Death on a Galician Shore (24 page)

They drove back along the track to the road but, instead of heading to Panxón, Caldas told Estevez to turn the other way, towards the top of the promontory. The road grew steeper, passing through an acacia grove that had not yet been invaded by eucalyptus. Then the pines began, covering the slopes down to the sea and filling the air with their sharp fragrance.

They parked on the esplanade by the memorial, and made their way to the lookout point.

‘Damn, this is pretty,’ exclaimed Estevez when he saw the view.

Caldas agreed.

To the south, Panxón was hidden by trees, but they could see Mount Lourido at the end of Playa America and, further on, the Playa de la Ladeira beneath the La Groba mountains. Baiona, with its medieval fortress, marked the limit of the bay. Beyond, they could just make out Cabo Silleiro, the final swerve of the coast before it headed south in an almost straight line for 400 kilometres to Cabo da Roca near Lisbon.

To the north rose the Cies Islands with their mother-of-pearl beaches and, further on, the point of Cabo Home, the tip of the north shore of the Vigo estuary, like an animal lying beside the sea. It was a clear day so the outline of the island of Ons was visible beyond that, facing the next estuary along, that of Pontevedra.

They could even distinguish the faint silhouette of another hump of land in the background, and Caldas wondered if it was the island of Salvora where the
Xurelo
had foundered so many years before.

‘Those small islands, the nearest ones, what are they?’ asked Estevez.

‘The Estelas,’ said Caldas.

‘Why haven’t you brought me here before?’

Caldas shrugged. He still found it surprising that a man who could break someone’s jaw without batting an eyelid could appreciate a view.

‘Do you mind if I go and take a look at the memorial?’ said Estevez. The inspector went with him.

On the stone monument, the Virgin of El Carmen looked out to sea with the baby Jesus in her arms. Above her was hung a bronze garland of flowers and, beneath, an inscription:
Salve Regina Marium
. A plaque on the side asked that prayers be said for drowned sailors.

While Estevez went round the back of the monument Caldas took out his mobile phone. Alba’s voice had been echoing in his head all day. He dialled Manuel Trabazo’s number and told him that El Rubio’s boat had been found by the lighthouse at Punta Lameda. Trabazo knew the spot.

‘Do you think it’s where Castelo drowned?’

‘No,’ said Trabazo without hesitation.

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Punta Lameda is on the north side of Monteferro. The beach where his body was washed up is on the south side. If he’d fallen into the water at Punta Lameda, his body wouldn’t have turned up where it did, on the Madorra. The current would have dragged it inland up the
ria
.’

‘I thought you said anyone drowned in the area washed up on the Madorra?’

‘Those who drown nearby or right out at sea,’ said Trabazo. ‘But if a body falls into the water close to the rocks on one side of Monteferro, it doesn’t turn back and head round to the other side. Test it out. Throw a piece of wood into the water at Punta Lameda and see where it ends up. I bet you a bottle of wine it doesn’t go round the mountain.’

‘Right,’ murmured Caldas. So El Rubio had been killed elsewhere and his boat towed to the lighthouse and sunk.

‘Where are you?’ asked Trabazo.

‘Here, in Monteferro. By the monument. Trying to make sense of it all.’

‘I’m going out fishing. Why don’t you come with me?’

Caldas hadn’t been on a boat in years.

‘Out to sea?’

‘You’ll see it more clearly out there, Leo,’ insisted Trabazo. ‘How about we meet at the harbour in half an hour?’

As they drove down the hill, Caldas leaned back, with his eyes closed and the window open.

‘Shall we stop off for another look at Mrs Valverde’s tits?’ asked Estevez as the trees of Monteferro gave way to the first houses.

Caldas tutted. He had no interest in Mrs Valverde’s breasts. It was her smile that fascinated him.

When Estevez dropped him off in Panxón, the village seemed quite different. There were people on the promenade and, on the beach, some brave souls were walking along the shore, feet in the water. On the terrace of the Refugio del Pescador, a few old fishermen sat in the sun.

Caldas looked at his watch. The fish market had been closed for hours. At the end of the jetty a couple of anglers were casting their lines out over the water, and the inspector headed towards them.

As he passed the yacht club he breathed in an acrid odour that mingled with the smell of the sea. He saw the carpenter through the railing. He’d moved the boat he’d been caulking when they’d interviewed him out into the sun, and he was applying a coat of tar to the hull.

The grey cat was at his feet, watching his maimed hand move back and forth as he applied the tar.

Caldas made his way along the jetty towards Justo Castelo’s traps, which were still stacked against the whitewashed wall. He sat down on a bollard and lit a cigarette.

Arias’s boat, the
Aileen
, was moored to a buoy, its traps piled up on deck. Caldas assumed that Castelo’s boat was a similar size, and he wondered if it was possible to tow such a boat in past the rocks at Punta Lameda. He’d ask Trabazo.

Until now Caldas had imagined one person approaching El
Rubio from another vessel. But if Castelo’s boat was too big to tow, at least two people must have been involved. One would have remained on their boat while the second sailed El Rubio’s boat to the lighthouse.

Caldas stubbed out his cigarette and walked back along the jetty. He leaned on the wall of the yacht club and watched the carpenter dip his brush into the tar and let the excess drip off before spreading it over the wood.

The cat was still watching the carpenter’s hand move back and forth.

Trabazo came up beside him, dropping a plastic box full of fishing lines, floats and hooks on the ground, and slapped the inspector on the back.

‘Watching the craftsman at work?’ said Trabazo, indicating the carpenter with a nod of the head. ‘He may have a few fingers missing, but that lad’s got a gift. The wood seems to obey him.’

‘Do you know, I didn’t think they made boats out of wood any more.’

‘It’s obvious you don’t fish, Calditas! The only reason people don’t use wood is because it needs maintenance, but a true fisherman will always choose it. In a wooden boat you’re really in the ocean, embedded in it. You can feel it in the small of your back,’ said Trabazo. ‘Boats made of plastic or fibreglass just slide over the water. They’re quite different.’

The carpenter looked up. He laid his brush down on top of the tin of tar and waved at the doctor.

‘Charlie not getting dizzy today?’ asked Trabazo, pointing at the cat.

‘He must be about to, Doctor,’ said the carpenter, smiling through his ginger beard. ‘He’s been watching me for about half an hour. I’m expecting him to keel over any minute.’

They carried the rowing boat down the slipway, placed Trabazo’s box inside and climbed aboard. The boat rocked and Caldas had a feeling he shouldn’t have accepted his friend’s invitation. He became sure of it when he saw Trabazo glance disapprovingly at his shoes. Some shoes, Calditas, he seemed to be thinking. What did they all have against his shoes?

Trabazo began rowing out to the buoy and Caldas gripped the gunwale of the small boat with both hands.

‘How’s your father?’ asked the doctor.

‘Backwards and forwards between the vineyard and the hospital.’

‘But he’s OK?’

‘Yes, he’s OK,’ said Caldas. Then he asked, ‘Did you know he had a dog?’

‘Your father?’

‘A big brown one,’ said Caldas. ‘He claims it isn’t his, but it follows him around everywhere.’

‘Well, you did have a little dog once … What was its name?’

‘Cabola,’ said Caldas.

‘That’s right. Cabola.’

‘But it was my mother’s dog. It died soon after she did.’

‘I remember,’ said Trabazo, and put down an oar to feel in his pocket. ‘I’ll show you something when we get to the boat.’

They reached the buoy, tied up the rowing boat and climbed aboard Trabazo’s main boat, a
gamela
almost five metres long with a small outboard motor. It was sky-blue and looked in need of a fresh coat of paint. A rock on the end of a chain served as its anchor. It wasn’t a doctor’s boat; it was a true fisherman’s boat.

‘The other day, after I gave you that photo of Sousa, I went through the chest of drawers and found this,’ said Trabazo, taking an old photograph from his pocket and handing it to the inspector. ‘Your parents and me. I thought you’d like to have it.’

They looked as if they were in their twenties. They were sitting on some steps, his mother, smiling, between the two friends.

Trabazo bent down to connect the fuel tank and pulled on the starter cord several times until the motor came to life.

Caldas, still staring at the photo, steadied himself as the boat started to vibrate.

‘You know, sometimes I forget her face,’ he said, sitting down on the middle bench. ‘Some nights I dream about her, I know it’s my mother, but the face I see isn’t hers.’

Trabazo released the mooring rope, sat down in the stern holding the tiller, and said, ‘In time everything goes, you forget the face, you forget the voice.’

‘What?’ said Caldas, and the doctor began to sing quietly, ‘
Avec le temps, avec le temps, va, tout s’en va
…’

‘Who sang that?’

Trabazo steered the boat between buoys. ‘Léo Ferré,’ he replied. ‘Your mother adored him.’

As they doubled the jetty Trabazo steered towards Monteferro. The boat moved through the water with its bow raised.

Some of the houses that were scattered over the strip of land between the mountain and the mainland appeared to be clinging to the rocks, but most were squeezed among the trees, vying for views of the bay. Caldas searched unsuccessfully for the glass façade of the Valverdes’ house.

‘They were planning to develop the whole mountain,’ said Trabazo, with a sweep of his free hand. ‘Can you believe it? They’d even started laying out streets.’

‘So what happened?’ Caldas was making sure not to look to either side. He held his head up and stared straight ahead, concentrating on exposing his face to the cold sea air.

‘The entire village rose up and a judge ordered the tree felling to be halted. Precautionary suspension, I think the term is. We’ll see how long that lasts.’

As he spoke, Trabazo backed off the throttle so that the inspector could hear him.

‘Did you go to see Don Fernando?’

‘Yes,’ said Caldas.

‘Any help?’

‘Yes, definitely.’

‘He spent years photographing the fishermen.’

This was not what had most impressed the inspector. ‘Did you know that he’s got an archive of cuttings about shipwrecks?’

‘Not just shipwrecks,’ said Trabazo. ‘He keeps anything to do with the village. It’s his way of experiencing the thrill of the sea, through the adventures of others.’

‘Right.’

They left the houses behind and sailed past the pine-clad slopes of Monteferro stretching above the cliffs. At the summit stood the monu ment to the memory of drowned sailors.

‘We’ll head that way later,’ said Trabazo, pointing at a spot along the coast. ‘Now I’m going to show you a place no one else knows. Sea Bass Rock, I call it. I’ve been fishing there for over thirty years.’

‘You only fish for sea bass?’

‘There I do. Only lovely bass,’ said Trabazo. ‘Though you never really know what you’re going to get nowadays. Did you hear about El Rubio landing a sunfish a few months ago? TV reporters even came to interview him.’

‘Yes, I read the newspaper cutting,’ said Caldas.

‘Did Don Fernando show it to you?’

‘No,’ said Caldas. ‘It was framed on Castelo’s sitting-room wall.’

As the boat skirted around Monteferro the Cies Islands appeared ahead. They looked further away now than they had from the top of the mountain.

‘El Rubio can’t have drowned beyond that point,’ said Trabazo, slowing the boat and indicating a rounded rock. ‘Look at the waves. See how they split apart? If he’d drowned beyond that rock, the current wouldn’t have dragged him to the Madorra on this side of the mountain, but to somewhere round the other side. His boat may have been found round there but Castelo can’t have fallen into the sea beyond that rock.’

‘I see.’

‘It couldn’t have been suicide.’

‘I know,’ said Caldas, still staring straight ahead.

Trabazo looked at the inspector expectantly but Caldas said nothing more.

‘Do you have any idea who might have done it?’ Trabazo pressed.

‘You know what they’re saying in the village, don’t you?’ said Caldas.

‘What they’re saying?’

‘Do you know or not, Manuel?’

‘Just about.’

‘And what do you think?’

‘What do you mean, what do I think?’

Caldas decided to get straight to the point. ‘Do you believe in ghosts, apparitions?’

‘Bloody hell, Leo!’ muttered Trabazo. ‘You don’t mention things like that on a boat.’

‘Well, do you believe in them or not?’

Trabazo turned the tiller abruptly and the boat reared up. ‘No,’ he said firmly. Then he knocked on the motor and spat over the side.

They continued in silence until the lighthouse at Punta Lameda appeared among the rocks a few minutes later. The Forensics van was parked in the same place, on the paved stretch of road. Trabazo brought the boat up close to the cliff and let it bob on the water with the motor in neutral.

‘Over there,’ he said, pointing. ‘The perfect place to hide something. I’d never have thought of it.’

Caldas nodded.

‘You can’t see it from here,’ the doctor went on, ‘but there’s a rock barrier a few metres from the shore. At high tide waves wash over it, but at the bottom of the pool the water’s always still.’

Caldas peered over the gunwale. Dark seaweed swayed beneath the boat, looking like the antlers of a rhythmically moving herd of moose.