The Sentinel: 1 (Vengeance of Memory) (2 page)

He shrugged. ‘
Claro
. That’s police work, fifty-nine minutes of boredom and one of excitement an hour – if you’re lucky.’

‘Even so, I wonder why we bother. We catalogue them and then what?
Nada
. Usually there’s no suspect and often no witnesses.
Dios mio
, it was seventy years ago. We aren’t going to make arrests. God knows there’s enough to keep us busy without digging up war graves three-quarters of a century old.’

‘Maybe so, Dr Galindez. But in the
guardia
, orders are orders. Even for
forenses
like you. That’s what keeps the pay cheque coming, no?’

‘That’s what they say,’ she agreed.
All the fucking time. We should have it on the badge
.

Molina followed Galindez towards the mine entrance. A second
guardia
emerged, struggling from the hole in the brickwork. He saw Galindez and she felt the familiar sensation of being measured against that invisible benchmark her male colleagues carried around alongside their gun and their nightstick. Maybe it wouldn’t be so annoying if they’d hide it a little. Especially since it was wasted on her anyway.

‘This is
Sargento
Hernandez. Hernandez, Dr Galindez.’

The
sargento
gave her a cursory nod and stared at her chest. Clearly she met some of his criteria since he didn’t even bother looking at her face. She folded her arms.

‘You get back to the
comisaría, sargento,
I’ll be along later,’ Molina said. Hernandez took a last look at Galindez’s breasts and walked back up to the cars parked by the fence.

Galindez looked at the ragged hole in the brickwork. ‘Is it safe to go in?’

‘
Absolutamente
. We’ve put up a couple of lights. You know, I think it shook the
sargento
when he saw what’s in there.’

‘I could tell he was the sensitive type.’ Galindez took off her sunglasses, squinting against the white glare. She forced her way into the narrow gap, the broken bricks sharp against her back. Inside it was dark and the air smelled of earth. Molina followed, crawling awkwardly through the gap, panting from the exertion.

An electric lamp hung from a hook in the narrow passageway, throwing dull light along rough stone walls punctuated by the columns of bricks bearing the weight of the hillside above. Galindez’s flashlight played over the dusty surfaces, a probing line of white light picking out rusty lanterns, heaps of broken tools and large coils of wire covered in lichen. Twenty metres in the passageway widened, ending in a brick wall with a heavy door fitted with a large rusty lock. There were storage spaces hacked from the rock on either side of the brickwork, most of the space occupied by piles of ancient equipment and tools, their form and function long erased by dust and cobwebs.

‘That’s the entrance to the mine,’ Molina said, pointing to the door. ‘But there’s no key for the door and I don’t fancy trying to force it open if we don’t need to.’

Galindez nodded, her flashlight moving across upturned buckets, oil drums and wire netting. Dust flickered in the sharp beam. And there they were.

The killers must have piled the bodies on top of each other but time had changed the order of things. With the decomposition of the bodies, the skeletons had collapsed like a heap of firewood. Galindez knelt alongside them. She’d seen plenty of skulls in her short career yet she still felt there was a certain pathos looking into a face so denuded of its essential humanity. All that remained was this last unrecognisable vestige of its owner, the jaws open in the impossibly wide, astonished surprise of the long dead. Those where the jaw was still attached.

‘From the look of it, none of these people died naturally,
Teniente
.’

Molina looked at the skull. ‘That’s a gunshot wound, isn’t it?’

‘Definitely. This is the entry point,’ she pointed out a neatly drilled hole in the back of the head, ‘and you can see the result here.’ Turning the skull, she indicated the massive exit hole, a gaping expanse of the forehead missing. ‘The bullet entered at the base of the skull, exiting through the forehead.’

‘So what does that tell us?’

‘
Hombre
,’ Galindez smiled, ‘someone shot him.’

Molina grunted humourlessly. He looked again at the dusty skeletons, so diminished in death, their essence long since drained away, the remains now crumbling slowly. ‘There are no signs of identity.’ He sounded disappointed. Galindez knew the feeling well.

She took latex gloves from her case and began to pull them on. ‘I think it’s best if I establish how many there are. Then we can get them bagged up.’

‘There’s no
we.’
Molina snorted. ‘
You
get them bagged up. That’s what you do,
señorita
.’ He got to his feet and headed back along the tunnel to the entrance.

Galindez felt the cold starting to seep into her damp clothes. It wasn’t unpleasant now, but after a while it would be. And she was going to be here quite a while, she was certain of that. She pulled off the gloves. There were things in her car she needed and it was pretty clear she wasn’t going to get any help.

Galindez climbed back through the ragged hole in the bricks into the simmering white heat. The light was painful after the half light of the tunnel. Two people were standing outside the entrance. An old man holding a sheaf of papers, and a woman: middle-aged, short dark hair. Quite attractive, Galindez noticed. She wondered if they were relatives of the victims. That would be good: she could try for a DNA match. The thought cheered her.

Molina introduced them. ‘Dr Galindez, may I present
Profesora
Ordoñez, professor of contemporary history at the University Complutense in Madrid and
Señor
Teodoro Byass, former manager at the Spanish Mining Company.
Señor
Byass tells me a large part of the mine and the neighbouring quarries closed after the Civil War.’

Señor
Byass was clearly pleased to have had his retirement interrupted to give the history of this godforsaken hole carved into the barren hillside. ‘As you say,
Teniente
, although we carried on some operations in the area until about 1970 – the year the company shut down. But the mine was sealed off long before that.’

‘Before the war?’ the professor asked.

‘No,
señora
. It closed in 1953. I’ve got the papers here. I kept the files when the company folded. Here you are,
señora
.’

‘It’s
señorita
,’ Ordoñez said, glancing at Galindez. ‘But if we’re being formal, I prefer
profesora
.’

Byass mumbled an apology as he handed
Profesora
Ordoñez the yellowed papers with their faded official stamps.

She examined them carefully. ‘Had the seam run out?’

The old man shook his head. ‘Orders from above. As you’ll see in that letter.’

Profesora
Ordoñez turned towards Galindez to read the letter. Her finger moved down the faded typewritten sheet. ‘Orders from the General Directorate of Security, January fifteenth, 1953. For reasons of public safety…’ the
Profesora
skimmed the page, ‘danger to passers-by, children and domestic animals… immediate closure of the mine entrance…’

‘An order like that couldn’t be ignored. Not back then,’ Byass said. ‘They sealed up the entrance within a few days.’

Profesora
Ordoñez turned to put the papers in her bag and caught Galindez lightly with her elbow. ‘I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?’ She squeezed Galindez’s arm in gentle apology.

‘
No ha pasado nada
, professor, my fault,’ Galindez said, thinking it less of an accident and more an opening gambit.

Profesora
Ordonez looked at the letter again. ‘The letter is signed by the Military Governor of Madrid, General Antonio Valverde,’ she read. ‘As you say,
Señor
Byass, an order from the
Capitán-General
of Madrid wasn’t something to be argued with.’

Molina sighed impatiently. ‘None of that’s important. As far as I’m concerned it’s an open and shut case of a wartime killing. I’ll leave you to do your job, Dr Galindez. I’m going to drive
Señor
Byass back to the village.’

‘I may need some help,’ Galindez protested. ‘Those skeletons are going to fall apart once they’re moved. If we could get a couple of officers in to assist, at least I could keep some of them intact. It would make the forensic investigation much easier.’

‘A quick word,’ Molina said, taking a couple of paces away from the
profesora
and
Señor
Byass.

Galindez followed him, knowing what was coming.

‘Don’t give me orders, Galindez,’ Molina said in loud voice. ‘You’re just the cleaning woman here, as far as I’m concerned. You may have all day to spend on this but I don’t. All I want is your report signed and dated and sent to the
comisaría
at Las Peñas by tomorrow morning. Get those bodies out of here and take them wherever the fuck it is you take them. And I want the hole in the bricks sealed up. I think I can trust you to arrange that, can’t I?’

Galindez glowered at Molina, her cheeks burning with anger.

‘That’s settled then,’ Molina said. ‘I’ll leave you to get on with it, Dr Galindez.’

‘Just a minute,’ Galindez said.

Molina stopped in his tracks and turned to glare at her.

‘You registered the mine as a crime scene when you arrived, didn’t you?’ Galindez asked. ‘And I presume you gave it a crime number?’

‘Of course.’ Molina was furious. Galindez could imagine what he was thinking:
who does she think she’s talking to
?

‘In that case,’ Galindez continued, ‘securing the scene is your responsibility. The regulations about crime-scene management are quite specific. You logged the crime – it’s down to you to find a bricklayer.’

For a moment, Molina seemed on the verge of apoplexy. Realising the others were watching, he nodded curtly and walked sullenly towards his car where
Señor
Byass was waiting. They climbed into the green and white Lexus and drove off.

‘What a charmer.’ It was the
profesora
.

‘He loves me really,’ Galindez laughed, ‘he’s just playing hard to get.’

‘Do you have to put up with that sort of thing often?’

‘That?’ Galindez shrugged. ‘That was nothing, believe me.’

‘You could complain, surely? Isn’t there some sort of policy about these things?’

‘Oh yes. We have anti-sexism policies, anti-bullying policies – all sorts of policies,
profesora
. But do you know what the most important policy of all is? I’ll tell you: never – as in never even-in-your-fucking-dreams-ever – complain. Complain and you’re a whinger. And that’s not a good thing. You just take the shit and collect the pay cheque. That’s what they expect and that’s what you do.’

‘What a depressing thought.’

‘Believe me, the alternative’s worse. You have to show you can take it. Otherwise they won’t respect you. And then you can’t do your job at all.’

‘Don’t you ever wonder if maybe you’re in the wrong job?’

‘I’ve only been in the
guardia
a year. I need to build up experience before I can get a transfer,’ Galindez said, speculatively prodding a stone with her shoe. ‘The trouble is, it’s a family thing. My dad and my uncle were both
guardia
. My uncle still is. I need to show I can hack it. In time it’ll get better.’

‘I hope so. For your sake.’
Profesora
Ordonez knelt and opened the chill bag lying at her feet. She took out a plastic bottle of water and offered it to Galindez. The water was cold, the condensation on the plastic felt pleasant in her hand. She raised the bottle to her mouth, aware of the
profesora
watching as she drank.

‘So it was you who located this place,
profesora
?’ Galindez asked, wiping her mouth.

‘Me and my research group.’

‘How did you find out about it?’ The intensity of the
profesora
’s look was almost embarrassing, Galindez thought. Almost.

‘Well, there’s a diary.’

‘Whose diary?’ Galindez asked, suddenly interested.

‘Oh, someone who was a key player back then,’
Profesora
Ordoñez said. ‘The diary of a man in charge of organising much of Franco’s dirty work.’

‘He documented it?’ Galindez automatically began thinking fingerprints, DNA, handwriting analysis. Evidence. Even if it wasn’t a smoking gun, she thought, at least it was some form of evidence for once.

‘Some of the diary is autobiographical,’
Profesora
Ordoñez continued. ‘There are also details of arrests and executions, although the locations aren’t given in great detail. We’ve identified some of the places he refers to. This was one of them.’

‘And he admits the killings?’

The
profesora
smiled. ‘No. There’s nothing to connect him to them directly. Besides, I don’t think you’d be able to arrest him now, it’s likely he’s been dead for years. ’

‘So this is your speciality – tracking down Franco’s hit men?’

Ordoñez laughed. ‘Haven’t you read my work? I would have thought someone working in this field would be familiar with it.’

‘I don’t specialise in war graves,’ Galindez said. ‘They’re allocated to me. Frequently. There’s a lot of political pressure to investigate them. But they don’t put any real resources into it: I have a look, do a report and then it’s on to the next one.’

‘Make the most of them. They’re fascinating,’ the
profesora
said. ‘Could I have a look at this one, do you think?’ She nodded towards the hole in the bricks. ‘Maybe a few photos for our records?’

‘No problem.’ Galindez picked up her latex gloves. ‘I’ll come in with you.’

‘I hoped you would.’

Galindez took the lead, crouching to scramble through the hole. She felt the
profesora
watching as she struggled through the hole, wrestling her bag past the broken bricks.