THE ENGLISH WITNESS (13 page)

JACK

“I think I ought to track down his family and pay my respects,” announced
Jack as he stood on the open landing in front of Antonio’s apartment.

“What family?” asked Miguel, more
brusquely than was called for. “We’ve been in touch with his kids. One’s a
doctor, the other’s in real estate. Neither of them kept in touch with him, and
his wife died years ago. Sorry, I assumed you knew as you’d been in touch with
him through this
Faces Books
thing. It seems he lived by himself, mainly
on his savings. But he coached people in English, among other things.”

“What do you mean,
other things
?”

“We were hoping you’d be able to tell us.”

“What on earth makes you think there was
anything more to Antonio than meets the eye.”

“You mean, apart from the manner of his
death? No, sorry, that was below the belt. But these Legion heavies must have
been onto him for a reason. And there’s more. Neighbours say he was away for
days at a time. And when he was here, get this, he used to spend time in his
garage.”

“Oh, wow. His garage, eh? That’s a dead giveaway.
What do you think? CIA? Mossad? Come on, Miguel, he was probably plinking at
beer cans or working on an old car. Why don’t we take a look?”

“That’s already been done.”

“I’d like to see for myself, if you don’t
mind.”

They waited for Julio to finish securing
the apartment, then tramped down the stairs together and across the open area
behind the building. The larger row of garages faced them with a second row at
right angles on their left. Jack walked straight across to one of the units and
attempted to open it, but the handle would not turn.

“Your memory’s playing you tricks, Jack,”
announced Julio sadly. “It’s this one.” He was standing in front of a unit in
the other block. He reached into his pocket for a key, unlocked the door and
raised it to horizontal.

Sheepishly, Jack ambled over and saw that
the open unit was indeed empty. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s been forty years.” He
stood staring into the dark, oblong, empty space for a few seconds, shielding his
eyes from the late morning sunshine. Then, leaving Julio to lock up, he wordlessly
headed back to the car.

Miguel was sitting in the front passenger
seat with the engine running and the air-conditioning at full blast. “It can’t
be easy after forty years,” he said.

“You’re right,” agreed Jack, still
standing by the window. “It’s not easy. But I’m still sure that it’s not
right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I‘m sure that’s not the garage I went to,
where he kept his car and his pile of beer cans. It was much the same time of
day as this, and we didn’t have the sun in our eyes. We couldn’t have hit the
targets if we did.”

“Well, that’s definitely his garage; I’ve
checked the lease. Memory can play tricks after half a lifetime.”

“I’m sure I’m not mistaken. It’s the one I
tried to open.”

“Can’t be. As I said, we’ve checked the
lease. And get this: we’ve even counted the number of garages, and it tallies
with the number of apartments.”

“Look, can you just humour me on this? I
think we need to check it out.”

“We have a meeting with the local police
in fifteen minutes.”

“It won’t take a minute. You want my help,
then humour me.”

In a less than gracious manner the
detective released his seat belt, threw open the door and climbed out. Julio secured
the car, his face a study in neutrality, and they followed Jack as he marched
across the yard to the unit in which he had already shown an interest. “Do you
want to try the key?” he asked. “I don’t suppose there are many different
numbers.”

Julio took out the key with which he had
opened the first garage, and put it into the lock. Initially it would not turn,
but it was a cheap system. Jack could see how the versatile driver kept a
turning force on the key while gently sliding it back and forth in the lock. After
a few seconds it turned slightly. Julio emitted a little sigh of satisfaction,
turned the key through a hundred and eighty degrees, and twisted the handle
without the slightest effort. But that was the sum total of his success. He
went red in the face tugging at the closed door, and then both Jack and Miguel
tried in turn.

“It’s hopeless,” panted Miguel. “It’s not
locked, but it won’t budge. There’s something going on here. Julio, get on the
phone and tell Velasco we’ll be delayed. On second thoughts, give me your phone
and I’ll ring. You try and unlock the adjacent doors the way you did this one.
And Jack, you see if there’s another way in round the back.”

Jack glanced at Miguel as the
detective squinted at the phone’s display. Had Julio been carrying the device all
the time they were on the run in San Sebastián? If so, why had he denied having
it, and why was he not more secretive about it now?

In the entire length of the garage block’s rear wall there was only one
door. It looked quite recent and very stout, but Julio had found a sledgehammer
in one of the adjoining units, and with a solid blow to the lock it burst open.
Immediately Miguel was on the phone explaining the illegal forced entry to an
irate senior detective from the nearby city centre. Suddenly he put his hand
over the microphone and shouted at Jack, “Stop, you can’t go in. I’m in enough
trouble already. We have to wait for Velasco.” He took his hand away again.
“Sorry, my friend, just a bit of damage limitation… Yes, I know it was my
damage in the first place… Look, I have to go. An hour, yes? See you then.”

Miguel hastily ended the call and strode over
to the rear door of the garage, where Jack was standing with one impudent foot
over the threshold. The detective laid a restraining hand none too gently on
his shoulder and span him round. “You want to lose me my job, Jack?” he
growled.

“Just take a look, Mr. Detective. What do
you see.”

“Yes, I saw the computer when we knocked
the door in. It’s a computer, big news. Your friend had to have a study
somewhere.”

“Take a proper look, Miguel.” With that, his
hand flicked a recessed switch just inside the door and the narrow space was
bathed in light. A few feet inside the door, placed so that anyone casually
glimpsing the interior would see it, was an elderly desktop PC with a dusty
inkjet printer sitting next to it. At the far end, where the inner face of an
up-and-over door should have been, was a solid wall of brick and mortar. But
the real revelation was against the long sidewall, shielded from casual view by
the open door.

A polished wooden work surface ran the
whole length of the unit. Spaced along it were three Mac Pro workstations and a
multi-function laser printer. Mounted above them on the wall was a horizontal
grey metal structure that could only be a gun locker. It took all of Jack’s
self-control to refrain from rushing in, and all of Miguel’s will power not to
let him. The two of them stood there immobile for nearly half a minute. Finally,
Miguel turned away. “We don’t even know for sure that it’s his,” he whispered.

“I think we can be fairly sure that it
is,” answered Jack. “Look over there. What do you see?”

Miguel turned back, squeezed alongside him,
and craned round the door to where the Englishman was pointing. Affixed to the
bottom corner of the gun locker was a small, faded colour photograph. It showed
a little blue and white Renault standing in front of a row of garages. But it
was not the car that held Jack’s attention. Before Miguel could restrain him, he
had stepped into the room and gently peeled the photograph away from the steel
panel. He retreated quickly to the door afterwards, and held the snapshot in
front of the detective’s eyes.

Miguel was getting long-sighted and had to
take a step back just as they heard a car pulling into the yard on the other
side of the garage. He lowered his eyelids and squinted at the picture. Beside the
car stood a figure in blue jeans and a dark T-shirt. Even in such a tiny, faded
print he could make out the wiry hair, high forehead, square jaw and mischievous
blue eyes.

“Who the hell is that?” he asked, unnecessarily.

“Actually, it’s me,” replied Jack. “This
is mine, OK?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you do
that.” The detective went to reach for the picture, but at that moment there
was a blast on a car horn from the other side of the garage block, and Miguel
obediently headed off towards the corner. Jack slipped the photo into his
wallet and hoped it would be forgotten.

An hour later Velasco had been and gone, having spent most of the time
yelling about procedure. He had taken Antonio’s keys from Julio, warned Miguel
not to re-enter the apartment or any of the garages, and told them all to remain
at the scene pending a visit from the I.T. forensics team.

An hour later, the Englishman and the two officers
were sitting on abandoned blocks of concrete behind the row of garages when
they heard another car pull into the yard. Shortly afterwards, two men appeared
round the corner. They flashed ID at Miguel, put on white overalls and masks,
and vanished through the broken door with a bulky aluminium case.

Nothing happened for several minutes, then
there was a warning shout from inside. Five seconds later, the two men came
stumbling out, one of them clutching an open aluminium case from which small,
intricate tools and instruments were scattering as he ran. A moment later, a
piercing alarm went off inside. It sounded for half a minute while the
investigators just stood where they were with their stripped-off facemasks in
their hands. Finally, there was a series of small explosions inside the garage,
and noxious black smoke began roiling from the doorway.

“Mission aborted,” said one of the men
quietly. “The drives were booby-trapped. At least whoever set it up gave us
plenty of warning.”

“What about all Antonio’s data?” enquired Jack.

“Well, that’s some of it you
can see pouring out of the door.”

Another hour later, and the hired Ford was cruising up the motorway
towards Granada. There was a long drive ahead, and the site of a Wild West
theme park outside the city got Jack reminiscing again. With nothing but the
awesome landscape to distract them, his companions left him to talk. Miguel set
the voice recorder running, and after a few minutes he began to jot written notes.

JAMES

Jerry thought that the most serious threat to my survival was Almería’s
location: an isolated strip of coastal plain, cut off from the rest of the
country by arid, rocky desert and spurs of unscalable high ground. Even today it’s
hard to think of a city in Europe with fewer ways in or out. The roads are
wider and faster than they used to be, but the choice is essentially the same:
either the coast road running west towards Malaga and northeast to Murcia, or the
one running northwest through the mountains to Granada. There’s a railway line following
the same corridor to the interior, but the main station would inevitably be guarded.

The most direct route to my destination, Valencia,
was round the coast via Murcia. The danger was that my pursuers would also see
it as the natural choice. The alternative was to follow the Granada road inland
as far as Guadix and branch northeast from there. It was longer but less
obvious, and as the road wound its way across the dramatic landscape it served
a string of remote railway stations.

Having chosen the second option, the next
big question was how I would travel. We’d ruled out trains and buses, at least
as a way out of the city, but I had no way of travelling the roads. To my
relief, Jerry had taken this into account. “We need to think about transport,”
he said, looking in Derek’s direction, “at least until our young friend is a
good few kilometres from here. Your car is too well known. Any ideas?” Derek
didn’t return Jerry’s eye contact. I guessed that Jerry had an idea in mind and
it was one that Derek didn’t like. The silence grew more embarrassing as it
lengthened.

An hour later my embarrassment grew beyond
anything I’d ever known, as a familiar blue and white Renault skidded to a halt
in a cloud of dust beside the house. To my relief, the only expression on
Antonio’s face as he set eyes on me again was one of surprise. “James?” he
said, with a faint note of disbelief in his voice. Then, to my present host,
“Derek, good to see you again. But I had no idea.”

If Antonio was surprised to find me there,
Derek was dumbfounded to see that Antonio and I were already acquainted.
“Antonio, you and this young man seem to know each other. I can’t believe it.”

“It is a small world, isn’t it, my
friend?” responded Antonio. “But it’s not that much of a miracle. James was one
of my students in England. He recently honoured me with a visit, which is how
he comes to be in Almería in the first place.”

Derek was still looking puzzled and I was
in shock. It took Jerry to remind us of the need for urgent action. “Antonio,
good to see you again,” he said, “but time is pressing. Can you take James north
right away? As far as Guadix if possible? He’ll explain things along the way,
and the three of us will talk when you get back.”

Antonio nodded, and Jerry turned to me
next. “Listen carefully, James,” he said sternly. “Don’t delay in explaining to
Antonio what’s happening. And the second he wants to turn round, you must get
out and carry on under your own steam. Even if it means walking. Is that
clear?” I signalled my agreement, and he continued. “There’s at least one train
a day from Guadix to Valencia. It stops everywhere, so there are plenty of
places you can break your journey if you have to. Or if you prefer you can head
back to Bobadilla and choose a destination from there. Just keep your eyes
open.”