The Sentinel: 1 (Vengeance of Memory) (19 page)

‘Does this get easier with time?’ Peralta asked. ‘Will I get used to it, do you suppose?’

Guzmán looked at him blankly. ‘No. Not for a second you won’t, son. At least not unless you suddenly start breaking a few people’s heads now and again just for the fun of it. And I can’t see that happening somehow. It’s the way it is. There are people like me – lots of them – and there are people like you. What you need to do is to make sure that while people like me do the dirty work, you make yourself as useful as possible without getting in the way. Keep your head down and keep quiet. Especially tonight when we shoot those traitors we’ve got downstairs. I know what I’m doing,
Teniente
, you’re there to make up the numbers. Dismissed.’

Peralta stepped out into the corridor and closed the door, muffling Guzmán’s laughter. He felt as if he was coming down with something. His head ached and he was sweating. He retrieved his overcoat from the meeting room and walked to the reception desk, the sense of dread still growing inside him. What had seemed distasteful work a few hours ago was now rapidly becoming a singular, terrifying reality.

‘Evening, sir.’ The
sargento’s
voice was as contemptuous as ever.

‘A message from
Comandante
Guzmán,’ Peralta said stiffly. ‘The prisoner Mendoza has been identified as a special case.’

The
sargento
’s sullen face cracked into a harsh smile. ‘Well, that doesn’t surprise me,
Teniente
. Be a surprise to him, though, I bet.’

‘What does it mean,
Sargento
, “special case”?’

The smirk grew bigger. ‘The
comandante
didn’t tell you,
Teniente
?’

‘He said it’ll be revealed to me in due course.’

The
sargento
smiled, revealing several missing front teeth and exposing disgusting shards of those that remained. ‘I won’t be the one to spoil your surprise, sir. Besides, the
comandante
would kill me.’

Peralta walked out into the icy darkness. A few flakes of snow drifted down through the anaemic glow of the street light. The windows of the shops and bars along Calle de Robles were pale and tired, much like the people in them. He walked slowly, breathing in the sharp icy air, making his way through bustling workers, preoccupied with the dull routines of daily life. The concerns of normal people, Peralta thought. Not for them the knowledge that in a few hours they would be involved in killing fifteen people and dumping their bodies in a mine.

Peralta had never killed anyone. That was what made the coming night’s work so worrying. He had seen a robber shot once in his last year of training. He’d been on patrol near the Prado, accompanying a uniformed officer on his beat. A sudden shout came from ahead of them, the crowds parting near the window of a jeweller’s shop. A man dressed in a dark suit ran towards them, pistol in hand, looking back at the shop where angry voices denounced his theft. Peralta didn’t move. He felt the uniformed officer at his side raise his pistol and take aim, the blast a white starburst that drained the world of colour. Peralta saw nothing, heard nothing until time moved again as the man crumpled, legs flailing drunkenly, heard his pistol fall to the ground, strangely loud. And the voice of the policeman as he moved forward, still aiming at the man: ‘
No te mueves, coño. Manos arriba
.’ The man lay twisted and broken, a dark bloody slick outlining his body. He didn’t move, nor would he again.

That had been bad enough, Peralta thought. But to bind them, blindfold them and then stand them in front of a firing squad. Could he do it? Even though they deserved it. It wasn’t that he cared, he realised. He just didn’t want to be there. He rummaged through his pockets and eventually found a solitary, crumpled cigarette, black tobacco spilling from the loose wrapping in small flakes as he raised it to his mouth. He lit it gratefully.

MADRID 1953, CHURCH OF SANTA MARÍA DE TODOS NUESTROS DOLORES

The grim Gothic outline of the church towered over him. A slight glow within shone kaleidoscopic light through the stained glass window. Peralta looked round, finishing his cigarette. He saw a couple pressed close together in the shadows, an old beggar with his feet bound with rags sprawled against the wall. He turned back to look towards the
comisaría
. A man in a black overcoat with a wide-brimmed hat moved into a doorway. Peralta threw the cigarette away: it tasted foul.

Inside, the church was silent with an icy stillness in which the slightest move produced a whispered echo. Light glimmered from rows of candles, leaving the pews obscure in flickering semidarkness around the penumbra of the altar. Peralta dipped his hand into the holy water of the font and crossed himself. He walked slowly down the aisle of the darkened nave, and crossed himself again, his footsteps loud in the cold silence. He stopped to listen. A faint noise. The sound of weeping. He turned towards the sound and saw the bulky shape of a woman, kneeling in prayer, her forehead pressed against the back of the pew in front. She was whispering hoarsely, her prayers interspersed by muffled sobs. The words clear and familiar in the darkness:

‘
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth…
’

Peralta felt embarrassed to be eavesdropping upon her grief. Each line was accompanied by more muted weeping and stifled sobs. He moved towards the vestry door which was lit by two small candles on a table piled with leaflets and tracts. Peralta decided to knock on the door but, as he moved forward a figure crashed into him from the side. Peralta stumbled and fell, struggling to get back to his feet. Above him a wild distorted face, florid and unshaven, the eyes improbably bloodshot. The man looked down at him, while from the darkness came the distant echo of the woman’s voice as she continued her prayer.

‘
I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried
.’

‘You clumsy fuck,’ the man spat, his florid face distorted with anger. ‘What are you doing hiding there in the dark?’

‘
He descended into hell. On the third day, He rose again.
’

Peralta dusted dirt from his coat and looked at the man. In the pale light of the candles he saw signs of physical decay, the damage wrought by a determined and sustained life of dissolution. The man had teeth missing, his hair was unkempt and his face unshaven and dirty with flecks of spittle at the corners of his purple lips. Peralta heard him gasping for breath and saw the way he staggered. He detested drunks and this one in particular.

‘I’m looking for Father Vasquez,’ he said coldly.

‘
He ascended to Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead
.’

The man laughed with an asthmatic rattle and his attempt at a smile showed his few remaining teeth. ‘Why, God bless you, my son. I’m Father Vasquez.’

Peralta saw the clerical collar and understood: this was Guzmán’s priest. This wreck was to attend the execution and deliver final absolution. He felt sudden anger.

‘
Comandante
Guzmán requires your presence, Father. You’re needed in an official capacity this evening.’

The priest looked at him blankly and then his face folded into a smile.

‘
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church…
’

‘Ah, the good
comandante
,’ he beamed. ‘How I love the work he does.’

Peralta looked at him with distaste. ‘Really? Have you known the
comandante
long?’

The priest grinned. ‘A long, long time, my boy. We’ve trodden the same road together, he and I, through blood, much blood. The blood of those without God. The blood of the Antichrist has washed around our ankles and always God has seen us through. He protects us in our work.’ He crossed himself fervently though somewhat inaccurately.

‘
… the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins…
’

‘Then you’ll know what’s required tonight.’ Peralta’s voice was tight with anger at this travesty of a priest. ‘The
comandante
requests your presence in an hour. No later.’

Father Vasquez nodded. ‘And the money?’

‘Money?’ Peralta echoed. ‘What money?’

‘
… the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen
.’

‘The money from the pockets of the Reds, the rapists, the assassins, the child-killers, the nun-violators, the freemasons, the…’ the priest’s red eyes rolled as he searched for another category to add to his taxonomy of hate, ‘those fuckers, the church burners…’ He staggered against a pillar and clung to it gratefully.

‘You’re drunk.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘And you’re an arsehole. So what about my money?’

‘
Comandante
Guzmán sent you this.’ Peralta took the envelope from his pocket and handed it to Father Vasquez who took it with a reverential air. The priest clutched at Peralta’s sleeve. ‘I hate them, like you,’ he slobbered. ‘The spawn of evil and international Jewry and—’

Peralta shrugged the man’s clawing hand from his coat sleeve. ‘Get off me, you piss-head. Save your slobbering for
Comandante
Guzmán. Perhaps he puts up with it, but I won’t. My advice is to sober up, you filthy bastard. There are men going to die and we’re expecting you to give them the comfort of the sacraments.’

He turned and walked through the darkness towards the church entrance.

The priest’s voice echoed in the shadows. ‘Comfort? Comfort is for those who follow the way of God. These
cabrónes
will get no comfort,
señor
, I’m not there to tell them it will be all right: just a little bullet and then off to heaven. Oh no, I’m there to tell them they deserve to burn in hell for eternity and that I will pray every day for their continued suffering. The priests they killed, the nuns they raped. Those who lived without God shall die without him. Their suffering is a small atonement for what was done by their side. The fuckers, the—’

‘Be at the
comisaría
within the hour,’ Peralta called from the doorway. He stepped out into the cleansing cold of the night. Flakes of snow whirled through weak light. Like lost souls, Peralta thought in a moment of poetic invention. How nice it would be to read poetry again, to lose himself in the rhythm of words, their angular abstractions and emotional ambiguities. He apologised, shaken from his reverie as he bumped into a man in a dark overcoat. The man seemed vaguely familiar, but when Peralta looked back to see if he could recognise him, the man had gone.

Guzmán looked up as Peralta entered his office.

‘Don’t you ever knock, Acting
Teniente
?’

‘I did knock,’ Peralta snapped. And then he could keep it in no longer. ‘Why, in a country awash with priests, use someone like him for this work? The man’s a drunk.’

Guzmán grinned. ‘And the rest. Thief, paedophile, you name it. But he’s all we can afford.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Peralta said, ‘you’re shooting fifteen men and you send them to their deaths with that bastard giving them the last rites?’

Guzmán looked at him. ‘Firstly,
Teniente,
those men downstairs don’t believe in God. They fought on the side that killed priests and burned their churches. These men supported communism and foreign corruption. Secondly, these are the fifties. The younger priests were only kids when the war began. They don’t want to be involved in the work we do. And even some of the older priests no longer want to be involved with these things either. So we have to take what we can get. And we can only get what we can afford and what we can afford is Father Vasquez.’

Peralta exhaled angrily. ‘I don’t think it’s right. There should be some dignity in these things.’ He turned on his heel and went out into the corridor.

Guzmán looked at the closed door and smiled. ‘Dignity?’ His voice was edged with contempt. ‘You’ll see fucking dignity once the shooting starts. Lots of it. Spilled all over the fucking ground. A drunken priest is nothing compared to that.’

But Peralta had gone. Guzmán lit a cigarette and returned to staring at the wall. His breathing slowed as he drifted into a self-induced trance with only the slow monotony of the old clock on the wall to disturb him. Guzmán was getting ready.

Peralta heard the crash of boots on the stone of the corridor as he sat in the mess with a cup of lukewarm coffee. Several
guardia civiles
entered, followed by the dissolute figure of the
sargento
. One of the men was carrying a large bucket.

‘Evening,
Teniente
,’ the
sargento
grinned toothlessly.

Peralta watched with slight curiosity as the
guardia civiles
produced several large bottles of brandy and began to pour them into the bucket.

‘Making punch,
Sargento
?’ Peralta asked, exasperated at having to ask what was going on.

‘Not one you’d care to try, sir,’ the
sargento
said. ‘At least not in a minute or two.’ He placed several small cardboard boxes on the table. ‘Sleeping pills, sir. For the prisoners. We dose the brandy, they have a last drink. Bingo. They go off happily. More or less.’

‘Almost humane,
Sargento
. That will make them easier to manage, I imagine?’

‘They’ll be good as gold, sir’ – another glimpse of rotten teeth – ‘be all over before they know it.’ He continued to fill the bucket with brandy. The smell was overpowering. ‘Care for a glass, sir – before I dope it?’

Peralta shook his head. ‘I don’t think brandy would agree with me just now.’

The
sargento
laughed. ‘It’ll agree with those bastards a lot less. But I think I’ll have a quick nip. How about you boys?’

The
guardia civiles
quickly agreed and waited while the
sargento
dipped a chipped cup into the brandy. Peralta wondered for a moment about the regulations concerning drinking on duty but decided this was not the time to raise the subject.