Not With a Whimper Page 3

  I heard voices above me as I got to the grille. They were arguing. There was a shrill edge to Teresa’s voice. “I am frightened of cats.” Ángel muttered so I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  Frightened of cats? I’m scared to death of spiders. Horses terrify me. But not cats. Not my favourite pet but nobody’s frightened of cats. And Hoggart. “I hate cats.” Forget it.

  I leant my left shoulder against the foundation wall, got the point of the poker into the grille, made sure I had a good grip and pulled steadily. It wasn’t as firmly fixed as the window. It exploded with a sharp cracking noise and I heard the scrape of a chair in the room above and Ángel say, “What was that?”

  I didn’t move. Nobody stayed as motionless as I did at that moment. I didn’t even breathe.

  Footsteps went to the window above me. “There is nothing there. I shall see Señor Christian.”

  I got my head through the hole but my shoulders stuck. I wriggled round so I was diagonal in the hole, pulled my shoulders in to my chest, they fitted but my arms were now pinned to my body and my feet gave me no leverage. I felt cold drops of sweat on my face. I had to get my body through. My jacket ripped at the shoulder and I cursed myself for not having the brains to take it off first but my right shoulder was working clear of the opening. A door shut in the room. Another few inches. I clawed my hand up my chest, squeezed it past my head and free. I pushed it up against the wall and I now had more room. I heaved against my free arm and I slid out and sat up. I shuffled backwards and my legs were clear. Another door shut. An outside door.

  I was on my feet and running. I didn’t know which way except it was away from the house, downhill over coarse Bermuda grass and into the pine trees. There weren’t many of them but they gave me some shelter and my heart was thumping like a rabbit’s hind leg.

  I gulped in some air and thought about what I was going to do next. The river was about fifty yards on my right and I was the same distance from the villa. Ángel came round the corner and he saw the hole immediately. There was enough light to reflect off the thing he had in his hand. It wasn’t part of the fire set.

  He moved quickly to the end of the villa, looked past it and saw nothing. He looked towards the trees and saw me. There was a salmon-crimson flash and crack and something ripped through the branches above my head. Then he was running.

  I ran too, parallel to the Guadalquivir. The light was fading, the sun below the horizon, but it still held a pearly greyness which made visibility good. A hundred yards was enough to convince me I should have kept in training. But I was going faster than he was. I could see his shape well behind me and out of range. Then there was an open space and gypsy caravans drawn up. People meant safety.

  I stopped at the end of the trees, letting my breathing die down to something approaching normal, took my jacket off to carry it and walked out to the circle of caravans.

  I waited there, fishing for the packet of cigars and doing the necessary bits and pieces and feeling smug. It was quiet and peaceful. Too damn quiet and peaceful. There was nobody home.

  Ángel was standing at the edge of the trees and he didn’t have a hair out of place. His face was a pale moon and I could feel his eyes searching for witnesses.

  I was very casual. I lit the cigar and let him see me smile in the flame from the match. I was so damned confident he should have gone away. He didn’t. He was getting confident, too.

  He stepped from the shelter of the trees, not bothering to hide the Browning. He knew as well as I did that there was nobody home.

  I knew then how a rabbit felt. I didn’t know which way to move. I just stood there with a foolish grin on my face watching him approach, still in carpet slippers and not even out of breath.

  A horse neighed at the far side of the caravans. He still came towards me. I could see his eyes now, very steady, very sure of themselves.

  A tree creaked behind him, a bird flew up against the sky, cawed and was answered by another. A bat tweaked round in eccentric circles and was gone just as quickly as it had appeared.

  Ángel was now ten yards away but he wasn’t going any further. Neither was I. The solid gleam of the barrel came up slowly, his left hand cupped under the right.

  There were words in my mouth but I didn’t know how to push them out. Any ideas I might have had were a long way away. Instead I just kept on grinning, thinking how quiet and peaceful it all was.

  The explosion of the shot sent a multitude of crows up into the sky, wheeling and cawing furiously. The ground at Ángel’s feet danced and crumbled: a teenager with a pump action rifle came out of the trees on the right. He was thin and dark, his teeth stretching white across his face.

  “What are you doing in the camp, señores?”

  Ángel stood as foolishly as I had been, the Browning wavered, then his left hand fell away and it dropped slowly to his side. The lad stepped across the grass to us. A black dog snarled at his heels.

  “You want to kill the señor, you do it some other place.” He waved the muzzle at us and I lifted my jacket over my shoulder, examined the cigar, decided there was enough ash to flick off, jettisoned it and stuck the cigar back in my face. My lips were dry and pasted to my gums

  Ángel looked from the teenager to me and back again. Several times. He looked confused. He didn’t move. I did. I got my jacket comfortable and said, “You can’t win them all.” Then to the boy, “Thank you, you saved my life.”

  That meant a lot to him. All he wanted was us off his campsite. As far as he was concerned we could kill each other somewhere else, anywhere else, just as long as it wasn’t there, or nearby. He said so in a thick dialect I could barely decipher and escorted us back into the trees. At the edge of the trees he decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  “I shall take your gun, señor.” He held out his left hand, the rifle hanging in the crook of his right elbow.

  Ángel lifted the Browning. The safety catch was off and the trigger finger had a tremor that meant business. I yelled and my jacket scythed through the air but the boy had the reactions of a wrestler. He dropped to one knee, his hand flicking the barrel up and into his left hand. There were two explosions.

  Ángel shot wild, his body swinging with surprise at my shout and the shape of my jacket which he must have seen out of the corner of his eye. The boy’s bullet took him, travelling upwards, right under his chest. The shock took him two steps back and his mouth opened blackly as he jackknifed, staggered some more, both hands clutching the hole in his stomach. Blood spurted over them. His knees unhinged and he hit the ground with his face, making no sound on the pine needles and grass.

  I had to talk fast. The boy was looking at me and wondering what to do. “Let’s bury him under the trees, not by the river in case a flood washes away the soil.” I was being as practical as dammit. “You have a spade in the caravan?”

  He stood up slowly and looked steadily at me. My nerves crawled. I forced myself to look round.

  “Over there.” Tree roots snaked over the surface and the soil was sandy but partly eroded between them. I got my hands under Ángel’s shoulders. “You get the spade. I’ll take him there.” I started dragging. The boy stood. “Hurry,” I said. “We should do it quickly.”

  He bit his lip, nodded and then he headed for the caravans, with the dog following him.

  I dropped Ángel’s shoulders and straightened up, wiping the sweat from my face and starting to breathe again.

  Then I dragged him over to the trees.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “We buried him darkly at dead of night.” It was hardly dead of night and it wasn’t yet dark but I couldn’t get the poem out of my head.

  I did the digging while the boy watched. The soil was loose and sandy, so it wasn’t hard work. I was glad to be doing something, not just stand there while the verse kept going through my mind.

  I dug down about two feet, making a neat rectangle so there was plenty of room for the corpse. The face had a silvery paleness, the
eyes staring at whatever dead eyes saw. The boy never spoke to me. I covered Ángel with sand, finally brushing it with a branch. I was finished, and wasn’t even sweating. Neither was the boy. He leant against a tree chewing a twig but the nonchalant angle of the rifle in the crook of his arm didn’t fool me one bit. I slapped my hands together to knock the sand off them and said, “He will not be found.”

  The boy pushed himself off the tree, saying nothing. He looked at the grave, pushed the toe of a fancy tooled leather boot into the sand. He took the twig out of his mouth and threw it away. The woods were silent and empty. I don’t think I have ever felt so alone.

  I picked up my jacket and shook it into a neat fold over my arm. The boy let the rifle drop into his hand. My breathing blocked in my throat. Then he tossed it back onto his shoulder, picked up the spade, turned and ghosted through the trees to the camp. He hadn’t said a word since he’d shot Ángel.

  I let out my breath, feeling as limp as a wet leaf.

  I walked back through the trees to the house and the road, but I wasn’t hurrying. I sucked the air deep in my lungs; felt its coolness on my face; smelled the scent of pine; listened to the sounds – the crack of a twig underfoot, the whisper of the wind in the tree tops, the creak of a moving trunk; looked at the stars which made holes in the blackness of the night now, little holes filled with a pure white light. Unlike the holes that were Ángel’s eyes, beetle black and dead. Unlike the hole in his stomach which had gushed dark red blood.

  I walked on. I breathed. I listened. I looked. I was alive.

  Gradually I came out of it. I leant against a tree and shook, retched and coughed, the sweat standing out like pebbles on my skin. Eventually it passed.

  After wiping my face, mouth, and the backs of my hands on my handkerchief, I poked my shirt into my waistband and set the collar straight round my neck, and then stepped out onto the road.

  There was a maroon BMW 3.0Si parked outside the villa now.

  I backed quickly into the trees, watching and wondering what to do. I could circle the cars and walk into town, or I could wait. I didn’t fancy waiting, though. The BMW might be reinforcements, meaning there could be more of them out looking for me. Then the door of the house opened, spilling a rectangle of light down the steps. I backed up some more and stopped.

  The woman who’d brought me here now stood silhouetted on the step, a middle-aged guy with his back to me standing talking to her. Light shone on a bone-white head. He turned and I saw a heavy moustache, grey side-whiskers and an angry expression. There were deep lines between his eyebrows and either side of his lips which were pressed tighter than a baby’s fist. He stamped up to the BMW while Teresa shut the door. The light vanished but he was nearer now and I could see him in the moonlight. A solid frame in a grey suit. Big hands and thick wrists. He opened the car door as though he wanted to tear it off its hinges, slamming it shut after he’d got in.

  I stepped into the road and watched him drive away. Behind me another car swung round the trees, bumping slowly and catching me in its lights. It stopped beside me. An Opel Manta. The window wound down. The driver said, “What are you doing here?”

  I raced round to the passenger side. The BMW’s brake lights flared in the distance.

  “You see that car?”

  “That, one?”

  “Follow it will you?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” It was Carol Byrd.

  “Just follow it, damn it.” The lights disappeared. “For Christ’s sake, Carol.”

  “Okay.” She took off fast and expertly, switching up to main beam. “A friend?”

  I shook my head.

  “You don’t want to catch him up?”

  I shook my head again.

  “I see.” She flicked down to dipped, skidded on some loose sand on the square, apologised and we caught him up on the Jerez road. “Whew, that was a little hairy back there.” She changed up into fourth. “Okay, Alan. What’s the story?”

  I chewed on an unlit cigar. She whipped a look at me, frowned. Her hands were tense on the wheel.

  “Come on, give.”

  Brake lights stabbed the darkness.

  “He’s stopping.”

  She hit the brakes violently.

  “That’s the Sanlúcar-Jerez road,” I said.

  The BMW turned right. A five-tonne Barreiros came up fast on it and Carol whipped out after it, stayed in second, hit a pothole which rocked the Manta to its hub caps and went past the lorry and in behind the BMW, now a couple of hundred yards ahead.

  She shook her head. “Christ, what shitty roads.” She went through the gears to fourth.

  “Did you enjoy your visit?” I said chattily.

  “So, you’re not going to tell me.” She laughed, shook her head but didn’t sound too disappointed, laughed again. “It was outta sight, Alan. I’ve never seen so many horses. It really wowed me. All down in the river. Men and women and the children and those horses. I thought I was going outta my skull, you know.” She smiled and snapped a look at me. The smile went. “Say, you look kinda flaky, Alan. You alright?”

  “I’m alright.”

  The road curved through gentle hills, the steel blue moonlight showing large fields and a few houses. Carol talked on about the horses. Then there was a quick flash of brake lights again and the BMW turned left off the road, its headlights pointing uphill, cut by a line of tall narrow trees.

  “Drive past, then stop.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  She eased off the road. The Barreiros thundered past while I got out and walked back. There was a long straight drive, lined by poplars either side which led to a large house on top of the hill. The BMW had gone. There were two three-metre posts hammered in the ground at the end of the drive. Between them hung a wooden cut-out of a bull swinging slightly in the breeze created by the passing lorry. Above it, in wrought iron, were words spelling out “El Toro Negro”.

  I walked back to the Manta. “Could you take me back to Rota?” I said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  El Corillo’s had little furniture but three of the biggest barrels you’ve ever seen. You would have been able to park a Cadillac in any one of them. The light came from one unshaded bulb, spotted with whitewash, strung on a wire. The whitewash covered the unplastered stone walls, while the floor was bare earth studded with outcrops of rock.

  Charnacero leant crosslegged against the far barrel watching a dice game being played on a low table. Miguel was with them and a black guy, medium height with scar tissue over both eyes and beginning to put on weight. I felt I’d seen him before. I blinked, shook my head. I was imagining things.

  Charnacero detached himself from the barrel. He had broad hunched shoulders, dusty hair and grey stubble on his cheeks. His lips were wide and folded like an empty purse, from which a cigarette dangled. He spoke through the cigarette. “Qué quiere, señor?”

  “Una copa de vino, por favor.”

  He picked up a thick glass from a row on a wooden bench, held it to the light, ran a stubby finger round the inside. That made it clean. “Tinto?”

  “Sí.”

  It was red, rough and fierce enough to take the enamel off your teeth at forty paces.

  He saw the expression on my face. The skin round his walnut eyes crinkled. “Ja! Ja! Está muy fuerte, el vino, no?”

  “The wine was strong, yes. Strong enough to open a safe.” I shuddered.

  A man at the dice game called. “Hombre, hay que acostumbrarse al vino como a las mujeres aquí.” He had no teeth and wicked eyes.

  They all turned to look at me and I said if they indeed had women as strong as the wine here, they were truly men. That set them off. They liked it. They rocked on their stools, slapped their thighs, spat on the floor, wiped their eyes. I was the funniest thing since Don Quijote. Miguel called me over, pulled out a stool beside him and I sat down.

  “Qué hombre, mi amigo, Alan,” he told the group. He wiped an eye. He shook his head. “He is from E
ngland and he is to be trusted.” He began to introduce them.

  The man who had spoken was Luis Camino. “And this is Félix Benítez. He drives a taxi.” Benítez was small with broken teeth and bandy legs. He wore a peaked cap, a frayed tieless shirt and a drab check jacket two sizes too big for him. “Pancho Siguenza. He is always desperate to borrow money. Never lend him any otherwise he will never respect you.” Siguenza scratched his upper lip and showed his gums. He had pouched watery eyes which blinked rapidly. “We all have our methods,” he said and nodded several times. “And Paco Sánchez. He worked in the mines of the Río Tinto for twelve years until he broke his legs. Now he is a fisherman.” Sánchez had slow eyes, a long strong-boned face which looked too big for his body, a tightly buttoned black jacket and a felt hat that looked as though it had been used for holding engine oil. “And our American friend is Mac, Mac Crawford.”

  I had seen him before.

  “MacDonald Crawford?” The black guy nodded. He was the only one who hadn’t been laughing. His eyes were narrow, hard-staring and bloodshot. The weight he had put on was firm fat with a lot of muscle in it.

  MacDonald Crawford. Never a real contender but one of the top ranking fighters had to get past if they were going to make it. Never higher than seventh or eighth in Ring magazine’s ratings. A hustler with a solid defence but lacking a good right. Gave Chic Calderwood a lot of trouble at the Albert Hall. I had seen that fight. I told him that.

  His eyes eased and he held out a hand. “It would be that one.” He still had a grip like a car crusher and we both strained over the handshake, looking at each other and pretending we were smiling. Then we were. Benítez finished his drink and gave Charnacero a look that got our glasses refilled immediately.

  Miguel was grinning like a dancing master. “I talked with Paco. He took me to a certain finca.”

  I squeezed a frown at him and he said happily, “They are my friends. They know everything.”