The Exile (18 page)

The general was sitting in a wooden straight-backed chair by one of the shuttered windows and turned, locking his small angry eyes on Guzmán. Torres still had most of his hair, though it was thin and white now. He was fatter than Guzmán remembered.

‘Is that you, Guzmán?' Torres asked, peering myopically at him.

Guzmán took a step closer. ‘Your eyesight's gone, has it?'

‘Don't forget I'm a general.' Torres's voice was like a petulant child.

‘You
were
a general,' Guzmán growled. ‘Though not a very good one.'

‘And you were insubordinate,' Torres snapped. ‘You never showed me any respect.'

‘That was because I never respected you.'

‘Excuse me,
Comandante
.' Magdalena put a restraining hand on his arm. ‘I must get Father settled so I can return to San Sebastián.' She leaned closer to whisper, ‘Then you can go.'

Guzmán was cheered by that. ‘Can I help with those shutters?'

‘Esteban's gone to get a screwdriver,' Torres said. ‘They've been fastened too tightly.'

‘Esteban?'

‘Esteban Jiménez, our warehouse manager,' Magdalena said. ‘He drove Father here and he's going to stay with him.' She smiled. ‘It's most awfully modern, we've had an office made for Esteban with a desk and everything. I'll just go and see where he is.'

‘This is what I've become,' Torres muttered, giving a despairing look. ‘I can't even run my own company, I have to let a woman do it.' He peered at Guzmán with rheumy eyes. ‘I want Magda to stay here until after the harvest ball but she won't listen. Tell her, will you? Make her see sense. She never listens to me.'

Guzmán gave him an evil look. ‘I'm not surprised, no one else does.'

Torres peered at the thin strips of light slanting in through the shutters. ‘It's too dark in here. Why aren't the shutters open?'

Magdalena returned, accompanied by a thin dark-haired man. His emaciated frame spoke of malnourishment or TB. Guzmán decided it might well be TB and held his breath as they shook hands.

‘I'll open this shutter so you can get some sun on you, General,' Jiménez said as he started to unscrew the brackets holding it closed.

‘In the absence of any staff, I suppose I'll make the coffee,' Magdalena sighed.

‘Shall I help you?' Guzmán was already sick of Torres's miserable company.

‘No, but you can help Esteban. I don't think he's accustomed to using tools.'

‘I've nearly got this screw out,' Jiménez grunted. From his tone, Guzmán wondered if he was about to complain that he'd broken a nail.

‘Why don't you move out of his way, General?' Guzmán suggested. ‘He can work faster without you in the way.'

Torres lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘I have trouble getting up.'

‘I can manage, honestly,' Jiménez said. ‘You stay right where you are, General.'

He removed the last screw from the bracket and pulled the shutter open. Torres grunted, turning his face from the bright sunlight.

Behind him, Guzmán heard the rattle of cups and saucers as Magdalena brought their coffee. He looked through the window at the autumn colours on the hillside overlooking the house. A sudden metallic flash among the trees. Branches moving.

‘Coffee's ready, gentlemen,' Magdalena said.

Guzmán stared. Someone was up on the hillside. A mounted man, pinpoints of sunlight reflecting from the bridle of his horse.

Jiménez took the bracket and went to a door on the far side of the lounge.

Guzmán stared at the rider, half hidden in the trees, looking down through a telescope.

‘Coffee,' Magdalena said, more emphatic this time. ‘I'm not the maid.'

It was not a telescope the rider was holding.

‘Biscuits if you want them,' Magdalena said, impatiently. ‘I won't ask again.'

Guzmán turned, shouting a warning.

A sharp crack at the window. Breaking glass. Tumbling echoes down the valley.

General Torres slumped sideways in his chair. Behind him, Guzmán heard crockery shatter on the floor. He twisted round and saw Magdalena, lying with her back against the sofa, arms limp. Broken cups and saucers were strewn around her, a growing stain extending over the carpet from the coffee pot. It was the blood he noticed most. Spattered over her face and hair, a dark slick extending from her chest to her waist. He started crawling towards her.

Her eyes opened. ‘Leo?' A distant voice.

He scrambled to her side. ‘Where does it hurt?'

She pointed to the window. Guzmán turned and saw General Torres slumped in the faded armchair. A portion of his head was gone, most of it was splashed over Magdalena.

‘Stay here.' He ran down the hall, working the slide on the Browning as he dashed through the front door, squinting in the bright sunlight.

A bullet hissed into the gravel path before he even heard the shot and Guzmán ducked behind a tree, shouting to Magdalena to stay inside. A moment later, a second shot whined off the garden wall in a mist of powdered stone.

And then, at the top of the hillside, the horse and rider appeared. Glancing out from behind the tree, Guzmán aimed the pistol with both hands, though he had no chance of hitting him at this range. The horseman raised the rifle above his head in a triumphal gesture before turning the horse into a grove of trees on the hilltop.

Guzmán went back into the house, raging. ‘I'll kill that bastard,' he grunted, shoving the Browning back into its holster.

Magdalena's eyes widened, surprised by his anger. ‘At least you're alive, Leo.'

‘How the fuck could a bandit know I was here? This mission is secret.'

‘I have no idea, but I'd be grateful if you would temper your language,
Comandante
.'

Guzmán nodded. ‘Sorry.'

He took out two Bisontes, put them in his lips and lit them. ‘Let's go outside,' he said, giving her one of the cigarettes.

She took a long drag and coughed. ‘We'd better go out the back. The rear of the house isn't overlooked.'

He followed her through the kitchen into a small herb garden. They sat side by side on a low stone wall in silence. Magdalena reached out and took his hand. Guzmán looked down at the whiteness of her skin and her crimson nails against his big sun-browned fists. An unusual sensation. Had he not been so angry, he could almost have enjoyed it.

Magdalena touched the congealing blood on her blouse. ‘Papa's dead,' she whispered as if he might have doubted it.

Accustomed to death, Guzmán was much less used to regretting it. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be a hypocrite, you hated him. I heard it in your voice. Mind you, so did I. He tried to do something to me when I was thirteen. I never forgave him for that.'

He decided not to ask. ‘He's gone. There's no use wasting energy hating him now. '

‘I'll direct my energies in whatever direction I wish,' Magdalena snapped. ‘And even though I own my father's company now, I'll never forgive him.'

Guzmán was tempted to say the same thing, though since he would have had to explain his reasons, he did not. ‘How long had you been here when I arrived?' he asked, reverting to being a policeman.

A vague shrug. ‘Ten minutes, perhaps. Esteban unlocked the door and helped Father into the lounge. He put him in the chair by the window and then went to get a screwdriver so he could open the shutters.'

Guzmán's eyes narrowed. ‘Was that your father's favourite chair?'

‘No. The room was stuffy since the lodge hadn't been used since July. Esteban said something about Papa getting some fresh air.'

‘Did he.' It was not a question. ‘Where is Jiménez anyway?'

‘I think he's probably cowering in the bushes. He isn't very brave. In fact he's...'

‘A coward?'

‘One might prefer to say gentle, Leo.'

Guzmán snorted. ‘You mean he's a
maricón
?'

‘Indeed. Papa was surprisingly tolerant about it.'

Because he was weak
, Guzmán thought.
Too weak to maintain a decent prejudice.

She took a last pull on her cigarette and threw it away. ‘Should we call the police?'

‘I'd rather not tell anyone yet,' Guzmán said, thinking fast. ‘Your father was a national hero: there'll be an outcry when Franco finds out he's been murdered. I was supposed to keep the hunt for El Lobo a secret.'

She took his hand again. ‘That's most inconvenient for you. I'm sorry.'

‘Inconvenient?' He saw the headlines, the call from Franco's HQ. And then a lifetime of poverty stretching before him. ‘It's more than inconvenient, I'll be fucked.'

‘Isn't there anything you can do?' Magdalena asked.

‘It would all be different if your father died from natural causes.'

‘You really are fucked then, if you'll excuse my language.'

‘Suppose he died of a heart attack?' he said. ‘At least, that's what we say happened.'

‘You mean you want me to cover up my father's death?'

‘More or less.' Guzmán nodded. ‘It's a lot to ask, I know.'

She gave him a long look. ‘What do you suggest we do?'

‘We follow his last wish to be buried quietly without a funeral, here at the lodge.' Guzmán said, improvising rapidly.

‘I really don't care what we do with him,' Magdalena said, ‘but I'll need a death certificate so I can inherit the company. And you'll never get a death certificate because no doctor in Spain would mistake a bullet wound for a heart attack.'

‘Isn't there a German doctor in San Sebastián?'

‘There's Dr Pfeiffer. He's a very proper sort, I doubt he'd help in something like this.'

‘What do you mean “proper sort”?'

‘Oh, you know, an ex-military man.' She frowned. ‘What's so funny?'

‘He'll provide us with a death certificate, all right,' Guzmán said. ‘I'll bury your father here, at the back of the house. You drive into town for your meeting and I'll come over tomorrow morning to say the words that will make Dr Pfeiffer only too pleased to help.'

‘Which are?'

‘Nuremburg is one and money is the other.'

‘You think he's a war criminal?'

Guzmán smiled. ‘Why else would he be living in Spain?'

OROITZ 1954, CUARTEL DE LA GUARDIA CIVIL

It was evening by the time Guzmán finished the grave and manhandled the late General Torres into it. Magdalena drove back to San Sebastián, her composure fully restored, having taken a shower and changed into a silk dress that stopped Guzmán in his tracks as watched her climb into her car. He leaned through the window to say goodbye and received a chaste kiss on the cheek for his trouble.

‘
Hasta mañana, Comandante
,' Magdalena whispered.

Guzmán drove back to Oroitz and parked up by the village.

As he walked down the narrow track to the
cuartel
, he realised something else had been going on here beside target practice. Two bodies lay near the door, wrapped in bloodstained sheets. Ochoa appeared in the doorway.

Guzmán nudged one of the corpses with his boot. ‘Who are the stiffs, Corporal?'

‘Reyes and Nistal,' Ochoa said. ‘So the others say. I don't know all their names yet.'

‘So what happened?' Guzmán said. ‘When I asked you to give them some target practice I didn't mean they should shoot each other.'

‘I think it was El Lobo,' Ochoa said. ‘I took the squad for a route march up onto the hillside. We were ambushed as we climbed the track. He dropped these two with head shots. I got the others into an extended line and we opened up on him. The lads did their best.'

‘Which wasn't much, given that it was one man against sixteen.'

‘They tried,
jefe
. I tried to outflank him but he rode off before I could get near.'

‘What time was this?'

‘About two thirty.'

‘But that's when he shot General Torres. The lodge is across the valley from where you were. It would take at least two hours to get from there to the lodge. You know what this means?'

Ochoa shook his head. ‘What?'

‘There's more than one gunman up there.' Furious, Guzmán threw his cigarette butt to the ground near the corpses. ‘And the bastard nearly shot me. I don't know who he's got with him, but I'll tell you this: they're not coming down from those hills alive.'

He stood for a moment, fists clenched as he stared up at the mountains. Far off, a campfire flickered on the ridge, a tiny speck of light in the darkness.

‘I've got business in town tomorrow, Corporal,' Guzmán said, calmer now. ‘You've got one more day to get the squad into shape. Then we're going into the hills after El Lobo.'

‘What if the men aren't ready,
jefe
?'

Guzmán shrugged. ‘That's their problem.'

8

MADRID, JULY 2010, BAR SALTAMONTES, CALLE DEL ALCALDE SÁINZ DE BARANDA

An expensive cocktail bar, angular black metal fittings, subtle lighting reflected on the long chrome and glass bar. The place was empty but for a woman perched on a stool at the bar, nursing her third drink. The barman darted an admiring glance at her, noting the expensive clothes, the immaculately styled hair framing the delicate beauty of her face. A face that turned heads in the street. But, beautiful as Isabel Morente was, it was her voice that made her famous: her radio show
Tardes con Isabel
attracted huge audiences. Until today.

‘Drowning your sorrows after what happened this morning, señorita?'

‘You heard the programme?' She looked at her empty glass, wondering about another.

‘I always listen to your show, although it isn't usually as exciting as it was today. Did you plan to quit before you went on air?'