The Sentinel: 1 (Vengeance of Memory) (10 page)

‘Your personnel folder,
querida
. Don’t you want to know what
Capitán
Fuentes says about you?’

Shit
. Galindez was suddenly uncomfortable. ‘I thought those things were confidential?’

‘Don’t forget who’s in charge, Ana María. Me. You can do anything you want when you’ve got the power. Let’s have a look.’ Ramiro skimmed through the papers in the folder, ‘Independent… popular member of staff… persistent attention to detail… dedicated… team player… hard-working –
hostia,
willingness to work late to meet deadlines. In fact, he says you have a tendency to overwork,
querida
. As if there’s any such thing. Anyway, overall, it sounds like Fuentes finds you very acceptable, my dear.’

‘That’s very flattering, Uncle. Are you sure he was talking about me?’

‘Oh yes, and coming from Fuentes, it’s extravagant praise. You’re doing well. Sure you wouldn’t rather be in uniform and wearing a gun?’

‘We’ve discussed that before, Uncle. You know my answer.’

‘I do. Fuentes forgot to put stubborn in his list. So, how long have I got to enjoy the pleasure of your company today,
niña
?’

Galindez looked at her watch. ‘An hour. Belén in Cryptography is going on maternity leave and we’re taking her for a drink at four thirty.’

‘Maternity leave?’ Ramiro sighed. ‘That means more overtime for someone. These pregnant women cost us a fortune.’ He noticed Galindez’s expression and changed the subject. ‘Now, tell me, what’s the favour you want? You didn’t say in your email, so I assumed it meant you need to flutter your eyelashes at me before asking?’

Galindez gave her uncle a hard stare. ‘As if. The thing is, I’ve been involved with a lot of war grave work over the last year and I wondered…’

‘If I can get you out of it? Of course,
pequeñita
. Not fit work for a young woman. I’ll speak to Fuentes, ask him to give you something office based.’

‘No, that’s not it. You see, I’m involved with a group at the university investigating war crimes and atrocities.’

‘The Historical Memory people?’ Uncle Ramiro snorted. ‘They’re just a bunch of lefties. raking over the coals of the past and whining about who shot grandpa.’

Galindez gave him a long look. ‘Surprisingly, Uncle Ramiro, they don’t refer to it like that. They need my skills to add a scientific dimension to their investigation of a
Comandante
Guzmán.’

Ramiro frowned. ‘Never heard of him. What makes him so special?’

‘He was a
comandante
in the
Brigada Especial
. His unit was involved in killing a lot of people in the years after the Civil War.’

Uncle Ramiro sipped his Scotch. He chuckled. ‘
Verdad
? That’s what happens when you have wars, my dear. It’s why we have them. Otherwise it would just be a sport.’

‘Guzmán reported directly to Franco. He was in command of the Special Brigade yet there’s no direct evidence of his involvement. I want to investigate—’

Uncle Ramiro held up his hand. ‘
Ya vale
, Ana. It’s ancient history. As you know, my father, the late General Ortiz Senior, fought in the
Guerra Civil
and God alone knows how many people he killed or had killed. Iron Hand Ortiz, they called him. And with good reason. It was a war: end of story.’

‘There were war crimes. Rapes and extrajudicial killings.’

‘I know. I know. You’ve discovered the Civil War and you want to share its evils with the next generation. You won’t be the first. Unfortunately.’

‘I wondered if I could have a secondment to work on the university investigation?’

Uncle Ramiro laughed. ‘I can just see Fuentes’s face if I order him to second you to some lefty group.
Imposible
, Ana. He’d hit the roof. You’ve only worked here a year.’

Galindez pursed her lips. She hadn’t expected outright rejection.

‘Oh, don’t give me that look,
cariña
. I can’t bear it. If it’s so important to you, then of course. I’ll call Fuentes and tell him.’ The general smiled. ‘Order him, I should say.’

Galindez looked at him in surprise. ‘I didn’t give you any look, Uncle. But
muchisimas gracias
, I really appreciate it – and I promise I’ll do a good job that reflects well on the
guardia.
And there is one other thing.’ Save the biggest for last, she thought. ‘I’d like access to some of the archives at Military Intelligence.’

‘
Jesús Cristo y todo los Santos
, Ana. So would lots of people. Military secrets?’

‘Only from the early fifties. To see if there’s anything on Guzmán.’

Ramiro frowned. ‘There is a possibility,’ he said. ‘They’ve computerised all the top secret records, though of course access to them is out of the question. Much of the material on the Civil War has been moved to the archives at Salamanca. But there’s still a lot of old restricted stuff left. I can get you access to that – for what it’s worth. You’d be working pretty much on your own. It’s kept in an archive at the Institute of Military Culture.’

‘Thank you,
Tio
Ramiro. This means a lot to me.’

‘Well, make the most of it while I’m still in post,
chica
.’

‘
Por Dios
, you’re not retiring, surely?’

‘
Que va
, Ana. I’m only fifty-nine. No, I’m going to be in charge of our NATO operation in Afghanistan from the start of next year. Unless some idiot stops the fighting before I arrive – which I sincerely hope won’t happen. After all, it’s rare for a general to get to shoot anyone nowadays.’

‘I’m sure they’ll keep it going until you get there, Uncle. Congratulations. Will you bring me back one of those rugs?’

‘Dozens,
querida
. Listen, once I’ve sorted this thing out at the archives for you, you’ll be on your own. They have very few facilities. You’ll have to do all the work yourself.’

‘I’ve had lots of practice, Uncle. I’ll be fine.’

‘Shame you never studied shorthand. That’s always a useful skill for a young woman,’ Uncle Ramiro muttered, signing the paper authorising the secondment.

Later, as Galindez prepared to leave, Ramiro pressed a wad of euros into her hand. ‘A little spending money,
chiquitita
. Get yourself something nice.’ He accompanied her to the door and waited as she thanked him once more and planted goodbye kisses on each of his ruddy cheeks. ‘You should wear your hair down more often, Ana María,’ Ramiro said. ‘It suits you.’

Galindez smiled. She decided Uncle Ramiro wouldn’t appreciate her explaining the importance of avoiding contaminating a crime scene.

It was a short walk to the lift and, as Galindez pressed the call button, she heard Uncle Ramiro’s booming voice as he talked to the adjutant. ‘Lovely little thing. They’ll have to prise her husband off her with a crowbar after their wedding night. She’ll make some man very happy. I’d say she was at least a seven or an eight, what about you?’

The lift doors opened and Galindez stepped in, wondering whether Afghanistan was quite ready for Uncle Ramiro. She pressed the button for the second floor and the lift descended slowly. She counted the money Ramiro had given her. Four hundred euros. Leaving the lift, she followed the corridor past Human Resources and down a short flight of stairs towards a small lobby with a dull khaki sign:
Capilla
. There was no one about outside the small chapel, just a sign giving the chaplain’s hours of attendance. Galindez looked at the memorial on the wall by the chapel door. Rows of small photographs of the fallen, their names and dates of death. The later photos were in colour. Her
papá
’s was in black and white.
Teniente Miguel Galindez, 5/4/1992
. Above the photographs, gilt letters bearing the words inscribed over the door of every
guardia comisaría
in the country:
Todo por la Patria
. Below the memorial was a collection box labelled
Las familias
. Galindez looked around to make sure she was alone before pressing the wad of notes into the metal slot of the collection box.

She returned to the lift and went up a floor to Forensics, stopping off in the women’s changing room to tie back her hair. It was humid and she heard the dull rumble of thunder, far away, outside the hermetic world of Headquarters.

Opening her locker, Galindez took out her carefully wrapped present for Belén: a dozen romper suits wrapped in a riot of spangled wrapping paper patterned with storks carrying bundles in their beaks. The whole thing bound with a couple of vivid ribbons tied in frothy bows. Belén liked that kind of stuff. Galindez walked down the corridor to Forensics and opened the door.

The room was empty. Every computer logged out, blank. She frowned. Outside, she heard the scratching sound of rain against the windows as the summer storm picked up. Galindez walked through the unusual quiet of the empty office and noticed a light in the
Capitán
’s room. She knocked on the door.

Fuentes looked up. ‘
Holá
, Ana María. Not going to Belén’s leaving do?’

Galindez lifted the gift with its sparkling oversized bows. ‘I thought it was at four thirty?’

Fuentes shook his head. ‘Two thirty. Belén sent everyone an email earlier in the week,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you see it?’

‘I must have missed it, boss.’ Galindez shrugged. ‘They’ll have finished by now. I’ll put her present in the post.’ She turned to leave.

‘Before you go, Ana María,’ Fuentes said, ‘that report you did on the grave near Getafe.’ He held up a thick folder.

Galindez felt a sinking feeling. She’d cocked something up. For someone who prided herself on her fierce attention to detail, it was more than just disappointment: it was what
Tia
Carmen had told her was the bane of her father’s life:
Sloppy work
.

‘What was wrong with it, boss?’ She waited for Fuentes to tear her off a strip.

‘Wrong with it?’ Fuentes said. ‘There was nothing wrong with it. Nothing in all its hundred and fifteen pages – and I’m not even counting the pages of diagrams and photographs. Know how long your predecessor made his reports?’

So that was it. She had been too brief. That wasn’t quite as bad as being sloppy but it was bad enough.

‘Three hundred pages?’

Fuentes laughed. ‘I was lucky if he did more than ten, Ana. I can present this report to the coroner’s court without the slightest amendment. It’s an excellent piece of work.’

‘Thanks very much, boss.’

‘To be honest, it’s made even better by the fact that I know you don’t like working on the war graves.’ Fuentes smiled. ‘But you’ve stuck at it and every one of your reports has been top notch. That’s why I’ve put you down for a transfer to profiling as soon as a vacancy comes up. I believe that’s what you were hoping for?’

Galindez wanted to punch the air. She contained that impulse. ‘When do you think there might be a vacancy,
Capitán
?’

‘There’s one coming up in December. I hope you can wait that long?’

‘Of course.’

‘Did you speak to your uncle about the other matter?’ Fuentes asked.

‘I did. He agreed.’

‘There you are then,’ Fuentes said. ‘You do your secondment on your Guzmán project until the post in profiling becomes vacant and then you move into a department dedicated to your specialism.’

‘I don’t know what to say, boss. You’ve been great about all this.’

Fuentes looked at her. ‘You could have asked your uncle for that secondment and gone over my head. Many people would have. But you came to me first. I appreciated that, Ana. And besides, we like to keep our staff happy when we can – despite what you may think sometimes.’

Galindez nodded, lost for words. She waved the brightly wrapped present, unable to speak.

‘Carry on, Dr Galindez.’ Fuentes looked down at his papers, avoiding seeing Galindez quickly wipe her eyes as she left the
Capitán
’s office.

‘Oh, one more thing, Ana,’ Fuentes called.

‘Boss?’

‘The satnav. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to pay for it. That’s the fourth in less than a year. I don’t know how you do it: how can you run over a satnav?’

‘It isn’t easy, boss.’

‘No. But you managed it anyway.’ Fuentes laughed. ‘They’ll stop it from your wages at the end of the month.’

Galindez made her way back to her desk and slumped into her chair, putting Belén’s gift in her in-tray. She sighed.
It’s all good
. She’d stuck it out and now it was paying off. She punched the air. Then looked round self-consciously to make sure no one was watching.

She logged on to her computer and saw Belén’s email reminder. How had she missed that? She stared at the email. It had been opened, so she must have read it. It wasn’t like her to forget things. Little things. The doctors had told her to report any lapses of memory immediately in case they were signs of deterioration.

Anyone can forget things. Even amnesiacs. If it happens again, I’ll tell the doc. No I won’t, they might block the transfer. I’ll wait and see. Christ it was only an email
.

Galindez opened a file and set to work on her report on the latest war grave. At eight o’clock, Fuentes came out of his office and saw her still working.

‘
Vamos
, Ana María, that’s enough for one day.’

‘OK, boss, you go, I’ll turn the lights off.’

‘No, Ana, if I go and leave you here, you’ll still be here at midnight. Go home.’

‘Coming.’ Galindez waited until Fuentes began to turn off the lights in the main office. Quickly she put her report and the file into her briefcase. She could finish it at home.

MADRID 1953, CALLE MESÓN DE PAREDES

For most people, nightmares are a corruption, an interlude of unwelcome and uninvited mental images interrupting the gentle rhythm of their dreams. Guzmán, however, slipped from consciousness into the oblivion of an inferno in which the screams of the damned echoed his name in a demented choir. This was how he had slept since the war, lost amid the stench and corruption of death, crashing blindly through marshes where rotting eyeless faces stared up from charnel pools towards a sky traced with blood and darkened with the smoke of funeral pyres. He splashed through fetid mud spiked with clumps of decaying marsh grass, feeling skeletal hands clutch at him as he ran. But Guzmán was not fleeing. His pursuit across the fields of hell was always like this. Through the smoke and the stench, beneath the permanent midnight cast of the sky, he saw the vague shape of his fleeing prey. His mouth opened to scream, to scream for them to stop, to await their fate. And, as ever, as he felt the scream in his throat, he awoke, soaked with sweat.