Authors: Adam Creed
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #FF, #FGC
Death in the Sun (4 page)
‘Like a London bus,’ says Marie. Her hair is tied up in a scarf and she is wearing blue workmen’s overalls. ‘Don’t see you for a week and then . . .’
‘Very funny,’ says Staffe. ‘You look like one of those women from the town hall, sweeping the square.’
‘What is it with that? Why can’t the men lift a finger in this bloody village?’
‘Where’s Harry?’
‘Playing with Rubén, down at his house.’
‘He has a friend?’
‘Of course he has a friend. He’s got too many friends. Some days he’s not home until after supper.’
Staffe doesn’t know what to say. Surely, at his age, Harry shouldn’t be left to such devices, practically feral down in the village whilst Marie and Paolo lounge around up here on the mountain. ‘Where’s Paolo?’
Marie nods up the sierra. High above them, Mulhacen’s snowy peak juts up, like a smear of toothpaste against the azure and cloudless sky. ‘He put some Thai basil down. Reckons the sun won’t be too strong by the time they come through. The restaurants in Orgiva have said they will take it.’
Staffe looks through the telescope that Marie keeps on the veranda. It had been their father’s. He watches Paolo toiling away with a roll-up in his mouth. He works with a hand tool in his right hand and a bucket of goat shit in his left. When he has done a row, he goes back and substitutes the bucket of shit for a bucket of water. He scoops the water with a cupped hand, his back bent double. His smile is unerring.
‘You thought he’d fuck up,’ says Marie. ‘Didn’t you? Well, I had my suspicions too, if I’m honest. All we have to worry about is the water.’
‘There is plenty of water. You should get six hours every eight days, according to your deeds.’
‘There’s something wrong. The
balsa
’s low.’
‘Do you want me to look at it?’
‘Paolo says he’ll sort it out. Don’t tread on his toes.’
Staffe turns away from the telescope, reaches out for his sister and pulls her close. ‘I’m pleased for you, I really am. Believe me, there’s nothing would make me happier than to be wrong.’
‘About Paolo?’
Staffe nods, but he is thinking also about Harry.
‘Oh, Will.’ She holds him close. ‘You’re going to stay, aren’t you?’ She squeezes him extra tight.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong.’
‘I know you, Marie, and something’s wrong.’ He holds her by the arms, leans away and weighs her up – deep in the eyes.
She shrugs. ‘It’s nothing. Just, when you were poorly, a few weeks ago – I thought someone was nosing around up here. That’s all. Just me being stupid.’
‘I can’t stick around doing nothing for ever.’
‘Someone tried to kill you, for God’s sake! You’ve got all that rent from your properties. You don’t need to go back to London and the damned Force.’ She stands back from him, holding his hands and looks him up and down. ‘I have a friend. You should meet her.’
‘Marie!’ He lets go of her hands. ‘I’ll find my own woman. All in good time.’
‘You already have, but you let her slip. You’re hopeless.’
He goes back to the telescope and scans the mountainside, tracking the edge of the high pine forest, down to the Rio Mecina’s gorge, and he follows it to Manolo’s stone-built
cortijo
. Out front, beneath his iron spit, he has built a fire but not set it. Hanging in the doorway of the
cortijo
is a goat, gutted; about to become
choto
.
There is no sign of Manolo, or Raúl, so he scans the mountain again, looking for Manolo’s flock. ‘Have you seen Manolo?’
‘He passed by with some
burracho.’
‘A smartish kind of a fellow? Slicked hair and an expensive shirt?’
‘In a girl’s car. Stank of cologne.’
‘That’s Raúl. He’s a reporter.’
‘Oh shit!’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Just, he seemed familiar.’
‘Spanish men of a certain age all look the same, don’t you think?’ says Staffe, laughing, ‘The waning libido; a last lunge in their loins.’
‘You’re right!’
‘Where did they go?’
‘Up towards Jackson’s place. Manolo must have gone up there – there’s nothing else between Jackson’s and the other side of the pass, but it’s a good two hours walk from here. You’d best set off now, while there’s still light – if that’s what you want?’
‘I came to see you, though.’
She goes to her brother, hugs him and says, ‘I know you, Will. You’re up to something. But don’t forget – you’re supposed to be taking it easy.’
‘He knows about mum and dad,’ whispers Staffe, into Marie’s hair. He whispers it softly, half hoping she won’t hear. She tenses up but says nothing, squeezes him a little tighter, and he says, ‘And you’re worried about someone sniffing around. What’s going on, Marie?’
Her arms and shoulders are rigid, like mortise and tenon. She says, ‘I’ve seen him before. I’m sure I have.’
*
It is dusk and he finishes the last of his water. At this altitude, it is already cold and only the peaks are getting the sun. He has no sweater and nothing to eat. His wounds are sore and he has left his medicine in the village, way down below in a crease of the mountains. The Med is a thin ribbon of blue, between the wide spread of plastic farming and the reddening sky. In this light, the plastic looks like salt flats, all the way from Adra to Almería. You can see Africa on a good day. Today is a good day and the clouds are low over the Rif.
The goat track takes him into a dark copse of chestnut trees. He can hear water, thinks he can also hear the scurry of animals. The locals tell terrible tales of the scorpions up here in the sierra and in the cool he suspects his fever might be coming back. He shouldn’t have drunk so much with Raúl yesterday. Was it only yesterday? The track swirls back on itself and he hears howling. This high, any dogs would be wild.
And then the track ends. He stands on a promontory, overlooking a waterfall. The thin river trickles twenty metres or so down into a pool. He squints, discerns – on the banks of the pool, perching on boulders – Raúl and Manolo with a man he has never seen before. It must be Jackson Roberts, the American: a wild old war vet; so they say. Staffe breathes deep, fills his chest with air and opens his mouth.
His body wants to call out, but he thinks twice. Raúl dangles his legs above the pool of wild water and Manolo is messing with his dog, Suki. The third man, fussing with a fire, calls out in an American accent, ‘You should have brought your fucking goat, man.’
Staffe climbs down towards the pool, holding onto the trunks of small, clinging trees, obscured from the men below but still able to hear them.
Manolo says, ‘You are the host. It is your party.’
The American drawls, ‘We can eat dog. We did in Vietnam.’
‘Korea’s where they eat dog,’ says Raúl, who turns to Manolo. ‘How can we trust anything this shit tells us?’
‘You’re drunk,’ says the American, who has a thick wad of hair, light brown but with streaks of gold. The jaw is strong. His bare-chested torso is lean, the pecs and abdomen well defined. All that gives away a life of decadence are his rosy, bloodshot eyes, the deep, treacly voice and the scrawn of his neck.
Jackson stands over Raúl, rests a foot on the journalist’s shoulder, who grips the edge of the rock. ‘Why would I lie? You’re the journalist.’
‘That article is shit, that’s for sure,’ says Manolo. He sounds morose and lies back, pulling Suki towards him, resting the animal on his chest. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘You should have brought that goat,’ says Jackson.
‘Why would I feed you, after all you have done?’
‘I have
chorizo
,’ says Roberts. ‘And the beans are in. I’ll make a
fabada
.’
‘And I’ll tend the bar,’ says Raúl.
‘I’m going home,’ says Manolo.
‘No!’ says Raúl. ‘It’s dark. We’re stuck for the night.’
They trundle off, muttering, and every now and again Raúl laughs. Roberts drawls into the night, but all the way, there’s not a peep out of Manolo as they make their way to Jackson Roberts’s
cortijo,
set low in a sheltered dell beneath a ridge which the locals call Silla Montar, the Saddle.
Staffe follows and sits above the
cortijo
until he can smell burning thyme. Plumes of smoke rise from the chimney. The sounds from inside are muffled and he looks down the mountain to the twinkling lights of Almagen and Mecina, like scattered stars. His wounds pinch, and he muses upon what secrets an all-seeing eye might witness from somewhere like here. It is completely dark now, and getting cold. Time to brace himself and go in.
Jackson Roberts nestles up to the fireplace on a low, wicker-seated rocking chair. Every now and again, he leans right forward and stirs the pot on the fire. The rest of the time, he rolls and smokes cigarettes – every other one a modest spliff.
Manolo is in the corner, his vast frame hunched in a dining chair and quiet now that he has finished berating Staffe for coming here – risking his health by walking all this way in his condition. Tonight, in Manolo’s brooding silence, Staffe senses deep disquiet.
Raúl cannot keep still. He tops up everyone’s drinks and mooches out onto the terrace and back again, waxing lyrical about how good the country life is; how this reminds him of when his father and uncles taught him to play cards and drink whisky in their
cortijo
s. Raúl catches Staffe’s eye as he goes back out onto the terrace. ‘You’ll never see a night sky like the ones up here. Come.’
Staffe follows Raúl outside and together, they look up into the dark, star-speckled sky. Gradually, new stars begin to appear as their eyes adjust. The journalist says, lowering his voice, ‘There’s something I think you should know.’
The door opens and light spills onto the terrace from inside the
cortijo
, dimming their view of the universe‚ Jackson appears, lighting up a spliff. ‘Where’s your family
cortijo
, then, Raúl?’
‘The other side of the Rio Mecina.’
Jackson offers the spliff around and Staffe declines, but Raúl tokes heartily and often, giving Staffe a resigned look, as if to say his disclosure can wait a while. They finish the spliff and they all go back inside, Staffe saying to Jackson, ‘It’s good of you to put me up for the night.’
‘You’re Marie’s brother, right? How could I not?’ says Jackson.
‘I hadn’t guessed it would be so desolate up here. They could declare war out there and you’d never know.’
‘Not tonight,’ says Jackson, laughing quietly to himself.
‘This place could tell some stories, I bet.’ Staffe looks at an oil canvas hung on the undressed stone wall that leads into one of the bedrooms. It is a landscape, hued of red and yellow and in the middle distance, two hunters walk away. A woman and another man remain behind. ‘You sell them?’
‘Never.’ Jackson’s sculpted features warp in the fire-glow flicker. The only other light is from a church candle on the bleached wooden table made from planks of chestnut wood, and a paraffin light hanging in the doorway to the terrace. ‘It’s for private consumption.’
‘Tell him who the woman is,’ says Raúl.
Staffe sees Manolo shoot Jackson a hateful look.
‘It’s from a long time ago,’ says Jackson.
‘When there were two artists in the village,’ says Raúl.
‘I’m no artist,’ says Jackson.
Manolo says, ‘He was never one of us.’
Staffe catches up with what they are talking about. ‘Barrington?’ he says.
‘They fucked our women and told the world lies. They don’t know one thing about us.’ Manolo finishes his glass of whisky, turns on Jackson. ‘You paint like him. Why so much red? Are you a commie?’
Raúl says, ‘I don’t care what you say, but Barrington could paint. He turned out some shit, but his best stuff . . . That’s how history will judge him.’
Staffe returns to the painting, looks at it hard.
‘That’s private,’ says Roberts, leaving his fire and offering round a plate of
empanadas
.
‘It has humanity,’ says Staffe. The painting appears to be a landscape, but almost lost in the folds of thick oil, the woman is clearly forlorn. Larger, in the foreground, a man carves a piece of wood in the shade of pines. Staffe pops an
empanada
in his mouth.
‘Come and sit down.’ Jackson looks back – long and hard at Manolo, his smile gone.
‘This is amazing,’ says Staffe, savouring the
empanada
.
‘Made them myself.’
‘Who is the man carving?’ says Staffe, running his tongue along his teeth, putting his finger on the taste: star anise amongst the filling inside the flaky pastry.
‘My father,’ murmurs Manolo.
‘It could be anyone,’ says Jackson.
‘What about your mother, Manolo? Still gone?’ says Raúl. ‘That was a fatal unsuitability.’
‘You don’t know how much he loved her. He couldn’t be without her,’ says Manolo.
‘Fatal?’ says Staffe.
‘A figure of speech,’ says Raúl. ‘You never met Barrington?’
‘I know he did his bit in the war,’ says Staffe. ‘Joined the International Brigade when he was seventeen. That says something about the man.’
‘It was a war and he was drawn to it,’ says Manolo. ‘It wasn’t his war, though. And yes,’ he looks daggers at Jackson Roberts, ‘Mother is still gone.’
Staffe wants to ask if that is why Rubio went mad. Instead, he says, fearing for his friend’s state of mind, ‘People don’t talk about the war. I thought it was taboo.’
‘We buried it. Buried it deep,’ says Raúl.
‘I can tell you plenty,’ says Manolo.
‘Not tonight,’ says Raúl, replenishing Manolo’s glass‚ and whispering to Staffe‚ ‘We have to talk, later – it’s worse than I thought.’
‘Worse?’
Jackson interrupts. Stirring the pot, he says, ‘Fuck the stuff of life and the stuff of art.’ He stands up. ‘Now, let’s stuff our faces.’ He lifts the lid from the earthenware pot with his bare hands and a cloud of steam bellows from the hearth. ‘Now bring your bowls.’
The
fabada
is thick and unctuous and pitted with chunks of
chorizo
the size of your thumb. The burnt spice of paprika oozes and the stew is blazing hot, all the way from the mouth to the belly. Each of his guests blows out with puffed cheeks and Jackson brings out a quart jug of the local wine – cloudy amber. ‘I put a few chillies in.’
And the wine flows.
‘I heard they had a way of killing in the war,’ says Staffe. It is a vague memory, from an article he read once about the war as they fought it up in the Basque Country. ‘They would bury a man in the earth – up to his neck and . . .’ As he talks, he remembers the African in the blue and yellow
burnous,
with no tongue to tell his tale. He closes his eyes, can see the African pouring the water into his open palm.
‘Go on,’ says Raúl.
‘They would fill him with water.’
‘I thought we weren’t talking about the war,’ says Jackson.
Manolo leans back from the table. He leans further and further back, grips the table as if to prevent himself from falling. ‘It was the fucking Communists who did that. The good guys did that. Ha!’
‘Your father would be too young to have fought in the war,’ says Staffe, to Manolo. ‘Like mine. They’re a lost generation, the men who never got to become heroes.’
‘His war was with poverty. He went to Germany. That’s where he found my mother. He fought for her.’ Manolo drinks his wine down in one and it goes to his eyes.
Raúl says, ‘I heard your brother is back. Does he see your mother?’
Manolo looks at Raúl quizzically, as if struggling to choose which reply to administer, but it seems that drink might have defeated him.
Jackson says, ‘Let’s get you to bed.’ He comes across, puts an arm around Manolo and helps him to his feet.
Raúl nods to Staffe, indicating that they should go outside and they leave Jackson and Manolo to it, both looking to the stars as they stand on the terrace. Up here, cloudless and with no light for miles and miles, the universe seems bigger.
Staffe says, ‘You said it was worse than you thought.’
‘I don’t know how much to tell you.’ Raúl plants a heavy hand on Staffe’s shoulder.
‘Tell me everything.’
‘Once you’ve been told, that’s it. There’s no going back.’
‘Was it a war killing?’
Raúl shakes his head. ‘He was . . .’
Inside the
cortijo
, something breaks. A plate or a bottle, and Manolo shouts out that Jackson is a cunt and that he is going to kill him.
‘He was what?’ says Staffe. ‘Tell me who was killed down there.’
‘No!’ comes the cry from inside the
cortijo
. It is Jackson.
Raúl says, ‘I was going to say, he was already dead. They didn’t drown him.’
‘No! Don’t!’ shouts Jackson.
‘We should go in,’ says Raúl. ‘Manolo has a dreadful temper.’
‘Tell me what happened down there in the greenhouse. Who was killed?’
‘Later,’ says Raúl rushing back into the
cortijo
, calling, ‘Manolo! Stop!’
‘Already dead?’ says Staffe, following Raúl, seeing that Manolo has Jackson Roberts pushed up against the fireplace. The flames from the fire are catching his trousers and his eyes bulge.
‘Let go of him!’ shouts Raúl, grabbing Manolo, but he makes no impression. Manolo’s shoulders aren’t hunched; they are broad like before and he has both of his thick-fingered hands around Jackson’s throat. Staffe tries to help Raúl pull Manolo off, but there is no chance. Jackson looks at him, pleadingly. Another twenty seconds and he will be dead, for sure. Staffe looks around the room, smelling the burning cloth of Jackson’s trousers. Picking up the pot, he empties the remains of the
fabada
onto the floor and holds the pot high, advancing quickly and bringing it down, as viciously as he dares, onto his friend’s head.
The sound of the pan on skull is hollow and it rings out, through the commotion. Manolo turns to look at Staffe, his hands still on Jackson’s throat, and Staffe thinks if he hits him again any harder‚ he might crack Manolo’s skull.
‘It’s all right,’ says Manolo. ‘I don’t want him dead.’ He relaxes his grip and Jackson gulps for air. Manolo’s eyes hood down and he wavers, unsteady on his feet. ‘Really. I don’t want him dead. Far from it.’
Jackson bends double, coughing and cursing as Staffe and Raúl lead Manolo back to his chair, ease him down before his legs give way.
‘Are you all right?’ says Staffe.
Jackson nods, quite vociferously. ‘It was nothing. Let’s forget it. Come on, let’s have a drink and then get to bed.’
Staffe clears the table and sweeps up the spilled
fabada
. By the time he is done, Manolo is asleep in his chair with a sad look on his downturned face, his arms hugging his big torso and Suki burrowed into the crook of his neck.
As he puts a blanket over his friend, Staffe catches Jackson taking down the landscape painting, placing it against the wall in the other room. ‘I never liked the fucking thing,’ he says.
Staffe notices Manolo’s knife on the floor by the fireplace. He picks it up and runs his fingers all around the intricate carvings of the goat’s head and horns. You’d think he would have had enough of goats.
The three of them sit up, drinking and talking about Barrington and all the while, Staffe waits for Jackson to leave, but instead he bunks down on the sofa. ‘You take the bed in the other room.’
‘No, it’s your bed. I came uninvited.’
‘I insist. As a guest, the least you can do is accept my hospitality. I won’t take “no” for an answer.’
‘Go on,’ says Raúl, on the verge of sleep in his chair. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow. You can buy me lunch – in Fuente.’
And with that, Staffe retires. He sleeps deep; so deep that not even Raúl’s snoring wakes him.
