THE ENGLISH WITNESS (12 page)

It’s a measure of my state of
mind that I felt able to betray a friend’s trust, let alone go equipped for a
serious assault. As for Antonio, I didn’t expect him to be overjoyed if he found
his favourite toy missing, but had he known of my predicament I sensed that he’d
have put his property and even his life at risk in order to help. To that
extent, I told myself, I’d done him a favour by keeping silent. But the sooner
I moved on, the less chance there was of an embarrassing reunion.

In the event, my plans for a quick getaway were foiled by circumstances
beyond my control. During the night – my second at the hostel – I woke up sweating
and shaking with a high fever. Pulling the rough blanket up round me, my head
pounding, I tried to get back to sleep. Rest eluded me, however, and between
dashes to the
servicios
I lay shivering for the rest of the long night.

By the time I was fit to travel I’d lost several
more kilos and definitely outstayed my welcome. In checking me out with effect
from the Sunday afternoon and reporting my bed as out of order, the kindly hostel
manager did me more of a favour than he ever realised. It meant that as far
aspolice records were concerned, I’d stayed for just two nights and then moved
on. But I was still in Almería, and time was running out. My pursuers knew where
I’d spent the weekend, and I feared Antonio discovering what I’d done—not
because he’d be angry, but because he’d realise that something was wrong and
insist on getting involved.

I obtained grudging agreement that
I could stay one more night in order to visit the Alcazaba, and began to psych
myself up for the long haul up the coast to the border.

As I walked up the hill towards the ancient Moorish hill fort, I couldn’t
get over the feeling that it was too quiet. There was none of the bustle I’d
anticipated, and as I peered up at the visitor entrance I could see that it was
shut. I was bitterly disappointed, and in the hope of finding a better
viewpoint I walked a couple of hundred metres farther up the narrow perimeter
lane. I was just retracing my steps when a black ‘124’ swept into view at the
bottom of the lane and headed up the slope towards me.

I don’t know how they managed it, but
they’d known exactly where to find me, and for once they had an effective plan.
With the castle ramparts to my left and a steep drop to the right, they must
have counted on me turning and running up the hill. If I’d tried that, the car
would have overtaken me in seconds. But after so many narrow escapes, I was always
on the alert for potential escape routes.

Taking a large, smooth stone from each side-pocket,
I hurled them one after the other at the windscreen of the approaching car. The
first went off target, but the second shot was perfect. It cracked the screen right
in front of the driver’s face, and as he skidded to a halt I stepped over the low
parapet. Scrambling down a patch of rough scree on the far side, I threw the
holdall containing my few possessions ahead of me. Then I took a deep breath and
launched myself outwards and downwards towards the flat roof of an old house
built up against the castle mound.

I’d dropped below my pursuers’ line of
sight, but my leap was not so daring that they’d be unable to follow. I jumped twice
to adjoining buildings looking for a way down to street level. At last I found
myself on a bright orange flat roof with an open door leading down into the
house. I dived through the doorway and scampered down the staircase inside. A
voice shouted, then another, but these were just angry householders. The front
door slammed against the wall as I wrenched it open and dashed out into the
street.

Reaching a shopping street a couple of
blocks away, I boarded the first bus to anywhere and slouched down in a rear seat
with my chin buried in my chest. From time to time I’d look behind, keeping my
face shielded with a newspaper I’d picked up from the floor, but there was no
sign of pursuit.

As the initial surge of adrenalin wore off
I was just beginning to feel disorientated – I had no sense of direction and no
map – when we reached the sea. For the next few kilometres the road continued
eastward, more or less following the coast. Occasionally the driver would stop
to let a passenger on or off, but there was no sign of a major town and my
anxiety began to mount.

I finally got down from the bus in a small
but colourful seaside village whose name I’ve long-since forgotten. There were lots
of holidaymakers milling around: mostly local people by the look of them, but a
few paler-skinned visitors which meant that I’d stand out less. I had time to
kill, so I bought a cheap pair of shorts and flimsy towel from a seafront kiosk
and sat on the beach until evening.

After a makeshift meal I began to scout
for a place to sleep, and to my pleasure I quickly found the ideal place. On a
deserted patch of beach, well away from the bars and souvenir shops, a small,
flat-bottomed boat had been pulled up clear of the tide. It was loosely covered
with a sky-blue tarpaulin, and lifting this up on one side I could see a scatter
of faded cushions in the bottom.

As soon as it was dark I went
over to the boat and pulled the tarpaulin part way back. My colourful holdall
went under the wooden bench seat, and I stretched out full-length on the cushions.
I could have wished that the boat had been sitting level, but it was a pleasant
having my lower body sheltered beneath the tarpaulin while my head and chest
were exposed to the stars. I was lulled into a peaceful sleep by the sound of
the waves.

I was rudely awoken by a sharp tug on one of my arms. In the grey light
of dawn two uniformed men were pulling at me. As I came to, they managed to get
enough purchase to drag me upright, and one of them began barking at me in thick
Andalusian dialect.

An hour later I found myself sitting
across a table from a more sympathetic policeman and reflecting on the downside
of sleeping rough in a tourist resort. I offered up a prayer of thanks that my holdall,
which contained my ‘borrowed’ identity card and the illegal weapon rolled up in
a towel, seemed to have been overlooked. I hoped it was still lying hidden in
the boat.

“You are clearly a British tourist,”
announced the policeman in good Spanish, with a polite smile. “We see hippies
like you all the time. Tell me, what is your name? And where is your passport?”

I went through the motions of feeling in
my pockets and tried to look surprised at my failure to find a passport there.
“I’m sorry,” I answered. “I don’t know.” 

“Do not play games with me. There is no
passport. It was not with you when you were brought here from the beach. We can
work two ways. You can be formally charged with vagrancy, in which case you
will be here for days, perhaps weeks. And in your case that would be extremely
bad news. Or you can convince me that you are simply a foolish student who has
got drunk and had his belongings stolen. Then I will do all I can to find you
help.”

I sat looking down at my lap for what must
have been a full minute, during which neither of us spoke. Then I looked up and
nodded. There were tears in the corners of my eyes as I told him my name. His
face softened slightly when he saw that I was telling the truth, and he called
out in dialect to a colleague.

The grey-haired, ruddy-faced Englishman
who walked into the police station half an hour later introduced himself as Derek.
He explained that he was the unofficial translator for a tiny enclave of
British expatriates living nearby. “I do what I can to keep the bureaucrats off
their backs,” he explained, “and they keep me supplied with Scotch. If anything
crops up that I can’t handle, I’ve got a friend in Almería who speaks English
and whose father-in-law is a top-notch lawyer.”

As we left the police station together I
began to say something about myself, but Derek held up his hand. “Not here,” he
warned. “They understand English better than they let on.” He led me a little
way along the road to where an ageing Renault 4 was parked with one sharply
angled wheel up on the kerb. He drove sedately down towards the sea front, barely
speaking as we made a detour to recover my belongings from the boat. Not until
we were a couple of kilometres outside the town did he pull into a parking bay
and turn to look at me.

“What’s going on, young man?” he asked
quietly.

“What do you mean?” I replied. “I’m just a
British student who…”

“Cut the crap, James. You haven’t got any
time to waste. I get a call from my friend Paco at the police station to say that
he’s holding a British student who’s in some kind of trouble. He should inform the
regional HQ in Almería, he says, and he’s taking a risk keeping quiet. Do you
understand what I’m saying? He knows you’re a special case and so do I. I don’t
need chapter and verse, but I do need to know the lie of the land.”

Reluctantly I opened up to
this stranger, not in detail but enough that he knew the risks he might be
running by helping me. It must have taken about twenty minutes to tell the
story. When I’d finished, he sat in silent thought for several minutes then
asked me a few questions. Finally he restarted the car, and drove a mile or two
further before turning off the main road towards a small cluster of white
houses set among the dunes.

Down on the coast, hemmed in by the desert and the sea, stood a tiny
village of chalets inhabited by a motley collection of Brits: retired
gentlefolk, struggling artists and probably one or two wanted criminals. Many
of the homes were empty, their occupants having returned to Britain for the summer
months. Others had been rented out to holidaymakers, a few of whom dotted the
almost deserted beach.

As Derek and I sat on canvas chairs in the
shade of his front porch, drinking ice-cold San Miguel, we were joined by a
slightly younger man named Jerry who I quickly realised was Derek’s life-partner.
Jerry listened patiently while we gave him a word-sketch of my situation. Then he
went off by himself, and when half an hour had passed I began wondering if he’d
gone to the authorities. Then he came back, waited until Derek had brewed
coffee, and gave us a brief but shrewd analysis of my situation.

“What you’ve failed to realise, James, is
that you haven’t just fallen foul of some blood-spitting faction up in the
Basque Country. I think you must have troubled the counsels of someone in the
dark network of movers and shakers that keeps the Franco regime in power. I’ve
no idea what you can have done, but running away from San Sebastián was never the
answer. Up there you were surrounded with sympathisers, even if most of them
were too scared to help. Down here your sympathisers number exactly zero. Apart
from Derek and me, that is. And Paco, but his hands are tied.”

“So what should I have done? I couldn’t
stay there.” 

“Your priest was right. You should never
have come back after your trip home in July. But failing that, you should have
stayed in San Seb. You’d have been less isolated than you are here, and a lot
closer to safety.”

I sat in silence for a while, letting it
sink in. “The priest said it would be safer for me to leave the region and
cross the border on the other side of the country.”

“I’m sure he’s a good man, but he has his
own delicate community to think of. He probably felt that the higher good was
served by getting a lighted match like you away from the powder keg. But in his
defence, he probably imagines that this country is safer and more peaceful
outside the Basque region than inside. And in reality it's swings and
roundabouts. Sure, the people down here are peace-loving and hospitable, but
they don’t suffer from an identity crisis the way the Basques and Catalans do.”

“I haven’t seen the number of police down
here.”

“They’re not needed. You may think the police
up there are heavy-handed, but they have to be careful or they could have a
riot on their hands. Down here, most people know their place and do as they’re
told. And there’s a whole lot of Spain between you and the border.”

I could feel my skin prickling, the colour
draining from my face. Jerry could see that he’d frightened me and began to focus
on the way forward. I had to get out of Andalusia, he said, where fair-skinned
outsiders stood out so clearly and where roads and railway lines were few and
far between.

Jerry finally asked a question that would
have far-reaching consequences: “Do you have friends anywhere between here and
the border? Anyone who would put you up for a couple of nights and keep schtum?
It would help you time your arrival at the border for the middle of the weekend
stampede—ideally Saturday lunchtime when they’re at maximum stretch and minimum
staffing. That means killing time, preferably in a big, anonymous city. Think.
Is there anywhere on this side of the country you could go to ground until towards
the end of the week?”

I didn’t need to think. Three years
earlier, I’d spent a fortnight as a paying guest with a family in Valencia. It
was directly on my route to the border, and now my head filled up with pleasant
memories: warm sea, fragrant orange groves, paella… and Trinidad.

Trini had been my landlady’s daughter. In
the course of my stay we’d formed a close friendship with just a hint of romance.
As I thought back to that summer of innocent pleasures, the thought of seeing
her again was irresistible. Jerry responded with relief to the idea, and no
more time was spent exploring alternatives. The remaining discussion was all
about getting me to Valencia.