The mantelpiece at the finca. That necklace.
Paco pulled at her arm. He was babbling again, more distraught than ever.
‘Have you called the police?’ she said.
‘Señora,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘I have no phone.’
‘Of course,’ she said, surprised at how together she sounded. ‘Mine’s at home. I’ll go back and call them. Will you be alright?’
Without waiting for his answer, she turned away and started running up the beach.
6
La policía didn’t seem too interested in the body. When, back at the bar, Anna got through on the phone, the woman took down the details and said they would send someone to talk to Paco, but her tone was more suited to the news of a squashed cat on the ring road. It happened quite regularly, the policewoman told her, migrant bodies washing up on beaches. Didn’t Anna know? They sailed over from Africa at night in flimsy, over-stuffed boats.
Anna hadn’t thought about it before, had never considered how the men arrived here, and found herself getting defensive. Yes, she replied, of course she knew that – but it wasn’t the case here. The body had been driven over from inland and dumped. Surely that deserved some attention?
She was also conscious of the hypocrisy of being frustrated by the police’s lack of concern whilst withholding a crucial, damning piece of information: that the string of leather pouches, tied too tightly around the man’s stomach, had until recently been hanging from her own fireplace. But, she thought, she must be careful. She needed to ensure the missile would hit the right target before setting it off.
Sitting on a stool in the shuttered bar, she nursed the knowledge, her thoughts circling the only narrative that made any sense. The dead man had been part of the group up at the finca; the owner of one of those five pairs of sandals she had seen lined up by the door. When he died – or was killed – the others had decided – or been ordered – to dump him down on the beach, to make it look as if he had drowned en route from Africa.
Her thoughts turned to the hole the men had been digging. Had they tried to bury the man before realizing it was too risky, and taken him down to the beach instead?
The bald scenario seemed plausible, but she could barely guess at the rest of the story. What had this man done to be killed? And what part had Simón played in it?
Two days after the discovery, the weekly expat newspaper was published. Anna bought a copy and, perching on the edge of the fountain, leafed through it. The paper devoted half-pages to stolen mopeds and disappointing pizzas, but failed to give the death more than a sentence in its In Brief column. It told Anna less than she already knew: a body had been found on Marea’s beach, believed to be an African migrant. No mention of his name, or that any further action was being taken.
Maybe things were going on behind the scenes, she thought. In some police mortuary, rubber-gloved hands were carefully unpeeling the thin leather on those pouches. Did they contain tightly folded identity papers? Perhaps the man had already been named, his family informed. Anna imagined a wailing woman in a dusty, remote village.
She stood up, threw the paper in the bin and walked across the square. It was another mild, ordinary day, the sky an insipid blue, the palm trees barely stirring. Sweeney out sweeping his terrace. The gift shop woman, leaning glumly in her doorway. The coin-operated child’s train, jiggling and flashing its lights as it solicited for custom. Caz doing her circuits, the dogs crowded around her like bodyguards. On a bench on the promenade sat Anna’s neighbours, Rose and David, who raised their hands in unison to greet her.
Anna leaned against the railings, looking down to the rocks at the far end of the beach. The body was long gone but the sand was still scored by tyre tracks. Would they have taken him away in an ambulance, at least, or was he just flung in the back of a truck? Further along the beach sat Paco’s blue boat and beside it Anna could see him crouched, tinkering with something. Should she go down and talk to him, check on how he was? No. There was no time. She felt fired by responsibility, her mind operating in a new high gear as she considered her next step.
Simón must have been involved. His rental of the finca had unsettled her from the start; and then there was the caginess and impatience during their phone calls; his warning to her about going up there. But if she sent police up to Yalo now, without any proof, wouldn’t the Africans invariably get the blame? She imagined an officer coming across that hole, just as she had; fingerprinting the mud-smudged light switches; sliding a spade in an evidence bag.
Anna looked out to sea, watching a gull drop silently down onto its flat, gilded surface. She needed to go back up to the finca and talk to the men, to find out what had happened. They’d talk to her, she was sure. She’d proved herself on New Year’s Eve, when she handed over the keys; she was kind, one of the good ones.
So, transport. Not Tommy. He was so amenable that if she asked him for a lift, explaining it was an emergency, he would probably stifle his confusion and hurt and take her. But the journey would be painful for both of them. She imagined ninety minutes of stilted small talk and his brave, dolphin smile; the inevitable questions that the ‘emergency’ would throw up.
She could call a proper cab, like before, except that she appeared to have reached the limit of her overdraft, and all she had to spend was the cash from Simón. There was just over 400 euros left, to last God knows how long. She couldn’t spend a quarter of that on one journey.
She looked down onto the beach steps. Unusually, there were no handbag sellers stationed there today; just a trio of young Spanish men, smoking and talking quietly. Smoke from their spliff drifted over in her direction. An idea came to her and she walked down the steps to where they stood.
‘Hey, can I ask you guys something?’ she said, in Spanish.
The men stopped talking and looked at her. Were they teenagers? In their twenties? They made no attempt to hide their joint.
‘Do any of you have a car?’ she said. ‘I need a ride.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said one of them, with close-cut wiry hair and very light-blue eyes. He laughed, looking at his friends. Ignoring him, Anna continued to appeal to the other two.
‘I can pay thirty euros,’ she said, and explained where the finca was.
‘I’ll do it,’ said one of them. He was tall and narrow and wore his hair shoulder-length and tucked behind the ears, like a nineties tennis player. He didn’t seem surprised by the request; maybe these sorts of deals were common in the post-crash Marea economy.
‘Petrol’s expensive,’ said the pale-eyed one.
‘Thirty-five, then,’ said Anna. ‘But that’s really all I’ve got.’ They could see she was telling the truth: the guy, her driver, gave an assenting shrug.
‘You want to go now?’ he said, and when she nodded he carefully handed an inch of spliff to his friend before leading Anna over to a Renault Clio, parked on the next street.
Anna started to climb in the back seat, before changing course and getting in the front. She didn’t want to appear aloof. The car interior was extremely neat; there were even little pinnies on the headrests to protect the fabric. As they buckled their seat belts, Anna said, ‘Sorry, I don’t know your name.’
‘Jaime,’ he said. He didn’t ask hers. He drove expertly through the town’s narrow streets, one arm laid along the open window. His long nose was flattened at the top, as if someone had pressed too hard on it when he was a baby, and his eyebrows looked as if they had been plucked in the middle. Is that what young men did these days?
As they reached the coast road, he asked if she minded some music, and slipped in a CD of something fast and urgent: a dance sub-genre Anna couldn’t name and wouldn’t choose to listen to. Now, though, the music suited her mission; it was a soundtrack to action.
As the roadside scenery slid by, Anna tried to prepare for what she might discover up at the finca, but was too fired-up for speculation. She couldn’t begin to bridge the gap between that body down on the rocks and a man
who had been living in her house; because she hadn’t known him in life, she couldn’t picture him laughing with his friends on the sofa, or looking out over the valley as he stirred his dinner on the hob, or stooping to plug in his phone charger at that irritatingly low socket next to the bookshelves. Her zeal to investigate his death felt oddly impersonal, but no less imperative for it
She’d have to think on her feet in order to get the men to tell her what had happened, but she felt confident about that. After all, if Simón was abusing them – if he had killed their friend – they would want the world to know.
Simón. What if he was there, at the finca?
For the first time that day, she felt a surge of anxiety. They were on the single-track road now, in the pine forest, stuck behind a lumbering water delivery truck. Anna glanced over at Jaime. He was nodding – in response to the music, she thought, rather than impatient at the delay. His lips were pursed and he looked closed off, on autopilot. For thirty-five euros, could she expect him to come to her aid?
Too soon, they were at the house. Anna asked Jaime to turn off the CD, and directed him to park on the verge, outside the gate.
‘Listen, I shouldn’t be long,’ she said. ‘But if I’m more than ten minutes, will you come and look for me? And if I shout, will you come?’
Jaime raised his eyebrows. His eyelids were large and convex, with a mauve tinge.
‘What’s going on in there?’
‘Nothing,’ said Anna. ‘But – will you?’
Jaime looked at her for a moment, and shrugged, in what Anna took to be assent. She smiled at him, bravely, before getting out and closing the car door as quietly as she could.
A flood of relief: Simón’s BMW was not there. The pick-up truck had also gone. Beyond the wild garden, the finca glowed pinkish in the late-afternoon sun. There was a nip in the air, and the crisp, clear day was softening into something more nuanced and mysterious. Around that time, the light in the valley changed continuously, the complexion of the mountains shifting between blue to peach to grey to rose. Above the house, an eagle circled. Anna could hear a faint strain of music. Had Jaime put on a CD? Maybe it was from another car, elsewhere.
Anna inched up the side of the path, avoiding the gravel, pressing herself against the rosemary bush. Her foot hit something unexpected and she yelped: looking down, she saw an empty rusted sardine can, discarded by one of the builders. Anna had found dozens of them when they had finally finished. Ahead, amongst the foliage, she glimpsed some white cloth, and froze, but then saw it was only a washing line, string up between two birch trees. A neatly pegged row of T-shirts, pants and trousers hung limp in the still air.
On the facade of the house, a nuthatch was pecking at the mortar between the stones, looking for caterpillars. The sitting-room shutters had been left open, and Anna approached the window from the side, cautiously peering in. The room appeared empty. She stepped lightly across to the doorstep and slowly turned the door handle. As the door swung open, she held onto its edge to stop it banging against the wall.
Standing on the threshold, Anna scanned the room. The dirt that had strewn the flagstones on her previous visit had been swept up, but the room was not as neat as it was before. The sheepskin rug that used to lie on the top of the Italian merchant’s chest had slipped off; one of the sofas was askew. A speckled jug, which she had once used to hold wild flowers, sat on the floor, beside a couple of glasses. A beard clipper – Michael’s – was plugged into a socket. There were still five pairs of sandals lined up against the wall. On the side table by the door was a little pile of papers. Michael’s sketches. The string and the pegs had gone from the wall. She stared at the empty space, before recalling the washing line outside. The pegs that had once held up Michael’s drawings of her high heels were now gripping strangers’ underwear.
She glanced over to the fireplace and . . .
‘Oh!’ she said, out loud.
There, hooked over Michael’s feeble sculpture, was the string of three little leather pouches.
Derailed, she stared at it. Then, she stepped over to the fireplace and reached out to touch one of the pouches. Her fingertips stroked the stiff, rough leather.
As she did so she heard the familiar sound of the toilet cistern flushing. Her heart jolted. She turned to see a man emerge from the bathroom.
Anna heard herself making a noise – not a gasp, but a strange, low groan, like a release of pressure.
They eyed each other. The man’s T-shirt was streaked with something dark. The old Anna would have started apologizing for her presence, but in that split second she knew she had to put on the cloak of someone different. After a long few seconds, she said, brightly, ‘Hello, I’m Anna. This is my house. I just wanted to check everything is OK?’
‘Don’t touch it,’ he said.
She withdrew her hand from the leather pouch and stepped back into the centre of the room.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
The man’s eyebrows knitted together. His body was wiry but his face round, with a neat beard. Was it he who used Michael’s clippers?
‘I call Mr Ruiz,’ he said.
‘No, no, no need to call Mr Ruiz. I just wanted to check you were settling in OK. I’ll go.’ She stepped backwards towards the door and the man moved forward, maintaining the same distance between them, ushering her out. Now all she could focus on was those dark marks on his T-shirt. What was in the bathroom?
She turned and walked a few paces down the path and then glanced back. The man stood in the doorway, watching her, his arm resting proprietorially on her door frame. She continued towards the gate, the crunch of gravel horribly loud. Then, she heard the music again, faint but distinct, and voices on top, carried on the breeze. She stopped to listen. It wasn’t coming from Jaime’s car, but from the other direction, beyond the almond grove.
She looked back at her house, at the man still standing in her doorway, and suddenly changed course, veering off to the right. She squeezed through a gap in the bushes, dropped down onto the terrace and ran to the almond grove. She wound between the trunks like a slalom skier, not looking back to see if the man was following, and burst out onto the dip, where she had seen the men digging.
Panting, she sunk to her knees, the scent of damp, mineral soil filling her lungs. Before her, three men in stained tops stood, startled, beside a mound of earth. Nearby lay some machinery, and a large coiled mound of plastic piping. She could see the hole properly now. It wasn’t a grave: unless the bodies were to be buried vertically. It was around four feet in diameter, with ropes and a pulley system feeding into it. As she stared, a pair of hands emerged and gripped its edges, and a man hauled himself up, as if he were being born from the earth. It was the one who had come in for the keys on New Year’s Eve, Almamy, his face flecked with mud. He scrambled to his feet and joined the others, staring at her. Inappropriately jaunty music played from one of their phones, which lay on a pile of clothes and water bottles.
‘Hola,’ she said, eventually, stupidly.
She appealed to Almamy. ‘What are you doing?’
One of the other men said, quickly, ‘No comprende.’
‘You speak Spanish?’ she said.
They all shook their heads. The music continued to drift. One of them reached down to turn it off, and, she noticed, kept hold of the phone.
‘What is this?’ she said, pointing at the hole.
The one holding the phone said, ‘You talk to Mr Ruiz.’
He started to scroll through the numbers.
‘No,’ Anna said, putting out a hand. ‘Please. We don’t need to call him.’
She heard a sound behind her and looked to see the hostile man from the house approaching. He stopped a little way from her, as if to guard her exit through the grove. She looked back towards the hole and the still, tense men around it, and then away from them, towards the chicken coop, as she tried to collect her thoughts. The coop’s wire was dented, a small hole under one side the legacy of the
fox that dug in to kill their hens. Their droppings were still there on the ground, dried – it reminded her of the globules of paint on the earth in Michael’s studio. Amazing that they were still preserved, out here in the open, after two years. Had there really been no rain since then?
Then she looked back at the hole; the pulley system; inhaled again that unfamiliar scent of damp, sweet earth.
‘It’s a well, right?’ she said. ‘For water?’
The men glanced at each other.
‘Why here?’ she said.
‘No comprende.’
One of them, at the back, very young, glanced nervily behind him, towards the hill, as if expecting someone. Almamy pulled up his T-shirt to wipe his face, and the sight of his stomach reminded Anna of the body on the beach and the leather string; the original reason she had come up here. But there was no time to think about that now.
She changed tack.
‘Listen,’ she said, addressing Almamy. ‘I know Simón is not a good man . . .’
‘Mr Ruiz is a good man,’ he said.
‘You don’t have to say that to me,’ said Anna, suddenly desperate. ‘I’m not trying to get you into trouble. It’s not your fault. It’s just – this is my home. It’s my home. You understand?’
‘It is not your home,’ said the man with the neat beard from the house, who had stepped forward so he was beside her.
‘Yes,’ she said, carefully. ‘This is my home.’
‘You do not come from here. From Spain.’
‘Oh no,’ she said, understanding. ‘No. I come from England. But this is my home here in Spain.’
Another silence. The very young one again glanced behind him, towards the hill.
‘Where are you all from?’ she said, finally.
‘Africa,’ said the man with the neat beard.
‘Which country in Africa?’
‘Africa,’ he repeated slowly, spelling out each syllable.
‘You must miss home,’ she said, ignoring the mockery in his tone.
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