Death in the Sun (23 page)

Staffe is totally hemmed in. The bench beneath is hard and his knees are tucked to his chin. He is pressed from behind and into his sides. Cigar smoke billows from left and right, and the heat is unbearable. From time to time, the crowd roars, shifts, and he can barely breathe. The band strikes up and the old woman in front turns, offers him a cake from a large oval platter.

The
picador
runs at the bull at full speed in short strides on the balls of his feet, adjusting his angle of attack as the bull moves. Just yards away, he gets the bull in his sights, raises his hands high, and vaults, planting the two sharpened
picos
into the bull’s back in mid-air. The crowd whoops. The bull, confused and with seams of blood coming from the two wounds, doesn’t know which way to turn. Staffe’s two wounds pinch. He thinks about the ways he has been goaded in this convalescence – since Jadus Golding delivered his twin strikes to Staffe’s torso.

After the kill – clumsy and protracted – the man on his right pats Staffe on the back and says, ‘Now, Tomas! A son of Almería!’ and Tomas takes the bull from the get-go. He teases, acts as the
picador
and takes the sword for the kill. He is tall and slender, moving like a ballet dancer with his chin to the sun, letting the bull brush the million hand-sewn lights of his suit.

Just before his kill, Tomas kisses the bull on the head and is then fast and true with the blade. The bull’s legs give way and it dies immediately. The crowd gasps. Then all is silent before a mighty roar emerges. The crowd stands as one, twirling white handkerchiefs in the air, pleading with the president to award Tomas two ears. When he awards only one, they whistle and jeer, refuse to take their seats until the third bull is brought out, and all the while, some of the crowd are leaving their seats, squeezing out along the tight rows, to meet family and friends below the stands, for a
merienda
; or simply to escape the stifling heat.

Staffe’s phone vibrates in his pocket and he sees it is Pepa, texting.

Understand. Having drink with my primo. No escape. Come join. Get out of the sun! Great jamón and all clear. Nothing to fear.

He calls her back, but gets no response, so he edges along the row, makes his way down into the bowels of the amphitheatre.

When he gets down below, the narrow corridor which runs around from section to section, creaks with large groups standing around drinking and picking at wondrous spreads of food, hand-held. He squeezes through, sees a youth in a sombrero which has ‘FIESTAS DE GABO 2011’ on its band.

‘Do you know Pepa? Pepa from Gabo?’

‘She’s his
prima
,’ says the youth, pointing to a tall man with his back to them. ‘Hey, Alejandro. Alejandro! This
guirri
is looking for Pepa.’

Alejandro is fine-boned. His eyes are glassy, clearly the worse for drink and he twists away from a brace of beautiful girls. ‘Where is my
prima
? Where is she!’

‘Pepa told me to meet her here. She said she was with you.’

‘I haven’t seen her since we came in.’

‘Are you joking?’ Staffe looks around, checking to see if Pepa is at the bar or queuing for the toilet. ‘Tell me!’ He grabs Alejandro, makes a scruff of his silk shirt.

‘Hey,
coño
!’

‘Where is she!’

One of Alejandro’s friends swings a punch at Staffe but he swerves to one side, takes a glanced blow to the head. He raises his hands. ‘OK. OK! I’m sorry, but she said she was here.’

‘Get yourself out of here,’ says Alejandro.

‘Aren’t you worried about her?’ Staffe has a fluttering in his gut.

Pepa’s friends laugh. ‘Worried? She’s not in the ring, is she?’

‘Pepa got in with the bulls. Oh my God!’

They laugh again.

Staffe moves away, squeezing through the crowd and double-checking his phone. He has another message, from Pepa:

Keep moving anti-clockwise. Get out of the K. We’ll get you.

‘We?’ he says, to himself, twisting in the crowd, as it takes him‚ anti-clockwise‚ towards the J section. Ahead, there is a break in the crowd where the corridor runs into a dead-end at a wooden wall. He thinks it must be where they bring the bulls into the ring. Above, a mighty roar erupts and the stands shake. The crowd are stamping their feet and he imagines it must be someone being gored. The crowd whistles, jeers, all hell breaking free.

He feels something on his arm.

Someone is squeezing his arm, and now saying his name. ‘Inspector. Inspector! Come with me.’

He turns, sees the waxed moustache and large chest of Quesada and Staffe’s heart settles down. He can feel himself unclench. Quesada is smiling.

‘Where is Pepa?’ says Staffe.

‘The crowd is getting agitated. Something is wrong. Come on, I can get us out of here.’

‘She said she was with her
primo
!’ shouts Staffe, but Quesada is moving, away from the crush of people, and Staffe is shoved in the back as more people descend the stairs from the stands, even though there is nowhere to go. Someone shouts for them to go back, that there’s no room, and a whole chorus of protestations ensues for the crowd to stay put in the stands.

Quesada is getting further away, his green uniform stretched tight across his broad shoulders. Staffe makes a mighty effort, grabs hold of Quesada’s arm. ‘Where are we going?’ Quesada keeps moving until he gets to the wall, then shrugs Staffe’s grip loose and taps a code into the pad at the side of a door in the wooden wall, disappearing through the portal. Staffe rushes through, too.

Others try to follow, but Quesada slams the door shut. It makes a mighty click.

Someone pounds on the door and Staffe says, ‘Shouldn’t we let them through?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

Suddenly‚ Staffe feels his arm being grabbed. He feels the roughness of hessian pulled over his face and everything becomes dark. He is gripped tight by both arms, dragged along, feeling the hotness of his own breath, trapped by whatever it is they have pulled down over his head. He smells cologne.

He tries to resist, to twist from the hold he is in, but when he does, he loses balance and his feet leave the floor. All he can do is writhe in mid-air, blind to what is happening to him.

The white noise becomes deeper and the air around them trembles. He hears animals, close. He thinks it is the bray of a horse. Then a bull, snorting. The hands leave him, and for a second, he is weightless. Then his head crashes against something hard and he is horizontal. The smell of animal is overpowering now: straw, manure, a horse’s coat.

‘Take it off,’ says a man.

Staffe’s heart quickens as he recognises the timbre of the voice, then its accent. The hessian hood is pulled off his head, scratching his face. He blinks into the gloom, seeing many shapes. Many different, large, brooding shapes. A horse. A bull. A man in a
toreador
’s uniform and three others. One is Quesada. The others are two enormous handlers, clutching ropes that lead to the bull’s head. The bull is in an iron pen.

As his eyes adjust, Staffe sees Pepa. She is on the floor, her feet and hands bound; beside her, the cake box.

‘Too late to expound the virtues of a man minding his own,’ says the man in the
toreador
’s outfit. He is clean-shaven and looks the part. He must see the surprise on Staffe’s face because he says, ‘I did a bit once.’

‘Very Hemingway,’ says Staffe.

The
toreador
take one pace towards Staffe, then another, then swings a foot to Staffe’s ribs.

‘Too many people know, Jackson,’ wheezes Staffe.

‘Not true. With you and her out of the way, our little secret stays the way it is.’

‘And the last Barrington is still worth a fortune. And all the others, too. I can imagine how perilous life would become if you made a fool of those collectors.’

‘Very clever.’

Staffe sits up and one of the bull-handlers says, ‘When do I let it out?’

‘If you kill me, that will arouse suspicion.’

‘Trampled to death, trying to save your friend, the beautiful journalist? Her
primo
will attest,’ says Quesada.

Amidst the smell of animal, the sweet cologne from Quesada takes him back to another dark time. ‘It was you who attacked me, in Raúl’s flat.’

‘Not me,’ says Quesada.

‘I thought it was Sanchez.’

‘Sanchez is no angel.’

‘It was you.’

‘Not me,’ says Quesada.

Staffe’s mind whirrs. He tries to work out who might have overpowered him in Raúl’s flat. ‘Angel?’

Quesada laughs; it turns into a sneer.

‘And what about you never having killed a man?’

‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ says Quesada.

‘You did for Edu, and Manolo. You were in on it with Sanchez. He left you behind in Almagen to keep an eye on that body in the woods. And he took fine care of you and your career.’

‘You were wrong about that body in the woods, though. Your speculations amount to nothing, Inspector.’ Quesada nods to the bull-handlers.

‘No!’ shouts Staffe. ‘There’s something we all need to sort out.’ He looks around. The crowd way up in the stands gasps again, then a band strikes up. He has no plan, just to try and acquire a little more time. The bull-handler pulls back the bottom bolt of the pen.

‘Listen to him!’ shouts Pepa.

Staffe looks at Jackson. ‘Did you make that film, of Manolo?’

‘No.’

‘Was it all you?’

Jackson looks at Quesada. ‘You overestimate me.’

‘But you killed Astrid.’

‘I loved her, you fool.’

‘You loved her enough to kill her,’ says Staffe. ‘You can tell from the paintings.’

‘Enough to kill her? That’s a strange thing to say,’ says Jackson, his eyes glazing. ‘I could never harm that woman.’

The handler pulls the middle bolt across and Quesada says to the other handler‚ ‘You’ll need to get the bull riled.’

‘And Raúl? You knew he was going to put me in the picture that night up in your
cortijo
, so you stopped us talking. The next day, you went for him and he drove away, but you cut him off at the bridge on your motorbike. You stopped him talking good and proper and made it look like a crash. You’re good at making things look like something they’re not.’

‘Shut up!’ says Quesada.

Staffe says, ‘They know all about the last Barrington at the university.’

‘It’s leaving the country, you prick,’ says Jackson. ‘I have a buyer. It’s the last!’

Pepa is on the floor, slowly adjusting her position, a flickering determination in her eyes.

The handler returns to the pen with a pair of
picos
. They are sharpened to a lethal point and adorned with baby blue ribbons on the handles. He stands on the bottom bar of the metal pen and raises the
picos
high above his head, leans forward and lunges with all his might, plunging the wooden spears into the bull’s back. The bull swings its head and kicks out with its back legs, clattering the pen as two thick rivulets of blood begin to stream down the bull’s back from the wounds. The horse rears up on its hind legs, then cowers into a corner of the small enclosure. ‘At least let the horse out,’ shouts Staffe. ‘Or the bull will kill it.’

‘It will do for you first.’

‘You can’t get away with this.’

Jackson takes a step closer.

‘Whose idea was it, to make it look like a ghost?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘I know who the ghost is.’

‘What?’ says Quesada.

‘And so does the
cuerpo
.’

‘Bullshit,’ says Jackson.

‘When you think about it, who else could it be? And you did the same to Agustín. Was that an accident, too?’ Staffe looks at Quesada. ‘Not exactly the product of an original mind.’

‘He had every chance to leave,’ says Quesada.

‘But he needed to prove Astrid was dead,’ says Staffe. ‘His own mother. And Manolo needed that, too – but not for the money. He had to know she didn’t abandon him. And for that, he is dead.’

‘What was done is done,’ says Jackson.

Pepa turns onto her side. At the far end of the pen, a cattle prod is propped against the wall. She stretches her foot out, rests it against the base of the prod.

Jackson turns to the bull-handler, says, ‘That bull’s mad enough now. Come on, get against the door.’

Staffe tries to stand but Jackson takes a swift step towards him and kicks out, karate style, catching Staffe full in the chest with the sole of his boot. He pulls out his knife; his goat’s-head knife.

‘Stab me and your story collapses. Unless your
brigada
here can prove the bull can hold a knife.’

‘I will be telling the story,’ says Quesada, ‘To anybody who is interested, it will look like a bull had gored you – believe me.’

‘Which it will do,’ says Jackson.

‘You’ve got some pact going on,’ says Staffe.

‘Pact?’ says Jackson.

‘But any pact is only as strong as its weakest link.’

‘You’re full of shit.’

‘Yours has survived the test of time, I’ll grant you that – since Edu guessed what was going on with Barrington’s painting.’

‘Edu hated Barrington,’ says Jackson.

‘But he needed the money, and then the day Barrington died‚ you had no choice but to bury the truth.’

‘What?’

‘I can picture you all there, that day. You and Rubio, and Edu and Angel. Just like in the photograph.’

‘What photograph?’ says Quesada.

‘You in the background and no sign of Astrid.’ On the periphery of his vision, Staffe sees Pepa shift. She moves inch by inch. ‘And Santi Etxebatteria? How did he fit into your plans, Jackson?’

‘I’d never heard of the son-of-a-bitch until Raúl turned up like the bad penny. You have to take what you can in life.’ He goes into his pocket, unfolds the newspaper article to reveal the images of Staffe’s father and mother. ‘You can see how it will aid matters, if this is on your person. The authorities don’t want to stir the shit with ETA just now.’

Staffe’s bile rises. ‘Cortes and Peralta know where Astrid is.’