Death on a Galician Shore (33 page)

Irene looked up and peered at Estevez from under her dark fringe. ‘He didn’t see him,’ she said quietly.

‘Was he in waterproofs, too?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.

Caldas nodded and she went on with her story.

‘Diego went to his friend’s house and came back on Saturday morning. You know the rest. He found everything clean and tidy,’ she repeated. ‘It wasn’t until the next day, when he saw the coffee grounds, that he realised it hadn’t been his mother who’d cleared up, and we went to report her missing.’

The report didn’t include all the information the woman had just provided.

‘Did you tell Somoza all this?’

She said no.

‘The pig questioned everything Diego said. He was sure Rebeca
was off having fun. “You know your mother,” he said. Instead of helping a worried kid, that policeman made fun of him. I can’t bear to think about it. He claimed he was really busy, and told us not to bother him with nonsense. When Diego said there were two men, do you know what he answered? “Two? Rebeca’s in fine form.” That’s what he spat out in front of the boy. Can you believe it? Diego wanted to leave. He’d rather not file a report than have to endure humiliation at the hands of that old bastard.’

‘But he did file one,’ said Caldas, holding out the document.

‘Because I insisted. I forced him to make a statement. He hardly spoke. I had to drag the words out of him. I don’t know why I bothered. It didn’t do any good. Somoza said he’d be in touch if anything came up, but we never heard a word. I went to see him a few days later. He was busy trying to catch two guys who’d held up a petrol station. They turned out to be a couple of boys from Corrubedo – junkies. But Somoza made them sound like Bonnie and Clyde. But about Rebeca’s disappearance he didn’t lift a finger. He claimed no one had heard of the fair-haired fisherman or his friend, and that searching the area had come to nothing. He still thought Rebeca must have taken a fancy to one of the men and would be back any day, when she got fed up. I insisted that she would never have abandoned her son like that. I said maybe she’d been hurt or even killed. “If she’s dead, her body’ll turn up,” he said with a filthy smile. He didn’t bother to look for her. He didn’t do a thing.’

‘How did Diego react?’

‘How do you think? He was devastated. When we got home, he lay down on the sofa again. He cried for days. I didn’t know what to do, who to go to. Some bastard had left him without a mother, and the police had simply made fun of him. He was fifteen,’ said Irene with a sigh. ‘I stayed at the house for over a week. We spent Christmas together, with the table set for three. I gave him sleeping pills every night, so he’d get some sleep. It was me who didn’t sleep,’ she smiled. ‘He was such a lovely boy. They destroyed his life, just as they destroyed his mother’s. What happened to them wasn’t fair. We spoke to the Civil Protection Force. They organised searches for Rebeca in the area that night and for a few days afterwards.’

‘But they didn’t find her,’ said Caldas.

‘No,’ she said, her fringe parting like curtains as she shook her
head. ‘But I’m sure someone killed her. Why else would they have bothered to clean up the house?’

‘Did the police ever identify the men she was with?’

‘No.’

‘They never found out who they were?’

‘No, never,’ she replied. ‘Diego believed they were fishermen. But it was a stormy night. No one could put to sea. Any boats in harbour that Saturday stayed there until Monday or Tuesday. There wasn’t a single boat from elsewhere.’

‘What did you do after that, over the following days?’

‘We waited.’

‘In case she came back …’

‘No,’ she said, her hands trembling as she took another cigarette from the packet. ‘I no longer believed she’d come back. Nor did Diego. He was just waiting for someone to come and tell us that … you know.’

‘Right,’ mumbled Caldas. ‘Why didn’t you go back to the police? Why didn’t you go directly to the police station?’

Irene shook her head. ‘Diego couldn’t face Somoza again. So I said I’d go to the police station, but he begged me not to. He was scared, and resigned to letting things take their course. He said there was no point in my going. Somoza was telling anyone looking into Rebeca’s disappearance that he had reasonable grounds to believe that she’d run off with some man. Reasonable grounds. He hadn’t lifted a finger and then he spoke of reasonable grounds to believe. Diego thought other policemen would treat him the same. He didn’t think it was personal.’

‘But you did?’

‘Somoza is a pig, and always has been,’ she said. ‘Now you see an old man with a sour face, glasses and gaping mouth, but for years he believed his police badge gave him the right to trample over people. The worst of it is that most people let themselves be intimidated. But not Rebeca. She was a one! There was one time she really put him in his place. She stood up to him.’

‘What happened?’

Irene drew on her cigarette before replying. ‘Somoza was always leering at her. He wouldn’t leave her alone. He thought that because she’d had a kid in her teens …’

‘Right.’

‘Rebeca was young but she told him where to go. It was one summer during the village
fiesta
, in front of everyone. I’m sure he never forgave her,’ she said. ‘And in the time after her disappearance he got his own back. He humiliated Diego because his mother had once humiliated him.’

‘When did the boy leave the village?’

‘A few weeks later. At the beginning of the new year. He’d had enough of not hearing anything and enduring the village gossip. Everyone believed Rebeca had gone off with a man. They still do,’ she said. ‘One afternoon, Diego came and told me he was leaving. We both knew he’d never see his mother again even if he stayed in Aguiño. He left the next morning.’

‘Do you know where he went?’

‘To his grandparents’ village. I don’t remember the name. It was up north, near Ferrol. They went back there when they retired. Diego went to live with his grandmother. The grandfather had died not long before. Neda!’ she said suddenly. ‘That was the name of the village.’

‘Does he still live there?’ asked Caldas.

She took another drag.

‘No. The grandmother died and he moved on.’

‘Where to?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You didn’t keep in touch?’

‘At first we spoke often on the phone. He’d call to find out if there was any news. He said he dreamed about his mother and the fair-haired fisherman. He couldn’t get the man’s face out of his head. I felt so sorry for him. I’d tell him to forget about the man, it wasn’t worth it, but he said he didn’t want to forget, and he’d cry. I couldn’t see his face but I knew he was crying. So was I. I felt terrible for not being able to do anything to comfort him. I just said I was thinking of him and that I loved him,’ she whispered, staring down at the table. After a moment’s silence, broken only by the screeching of seagulls in the harbour, she went on: ‘He called less and less. First it was once a week, then once a month, until eventually he stopped.’

‘When did you speak for the last time?’

‘It must have been six or seven years ago. He called me on my
saint’s day, to congratulate me. He said his grandmother had died and he was leaving Neda.’

‘Did he say where he was thinking of going?’

‘I suggested he come back to Aguiño. I said their house was falling into ruins. But he didn’t want anything to do with either the house or the village. He felt stifled here. He felt stifled just thinking about coming back. He said he’d go wherever he could find work.’

‘What did he do?’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t talk about his life. He just called to let me know he hadn’t forgotten,’ she said, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘Poor Diego,’ she murmured. ‘Poor boy.’

‘Have you got a picture of him?’ asked the inspector.

‘I’ve got some upstairs. From when he was a baby.’

‘No later ones?’ asked Caldas.

Irene looked at Caldas, then at Estevez, then back at Caldas.

‘It’s Diego you’re interested in, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Has he got himself into some sort of trouble?’

‘He may have done,’ said Caldas, taking from his pocket the photograph of the crew of the
Xurelo
.

He placed it on the table beside the ashtray, which was now full of cigarette butts.

‘This is the crew of a boat that sank near here, on rocks near Salvora,’ he explained. ‘They foundered the night Rebeca Neira disappeared. They may have put in at Aguiño, at least for a few hours.’

Irene placed a finger on the fair hair of Justo Castelo in the photograph. ‘Is that him?’

‘It could be,’ replied the inspector.

Holding back her hair, the woman leaned over the photograph and peered at each of the faces.

‘Which one went inside Rebeca’s house?’

‘It could have been any of the others.’

‘Do you think she was on the boat, too?’

Caldas shrugged.

‘Did they survive?’

‘The three younger men did. They managed to swim ashore. But the skipper drowned.’

Irene looked at the photograph again and Caldas told her what had brought them to Aguiño. ‘The fair-haired one was called Justo
Castelo. Last week his body washed up on the beach at Panxón. He’d been murdered. We’re investigating his death.’

The woman looked up from the photograph. ‘You think Diego had something to do with it?’

Caldas decided not to tell her that a few weeks earlier the word ‘Murderers’ had been daubed on Castelo’s boat. Nor that the date of the sinking, of Rebeca Neira’s disappearance, had been inscribed beneath it.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’

‘We’ve just come from the canteen at the fishermen’s association,’ said Caldas after giving his name. ‘The waiter there said that the Aduana was the only bar in the harbour that was open in the evenings in 1996.’

‘That’s right,’ replied the man, staring wistfully at the floor. ‘I closed up in 1998, after thirty-five years. Now the canteen’s the only place for fishermen to go. But it closes in the evening. And why not? Boats stopped going out fishing at night a long time ago.’

Caldas nodded and the man went on, ‘Don’t be fooled by the empty harbour – this place was one of Galicia’s most important fishing ports once. They caught a lot of sardine, a lot of hake. A major port,’ he said. ‘Did you see the boat that’s a bit bigger than the others?’

The policemen nodded, recalling the trawler half-glimpsed through the mist.

‘It’s the
Narija
,’ said the man. ‘There used to be dozens like it here. The market was overflowing with fish. Crates of hake coming out of the door. But then stocks started to go down. You think it’ll never happen, but it does. Of course it does. The only boats left now go out for octopus,’ he said contemptuously. ‘At the market you can buy
percebes
, clams, roughy … But hardly any fish – real fish, that is.’

‘Of course,’ said the inspector, encouraging him to continue. He was happy to let the old man talk, granting him the time that death would soon deny him.

‘People came from all over,’ said the former owner of the Bar Aduana and listed the towns that had supplied the Aguiño fleet with
crew. He went on: ‘We made a living from the harbour. Our children expect to make theirs from the beach.’

‘Things change,’ murmured Caldas.

‘Some,’ said the man. ‘Not others.’ Then he asked, ‘Why are you here?’

‘We want to know if you remember any of these men,’ said Caldas, showing him the photograph. ‘They were the crew of a boat from Panxón that used to come and fish in this area.’

The man peered at the picture. ‘I remember the older one,’ he said, placing his little finger on Antonio Sousa’s woollen cap. ‘Everyone referred to him as Captain Sousa. He sometimes moored in the harbour and came into the bar for water or a meal.’ He looked up at the policemen. ‘But I thought he was dead. Didn’t his boat founder by the Asadoiros islets near Salvora?’

‘That’s right.’

The man looked at the photograph again. ‘You know I saw him the night his boat went down?’

Caldas and Estevez exchanged glances.

‘He came into the bar?’

‘That very night,’ he said, going on unprompted. ‘There was a storm. The fleet was in harbour and the local fishermen were all at home, enjoying a night off with their families. I was about to head home myself. I’d already turned out all the lights when the skipper arrived. He asked if I could get him and his crew something to eat. The stove was off so I made them some sandwiches and left them water and wine on a table in the gallery. The Aduana had a glassed-in gallery at the front, so people could sit and look out at the sea even when the weather was bad.’

The policemen nodded.

‘I went home. I’d locked up the bar itself but left the gallery open so they could eat in there, and the skipper went back to get the crew. The next time I saw him was in the papers. He drowned that night.’

He looked at the faces in the photograph
.
‘The boys survived, didn’t they?’

‘Yes, all three of them,’ said Caldas.

‘I don’t know what they were thinking, putting out to sea. The skipper seemed like the cautious type.’

Caldas had his own ideas about why they’d set sail despite the storm.

‘Do you remember a woman who was known as Rebeca the First?’ he asked, putting away the photograph.

‘Rebeca the First,’ said the man quietly. ‘Of course I remember her. She lived in a stone house about five minutes away. She left the village years ago.’

He fell silent, smiling as if at a pleasant memory.

‘Rebeca the First,’ he said again. ‘What became of her?’

Caldas shrugged. ‘Was she a customer of yours?’

‘In a way,’ replied the man, still smiling. ‘We didn’t get many pretty girls at the Aduana. They preferred a different kind of bar. Rebeca the First only ever came in for cigarettes.’

‘She got her cigarettes at your bar?’

‘Nearly always,’ he said. ‘She’d come in, put coins in the machine, bend down for the pack of cigarettes and leave, with us all staring after her.’

‘At one stage, she went missing and the area was searched …’ said Caldas, leaving his sentence hanging in the hope that the man would say more.