The Armada Legacy (21 page)

Doors; more doors. They passed in a flurry as she ran on, gathering up the hem of the dress to keep it from tangling up her legs. Nothing that looked like an exit, and there could have been a bunch of guards standing right behind any of them. She’d never been inside such a huge house before – it seemed to go on forever and now she was starting to panic, her breath coming in gasps as she thought about what would happen when Serrato returned to the dining room to find it empty. A whole army of his men would go storming through the whole place searching for her. She couldn’t possibly evade them for long.

A glimpse of a window as she tore down a passage and went hurrying down a narrow flight of steps told her night had fallen. This part of the house was workmanlike and plain, dimly lit with bare walls and rough concrete floors that chafed on her bare feet as she ran. She hurried round a corner and had to fling herself into a shady alcove for cover as a set of doors swung open and she almost ran right into two men dressed in catering aprons. The place they’d emerged from was a kitchen, but from the pungent aroma of grease, fried beans, tomato and chilli that wafted out of the doors she guessed it catered for Serrato’s troops rather than meeting the elevated gastronomic tastes of the man himself. She waited hidden, holding her breath, for the cooks to pass by, then ran on.

She was quite lost now, and becoming more panic-stricken by the second. The passage she was heading down was getting narrower and seemed to be leading nowhere. Brooke was on the verge of turning round to head back the way she’d come or find another route through the house, when she suddenly stopped dead.

She’d heard something. And as she stood there tensed up in the gloomy passage, she heard it again. The sound of a woman’s voice not far away. She cocked her head, listening in alarm. No, there were two distinct voices – two women.

And they were both screaming in fear.

Brooke moved along more slowly now, wondering where the terrible keening sound was coming from. She paused at a door, gave it a tentative shove and peered inside as it creaked open. It was a laundry room, with a row of large, squat washing machines along one wall and stacks of laundry baskets along another. Near the ceiling above the machines was a window, thick with dirt and cobwebs. She realised she’d wandered into a basement.

Her escape attempt was forgotten for the moment as she felt herself drawn to the source of the awful, continuous screaming that she now realised was coming from through that high window. A bright white light, like a floodlamp from outside, was glaring through the dirty glass.

Despite the awkward dress Brooke managed to clamber up onto one of the washing machines, so that the window ledge was about eight inches above her head. She reached up to the ledge with both hands and hauled her chin level with the window sill, scrabbling with her bare toes to get a purchase on the wall, then peered through the dirty glass.

The window was a few inches above the ground level of a brightly-lit concrete yard, about ten metres square and surrounded by a whitewashed block wall. There were six men standing in the yard, one of them just inches from where Brooke was straining to peer through the window, so that the leg of his combat trousers half-blocked the view. But she could see enough.

At the opposite side of the yard, the two guards who’d brought her from her quarters earlier, the muscular ponytailed one and the one with the damaged ear, were violently dragging and shoving the Brazilian maidservants against the wall. Presentacion was clinging desperately to her mother and sobbing hysterically in the glare of the floodlights. Consuela let out another high-pitched scream as the ponytailed guard ripped her daughter away from her and sent her sprawling to the concrete.

Brooke wanted to scream ‘Stop it! Leave them alone!’ But all she could do was hang there from her fingertips and stare in horror as she realised what was about to happen.

A tall figure in a cream suit stepped into view. He had his back to the basement window, but she knew Serrato well enough now to recognise him instantly even from behind. He appeared quite unfazed by the frantic screams of the two women as he walked over to them. Consuela tore herself from the grip of the guard holding her and threw herself at his feet, clutching at his trouser legs, her face covered in tears, pleading with him in her native Portuguese. Brooke understood every plaintive, sobbing word.

‘Don’t harm my child, I beg you! I’m to blame, I swear. Punish me, but please don’t hurt my baby! Please!’

Serrato’s reply was too quiet for Brooke to catch through the glass, but she didn’t need to hear to understand. He shook his head, brusquely pushed the weeping mother away with his foot, and took three slow steps back. He reached out his hand. One of the guards unholstered an automatic pistol and passed it to him, butt-first. In no hurry, Serrato checked the weapon over and then aimed it down at Consuela’s bowed head.

Presentacion let out a wailing, inhuman shriek. Brooke almost screamed, too. He was going to slaughter the Brazilian maids just the way he’d slaughtered Sam and her employer, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

The gunshot reverberated sharply round the walled yard. Consuela gave a lurch and then slumped over on her side. There was a spatter of blood up the white wall behind her.

Then Serrato turned the pistol on Presentacion. The ponytailed guard who’d been tightly gripping the screaming girl’s arm now let go. Presentacion had nowhere at all to run, but in her desperation she raced for the far wall and almost reached it before the pistol cracked a second time in Serrato’s hand.

The shot caught her in the back. She collapsed on her face in a tangle of arms and legs, but she wasn’t dead. Brooke went on watching in anguish as the young girl tried to drag herself across the concrete yard. Serrato calmly walked up to her and fired another shot into the back of her head. The blood sprayed a foot across the ground. This time Presentacion stopped moving.

Serrato returned the pistol to his man. ‘Dump the bodies in the jungle,’ Brooke heard him order the guards in Spanish. Her heart was pounding. She felt numb, barely conscious of the pain in her fingers clinging to the window ledge.

Serrato turned round to walk away from the two dead women. There was nothing in his expression. As he moved closer to Brooke’s window she could see the flecks of blood on his suit. He paused to dab at them with a handkerchief, tutted irritably and walked on out of sight, followed by all but two of the men, who stayed behind to take care of the corpses.

Wanting to throw up, Brooke lowered herself back to the floor. She knew that if Serrato returned to the dining room and found her missing, there might be a third woman’s body thrown out for the jungle scavengers that night.

She staggered for the door, threw it open and started running frantically back the way she’d come. By a miracle she didn’t meet anyone as she retraced her steps; by an even bigger miracle she managed to find the dining room without getting lost in the maze of passageways. Her heart was in her mouth as she opened the dining room door, fully expecting Serrato to be there already waiting for her with a pistol in his hand. But the room was empty. Brooke hurried across to the table, sat down at her place and tried to control the emotions that were making her hands shake.

A few minutes later, Serrato returned. He’d changed out of the cream-coloured suit and into a pair of chinos and a navy blazer. ‘I hope you will forgive me for so rudely interrupting our dinner,’ he said with a smile. ‘I suddenly remembered a matter of business that simply could not wait, not even for you.’ He glanced downwards and his smile faded into a frown. ‘You have taken off your shoes?’

Brooke had completely forgotten the sandals she’d slipped off and left under the table. ‘They’re a little tight on me,’ she said, thinking fast. She managed to control the tremor in her voice.

‘No matter. I will have new ones made to fit,’ he replied. ‘Now, shall we eat?’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The address on the ripped-out page from Forsyte’s book was in the province of Granada, Andalucía, in the deep south of Spain. When Ben checked out the location, he could see Butler had been right about Juan Fernando Cabeza being reclusive. The historian had chosen a home high up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, some way east of Granada City and just about as remote as anywhere in Europe. His old university still had him listed on their website as a former faculty member, offering a blurb about his various academic achievements, accolades and publications. Cabeza’s birth date was 1966. The image of him on the site showed a craggy-faced man with a serious expression and unusually fair hair and pale eyes for a Spaniard. Ben committed the face to memory.

After a few hours’ snatched sleep in the car, he boarded the earliest possible flight from Gatwick to Málaga, the airport nearest his destination. Another two hours later he was touching down on Spanish soil, dragging his heels impatiently through customs and hiring a Volkswagen Touareg four-wheel drive. His head was aching badly and he’d barely eaten a thing for two days, but a powerful, furious inner force kept driving him on.

Ten-eighteen, local time. Brooke had now been missing for over fifty-nine hours.

Ben’s last time in Spain had been a brief but eventful visit to Salamanca the previous September, when the weather had been hot and sultry. This time round, the dashboard thermometer read minus four and plummeted down two degrees further as he bypassed Granada in the Sierra Nevada foothills, 130 kilometres east of Málaga, and wound his way up and up into the mountains.

The scant traffic thinned out to almost zero the higher the road climbed, and he saw nothing for miles and miles except endless snowy forests of oak and pine. He had to stop frequently to check his bearings. Once he almost collided with a curly-horned mountain goat that burst out from the roadside shrubbery and darted across his path. On and on the road led him, often buried deep in snow and almost impassable in places, climbing ever more steeply until he could see the snowy mountain peaks rearing up above the clouds like something out of a dreamscape.

It was early afternoon by the time Ben caught his first glimpse of the house through the trees, checked his map again and knew he’d come to the right place. By then the road had dwindled into a narrow track that was virtually invisible under a blanket of white. If any other vehicles had made it up here recently, all trace of their passing had been covered in the last snowfall. Judging by the heavy sky, another was due before long.

The final hundred or so yards to the house were blocked by a fallen pine trunk that looked as if it must have come down in a recent winter storm, and drifts too deep even for the 4x4 to negotiate. Ben got out and began trudging through the crisp snow, his legs sinking in knee-high. The cold air was stunning after the warmth of the car. Condensation billowed from his mouth. He dug his hands deep in his jacket pockets.

He paused at the fallen tree to brush away the clumps of snow from his jeans and observe the house. It was a long, low building except for the round, ivy-clad, two-storey tower that dominated one wing. The stonework was as white as the snow that had drifted high up against the foot of the walls. Thick bushes and spreading pine trees had grown in close all around. He could see no sign of a vehicle, but guessed that Cabeza’s car or truck must be parked behind the wooden doors of the garage built into the ground floor of the house. Straining an ear over the constant whistle of the cold, biting wind, he was sure he could hear faint music coming from somewhere inside. Someone was at home.

He could hear the music more clearly as he approached the foot of the building. It sounded like Beethoven, being played loudly from one of the rooms within the round tower.

The front entrance to the house was at first-floor level, on a raised terrace skirted by a wrought-iron railing. Ben climbed the slippery steps and tinkled the little bell that hung from an ornate bracket by the door. It didn’t surprise him when there was no response. The Beethoven was blaring loudly enough from inside to drown out anything short of a shotgun blast. Maybe Cabeza was deaf, he thought. He tried the door and found it unlocked. Creaking it open a few inches, he peered in and could see the woody interior of a living room with exposed beams and a tall stone fireplace.

‘Hello?’ he called out in Spanish. ‘Anyone here?’

Still no sign of life except for the music. Ben kicked the snow from his boots and stepped inside the house. He looked around him. The scent of freshly-brewed coffee drew his eye to an open doorway to his right, and the kitchen beyond. He walked in and touched the coffee pot by the stove. It was warm, and so was the half-finished cup sitting on the table next to an open newspaper.

The music was still playing in the background. Ben made his way back through the living room towards the sound. Through another door was a hallway that led to the first floor of the tower, a round library completely encircled with wooden bookcases crammed with thousands of volumes and periodicals. Next to a little reading table was an iron spiral staircase leading upwards to a neat circular hole in the ceiling. Ben climbed the steps and found himself emerging into a hallway on the tower’s top floor with a door on either side of him.

The music was coming from the left hand door. Ben knocked lightly, then more firmly. ‘Hello? Professor Cabeza?’ He waited for a reply, but all he could hear were the strains of Beethoven from behind the glossy wood. If Cabeza was inside the room, he didn’t want to scare the man by walking in unannounced – but he couldn’t wait out in the hall forever, either. He gently opened the door and stepped inside.

The semicircular room was bright and spacious, lit from above by a large skylight and from the east and west by a sweeping, curved expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out through the pine trees over the snowy forest and the peaks in the distance. Historical prints hung on the walls. More books and papers lay in heaps and piles everywhere: on the floor, on a side table and among the clutter of the large desk by the window. But what Ben was looking at was the high-backed leather chair facing away from him, and the man he could see sitting in it.