THE ENGLISH WITNESS (14 page)

Five minutes later, I was in the familiar car
heading back towards the city centre. As we drove I told Antonio my story. From
time to time he would interrupt to seek clarification, and when I’d finished
there was a silence lasting a couple of minutes. When he finally spoke, he said
something that drove my heart down into my stomach: “My friend, you owe me an
apology.”

For several seconds I sat speechless. I
wanted to sink through the seat, through the steel floor of the car, into the
tarmac. But Antonio was speaking again in a breathless stream of consciousness:
“I don’t expect you to say sorry, but I feel dishonoured. You stayed under my
roof and you ate my food. You were under my protection and you said nothing. You
went off into the night leaving me in ignorance, depriving me of the chance to help
you. You patronised me, James. You shielded me from risk. You treated me as
unworthy of your confidence.” He paused. “Alongside that, taking the pistol is
nothing. I understand why you took it, and I’m glad I was able to help you in at
least one small way. Nothing more needs to be said, we just…”

Antonio had glanced up at his rear-view
mirror and said urgently, “Quickly, get down in your seat.” I went to look over
my shoulder, but his right hand came across and pushed my head forward with
surprising force for such an awkward angle. “No, down,” he snapped. For another
minute we carried on at a sedate pace as my back and neck began to burn with
cramp. Then I saw his foot twitch on the throttle, felt the car surge forward,
and heard his voice telling me I could get up.

As we turned north, Antonio opened up for
the first time about his own life. He’d shared my teenage obsession with weaponry.
But unlike me, he lived in a country with compulsory military service. Rather
than face conscription he’d enlisted for a short service commission. On the
strength of a perfect score in aptitude tests he’d been inducted into military
intelligence, and it was not until his return to civilian life that he’d
trained as a teacher.

“I still get nostalgic for the old days,”
he said wistfully as he ended his story, “but it’s no life for a family man.”

“James Bond,” I answered reverently.
“James Antonio Bond. No wonder you drive like a stuntman. Have you ever been in
a gun-fight?”

“Let’s not talk about it,” he muttered.

JACK

Brown now with dust, the once white Ford reversed into a parking space
just across the road from Guadix railway station. Julio left the engine and air
conditioner running, and the temperature in the car stayed almost bearable.

“So this is Guadix.” Miguel was flushed
and sweating. “Why the hell have you brought me to this suffocating hole in the
middle of nowhere?”

“Sorry, Miguel, I thought you got the
point. Purely to help you, I’m doing my best to put a confused bundle of memories
in order. And I’ve said enough times that it’s both painful and difficult. The
point of coming to these places isn’t just to jog my memory, although it’s
doing that too. It’s about laying ghosts to rest. And that’s helping me to talk
about things I’ve been bottling up for decades.”

There was silence in the car for a full
minute, then Miguel spoke again. “I’m not going to say sorry. But I will say
thank you for your efforts to help us. Have you seen all you need to see here?”

“Not yet. Could you just drive around for
a while? I’m trying to get a sequence of events clear in my head.” Julio
dutifully put the car into gear and began to pull out. “No,” barked Jack
suddenly. “The other way. Please. It’s important.”

They set off, and as Jack gave
directions they went round in a great loop. Then they went round again.
Finally, Jack breathed out loudly and suggested they go for a cold beer.

The bar in which they sat was mercifully
air-conditioned and the beer ice-cold. The early evening clientele could best
be described as middle-class bohemian, befitting a town famous for its cave
dwellings and its arts scene. An invisible pianist was playing smooth jazz
somewhere in the establishment, and the waiters wore black bow-ties. Jack
thought that he and his companions looked rather out of their element. He put
the vague sense of embarrassment out of his mind, however. He was coming to a
part of the story that he knew was appallingly dark, but apart from the
occasional impressionistic flashes…

                               …Severed…

                               …Gaping…

…its precise nature was still sealed away.

JAMES

It was evening before we reached Guadix, but the place made a strong
impression on me and I was itching to explore. That wasn’t on Antonio’s agenda,
of course, but I expected him to head home at any moment.

“Thank you so much for all you’ve done,” I
said. “I wish I could offer you money for petrol, but I know it would offend you.”

“Perhaps you’re getting to know me at
last.”

“You should be getting back to your lovely
family. I’ll go to the station and check the timetables. And I’d like to visit
the Troglodyte caves while I’m here.”

“Do you know, James, I thought you were
beginning to grasp what you’re up against. It seems I was wrong. I’m not
turning my back on you until you’re sitting on a train surrounded by people.”

“Why? You don’t owe me anything. In fact I
owe you. You should go home.”

“Then you’re not getting to know me as well
as I thought. I do owe you. Bad people are persecuting someone who’s been a
guest in my house. I can’t come up north with you, but as long as you’re in my
part of the country I have a duty to help you.”
  

JACK

“A good friend, clearly,” commented the detective without any real warmth
in his voice. “And
a good
man. But I can’t imagine living with a moral code like his. I’d have dropped
you at the station and been out of here.”

“He was a remarkable guy,” confirmed Jack,
wistfully. “I still can’t believe he’s gone, even though I haven’t seen him
face-to-face for forty years.”

“But I’m guessing that his judgment wasn’t
perfect. That’s based on things you’ve said outright and on little hints you
may have let slip without meaning to. Remember, I’ve listened to a lot of
witnesses in my years in the service. And I think he must have done something
to raise the stakes, to escalate the danger you were in.”

Jack was silent for a moment as he tried
to work out how he had let something so big slip under his guard. Was it on the
last evening at the second safe house, when Miguel and Julio had been plying
him with questions in an attempt to bypass his long-winded narrative? He did
not think so, but then how was Miguel able to see so clearly where the
story was going? “The best thing is if I
carry on,” he said at last.

JAMES

I sat in the passenger seat of the blue Renault, looking along the
street at a black Mercedes parked opposite the station forecourt. I hadn’t
really expected to find the station unguarded, but having my worst fears
confirmed hit my morale harder than expected.

“OK, Scarlet Pimpernel,” said Antonio. You
told me how you got to the platform in Granada by walking along the tracks. We
need to see if something like that is possible here. I think the main entrance
is too much of a risk.”

“What do I do about a ticket? There’s been
an inspector on every train I’ve travelled on. And what’s that about the Scarlet
Pimpernel?”

He grinned slyly. “They seek him here,
they seek him there… Just paying you back for the dig about James Bond. But
you’re right about the ticket. There’s no point in attracting attention. If you
give me your
carnet
I’ll go in and buy it for you.”

I handed him my prepaid travel booklet and
he started to get out of the car. Then he sat back down and looked at me
searchingly. “James, you can drive, yes?”

“Yes, but what…?”

“Then get behind the wheel, and take off
at the first sign of trouble. If necessary I’ll get the train back to Almería
and report the car stolen. But remember, if you can get onto the train it’ll be
safer than the road. It’s due to arrive in just under a quarter of an hour and
will leave about five minutes later.”

As soon as Antonio had left the car, I wriggled
across to the driving seat and began familiarising myself with the controls.
But I was exhausted after a virtually sleepless night in the tiny car, and as
the minutes ticked by I could feel my eyelids drooping.

I was jerked out of my reverie by a shout
from along the street. A man had just run across the courtyard in front of the
station and was sprinting along the road towards me. My first reaction was
fear, but then I realised with an even greater shock that the sprinter was
Antonio.

Immediately I turned the starter, and as
the engine whined into life I pushed the stick into gear and let up the clutch.
There was a faint crunch as I brushed bumpers with a van parked awkwardly in
front of me, followed by a tinkle of broken glass. Then the note of the eager
little engine rose to a scream as I fumbled to change gear with my right hand. I
nearly stalled as I pulled up beside Antonio, but he wrenched open the
passenger door and flung himself in.

“Go, go, go,” he shouted, his face purple
beneath the tan. I let the clutch up and took off cautiously, casting a wary
glance at the black Mercedes still sitting stationary across the road.

“I’m sorry,” I blustered, “I hit…”

At that moment a man in uniform came
rushing across the courtyard towards us with his arm waving. But his eyes
weren’t on us—they were on the Mercedes. Instinctively I put my foot down
harder, and the little car surged away as I made my way smoothly up through the
gears. But we were only a couple of hundred metres along the narrow road when I
saw in the mirror that the black car was following us. “Uh-oh,” I breathed.
“They’re onto us.”

“Right just up ahead,” urged Antonio.
“They can beat us on the straight. Our only chance is in the lanes. And we need
to switch places as soon as we can.”

I pulled the car sharply round a right-hand
corner where Antonio was pointing and raced down a narrow thoroughfare, praying
as I did that we wouldn’t meet anyone coming the other way. “Right again,” he
shouted, and again I followed instructions. I drove at a reckless pace along the
winding, bumpy single-width lane.

Then Antonio spoke again. “I have a plan,”
he said. “Turn right at the end, then right again, and park in front of the
station. Here, take your
carnet
. Don’t try to use it—the man in the
ticket office took one look at your name and freaked out. But the station is
swarming with foreign students. Just walk onto the platform and lose yourself
in the crowd. You’ll have to improvise if the guard comes through the train,
but I think it’s your only hope.”

I pulled in where the Mercedes had been parked
just a few minutes earlier. Then I turned to Antonio to say thank you, but he cut
me off. “No time. Get going. Write to me.” After a quick handshake I grabbed my
holdall and leapt out. He quickly sidled across to the driving seat, and by the
time I was across the road he’d turned a corner and disappeared.

I never saw Antonio again, or tried to
contact him. And I never heard from him until he sent me a friend request on
Facebook a few months ago. We were going go on a grand tour—roughly following
my route from forty years ago. It was going to be therapeutic for both of us. But
getting back to the story, I walked straight past the ticket office and pushed
in among a group of tall, sun-bleached, unshaven, mostly Australian backpackers.
And the train wheezed its way into the station less than five minutes later.

It wasn’t what I’d expected – just a tiny diesel
shunting engine with three dilapidated coaches _– and it was already overfull.
Even the luggage racks carried horizontal passengers in various states of
consciousness. So I just stood in the corridor, and we were moving within another
five minutes.

JACK

“Now this is crucial,” announced Jack as he checked to make sure he had
his companions’ full attention. “I was watching carefully as we pulled out of
the station, and I saw no sign of trouble. But I could see a dense column of
smoke diagonally ahead of us. And a minute later, as we crossed the road that
I’d driven Antonio’s car along earlier, I could see that a vicious fire was raging
somewhere to the right of the tracks.

I think the smoke is important. Because I’ve
come up with a theory – perhaps
suspicion
would be a better word – that Antonio
took them out. Tthat he killed the whole crew in the Merc. I’ve no idea if he
meant to. I hope he was just trying to hold them up and things went wrong. You
see, I got the blame for their deaths. And as you’ve already worked out, that
took things to new level.”

“We should go and look,” said Miguel.

There was a heavy silence in the car as
they drove round the circuit once again, and this time Jack asked Julio to stop
the car at a junction within sight of the railway overpass. “It was here,” he
said quietly. “I think three members of the Legion died violently just here. I
think that intentionally or not Antonio killed them. And having met some of the
people involved, I know they’d have hunted him forever. If you can find the
record of a fatal accident just here, you might get some names and a vehicle
registration.”

It took nearly two hours for a reply to
come back, by which time they were back in the air-conditioned bar, but the
result was conclusive. Miguel passed on the substance of what he had been told:
“In September 1973, three men died in a mysterious incident at the road
junction where we stopped. Two of them were employees of a private security
firm up in the far north of the country—one with active paramilitary
connections. The same firm owned the car in which they were found, a black
Mercedes, which was not badly damaged and was later re-commissioned.

“I don’t understand,” said Jack after a
moment’s silence. “There was a big fire. How can the car not have been a write-off?”

“I’m keeping the best for last,” answered Miguel.
“There was another car involved which was completely burned out. It was a modified
Renault 8, ownership untraceable. The only patch of paintwork left intact by the
fire was in the angle of the passenger door. It was mid-blue.”

“And the driver?” asked Jack breathlessly.

“Burned to a crisp,” answered the
detective. “But before you go to pieces on me, it obviously wasn’t your friend.
You said there were three in the Merc, and remember only two bodies were found.
Secondly, I said they died in an incident, not an accident. They were killed by
shots to the head at close range.”

“And what about the man in the blue
Renault,” insisted Jack.

“Unidentifiable. I don’t suppose you’ve
ever seen the victim of a petrol fire. I hope you never have to. Even the bones
shrink, and human tissue fuses to the metal and plastic. It could have been
Elvis Presley in there for all they knew. But if you want
my
theory,
your friend Antonio murdered all three of them before putting one of the bodies
in his own car and torching it.”

“Then he finally got what was coming to
him,” said Julio grimly.

“As I said a moment ago, they couldn’t
trace him at the time,” explained Miguel. “The plates were missing from the
Renault, and there were no readable engine or chassis markings. And of course the
only surviving witness to Señor García’s presence left the country. Not your
fault, Jack. But don’t go calling him a hero in my earshot.”