‘And would you be willing – for my sake, and for the sake of my family’s honour – to talk to Chief Inspector Paniatowski?’
The old woman hesitated for a moment, then took a deep breath and said, ‘I will do it as long as you are by my side.’
‘I will be by your side,’ Robert Martinez promised.
FOURTEEN
With a large man like Charlie Woodend as a passenger, Ruiz’s little Seat 500 made even harder work of the mountain roads than it had the last time Paco had visited Val de Montaña, but finally it drew to an exhausted halt in the village square, close to Don Ramon’s bar.
‘It will be harder for me to question the old men if you are there,’ Paco said, as they crossed the square.
‘I understand that,’ Woodend said, ‘but if I’m to be of any bloody use at all in this investigation, I need to soak up the atmosphere, and watch the men’s faces as they talk.’
Paco grinned. Woodend had been famous for ‘soaking up the atmosphere’ back in Lancashire, Monika Paniatowski had told him. He’d even had a nickname – Cloggin’-it Charlie – which acknowledged the fact that rather than stay in his office and coordinate the investigation – as many chief inspectors did – Woodend would walk endlessly around the environs of the crime until, as if by magic, he began to gain an understanding of exactly what had gone on.
‘Any information we can gather up will be useful,’ Woodend said, ‘but the vital thing to find out is whether or not this lieutenant – or one of the other two soldiers killed by Javier Martinez – had a close enough friendship with another of the soldiers for that soldier to want to seek revenge, even after all this time.’
Paco’s grin widened. ‘Is that right?’ he asked. ‘I would not have known that. But then, I have never been a policeman.’
Woodend grinned too – though his grin was somewhat sheepish, rather than amused.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been the boss for so long that it’s a little hard to get used to having an equal partner.’
The two old men – Don Ramon and Don Pedro – were at the same table they had been sitting at the last time Paco paid a visit.
Don Ramon smiled an almost-toothless greeting at Paco, then looked with suspicion at Woodend.
‘This is Carlito, an old friend of mine,’ Paco said to Don Ramon, in Spanish. ‘If you trust me, then you can trust him.’
The old bar owner was silent for some time, then he said, ‘And does this Carlito of yours play dominoes?’
‘Yes,’ Paco replied.
‘Does he take it seriously?’
‘He takes it very seriously indeed. In fact, you would almost think he was Spanish himself.’
Don Ramon gave a nod which looked only half-convinced. ‘Ask Carlito if he would like to play a few games,’ he said.
Paco passed the information on to Woodend.
‘It is a kind of audition,’ he said. ‘They want to see if you are the kind of man they can talk to.’
‘Would it put them in a more receptive mood if I lost the game?’ Woodend asked.
‘It might,’ Paco replied, ‘but it will depend on how you lose. These men are experts. If you lose badly, they will take you for a fool, and tell you nothing. If you try to throw the game, they will see you as dishonest, and also tell you nothing.’
‘So I should play as well as I can?’
‘You should play as if your life depended on it.’
Woodend nodded. ‘That seriously, hey? Then I’d better take my coat off,’ he said, removing his hairy sports jacket and draping it over a chair.
Don Pedro won the first game, and Don Ramon won the next two, but by now Woodend was getting a measure of their playing styles, and won the fourth.
At the end of half an hour’s fast and furious playing, when Woodend was one game ahead, Don Ramon pushed the dominoes to one side, and turned to Paco.
‘Carlito is an excellent player,’ he said, ‘but on a good day, I still think I could beat him.’
‘I’m sure you could,’ Paco said.
Don Ramon grinned. ‘That was the right answer,’ he said. ‘We are ready to answer your questions about Elena now.’
‘We have no more questions about Elena,’ Paco said. ‘Today, we are more interested in those soldiers who came to Val de Montaña just after the Civil War ended.’
‘What has this to do with Elena’s legacy from her uncle in the United States?’ Don Ramon asked.
‘Nothing at all,’ Paco admitted. ‘We are now investigating something quite different, though it is still related to this village.’
‘So that is what you are – a shepherd who also keeps pigs,’ Don Ramon said.
Paco laughed. ‘And you are a bar owner who sells sardines,’ he said. ‘In both our lines of work, Don Ramon, it is sometimes necessary to have more than one string to your bow.’
‘That’s true,’ the other man agreed. ‘And what does this second string of yours involve?’
‘I am sorry to tell you that Javier Martinez, who has lived in England since the end of the Civil War, has been murdered.’
‘It is sad news,’ said Don Ramon, nodding gravely, ‘though in a way, he was lucky – as we all are – to have lived so long.’
‘We think that his murderer was a Spaniard,’ Paco said.
‘I do not understand why you should think that,’ Don Ramon said. ‘Are there not many more Englishmen in England than there are Spaniards?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then wouldn’t it perhaps be wiser to consider the possibility that it was one of them who killed Javier?’
‘Under most circumstances, what you have just said would undoubtedly be true,’ Paco agreed, ‘but you see, Javier Martinez was garrotted.’
‘Then perhaps you are right, and it was a Spaniard who killed him,’ Don Ramon said. ‘And do you think that this murderer might have been one of the soldiers who came to this village?’
‘It is a possibility – especially since, before he left the village, Javier killed three of their comrades,’ Paco said.
‘Thirty-six years is a very long time for someone to hold a grudge,’ Don Ramon said.
‘Are you saying that you yourself do not hold grudges against the enemy any more?’ Paco asked. ‘Are you suggesting that if one of those soldiers walked into the village today, you would greet him as a brother, clap him on the shoulder and buy him a drink?’
‘I might buy him a drink – but only if I had poisoned that drink first,’ Don Ramon said.
‘So perhaps one of those soldiers felt the same way about Javier.’
‘Perhaps he did.’
‘We would like to track them down, and if one of them is guilty, we would bring him to justice.’
‘Much chance there is of that in Francisco Franco’s Spain,’ Don Ramon said dismissively.
‘But this is not Franco’s Spain any more,’ Paco pointed out. ‘Perhaps things will change. And if they do not, did I say anything about bringing him to justice through the courts?’
‘You would kill him?’ Don Ramon asked.
Paco laughed. ‘Not me. I’m too old for that. But I have two or three young friends who might be willing to oblige me.’
‘I cannot remember the fascists’ names,’ Don Ramon said. ‘Perhaps I never knew them – but I do know that most of them – including the lieutenant – came from a small town called Arco de Cañas in Burgos province.’
‘And how they boasted about it,’ Don Pedro said. ‘“Arco de Cañas is a grand town,”’ he continued in a voice that was not quite his own. ‘“Arco de Cañas has four shops.” “Peasants like you would be completely lost in a town like Arco de Cañas”.’
‘They treated us all like dogs,’ Don Ramon said. ‘They locked us in a barn, you know.’
‘I thought you told me they didn’t lock you and Don Pedro up, because you were too old to have taken part in the fighting,’ Paco said.
‘We were there in spirit, if not in body,’ Don Ramon said, his dignity clearly offended.
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‘Of course you were,’ Paco agreed hastily.
‘They gave us a slop bucket, but when it was full, and we asked if they could empty it, they laughed at us. They said we were almost animals ourselves, and we should be used to living in shit. And when they took one of us to the priest’s house to be questioned, they tied his hands so tightly behind his back that they almost cut off the blood.’
All the time the old men had been speaking, Paco had been providing Woodend with a running translation, and Woodend himself had done no more than just listen, but now he said, ‘Their hands were tied behind their backs?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you make sure that’s what Don Ramon said?’
Paco did.
‘It’s what he said,’ he confirmed.
But that just didn’t square with what Monika had told him, over the phone, about Javier Martinez’s escape, Woodend thought. According to her, Javier had said that he had stunned the lieutenant with a large crucifix.
‘Ask him why they didn’t tie Javier Martinez’s hands behind his back,’ he said to Paco.
‘They did tie his hands behind his back,’ Don Ramon said, when Paco had translated. ‘I saw him myself, being marched down the street, and there is no question about where his hands were.’
‘Then if that’s true,’ Woodend said, when Paco had translated, ‘it’s not Martinez’s enemy we should be looking for – it’s his thwarted business partner.’
‘We have to start with the assumption that the gold isn’t just a legend, but that it actually existed,’ Woodend said to Ruiz, as they drove back towards Calpe.
‘Do we?’ Paco said. ‘And why is that?’
‘Because if the gold existed, then everything that I’m about to say makes sense,’ Woodend told him. ‘But if it doesn’t exist, then absolutely nothing that went on in that village one night in 1939 makes any sense at all.’
‘I’m listening,’ Paco said.
‘With his hands tied behind his back, it would have been impossible for Javier Martinez to escape from the priest’s house on his own, so he must have had help,’ Woodend said, ‘and that help couldn’t have come from any of his fellow villagers, because all the young, able-bodied ones were locked up in the barn.’
‘So it must have been one of the soldiers who helped him,’ Paco said.
‘Exactly,’ Woodend agreed. ‘We know that the lieutenant wanted the gold for himself, and maybe this soldier – let’s call him José for the sake of convenience – had the same idea. So José strikes a deal with Martinez. He will help him to escape, in return for a share of the gold.’
‘But there are quite a lot of soldiers guarding the barn, so the only time such an escape will be possible is when Martinez is in the priest’s house,’ Paco said, following his reasoning.
‘Of course, the lieutenant and the other two soldiers will be witnesses to that escape, so they will have to die, but José’s so hungry for the gold that that thought doesn’t bother him. Anyway, the whole thing goes like clockwork – José shoots the three soldiers, and lets Martinez go, taking the gold with him.’
‘Why did Javier Martinez tell Monika such a different story about how he managed to get away?’ Paco asked.
‘Because he couldn’t admit he was helped by one of the soldiers without revealing the reason why he was helped. And he doesn’t want anybody – and I mean anybody – to know about the gold.’
‘Perhaps that is what happens,’ Paco said, slightly dubiously. ‘But won’t the other soldiers wonder how Martinez has managed to escape?’
‘Yes, they will, but they know the villagers couldn’t have helped him, and it never crosses their minds that one of their own comrades – a man they’ve fought side by side with – would have killed the lieutenant and the other two soldiers. And so they come up with some other explanation. They decide – I don’t know – that Martinez tricked the lieutenant into untying him, or that whoever had tied his hands behind his back hadn’t made a very good job of it, and he’d managed to get free. None of their explanations will have entirely satisfied them, but then, in a war, so many things are left unexplained.’
Paco nodded. ‘That makes sense,’ he said. ‘I can think of many unexplained occurrences in my war.’
‘Once Martinez has gone, José sets fire to the priest’s house to create a distraction,’ Woodend continued.
‘Why doesn’t José keep the gold himself?’ Paco asked.
‘He daren’t run the risk. As things stand, there’s nothing to tie him to the murders, but if the other soldiers find out he’s got the gold, they’ll put two and two together immediately. And can you imagine what they’ll do to him then? It won’t be a quick death, by any means. Besides, Martinez must be a clever talker to have got him to agree to the plan in the first place, and he’s somehow managed to convince José that he’ll keep to his half of the deal.’
‘But he doesn’t.’
‘No.’
‘So why doesn’t José track him down? After all, Javier was living in England under his own name.’
‘You and I know that he was living in England, but José doesn’t. He probably thinks that since Javier is rich enough to live wherever he wants to, he will have settled in a country as much like Spain as possible – because that’s just what José himself would have done in the same circumstances.’
‘Somewhere in South America?’
‘Exactly! And remember, José isn’t much more sophisticated than the people of Val de Montaña – he comes from a town which has only four shops – and he has no idea how to set about searching the world for Martinez.’
‘But he does have one link with the gold – Elena!’ Paco said.
‘Spot on! He is sure that Martinez will contact her eventually, and he keeps watch on her for nearly four decades.’
‘There is probably no other country in the world where that would happen,’ Paco said reflectively. ‘But this is Spain, and, like all Spaniards, José has within him all those characteristics which could make him a great man or a fool – and sometimes both. For him, it is no longer about the gold. Martinez has made a dupe of him – has damaged his pride – and he will not rest until he has had his revenge.’
‘And finally, his patience is rewarded,’ Woodend said. ‘Elena books a flight to England, and he follows her. And once she’s led him to Whitebridge, she’s no longer of any use to him. In fact, she may actually be a danger to his plans, because Martinez will realize that if Elena can find him, José might, too, and that will put him on his guard. So the first opportunity he gets, he kills her. Then he tortures Martinez to make him reveal where the gold is, and once he has it – or even if he doesn’t – he garrottes the man who has betrayed him.’
‘It is an elaborate theory …’ Paco began.
‘Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once had Sherlock Holmes say, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,”’ Woodend interrupted him.
‘I had not finished what I was saying,’ Paco replied, a little sharply.
‘Sorry, I’m acting like I’m the boss again, aren’t I?’ Woodend said.
‘Or an excited five-year-old,’ Paco said wryly.
‘Yes, that’s more like it,’ Woodend admitted. ‘So what were you about to say?’
‘That it’s an elaborate theory, and elaborate theories have a habit of being widely off the mark,’ Paco told him, ‘but that in this case, Charlie, I am convinced you’re right.’
‘So where does that leave us?’ Woodend asked.
‘It leaves us making an excursion to Arco de Cañas,’ Paco said.
Martin Cheavers, Her Britannic Majesty’s Vice Consul to the Costa Blanca, was holding the telephone in one hand, and scratching vigorously under his left armpit with the other.
‘Yes, Charlie,’ he said into the phone. ‘I see … Do you really think that’s wise? … Well, you be careful. And that goes for Paco, too.’
He hung up and saw, with some an
noyance, that his new assistant – who went by the improbable name of Gerwain Harrington Benson – was looking at him questioningly.
Cheavers had become Vice Consul in the 1950s, at which time he’d been running a largely dormant import–export company. It was a post he had more or less drifted into.
‘I suspect the only reason the government wanted a consulate at all was to show that Britain was still a world power – which, of course, it self-evidently wasn’t,’ he’d tell his dinner guests, ‘and that the reason it chose to bestow the singular honour on me was because I was the only person in the entire region who was even vaguely suitable.’
In the fifties, his duties had involved little more than signing the odd letter and showing the occasional British VIP around. But the tourist boom in the sixties had ended all that, and soon he seemed to be spending half his time persuading the Spanish police that the drunken Brits they had in their cells were good lads really, and had just got a bit overexcited.
As the tourist industry had grown even more, he had acquired a staff. It had been locally employed at first, but then the Foreign Office had begun sending out bright young men from London on a one-year attachment.
‘It’ll be a good experience for them, Martin,’ an official from Whitehall had explained to him over the phone. ‘You can train them up.’
But what he had really meant, Cheavers decided, was that they could keep an eye on him – the maverick whom the FO had employed when it didn’t really seem to matter, and whom it now couldn’t quite find the right excuse to get rid of.
‘So who was that you were just talking to on the phone?’ asked his new deputy/handler.
‘That,’ said Cheavers, ‘was Charlie Woodend.’
‘Who’s Charlie Woodend?’
‘How long have you been here?’ Cheavers asked.
‘A couple of weeks.’
‘And you still don’t know who Charlie Woodend is? Haven’t you read the files?’
‘No, I’ve been … er … too busy absorbing the culture,’ Harrington Benson said.
‘Absorb too much culture, and you’ll wreck your liver,’ Cheavers told him sharply. ‘Well, then, for your information, young man, Charlie Woodend is one half of the best Anglo-Spanish old-age pensioner detective agency on the whole of the Costa Blanca.’
Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire Page 15