‘Let me hear it.’
‘Okay, it reads like this. José-Luis and Dolores were having it off on the quiet; when he got back from the Miryam, he had a visit from her. Gomez will say that Planas had just given her one and zipped up, and she’d gone into the house to, freshen up, let’s say, when I arrived, with the intention of saving myself twelve thousand euro. I’d just clobbered him with the chair when she came out of the house, taking me by surprise, for I didn’t know she was there. I subdued her, rigged the scene to make it look like an accident, took the glass to eliminate any trace of her having been there, and took her away in her car. I hid her at my place, gagged and bound till I figured out what to do with her, then dumped and burned her motor. When I heard at the old man’s wake that the car had been found, I decided that the time had come to kill her, and, when I had a chance, to put her body somewhere it would never be found, maybe under the flagstone in the storeroom itself, in what I reckon was once a limepit. But I got unlucky, they’ll say; first I left a print on the chair, and second, Charlie smelled her, once she was dead, and raised the alarm. My love,’ I used the term without thinking, ‘even you would convict me on the basis of that evidence.’
He was silent for a while. ‘No,’ he replied, eventually, ‘I wouldn’t . . . faith overcomes all doubts.’ I felt a renewed burst of guilt at my suspicion over those feminine items. ‘I understand your scenario, though, and you’re right, that’s how Gomez, and even Alex will see it.’
‘So what can I do?’
‘Stay where you are, be patient, and wait. Nobody is that clever; there’s something wrong with the picture and in time we’ll see it.’
‘Okay,’ I agreed. ‘Any other orders, sir?’
‘Yes. Get out of that bath; it must be cold by now . . . plus, the bubbles must have disappeared and it’s starting to disturb me.’
Thirty-five
I
chose the second bedroom. It wouldn’t have felt right to have slept in Gerard’s bed. The divan was made up, with a fitted sheet and another, loose, on top, all that was needed there in the summer. Too much, in fact, for I found when I woke at half past six, after about five hours’ sleep, that I’d kicked it off.
I dressed, then tidied up, took the few clothes I had left from my haversack and put them away in a small chest of drawers beside the door. When I was done I took the stuff I had worn on the journey up to the kitchen and put the lot into a washer-dryer that was plumbed in near the sink, with a dishwasher on the other side. I looked in the cupboard between them and found detergent and liquid capsules. There was no manual, but the controls were self-explanatory, the kind that even a man would find easy to work out.
I programmed the machine, and then turned my attention to the fact that I was starving. I could have raided the freezer, but I felt that I’d run up a big enough tab with my benefactor, so I decided to be brave and go out. There was another consideration . . . I couldn’t find any booze in the place apart from the San Miguel, and I don’t like San Miguel.
I decided to head down to the Paseo de los Tristes; it had looked friendly, the sort of place where the police wouldn’t need to hang around, so I was sure I could chance it. I had no problem finding it, although I’d reached Goats’ Hill by a circuitous route. All I had to do was head for the Alhambra, and I’d be bound to get there.
The streets in the Albacin are narrow, many of them too narrow for cars, but it’s hardly a maze. Even so, I missed my way, and came out at the foot of a flight of steps, in the middle of the narrow street where I’d played tig with pedestrians, beside a building with a sign that announced an old Arab thermal bathhouse . . . a thousand years old, to be approximate. I went inside, on impulse. I’d been to Andalusia before, but not exactly as a tourist, so I’d had few Moorish experiences. The baths aren’t operational any more . . . and anyway, I’d just had one . . . but the building looked as if it was seeing its second millennium. There were no windows, just star-shaped holes in the roof and walls that provided both light and ventilation. In Scotland, a place like that would be turned into a pub in the wink of an eye.
I didn’t stay long but joined the crowd outside as it weaved its way in the direction that I wanted to go. When I got there, I was lucky; the first two groups of tables I passed were fully occupied, but I managed to find one opposite the third café. It had a French name, but an Italian menu . . . that’s Spain for you. I went for cured ham and bread as a starter, then tagliatelle with a pesto sauce, plus a bottle of Chianti, and some still water. From my table I could see that the kitchen was small, so I anticipated that I might have a wait before the food arrived, but the wine came by return, so I wasn’t bothered.
As a bonus, I was sitting in the shadow of the Alhambra . . . not literally; the sun was heading west by that time . . . being entertained by three buskers with guitars and a very nice way with the works of Lennon and McCartney and Eric Clapton. I felt . . . looking back, it’s hard to explain what I felt, but there I was, accused of murder, separated from everyone I loved, yet I was exhilarated, and in that moment, utterly perversely, I was able to be completely honest with myself and to face the truth about myself; that although I had chosen the ideal environment in which to raise my son, I couldn’t just settle for that.
There were things I was missing; I had known excitement in the past, and I had thrived on it, but since Oz’s death I had run away from anything that smelled of personal fulfilment, other than Tom. I’d become diminished, and I knew of someone who would not have approved of that at all. ‘Okay,’ I whispered to him. ‘I’ll find myself again.’ And as a very first step in that process, I knew that I was going to break a promise. But what the hell; it was one that I’d been finding it hard to keep anyway.
Thirty-six
T
he food when it came was pretty good; the buskers were . . . funny thing, but the more Chianti I drank, the better they got. When one of them came round the tables flogging their CD I bought it before I’d even asked the price. When I found that it was only ten euro, I bought three, the extras intended for Gerard and Mac.
It was dark when I left the pavement café. During the evening a couple of guys had tried to hit on me; it was good for morale, and happily neither of them had taken it badly when I’d made it clear they were wasting their time. I found Goats’ Hill more easily than I’d found the Paseo earlier; it turned out that it was more or less in a straight line up a passage that began directly across the road from where I’d been sitting.
The streets of the Albacin are poorly illuminated, but there was enough light in the moon to show me the way to my temporary home. When I got in, I watched a little telly . . . Gerard had CNN in English as well as Spanish, and BBC World Service, but that’s crap so I didn’t stay on it for long . . . until I decided that taking a shower then going back to sleep was a good idea, and did both.
I had left the bedroom shutter open, just a crack, but it was enough to wake me when the sun rose high enough to hit it. I felt refreshed, and hungry again, so I slipped on a knee-length T-shirt . . . nightshirt, really . . . and trotted upstairs. I dug out a couple of slices of bread from one of the loaves in the freezer . . . I had transferred the butter to the fridge the night before . . . stuck them in the toaster and pressed the lever down. Rather than wait for it to pop, I filled the electric kettle, from a five-litre flagon of drinking water that I’d found beside the detergent, and set it to work.
It was just coming to the boil, and I had just finished buttering the toast, when I heard a loud thump on the front door. My heart vaulted into my mouth; a slice of breakfast stopped halfway there. I froze, not knowing what to do, and so in effect doing nothing. Which was not what the people at the door wanted. Another bang, and a shout. ‘Open. Police!’
‘Oh my God,’ I said, aloud, reverting to my native language in my moment of crisis. ‘How the fuck . . .’ What options were open to me? Go back downstairs and get away through the garden? But was there an exit that way? I didn’t know. Try and wait them out? They didn’t sound like the types who’d go away before they battered the door down. Open the door and take what was coming?
The way I saw it I didn’t have a choice. I walked through to the living room, shouting, ‘I’m coming, be patient,’ in Spanish, then throwing the door open. Two officers stood there, in uniform, big guys, looking belligerent, guns on their hips . . . on their hips but not in their hands, I registered. ‘Yes?’ I barked at them, deciding that it was better to attack than flutter my eyelashes.
They didn’t take kindly to that; some cops don’t. One put his hand on the butt of his pistol; the other one snapped, ‘That your car outside? That ancient little blue thing?’
‘Not exactly,’ I replied.
‘What the hell does that mean?’ the pig . . . that is not meant to be the insulting noun often applied to police officers; this guy was a male chauvinist, impure and very simple . . . sneered.
As he spoke, I thought I heard a sound behind me, the sound of a door opening.
‘It means it’s mine,’ said a deep, familiar voice. ‘So tell me what your fucking problem is and leave my girlfriend alone.’
He walked past me, dressed in jeans and a khaki shirt that I’d never seen before, his wide shoulders filling the narrow doorway as he squared up to the two cops. They backed off straight away. Able to look at them more calmly, I saw that they were from the city force, and not of the considerably more authoritative Guardia Civil. ‘You shouldn’t be parked there,’ the non-pig explained.
‘It’s my house. Am I blocking anyone’s way?’ He stepped out into the street, forcing them to move away from the door.
‘No, but . . .’
‘No, but nothing; I’ve been parking there for years. You ask Jorge Lavorante; he’ll tell you that.’
Both cops seemed to flinch at the name. ‘One of your tyres is nearly bald,’ Porky chipped in, as if he was determined to get out of there with some sort of a result.
‘Thanks for pointing it out. I’ll replace it today.’ He kept moving, ushering them towards the Suzuki. ‘Let me show you the papers and insurance documents for the car; they’re in the glove box, and they’re all valid.’
‘We’ll take your word for it,’ said the kosher cop.
‘Thanks. Now if there’s nothing else you want to bother us about, my breakfast has a greater call on me than you guys.’
Piggy gave him a look, but not for long; he followed his mate to the patrol vehicle and they reversed it out of there.
He turned and came back towards me. I was standing just inside the doorway, stunned, speechless. I’d spoken to him less than a day before, and he’d said nothing about flying down to L’Escala. ‘Sorry for the surprise,’ he said, smiling. He needed a shave. I’d never seen his full eight o’clock shadow before; it looked good on him. ‘I got in very late. I guessed you’d be asleep, so I was very careful not to wake you when I came downstairs.’
As I looked at him, I remembered my thoughts in the Paseo de los Tristes, and the resolutions I’d made. ‘Maybe I wouldn’t have minded if you had,’ I murmured.
His eyes widened as he looked at me. I’d taken him aback.
‘Gerard,’ I began, ‘I can’t bottle things up any longer; and I sense that you can’t either. We have to talk, you and I.’
And then he laughed; he put his head back and roared with laughter. I felt the heat rush to my face.
‘He didn’t tell you,’ he chuckled. ‘The innocent, unworldly idiot didn’t tell you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I exclaimed, truly bewildered. ‘Who didn’t tell me what? Gerard, for . . .’
‘I’m not Gerard,’ he said. ‘I’m Santiago, Santi, his brother. His twin brother.’
It’s funny, but looking back, as soon as he said it, I knew; I saw all the little differences, the hair cut slightly shorter, the signet ring on his right hand, the Breitling watch on his left wrist, not the Tissot that was all Gerard would allow me to buy him the Christmas before, when I’d suggested a Tag Heuer or a Mont Blanc, the small, healing scar on his forehead, and most of all, the difference in the way he looked at me.
‘You’re right,’ I told him, softly. ‘He didn’t tell me, not that you’re identical. But now I think of it, he did warn me that you’d be here. He said we were not alone, and that I was being looked after. Gerard being what he is, I assumed that he was talking about God.’
‘My brother might be a priest, but he’s more practical than that. He’s hands on when he has to be,’ he smiled again, ‘although not in the way that’s often meant.’
‘So this is actually your house?’ I ventured.
‘No, it’s not; it’s Gerard’s. He’s half an hour older than me, and so when our mother died he inherited, naturally, under Spanish law. He offered me half . . . in fact he offered me it all . . . but if I’d accepted he’d have had nothing. Anyway, I didn’t need it. I’m an airline pilot; I’m rolling in money. I have an apartment in Madrid.’
‘But this house has been modernised. Gerard can’t have done that.’
‘No, I did it. I use the place a lot; I come here on holiday, and if I have a stopover in Malaga. He hasn’t been here for years; he has no idea what I’ve done to it.’ He smiled. ‘The car is mine though. I left it with him the last time I saw him, in L’Escala.’
‘You’ve been to L’Escala?’