The Exile

by Mark Oldfield

  ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ Magdalena asked as he got into the car.

  Guzmán reached for his cigarettes. ‘It turned out I hadn’t lost it at all.’

  ‘That must be a relief.’ She started the engine and the car moved down the drive. The sentries saluted as they opened the gates. They drove along the sea road, following the curve of the beach. The bay was black, speckled with light from the shore.

  ‘Beautiful, don’t you think?’ she asked, looking at the bay.

  ‘Very beautiful,’ Guzmán said, looking at her.

  The car turned into the boulevard and slowed to a halt outside his hotel.

  SAN SEBASTIÁN 1954, HOTEL ALMEJA

  ‘Can I offer you a nightcap?’

  ‘I won’t, gracias,’ Magdalena said. ‘I never go back to a gentleman’s hotel room on the first night. I find my restraint helps develop a certain demeanour in him later on.’

  ‘What kind of demeanour?’

  ‘Why, gratitude, of course.’ She brushed his cheek with her lips and got back into the car. Guzmán watched as she gunned the engine and sped away down the boulevard, turning with a squeal of tyres into Calle San Juan. As the roar of the engine died away, he went to the hotel door and hammered on it to wake the night porter.

  The bleary-eyed porter opened the door and Guzmán waited at the desk, impatient for his room key. It had been a good night, he reflected, a very good night indeed, and nothing, not even this wooden-headed badulaque, could ruin it.

  As he handed Guzmán his key, the porter remembered the letter that had arrived earlier in the evening and hurried to retrieve it from the ancient wooden mail rack behind the desk.

  Guzmán tore open the envelope and read the short message inside. He had been wrong.

  His evening was ruined.

  VILLARREAL, 9 MARCH 1937

  The teniente did not visit her the next morning. Instead, she was taken upstairs by a myopic corporal in thick spectacles. He led her to one of the ruined houses and waited outside while she washed in a bucket of cold water. Afterwards, they sat on a stone wall and Ochoa held the baby for a while, waving the doll at her until she beamed.

  He took out a battered packet of Superiores. She took the cigarette he offered and leaned forward to let him light it. ‘Can I ask your name, Corporal?’

  ‘Segismundo Ochoa, señorita. At your service.’

  ‘Do you have children?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Ochoa said. ‘I will one day, I hope.’

  He was about to escort her back to the cellar when the teniente returned. After Ochoa had gone, she laughed, seeing the teniente’s face blackened with soot. ‘You look like the devil,’ she told him. ‘Want me to tell your fortune like I used to?’

  He took her by the arm and started leading her back to the ruined building. ‘Stop acting like you know me,’ he growled.

  ‘Then help us get away, chico. If you don’t, I’ll lay a curse on you.’

  His face darkened. ‘Don’t joke about things like that.’

  ‘Then help us. Just let me and the little one go on our way, for old times’ sake?’

  ‘It might be easier just to kill you.’

  ‘Don’t even think about trying that, chico. I know who you are, remember? In any case, if anything happens to me, the curse stays put for ever.’

  He escorted her back to the cellar in silence. The guards led her back down into the shadows and he walked away, lost in dark thoughts.

  She was becoming a problem.

  4

  LEGUTIO, JULY 2010, PENSIÓN ARALAR

  Sargento Atienza found Galíndez in the dining room, finishing off a plate of jamón, huevos y tomates. They shook hands and Atienza asked for coffee when Señora Olibari came to say good morning. She guessed Atienza was in his fifties from his greying hair and beard.

  He watched her push her plate away. ‘You’re not leaving that ham, are you?’

  ‘Go ahead, I’m stuffed.’

  ‘Gracias.’ Atienza picked up a piece of bread and made a sandwich with the ham. He glanced at the wood-panelled dining room. ‘I bet this place looked the same fifty years ago.’

  ‘Can we get started?’ she asked, impatient. ‘I have to be back in Madrid this evening.’

  ‘Sure, let’s go.’ Atienza finished his improvised breakfast and went out into the street. Galíndez picked up her bag of equipment and followed him. A four-by-four was parked outside. As she stowed her bag on the back seat, she noticed Atienza lying on the kerb, checking underneath the vehicle with a small mirror. A careful, systematic search, something her father should have done the morning he was killed. Another reminder of where she was.

  Atienza finished his inspection and sensed her watching. ‘Routine precaution,’ he grunted casually as he got behind the wheel. He’d unfastened the retention strap on his holster, she noticed. Not so casual after all.

  Atienza followed the narrow cobbled street down to the main road and turned north across a long bridge over a lagoon, heading towards a series of hills several kilometres away. The clouds had rolled away now and the water glittered. She saw rowing boats and sailboards, people fishing.

  ‘Did you see the remains of the cuartel when you arrived?’ Atienza asked.

  She nodded. ‘There wasn’t much left. Will they build another?’

  ‘Supposedly, but the local councillors are holding things up. They think if they do that long enough the guardia won’t come back.’ He shrugged. ‘Leave them to it, I say.’

  They left the road and turned onto a rough dirt track running up the side of a hill overlooking the dam. After a few hundred metres, the track grew too steep to continue.

  ‘Sorry, Ana.’ Atienza held up his hands in apology. ‘We’ll have to walk from here.’

  Galíndez looked at the gradient of the steep track, imagining the pain in her ribs as she climbed with the heavy bag of equipment. She shrugged. ‘No problem.’

  ‘Can I carry your bag for you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t need any help.’

  Further along the hillside, slow lines of construction vehicles were struggling up a makeshift service road leading to the flat ground on top of the hill where the skeletal outline of a crane towered over the half-completed sports complex.

  Atienza was talkative and filled her in on most of his life story in the first ten minutes of the walk. It was pretty standard stuff: a daughter who left home at sixteen, unable to tolerate the disruption of his various postings, and then an acrimonious divorce. And now, with retirement looming, he hadn’t a clue what he would do in civilian life.

  The hilltop was littered with ruined houses. Atienza pointed to some ragged brick walls, none of them more than half a metre high. ‘That’s the house. Or it was.’

  The ruin was surrounded by green and white chequered tape: Guardia Civil No Pasar. Two uniformed troopers with sub-machine guns were standing by the ruins of the house. Both men acknowledged Atienza with a friendly wave. Neither spoke to Galíndez, though she noticed their brusque appraisal.

  ‘This is Juan Carlos,’ Atienza said, introducing Galíndez, ‘and this is Pepe.’

  They grunted, turning their attention to a group of men standing a few metres away.

  ‘Those are the construction workers,’ Atienza explained. ‘They’re waiting for us to sort out what’s in this cellar so they can get back to work. They’ll lose money if we hold them up much longer.’

  Galíndez stopped. One of the men was staring at her. A tall heavy-set guy with a thick beard covering his pointed chin. The ‘hare face’ they called it up here. A Basque face.

  She walked toward him, returning his stare. ‘Got a problem?’

  He glowered at her. ‘Fuck off back to Madrid.’

  She felt the vibrations start somewhere deep in her chest, spreading down her arms, her fists clenching. ‘What did you call me, you prick?’

  A hand gripped her arm. ‘Leave the peasants alone,’ Atienza said quietly. ‘The farmers need lads
like him to keep their sheep pregnant.’

  Galíndez tensed against his hold on her arm. She heard the metallic rattle of the two troopers readying their weapons.

  ‘Come on,’ Atienza muttered. ‘We don’t want anyone getting hurt. It’s bad publicity.’

  Galíndez turned reluctantly and started back towards the house. A mocking voice followed her. ‘There she goes, down into that cellar to take it up the arse, like all the other whores from Madrid.’

  ‘Puta madre.’ She spun round, incensed.

  Atienza pulled her back. ‘Tranquila, Ana, there’ll be trouble if this kicks off.’

  ‘Yeah, Ana, don’t start any trouble.’ The construction worker grinned. ‘Just drop your bragas and bend over, that’s what you’re here for.’

  Galíndez glared at him, rigid with anger. She was memorising his face.

  The bearded man cackled. ‘Look at her shaking. They’re all scared when they come here. Make sure to look under your car when you go home, puta.’ He made a gesture, throwing his hands up in the air. ‘Boom.’

  ‘Leave it now, Aïtor,’ one of the others muttered.

  ‘Ana, do you want to see what we found or not?’ Atienza asked, trying to distract her.

  Galíndez threw a last dark look at Aïtor and turned to inspect the ruins.

  It had been a large building once. She saw a ragged opening and a flight of steep stone steps descending into dark shadow. ‘They’re down there?’ she asked, putting down her bag.

  ‘That’s right.’ Atienza pointed to a heap of broken concrete. ‘The cellar entrance was sealed up. The concrete cracked when a heavy vehicle got too near. The house was built on the site of an older one, but no one knew about the cellar.’

  ‘Did you touch anything when you went down?’

  ‘When I saw the bones, I guessed what it was,’ Atienza said. ‘I knew you wouldn’t want my DNA all over the place.’

  ‘I wish more of our agents were like you.’ Galíndez tied back her hair and took a pair of latex gloves from her bag. She smiled. ‘I hate a contaminated crime scene.’

  The builder saw her pull the gloves on. ‘You’ve done that before, muñeca.’

  Galíndez froze. ‘If he calls me “babe” again...’

  ‘You know, that’s quite a temper you’ve got,’ Atienza said.

  ‘Tell me about it.’ Galíndez pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

  ‘Just be cool, he’ll lose interest in a minute.’

  ‘I know what he ought to lose,’ she muttered, taking her flashlight from the bag. ‘So, what made you contact me about this site, Sargento?’

  ‘Why don’t you see for yourself?’ He gave her a faint smile. ‘I thought I’d save the best till last, like I used to with my daughter’s Christmas gifts.’

  She felt a sudden warmth towards him for his attempt at being kind. ‘I bet your daughter liked that, didn’t she?’

  He shook his head. ‘She can’t stand me. When she left home, she got into drugs big time. Three times I tracked her down and brought her home. She just ran off again.’ He sighed. ‘You know, there’s no helping some people and she’s one of them.’

  Galíndez wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

  Fluffy clumps of cobweb clung to her sleeve as she negotiated the shattered stairs, running the flashlight over the debris littering the cellar floor. Shining clouds of dust rose in the white beam. In the rubble, she saw a large angular shape wreathed in cobwebs. Kneeling, she pulled away some of the thick web, revealing an ancient metal chair, lying on its back. She moved the beam to her right, her interest growing as the light picked out a jumble of bones around another chair.

  ‘There are bones everywhere,’ Atienza said. ‘Were they in an explosion?’

  ‘No, over time, the skeleton falls apart,’ Galíndez said, shining the light further into the gloom, seeing the same pattern repeated: another battered metal chair, bones strewn around. Looking closer, she saw the damaged spine, severed between the first and second cervical vertebrae. She took her phone from her pocket and took a picture.

  Atienza moved closer and saw the look on her face. ‘What have you found?’

  ‘Someone cut off the head. Whoever did it had already hit the victim several times, see?’ She pointed to the mark of the impacts on some of the bones. ‘He would have been bleeding badly before the fatal blow.’ She knelt, examining the floor behind the chair.

  ‘So what are you looking for?’ Atienza asked.

  ‘The head, of course.’ The beam of her flashlight fell on a pale ball of dusty gossamer. ‘There we go.’ A skull, the dark hollows of the orbital cavities discernible through the dusty shroud of accumulated cobwebs. A head didn’t detach itself and travel two metres without assistance. Something bad had happened here.

  ‘Hello, what’s this?’ Atienza turned and saw Galíndez kneeling, head down, meticulously examining something. She got up, carefully brushing cobwebs from it. Her eyes suddenly widened. She turned the object towards him. He saw a chipped nose, a small mouth, two faded glassy eyes.

  ‘What’s that?’ He frowned.

  ‘You’ve a daughter,’ Galíndez said, ‘can’t you see? It’s a doll’s head, porcelain, I think.’ She shone her torch down at the spot where she’d found it. ‘I expect the body was made from cloth or wool. It must have rotted away long since.’ She bagged up the head and put it to one side. Her face set with concentration. ‘You didn’t find any trace of a child’s body, did you?’

  Atienza shook his head. ‘No, I took a good look round and these were the only remains I found.’

  Galíndez moved the torchlight over the rubble again. ‘Can’t see anything. I’ll keep an eye out in case. Let’s see what else we’ve got, shall we?’

  Atienza pointed his torch into the darkness, a circle of white light flecked by dust. ‘There’s the other body.’

  This one was different. Some of the body was still in the chair, half buried in a sloping pile of rubble that reached up to a ragged fissure near the top of the wall, crudely repaired with concrete, suggesting the damage had been caused by an explosion outside. There was no head here either, though the ribs and spine were kept in place by the debris that engulfed the body. She saw a humerus amid the rubble behind the chair.

  Atienza kept his distance, giving her room to work. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Part of the wall collapsed,’ Galíndez said. ‘Probably the result of shell fire. See that?’ She played her torch over the sloping mound of rubble, her latex glove eerily white in the beam of the flashlight as she pointed to an irregular patch of concrete where the damage had been repaired. ‘It blasted a hole in the wall, and rubble poured down onto the body, that’s what’s kept it in place all these years.’

  She moved closer, bending to examine the scattered bones. ‘Mierda, look at this.’ She lifted the skull in both hands, turning it to show the full extent of the damage. ‘Someone cut through his skull as if they were taking the top off an egg.’

  Atienza looked round. ‘What do you make of all this?’

  ‘What it looks like,’ Galíndez said, mulling it over, ‘is that someone hacked these people to death. I mean he really hacked them, there’d be body parts all over the place.’ She glanced at Atienza. ‘Are you OK with me talking like this? Some people get a bit squeamish.’

  Atienza nodded. ‘I’ve seen worse.’

  ‘Lucky you.’ Galíndez played the light over the cellar. ‘Is this everything?’

  ‘You sound disappointed.’

  She shrugged. ‘If this is all we’ve got, I’m going to try spraying with Luminol.’

  ‘That’s the stuff that finds traces of blood, isn’t it?’

  ‘With these injuries, there would have been plenty of blood. Using Luminol might just help give me a better idea of how the killings happened.’

  ‘Can I help?’ Atienza asked.

  She looked at him in surprise, unused to anyone offering to help her in these situations. ‘It would be great if you’d ope
rate the camera. You’ll need to sit on the stairs about halfway down and hold it steady because we need a prolonged exposure.’

  ‘I think I can do that.’

  On the stairs, she found an angle that would take in most of the cellar while keeping the skeletons in view. ‘This will do nicely.’ She handed him the camera.

  Atienza watched as she prepared the mixture, mixing luminol with a catalyst and then pouring it into her spray gun. ‘You think there’ll be any blood after all these years?’

  ‘Absolutamente. Luminol will show blood over a hundred years old. And old blood glows brighter than new. Let’s see, shall we?’

  She pulled up her face mask and began spraying, careful not to trample any potential evidence. As she reached the far end of the cellar she called to Atienza. ‘Press the button, Sarge.’

  Atienza obeyed and Galíndez switched off her torch, plunging the cellar into darkness. It was not dark for long. The Luminol began to glow in iridescent blue patterns, covering the cellar floor with intricate geometries of glinting blue light. ‘Press it again, Sarge,’ she said. The camera shutter snapped, brittle and loud. ‘Now move down three or four steps and let’s do another.’

  He took another photo. ‘What do you think, Ana?’

  ‘I think it was a messy killing; there’s blood everywhere.’

  ‘So what do you want to do with these skeletons?’

  ‘I doubt we can identify them,’ she said, gauging the work involved. ‘Maybe you should bury them once your forensics unit has carried out its investigation?’

  ‘There’s no local forensics unit,’ Atienza said. ‘And the construction company has political connections, so my boss doesn’t want things held up any longer. If you don’t take these bones with you, the guys up top will fill the cellar with concrete and build over it.’

  ‘I’ll take them,’ she said quickly. ‘You said something about saving the best till last?’

  ‘Over here.’ Atienza led her to the side of the stairs. ‘I left it just where I found it.’ He pointed the flashlight at the ground. In the white circle of light she saw a glint of metal.