Confessional

by Anthony Masters

  ‘I didn’t have any evidence. I still don’t. But I believe that those who killed Eduardo and Blasco and your colleague … are also going to kill me.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I’ve been … There’s powerful people on Molino. I know a great deal about them.’

  ‘I bet you do,’ sneered Larche. ‘It’s your stock in trade, isn’t it? Bullying, perversion – extortion?’

  ‘Whatever you say about me, señor – it doesn’t concern me in the least. I’m going to leave the island tonight.’

  ‘No one’s allowed to leave,’ said Larche sharply. ‘You’ll be arrested.’

  ‘I have my wits about me.’ Lorenzo was quiet now, more in control of the situation. ‘I know where to go to earth.’

  Larche advanced on him threateningly, trying to keep his confidence intact. Suddenly he was beginning to lose his grip. Was Lorenzo genuinely afraid? Or was he simply winding him up? ‘You’re not going anywhere. This interview isn’t finished yet.’ Larche spoke softly but he was sure that the tension inside him was all too obvious. ‘I’ll have you arrested,’ he continued, ‘if you don’t stop pissing me about.’

  Lorenzo looked at him appraisingly and Larche had the impression that he was weighing him up, seeing where he could find a weakness. He’s like that, thought Larche. A man who looked for weaknesses and found them. He had made a profession of it.

  ‘If you tell me the truth I’ll see you’re protected,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not telling you anything.’ Lorenzo shrugged with sullen challenge. ‘I don’t trust you – and I don’t want to trust you.’ For once he looked considerably shaken, and Larche became even more convinced that Lorenzo genuinely feared for his life – the only honest emotion he had expressed so far.

  ‘Try me.’ Larche sat down on the edge of the table. Lorenzo looked up at him warily and then began to speak softly and quickly, as if he had known exactly what he was going to say all the time.

  ‘I was given a powerful position by a powerful man.’

  ‘Did you abuse your position?’ cut in Larche sharply.

  ‘The people here were lazy. Eduardo wanted me to revive a dead industry – so I was tough. Very tough. It worked. But Eduardo wanted more of me than just running a fishing industry.’

  ‘Immediately?’ asked Larche.

  Lorenzo shook his head. ‘Eventually.’

  ‘He had an affair with you?’

  ‘Yes. But I procured for him too. It was not difficult – Sebastia always had a certain reputation.’

  ‘I’m amazed that Eduardo’s parents allowed such a situation to exist.’ Larche was conscious of sounding pompous but Lorenzo didn’t seem to notice.

  They all wanted something out of it,’ he replied carefully. ‘The rich must have outlets. Sebastia can be straight – or not, as the case may be.’

  ‘So Eduardo paid for Sebastia’s services? Your services?’

  ‘He paid very well.’

  ‘And Salvador? He’s just a child. Did Eduardo know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anita?’

  ‘I’m sure she doesn’t.’

  ‘So how did it happen?’

  ‘He came to me.’

  ‘A young boy like that.’

  ‘He wanted to learn.’

  ‘And you taught him,’ said Larche contemptuously.

  ‘He didn’t need any teaching.’ The laugh in Lorenzo’s voice was particularly unpleasant.

  Larche had a new thought – one that he knew should have occurred to him earlier and had been obscured by his sense of outrage. ‘Did you do this to Salvador because you had learnt to hate his father?’

  Lorenzo grinned. ‘The boy had a particular yearning …’

  ‘Which you encouraged.’

  He shrugged. ‘You have to realize that our little Salvador has something of a father complex – as well as certain other problems. His own father was a remote figure – you and I are not.’

  ‘You and I?’ Larche repeated.

  ‘You don’t wish to be associated with me, señor? You don’t wish to share a bond?’

  ‘I would find that very distasteful,’ replied Larche, trying to work out what he was getting at.

  ‘Listen – he was drawn to me.’

  ‘You brought out the deviant in him,’ said Larche bluntly.

  ‘That’s why he hated me.’ Lorenzo stared ahead woodenly for a moment. ‘That’s why he loved me as well. And he sees a father figure in you too, Señor Larche.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘He thinks you’ll make it “all right” for him.’

  ‘You hated Eduardo because he had finally been forced to sack you – after you’d been overreaching yourself for years,’ said Larche, deliberately changing the subject, trying to divert his opponent from what he now considered was a well-thought-out script.

  ‘I was very angry. But he was still more useful to me alive. I mean – I can be very persuasive. I’m not your killer, señor. I just don’t have the necessary powers. But I’m afraid now. Very afraid.’

  ‘I can see that.’ Larche paused. ‘Don’t you have any more to tell me? So far you’ve told me nothing.’ Was he going to confess – just like the others? It was bound to be a tissue of lies, but then weren’t all the other confessions he had heard manipulative?

  Lorenzo was silent. Then he began to speak very slowly, clearly, enunciating each word as if he was on the edge of some mental precipice. ‘Those bastard priests …’

  Are we still on the script, wondered Larche, or is something genuine about to creep in?

  ‘I had a vocation – believe it or not.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You didn’t know I was called, did you?’ Lorenzo seemed anxious to shock.

  ‘To be a priest?’ Larche’s surprise, although feigned, was studiedly genuine.

  ‘I might have gone to the seminary and taken Orders. But I would more likely have wanted to stay on in Fuego – in the community.’

  ‘You? At Fuego?’

  Lorenzo smiled. ‘I’ve taken you by surprise, señor. Haven’t I?’

  ‘Yes – yes, you have,’ he lied.

  ‘But they threw me out.’ His voice shook, but Larche couldn’t work out whether all this was clumsy deception or at least an attempt at the truth.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘No reason.’

  ‘There must have been one,’ Larche encouraged.

  ‘I was told I didn’t have a vocation, but I’d set my heart on serving God.’

  ‘You were very bitter?’ Larche wondered if Lorenzo was actually levelling with him now. There was a conviction to all this – a lack of glibness that made him pay more attention.

  ‘Señor – I was born in a small fishing village down the coast. My father left when I was a baby, my mother killed herself when I was ten. I went into an orphanage in Girona which was brutal and … I don’t even want to think of what happened there. When I was old enough, fifteen, I left and went on the fishing boats and most nights I slept in a store room. I can tell you without self-pity that I had no one, señor, no one and nowhere to call my own.’ He paused and looked across at Larche, as if he was trying to make up his mind whether to continue or not. Then he plunged on. ‘Not only did I learn a good deal about the fishing industry but also about how to maximize its efficiency. That was easy; it was as lazily and incompetently run as the children’s home. Then I saw her.’

  ‘Saw who?’ asked Larche, mystified.

  ‘The Holy Mother.’

  There was a wary silence while Larche wondered how to react.

  ‘The Virgin Mary,’ he repeated as if he had not been understood the first time. ‘It was very early, a misty morning in late spring and there was no wind at all. The sea was utterly calm, señor, and Ivan had cut the engines while he put the nets down. But for some reason he didn’t do it immediately. Instead he went into the wheelhouse and lit a cigarette – as if … as if he was going off-stage. Then I saw her – on the
water, coming out of the mist. She was walking on a very, very slight swell and the mist closed in until all I could see was her. She had a cormorant in her hand and she drew the bird up so that it fluttered against her cheek. Then she smiled and spoke to me.’

  Again he paused but Larche, who appeared to be concentrating intently, said nothing.

  ‘She spoke to me. She told me to go to Fuego – that I had a calling. I was nineteen. When she went it was as if time had been suspended. Perhaps it was. Next day I went to Fuego and told the Abbot what had happened. I don’t know whether he believed in what I had seen and heard, but I know he didn’t doubt my sincerity. A few days later I brought over my few personal belongings and joined the community as a novice. A year later I took my first vows.’ He lit a cigarette and stared reflectively at Larche. ‘Do you believe me, señor?’

  ‘Why should I do otherwise?’ Larche replied easily. ‘How long did you stay in the community?’

  ‘Until I was told I had no vocation.’

  ‘There was no other reason?’

  ‘None that I know of.’ Lorenzo was watching him steadily and Larche had the feeling that he was challenging him.

  ‘Did you … did you not become … did you have a relationship with another brother?’ He cursed himself for fumbling the words.

  ‘Who told you that?’ said Lorenzo quickly, but he didn’t wait for a reply. ‘People regard me here as some kind of devil’s spawn.’ He laughed. ‘It amuses me.’

  ‘But did you?’

  ‘No, señor. How many times do I have to tell you? They made it clear that I had to leave, but I took my time. In the end Blasco Tomas gave me a contact in a boatyard in Rosas and I got a fetch and carry job. I did well – well enough to take responsibility and so I learnt a new trade.’ He ground out his cigarette. ‘Then I had two kinds of expertise, señor. Fishing and boat-building. But I had lost the centre of my life and I was so bitterly unhappy that I often thought of committing suicide. Then Blasco contacted me again.’

  ‘He contacted you?’ asked Larche in surprise.

  ‘Yes. He introduced me to Eduardo. He wanted someone to help start up the fishing industry on Molino again and he thought I was the man. Eduardo agreed. I think he was right.’

  Larche nodded slowly, the new realization creeping into his mind with traumatic stealth. So Blasco’s hatred for his brother was that intense. It hardly seemed credible, but what he had done was to plant a time-bomb in the shape of lonely, damaged, rejected Lorenzo and stand aside to let events take their course. If this was true then Larche was appalled. Or was the statement part of Lorenzo’s script? Nothing was what it seemed. For a minute he stared blankly at Lorenzo, his thoughts racing, then he was suddenly jerked back into the present. If Lorenzo was so afraid, why the hell had he waited for him to arrive? Why hadn’t he gone to earth already, old fox that he undoubtedly was?

  ‘Why are you still here?’ he asked. ‘Why haven’t you bolted?’

  ‘I knew you’d come here eventually. I wanted to tell you what had happened – why it had happened.’ The glib statement was made as easily as Larche suspected it would be.

  ‘That’s what everyone’s done. They’ve come to me – almost as they’d come to a priest – all with their carefully prepared confessionals.’ Larche paused threateningly. ‘Fortunately, I am able to be analytical. Perhaps a priest is that way too.’

  Lorenzo smiled. ‘The only difference is that you can hand out retribution. Maybe that’s what they’re all looking for.’

  ‘I doubt it. Six Hail Marys are a little easier than a life sentence,’ Larche observed.

  Lorenzo shrugged. ‘You’d be surprised how barren life is without the Church’s approval, señor.’

  Chapter 11

  Something stirred in a recess of Larche’s mind. How all-consuming was this killer’s obsessive hatred? Surely those killings must be the work of someone whose anger had been built up over such a long period that it had eventually become frenzy. What had Byron written? Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste, but they detest at leisure. And leisure had been an enforced pursuit in varying degrees for those that had lived on Molino. Anita, for instance, unless she spent the rest of her life touring, might have to face considerable periods of watching the Mediterranean. So would Lorenzo – wherever he tried to hide himself – for he would not be able to come out of hiding. Larche considered two important points. The first was that his investigation could well be getting somewhere at last. The second was that he was determined not to allow Lorenzo to leave Molino. He held too many secrets and Larche was determined to extract them from him.

  ‘I’ve enjoyed the power I was given,’ said Lorenzo quietly, breaking into his thoughts. ‘Enjoyed it very much. But I didn’t kill anyone, señor. Eduardo was far more useful to me alive.’

  ‘And Blasco?’ asked Larche gently.

  ‘And Blasco.’

  ‘Did you not feel he played some part in your dismissal from the community?’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t.’

  ‘You hate the Church, don’t you?’

  ‘For what they did? Yes, I hate them, but it’s an old, dormant hatred.’

  ‘Is it so dormant?’

  Lorenzo looked at him with a sudden wariness and a rush of adrenalin flooded through Larche. ‘I don’t understand you,’ he said guardedly.

  ‘I think you do. Foolishly Bishop Carlos has been paying you to protect Anita’s so-called ignorance of Eduardo’s … weaknesses. You must have been enjoying that.’

  Lorenzo shrugged. ‘I’ve been receiving financial gifts.’

  ‘Calvino will arrest you for extortion,’ said Larche quietly. ‘On my evidence.’

  ‘You’ve got no evidence.’ Lorenzo was completely calm but Larche could detect the flicker of panic in his eyes. I can break him, he thought triumphantly. I can break him. Now.

  ‘I assure you I have.’

  ‘The Bishop – he can prove nothing.’

  ‘He can testify against you. You’ll be put away for a long time, Lorenzo – and it’s going to be much worse than the orphanage.’

  ‘Then I shall make public everything I know about Eduardo Tomas. It’ll be a national scandal.’ Lorenzo’s voice rose. ‘It’ll destroy her.’

  ‘I’m not sure she doesn’t know already,’ Larche said quietly.

  ‘Know?’ Lorenzo laughed contemptuously. ‘She has persuaded herself not to know anything; she denies the truth completely. She’s crazy, but she won’t be able to hide away from the press. Not once it’s out.’

  ‘But it won’t be out,’ said Larche. ‘There’s no chance of that.’

  ‘Why not?’ Again the flicker of panic in his eyes.

  ‘Because I can stop you.’

  ‘How?’ Lorenzo’s voice shook and Larche knew that he was winning.

  ‘If you destroy Eduardo’s reputation, you’ll also destroy Anita. She may be blinkered, but she doesn’t deserve that. And you’ll destroy her for revenge.’ Larche held up a hand as Lorenzo tried to interrupt. ‘Listen to me. I can understand how much you hate the establishment of the Church – of the Tomas family – of power and authority in general. You’re just a pawn. But you lost the game, Lorenzo. You played on their weaknesses, helped to turn Sebastia from a peasant Bacchanalia into something much more professional.’

  ‘They owed me,’ he muttered. ‘But I didn’t kill them.’

  ‘No – you didn’t,’ said Larche. ‘I know who murdered them.’

  Larche’s voice was flat; the knowledge gave him no satisfaction – not even for Alison’s sake. The one name rang like a clarion in Larche’s mind and he owed the sudden immediacy of his deduction to the thoughts he had been having while Lorenzo had been part-manipulating, part-confiding. He felt neither triumph nor elation; instead, he was stale, mentally exhausted, certain that this complex investigation was now almost at an end. He had heard the conflicting confessions and tried to disentangle one from the other, and now that he understood Lo
renzo the solution was appallingly obvious.

  Larche spoke slowly and carefully, determined to stay in control of the situation. ‘Listen to me – you’re going to go down anyway, and not just for blackmail. I’m sure there’s going to be a lot more you can be done for under Spanish law.’

  ‘There’s a lot more can come out.’ He smiled a shadowy satyr smile, but his voice lacked conviction.

  ‘No. You’ll do a short sentence if you keep quiet, but if a word about Eduardo or the activities here leaks out – then you’ll be in for the rest of your life.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ he said confidently. ‘You just haven’t got the authority.’

  ‘Maybe not. But the Spanish security services have. They won’t want any of this to get out and they’ll lean on you accordingly, won’t they? I can see that I’m convincing you.’

  Lorenzo lit another cigarette. ‘If I don’t talk, her artist friend will.’

  ‘Yes – I imagined you two got together; you must have been drawn to each other like magnets. But I can assure you that Morrison will be effectively leant on too. His career as a portrait painter to the rich and famous would be finished. Don’t get me wrong, Lorenzo, I’m talking good sense.’

  Nevertheless, Larche was very surprised to see him nod – to see the look of acceptance on his face. Had he really convinced him?

  ‘How long would I get?’ he asked indistinctly.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Guess?’ Suddenly he was pleading.

  ‘Five years.’

  ‘God.’

  ‘And if you talk – it will be much, much longer. I can assure you of that.’

  Again he nodded, his leathery features creased in pain and his hand flattening his thick black hair.

  ‘Do you really understand me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you must come with me.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To Calvino.’

  ‘I’ll go into a cell tonight then?’

  ‘I doubt if you’d get bail. You’re too dangerous outside.’ Larche put as much authority into his words as possible, knowing that he was really bluffing now.