Authors: C. J. Sansom
He turned into a square. Two sides had been shelled into rubble, all the houses down, a chaos of broken walls rising from a sea of shattered bricks and sodden rags of bedding. Weeds had grown up between the stones, tall scabrous dark-green things. Square holes in the ground half filled with green scummy water marked where cellars had stood. The square was deserted and the houses that had been left standing looked derelict, their windows all broken.
Harry had never seen destruction on such a scale; the bombsites in London were small by comparison. He stepped closer, looking over the devastation. The square must have been intensively shelled. Every day there was news of more raids on England – did London look like this now?
Then he saw a sign on a corner, Plaza General Blanco, and felt a
dreadful lurch in his stomach. This was the square where the Mera family had lived. He looked round again, trying to fix his bearings, and realized that the tenement block where the family had lived was gone, rubble. He stood there, his mouth falling open.
There was a flash of movement and Harry started as a dog jumped on to the remains of a wall and stood looking at him. It was a little tan mongrel with a curly tail; once it had been someone’s pet but now it was half starved, ribs showing through a coat half eaten away by mange.
It barked twice, sharply, and a dozen shapes slipped from behind walls and through the weeds, thin mangy dogs of all shapes and sizes. Some were no bigger than the mongrel, but there were three or four large ones including an Alsatian. They gathered together, watching him. Harry stepped back, remembering what Tolhurst had said on his first day about feral dogs, rabies. He looked round frantically but apart from the dogs there was no sign of life in the misty shattered square. His heart began thumping and a hissing noise sounded in his bad ear.
The dogs padded over the rubble towards him, fanning out slowly and carefully, unnervingly quiet. The Alsatian, evidently the leader, stepped ahead and bared its teeth. How easily that lift of the lip could transform a dog into a wild animal.
You mustn’t show fear. That was what they said about dogs.
‘¡Vete!’
he shouted. ‘Go away!’ To his relief they paused, stopping ten yards from him. The Alsatian bared its teeth again.
Harry stepped back, keeping his eyes on them. He almost stumbled on a half brick and flailed his arms to keep his balance. Staring into the Alsatian’s eyes, he bent and picked the half brick up. The dogs tensed.
He hurled it at the Alsatian with a shout. It caught the animal on a scabby haunch and it yelped, twisting away.
‘¡Vete!’
Harry yelled again. For a second the dogs hesitated, then they turned and ran after their leader.
The pack stopped just out of range and stood watching him. Harry’s legs were shaking. He picked up another piece of brick, then slowly retreated. The dogs stayed where they were. He stopped at the far side of the square, his back pressed against a wall. A tattered
Republican poster still hung from it, steel-helmeted soldiers leaping into gunfire.
He retraced his steps slowly, keeping against the walls, watching for movement from the bombsite. The dogs had disappeared among the rubbish but he felt their eyes on him and did not turn his back till he was in the street that led to the square. He leaned against a wall, taking deep breaths.
Then he heard the scream, a yell of pure terror. Another followed, even louder. Harry hesitated a moment, then ran back.
The spy was standing at the edge of the bombsite. The dogs had him surrounded, jumping up at him. A big mongrel had him by the shin, worrying it, trying to bring him down as he screamed again. His trouser leg and the dog’s muzzle were red with blood. As Harry watched one of the smaller dogs leapt up and seized the man’s arm, making him stumble. He went down on the ground with another yell. The Alsatian leaped for his neck. The man managed to throw his arm across his throat but the Alsatian seized the arm. The dogs gave low growls of excitement as he almost disappeared under them.
Harry picked up another piece of brick and threw it. It landed among the dogs and they jumped back, baring their teeth and snarling. He ran across the square in a half crouch, picking up stones and pieces of rubble and hurling them with both hands, yelling at the dogs. Again he aimed mostly for the leader, the Alsatian. The dogs hesitated and Harry thought they were about to go for him too but the Alsatian jumped back and ran off. It was limping; the brick he had thrown earlier must have done some damage. The others followed, disappearing once more among the weeds.
The man lay spreadeagled on the broken cobbles, holding his arm over his throat. He stared at Harry open-mouthed, breathing in loud gasps. His trouser leg was torn and covered with blood.
‘Can you get up?’ Harry asked. The man stared up at him, his eyes wide with shock. ‘We’ve got to get away,’ Harry said gently. ‘They could come back, they’ve tasted blood now. Come on, I’ll help you.’
He took the man under the arms and helped him to his feet. He was light, no more than skin and bone. He stood on one leg, put the other to the ground then lifted it again, wincing. The Alsatian
reappeared, watching them from the top of a pile of rubble. Harry shouted and it retreated again. He helped the man from the square, glancing back every few seconds. Once they were a couple of streets away he lowered him to the front step of a tenement. A woman looked out of a window at them, then closed her shutters.
‘Thank you,’ the spy said breathlessly. ‘Thank you,
señor
.’ His leg was still bleeding, there was blood on Harry’s trousers. He thought of rabies – if the dogs had it, the spy would die.
‘I thought I’d shaken you off,’ Harry said.
The spy looked terrified. ‘You know?’ His eyes widened. He was even younger than Harry had thought, little more than a boy. His pale face was quite white now, from shock and fear.
‘I’ve known for a while. I thought I’d got rid of you.’
The man looked at him sadly. ‘I am always losing you. I lost you when you went out this morning. Then later I saw you near your flat, but I lost you again before the square.’ He gave Harry a weak grin. ‘You are better at this than me.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Enrique. Enrique Roque Casas. You speak good Spanish,
señor
.’
‘I’m a translator. But you know that, I expect.’
He looked shamefaced. ‘You have saved my life. Believe me,
señor
, I did not want this job, but we need the money. Now I am ashamed.’ He laid his hand on his leg and drew it away covered in blood. His teeth began to chatter.
‘Come on, I’ll help you home. Where do you live?’ The reply was a mumble Harry couldn’t catch, there was a faint hissing in his bad ear. He bent his good ear towards him and asked again.
‘Only a few streets away, near the river.
Madre de Dios –
I had heard about those dogs, but I forgot. I did not want to have to report I had lost you again. They are not happy with me as it is.’ Enrique was shivering now, shock setting in.
‘Come on,’ Harry said. ‘Take my coat.’ He took it off and wrapped it round the thin shoulders. Supporting him, Harry followed Enrique’s directions through the narrow streets, ignoring the stares of passers-by. He thought, this is ridiculous, but he couldn’t just leave the wretched man; he was in shock and that leg needed seeing to.
‘So who do you work for?’ he asked brusquely.
‘The Foreign Ministry,
señor
. Our block leader got me the job. They said they wanted me to follow a British diplomat, tell them everywhere you went.’
‘I see.’
‘All the diplomats are followed, except the Germans. Even the Italians. They said you were a translator,
señor
, you would probably only go to the embassy and the good restaurants in town, but I was to record it all.’
‘And they might get something useful. If I went to a brothel, say, I could be blackmailed.’
Enrique nodded. ‘You know how the business works, señor.’
Only too well, Harry thought.
They stopped before a broken-down tenement. ‘This house, señor,’ Enrique said.
Harry pushed the door open and entered a dank gloomy hall. ‘We are on the first floor,’ Enrique said. ‘If you could help me.’
Harry helped him up a flight of stairs. Enrique produced a key and opened a door with a shaking hand. It led into a small, gloomy hall. There was a close, fusty smell. Enrique opened another door and limped into a small
salón
. Harry followed, taking off his hat. A
brasero
burned under a table but the room was still chilly. A couple of scuffed wooden chairs were drawn up to a table where a small thin boy of about eight sat, scrawling dark shapes over and over again with a crayon on a copy of
Arriba
. At the sight of Harry he jumped up and ran to a sagging single bed in one corner. Curtains had been rigged round it but they were open. An old woman lay there, propped up against pillows, thin grey hair spilling round a wrinkled face that had one side twisted into a leering grimace, the eye half shut. The boy jumped on to the bed, wriggling against the old woman’s side. Harry was shocked by the fear and anger in his look.
The old woman heaved herself up on one arm. ‘Enrique, what has happened, who is this?’ She spoke slowly, her voice slurred, and Harry realized that she had had a stroke.
Enrique seemed to regain control of himself. He went over and kissed her cheek, patting the boy’s head. ‘It is all right, Mama. An accident, some dogs, this man helped me home. Please, señor.’ He pulled out one of the rickety wooden chairs and Harry sat down. It
creaked under his weight. Enrique limped back to the old woman. He sat on the bed and took her hand. ‘Don’t worry, Mama, it’s all right. Where’s Sofia?’
‘Gone to the shops.’ The old woman leaned over to pat the boy. He had burrowed against her left arm, which was white and shrivelled. He sat up and pointed at Enrique’s leg.
‘¡Sangre!’
he shouted shrilly.
‘¡Sangre!’
Blood!
‘It’s all right, Paquito, it’s only a cut, it’s nothing,’ Enrique said reassuringly. The old woman stroked the child’s head. ‘
No es nada, niño
. It’s all right, it’s nothing.
She looked at Harry. ‘Foreigner?’ she said in a loud whisper to her son. ‘Is he German?’
‘I’m English,
señora
.’ She looked at him anxiously, and Harry guessed she knew what her son did for a living. He looked at Enrique’s tattered, blood-spotted trousers.
‘You should get that leg washed.’
The old woman nodded. ‘Water, Enrique, get water.’
‘
Sí
, Mama.’ Enrique nodded and limped to the door. Harry rose to help but Enrique waved him back.
‘No. No, stay here,
señor
, please. You have done enough.’ He picked up a bucket from the corner and went out, leaving Harry standing awkwardly. He supposed he could leave but he didn’t want to be rude. He remembered the Alsatian tearing at the spy’s arm, trying to reach his throat, and shivered.
The pair on the bed stared at him. It was hard to read any expression on the old woman’s face, but the boy’s was angry and afraid. Harry smiled awkwardly. He looked round the room. It was clean. If the old woman was here all the time it was probably impossible to avoid that fusty smell. There were dried flowers in vases and cheap pictures of country scenes on the walls, an effort had been made to make the room look cheerful, but Harry saw that the wall under the window was covered with black streaks of fungus where water dripped from a rotten windowsill on to a folded blanket. He looked away. There were photographs too, he saw, pinned to the wall. The old woman pointed at one of them. ‘My wedding,’ she croaked. ‘With my brother.’
Harry nodded politely and got up to look, the child tensing as he
crossed the room. The photograph showed a young couple standing in the doorway of a church, a smiling young priest next to them. From the clothes it seemed to have been taken around the same time as his parents’ wedding. The woman smiled with the half of her face that could still move. ‘
Dias más felices
,’ she whispered. Happier days.
‘
Sí, más felices, señora
.’
‘Please,
señor
, sit down.’
Harry took his chair again. The old woman stroked the boy’s hair. He stared at Harry with frightened eyes.
The door opened and a girl in a heavy coat came in, carrying a shopping bag. She was in her early twenties, small and dark-haired, with a heart-shaped face and large brown eyes. When she saw Harry she stopped dead. He stood up.
‘What has happened?’ she asked sharply. ‘Who are you?’
‘It’s all right,’ the old woman said. ‘Some dogs attacked Enrique. This man helped him home. Your brother has gone to get some water.’
She lowered her bag to the floor, still frowning anxiously.
‘I’m sorry if I startled you,’ Harry said.
‘Where are you from?’
‘I’m English. My name’s Harry Brett. I work at the embassy.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Then – you are the one who he—’
‘Er, yes.’ So the girl knew what her brother did for a living too.
‘What has he done now?’ She gave Harry a long hard look, then turned and left the room.
‘My daughter,’ the old woman said. She smiled. ‘
Mi Sofia. Corazón de mi vida
.’ Heart of my life.
There were voices on the stairs, the girl’s angry, Enrique’s an apologetic mumble. He limped in, followed by the girl who was carrying the bucket of water. Enrique sat in a chair opposite Harry, and the girl took a pair of scissors from a drawer. She looked over at the boy.
‘Paquito, go into the kitchen. Go on. Light the oven for heat.’
Obediently the boy got up from the bed and left the room, with a last scared glance at Harry.
‘I think his leg’s the worst,’ Harry said. ‘But they got his arm too. Can I help?’
She shook her head. ‘I am all right.’ She turned to her brother. ‘You’re going to have to find some new trousers from somewhere.’ She began cutting his trouser leg, Enrique biting his lip to stifle cries of pain. The leg was a mess, full of puncture marks, lengthened into tears in the flesh where the dogs had torn at it. Sofia took off his jacket and cut his shirtsleeve, revealing more bites. She produced a bottle of iodine from the drawer. ‘This will sting badly, Enrique, but otherwise these wounds will become infected.’