THE ENGLISH WITNESS (10 page)

And so I went to bed in my already rank
clothes, barely sleeping for fear that I would oversleep, and crept out into
the fresh dawn air while everyone else was still enjoying their rest. The gates
were already open, and I was about to step out onto the roadway and head for
the station when I saw a black saloon parked just a few metres along the road.

As I dodged back into the grounds I heard
doors slam. I sprinted back towards the hostel buildings, intending to cut
across the playing field. But as I rounded the corner of the dormitory block
and glanced over my shoulder to see how much of a head-start I had, my feet
struck a solid obstacle and I flew headlong to the ground. My palms and chin
made contact with the sun-baked earth, and the wind came out of my lungs in a
rush.

As I stood up groggily, fighting to get my
breath back, there was a grunt from behind me. I looked back to see Dougal and
Sandy lying naked on the ground beside their bike. There was an opened-out
sleeping bag beneath them and there had evidently been another preserving their
body heat and modesty until my foot dragged it off them. Dougal propped himself
up on one elbow and roared an incomprehensible question at me.

“Sorry,” I stammered, “I didn’t expect
anybody to be lying out here on the ground.”

“How else are we supposed to have a
honeymoon?” he countered, this time making more of an effort to be understood.
“Why the hell can’t they provide married accommodation in these places?”

“I’ve got to run,” I said desperately,
glancing back the way I had come and expecting my pursuers to appear round the
corner at any moment. “Some guys are after me.”

There were several seconds of quiet,
during which Sandy woke up and threw an arm across her torso, the half-awake
Dougal struggled to make sense of the situation, and I backed away towards the
open field. Then the near-silence was broken by the all too familiar sound of a
revving engine followed by a scuff of rubber on loose, dry ground as the car
skidded to a halt. Before it was at a complete standstill, the two doors on the
side facing me swung open and a pair of dark-suited, heavily built men climbed
out. The driver stayed in his seat. He was smaller than his two passengers, but
could clearly have manhandled me into the car single-handed.

The two big men advanced side by side.
“Cover yourself up, slut,” one of them said as they bypassed the two people
still on the ground. I turned and sprinted out into the field, knowing even as
I did so that I could never outdistance the heavies who were advancing with
such grim determination. After a hundred metres, however, I still hadn’t felt a
beefy hand on my shoulder and I risked a glance behind me.

There was no one there. The only person I
could see was Dougal, standing naked and proud beside the dormitory block. The
bike was still there accompanied by the large, pale, horizontal mass that was
Sandy. And on the ground nearby were two darker shapes. The car was nowhere to
be seen. As I began to trudge breathlessly back the way I had come, I saw that
there was something long and black hanging from Dougal’s right hand. As I drew
closer, I could see that it was a motorcycle drive chain.

JACK

“May I speak now?” asked Miguel. Jack nodded, completely missing the
irony, and the detective continued. “It’s finally getting interesting. You see,
this is the first time since leaving San Sebastián that you were traced through
the paper trail. At the inn near Lóyola, they were lucky enough to get a
tip-off—probably the payback from a local canvassing operation.”

“Yes,” agreed Jack. “And after that, the
monastery itself was the logical place to come looking.” 

“I imagine that your big jump south to
Córdoba threw them off the scent,” continued the detective, “at least for a
time. But two days in Granada and, bang, they were on the phone to the hostel.”

“I see now where you’re coming from,” said
Jack. “I guess better people were on the job. And by then they knew the name I
was travelling under. I’m afraid that means they must have tracked down
somebody who helped me and put pressure on them. I’m gutted about that.”

“Forty years on, there’s only one thing
you can do for them,” responded the detective. “In all probability the guilty
ones are still alive. And now we’ve got a justice minister who’ll rip them to
shreds. Help us crack this case, and you’ll live to see them in chains.”

Shreds. Chains.
Jack grunted an acknowledgement, but as he
resumed his narrative Julio could see that something was wrong. The
Englishman’s face had gone grey, his eyes blank, his speech hesitant and vague.
He only just got through the story of his departure from Granada.

As far as Miguel could decipher from an increasingly distracted and incoherent
account, Jack had already purchased his seat on the eastbound service to the Mediterranean.
But on arriving at the station early in the morning, after his narrow escape at
the youth hostel, he had bought second ticket to the important railway junction
at Bobadilla—two hours’ travel time in the opposite direction. Having made sure
(by the simple process of insulting the station clerk) that his face and
appearance would be remembered, he had boarded the first train heading west.
Getting off at the first stop, he had waited for the shops to open and given himself
a thorough makeover – haircut, change of clothes and a garishly coloured holdall.
Finally, he had caught a train back to Granada and discreetly waited at the end
of the of the platform until his train to the coast arrived.

“Are you still such a crafty person,
Jack?” asked Julio, watching the Englishman carefully as he spoke. “Those were
great moves for a guy barely out of his teens. You made sure the clerk would remember
you getting on a train towards Bobadilla, where there are connections to most
of the country. In short, you pointed them to everywhere but where you were
actually going, and you made it unlikely that they’d recognise you even if they
saw you. That was some going.”

Jack made no reply, and when Julio complimented him
again in yet stronger terms he was still slow to respond. “I was twenty,” he
answered at length, his voice slack and expressionless, his view of the room
eclipsed by a sudden vivid mental picture.
Carlos, a trickle of blood
running down from his mouth.
“Twenty years old. But I had some training, did
I tell you that? Firearms and manoeuvres with the Air Cadets and Army
Reservists. Personal security with Father Ignacio.”

Julio tried to catch Miguel’s eye, but the detective
did not seem to notice; he was busy planning the next question. “I’d like you
to think,” he said, “of all the bad people you met on your travels. Have you
seen any of them again since?”

Kaixo, my little friend James.
Now Jack was struggling to hear the
detective’s words above the cacophony of voices and background noise inside his
head. But Miguel carried on regardless. “I think they were minions,” he said. “Up
to and including the raid on the monastery. Then they lost you, and I think at
that point the principals got directly involved. My guess is, they found out
the name of the kid who got shot and put two and two together regarding his
missing ID. Then they’ll have found his name on registration cards from the
places you stayed in Madrid and Córdoba. That probably took them a couple of
days, but once they had your travelling name confirmed they’d have traced you within
hours.”

“Hmm. That adds up,” agreed Jack distractedly. “And
it fits with what happened…
(striped shadows).
What happened when…
(blood).
What happened when…
(severed, gaping).
”

He stopped in mid-sentence. Miguel and Julio waited
for him to continue. After two or three minutes had elapsed, Julio asked him if
he was OK. There was still no reply. Not when Julio shook him firmly by the
shoulder. Not even when Miguel slapped him hard across the face, first one way,
then the other. Before the third blow could land, Julio’s long, sinewy arm
snaked out and grasped the detective’s wrist on the backswing.  

“You seem to have taken Señor Burlton somewhere he doesn’t want to go,”
pronounced the young female doctor after examining Jack and hearing an outline
of the interrogation. She and the detective were standing outside Jack’s room
in the witness protection house, where she had spent half an hour on a physical
check-up and as long again trying to interact with him. “It’s not catatonia as such.
He’s just in deep shock. I would judge that you’ve induced him to relive something
horrific, and now he’ll be in much the same state as he was after going through
it the first time—perhaps worse.”

“Are you saying he had some kind of
amnesia? That we reawakened lost memories?”

“Not necessarily. From what you’ve told
me, there may be a history of functional amnesia in relation to past events. Memory
loss is more often caused by a physical injury to the brain, but we all have
memories that we’re loath to revisit. And if we constantly shrink away from
examining those memories we can eventually construct a wall around them. We
know in outline what’s behind the wall, but we stop interacting with it and
forget all the associated pain and outrage. But behind that wall is a ticking
time-bomb.”

“And we’ve detonated it?”

“Possibly. People are all different. He
may be chatting away happily by this time tomorrow, or it might take another…
How long ago did you say this was? Thirty years?”

“Forty.”

“It could take him another forty years,
either to integrate what happened into his life narrative or wall it off again.
Which in his case would be the rest of his life. This is largely speculation of
course; I’m not a mind reader. But it gives us a way forward.”

“And that is?”

“The most immediate problem isn’t amnesia.
Amnesia victims can usually hold a lucid conversation, as I gather he was doing
until your questioning reached a certain point. As I said, he’s in shock. He
needs mild sedation, a period of psychotherapy and time with his family. Give
it a month, a year, possibly longer, and under the supervision of a good
counsellor he may be ready to help you further with your enquiries.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Detective, Señor Burlton is my patient
now. He’s highly stressed already, and I can’t allow you to expose him to any
more pressure. It sounds melodramatic, but you could utterly destroy him. He
needs help before he can help anybody else.”

“Let me remind you, he chose this in full
knowledge of the risks. I guess none of us understood quite what the risks
were, but that doesn’t change things.”

“He needs help.”

“He wants to help. And we’ll take care of
him.”

“You know, I very much doubt that. And if
I sign him off as mentally unstable, any testimony he gives you will be
worthless.”

Miguel saw that this was a battle that he
could not win outright, and he adopted a more conciliatory tone. What would we
have to promise for you to entrust Señor Burlton to our care?”

The doctor looked at him steadily, knowing
it was not a battle either of them could win. ”Patience. Lay off the pressure.
Get him out of this prison. Lay on plenty of sensory stimulation—and I
do
mean the pleasant kind. He knows what you need. You just have to let him bring
it out in his own time and his own way. He’s like a fresh trauma victim, and if
you don’t treat him like one you’ll do incalculable harm—to him and probably to
your investigation. Is that a promise?”

“Promise,” answered Miguel.

The doctor did not really
believe him. She had silently noted the bruising on the patient’s face and a
recent laceration to his cheekbone. But the bulky detective made her nervous,
and she thought she could do more good in the world if she fought battles that she
had a hope of winning.

“Do you think we’re wasting our time, Chief?”

“Perhaps,” answered Miguel. “But I don’t
see any alternative. We can’t let the case fizzle out, and we’re sort of giving
him what the doctor ordered.”

“But the place?”

“I’ve run it by you twice. He never said
where he was going, but I think the evidence narrows it down to this
godforsaken place. He said he was travelling eastwards to the coast. This is
where the train would have taken him. And remember, he’d booked his seat before
they tracked him down and no doubt punctured his euphoria. He’d been planning
to pay somebody a visit, and I imagine he went ahead with it in the hope of a few
days off the grid.”

“Somebody else to draw into the web.”

“Quite so. I’m constantly impressed with
the old guy, but I don’t think I’d want him as a friend, do you?”

“No thank you. He does what he has to do.
He’s a survivor. Or has been. Do you think he’ll get himself together again?”

Miguel was quiet for several seconds
before replying. “As I said when we talked it through, I’m hoping that this
place will provide the sort of stimulation the doctor ordered and spark off
some memories. But if things comes to the point where it’s between him and the
case, I’ll have him drugged to the gills. I’ll strap electrodes to his nuts
myself if I have to. But we can play nice for a little longer.”