Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire (14 page)

‘Is he a fascist, this friend of yours who went to the village?' Javier Martinez demanded.

‘No,' Paniatowski assured him. ‘He fought on the Republican side for the whole of the war.'

Javier Martinez gave a slight nod. ‘Then he is a man of honour, and the villagers will have told him the truth,' he said. ‘You are right, they locked us in the barn, but just after dark, two soldiers came and took me to the priest's house. That was where I met the lieutenant. He was in the priest's library, and he had a pistol held in his hand. I thought he might shoot me, then and there, but he merely pointed the pistol at me and told the two soldiers to go downstairs.'

‘Are you sure that you're strong enough for this, Father?' Robert Martinez asked.

‘I'm strong enough,' the old man said, and he did sound stronger – almost as if he were drawing some strength from the memory of the man he used to be. ‘This lieutenant said that he knew who I was, because my wife had informed on me. I told him I did not believe it – that I knew my wife would never betray me. But he said it was quite true. He said she went to see him, and offered to sleep with him if he would give her extra rations, and that he turned her down. I did not believe that either. I think that he was the one who offered the rations. He said that she spat on him, and screamed that her husband was a captain in the militia. And that I did believe – because Elena always had a fiery temper.'

‘You were right to have faith in your wife,' Paniatowski said. ‘Half an hour ago I was talking to my friend who went to the village, and he told me that what you thought happened was exactly what did happen.'

‘The lieutenant said that he had had her locked up for daring to insult him, and that he hadn't yet decided whether to have her shot or not. And then he asked me to tell him about the gold …' The old man paused. ‘Do you know all about the gold, too, Chief Inspector?'

‘Yes, I know about the gold.'

‘He said I could buy my freedom – and that of my wife and child – if I could lead him to the gold.'

‘He was lying, of course,' Paniatowski said.

‘Naturally he was lying,' Javier Martinez agreed. ‘If there had been any gold, and I'd told him where it was, he would have shot me immediately, and if I had told him there was none, he would have got his men to shoot me. So I played for time. I said there was gold – ten bars of it – and that it was hidden in that very room, behind the bookcase. I have never seen a man lose control of himself so quickly. He laid the pistol he had been pointing at me on the desk, and rushed over to the bookcases, and began pulling them away from the wall. If my hands had been tied behind my back, there would have been nothing I could have done to take advantage of the situation. But they weren't – they were tied in front of me – and while he was pulling the bookcase away, I grabbed the big crucifix which was hanging on the wall, and struck him on the back of the head with it.'

‘Did the blow kill him?'

‘No, but it knocked him unconscious. The two soldiers who were down below had heard the sound of the bookcase falling, and were running up the stairs. I picked up the lieutenant's pistol from the desk, and when they came through the door, I shot them both dead.'

‘Did anyone outside hear the shots?'

‘No, the house had very thick walls, and anyway, all the other soldiers were billeted near the barn in which we were being held prisoner.'

‘What did you do next?'

‘I found a knife in the kitchen, and cut through my bonds. I had decided that I would find out where Elena was being held, and do all I could to free her, even if it cost me my own life. And that was when I heard a baby crying.'

‘Your son?'

‘My little Roberto. I found him in one of the bedrooms. And I knew, at that moment, that I had to choose between saving my wife and saving my son, because I could not do both. I chose my son.'

‘Did you kill the lieutenant before you left?' Paniatowski asked.

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because he was still lying unconscious where he had fallen – and I could not bring myself to kill an unconscious man, however wicked he had been. It was a matter of honour.'

You might have killed him if you'd known he'd raped your wife
, Paniatowski thought.

‘He died anyway – in the fire,' she said aloud.

‘What fire?' Javier Martinez asked.

‘You didn't set the house alight before you left?'

‘No.'

‘Then why did it burn down?'

Javier Martinez gave a weak shrug. ‘Maybe the fire had been started during the struggle – the house was lit by oil lamps, we did not have electricity in the village, not even the priest – but only really caught after Roberto and I had left. I wasn't there, so I cannot say.'

‘What did you do after you left the village?'

‘We made the long and terrible journey north. We lived off roots that even the pigs would have rejected.' Javier Martinez turned to his son. ‘I am thankful that you were too young to remember it.'

‘Perhaps I do remember it – or at least, a part of it,' Robert Martinez said. ‘Sometimes in the middle of the night, when I'm not quite asleep, I feel a terrible coldness coming over me, and suddenly everything around me seems to have become perfectly white.'

The old man nodded. ‘You are remembering crossing the Pyrenees, which was the worst part of it all,' he said. ‘But we survived, and we got to France. There were some kind people on the other side of the mountains, and they cared for us until we had regained our strength. I wanted to stay with them, but they said that if Hitler invaded – and they feared that he might – we would be sent back to Spain. They gave me a little money, and Roberto and I came to England. And that is the end of our story.'

‘You never tried to contact your wife?' Paniatowski asked.

‘No, I did not.'

‘Why not?'

‘I believed that she was probably dead. And if she was not dead – if she had somehow managed to survive – I would only have been putting her life in danger by trying to get in touch with her.'

‘The retribution went on long after the war ended,' Robert Martinez explained. ‘People were executed just for having been friendly with someone else who had been executed. If my mother had received a letter from England – written by a known rebel – it would have been as good as a death warrant.'

‘And perhaps,' Javier Martinez said, with a tremble in his voice, ‘perhaps I did not want to get in touch with her. Perhaps there was a part of me that began to feel that the lieutenant had been right, after all, and she had betrayed the family.'

‘In what way did you feel she'd betrayed the family, Don Javier?' Paniatowski asked.

‘This part of me kept whispering Elena's first duty was to protect little Roberto – that she should have undergone any indignity that the lieutenant chose to inflict on her, as long as it meant she could keep her baby by her side. But she chose instead to make the grand gesture, and if I had not rescued Roberto, who knows where he might have been now?' The old man bowed his head. ‘That is what part of me said, but it was the unworthy part of me. It was Elena's spirit that I fell in love with – the spirit which made her the woman she was. And I can no more blame her for spitting in that
hijo de puta
's face than I can blame myself for leaving my family in the village and going off to fight the fascists.'

‘Father …' Robert Martinez said with growing concern.

‘When I looked down at that body in your mortuary – when I finally really looked – I did not see an old woman who bore all the scars of the life she had led,' Javier Martinez said fiercely. ‘I saw a young woman – a beautiful, wonderful young woman – and my heart was broken all over again.'

Paniatowski stood up.

‘I'd better go,' she said. ‘I want to thank you, Sr Martinez, for telling me your story. I know it can't have been easy.'

But the old man had a glazed look in his eyes – as if he were no longer in his living room in Whitebridge, but back in Val de Montaña – and he didn't even seem to realize she'd spoken.

‘I'll see you to the door, Monika,' Robert Martinez said, standing up.

Paniatowski followed him into the hallway. ‘You can get grief counselling for your father, you know,' she said. ‘I have some telephone numbers, if you'd like me to give them to you.'

‘And what about counselling for me?' Robert Martinez said.

He sounded angry, she thought. And then she realized that it wasn't anger she was hearing.

‘You're crying!' she said.

‘Yes, I'm crying,' he admitted. ‘I'm a grown man – and I'm crying. Isn't that the stupidest thing you've ever heard?'

‘No, of course not,' Paniatowski said soothingly. ‘You don't like to see your father so upset …'

‘It's not my father I'm crying for – I'm crying for myself,' Robert Martinez said.

And now there
was
anger in his voice, though whether that anger was directed at her for failing to understand, or at himself for seeming so weak, she wasn't quite sure.

‘I … I haven't seen my mother since I was a baby,' Robert said. ‘I thought I had no real memory of her at all. Yet tonight, looking down on her cold, stiff body, I realized that I had always loved her. And now she's gone forever. Now she's never coming back.'

Paniatowski put her hands on his shoulders to console him, and suddenly they were kissing.

This was insane, she told herself – yet she did not want to let go.

The kiss continued, and it felt wonderful and natural – as if it had always been meant to be.

Someone outside rang the doorbell, and as the chimes reverberated down the hall, she forced herself to break away from him.

‘I'm sorry,' she said.

‘It's as much my fault as it is yours,' Robert Martinez said.

The doorbell rang again, more insistently this time.

‘It won't happen again,' Monika told Martinez. ‘I promise it will never happen again.'

‘But I want it to happen again,' Robert said. ‘I so desperately want it to happen again.'

‘For God's sake, you're part of my investigation,' Paniatowski told him.

‘But once the investigation's over …' he said hopefully.

The doorbell rang for a third time.

‘Who is it?' Robert Martinez called out.

‘Courier service,' said a voice from the other side of the door.

‘It'll be my House of Commons mail,' Martinez told Paniatowski. ‘When I'm away from London for any length of time, I always have it couriered up. It won't take a minute for me to sign for it, and then we can …'

‘I have to go,' Paniatowski said.

‘But there's so much we have to say to each other. Just give me another five minutes,' Robert pleaded.

‘I can't,' Paniatowski told him.

She reached for the latch, and flung the door open. The courier, surprised by the sudden violence of the move, instinctively sidestepped, and thus avoided her crashing into him.

Paniatowski strode quickly down the path. By the time she reached her car, she had calmed down a little.

She had been saved by the bell, she thought – by God, she had.

The closer she got to home, the more appealing the idea of a bath seemed to Paniatowski.

She would surrender completely to the warm, soothing water, she promised herself, and for the first few minutes, she would think about nothing at all. Then, when her body had relaxed a little – when her muscles had started to feel a little less knotted – she would turn her mind to what had happened in the Martinezes' hallway, and see if there was anything she could rescue from the wreckage.

She realized the plan was a non-starter as soon as she opened her front door, and saw Louisa standing there expectantly.

‘Was it her, Mum?' Louisa demanded excitedly.

‘Yes, it was her,' Paniatowski confirmed.

‘Brilliant!' Louisa said.

‘It's not brilliant at all,' Paniatowski said severely, as she took off her coat. ‘A woman has died, you know.'

‘That's true,' Louisa agreed, only slightly subdued. ‘It's not brilliant that a woman has died, and it's not brilliant that the dead woman has turned out to be Doña Elena – but you have to admit that it is brilliant that I was right.'

‘Don't you feel even a little bit of pity for her?' Paniatowski asked, a little worriedly.

‘I only saw her that once, at Tía Pilar's house,' Louisa replied. ‘I never even talked to her. Besides, don't you always say that you shouldn't let your emotions get in the way of an investigation – that if you stop being completely objective, then you're not doing your job properly?'

Yes, she did say that, Paniatowski agreed silently. It was a rule she had learned from Charlie Woodend – though neither of them had ever been particularly good at applying it.

‘I do feel sorry for Don Roberto, though,' Louisa continued, as they entered the lounge.

‘Really?' Paniatowski asked, as they sat down. ‘I would have thought that the person you should really feel sorry for is Mr Martinez senior, who's just found out that his wife is dead.'

Now what made me say that? she wondered.

Was it because she didn't want Louisa to know how upset Robert had been? Was she protecting him?

‘It's true Don Javier's just lost his wife, but Don Roberto's just lost his mother,' Louisa countered. ‘That can't have been easy for him, even though he hasn't seen her for all those years. Anyway, Don Roberto's bound to feel it more, because he's very sensitive, whereas his dad's a bit of a cold fish.'

She would have agreed with her daughter's assessment of Javier Martinez earlier in the day, Paniatowski thought, but a lot had happened since then. She had seen him in the mortuary, and she had listened to him tell his tale when he got back home, and now she looked at him in quite a different light.