Sing Like You Know the Words (56 page)

The point I’m trying to make is;
work can’t save you, even though I hoped it might. And I never
looked for love to save me. Deep down I don’t know if I even
believed it really existed, except as a shared delusion. But now it
seems to me that there is nothing else that holds things together.
Without it I’d be lost entirely.

***

This is how the story ended for
Mitchell Walcott. Ray Hawkins drove the taxi for a long time
without speaking. He kept humming a tune to himself, which Walcott
couldn´t help but find irritating even in his present situation.
They left the city behind them and eventually turned off the main
highway onto roads that were empty of traffic. Finally Hawkins took
his gaze from the road for a moment and smiled pleasantly at
Mitchell.

-You know why I’m here, I
suppose?

-It was that man we saw, the
first time I met you, the one you said was a policeman.

-You saw him again, didn’t
you?

Mitchell nodded weakly

-And for that you’re going to
kill me now.

-Nothing is that certain in
life, but you should bear in mind that these doors are locked, so
jumping out of a moving vehicle, which I would not advise anyone to
try, is not an option. Also there is a weapon next to me here that
is loaded and ready to fire and should you try to do anything
really stupid it will put holes in you in really awkward places in
a very short time. On the bright side, if that happens, the gun has
a very good silencer, and the car is not mine so it won’t be me
doing the cleaning up afterwards.

Walcott did not reply.

-So for now, we still have a
drive ahead of us- If you have no objection we could pass the time
with me telling you a little story. Help you understand one or two
things.

He smiled again at Walcott, who
could do no more than shrug.

-I’ll take that as a yes.

Hawkins drove on steadily
towards the mountains which seemed a far away destination. Walcott
guessed that they would arrive soon enough.

-You remember that last time we
saw our friend; he was trying to persuade me to get something for
him. I told you what it was but that probably meant nothing to you.
Well, I’d told you before how I’d got to be friendly with some
Irish lads, and that these lads had friends in other countries, who
had need of some of the same kinds of stuff as them; weapons
mostly, and explosives, I reckon you guessed that. They all had
money, but not a ready supply of goods, which was where I could be
helpful. It was all a long time ago.

-Now the policeman, he had my
name and I don’t know how, though I suppose that with his job it
was not so hard for him to find me; and in any case he got word to
me that he wanted a meeting. Not so easy for me to say no to that,
me being an upstanding businessman and all; but worrying for all
sorts of reasons; which was why it was helpful to me when you came
along to act as my associate. At least he agreed to meet in
England. No way was I going over to his place. I wasn’t exactly
expecting trouble that night, but it wouldn’t have surprised me
either.

-As you know, it turned out that
he wasn’t interested in my business, just in getting hold of some
explosives. The curious part of that is that he wanted to get hold
of the type of explosives that the friends of my friends, from the
north of Spain, like to use. And, what’s more curious; because I
can never leave well enough alone, I did some research on this
person before our meeting, and I discover that his policeman’s job
is supposedly to track down and catch these friends of friends of
mine.

-So now you see it’s not really
strange at all, and I imagine right away that his intention is to
plant the explosive on some unfortunate person as evidence when he
arrests or shoots them as a terrorist. So far so normal, but of
course you know my opinion of police in general, so I had my mind
made up from the off that I’ll be selling him nothing. But
sometimes it’s best not to come out with these things in that blunt
way, so I told him I would do my best. You know, stay polite, let
him down gently.

-Well as you will recall, this
was one of those Spaniards who can’t keep his mouth shut, and he
keeps on about his patriotic duty and saving the country, and his
uncle who was not afraid to act to save the country and prison was
his reward. And I have no idea what he’s talking about but I keep
nodding and hoping he doesn’t start foaming at the mouth.

-After the meeting; well I
suppose I should have let it drop there, but I’m like the cat that
died of curiosity. So I spoke to him a few times after, even met
him again once, and did some digging on my own account.

-It seems that our friend’s
uncle was in a secret society back in the seventies. They called
themselves the Allianza Apostolica Anticommunista if you can
believe that: sounds more Italian comic opera than Spanish doesn’t
it? Maybe they just wanted a name that would give three letters the
same, like Klu Klux Klan. You can imagine what it was about: ultra
religious, ultra Franquist and ultra reactionary. When Franco
himself died in seventy five they all went a bit nuts.

-And did what exactly?

-One of their stunts was at 55
Atocha Street, in Madrid. In January seventy seven our friend’s
uncle and some of his pals marched into the national trades union
offices, and started lining up against the wall anyone who was
wearing a suit or looked like they might be important. They
massacred those people and walked away. They didn’t expect to be
chased and they weren’t.

-What were they trying to
achieve?

-Another civil war, I suppose:
that’s how the fascists gained power in the first place. Unsettle
the people and then everyone starts killing everyone else, until
the army steps in for the good of all. In this case it was touch
and go for a while, but I suppose the people on both sides weren’t
really looking for another bloodbath just at that moment. They were
still trying to get over their last civil war.

-So just another bunch of
extremists with crazy ideas you might think; but when you start to
look at it with a professional eye, you notice some interesting
things: like the weapons that were used; Ingham MAC10’s. That’s a
machine pistol famous for the silencer that comes with it. Kind of
ideal for the job, but not so easy to get hold of, except that for
some reason units of the Spanish police were issued with them in
those days.

-Then again, the gentlemen
responsible made no real effort to escape; they just walked away
like Chicago gangsters who know they are protected. Our friend said
they were heroes who were betrayed, and I guess they never expected
to be arrested. It turned out that even though they were caught,
two of the three main men managed to escape not many years after
they were sentenced. I guess it was made fairly easy for them to
get away.

-So yes, it was another
conspiracy, but you’ve disappointed me Mitchell, you are not
listening very carefully. This happened seventy seven, on the calle
Atocha. Where did you see our friend again?

-Outside the station. Atocha
station in the square, where he was making the salute. You think he
planted the bombs?

-It doesn’t work that way
anymore. You don’t need to plant your own bombs; there’s plenty of
idiots queuing up to do the job for you: and generally speaking
they are happy to blow themselves up in the process, which is
convenient in the way of not leaving much evidence. All you have to
do is make it easy for them.

-The bombs were on the train
before they set off for Atocha remember. Our friend couldn’t have
planted them; but he and his friends could easily have helped the
people who did to plan, to get the materials and so on. It seems
that the bombers would have needed quite a lot of help; they were
such a bunch of amateurs. It was a gang of Moroccans running a
mobile phone shop. They used their own phones to detonate the
bombs, making it easy enough to find them. Our friend was probably
watching to make sure they got on the right trains on the right
day.

-But to continue, you’ve been
living here, so you know all the fuss it caused, three days before
the election, both main parties accusing each other of lying about
it. The government claimed it was ETA, the evidence pointed to
Islamists. Now the left says the right lied to win the election,
and the right says the left stole the election by making everyone
terrified of Al Qaeda.

-Well our friend, when he was in
his foaming and ranting phase, talking about sacred missions and
old betrayals, he just didn’t see any difference between right and
left in the main parties. He said he wanted to see the back of them
and of all the other queers in the Cortes. It sounded like he hoped
that the result of whatever he was planning would be for Spain to
bomb Morocco back to the Stone Age, but he’d be content if the
people took to the streets and beat some Arabs to death for
starters. It’s the same basic idea, I’m afraid, the country
descends into violence and chaos and then the strong men step in.
The country’s grown beyond it you might think, but these people are
depressingly short on imagination.

-If what you say is right, then
he must have been pretty disappointed.

-Yes, it’s nice to think that,
just occasionally, ordinary people can see that both sides are
feeding them bullshit and decide to make up their own minds. Gives
you some hope for the future in a generally disappointing world. Of
course I have a hedge against that kind of disappointment, since my
business tends to prosper most when people are intent on killing
one another. It’s win win for me.

-Anyway, it’s obvious that all
of this mess was not the work of one deranged police colonel who
wanted to drive the Moors out of Christendom. And you might show a
little more interest; given this has a personal bearing on you.

-I’ll go on, shall I? It turned
out that two of the bombers were on the police payroll as
informers. When you look closely, you see other black ops signs.
One of the bombs fails to blow up because it’s not connected, and
the trail leads so clearly back to the Moroccans that even
Inspector Clouseau could have tracked them down and made the
arrest. The bombs turn out to be made from local dynamite which was
obviously the best our man could do. It checks back to some Madrid
gang who use it for blowing safes or fishing, who knows. Certainly
there was no reason for the gang to draw attention to themselves by
helping radical Muslims to make bombs. They only want to be left
alone to do crime. But it would be easy for certain people to twist
their arms up their backs to help. It’s supposed to look like ETA
and to look like Jihad as well, you see. Maybe at a stretch you can
even argue that the two are in league. It’s about creating
confusion and panic, and distrust.

-So the government first claims
the separatists are responsible, and after they lose the election
they destroy all the records in the files. They even wipe the
electronic data and leave the bill for the job behind for the new
lot, who claim that this proves they knew it wasn’t separatists and
chose to lie. I think it’s more likely they just realized, too
late, that they’d been had, and wiped the records to cover their
embarrassment.

They drove on without speaking
for some time. Finally Mitchell spoke, sullenly.

-You haven’t explained why any
of that puts me here.

-You were unlucky enough to see
our friend at the scene of the crime, out of uniform, probably off
duty, but certainly where he was not supposed to be. Very difficult
to explain and if you were persuaded to remember when you and I
first met him, that would create complications for me, but also for
some important people who know me.

-They might be more worried
about you than about me.

-That’s possible, but I don’t
have your unfortunate knack of turning up in the wrong place at the
wrong time.

The car stopped.

-We’re here. Get out.

Outside, the afternoon was
shading to evening. The air was very still. The road was deserted.
It ran straight along a little ridge for a way before dipping out
of sight. To their right the land fell away into steep, thickly
wooded ravine.

-I don’t want to get out. I know
what happens next.

-You certainly know what happens
next if you don’t do as I tell you.

Walcott exited the car, as
commanded. He had to lean on the door, not able to trust his
shaking legs. Ray held the gun in his pocket, not pointing it
anywhere in particular. He motioned for Walcott to get off the
road. They walked a little way down a rough track that led into the
trees: Walcott had to go first. Then Ray commanded him to stop.

-By the way, he remarked
conversationally. I tracked down our friend the policeman. He was
well. Seemed in good spirits. Wasn’t put out about seeing me at
all. Said he expected I would be meeting with you in the not too
distant future. Sit down on that rock a moment, you look like
you’re about to fall over.

Walcott half collapsed onto the
boulder, but he could not turn his eyes away from Ray’s.

-I did ask him about some of
these crazy ideas I’ve been having, just out of curiosity. He
couldn’t stop himself confirming most of what I told you. Not
really a professional you see; too much pride and passion – an
enthusiast. He was right though, he did his part even a little too
efficiently, and the boys weren’t as useless as he feared when it
came to actually blowing things up. Regrettable loss of life, he
said, but that is the nature of war: the priority must always be to
achieve the objective. I said I understood completely; then I shot
him four times in the back of the head. I never liked policemen and
the fascist ones are worse.

-So now all that links me to any
of this is you. And I have a theory about you?