The Sentinel: 1 (Vengeance of Memory) (3 page)

The pile of bones intrigued
Profesora
Ordoñez and she listened carefully as Galindez outlined her view of how the bodies came to be in the mine: that it was likely they were killed somewhere else and then brought here and dumped in a heap before the entrance was sealed up permanently.

‘How long would you say they’ve been here, Ana MarÍa?’ The
profesora
asked.

‘Right now, I’d date the killing sometime between 1952 and 1970, probably earlier rather than later.’

‘And why do you say that?’ The professor moved nearer, placing a hand on Galindez’s shoulder to steady herself. Once she was comfortable, her hand remained in place.

‘I’m not Sherlock Holmes,’ Galindez said. ‘The mine was sealed in fifty-three and the company closed down in the seventies. These people have been dead a long time and of course it’s unlikely a pile of bodies was lying around while the miners came here to work the seams. So…’

‘
Elementario, mi querido Watson?
’ A hint of a smile in the professor’s voice.

‘It is when you know how.’ Galindez tensed, sensing condescension.

‘It’s unlikely you’ll find anything of much interest.’

‘Over a dozen people shot dead and hidden in a mine? If it took place in the early fifties that was well after the war ended. We’re talking about murder rather than a war crime surely?’

‘This may not be a shooting carried out
during
the war. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t connected to the war,’
Profesora
Ordoñez said.

‘But why here? Why not just kill them in prison?’

‘Things weren’t so neat and tidy in those days.’ The professor’s flashlight wandered over the skeletons. ‘Perhaps the killings needed to be covered up so they dumped them here. They knew one thing for certain: no one would come looking for these people. Not in Franco’s lifetime anyway.’

‘So the killers weren’t worried about the law?’

Profesora Ordoñez
smiled. ‘It’s quite possible they were the law.’

Five o’clock and the sun was remorseless. Galindez worked steadily and methodically, piling the skeletons on top of black plastic sacks outside the mine entrance. So many bones. Skulls, the strange curves of spines and ribcages, thigh bones, shins, the smaller pieces: toes, fingers – even a few teeth found in the dirt beneath the pile of bodies. Fifteen scrambled skeletons. Back at the lab Galindez could reassemble these bodies – given time. Whether the
guardia
would sanction the expense was unlikely, she knew. What good would it do anyway, she explained to the
profesora
. Apart from keeping the pay cheque coming, of course.

‘You mean they won’t investigate further?’
Profesora
Ordoñez asked, surprised.

‘What difference would it make? That world has gone. Those people have been dead so long, who can possibly care now?’

‘That’s rather harsh, Dr Galindez,’ Ordoñez said, ‘Don’t you have any interest in the past?’

‘No, not really,’ Galindez said, a little too quickly.

‘None at all? Don’t you care about how the past constantly seeps into the present? How it nuances and shapes contemporary choices and options?’

Galindez laughed. ‘You really do sound like a professor.’

‘I’m in the right job then.’

‘You mentioned something earlier about a diary,
profesora
?’

Ordoñez opened her bag and brought out a book bound in faded, scuffed leather. She opened it gently, almost tenderly. The writing was in a broad script written with a large-nibbed pen. The ink faint but still legible.

‘We found this three years ago,’ she said. ‘Hidden under the floorboards in a house in the centre of Madrid.’

Galindez looked at the page. Strong, even pen strokes, the writing an exemplar of geometrical rigidity, yet with a bold, angry sweep to it. She saw dated entries, barely a hint of any correction.

‘This diary is extremely important,’
Profesora
Ordoñez said, closing it. ‘But I can tell you about him later. Look at you, you’re filthy. You need to get out of those clothes and have a shower.’ She smiled. ‘And a cold drink or two. Tell you what, I’m buying when we get back to Madrid. In fact, we could go to my place. You can get showered while I fix us a drink.’

Galindez saw the look in the
profesora
’s eyes. The day might end better than it had begun. But she wouldn’t be going anywhere until the truck arrived to take away the remains. And then there were photographs to be taken. ‘That would be nice,
profesora
, but I’ve still a fair bit of work left to do.’

‘I’ll wait. And it’s Luisa, by the way.’

‘OK. Pro— Luisa. Listen, you’ve got me hooked, this man we’ve been talking about – the one who wrote this diary. Just who was he?’

Profesora
Ordoñez smiled. ‘So you’re getting more interested in the past now? That can happen. He was very special, Ana María. This is him.’ She opened the diary again.

Inside the cover was a pressed, yellowed newspaper clipping from the right-wing daily,
ABC
. The contrast between light and shade was so sharp the photograph seemed almost a sketch. In the picture, a tall, heavy-set young man in combat gear was having a medal pinned on his chest by a short man in a uniform with big epaulettes, his spindly legs clad in gleaming riding boots. Behind them, neat ranks of troops were drawn up at attention. And beyond the lines of soldiers, the wooden
barrera
of a bullring.

Despite the blazing sun, Galindez felt a sudden chill, her skin prickled against her sweat-soaked clothes. She read the headline:
Hero of Badajoz decorated by
Generalísimo
Franco
. It was her first glimpse of
Comandante
Guzmán.

MADRID, 13 JANUARY 1953, PUERTA DEL SOL

During the afternoon the wind changed, and the scattered snowflakes that had spiralled down since early morning now turned to an insistent hail. Freezing rain clung to the shabby clothes of the crowds passing along the cobbled street between Plaza Santa Ana and Puerta del Sol. Guzmán watched the thin, hungry faces of the men and women who clattered past him, the sound of hobnails sharp on the frozen cobbles. Although his coat was thicker and of better quality than the majority of those around him, Guzmán was still freezing.

The lights of numerous cafés and bars illuminated the flurries of sleet and snow that dappled the vague light of the street lamps. Inside the cheaper places, Guzmán saw workmen in blue boiler suits, crowding round the bar, spearing tapas with toothpicks, others cradling cups of hot coffee in their frozen hands. In more expensive places he saw the middle classes, brilliantined and preening, taking coffee and cognac. In every establishment cigarette smoke rose in clouds around the lights, gently enveloping those within in an indistinct blue haze.

Guzmán stamped his feet to try to warm them. It was then he realised one of his shoes was leaking. Since the war, poverty encroached on the lives of all but the very fortunate. The idea he shared an experience with those grey, cadaverous workmen disgusted him. Their shoes might leak, but as far as Guzmán was concerned, it served them right. They were born to it. There was no reason why he should share in their poverty and deprivation if he could possibly avoid it. And he had so far.

Behind the market near the Plaza Mayor, Guzmán entered a plain small bar. The warmth washed over him as he stood against the bar watching the occupants with a practised eye. Behind the bar the barman was grilling large piles of mushrooms in oil and garlic on the hot plate. Guzmán nodded when the barman looked at him in silent inquiry before heaping a plate with sizzling mushrooms, dousing them with salt and topping them with slices of bread skewered by a couple of toothpicks. The plate was accompanied by a small stone pitcher of rough red wine. Guzmán poured the wine into the smeared glass. He tasted a mushroom and spat it to the floor as it burned his mouth. He damped down the pain with a gulp of the wine, glaring at the barman’s back, wondering for a moment whether some retribution was necessary. A moment later the mushrooms had reached a more acceptable temperature and he wolfed them down, scooping them up with the bread and then mopping up the remaining oil and garlic. Guzmán finished his wine and then fastened his coat tightly before leaving. Outside the sleet was thickening again and passers-by hunched against the sharp gusts of clinging wind-borne snowflakes.

‘Hey, that guy didn’t pay,’ the younger barman said as Guzmán left.

The old man pulled the young barman back. ‘Police,’ he said simply and the younger man suddenly deflated, shooting a worried glance after the dark bulk now striding into the snow-flecked late afternoon.

‘You should have said before,’ he complained.

In the street near the market, a dark Hispano-Suiza sedan was waiting, its engine running. Guzmán saw the wan face of the driver through the misted windscreen. He came alongside the car and opened the driver’s door with one quick movement, reaching in and seizing the man’s throat in his big hands. The driver’s eyes jerked open as he struggled for breath.

‘
Hijo de puta
, never go to sleep again when you’re driving me, or I’ll break you down to private and send you to the fucking Rif mountains where the Moors will cut you into pieces.
Entiendes
?’

The driver nodded. He was having difficulty swallowing.

Guzmán released him and climbed into the back seat behind the startled driver. ‘Got the address?’ The driver nodded again. ‘Then let’s go.’

The car moved away from the kerb. Guzmán felt the musty warmth seep through him as the car built up speed. The interior of the car smelled of leather, sweat and black tobacco and Guzmán relaxed as he inhaled the familiar odours. As they drove, he watched the architecture change as they left behind the impressive buildings surrounding the Plaza Mayor and passed through neighbourhoods of increasingly shabby, ill-kept buildings punctuated by the odd collapsed wall or bomb site.
Not as many as there used to be
, Guzmán thought.
Soon you won’t know there had been a war at all. The city is starting to forget. If we let it
.

The streets were now decidedly working class, the dilapidated buildings dark and shadowed. Lines of washing hung across balconies like ships’ flags, signalling the poverty of the inhabitants. There was less motor traffic now and they frequently encountered horse-drawn vehicles which slowed them, and from time to time carts and trolleys being pushed by sallow men in ragged clothes. The driver suddenly accelerated, forcing a pair of youths to abandon the cart they were pushing and leap out of the way.

Guzmán leaned forward. ‘No rush, we’re almost there.’

‘
Si, mi comandante
.’ The driver slowed as he took the next corner, keen to obey.

‘There they are.’ A hundred metres away, Guzmán saw a khaki truck filled with
guardia civiles
. The Hispano-Suiza glided to a halt by the rear of the truck and Guzmán looked out at the
guardia
crowded in the back of the vehicle, strange dark shapes in their tricorne hats and heavy capes, a mass of men bristling with long rifles. Guzmán climbed from the car into the freezing late afternoon air.

A uniformed
teniente
stepped forward. ‘
Comandante
Guzmán?
Teniente
Cabrera.’ The man snapped off a salute. Guzmán ignored it.

‘He’s in a
piso
just up there.’ Cabrera gestured towards a row of tall ramshackle buildings near the end of the street. Snow was falling heavily. Those few people braving the cold rapidly began to disperse, as they saw the
guardia civiles
climb from the lorry and move purposefully down the road. Bystanders melted away into the black recesses of the tattered buildings, recognising impending trouble. A tense silence accompanied the dark shapes of the
guardia
as they took up positions along the pavement, their breath steaming in the dwindling afternoon light. The noise of the city faded, muffled by the thick snow falling over the shadowed street.

‘We need to get a move on. If it gets too dark he might be able to make a break for it,’ Guzmán said. ‘Five men at the top of the street there…’ he indicated the far end of the road, ‘another five in the alleyway at the back. The rest can go inside and break down his door. Any resistance and they shoot to kill.’

‘Understood,
mi Comandante
.’ Another snatched salute. Guzmán sighed.

Guzmán watched the first group of
guardia
move stealthily down the pavement to take up their positions. Several more troopers hurried along the alleyway leading to the back of the apartments. Escape from that end of the street would now be impossible, whether their quarry came out the front or rear of the building. When the man ran – and he would, Guzmán knew – his only escape route had now been decided for him. Guzmán waited until the remaining
guardia
started entering the building before he began walking towards the alley.

‘Shall I accompany the
comandante
?’ The
teniente
asked. Guzmán scowled and waved the man away dismissively. His work was best done alone.

Guzmán walked down the alley, barely noticing the rubbish strewn at his feet. At the end he came to the rear of the apartments. The space between the houses of the street and those at the back of them formed a high narrow lane. Fine for pedestrians, but there was no exit, particularly for a man fleeing from justice. That was how it should be, he thought. Looking down through the gloom, Guzmán saw the
guardia
were now in position. He looked in the other direction, down another dark alley half filled with old packing cases and boxes. That was where the man would run when the
guardia civiles
broke down his door. He wouldn’t risk going back out into the street once he had leaped down into the lane between the buildings – which he surely would because Guzmán had planned it that way. Guzmán ambled into the shadows of the alley. For a big man, he moved quietly and carefully. Taking up a position behind a large pile of boxes, he took out his pistol, an American Browning Hi-Power. Guzmán preferred the certainties of superior firepower to the vagaries of a smaller-calibre weapon. Some people carried a sidearm for effect. Guzmán’s weapon was purely functional.