The Exile

by Mark Oldfield

  FRONTERA INTERNACIONAL, ESPAÑA–FRANCIA 1954

  It was just after two in the morning and Guzmán felt his eyes closing, despite the erratic motion of the car as he hurled it round another sharp bend. ‘That’s the French customs post coming up,’ Ochoa said. Two hundred metres ahead, the weatherboard shed was lit by a couple of oil lanterns that threw trembling light onto the French flag hanging limply above the wooden barrier between France and Spain.

  ‘We’ll stop here.’ Guzmán slowed and pulled onto the grass verge.

  ‘My father will be here soon,’ Etienne said truculently. ‘Better get over the border quick, Spanyol, or you’re going to be sorry.’

  Guzmán used his trench knife to cut the ropes holding Etienne to his seat. ‘No tricks,’ he warned, pushing Etienne in front of him as they walked across the grass towards the road. In the distance, faint headlights pierced the darkness. The sound of a car moving at speed.

  ‘That’s my father.’ Etienne smirked. ‘Better run, Spanyol, you’re in the shit.’ He peered at the approaching lights. ‘Better keep running too; the Çubiry have a long reach and an even longer memory.’

  ‘You’re full of fucking hot air, just like your papa,’ Guzmán muttered.

  ‘I’m next in line as leader of this clan and I tell you if my father doesn’t kill you, I will.’

  ‘The successor?’ Guzmán’s face set with concentration. ‘There’s a thought.’ He pushed Etienne forwards and clubbed him with the Browning, knocking him to the ground. Etienne lay half-stunned in the wet grass, moaning French obscenities.

  The headlights were now large radiant circles of light racing towards them.

  Guzmán tried to work the slide on the Browning. ‘Fucking thing.’

  Concerned, Ochoa got out of the car. ‘What’s up, jefe?’

  ‘Jammed,’ Guzmán grunted.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Etienne wailed. ‘Allez. Go before my father arrives.’

  Guzmán struggled with the pistol. ‘Keep quiet.’

  Dazzling white light as the car roared down the road, closing fast.

  ‘Do you want mine, jefe?’

  ‘I’ve got it now.’ Guzmán worked the slide and grunted with satisfaction as he heard the round go into the chamber. He cocked the hammer.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Etienne struggled to his feet. ‘I’m warning you—’

  Guzmán moved behind him. ‘I’ve got a warning of my own to deliver, amigo,’ he said, his eyes on the approaching car. ‘Kneel.’

  ‘Why?’ Etienne moaned as he sank to his knees.

  ‘I want to be sure your father sees who’s doing this.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Etienne’s voice was sharp with fear.

  ‘Sometimes there’s a line to be drawn,’ Guzmán said, raising the pistol. ‘And you’re next in the Çubiry line. You said so yourself.’

  ‘You can’t.’ The white headlights illuminated Etienne as he knelt in the mud, wringing his hands. Behind him, Guzmán’s dark silhouette, his arm pointing accusingly at Etienne’s head.

  A flat bitter report. The ejected cartridge rolling on the ground. Etienne pitched forward into the grass, dead before Guzmán’s second shot hit him.

  Guzmán strode past the twitching body and opened fire on Baron Çubiry’s car. Behind him, Ochoa started shooting, the staccato muzzle flashes flickering over Etienne’s crumpled body.

  Sparks flew off the Çubiry vehicle, its tyres squealing as it veered into a shallow ditch on the far side of the road.

  Ochoa ran back to the Buick and slid into the driver’s seat. He waited until Guzmán was inside and then gunned the engine. The car raced forward past the French customs post, smashing through the wooden barrier, sending the flag falling in a limp heap onto the road.

  Guzmán lit a cigarette. ‘First time the Browning’s ever jammed,’ he said through a cloud of smoke. ‘I must oil it more often.’

  Guzmán and Ochoa were already three hundred metres across the border before the French police tumbled from the wooden guardhouse, seeing the remains of the shattered barrier strewn across the road. In the distance, the tail lights of Baron Çubiry’s car were already fading into the night.

  18

  MADRID, JULY 2010, CALLE DE LOS CUCHILLEROS

  Dull noise growing louder. Men shouting, the low rumble of a truck making its way down the narrow street. Galíndez pushed her face into the pillow, trying to will herself back to sleep as the garbage collectors moved away towards Calle de Segovia. She focused on the steady rhythm of her breathing, imagining herself on a deserted island, the gentle sound of waves, warm sand beneath her feet.

  An explosion of noise. Galíndez jerked upright, heart racing. ‘Mierda.’

  The phone kept ringing.

  Groaning, she slipped out of bed and padded into the living room. As she reached for the handset, the ringing stopped. She turned to go back to bed, angry now.

  The phone went again and this time she snatched it up. ‘What?’

  ‘You fucked up. Thanks a lot.’

  ‘Mendez?’ Galíndez glared at the phone. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘It’s time for work, Ana. Maybe it’s different for you on that cushy secondment but the rest of us are working our butts off.’

  ‘You rang me to tell me that?’

  ‘No. I asked you to do one lousy DNA test and you fucked it up.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Galíndez knew she’d done the test as she always did. By the book.

  ‘Come and see for yourself. I’ve got to tell the coroner and the prosecutor that we can’t present the evidence in court today. Guess what? They won’t be pleased.’

  ‘I don’t understand, it’s a simple procedure.’

  ‘You’re right, which is why I’m so pissed off. Because the case was going to the coroner, I had to have the sample taken by someone qualified who knew what they were doing. That was you, amiga. Only you didn’t do it right, so now I’m going to get it in the neck because of you.’

  ‘I’ll come in,’ Galíndez sighed.

  ‘So you should. What are you wearing?’

  ‘A Barcelona shirt. Why?’

  ‘OK, I’ll factor in an extra five minutes for you to get dressed. Be here in ten.’

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ Galíndez slammed the phone down. ‘Mierda.’ She pulled the football shirt over her head and threw it at the wall as she stormed into the bathroom and turned on the shower. The day could only get better. At least she hoped so.

  MADRID 2010, GUARDIA CIVIL, LABORATORIO FORENSE NO 5

  Mendez listened as Galíndez described the procedure for taking the DNA sample.

  ‘Excuses, Ana?’ she grumbled. ‘You came here to give me excuses?’

  ‘No, I came to give you this.’ Galíndez looked up from the dead girl’s file and raised her index finger. ‘There was no problem with that sample, for Christ’s sake. Everything we sent to the central crime lab was in order. ’

  Mendez picked up the file and pointed to a sheet of paper bearing the guardia logo. ‘So how did they come up with this?’

  Galíndez looked down at the scrawled note at the top of the page. As a routine procedure, the lab had run the sample against their database and got a match. The result was conclusive but puzzling. Sixteen-year-old Zora Ivanova, a Bulgarian national, date of birth unknown, date of death 8 July 2010, had a perfect DNA match with one Leticia Solano, date of birth 2 February 1993, date of death 2 Feb 1993, who died in the Santa Rosa maternity clinic run by GL Sanidad. The cause of death was recorded as sudden infant death syndrome.

  ‘Well?’ Mendez asked, looking at Galíndez for an answer. ‘Our dead hooker can’t be both those people, can she?’

  Galíndez looked again at the dead girl’s details, remembering.

  ‘Hola?’ Mendez said, impatient now. ‘I’m waiting.’

  Galíndez rummaged in her jacket for her phone.

  ‘Hey, I’m asking you, Ana, don’t phone a friend.’


  Galíndez narrowed her eyes. ‘On the first day at the university, a woman came to see me. Her newborn daughter was supposed to have died at birth but she didn’t believe it. She thought she was one of the niños robados. It destroyed her entire life, Sarge. I’ve never seen anyone look so haunted.’

  ‘Well, sorry as I am to hear that, Ana, how does it help me?’

  ‘These are her details.’ Galíndez held out the phone.

  Mendez looked at the names. Adelina Solano, 32,3a Calle Azcoitia, Madrid, 28004. Daughter’s name: Leticia, born/died 2nd Feb 1993. She raised her hands, suddenly conciliatory. ‘There’s something strange here.’

  ‘Isn’t there,’ Galíndez agreed, putting her phone away. ‘I’d better talk to her. She asked me to help find her daughter. I should be the one to tell her.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ Mendez said. ‘Ever told anyone their kid’s dead before?’

  Galíndez shook her head. ‘What should I say?’

  ‘Don’t beat about the bush. When she opens the door, come straight out with it. “I’m sorry ma’am. Bad news about your daughter: She’s dead.”’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘You stand back while she falls apart. From what you said about the state she’s in, that could be spectacular.’

  ‘Thanks.’ As she got to her feet, Galíndez remembered the sun of a faded afternoon, her mother weeping in the kitchen, holding her dead father’s leather tricorne in her hands. She pushed the memory away. Señora Solano’s grief was going to be more than enough without revisiting her own tragic past.

  As she reached the door, Mendez called after her. ‘Seen where she lives? Better take your hubcaps with you after you’ve parked.’

  MADRID 2010, CALLE AZCOITIA, CARABANCHEL

  Galíndez got out of her car, beginning to think Mendez had been right. A soulless area of low-rise apartments, patches of scuffed grass strewn with dog shit. Anaemic-looking trees along the roadside, planted in an attempt to mask the featureless buildings hung with badly fitted TV and power cables, their small windows protected by metal blinds. Walls daubed with low-quality graffiti as if even the local taggers couldn’t be bothered to exert themselves.

  Señora Solano’s apartment building was a squat three-storey construction, with a patch of grey concrete at the rear, housing a row of garbage skips. There was no one around as Galíndez walked to the entrance, though there was plenty of noise coming from inside the building: deep bass notes throbbed from a window, competing with a dozen TV channels all at full volume.

  She climbed the stairs to the third floor and went along a narrow walkway that overlooked the building’s evil twin thirty metres away. Señora Solano’s door was at the far end of the walkway. A small window next to the door was broken. Someone had repaired it with a piece of tattered cardboard fixed in place with sticky tape. She knocked and waited, thinking it might have been easier if she’d just phoned. But Adelina Solano had helped her by bringing the cache of letters to the university. The least Galíndez could do was give her the news about her daughter face to face. She knocked again, louder this time.

  ‘Looking for Adelina?’ An elderly lady with an Andalucían accent peered at her from the doorway of the flat next door.

  Galíndez decided not to reveal she was guardia. It might have a negative effect round here. ‘Have you seen her?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘No, querida, she was in an accident a couple of days ago.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘They took her to the hospital but she was already dead.’

  Galíndez looked at her in surprise. ‘She’s dead?’

  ‘A traffic accident, I heard. Are you a relative?’

  Galíndez decided she didn’t want the woman asking any more questions and pulled her ID from her pocket. ‘Guardia civil.’ The woman’s face changed at once. ‘How long did Señora Solano live here, ma’am?’ Galíndez asked, icily formal now.

  ‘About fifteen years. She moved here after her husband left her. Seems she had a daughter who died young and it sent her a bit funny. Far as I know, she spent most of her time writing letters.’ As Galíndez expected, producing her badge had curtailed the woman’s desire for small talk. ‘I must go,’ she muttered as she closed the door.

  Galíndez looked round at the deserted streets of anonymous buildings with half-closed shutters and sagging electricity cables. Adelina wrote letters? She was willing to bet they were linked to the niños robados. Maybe she had an address book. It would be interesting to know who the recipients of her letters were.

  Galíndez put her hands on the door of Adelina Solano’s flat and pushed. That wasn’t going to work. The door was in bad condition but it would need more than a push to open it. She sighed. Now she needed to call Mendez and ask for authorisation to get inside. They’d have to get a warrant, or contact Adelina’s relatives. You could spend days doing stuff like that. She put her hands on the door and pushed again, harder this time. The door gave a little, clearly the lock was badly fitted. Galíndez pursed her lips, weighing things up. All that bureaucracy just because of a cheap lock that might blow open in a puff of wind. She glanced round. There was no one on the landing and the street below was deserted.

  Galíndez kicked the door hard, just below the lock. She heard a dull crack as the door swung open, the ruined lock dangling from it. She slipped inside and closed the door behind her.

  Adelina’s flat had a sad air of neglect, the smell of cabbage and dust mixed with other more complex odours, none of them pleasant. A kitchen sink with a ring of well-established green mould. Beyond the kitchen was a living room, though Galíndez decided living might be too strong a word. Adelina Solano existed here, no more. A table and a single chair by the window, the metal blind drawn and locked. An electric fire by the wall, far too small to provide adequate warmth in a Madrid winter.

  On the wall above the fire was a large photograph of a young woman. Galíndez stared, realising she’d seen her before, lying on a mortuary trolley at HQ. It was the young hooker, Zora Ivanova, the girl who shared a DNA profile with Adelina’s dead – or not so dead – daughter, Leticia. Galíndez exhaled slowly. Adelina knew this thin-faced prostitute was her daughter. That was why she’d said she hoped to have more information for Galíndez. She’d been watching her daughter, photographing her. Galíndez’s eyes widened. She was collecting evidence.

  Next to the electric fire was a small heap of newspaper cuttings and Galíndez knelt to examine them. The first was from a Madrid daily, La Razón, a picture of a man outside an imposing building, holding his hand up in an unsuccessful attempt to block the cameras. She read the headline:

  Husband of the Minister of the Interior Attended Sex Parties

  Madrid 19 December 2009

  Juan Luis Calderón, husband of the interior minister Rosario Calderón, admitted today under intense media pressure that he attended parties organised by disgraced financier Ricardo Castro despite earlier denials. The parties were held for foreign businessmen interested in investing in Castro’s development projects. Witnesses have spoken of drunken affairs with prostitutes brought in to entertain prospective business partners.

  ‘It is true that I denied attending these events,’ Calderón said in a statement drafted by his lawyer. ‘I should have said I was present, though had I realised that these events involved call girls, lap dancers and, in some cases, the use of hard drugs, I would of course, have avoided them. My only wish was to help support a Spanish trade event aimed at creating jobs.’

  Calderón refused to say how many of these parties he had attended. He also denied knowing the whereabouts of Ricardo Castro, who has not been seen in public since the Guardia Civil raided his business HQ earlier in the month. Unofficial sources suggest Castro may be in hiding in Bolivia where he has a number of business interests. A brief statement from Minister of the Interior Rosario Calderón said her husband had committed no crime and that his private life was no one’s business but his. She herself had no knowledge of him attending these even
ts.

  Another piece taken from El Mundo carried a similar story, noting that the prime minister had expressed his confidence in the minister of the interior, emphasising that her integrity was beyond doubt no matter how ‘unfortunate’ her husband’s actions had been. Galíndez hadn’t heard about this, and no wonder, she realised, seeing the date. When this story had broken, she had still been in intensive care.

  As she got up, she saw a photograph almost hidden beneath the cuttings and picked it up. The photo was of a party, taken through a blurred crowd of revellers. A young woman leaning on a bar, a glazed expression on her face, next to her a man, resting his face against the girl’s hair, his arm wrapped around her waist.

  ‘Me cago en dios,’ Galíndez breathed. The girl was Zora Ivanova. And although the man’s face was partly hidden, it wasn’t enough to hide Señor Calderón’s identity. She took a plastic evidence bag from her pocket and put the cuttings and photograph inside.

  A jumble of letters lay on a cheap plastic table by the window and Galíndez leafed through them. All were dated some time during the past ten days. Adelina must have intended to post these in a batch, since alongside them was a packet of envelopes and a book of stamps. Galíndez took a look at a couple of letters. One was addressed to the King, Juan Carlos, the other to the president of Real Madrid Football Club. All were handwritten, beginning with the words ‘May God bless you’. She could imagine the reception these got from the recipients.

  In her letter to the King, Señora Solano noted his failure to reply to her previous correspondence, undoubtedly due to His Majesty’s enormous workload, she was sure. Perhaps now, however, his Royal Highness would be considerate enough to consider the case of her daughter Leticia, a baby stolen from her mother at birth against the laws of man and God. For years Señora Solano had searched for her child, sensing with a mother’s unerring instinct that she was still alive. And her persistence had finally paid off: she had found her, selling herself on the streets, the prisoner of a group of Bulgarian pimps. If His Majesty would only see fit to order the police to intervene...