A Matter of Latitude

by Isobel Blackthorn

  I can't either. I can't imagine that painting falling into the hands of anyone associated with Redoto's restaurant. It just isn't possible. There's only one person with ready access to Celestino's work: Celestino.

  Only, I've never seen the work before. I'm as certain as I can be that it isn't a work composed years earlier: a commission or a sale. It's a new work, a very recent work, a work crafted in the oils he bought six months before with the proceeds from the sale of a commission in acrylics. I couldn't have known that this is what he intended.

  Limpets

  I'm awake in the gloaming after a night of fitful sleep. The shoulder will keep but the leg is in a bad way. I can feel the swelling beneath the fabric of my trousers, inflamed, hot and throbbing, signs of infection.

  I'm not sure I can hold out another day. My instincts are telling me to stay put but the hole in my stomach is urging me to risk it and head back. Then again, there's food out there in the rock pools. If I wait until low tide and take my weapon, I should come back with a feast of shellfish. A feast!

  It's a long and tiresome wait. I nibble on a chocolate bar and sip some of the day's water ration. I keep my eye on the ocean. There's a gentle swell. Boredom soon kicks in. I find a stray pencil and some scraps of paper in the rucksack and doodle little sketch: a pitiless still life replete with upturned table, broken chairs, crates and a bucket. Even in moments such as this, there is art.

  Satisfied at last that the time is opportune, I grab hold of my weapon and head off, taking my time, scanning every nook and cranny on my way, pressing against walls at the corners. I picture myself from afar and begin to feel ridiculous. The whole situation is surreal.

  Before long I've left the village behind me. Now I'm too exposed. Paranoia kicks in, all my senses alert, and my heart beats that much faster.

  I tell myself to get a grip.

  The day is bright and the sun warms my back. The only sound, the waves hitting the rocks. There's no sign of the dog. As I walk I look behind me, ahead, to my left at the cliff. If the dog comes, I'll be prepared. If it's the henchman, I've had it. My best option would be to launch myself into the ocean and drown. Better that than a bullet.

  I need to stop thinking like that. The chances are I'll be fine.

  I apply myself to the hunt for food. I crouch on my haunches beside rock pool after rock pool, making sure I'm facing the cliff. I divide my attention between dog watch and the shellfish—limpets mostly—and I creep up softly and use a stone to tap them free. Before long, my pockets are full.

  I head back, pausing by a clump of spurge. I grab that too; it's edible, although I'm not sure of the taste. The moisture in those fleshy stems will add to my water intake. For a brief moment, I feel like a survivor washed up on a desert island, awaiting rescue from a passing ship.

  The sunshine, the waves slapping the rocks, the shimmering blue and the vast expanse of malpais beside me, encrusted with lichen and euphorbia, it's a kind of paradise for those who like open space and isolation. Although the tourists don't come here; few leave the enclaves in the south and east, the island's leeward side, sheltered, where they can enjoy beaches of creamy white sand. Why, with all that, would they come here?

  Lanzarote, a playground for pleasure seekers; I like to keep my distance from the madness of it. I've seen what it's done to my people, a violent and radical transformation in a single generation, perhaps two.

  The wealthy were quick to seize the opportunity and scramble for advantage, the poor peasant farmers too slow and ignorant to see what was coming. Manrique saw as early as the 1970s, and he tried to pre-empt the tide and mitigate. I admire him for that; the island's hero. Paula thinks I don't, but I do. It's just that we need living heroes, not dead ones; we need to undo the damage that has already been done and prevent further destruction. Manrique cannot campaign from the grave. Memorialising him only serves to make history of the present. Suddenly, we are mourning instead of fighting. And fight we must.

  All these thoughts I have as I hobble back to the hut, keeping an eye on the ridge, not only for the dog, but, by chance, a passing tourist.

  A laugh, brief and bitter, escapes my lips in a single short burst. Never before have I wished to see a tourist so badly, not even on my market stall on quiet days. Then, I only wanted cash to pay the bills. My life has never depended on a sale. Now my life might depend on a tourist appearing, full stop.

  My mind drifts to Paula. Tourism is how I met her. And she was not just any tourist, but a woman working in a tourist information centre. I've always felt a private triumph stealing her from her career and depositing her into my world. But what world is this I've put her in?

  As I open the door to the hut, doom descends in my mind, black as night.

  The Aljibe

  Richard tosses his pen on the desk. It skitters to rest beside his notepad. He takes in the odd angle and nudges it into alignment. The screen of his laptop stares back at him, the cursor arrow pointing at the end of a solitary paragraph, as if in mockery. He takes a slug of his gin and tonic, the second he's had this morning in the hope of stimulating his inspiration. So far, it isn't working.

  The Aljibe is to be crime fiction. He has in mind a pretty young tourist out hiking one day, found floating face down in the aljibe at La Corona. Better give her dark hair. Short and curly to distinguish her from his Paula-like sleuth.

  Of course, the police are informed and there's an investigation. His Paula would no doubt find the interference intrusive and damn annoying. Trouble is he hasn't a clue about police procedures on the island, or which police force would be in charge—the local, the national, the Guardia Civil? Would they fly chaps in from Gran Canaria? Or Spain? After all, a tiny island with a miniscule population can't have that much serious crime. Most likely they deal with petty theft, the odd break in, traffic offences and drunken British teenagers running amok. To make matters worse, he can't begin to speculate on how skilled or otherwise the officers might be. After Ico's Promise, he isn't about to risk the criticism. Crime fiction fans are sticklers for that sort of accuracy.

  He has to find a way of avoiding police involvement without stretching the plausibility boundary. What possible motive can his sleuth-Paula have for concealing the body she's discovered? What does she do with it? Walk away and leave it there? But that would mark the end of the story, not the beginning. She'll have to drag it out and hide it somewhere. Maybe she goes for help and when she returns the body is gone. But who would take it? The killer? It all seems so impossibly contrived.

  The laptop screen goes black and his attention diverts to the view of the hill to the east and he finds himself idly counting palm trees.

  He rues the day he agreed to set a crime novel on Lanzarote. Trent hasn't a clue about the place and he shouldn't have trusted his judgment. Lanzarote has always seemed to him something of a backwater. Little more than a tourist haven awash with ex-patriots, most of them retired—those who come to escape the tribulations back home; warm the bones, lead a quiet life. The locals are a peaceful law-abiding bunch as well, more interested in earning a decent living out of tourism and putting on a good show, especially at their numerous festivals. There really isn't much about the place to make for good crime. Although he can't be certain that his assessment is accurate; in all the years he's been visiting he hasn't paid much attention to his surroundings, the demands of producing his next book practically tying him to his chair.

  One, two, three … he counts seven palm trees, eight when he stands, fifteen when he goes to the window. Despite his lack of inspiration, he has to admit with its unusual setting and sleepy lifestyle, Haría is the perfect writer's retreat. Although Bunton would have done just as well. Or it might have, if not for the relentless demands of his wife, Trish, who has been less than sympathetic about his literary hiatus.

  She's been fretting about money. Making a show of having to cut back. She has even started to invent plots. He would be lying on the couch resting his spine and in she'd glide, filled w
ith delight, coming to a stop at his feet. 'Richard. I think this one is perfect.' He would affect pain, wince and writhe and sigh, but she wouldn't be swayed. 'Hear me out. And don't worry about committing the plot to memory. I've written it all down.' And he was then forced to listen while she launched into some convoluted scenario involving several interconnected families, a bishop, a member of parliament and a smutty scandal, and at least three dead bodies. Means, motive and opportunity, always clichéd or unconvincing, or both. Her latest, involving an entire exhibition of paintings swapped, not with forgeries but with different works of art, and some ludicrous explanation as to who was behind it and why, caused him to rise from the couch with sudden mobility, and head straight to his travel agent to book the first available flight to Arrecife.

  Not that he's come up with anything better.

  He thinks back over the elements of his current plot. The body in the aljibe has to be a tourist. That much he's sure of. A tourist with a compelling backstory. What is her name? Where does she come from? Why is she out walking in that inhospitable terrain? He can't decide on even the simplest of matters. As for the suspects, he struggles to conjure anyone interesting. Making matters even worse, that pretty young tourist ambling over all that rock and scree at the base of the volcano has fused with the Paula-like sleuth of his imagining, despite the difference in hair colouring. But he can't think of a finer sleuth than Paula: intelligent, moral, introspective; someone who will ponder and puzzle. She has all the key traits. Yet there's something lacking. She doesn't have that additional zing, that singular idiosyncrasy so necessary in a character whose task it is to solve crimes. She is, dare he admit it, a trifle ordinary. Perhaps he should give her a lisp, although that would be annoying, or a wooden leg, but then she'd never discover the body in such a remote location. He thought of dumping her from the narrative and coming up with a more compelling sleuth, but with Paula he felt comfortable. Never mind he can't conceive of a single reason why she'd investigate the crime. She's all he has that gives him a sense of purpose.

  Her, the aljibe, and the body.

  Which leaves him no choice.

  He closes his laptop, and downs his gin and tonic in three measured gulps, enjoying the bittersweet aftertaste, the slow burn, the delicious expanding of his being as the alcohol courses through him. He takes his tumbler to the kitchen and rinses it under the tap. Then he dries it thoroughly with a tea towel and puts it back in the cupboard. Not wanting Paula to regard him an alcoholic, he brushes his teeth.

  Paula and Celestino's house is situated on the other side of the village, making for a pleasant walk on this warm March morning. The air is fresh, the breeze invigorating and, being a Tuesday, there's little traffic about. He takes pleasure in the view of the mountains, the palm trees, the smart white houses with their flat roofs and ancient wooden doors and shutters the same shade of green, the vacant lots filled with wild flowers, the occasional ruin. There is always something about the place to catch the eye. He succumbs to an exquisite sense of belonging to the exotic, so far from the oaks and hollyhocks of home. Sometimes he wonders if his choice to spend the first few months of every year here, at a time when the rains have freshened the landscape, has more to do with the charm of the place, than it does his need for retreat.

  He cuts through the plaza and on past the town hall, pausing to admire the colonial façade from the vantage of the plaza opposite, then veering left near the little market set back on the other side of a concreted swale in the road. The swale forms part of a watercourse that passes through the village. Normally bone dry, but there must have been a torrent running through it on Saturday. No evidence remains; there isn't a puddle in sight. He's yet to visit that little market and as he goes on by, he thinks he might take a look on his way back.

  About two hundred yards on and he finds himself at the Diaz's front door. He hasn't visited the house before, although he's passed it many times on his rambles about the village: ancient and simple in design, with green shutters on all the windows, open and pinned to the wall. The roof of the tower on the right peaks at a low angle, and a decorative turret, like those found in North Africa, is positioned on the flat roof to the left. Charming. It would make a good feature in a streetscape postcard too, were it not for that ostentatious monstrosity of a house next door, with its oversized windows, grey stone quoining and tiled front yard; a house built with an abundance of cash and a paucity of style.

  A tall, bald-headed man with a lumbering gait approaches and Richard makes way on the pavement for him to pass by, his attention drawn to Paula's car parked at an odd angle across the street. Looks as though she's pulled up in haste and plans to be back out in a jiffy. Probably about to take the child to the grandparents. He's lucky he's caught her in. It occurs to him she may think him pushy turning up at her house uninvited to re-state his request. After all, it was only yesterday that she told him emphatically, no. His courage, earlier bolstered by the gin, begins to wane. Is it desperation that compels him to apply his knuckle to her door?

  She opens it shortly after the knock.

  'Richard,' she says, surprised.

  'I'm terribly sorry to bother you, Paula, but I was hoping…' He trails off at the sight of the harried look on her face.

  'You better come in,' she says and moves aside.

  Stepping inside the dim, cold hallway, the presence of Celestino seeps from the walls; he can almost smell him and half expects his visage to appear in the bright rectangle of light framed by the doorway at the other end. He's slightly overcome and in need of a chair. The thought of forgiving his former friend, finding acceptance in his heart, reaching out for his friendship once more, are all overshadowed by the humiliation he still clings to. Celestino ridiculed his name. The man, he has to admit, is not only insensitive, he is cruel.

  'Where's the lil' 'un?' he says, looking around upon entering the warm and sunny patio, and taking note of the untidiness: clutters of pots, shoved three-deep against the walls, a mature-looking drago tree in its centre too big for the space.

  Paula pauses behind him in the doorway. 'Gloria's with her grandparents.'

  'Still?'

  'She's better off there,' she says dourly.

  'And Celestino?'

  'I have absolutely no idea. Café?'

  'That would be nice,' he says, thinking they must have had a row.

  She leads him into the kitchen and indicates a chair. He sits down. Finding himself facing the wall and unable to watch her without twisting his spine—an action he's learned to avoid—he stands and goes around the table, taking up the chair facing the patio and the small bench that serves as her meal preparation area. Poor Paula. She has no choice but to make do.

  Although he has to admit that occupied with cups and the paraphernalia of brewing coffee, she's a pleasure to watch. Dressed in calf-length trousers and a figure hugging blouse, she's svelte and a frisson of desire rises up in him and he relishes it. Of course, he'll never again betray his wife, not after that dalliance with Ann, but he can't help lusting after an attractive woman and he refuses to feel guilty about it.

  As the feeling passes he's confronted with her harried demeanour anew. Perhaps there's more going on than that row. For one thing, motherhood doesn't seem to suit her. Neither does the drudgery of housekeeping. Although looking around, she doesn't seem to do much of either. The child practically lives at the grandparents from what he can ascertain, and the house is filthy. Littering the bench are an empty water flagon and a carton of orange juice—also empty judging by its crushed shape—the remnants of a packet of biscuits, and an assortment of dirty glasses stacked by the sink. Trish would never let her house get into such a state.

  At the other end of the bench, her telephone console flashes its message light. He wonders why she hasn't checked the message. Things don't seem right to him. Is she depressed? Has Celestino been cruel to her? Richard thinks it possible, but not likely. Then again, the man can be harsh, almost aggressive at times. And there is the La
tin temperament to consider. Poor Paula. What she needs is a lift, a diversion, and fortunately he has just the thing.

  She has her back to him when he speaks.

  'I know you said you weren't able to help with The Aljibe,' he says, launching in without preface. 'But I was hoping you'd spare me a little time. It's just that Trent—that's my agent—is nagging me and I've never felt so uninspired.'

  'Richard, I…'

  'Please don't say no.'

  'I put milk in your coffee by mistake,' she says, turning around, cup in hand. 'You will drink it with milk?'

  'As long as it isn't much.'

  'Just a dash really. I caught myself in the act. See.' She holds the cup beneath his gaze and he stares into the pale brown contents with private disgust.

  'That will be fine, thank you,' he says, with all the grace he can muster.

  'Sugar?' She takes the cup back to the bench. 'You take sugar too, don't you?'

  'Paula.'

  'I think I recall you taking two. Is that right?'

  She spoons the sugar into his cup and stirs.

  'Paula, come and sit down. Please.'

  She hands him his cup and leans back against the bench.

  'I don't think I'm able to be of much help to you, Richard.'

  'You must know something about ancient water storage. You of all people.'

  'They dug wells. Just like people the world over. They dug huge holes and lined them with concrete to store water underground. They dug tunnels to access the water galleries. You know all this already, Richard. They dug a lot of ruddy holes.'

  'They didn't just dig holes.'

  'All right,' she says with a rising inflexion. 'They concreted stretches of land on the sides of volcanoes, or anywhere the land sloped and the run off could be funnelled into a storage tank. They're called 'alcogidas'. It was all about storm water capture. That's the essence of it. There's really nothing much else to say.'