small, intricate tools and instruments were scattering as he ran. A moment later, a piercing alarm went off inside. It sounded for half a minute while the investigators just stood where they were with their stripped-off facemasks in their hands. Finally, there was a series of small explosions inside the garage, and noxious black smoke began roiling from the doorway.
THE ENGLISH WITNESS Page 13