Sing Like You Know the Words (49 page)

-He didn’t scream or plead or
anything. Just whimpered a bit. At first that made me more angry.
And then I realized it was useless. I left it then. I asked George
to look in on him later and I went home. He didn’t look much worse
than others you might see on any Friday night in those days, to be
honest.

-I went home thinking I should
feel good about it. He was a black bastard. He deserved it. The
lads would see that I wasn’t frightened to get my hands dirty. But
I didn’t sleep. I knew it was wrong. If I could have taken it back
I would have done, even not knowing how it would turn out; that
he’d be dead. That’s something else you can believe or not, but
it’s true. And that’s the first part of my confession finished.

-You mean there’s more?

-I mean there’s a reason why
John Obuswu’s name was never linked to that crime. He never
attacked the boy.

Moss had seemed quite calm in
the course of his narrative, but now he got up to stretch out his
back. Patricia saw that he was sweating heavily into his shirt. He
took a step to the window and paused to steady himself against the
sill, staring for a moment at something unseen outside. His thin
black hair hung in strands down his fat neck. He was trembling a
little as he leaned against the glass. Patricia wondered if he had
a heart murmur: or was the shaking caused by the stress of the
moment. Finally he slouched back into his chair. She watched him
silently, anxious not to interrupt his mood.

-I found out not long after that
John couldn’t have been the one responsible, he said.

-Did you speak to the boy?

-He never said anything at the
time. Later I had my own problems. Now it’s too late.

-What do you mean?

-Francis O’Riordan swallowed a
bottle of sleeping tablets when he was fourteen years old.

-That’s terrible. But then…

-If you had the medical report
on his case. You’d see that the doctor did a very full report on
his injuries. You might remember that in those years, the
specialists at the city hospital were obsessed with diagnosis of
child abuse. It was the fashion for a while.

-I remember that epidemic of
taking children into care. It seemed a little like hysteria; as if
the doctors had persuaded themselves that most parents were
abusers.

-Yeah, it was out of control.
But there wasn’t any doubt in this case, and the evidence was
clear. What happened to Francis: what left him unconscious that
night; had happened to him before. To spare you the details, the
doctors could tell from the wounding and healing of old wounds that
it had happened to him several times, over a period of months.

-But John had only been in the
city a week or two when he died.

-Exactly.

-So no one knows who was
responsible.

-You could say that. No one was
ever prosecuted and as far as I know the investigation went no
further. The evidence could still be there though. You have the
medical reports and I suppose they test for DNA these days, if they
have a suspect, and useable samples.

-Do you have a suspect?

-It’s a hard thing for me to
say. The priest of St. Patricks was moved on to another parish a
few months after the attack. They sent him back to the old country,
somewhere out in the sticks. He was a popular priest. There’s no
reason why they’d banish him to the back of beyond, no reason why
he’d want to go. Or only one that I can think of.

-You mean you think that it was
him and that someone knew.

-Or suspected. But I never
followed up on it myself; call it superstition, or cowardice or
bitterness. I don’t know. But that’s the second part of my
confession. I’ve done nothing all these years. For all I know the
old bastard is doing the same or worse somewhere in the wilds of
Ireland, where no-one will ever lay a hand on him for it.

-We’ve got to do something.

There’s no we, it’s up to you.
The burden passes to you now. You know as much as I do. What you do
with it, is up to you. I feel a little better for your knowing.
I’ve never even told a priest what I’ve said to you just now, so
thank you.

***

In a small bar outside the
centre of Madrid, not far from Arturo Soria, sipping coffee under a
sky of untroubled blue, Matthew met Walcott and heard his story.
That night he typed up a written record from the scribbled notes he
made as they spoke.

After leaving England, for
reasons that were not clarified, Mitchell had no job and little
money. He went to the south, along with all the other English, and
hung around Malaga, working in bars for cash when he could; picking
up bits of the language and living day to day. He had no idea what
he wanted except that he did not want to go back.

In some of the bars where he
worked, there were little pieces of book keeping that needed to be
done. It seemed that the ex-patriots didn’t trust Spanish
accountants, and couldn’t afford the English ones. Soon he was
running a small business that had started without him noticing,
keeping books in order for struggling bar owners who had come to
the Costa in search of their dreams. He began to understand the
ways of the local officials, and pick up some basic tricks in the
way of dealing with them. Soon he was able to help clients avoid
the more obvious difficulties with the regional authorities. What
language he needed seemed to come easily to him, even though he’d
learned nothing in the rudimentary French lessons he’d suffered in
the secondary school.

There came a point quite soon
where he enjoyed the trust of his little English speaking
community. He picked up more work through recommendations. One job
was for a man who had a building project running along the coast
close to Fuengirola. This man had suffered bad experiences in his
dealings with local investors, but he needed a partner to move the
project on. His bank facilities were fully extended, but the bank
manager had given the name of a possible private investor from
Madrid: a very cultured man, very anglophile; not really a
businessman at all in fact, but the manager was sure that he had
funds that could be made available at terms that would suit all the
parties.

The developer supposed that the
Madrid gentleman would be a relative of the bank manager, but the
money was the same colour. Anyway what choice did he have?

The proposal was that Mitchell
should prepare a business plan setting out the funding case; meet
the man in Madrid, and explain the opportunity to him. If the
investor was serious and could prove funds, he would visit Malaga a
short time later, to view the site and close the deal. If it came
off, there would be a bonus commission for Mitchell. It was also
understood that if this transaction was successful, there could be
a more permanent understanding between Mitchell and the developer
on future projects.

It was exciting for Mitchell. He
sensed a glorious future within reach. He quickly drafted the
business case and took the high speed train to Madrid checking into
the cheapest lodgings he could find, to prepare for the big meeting
the next day.

The next day was 11 March 2004.
In the morning he checked out of the room early and joined the
commuters headed for the Madrid central station. His contact had
requested a breakfast meeting and he wanted to allow plenty of time
to find the offices. He’d been through the numbers thoroughly and
he was confident they made sense, but he was on edge about the
meeting and preoccupied with how he should approach the investor.
He barely registered the stations as they went by.

It was just after half past
seven in the morning, as his train was pulling into Atocha Central,
that the bomb exploded in the next carriage. Later, he heard about
bombs that had exploded on other trains, more or less at the same
time, all along the line.

He couldn’t remember much about
the explosion. Afterwards he read eye witness accounts later from
people who described horrible things that maybe he saw too; but
none of it stayed in his memory. His mind held no clear image of
getting off the train and stumbling away, aimlessly. Some people
seemed to be heading the same way; others were hurrying in the
opposite direction, towards the carnage. He had no impression of
where anyone was going. Still more people appeared, some with
uniforms, shouting to each other; the voices of authority.

He could remember thinking that
he didn’t want to get into trouble, even if he had no idea why he
should be. He began to walk away, out of the station. He wasn’t
stopped or challenged. Everyone’s attention was directed on the
scene inside. He was still holding his case. Suddenly, it seemed
very important to get to the meeting without being late. He looked
at his watch, but the face was smashed and there was no display. He
noticed what seemed to be quite a lot of blood on the cuff of his
jacket, but so far as he could tell it was not his.

Outside the station he stopped,
halfway across the dual carriageway crossing. There was a man on
the other side of the broad street, a little apart from the crowd
of pedestrians, ignoring the general melee. He was standing quite
still and looking towards the station. He had on a long, dark
overcoat, though it was not cold, and he almost seemed to be
standing to attention; his arm was extended in a stiff gesture.
Mitchell had seen the pose before, in the old black and white
photographs that still decorated some of the older bars; he
recognized the Franquist salute.

However it was not the strange
gesture that held his attention across the lanes of traffic. Even
at that distance his recollection of the memorable face was
perfectly clear. The long, dark features, the precise military
style of dress and bearing, the small chin and the proud, angry
eyes: it was certainly the man who Ray Hawkins had told him, two
years earlier, was a police officer; the one who’d wanted Ray to
sell him something.

The man was staring at him now:
probably quite a few people were. There was blood on Mitchell’s
torn coat, his hair was awry, and there was more blood running down
one side of his face from a slight gash that he would notice later.
His placid expression, standing at the pedestrian crossing with his
business case in his hand, as if nothing had happened, must have
made him seem deranged. But more than this, it was clear to him
that the other had recognized and remembered him: a part of him
registered this before his conscious brain knew it. His body was
turning to run even as his mind struggled to make any connection to
the circumstances.

And the other was following, he
was sure of it. He heard the crossing signal beeping behind him and
scuffling and shouts as the man pushed crossers out of the way and
ran after him. Mitchell headed back towards the station. The lights
were against him, but the traffic was hardly moving. He raced
between the cars, not stopping to look at anything. He never heard
the whining engine of the approaching motor scooter, speeding
between the cars; just a squeal of brakes and a thump; then metal
crashing against metal as the scooter piled into the cars. He
looked round once to see his pursuer lying in the road between the
cars, under the helmeted body of the bike rider; kicking furiously
to get free.

Mitchell did not wait to see if
either of them got up: he jogged back into the station. There
someone stopped him and others came to help him clean up and
establish that his injuries were not serious. He insisted he did
not want to wait for an ambulance and did not need a check up. He
walked a few blocks intending to find a cab. There probably
wouldn’t be any more trains that day, so he thought the best thing
to do would be to catch the first available flight back to Malaga.
Then he started to worry: if the man really was a policeman, he
might be able to trace Mitchell. For all he knew they already had
his passport details. They could have been watching him for months.
Obviously the police believed he really was a partner of Ray
Hawkins.

He dare not use his passport, or
even return to Malaga. Even his semi-official existence there would
have left some trace. The only safe place for the moment seemed to
be the boarding house. No one knew he was there.

***

-And there he stays, Matthew
concluded. He told me that this Ray Hawkins was a professional
criminal, probably a killer, who he accidentally bumped into some
years ago. The man hijacked him to sit in on a conversation in
London, with this Spanish person who is supposed to be a policeman.
He says he has no idea what the connection is between them. I can’t
make sense of it

-But you got the address? David
sounded greedy for the information.

-Maybe, but hold on. When I’d
been talking to this guy for a while, I realized there was more to
this than the usual paranoid delusions, even though his story seems
crazy. The fear is different: and there are other things. This is
not someone who is spinning a complex fantasy around a few
coincidences. Those sort of people are waiting for you to raise
objections because they have everything worked out. They weave
explanations into the story so that they can explain to you how it
all fits together. Walcott’s story is full of loose ends, and I
don’t believe he has any appreciation of what he is involved in, or
what it all means. To be honest, he’s not even interested in making
sense of it; he just wants to get clear. All sorts of little hints
make me think I should believe he’s telling the truth.

-Well we can at least help him
get clear, that’s my job in fact. If you’ll just tell me where I
can find him.

-David, he asked me not to give
those details to anyone, not even you. And in any case it’s a
story. It’s like you asking me to divulge a source. I would be
breaking professional standards.