Authors: Adam Creed
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #FF, #FGC
Staffe describes the woman in Jackson’s sketch. ‘She has wild hair and almond eyes. She’s African, and she is beautiful.’
The barman shrugs, but Staffe can tell he knows her. He puts a twenty on the bar. In this particular corner of town, twenty euros gets you all kinds of places, and it’s sufficient to elicit a name. The barman takes the twenty and nods outside. He whispers, ‘Yolanda. She’ll be by.’
Bar BonBon is in the Campo de Principe. It is a lingering reminder of what the
barrio
used to be like – hippies mix with
gitanos
and South American whores. Money passes in furtive exchanges and you can almost hear broken promises snapping in the air. As the barman suggested, Staffe takes his Tanqueray outside. It comes half and half with tonic over a large handful of ice cubes. He feels better than he has in a long time and he wonders why Jackson doped him the way he did. And who tended his wounds?
The evening
paseo
is under way. Lovers, young and old, walk arm in arm; entire families meander into the square, chatting amongst themselves and with each other. You don’t get this in Blighty and Staffe contemplates how he might surrender to the pull of being closer to Marie and Harry, and the new baby, too, but that gets him thinking about Sylvie – for the first time in weeks.
There is a hole in the heart of him that was made the day his parents were murdered and Sylvie could make him feel as though the hole wasn’t there. But it is. The thought of returning to Leadengate brings him down. He swirls the ice in the Tanqueray, blue as a shallow sea. And then the barman scoots out, gives him two hard taps on the shoulder as he shimmies through the outside tables.
Staffe locks onto the arc of a beautiful, large-boned African woman in a tight, fishtail skirt. She has cheekbones like halved plums and large, almond eyes. She slows down and gives him a proper look, as if to say, ‘
You
? You think you’re man enough?’ He watches her go, cutting wide, slow figures of eight with her hips. He thinks what a gift Jackson has – to so deftly capture Yolanda.
As she steps down onto Calle Molinos, Yolanda gives him a final look, and he stands, follows slowly, thinking that maybe these steps he is taking now can make some kind of sense of what happened to him in London. Maybe a blessing can emerge from the blight.
Yolanda shouts up at Jackson’s building, ‘Jacques!’ She kicks the door and steps back into the road, shouting ‘Jacques!’ again up at the windows.
Staffe moves into the doorway of a closed shop.
‘Cocksucker!’ she calls. ‘Ladyboy son of a whore.’ She kicks the door a final time and reaches into her bag. Looking left and right, and pushing herself against the door, she levers it open, quick as theft, and goes inside, her fishtail skirt fanning the air behind her, as if covering tracks.
Staffe moves quickly, crossing Molinos in between the slowly moving cars. He is slowed up by the
paseo
and by the time he gets to the door, Yolanda is gone. But the door is slightly ajar – the lock broken and the jamb of the frame splintered.
He waits outside, to give her time to start doing what she is doing. As he waits, his heart beats time and a half. After five minutes, he goes in, quickly climbing the stairs past the doorway to Guadalupe’s apartment. When he gets to the apartment above, he pushes open the door. He can smell turps, hears a deep cursing from behind an exposed brick wall.
Edging a step further, he holds his breath – to better discern what is being said.
‘Come here, you cocksucker. Damn you!’
The voice is deep and he thinks it could be a man, which isn’t what he expected.
He takes another step, reaching out and standing on the pads of his toes; and then another step.
‘Son of a whore!’ The voice is muffled.
He is one step away and he leans forward, craning his neck to see round the brick wall. The first thing he sees is Yolanda’s bottom, swaying from side to side. She is on her knees, showing her stocking tops and straining forward. ‘Aaah,’ she says, from the hearth.
Her shoulders are butting up against the lintel and her head is in the chimney. She makes a lunge, for whatever it is that holds such appeal. A final curse and another sigh of relief.
Yolanda sinks to her knees, twists, and sits cross-legged in the hearth, clutching a roll of something, wrapped in a blue bin liner.
‘Hello,’ says Staffe.
The woman looks at him, her almond eyes showing plenty of white. ‘You?’ she says, bemused. ‘From the square. What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I ask the same question. This is my friend’s place. Jackson Roberts.’
‘Jacques?’
‘And that is his?’ Staffe points at the wrapped roll. It is two feet long and has the circumference of a rolled-up poster.
‘Oh no. This is mine. And you can go fuck yourself. I’m going.’
‘Stay where you are, Yolanda.’ He can see she is shocked to hear her name in his mouth.
‘Jacques did this for me.’
‘Did he say to break into his apartment and take it from up his chimney?’
‘How do I know you’re a friend of Jacques?’
‘He has a
cortijo
, in the Alpujarras.’
Yolanda weighs Staffe up.
‘Show me,’ says Staffe, nodding at the roll. ‘We should do this the proper way.’ He shows her his warrant card.
‘That’s not Cuerpo.’
‘This is a cross-border investigation. And I’m working with the Cuerpo Nacional. I should really take you to them.’
Yolanda unwraps the plastic, pulls out a roll of canvas, unfurls it and holds it up.
It is a thing of great beauty, but not what you would expect, so Staffe carefully examines the signature, bottom right. It seems to be the real thing. ‘You’re going to have to hand that across, Yolanda.’
‘No!’ she pleads.
‘If it’s yours, it will be returned. I will give you a receipt.’
‘No!’ she shouts, her voice cracking.
Staffe goes into his pocket. He has a hundred-euro note and a couple of fifties. ‘Here you are. It’s all I’ve got.’
‘It’s worth more than that.’
The way she says it, Yolanda clearly has no idea quite how much more. Staffe rolls up the canvas and puts it in the bin bag. ‘It’s all you’re getting. I could report you for breaking and entering.’
‘What’s going on?’
Staffe and Yolanda both turn round, each clearly afraid.
‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ says Guadalupe. Beside her is Pepa.
Yolanda snatches the money from Staffe’s hand and rushes out, pushing past Guadalupe and Pepa who watch her sashay down the stairs. On the first turn, without looking, she gives them the finger.
Guadalupe hisses, ‘Jackson, and his damned whores.’
Staffe picks up the canvas.
‘It’s time you told me exactly who you are,’ says Guadalupe.
*
Downstairs in Guadalupe’s flat, Staffe has a hushed word with Pepa whilst Lupe calls a locksmith to tend the broken front door. Pepa’s pupils are dilated and her eyes flit rapidly around the room, avoiding him. ‘What did you find out about Astrid?’
‘She’s loaded. At least her family is loaded.’ Pepa talks mechanically, and slow. ‘Her father is Gustav Hesse. He sold a publishing firm years ago and got seven million marks for it. And he has a thing for Africa.’
‘Does Astrid have any siblings?’
Pepa pauses, rubs her face. She looks at him briefly, then away at the returning Lupe. ‘No. It was just her. Her mother is dead.’
‘My mother!’ says Lupe, sitting with them in front of the fire.
‘No,’ says Staffe. ‘Just someone we know.’
‘What was going on in Jackson’s place?’
‘You told Jackson we came round the other day, didn’t you?’
‘You lied to me. I needed to know who you really are, and he put me straight. Like I said, he’s always been good to me.’
‘Do you really want to be tied up in this?’
‘In what?’
Staffe goes to the drawing of the seascape. He saw it the other day and now he sees the point of it: a study for something greater. ‘I should alert the Cuerpo and let them ask you these questions.’
‘What questions?’
‘I need to know about Manolo Cano, the shepherd’s son – from Almagen.’
‘It was Agustín Cano who was my friend.’
‘Agustín?’ says Pepa.
‘He left the village years ago,’ says Staffe.
‘His grandparents wanted him to go to a German school.’
‘But they didn’t send Manolo?’
‘The boys were very different.’
‘Manolo is missing,’ says Staffe.
‘And Agustín?’
‘He doesn’t concern me.’ He leans forward in his chair. ‘Manolo is my friend, Lupe. That’s why I’m here.’
‘Did Agustín have a stud in his nose?’ asks Pepa. ‘A ruby.’
‘What?’ says Staffe.
‘He was only a teenager when I last saw him,’ says Guadalupe.
‘But he came back,’ says Staffe. ‘He was in Almagen a few weeks ago, so I heard.’
‘I didn’t see him,’ says Guadalupe, turning away, adjusting the heads of some crocuses in a vase.
‘What about his mother? Astrid. Do you see her?’
‘Not in a long time. But you hear things.’
‘You
hear
things?’
‘The villagers never understood her. They called her a witch. She would go to Tangier. I guess Rubio wasn’t exotic enough for her in the end.’
‘She’d go to Africa?’ says Pepa. ‘I know your father liked to visit Tangiers. What appeal did it hold for him?’
‘If you’re asking me if he went to Tangiers with Astrid, I’d have to say no.’
‘I thought he had something of a reputation,’ says Pepa.
‘That’s easily come by in a place like Almagen.’
‘Was Jackson exotic enough for Astrid?’ says Staffe.
‘Jackson sees the world in a different light. He has a different energy. And frankly, that appealed to me, too, for a while.’ Guadalupe stands. ‘He’s not what you might think.’
‘Does he still appeal?’
‘I was young when I came to Granada and I was alone. He was a damn good friend to me – he still is. Now, I really must get on and I’d appreciate it if you put a stop to these visits.’
‘Then tell me‚ did you see your father towards the end?’
Lupe says, ‘No,’ holds out her hand and shakes Staffe’s with a disarmingly firm grip. ‘If you want to know about my father, why not talk to my uncle.’
‘Edu? But he would never have anything to do with Barrington. It’s a matter of pride.’
‘Pride? Do you really think so? More like he couldn’t make any money out of my father being with my mother.’
‘Yet he carried the coffin, at your father’s funeral.’
‘I always thought that might have been for my mother. It was the only thing Edu ever did for her. But at least he did it. Now, are you going to leave the painting?’
‘I didn’t say it was a painting.’
‘I’ll have to tell Jackson you’ve absconded with it.’
‘He’ll know where to find me, I’m sure.’
The Alquería Morayma is a restaurant set in a Granadino garden of bougainvillea and cypress trees, and named after the woman who inspired the building of the Alhambra.
‘You can’t push me around. Nobody ever managed that,’ says Pepa as they wait for the waiter to bring their water and a bottle of Calvente.
‘Manolo is missing and my family are living on a crime scene, so I have to look under every stone.’
‘I’ve told you everything I know.’
The waiter brings their drinks and Pepa orders her food. Staffe gestures that he will have exactly the same and as they wait, Pepa recalls the story of Morayma to herself, wondering what it would be like to be truly loved.
‘What makes you unhappy, Pepa?’
She looks at the Alhambra, eventually says, ‘Tell me about your parents, Guilli.’
He tells the tale and when he is done, she says, ‘I knew it. Mostly. But you didn’t know that, so thanks for telling me.’
‘How did you know?’
‘I have a deep sadness, too.’ And she tells him the story of Hilario, her brother who was carried home from the sea by her father, laid out dead on a table in the
comedor
of their fishing house by the harbour; and how her father has to go back into that same sea every day. And they still eat from that very table. She says, ‘We’re not so different, you and I.’
‘No. We’re not so different, but how did you know about my parents?’
‘Raúl asked me to track down Santi Etxebatteria.’
‘What!’
‘He’s been in exile ever since he did what he did.’
‘But now ETA has another truce.’
‘Madrid could never grant an armistice‚ though. Just like they can’t release the prisoners and ETA are left with a war they cannot win. All the time, what they fight for gets smaller.’
‘Did you find Etxebatteria?’ says Staffe.
‘Once he knew I was looking, he found me.’
‘You met him?’
‘I was about to. Then Raúl died. My chief called me off everything to do with Raúl.’
‘So why are you here?’ says Staffe, thinking back to the first time he met Pepa.
‘I have to make sure they don’t tarnish him. His reputation is all he left behind.’ She takes a moment, has a sip of wine. ‘I wish I’d said more to him.’
‘When I said goodbye to my parents the last time, I didn’t say any of the things you should say. All I could think of was a party I wanted to get back for. I just hope I’ve learned to be less selfish.’
The light from the lantern above catches her eye. It glistens. ‘There’s plenty wrong with you, but being selfish isn’t a part of it.’
He laughs and they clink glasses. ‘That first time we met, at Raúl’s funeral – that was no chance encounter. You snared me,’ he says.
‘That’s not how I remember it.’
‘You had your paw on my tail from the get-go.’
Pepa laughs, says, ‘In that case, you’ll show me the painting when we get back to the hotel.’
‘Tell me what you found about Agustín.’
‘And is the painting definitely a Barrington?’
‘Like you’ve never seen.’
She swirls her glass. ‘Agustín is fine-featured and fair, almost the opposite of Manolo. He left Almagen because his grandparents wanted to school him in Germany.’
‘I still don’t understand why they didn’t choose to take Manolo to Germany. He’s the elder.’
‘Maybe Agustín was the bright one.’
‘Manolo had a scholarship to college – right here in Granada, but never got to go.’
‘Agustín is the spit from Rubio. What better way to establish a hold over their son-in-law: to have his son with them, the son he loved most. And the other – he gets to tend the goats.’
‘Rubio wouldn’t have allowed it, surely‚’ says Staffe.
‘Gustav’s company sold for seven million marks. Perhaps Rubio complied with their wishes for the money.’
‘If that’s why they ended up staying together, estranged from their son, no wonder they fell out of love,’ says Staffe, thinking about the film of Jackson with Astrid. Rubio and Barrington looking on. He looks up, sees the reflection of him and Pepa, from above, in the lantern.
‘It’s your turn,’ says Pepa. ‘Tell me what else you learned today.’
‘Jackson and Astrid were lovers. There is a film of the two of them together.’
‘My God.’
‘You mentioned Agustín had a ruby.’
‘I saw a photo of him wearing a Moorish smock. He had a piercing in his nose. Something struck me about it.’
‘What, precisely?’
She shrugs. ‘I had a feeling it was significant. And I’ve been thinking about that body in your sister’s wood.’
‘Thinking who it is?’
‘Astrid.’
Staffe nods. ‘We’re in deep – you know that.’
The lights on the Alhambra morph from gold to emerald, then an electric blue. Finally, the whole palace lights up, ruby red, and Pepa wonders if it could be a bad thing – to be stuck in the middle of the biggest story she has ever had; or ever will.
*
Staffe unrolls the Barrington canvas and lays it out on his bed, a cushion at each corner softly resisting its instinct to curl back up.
Pepa comes across to the bed, gasps – as if she has been touched – wraps her arms around herself, leans right over the painting, then stands back from it. ‘You were right.’
‘Isn’t it remarkable?’ he says.
‘It’s different from all his others. Yes. It’s quite beautiful. And romantic. It’s full of love.’
Through the open window, a fast, hollow flutter of castanets, then a low, guttural lament from a tortured human voice.
‘We should go to a
peña
,’ says Pepa.
‘Raúl took me, the first time we met.’
She looks sad and Staffe can’t help feeling a concern for her. He remembers how hard he lived when he was her age, making his way, sailing close to the wind.
Pepa says, ‘What do you think happened to Raúl at that bridge?’
‘He didn’t drive straight into the
barranco
, that’s for sure.’
‘I didn’t ask what didn’t happen to him.’
‘Someone stopped him crossing the bridge. I think they were there a while.’
‘There was a bloody rag, you say.’
‘That’s gone, and the car has been crushed. We’ll never know.’
‘He didn’t ever wear a seat belt.’
‘That’s not exactly proof, though.’
‘I know. But let’s remember him tonight. I’ll take you to the best place,’ she says as they stand, side by side, looking at the painting. ‘Somewhere Raúl would have loved.’
Staffe says, ‘Tomorrow, there’s something I’d like you to do. For both of us.’
Pepa looks at him askance, raises her eyebrows.
‘Rubio is in the Hospedería. It would be good if you visited. He won’t talk to me.’
‘You think he knows where Manolo is?’
‘That might be too much to hope for. But he has a notebook he writes in. It would help if we knew what is in it.’
Pepa’s eyes glisten and a smile forms. For a moment, she looks truly happy – like a child in the heart of theft. She says, ‘I’ll see you in the lobby in ten minutes.’
‘Why do you need ten minutes?’ Staffe gives her what seems to be a look of admonition.
‘It’s all right. This afternoon was a lapse. I only use that stuff once in a black moon.’
*
High above the road, Staffe notices the place he woke up the other day, after he had been doctored by Jackson and patched up by God knows who. The dodgy
gitano
is outside, again, strumming a guitar. His grandmother sits beside him, smoking and clapping. Pepa says, ‘This is it,’ and Staffe hands the driver the fare and gets out, discerning a door into the rock. Above the door, a sign says ‘Cueva Bruja’ – Witch’s Cave.
They climb the steep steps cut into the rock and Staffe watches the taxi’s red tails get small and go out. He wonders why the driver didn’t turn around, go back to where the fares come from. When he turns around, the
gitano
gives him the dead eye.
Pepa is up ahead, getting them in and with each step, the
bulería
comes at him with a stronger pulse, drowning the waifish chorus from the cicadas.
Inside, the
peña
is in a series of cells, each carved from the rock and at the far end a man plays guitar, bent almost double with his cheek on the fretboard. Beside him, another claps with his eyes shut and his face scrunched. A third dances‚ hammering out the
bulería
with his heels and soles, sculpting beautiful shapes with his long arms and scalloped hands. First slow, then fast, a rhythm that comes from beyond the body.
At a small bar just a few feet away from the musicians, a young girl hands him glasses of Cacique and asks for twenty euros for the door. The drinks are free, she tells him‚ and the girl nods at his drink for him to finish it up. As soon as he does, she recharges his glass. The young girl winks, moves away, slipping the twenty down the front of her jeans. Staffe surrenders to the night.
The
bulería
finishes, and a woman joins them, dressed in a flowing black skirt and a white blouse that ruches off the shoulder. She dances a
fandango
, and then they play a
soleá
– his favourite. That is the end of the first set and the cave fills with chatter.
Staffe is tallest by a few inches and palest by a long chalk. He wants to ask Pepa if she has any gypsy stock in her; whether she feels what they call
duende.
Pepa says, ‘You feel it. I can see.’ She puts a flat palm above her tummy, beneath her breasts, not on her heart but in the centre. Perhaps that is where the soul is.
‘Where are the toilets?’
‘I’ll show you.’ She leads him through the crowd. They spur off to the right where there is only one door, saying ‘
Servicios’.
He pushes the door open. Inside, it is dark and he asks her where the switch is.
‘Keep going. Over there. At the end.’
He sees a cord hanging from the ceiling beyond another door and he registers where it is, just before the door swings shut behind him, shutting out all light. He takes three steps, his arm extended out and high, to grab the cord. He clasps his hand shut, expecting to feel the cord, but it’s not there. He flails around with his hand but he can’t feel anything. He turns towards the door he came through and can see its outline from the light beyond.
Staffe thinks he’ll forget about the pee and goes back, feels for the handle, pulls, readying for the flood of light, but the door is jammed. He pulls at the handle of the door again, but the handle comes off in his hand so he taps on the door and calls, ‘Pepa.’
‘There’s no need for that.’
The voice is behind him. It is a man’s voice but it sounds muffled.
Staffe pulls at the door again, begins to pound against it, but something knocks his leg from under him and he falls to the ground. His face is on the stone floor. The ground is wet and he feels a great weight on his throat and chest.
‘Be still.’
He thinks the voice might be familiar.
‘Manolo?’ he says, but on the third syllable, as his mouth opens to say the vowel, something cold and sharp is put into his mouth.
‘Don’t move.’ The voice is whispering now, hot and urgent in his ear and he can smell oil and garlic and peppers on the man’s breath. ‘Your answers are in the mountains, and by the sea. You must think about what they buried. The dead aren’t what they seem, but they are your allies. They can’t ever be buried. Not truly.’
Staffe wants to speak, but fears the blade of the knife in his mouth.
‘Now, lie with your face to the floor. Count fifty and don’t bother to look. You can’t find us.’
The metal blade presses against his tongue but the pressure on his throat and chest seems to abate. A light, rhythmic tap on the door and light floods the room. He doesn’t move. The door shuts again and all is dark.
He opens his mouth wide and slowly pulls the blade from his mouth. He sits up, waits. And waits. Eventually, the light floods in again. Pepa rushes in, kneels by his side. ‘What happened?’
‘Where did you go? I called for you.’
‘I went for a smoke.’
She smells of smoke. He wants to believe her.
‘What’s that?’ she says.
He looks down, and his heart misses a beat. The knife’s handle is hand-turned from chestnut and has the head of a goat carved into it. He has seen one just like it.
‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’
‘You know as much as me. Someone here doesn’t like me.’ But he wonders if he might be wrong about that – amongst other things.
They weave through the dense crowd, to stand at the bar where they were before. The crowd distinctly, and quite deliberately, do not look at him.
A mournful
soleá
begins. Staffe recognises the words from his night on the tiles with Gutiérrez. He says to Pepa, in English, ‘I was a stone and lost my centre, and was thrown into the sea, and after a very long time, I came to find my centre again.’
‘What?’ she says.
‘It’s the song. The Soleá de Sernata. Come on. Let’s go.’
As they go, the lament soars and falls, like a gull.
On the balcony in Pepa’s room, looking down on the courtyard of the Ladrón del Agua, she says, ‘That song. Were your parents the centre that you lost?’
‘Too much happens in life for one thing to make us who we are.’
‘Don’t you think we are always the same, at our centre?’
He smiles at her. ‘That’s a good thought, but I wasn’t always the kind of person I’d want to be.’
‘You seem fine to me. Come inside.’ Pepa goes to her wardrobe and sinks to her haunches, reaching in. ‘I’m not sure I should be doing this.’ Her voice resounds in the old wood and she pulls out a buff-coloured file, turns to face Staffe, standing awkwardly, looking down on her. ‘Sometimes, you have to trust someone. Don’t you?’
‘It’s one of God’s cruel jokes: such a good thing as trust – he made it so dangerous.’
Pepa removes some papers from the file, tosses them on the bed. ‘That’s you,’ she says.
Staffe sits on the edge of the bed and begins to flick through. It takes several minutes for him to absorb the content. ‘How did you get all this?’ he says.