A few minutes later, we pulled into the driveway of a handsome farmhouse on the side of a hill. There were other isolated estates dotted around the steep landscape, but none of them close enough for anyone to hear a cry for help. I began to feel a sense of grim inevitability. Then Adolfo braked sharply, and although the car was not travelling fast I was thrown face-first against the seat in front of me. I looked through the windscreen, and standing in the beam of the headlights facing the car was Father Ignacio. He stood there for a moment longer with a hand stretched out towards us, and raised his voice.
“You cannot have him, Txema.”
Adolfo angrily wound the window down, and shouted back, “Out of the way, old man, or I’ll drive straight over you. God knows you’ve got it coming.”
“In the name of God, Txema, this must stop. You need rescuing as much as the boy does.”
“Don’t talk to me about God, you disgusting hypocrite. How many kids have you men of God put through hell? Who was there to tell you that you couldn’t have me? You did more than anyone to make me what I am, you and your wretched kind.”
“We’ve talked about the past, Txema, and we’ll talk again. We’ve both been in bondage to evil, and we’re both in need of absolution. Let the boy go. Begin to free yourself.”
Understanding of this exchange would come later, but for the moment I was distracted by the odd dance that the priest had begun to perform in front of the car. With clenched fists held together in front of him, he was dancing round and round in a tight circle. As he did so, he kept turning in such away that he constantly faced the centre. almost as if his hands were tied to an invisible pole in the middle of the drive. But I could see his eyes on me as he kept turning his head in my direction, and I knew for sure that this was another message that required action on my part.
Round and round went the priest, round and round without saying anything, until Adolfo lost patience. He gunned the car forward, and I both felt the impact and heard the sickening crack as the fender struck the old man in the legs and scooped him onto the bonnet. Inertia brought his head within inches of the windscreen, and for a moment I thought he would come through it, but as Adolfo braked sharply for a second time the priest slid forward off the bonnet and onto the ground.
My captor leapt from the driving seat pulling out the pistol from somewhere in his clothing. “No!” I shouted. “¡No le mate!” But it was too late. Adolfo stood at the front of the car and straightened his arm diagonally downwards towards the ground. There was that whip-crack sound I had heard before, louder at such close quarters, and the arm jerked slightly. For over a minute he just stood there looking down at his victim who, I could tell from the harrowing sounds, was taking his time to die. “Nothing changes,” said the killer at last, before walking off up the drive.
He was gone for four or five minutes, during which time I struggled to work out what the late priest had been trying to tell me. From the position of his hands he had looked as if he was praying. Had he simply been telling me to pray? That didn’t sound like the man I had known, for all that he was a priest. And why was he dancing round in circles?
I looked down at my own hands and held them together as if I was praying. I had to straighten my fingers to do so, and immediately I realised that Ignacio had not been miming a prayer; his fingers had been clenched like mine. That was it! He must have been acting out my position in handcuffs. But he was twisting round and round. Why would he want me to do that? Would twisting the chain work where tugging on it had failed?
I immediately began turning round and round. It was exhausting in the confined space: sliding my bottom along the seat for half of each turn, then rising to a crouch with the floor bracket between my legs for the second half. It seemed to take forever, and as the chain twisted on itself so the length shortened, dragging my wrists downwards and making it ever harder to turn.
At one point I heard Adolfo coming back and thought my time was up, but he was simply bringing a wheelbarrow to remove the corpse. He had no difficulty scooping up the priest’s remains from the ground, and then he disappeared into the darkness beyond the pool of light from the car’s headlamps, pushing his macabre load ahead of him. I set to work on the chain again, and soon had it at the point where it wouldn’t turn any further without real pressure.
My wrists were raw and bloody by this time, and only the certainty of impending disaster kept me pushing as some of the links began to twist. I could never have straightened one of them by so much as a millimetre, but I was able to open one of the seams sideways far enough that the adjacent link could slip through.
I carefully opened the door and slid out, closing it quietly on the first catch so as to delay the moment of realisation as long as possible. Then I crouched behind a wide flowering shrub for a few seconds while I got my breath back and decided which way to go.
It was the second time I’d found myself a fugitive out on the steep, damp highlands. But the air was noticeably colder than when I’d fled from the inn on the Alzaibar road. My best chance lay back in the relative civilisation of San Sebastián, but I had no idea how to get there or how to raise help if I ever arrived. The loss of Ignacio was a terrible blow. Already I was starting to speculate on the meaning of Adolfo’s bitter words, but, whatever secrets the past held, he’d cut short his own life to give me a chance of escape. And with him gone, I had no idea how to make contact with anyone else.
In the end I was able to free my hands with surprising ease, the same way I’d broken the chain in the car. By swivelling one of the bracelets round and round my wrist, I was able to twist apart one of the links that held the two together. It was an agonising process as my wrists were already raw, but the fact that Adolfo had attached one of the cuffs loosely enough for me to turn it at all was something to be thankful for.
The problem of transport was solved by taking a bulbous old Vespa from a woman working in a nearby orchard. She saw me as I straddled her scooter and shouted through the trees, but at first she made no attempt to move towards me. Then there was a moment of panic as I kicked the engine over five or six times without success, and she began a lumbering jog towards me. Then at last the engine fired, and I pulled away in a puff of blue-grey smoke with the owner still shouting after my receding back.
I’d ridden a motorbike in my teens. It took a few minutes to get used to the handlebar-mounted gear change, but after a couple of wrong turns I came down onto a major road somewhere between Hernani and Lasarte. From there I was able to navigate my way back towards the city, but I ran out of petrol near the hospital and had to walk the rest of the way. By the time I reached Anoeta, it was broad daylight.
Heading on foot towards the city centre, I flinched when a car pulled up alongside me. To my relief it was one of the younger men I’d seen at the meeting three days earlier, who leaned across the passenger seat to speak to me through the open window. At his invitation I let myself into the tiny, chugging ‘600’ and listened as he updated me.
“Adolfo was ahead of us, James. We broke the back window, but we didn’t get time to lob in the gas and we couldn’t get past his men to follow you. Mind you, it was an idiotic plan. I reckon that if we’d caught up with him, he’d have killed you on the spot.”
I was suddenly overcome by a wave of suspicion, and laid my hand on the door-handle. “You must have thought I was dead. What were you doing waiting down here?”
“If you did get away, this is the way you’d have had to come. You got here just in time. I’d given you up as lost and was on my way.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.
“It’s nothing,” he replied, missing the irony.
“I’m going to get that hijo de puta if it kills me.”
He looked glanced across at me before returning his eyes to the road. “Then the priest was right about you.”
“The priest is dead,” I answered. “And I’d be dead but for him. Trini who was important to me is dead, along with her mother. Carlos was on the way t
o becoming a friend, and he and his whole family are dead. Who’s going to make the bastard pay?”
“We will make him pay,” answered the young guy, who I think was called Juantxo, clearly as shocked as I was by the Ignacio’s death. He paused for a second time before continuing, “With your help, if you’re still prepared to give it.”
“No, I won’t help you. I need you to help me.”
“We can help you get even. But we need your help putting a new plan into operation.”
“Your plans are part of the problem. They’re too military, too big, too defensive. We need to take the battle to him.”
“That’s exactly our problem. We don’t know where to find him.”
“I do.”
“Then tell us. Take us there,” he urged.
“It won’t work,” I insisted. “He knows exactly how you think, and whatever you do he’ll expect it. He won’t expect me, because he’s used to me running away. I’m not asking you to do anything that’ll get you into trouble. The help I need is with basic things like transport and equipment. And some cash. And food.”
“Suppose you try and you fail?”
“Then you’re no worse off. You can keep trying till you’re all dead as far as I’m concerned.”
“We would be worse off. We wouldn’t have you.”
“As the bait in a trap, you mean. I’ve already made clear that you don’t have me. Not any more.”
“Actually, I think we do have you. We don’t have to let you go, you know.”
Clenching my teeth, I pushed the door open and leaned half way out. He swore, and clutched at my arm but missed. He had to swerve suddenly to prevent the door from hitting a parked car.
“OK, you’ve made your point,” he admitted as I pulled it shut. “You’ve been a lucky cabroncete, and you deserve a shot. Tell me what you want and I’ll try to help. But only until midday tomorrow, and then I’m expected back at the...” He stopped, embarrassed. “I nearly said too much,” he ended lamely.” In my mind’s ear he adds, “If I’d said any more, I’d have had to kill you,” but I think that’s just my imagination working overtime.
It was late afternoon when Juantxo dropped me off in front of the hospital. I was equipped with two five-litre cans of petrol, a bottle of two-stroke oil, some bungee cords and a selection of readily available household items. I’d also acquired a helmet with a full-face visor and a heavy windproof jacket with deep pockets. Going round to the bicycle stands where I’d left the Vespa the night before, I trickled a little of the petrol into its tank. Then I used the bungee cords to secure the cans to the running boards and found my way back to Adolfo’s place.
I passed the end of the drive that had such grim associations for me without slowing, but I had plenty of time to check that his black SEAT was in the drive. And, by standing up precariously on the running boards as I went past, I was able to confirm the presence of something else: a second vehicle tucked behind a stand of shrubs. Adolfo’s backup team was already in position. He’d taken seriously the possibility that I night find my way back with reinforcements.
Killing the Vespa’s engine a little way past the property, I coasted silently back down the hill and waited out of sight from the road. As the time on my watch crept up towards 6 p.m., I tensed. Something should happen any time now, and if it didn’t then I was in a very dangerous situation. It would mean that Adolfo had second-guessed us once again, and as the minutes dragged by I began to sweat. Then a wave of relief swept over me as the black SEAT roared past my hiding place, and I could see Adolfo himself hunched over the steering wheel as if willing the car to go faster.
I continued to wait with baited breath for another three or four minutes, hardly daring to blink in case I missed the vital information I needed to capture. The best information at Juantxo’s disposal was that Adolfo had three men on call. If there were three in the car I was going ahead; less than three and the farmhouse might not be empty when I got there.
I heard the car coming before I saw it: a wallowing old Mercedes as black as Adolfo’s SEAT. I wondered for a moment why he was not using the Merc himself, but then I remembered that he was a policeman – senior but not at the top of the tree – and had appearances to keep up. I squinted hard at the car as it came past, and sure enough there were two men in the front and one in the back. As soon as the sound of the engine and tyres had faded in the distance, I worked the Vespa’s kick-start lever and felt relief surge through me as the little engine began to pop.
On reaching Adolfo’s driveway, I switched off the engine for the last time and pushed the scooter some way into a thicket of trees on the opposite side of the road. Leaving the helmet perched on the saddle, I unclipped the petrol cans and carried them towards the tightly shuttered house.
I was highly nervous. I hoped Adolfo’s hurried departure meant that the setup had worked—that he’d been misled into believing I was under arrest down at police headquarters. Similarly, the departure of the second car ought to mean that they’d been ordered to accompany him. If he had fallen for the decoy, I had at least an hour to prepare for his return. If he was just calling our bluff, then I had to be prepared for disaster.
People in movies can usually find an unlatched sash window to climb through. Failing that, they put their shoulder to a locked door without so much as a broken collarbone to show for it. It’s not quite so easy in real life, but houses are not that hard to break into. A lock is more of a psychological barrier than a physical one: if you force it, you’re committing a crime and making a lot of noise into the bargain. I was beyond caring about the law, and there was nobody close enough to hear the sound of a break-in.
We considered a burglar alarm unlikely; for a man like Adolfo an alarm could attract unwelcome attention. Getting ready to flee if I did see any electronics, I drew a long steel wrecking bar from a compartment in the jacket’s lining, forced open one of the shutters facing away from the road, and smashed all the glass out of the window frame. Taking care to avoid any shards, I pushed the cans of petrol in ahead of me before hauling myself over the sill.
The windproof jacket was easier to move about in without the steel bar, and I began to make myself at home. I very much regretted what I was about to do, because the house was beautiful. Beneath a shallowly sloping roof of red tile, it was rendered in crisp white stucco apart from the neat grey stonework round each window recess. Bright green paint on the doors and shutters closely matched the meadow grass on the surrounding hills, while the low parapet walls surrounding the property were attractively ornamented with plants growing in terracotta pots.
The exterior was thus handsome, but hard to distinguish from dozens of other hillside farmhouses I had seen dotted around the region. The inside turned out to be markedly different, however. The highly varnished floorboards and modern pine furniture were common enough, and a large family could have lived there in great comfort. Likewise, an elegant light oak staircase and galleried landing that would have graced any residence. Even the sizeable portion of the building given over to office space and workshops was not unusual for a working estate. Apart from the ever-present odour of carbolic soap, and a room with a securely locked fire door that I guessed was an armoury, the real difference was down in the basement.
I came back upstairs a few minutes later going through hot and cold flushes, my stomach heaving. We live in an age of cult horror movies, and the idea of sadistic serial killers with lavishly equipped torture chambers has become something of a cliché. By these standards, Adolfo’s hobby room was quite understated: no pulleys, no cages, no blowlamps or power tools. What he did have was a basement lounge with a decent hi-fi system, a television and a comfortable leather sofa. What didn’t fit with the décor was what today would be called a wet-room—a fully tiled section with sluices in the floor and shower nozzles set into the walls and ceiling.
Even this could have passed as a rich man’s en-suite but for one additional feature: in the middle of the tiled area stood a hospital gurney
with a hard, shiny surface. At each end, a pair of handcuffs was attached to the stout chassis by a length of chain. On a rack nearby stood a roll of heavy-duty adhesive tape and a selection of surgical instruments. Everything was clean, but it had been washed down only recently without being mopped dry, and water was still pooling on the gurney and the tiled floor. Several cans of Zotal disinfectant were lined up along a shelf, and the reek of phenol – the active ingredient in carbolic soap – was overpowering. All the same, there was an underlying odour in the air that immediately took me back against my will to the apartment in Valencia. Suddenly I no longer regretted what I was about to do to a house that had created such a pleasant first impression.
Within three quarters of an hour I felt that I had done enough. I thought of my old Commanding Officer in the Air Cadets—a wartime saboteur if one believed his yarns. He’d passed the time on field trips explaining how to make some quite deadly devices from common household objects. Adolfo was in for a very unpleasant surprise when he got home. Whether it would have the desired effect I didn’t know, but for the first time in months I felt in control. I left the house the way I’d entered and pushed the damaged shutters closed. I had no way of re-fastening them, but that wasn’t a problem. Adolfo would be leaving the house in a hurry soon enough, and my life depended on him coming this way and this way only. I settled down to wait for the master of the house to return.
CHAPTER 15
The light was fading when Adolfo came back to the house, and to my relief he was alone. He must have been suspicious of the false message about my capture, and would no doubt have appreciated some backup. But as I learned later, Juantxo had found the courage to tell his superiors what was happening, and after warning him of the consequences if things backfired they’d given the new plan a cautious welcome.
In consequence, Adolfo’s backup team had been intercepted and detained. Even so, he was still armed, and vastly stronger and better trained than I was. I had no illusions as to how much luck I’d need to survive the next few minutes.
THE ENGLISH WITNESS Page 18