Playing Dead (14 page)

This particular day, he was sitting there in the rickety passenger seat of the old car as Benito drove them back up to the monastery after their shopping expedition, when he had another flashback; vivid and sudden. He saw himself in the back of a sleek black motor, and someone else was driving him.

It was there, and then it was gone.

‘I think I’m starting to remember things,’ he told Benito.

Benito glanced at him with a cheerful smile. ‘Are you? Like what?’

‘There’s a woman,’ he said. ‘And a car.’

‘That’s good. Don’t force it, my friend. Let it happen as it will.’

As if there’s anything else I can do
, thought the man gloomily.

They turned a sharp bend in the road, and the way ahead was blocked. There was a fallen cork oak lying across it. Benito wrenched on the handbrake and turned off the engine.

‘Look at that! Sometimes this happens, they just die of old age.’ Benito got out of the car and walked towards the fallen tree. ‘Come on, I’ll need a hand with this,’ he said.

But the man held back. The oak hadn’t been there to impede their passage down the mountain, but now here it was. The man looked at the base of the trunk of the tree; to his eyes it looked as if someone had hacked at it to give it a helping hand.

He felt tension take hold of him, some sixth sense telling him something was wrong with this. The man knew that Benito made this journey every week on the same day and at the same time. And if he knew it, maybe others knew it too.

Warily, he got out of the car. Brother Benito was already standing beside the oak, pulling up his cumbersome robes to get a good grip on the thing and heave it out of the way.

‘Benito . . .’ said the man, moving forward, looking left and right, wanting to say: Wait; be careful.

Then two men emerged from the shrubbery on their right.

Fuck it
, thought the man. Benito had seen them too – and the man could see that he was instantly thinking the best of people, as he always did; that these kind strangers had been passing and were now going to help them move the obstruction.

‘You need help, Brother?’ shouted one of the men, moving forward, his grin a bit too wide, a bit forced.

‘Thank you, we do,’ said Benito, and then he bent over the oak and one of the men, young and wearing a sweat-stained red shirt and shorts, ran forward and struck him across the head with a branch. Benito fell forward.

The other one, who looked older, his dark hair flecked with grey at the temples, wearing a torn grey vest and jeans, was watching the man, who had started forward with a warning shout just before Benito was hit. The older one pulled out a knife.

The man came from the car at a run, straight at him, then he stopped a yard away, his eyes on the knife. Grey Vest grinned, and lunged, expecting the man to fall back. Instead, he jumped forward, catching the arm with the knife in both of his hands, then launched himself furiously at Grey Vest, hitting him square in the nose with his forehead.

Grey Vest staggered back, blood pouring down his face. The man dug his elbow hard into his solar plexus and when he started to topple he kicked his knee and heard a satisfying crunch as it broke. Grey Vest screamed with agony and dropped the knife.

The man picked it up; Benito’s young red-shirted attacker was running at him now with the stick raised. He threw the knife, and it thwacked hard into the join of the man’s elbow. He shrieked and fell to the ground, the stick bouncing away from him, The man came in fast and kicked him in the groin.

Get them down and keep them down
, shot into his brain.

He turned, ready to inflict more damage. The two men were grovelling in the dirt now.

Finish them.

He yanked the knife free of Red Shirt’s arm. Red Shirt yelled, cursed, but the man ignored him. With the dripping knife in his hand, he stepped towards Grey Vest.

‘My friend!’ Benito was there by the oak, tottering a little on his feet, clutching at his bruised head. ‘No! Don’t. Enough.’

The man paused, breathing hard. Looked at the two writhing men, looked back at Benito. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked after a couple of beats. The blood was singing in his ears. He
wanted
to hurt them.

‘Just a sore head,’ said Benito, but he looked ashen.

‘Get back in the car, in the passenger seat, I’ll drive,’ said the man.

He glanced at the knife in his hand, then at the two men who were watching him with abject fear and anguish in their eyes. Suddenly he hurled the knife out over the cliff. Then he approached the oak and, keeping a careful eye on their fallen assailants, he grunted and lifted the thing to the side of the road.

He went back to the car, got in.

‘But what about . . .’ began Benito, his anxious eyes on the two men, still prone in the dust.

‘They’ll live,’ said the man roughly. ‘Not that they deserve to. Benito, you have to vary the days for your trips to the town. Don’t just go down on market days, it’s not safe. And always make sure you have someone else with you, an escort, all right? Take more care.’

Benito was staring at him. There was a large blue lump coming up on his tonsured head. He seemed shaken, but not – thank God – badly hurt. ‘Um, my friend?’

‘Yeah, what?’ He was restarting the engine, shoving the gear into first, taking off the handbrake. The car started to move, past the men, up the mountain road once more.

‘My friend . . . you’re driving. Did you know you could drive?’

The man took a breath. Seemed to become aware. He flashed a shaky grin at Benito.

‘No, I didn’t. But obviously I can.’

‘So . . . you can drive, and you remember a woman, and a black car . . .’

‘A Jaguar,’ said the man suddenly.

‘A Jaguar.’ Benito nodded, then winced and clutched at his head.

‘You all right?’

‘It’s nothing; it was just a glancing blow. I turned away just as he struck me.’ Benito was still staring at his companion.

‘What?’ asked the man.

‘You seem to know how to defend yourself. With more force than is strictly required.’

‘He had a knife.’

‘Still . . . you broke his leg.’

‘How can you know that?’

‘I heard it snap.’

‘Ah. Well, he deserved it,’ said the man, grim-faced as he steered the car up the dusty road.

Benito was still watching him. ‘You have a talent for violence.’

‘Maybe I’m a soldier,’ said the man. ‘Like you used to be.’

‘Do you think that’s what you are?’

The man thought about it. ‘No. I don’t.’

Chapter 28

Several times when he was running along the pathways in the mountains, he glimpsed a boy herding goats, and he wondered if this might be Jaime, the boy who had found him and, with Benito’s help, saved his life. He tried to get near enough to find out, but it was difficult; Jaime was as agile as the goats he herded, and always seemed to be away in the distance, inaccessible. This had become the norm: spotting the boy but being unable to do more than raise a hand to him and have him raise a hand in return. So when he rounded a bend in the track one day and came face to face with the boy and his goats, he was both surprised and delighted. He slowed to a walk, then a stop.

‘Are you Jaime?’ he asked with a grin.

The boy nodded warily.

The goats milled around the man, nudging his legs with their hard little noses.

‘You found me,’ said the man, pointing. ‘Right down there somewhere. Didn’t you?’

Jaime’s darkly tanned face split in a bright, white smile. ‘It’s you!’

‘Yeah, it’s me. I want to thank you.’

Jaime was shaking his head in wonder. ‘You look so different! So . . . better.’

‘I have you to thank for that.’

‘
De nada
.’ It’s nothing.

‘Can you show me the spot? The exact place where you found me?’ He wanted to see it; maybe it would jog some hidden memory, who knew?

‘
Sí
,’ said Jaime, and headed off down the path to where it grew rockier, more difficult to traverse. The man felt his freshly healed ankles twinge in reproach as he scrambled after the boy, going off the main path and out over the crashing dark blue ocean to a small ledge.

At last, Jaime stopped, pointed. ‘Here. Here is where I found you.’

The man looked at the place where he had almost lost his life. It was a narrow ledge, rocky, treacherous. If he had fallen from above, he could so easily have missed it altogether, and gone straight down onto the rocks and then into the ocean far below.

‘Do you think you fell,
señor
?’ asked Jaime, holding up an arm to squint against the sun.

‘Must have done,’ said the man.

‘From right up there, at the top,’ said Jaime. ‘You think?’

‘Maybe.’

The man looked up too; the sun dazzled him. He raised an arm, peered upwards. He thought he could see a low wall, way up there above the crags and rocky outcrops, but the blinding intensity of the light made it difficult to be sure.

‘What’s up there?’ he asked Jaime.

‘I never go up that far,’ said Jaime, shrugging.

The man decided right then and there that he would.

It was days later when he managed to find the time to go up the track where it continued into the more mountainous terrain beyond the monastery. He was busy helping the brothers with the digging in their vegetable garden, wanting to pay them in kind since he had no other way to earn his keep.

When he got a spare hour or two and the brothers were at prayer, he washed, slipped on clean shorts and a shirt, and started walking up the track. It was a hot day, baking; the heat haze shimmered on the rough road ahead of him. One of his ankles gave a twinge, but behaved itself. He breathed in the fresh mountain air and felt liberated, at peace as he strode along. Yet still there was that niggling feeling of suppressed urgency, of something missing, something that should be found.

It took nearly three-quarters of an hour to reach a closed set of intricately fashioned, high wrought-iron gates. They were padlocked and there was a thin strand of barbed wire across the top of them. He stared at the gates; seemed in some unplumbed part of his brain to know them. He looked to left and right. All was still and silent. A lone buzzard circled lazily overhead, but no other living thing disturbed the peace of the place. He was alone.

The man took off his shirt and threw it over the top of the gates, then scrambled up and – using his shirt as protection against the barbs – levered himself over the top and down the other side.

He pulled the shirt down, put it back on and started to walk down the driveway. Into his brain, sharp as the scent of lemons, drifted a name: Rufio.

There was a small gatehouse on his left.

Rufio lives here, he thought. With . . . with
Inez
.

Now he had a picture in his mind of Rufio, middle-aged and beaming smiles in all directions, shinning up the date palms with his machete to make them neat and pristine every year.

And Inez . . . gently smiling Inez, gabbling away in fast Mallorquin while she prepared lunch for . . . but there the memory stopped.

He paused by the little
finca
.
Jesus, I know the people who live here. Rufio and Inez.

He stored the names away like a pirate storing treasure, adding them to the bank of memories – the luxurious Jaguar car, the beautiful dark-haired girl – that he was beginning to accumulate.

Then he stepped onto the terrace under the rickety old pergola at the side of the
finca
. A vivid magenta bougainvillea was tumbling over the tired-looking structure, shading the terrace beneath it. After a moment’s hesitation, he tried the old door, which was painted a faded sky-blue. It was locked.

‘Hello?’ he called, and knocked on the door.

Only silence answered him.

A car – shouldn’t there be a car? Rufio had driven one, he somehow knew that, but he couldn’t remember the make. There was no car here. He stepped out from the terrace and walked on down the drive, each step giving him the weird feeling that he had trodden this path before, that everything about it was familiar . . . and yet now so strange.

There was a big villa down here, way down around a bend in the drive, hidden from the track. As he approached it he could hear the rush and suck of the sea far off down the mountainside. He could see the big freeform swimming pool, which was empty of water. He stepped onto the terrace between the villa and the pool, looked at the four sun beds set out so neatly. All empty. The whole place was empty. There was no one here, except him.

Suddenly he felt dizzy. He sat down on one of the beds, clutching his head. Images swirled into his brain with nauseating force. He looked up, his eyes watering, across the empty pool to where there was a low wall. He staggered to his feet and went over there, looking over the wall at the rocks below, the sea battering them far down there at the base of the cliff.

A big man, very strong, dark eyes. Implacable. Set on killing him.

There had been two of them, grabbing him, throwing him over. His hands clutching wildly at the wall, his feet dangling in space. Heavy feet crushing his fingers so that he fell . . . and fell . . . and fell.

He remembered the fall. Oh shit, he remembered the fall. Hideous, never-ending. And then the impact; the bone-crushing collision of flesh on rock. Shattering pain shooting up his arms and his legs, and then blackness followed by hours of baking, merciless sun. How long had he lain there? He couldn’t even guess.

The world spun. He sat down on the wall. Looked around him. The pool house, there had been a pool house, but now it was missing. There had been an explosion. Screaming. A shot. More pictures thundered into his mind, a crazy ghost-whirl of faces and scenes and bodies. A blonde girl, shrieking. And . . .

He sank his head into his hands and a loud sob escaped him.

Jonjo.

His brother.

Jonjo had died here. He could see now how it had been: the shot fired, the red flower blooming between Jonjo’s rapidly glazing eyes. Screams and shouts and a child singing a French song.