Death on a Galician Shore (34 page)

He did. ‘Yes, I remember. For the first few days it caused quite a stir. Later we heard she’d run off with a man.’

‘The night she disappeared she went out for cigarettes,’ said Caldas, again encouraging him to continue.

‘That’s right. I was asked if she’d been into the Aduana. But the bar was closed that evening. There was a storm,’ he said and fell silent, as if listening to the echo of his own words, looking Caldas straight in the eye.

So now you see it, too, the inspector said inwardly, and asked the man: ‘Anything wrong?’

‘No, nothing,’ he said, signalling to Caldas that it was time to listen carefully. ‘Would you mind showing me that photo again, Inspector?’

Caldas put it on the table and the man placed a finger on Justo Castelo’s fair hair.

‘I was asked if I’d seen a fisherman with very fair hair in the harbour that weekend.’

‘Who asked you?’

‘Irene, from the pharmacy,’ he said, staring at the photo.

‘No one else?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I told her I hadn’t. I never saw the skipper’s crew. Do you think Irene was referring to this lad?’

‘Maybe.’

Outside Caldas lit a cigarette and put his hands in his pockets. Pale mist still lay over the village, shrouding it in damp.

Caldas and Estevez walked in silence, towards the church tower that loomed above the other buildings. As they passed the canteen of the fishermen’s association, they heard laughter. By contrast, the seagulls had ceased their screeching and alighted mutely on the ground.

As they got back to the car, Estevez jerked his head towards Somoza’s front door. The former deputy inspector was shuffling out in his slippers.

‘Aren’t we going to talk to him again?’ asked Estevez.

Caldas watched Somoza, trying to picture him as the arrogant policeman who had humiliated Diego Neira. All he could see was a defeated, stooping old man with a short-sighted squint and gaping mouth. ‘What for?’ he replied. ‘There’s no point.’

At the quay, they glimpsed the
Narija
between houses. It was fading into the mist like the ghost of Captain Sousa that had brought them to Aguiño that morning.

At eleven thirty, as the last of the village houses receded behind them, Estevez asked, ‘So, what do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘Do you think they murdered that woman, Rebeca Neira?’

‘Don’t you?’ said Caldas.

‘Please don’t start!’ muttered Estevez. ‘I’m asking you.’

‘Why else would they set sail in a storm? And, anyway, even if they didn’t do it, her son’s convinced they did.’

‘You think it was him who killed Castelo?’

Caldas nodded.

‘How did he track them down after all this time?’ asked Estevez. ‘Panxón is south, and Diego Neira went to live a long way north.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Caldas, looking out of the window.

The sea was still hidden by a mantle of mist, but a strong smell of brine revealed its proximity.

Caldas took out his mobile phone and called Olga to get the number of the police station in Ferrol. When he got through there he asked for Quintans.

‘Could you do me a favour?’ he asked, once they’d exchanged greetings.

‘Hit me,’ said Quintans.

‘I’m looking for a twenty-eight-year-old man who lived in Neda for a time from the start of 1997. His name’s Diego Neira Diez,’ said Caldas, looking at the missing persons report.

‘Have you got a recent address?’

‘All I know is that he lived at his grandparents’ house in Neda at least until six or seven years ago. Then he moved away, but he may have come back. I need any information that might help me find him: where he lives, if he has a partner or friends, what he does for a living – anything.’

‘I’ll call you back tomorrow.’

‘Don’t make it any later than that,’ said Caldas. ‘It’s urgent.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t,’ said Quintans. Before hanging up, he asked,‘How are you doing?’

‘Fine.’

‘And Alba?’

‘She’s fine, too,’ replied Caldas, his voice so steady it sounded sincere even to him.

Then he closed his eyes, but it wasn’t Alba he saw behind his eyelids, it was a mother torn from her home one rainy night. As the Léo Ferré song Trabazo had quoted on the boat went, time makes you forget the face and voice of those who are no longer here. His thoughts travelled back to the harbour in Aguiño, the fishermen hastily setting sail so that no one could place them there that night, the
Xurelo
foundering on rocks, the men in their waterproofs calling out, terrified, in the storm.

‘Who do you think went inside Rebeca Neira’s house?’ he asked.

‘There are only two possible candidates,’ replied Estevez.

‘Three,’ said Caldas.

‘You think the skipper …’

‘Why not?’ replied the inspector. ‘It must have been someone with authority over the others. If not, how do you explain them agreeing to set sail in those conditions?’

‘That hadn’t occurred to me,’ admitted Estevez. ‘Do you think they were all in on what happened to the woman?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised. You saw how Arias and Valverde reacted when we mentioned Aguiño,’ said Caldas. ‘Let’s see what they have to say now.’

A little later he made another call, this time to Clara Barcia’s mobile. He asked about the footage from the security camera on the house in Monteferro.

‘We were going to go through it this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Would you like us to do it sooner?’

Caldas glanced at his watch: it was a quarter to twelve.

‘This afternoon’s fine,’ he said, and leaned back in his seat. He wanted to hum ‘Solveig’s Song’, which Justo Castelo used to whistle in his mother’s house. But though the academics at the Eligio had sung it to him, he couldn’t remember the tune. He clicked his tongue and looked out of the window. On a billboard an advertisement for a fishing tackle shop showed a man proudly holding up a fish that dangled from a fishing line.

‘I know how he tracked down El Rubio,’ he said suddenly.

‘How?’ asked Estevez.

‘It was around this time last year.’

‘How do you know?’

‘You went to Castelo’s house?’

‘Yes, with you.’

‘Did you notice the photos in the sitting room?’

His snort conveyed that he hadn’t.

‘About a year ago, Justo Castelo caught a sunfish,’ said Caldas. ‘It’s a big round tropical fish, as rare off the coast of Galicia as a great white shark. Several newspapers ran features about it, with a photo of Castelo holding up the fish. There was a framed copy in his living room. He was even interviewed on TV.’

‘Bloody hell,’ muttered Estevez, raising his eyebrows. ‘Since last year … Why has he waited until now?’

The inspector had a question of his own: ‘How long since his mother went missing? Twelve, thirteen years?’

‘About that.’

‘I don’t think he was in any hurry. The murder wasn’t committed on an impulse. He was patient,’ said Caldas, recalling the graffiti that had so disturbed Castelo a few weeks before his death. ‘He planned it well.’

Caldas closed his eyes again.

He wondered how many tunes Diego Neira had stopped whistling.

When the motorway forked, instead of turning off into Vigo, they drove on, up and around the city that spread out over the slopes, above the sea.

‘What a great view,’ said Estevez as they reached the top. Caldas opened his eyes.

The mist had retreated out to sea, revealing the mouth of the estuary and the Cies Islands. An ocean liner was heading towards the port, to release its cargo of tourists equipped with their maps, raincoats and cameras on to the streets of Vigo.

Caldas caught sight of the green hospital building at the foot of Monte del Castro, and pictured Uncle Alberto counting the hours, happy to relinquish his room to another patient. When had his father said they were discharging him?

He gazed at the landscape – the gentle curve of the coast broken only by the tower block on the island of Toralla and the dark shape of the headland at Monteferro – before closing his eyes again.

The motorway ended a kilometre from Panxón, and they drove the rest of the way past empty holiday homes. The sky, like the sea, was grey.

They parked by the promenade and got out of the car. They were greeted by the same smell they had left behind in Aguiño. Caldas looked around.

The promenade was almost deserted. A group of elderly people was seated at a terrace table enjoying a rain-free morning. On the
beach, two women walked at the water’s edge with their trousers rolled up and shoes in their hands. Near the slipway, the boy in the wheelchair was throwing a ball for his Labrador. Beyond it, on Playa America, waves broke with great jets of spray. On the Panxón side, by contrast, they seemed to caress the sand as they rolled in and, in the shelter of the harbour, the boats hardly swayed on the water.

Justo Castelo’s traps were still stacked against the white wall of the jetty. At its tip, the same anglers held their fishing rods out over the water.

In the streets of the village, a woman was sluicing down the pavement outside her house, and a few people walked by, plastic bags in hand.

Caldas and Estevez made their way to the narrow street where José Arias lived. They rang his doorbell several times but there was no answer.

Glancing at his watch Caldas saw that it was ten past one – the fisherman would have been asleep for about four hours.

‘Shall I open it?’ said Estevez. ‘I’ll just give it another little nudge …’

Caldas looked at the mark on the door caused by Estevez’s last ‘little nudge’. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said, turning at the sound of footsteps behind him.

He recognised Alicia Castelo’s fair hair and swallowed hard. She was wearing a black dress and her arms were crossed to protect herself against the cold. As she drew nearer, she looked up at Arias’s neighbour’s window. Caldas glanced up, too. The net curtains did not move.

‘I saw you as you passed my house, Inspector,’ she said. ‘Could I speak to you for a moment?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Taking out his cigarettes, Caldas said to his assistant, ‘Keep ringing the bell.’

‘No one’s going to answer, Inspector,’ said the drowned man’s sister. ‘He’s not there.’

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘He’s left.’

‘Left?’ said Caldas. ‘The village?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘On Saturday afternoon. A few hours after he spoke to you.’

‘Damn,’ muttered Caldas. He should have listened to Estevez and arrested Arias at the time, holding him in custody until they returned from Aguiño. It had been foolish to put him on his guard and leave him unwatched. He could be anywhere by now. He might even have gone back to Scotland. It was where he’d taken refuge after the sinking of the
Xurelo
, and he had a daughter there.

‘José Arias has done nothing wrong,’ murmured Alicia Castelo. ‘That’s what I wanted to speak to you about.’

‘Hasn’t he?’

‘You remember the call made from Justo’s house?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Caldas glanced up at the neighbour’s window again, to check they were not being overheard.

‘It wasn’t my brother who called him.’

Caldas understood immediately, unlike his assistant.

‘Then who did?’ asked Estevez.

Alicia glanced up again, then down at the ground.

‘Me,’ she whispered. ‘I called José from my brother’s house.’

‘José,’ Caldas repeated to himself. It was the first time he’d heard anyone refer to the hulking fisherman like that.

‘It wasn’t him. You’ve got it wrong. He hasn’t spoken to Justo for years.’

‘So why has he run away?’ asked Caldas. He decided not to tell her that the nosy neighbour had seen her brother enter Arias’s house the day before he died.

‘To protect me,’ she said. ‘My husband is coming back from Namibia this week. José didn’t want to put me in an awkward position, where I’d have to testify. I was with him the morning my brother was murdered,’ she said glancing up again. ‘It’s a small village, as you’ve seen. My mother couldn’t take it.’

‘I understand.’

‘But I don’t care what people say,’ she went on, trying to hold back the sobs. ‘I already lost him once, a long time ago. I don’t want to lose him again now.’

Caldas looked into her blue eyes. They had filled with tears as they had every time he’d seen her.

‘Do you know where he is?’ he asked, resisting the urge to put his arms around her.

‘No,’ she said, wiping her eyes. Her voice sounded like a lament from the sea. ‘I don’t know. I just hope it doesn’t take him another twelve years to come back.’

Estevez waited at the bottom of the hill with the engine running while Caldas made his way up to the Templo Votivo del Mar to return the photographs of Sousa and the crew of the
Xurelo
to the priest. When he got back to the car, they set off for Marcos Valverde’s house.

The large wooden gate was closed so Caldas climbed out and rang the bell. He gave his name and the gate slid aside revealing the house’s concrete façade. The inspector walked into the courtyard and waited while Estevez parked beside the red car. The air smelled of freshly mown grass.

‘Do you think he’s got away, too?’ asked Estevez, gesturing towards the space where Valverde’s black sports car had been on Saturday morning.

‘Let’s hope not,’ said Caldas, stepping off the gravel path to go and breathe in the fragrance of the verbena for a moment before continuing round the house to the front door.

In the sitting room two large logs were burning in the square cast-iron fireplace and a clarinet concerto was playing. On the other side of the room the table was set for two.

‘My husband will be home any minute,’ said Valverde’s wife, going over to the sound system and turning the volume right down. She selected another disc from the shelves, inserted it into the CD player and invited them to sit on the sofa.

‘May I ask why you’re here?’ she said, sitting in an armchair as angular as everything else in the room, except herself.

‘We’d like to speak to your husband.’

‘I’m a grown-up, Inspector,’ she said, her eyes shining. ‘What’s going on?’