THE ENGLISH WITNESS

by John C. Bailey

  More by luck than judgement, Ángel’s last-ditch strategy worked like a charm. He arrived at the motorway turn-off for San Sebastián sooner than the Mercedes could possibly have covered the distance. He knew the occupants would be looking out for him, and after driving round the interchange twice he discovered a spot behind a signboard where he would be largely shielded from view. Switching off the engine, he kicked down the side-stand, climbed stiffly off the machine and gingerly lowered himself onto a knee-high patch of banked up earth.

  He thought back over the pursuit. The strangest incident of the day had been his encounter with the airport taxi. It had left him with a nagging sense of unease. All the evidence had confirmed that it was a different car carrying different passengers. And yet with hindsight his heart was saying something else.

  He tried to picture the car in his mind’s eye. Apart from a couple of long scratches along the driver’s side, it had been identical to the vehicle he had followed from the monastery—even down to the structural modifications. There had been nothing unusual about the occupants, but would someone going to a funeral wear a hat and veil all through the journey?

  Suddenly the black Viano with the white ‘Aero-Taxi’ signage was there on the road. And as Ángel levered himself stiffly to his feet and swung a leg over the saddle of the BMW, he realised what was unusual. He could just make out the shape of the woman in the back seat, and she was sitting on the same side of the car as the driver. A chauffeur would normally hold open the rear door on the passenger side. Would the sort of lady who wore a black veil to a funeral get in on the driver’s side?

  Although not conclusive in itself, it was odd enough to keep Ángel’s suspicions alive. And then something else occurred to him: there was no airport anywhere down that road. The funeral must already have taken place, and the woman would have been on her way back to San Sebastián for a flight out of the region. That would fit with the time of day. And yet her floral tribute had still been lying on the seat beside her.

  By this point in his train of thought, Ángel was already accelerating into the outside lane, keeping the car in view but staying far enough back that he would hopefully not be noticed again. And then, coming off the ramp in Amara, an inconsiderate driver cut across in front of him.

  He was concentrating so hard on the Viano in the dense traffic that he only saw the Volvo at the last moment. He braked sharply, his wheels drifted on the greasy surface, and the bike went over. He managed to control his own fall and kick himself clear of the heavy machine as it slid along the ground in a shower of sparks. The long leather case that he was carrying took the brunt of his impact with the ground, and his injuries were no more than could be treated with a hot bath and some ibuprofen. And damage to the bike itself was only superficial. But by the time he had it upright the Mercedes and its occupants were lost to view.

  As he remounted the BMW, Ángel almost gave up and headed back to the monastery that was now his home. But he thought of what Jimmy had once done for him and knew he could not give up the chase until all was lost. And as he thought of Jimmy and Steve and Gina, he realised why he had felt that sense of unease at his first sight of the woman in the ‘Aero-Taxi’. Even as a kid, Jimmy had been into disguises; he had worked some of that stage magic on him, Brother Ángel, back in the days when he had been the confused and lonely Txako Ibarra.

  Jimmy and his friends had saved Txako from himself—not from his aspirations to be a working class hero, but rather from the fear and lethargy that had reduced him to breaking point in the aftermath. And their hare-brained plan had suggested new possibilities to him: a kind of activism rooted not in violence but in sacrificial love. The change had been a slow one; as part of the Basque community in exile he had trained hard as a fighter. But time and providence had done their work, and when the change of regime had at last allowed him to return to Spain, he had come not as a warrior but as a monk.

  Now, like Jimmy, Txako was in his sixties. Age and the recently diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease were already robbing him of his physical and mental energy, and one day they would take everything. He knew this would be his last mission and welcomed whatever the Lord might send. But as his strength and mental clarity declined, it was his more recent identity as a mystic that was fading. He had begun to believe that it was his destiny to go out blazing. And after the rigours of his ride up from Alzaibar, he knew that if he was going to fight it would have to be soon.

  Ángel knew that the key to finding Jimmy lay in the connection between hostilities past and present. Who was the tall man? And where could he be taking Jimmy? He strove to push aside the foggy emptiness that was invading his mind and assemble the pieces of this four-dimensional puzzle.

  He started again from the beginning. The two wounded gunmen he had treated in the infirmary had been quite informative. As mercenaries, they had nothing to gain from loyalty to a dead employer. He knew now who the dead men were, and for whom they had been working. But so many questions remained unanswered, and the big unknown quantity was the tall stranger who had been seen driving away with Jimmy. Was he a friend, or was Jimmy still in danger? Where did the newcomer fit into this melting pot of police, politics, and hatred that spanned generations?

  That last thought prompted a further question: What were the family connections here? Something other than police work had surely drawn the detective to his death at the monastery. Ángel had seen his car race onto the grounds and observed the reaction of Antonio García’s mercenary thugs to Miguel’s appearance. He had watched the overweight man sprint across the plaza, and a few seconds later heard the exchange of fire.

  Acting on impulse, he turned into a quiet residential street, removed his helmet and took out a mobile phone. “Hi,” he was saying a few moments later. “Yes, it’s me. How are things, old friend?”

  “It doesn’t get any better,” came a familiar but weary voice from the other end. “The days are OK. The nights aren’t so good. Is it going well over there?”

  “No, it’s not good here. I’ve lost them. Yes, it was careless of me. I’m trying to track them but I need some information. I’m sure you know that a very bad man checked out today. I need to know if he had a son in the Donostia police.”

  “A son? No, Adolfo was childless. He was emasculated in a ghastly sectarian attack as a young boy. Definitely no offspring.”

  “That’s horrible, but I didn’t mean Gallego. I meant García López, the Mister Big from Almería. I heard that a cop named García Ruiz went down in the same exchange of fire, and I think my informant was holding something back. García is a common enough name, but a family connection would explain some things, and perhaps give us a lead on where Jimmy’s gone.”

  “OK, Txako, I’ll get on it. Sorry, I meant…”

  “Doesn’t matter, Juantxo. But you’ve made me think. If there is family history wound up in all this, could you get somebody looking into any possible family connections with Gallego? You said he couldn’t have children, but there’s something really dark going on. I’m certain it’s about more than politics.”

  “You think there’s someone else involved?”

  “Either someone, or some thing. A pattern of obsession that points back to the past. I know something about Adolfo. And I’m thinking Avenger. Or maybe even Disciple. Until you get back to me, I’m working on the assumption that García Ruiz was the son of García López. But that gets me wondering about parallels with Adolfo. You said he was castrated as a boy. How definite is that?

  “His injuries? Not gospel. Just a story on the street that everyone has heard and nobody has ever challenged. Why do you…”

  “No time to go into it. Any chance of getting hospital records from that far back?”

  “No chance at all, I should think. And anyone old enough to have treated Adolfo as a child is probably dead by now. But I’ll do what I can.”

  “Yes please. But before I go, can you think? Just suppose Adolfo did have an avenger or a disciple, somebody who knew his life s
tory and shared his obsessions. Can you think of anywhere that might have special significance? Especially somewhere with a connection to Jimmy?”

  “Hmm. Thinking. The monastery, of course. And there was a confrontation down at the youth hostel in Anoeta. God, we’re getting so old. My brain isn’t what it used to be. But it all started when Jimmy witnessed something he shouldn’t have. He saw a hit going down just weeks after helping you get across the border. And that was where he crossed paths with Adolfo for the first time. I never heard the full story, and I’m racking my brains to remember where it happened. It was somewhere remote, but I know he went on foot because he told me he was exhausted and in shock and no one would offer him a lift. You’ll have to help me, Txako; I’m not a local. He had to make a long climb on foot and catch some sort of cable car. Can you think of anywhere like that? Hello?”

  But Ángel was already pulling on his helmet and cocking a leg over the BMW. He raced up the centre line of the road towards the seafront, jumping red traffic lights and hooting at pedestrians. Once on the seafront, he turned left and accelerated along the curving road towards Monte Igeldo. He wound up the Igeldo road at a homicidal speed. Then halting behind the hotel, he gazed down across the car park. The black Mercedes people carrier in the bottom corner pf the car park confirmed to him that he had come to the right place, but he was terrified that he would be too late.

  “Why did you have to shoot the dog walker, Julio?”

  “Witness, obviously. If my father had killed you when he should have, things would have been very different.”

  “Your father? I’ve no idea who you’re talking about.”

  “Then you’re more stupid than I thought you were. My father was Txema Gallego. Or Adolfo, to give him the name that defined him. Or José María as he styled himself more recently.”

  “Now I know you’re lying. It was you who killed him, or at least left him a basket case. And he couldn’t have children anyway; he got castrated as a kid.”

  Julio kept the long, silenced automatic pointing at Jack, but quickly glanced around the cove. He was sitting closer to the Englishman than he liked, and he knew Jack had been smart enough to outmanoeuvre his father. On the other hand he had to talk, and the thunder of the waves on the rocks was too intense to allow conversation at a greater distance. It was important to him that that Jack should know why he had to die and why his father had had to be punished.

  “Adolfo had a child. He had me. He wasn’t maimed in quite the way he wanted people to think. He didn’t have the means to satisfy a woman, but with minor surgery he was able to… let’s just say he made a deposit at the bank. A woman was impregnated and I was born. I dug all that up later; my adoptive parents knew nothing about it. And it was my father himself who put about the story that he’d been emasculated. It was all part of covering up my existence.

  “Can you imagine what it was like growing up? Finding out about my real father. Admiring him from afar. Wanting to be with him. Wanting to be him. And hating him, because he just saw me as a weak spot in his armour. But at least he was a strong man, a leader, a warrior, even if latterly he had to send others out to fight.

  “Then he reinvented himself, and he was going to reinvent the country with mere words. The maimed warrior became what he’d always hated, always despised, always destroyed: a politician. What do you think it was like, Jack?”

  Jack looked at him, and now he thought he could see a family resemblance. Something about the mouth and the cheekbones. But there it ended. In fact, the rest of him actually reminded Jack a little of Miguel, and that was just freaky. “Can’t have been pleasant, Julio, growing up torn between an adoptive family and a biological parent whom you admired. On that you have my sympathy. Then again, you could have chosen to admire him as a man but reject the hatred and violence.”

  “I don’t need your sympathy. I certainly don’t need your smug lecture. But it doesn’t matter. You can patronise away, but you’ve only got minutes to enjoy it. If it helps, I’ve actually enjoyed your company over the last few days, but that doesn’t change anything. You were marked for destruction from the minute you stepped off the train.

  ”It was all so complicated, Jack. You must have guessed that I’m more than a chauffeur. Does the name CIFAS mean anything to you? We’re like your MI5. I’ve been monitoring Antonio for years as a potential domestic terrorist. God, he was up to some stuff. And officially I’ve been on secondment to the police to assist – in other words keep an eye on them – in the investigation of his death. But I never bore them any ill-will, him or my half-brother Miguel, neither of whom knew about me. And once I knew the score I was happy to help them destroy my father—God knows Txema had it coming.”

  “So tell me about your mother, Julio. Does she approve of the life you’ve chosen?”

  “You can’t get to me by talking about my mother, Jack. I’ve come to terms with what happened. And I don’t even mind telling you, as you’re going to be dead within a minute or two. My real mother – not my adoptive mother in San Sebastián – was married to Antonio. She bore him two children—you met them all on your travels. But he was a sick, violent…”

  “She must have taken them away from him,” interrupted Jack. “That’s why his apartment hadn’t seen a woman’s touch in years.”

  “He had other homes, including an armed compound out in the desert. In recent years his place in Almería wasn’t been much more than a post box. But you’re right: she took the children away from him, and in the process she removed herself and them from the protection of his paranoid security protocol. And when Txema found out about Antonio’s role in the deaths of three legionnaires, she was a soft target. He knew exactly how to use her in inflicting the maximum pain and dishonour on Antonio. He impregnated her, disfigured her and then let her go, knowing that as a strict Catholic she’d never consider an abortion. But within days of delivering me, she’d taken her own life.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”

  “As I said, I don’t need your sympathy. Just your death will do.”

  “I came to like and admire you. I still will if we can get past this.”

  “No chance. My father may live or die, but he had to be punished—both for what he’d become and for what he did to my mother. And I was more than happy for my half-brother Miguel to use you as bait. It was you who made my father what he became: a physical and a mental cripple. Besides, Antonio was right about one thing: you really do know too much.”

  Julio raised the long barrel of the pistol he was holding, which Jack now recognised. Remove the suppressor and it was the same weapon that Jack himself had once carried for several hours.

  “Nice weapon. Adolfo’s of course.”

  “Yes, his Ruger. Only .22 calibre, and I’m afraid it may not kill you very quickly, particularly with the silencer attached.”

  Jack closed his eyes. He knew this was the end, and he was beyond fighting. He heard the gunshot and waited for the pain.

  Afraid that the BMW’s noise would attract attention, but aware that he could not spare the time or the strength to walk, Ángel kept the engine at idling speed and used gravity to draw him down the slope. For minute after minute he coasted on down the side of the cliff at barely jogging pace, using the front brake lever to hold the machine back. It was not an easy surface, and the BMW was poorly suited to off-road use, but he made progress.

  A few hundred metres down, he saw a large dog running loose amongst the scrub. He thought it was a Labrador, but the light was fading too much to be sure. Then he came to the body in the middle of the path and his heart skipped a beat. It was not Jimmy, but exhaustion and confusion were creeping up on him. At one point the path sloped up a little, and he had to use the engine to keep the bike moving, but he thought the lie of the land would deflect the sound over the heads of anyone down in the cove.

  As he neared the bottom of the path, he realised that he need not have worried about the sound of his engine. The roar of the waves on the
rocks might not mask a gunshot, but it was enough to drown out the refined purr of his engine. He switched off the ignition, propped the bike on its side-stand and opened the long bag that had been making his shoulder ache for hours. He hoped the contents had not been damaged in his minor accident on entering the city.

  There was a deep scuff mark on the polished wooden stock, but he did not think the damage was more than cosmetic. Taking two ammunition clips from a separate compartment in the case, he pushed one into the rifle and slipped another into his pocket. Then, working the bolt action and holding the weapon at the ready, he set off in a tired and uneven gait across the rock-strewn beach.

  He saw the two men within a couple of minutes. They were positioned sideways on to him, and in the fading light of late evening he doubted either would have seen him. However, he knew that in poor light conditions peripheral vision is sharper than direct, and that the eye and brain are particularly alert to movement. Therefore he moved very slowly as he knelt behind a large rock and rested the barrel across it.

  Averse as he was to causing harm to another, he knew that he needed to disable the gunman and took careful aim. But his vision seemed blurred, his coordination tired and clumsy, his resolve to shoot wavering. And at first, he hoped that he would not have to take the shot at all. There seemed to be a two-sided conversation going on, and he dared to hope that the two of them would resolve their differences.

  Then the tall, slender man with the gun straightened his arm into an unmistakeable firing stance. The sudden tensing in the other man’s posture indicated that he also expected the gun to fire.

  Fearing that he had delayed too long, Ángel aimed for the gunman’s arm and fired, but knew even before his trigger finger had completed its movement that he was going to miss. As the heavy report reverberated around the rocky cove, he worked the rifle’s double-action bolt to chamber another round. But Julio’s right arm was quicker, swinging out towards the muzzle flash and squeezing off two quick shots. The first ricocheted off the rock behind which Ángel was kneeling, but the second snatched at his upper left arm on its way past. He knew from the shockwaves travelling through his nervous system that he had been hit in the muscle, and that like all real life bullet wounds it was a serious injury. Whether he lived or died depended on whether major blood vessels had been torn.