Death on a Galician Shore (30 page)

Caldas saw this was true. In any case, the boat wouldn’t have needed to be underwater too long before all clues were erased.

‘If I was faking that fisherman’s suicide,’ Estevez continued, ‘I’d have left the boat adrift for the current to dash it against rocks. I wouldn’t have brought it round this side of the mountain.’

‘But what if someone had found it before it sank?’

‘They couldn’t have,’ replied Estevez. ‘I’d have made a hole in the hull to make sure it went down before I jumped back to the other boat. All they’ve achieved by sinking it in here is letting us know for sure that it wasn’t El Rubio who brought it here, don’t you think?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Caldas. He remained on the rock, smoking, while Estevez went down the slope away from the lighthouse.

‘There are two guys down there,’ said Estevez when he returned.

‘Where?’

‘One in a boat and one on the rocks.’

Caldas followed him, first down the slope, then from rock to rock. When his assistant leaned to peer over the cliff edge, the inspector did likewise.

As Estevez had said, there was a man in a dinghy and another perched on a rock surrounded by sea spray, tethered to the boat by a harness he wore over his wetsuit. He was gripping a scraper in one hand and a couple of plastic bags hung from his belt. The other man was keeping the dinghy a few metres away. He was holding on to the end of the rope and adjusting the throttle to keep from being dashed against the rocks.

‘They’re collecting
percebes –
gooseneck barnacles,’ said Caldas.

When the sea withdrew, the man on the rock climbed down to the dark exposed strip and scraped barnacles off the rock with his spatula. Then, when his companion in the boat warned him of the next incoming wave, he scrambled back up to safety. Sometimes he got away with bags full of
percebes
, but at others he barely escaped with his life.

‘Is that how they’re always collected?’ asked Estevez, sounding surprised.

‘Yes,’ said Caldas. ‘They form colonies on the rocks, in places where the sea beats against them. You’ve got to look for them there.’

Estevez whistled. ‘Now I know why they’re so expensive.’

‘And so delicious,’ added Caldas, who could think of no better company at table than a plate of
percebes
. He loved nothing more than shelling one of the barnacles and savouring the intense briny taste of its flesh.

‘How do they get them when the weather’s bad?’ asked Estevez.

‘You don’t get
percebes
when the weather’s bad,’ replied Caldas, who hadn’t seen any in the display cabinet at the Bar Puerto for weeks.

‘I don’t understand it,’ said Estevez as the man scrambled out of the way of another wave.

‘What don’t you understand?’

‘Why they risk their lives like that.’

Caldas shrugged. ‘They need to eat.’

‘Well, they should eat something else,’ said Estevez gravely.

The inspector looked at him out of the corner of his eye and Estevez burst out laughing.

A little later, his bags full, the man on the rocks jumped into the water and the other man hauled him to the dinghy by the rope. Once he was aboard, they sailed away from the coast.

‘Are we heading back, Inspector?’ asked Estevez, still slightly flushed from laughing.

They were almost back at the car when they heard the drone of a boat engine nearby. They peered over the lighthouse wall and saw the
percebes
collectors in their dinghy. They were approaching the pool where Castelo’s boat had been found. The policemen watched as the pilot steered the craft between the rocky shoreline and the reef
protecting the pool. Caldas thought of the bad weather the previous Sunday. The murderers would have had to perform the same manoeuvre in much heavier seas. Only someone with great experience would have dared attempt it.

The man in the wetsuit climbed out of the dinghy with the bags of barnacles, and waved goodbye to his companion.

‘Now we know who the yellow car belongs to,’ murmured Caldas.

Estevez nodded. ‘Why have they landed here?’

‘Because they’re doing this illegally,’ said Caldas quietly. ‘They must have over twenty kilos of
percebes
there. If they came ashore in a harbour they might be reported, or worse.’

The dinghy sailed away and the policemen waited by the lighthouse while the fisherman climbed the hill. He looked about twenty. He was slim, of medium height, and the sea water had made his hair curl.

He looked surprised when he saw another car parked near his at that early hour, and even more so when the two men leaning on the lighthouse wall headed towards him.

‘Good morning,’ said Caldas.

The man raised his eyebrows in response and continued on his way.

‘You’ve done pretty well there,’ the inspector continued, pointing at the bags of
percebes
.

‘Well …’

‘Could we have a word?’

‘You’re from the police, aren’t you?’

‘That obvious, is it?’

The young man nodded.

‘It’s not about the catch,’ Caldas reassured him. ‘We just want to ask you a few questions.’

The man put the bags down, as if lowering weapons. He said he was from Panxón but worked in Vigo. At weekends, if the weather was good, he and his brother got to Monteferro at dawn, supplementing their income with what they found on the rocks.

‘Were you here last weekend?’ asked Caldas.

The boy shook his head. ‘Seas have been too heavy for the past fortnight,’ he said. ‘That’s why there are so many
percebes
today.’

‘Can you still get here by boat in bad weather?’ asked Caldas,
glancing at the spot where the dinghy had dropped the boy off.

‘Yes, of course you can,’ he replied. He explained that steering a boat into the pool wasn’t difficult for an experienced pilot.

‘Anyone who’s sailed around here can get in, even in rough seas. You just have to go easy on the throttle,’ he said, moving his hand as if accelerating on a motorbike. ‘And make sure the tide’s out so you can see the rocks and don’t get any nasty surprises.’

When they asked why he’d picked that spot to unload the catch, the young man replied, ‘When the tide’s out, it’s like a pier. It’s the only place you can land without being seen. Anywhere else the rocks are too dangerous or you’re overlooked by houses.’

In Caldas’s mind the boy’s words caused an instant reaction, like precipitation in a test tube. How had it not occurred to him earlier?

‘Do many people know this place?’ he asked.

‘The lighthouse?’ said the boy.

‘The place you landed,’ clarified Caldas.

‘The fishermen from the village know it.’

‘Right.’

‘But others know about it as well,’ added the young man, jerking his head in the direction of the two parked cars. ‘You can get here by car.’

Caldas rubbed his face and rummaged in his jacket for his cigarettes. He lit one and said, ‘I think I now know why they sank it here.’

‘Why?’ asked Estevez.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ he said. Then, addressing the young man, ‘You can go.’

‘What about the
percebes
?’ he asked hesitantly.

‘Take them,’ replied Caldas. ‘You collected them.’

The man thanked him and hurried away with a bag in each hand and a smile on his face.

‘One more thing,’ called out the inspector.

The young man turned around. He’d stopped smiling, but he grinned when Caldas asked:

‘How much do you want for a couple of kilos?’

Once the clandestine fisherman had driven off, Caldas set out his theory for Estevez.

‘I don’t think they came to the pool to dispose of the boat. I think
they left it here because it was the only place they could land where they were safe from prying eyes.’

‘Say that again?’ said Estevez.

‘I’m saying that while one of the killers left in his boat – the one they boarded El Rubio’s from – the other one brought Castelo’s boat here. But not to sink it, just to land without being seen.’

Estevez looked around. He could see nothing but water, rocks and trees.

‘Why didn’t they both leave in the other boat after throwing Castelo into the sea?’

‘Maybe they didn’t want to be seen together,’ suggested Caldas.

‘Maybe,’ agreed Estevez. ‘But why did they sink the boat?’

‘You said it yourself: because El Rubio’s body was round the other side of the mountain. That’s why they didn’t simply want to leave his boat adrift. It would have seemed odd for the body to turn up on one side of Monteferro and the boat on the other. They needed to land here, so they had to sink the boat here, too.’

The inspector climbed back down to the edge of the pool and Estevez followed.

‘See the rocks piled up by the wall?’ asked Caldas. ‘They’re like the ones found in Castelo’s boat. I think that after jumping ashore they threw the rocks down from up there to make a hole in the hull to make sure the boat stayed on the bottom.’

‘But if things happened like that, if one of them landed here, where’s the other boat?’ asked Estevez. ‘No boats went in or out of any of the local harbours last Sunday.’

‘We’ll have to ask further afield.’

Estevez snorted. ‘Has it occurred to you that maybe the other boat doesn’t exist, Inspector?’

‘So how did they reach Castelo?’

‘Maybe someone was hiding on his boat, waiting for him.’

‘We’ve already been over this: Castelo was the only one aboard when he left the harbour. Hermida’s wife saw him from her window.’

‘That woman’s getting on a bit,’ said Estevez. ‘And it was dark. She could have got it wrong.’

‘She could,’ said Caldas. ‘But Castelo would have spotted if anyone was on board. The wheelhouse of his boat has windows, like Arias’s
and Hermida’s, and his traps were piled up on the jetty. He’d have known if there was someone else on his boat.’

‘It was dark,’ Estevez repeated.

‘But the woman saw him turn on his light. I’m telling you, there was nowhere for anyone to hide. They had to get to him by sea, and there had to be more than one of them.’

Caldas set off back up the hill to the car.

‘So how do you explain that they knew El Rubio was putting out to sea that morning?’ asked Estevez, walking along beside the inspector.

Caldas stopped and threw open his arms. It was the second time in two days that his assistant had asked him the same question.

Leaving the lighthouse behind, they drove along the potholed track that ran first beside the sea, then through the pale trunks of the eucalyptus grove. The trees’ sharp fragrance blew in through the car window on chill air that gusted over the inspector’s face.

When they reached the road, Caldas looked out and asked his assistant to slow down as they drew near to the first few houses.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Estevez, surprised to see the inspector peering like a bird of prey, instead of sitting with his eyes closed as he usually did in the car.

‘I want to see if any of these houses have security cameras,’ said Caldas. ‘You check on that side, will you?’

The number of burglaries in the area had increased over the past few years and many homeowners had installed alarms and other security devices. The inspector was hoping that a CCTV camera outside one of the houses had caught someone heading along the road the previous Sunday. It was the only road leading away from the lighthouse. After landing at the pool and making their way down the track, they would have had to pass along that stretch of road.

‘There!’ said Estevez soon afterwards, pulling the car up alongside one of the first houses.

It was a modern house with a garden surrounded by a high stone wall. The camera was on the second floor, directed at the entrance, the most vulnerable point of the perimeter. Any car driving along the road would be caught on camera.

Caldas rang the doorbell but there was no answer. The blinds were drawn and the letterbox was overflowing with rain-dampened junk mail. He assumed it was a holiday home, so he simply noted down the name of the security firm that had supplied the alarm, prominently displayed on the wall as a deterrent. He also took down the house number on the stone wall and returned to the car.

They drove on slowly, scanning every wall, door and window. They saw several security firm signs, but no more cameras.

At the crossroads, Estevez asked, ‘Are we going back to Vigo?’

Caldas nodded and they turned left, away from Panxón.

They stopped for petrol.

‘I’m going for a piss,’ said Estevez, after he’d filled the tank.

‘Try to get another bag,’ said Caldas. ‘We need to divide up the
percebes
.’

Estevez nodded and headed towards the toilets. While he waited, the inspector called Clara Barcia and gave her the name of the security firm and the house number.

‘Do you think there’ll be any footage from last Sunday?’ he asked.

‘Depends on the equipment, Inspector.’

‘The equipment?’

‘The recording equipment,’ said Barcia. ‘If it stores images on disk there’ll be several weeks’ worth but if it’s the kind that uses a tape you can forget about Sunday. There’ll only be a couple of days’ footage.’

‘Right,’ said Caldas. ‘Thanks, Clara.’

Estevez had got back by the time the inspector hung up.

‘You shouldn’t have called her, Inspector.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s Saturday.’

‘She didn’t complain.’

‘No,’ said Estevez. ‘Not to you.’

Estevez drew up outside Caldas’s apartment building, exactly where he’d picked him up earlier that morning. The inspector climbed out of the car, stretched and looked at his watch. It was eleven thirty. They got the two kilos of
percebes
out of the boot and divided them up.

‘I’ve never tried them,’ said Estevez.

‘Well, a kilo isn’t a bad start,’ said Caldas. ‘Shall I tell you how to cook them?’

‘If you don’t mind,’ replied Estevez.

‘It’s easy. Set a pan of sea water on to boil, with a bay leaf …’

‘Does it really have to be sea water?’ interrupted Estevez.

‘You can use tap water with salt added,’ said the inspector. ‘When it comes to a rolling boil, add the
percebes
and wait for it to come back to the boil. Count to fifty, drain, serve and enjoy.’