Something clicks in Richard's mind. His speculations arrive like a drum roll at the foot of a new idea. Here right before him is a new character and an intriguing one at that. He appears preoccupied, troubled, haunted even. Has he suffered some kind of breakdown? Perhaps his wife has betrayed him, or died, and he's come to this remote part of the island to get away from his tribulations. Enjoy some peace. What does he do? A dentist maybe. Yes, a dentist. Dentistry is known to be a dreadfully high-pressure job. Richard makes a few mental notes of his appearance, taking in the stature, the prominent chin and stern brow, the deep-set eyes, deciding there and then that the man will make the ideal conflicted character.
Satisfied, Richard marches off down the plaza, slowing to a normal pace as he nears the café end, not wanting to appear too excited, his urge to consult Paula stronger than ever.
Perhaps if he offers her something in return, a sweetener, payment, a tour guide fee, something of that sort. After all, she isn't the flowers and chocolates sort of girl. He reaches the café at the end and is about to pop in for a couple of sweet pastries when Paula appears, heading straight for him. What good fortune!
'Paula!' He arranges a pleasant smile on his face. 'How are you?'
'Hello, Richard,' she says cordially.
He supposes it's the best he could hope for.
A loud cheer followed by exuberant applause catches his attention. He glances over at a large party seated at the café. For midweek, the plaza is rather busy and he isn't altogether sure he likes it.
'May I buy you a coffee?' he says out of politeness.
'Are you insisting?'
The impatience in her voice takes him aback. She sounds thoroughly dejected. Although he can't be altogether sure; she hasn't removed her sunglasses.
'I take it Celestino hasn't reappeared,' he says, guessing that must be what is affecting her mood.
'You make him sound like a stain.'
The sharp tone of her reply is unwarranted. 'I'm sorry to cause you any offence,' he says countering hers with a conciliatory tone. 'I meant no harm.'
Privately he decides the woman has more barbs than a stonefish. It is becoming apparent to him that she is most likely the cause of his writer's block. He ought to walk away, but something in her manner makes him stay.
They both hover, looking around. Then in an astonishing turnaround, she says, 'Look, I'm sorry, Richard. I'm worn out. How have you been?' And he finds himself erasing his previous judgement.
'I went to La Corona.'
'And how was that?'
'Not good. I hurt my back.'
'The terrain? You didn't fall?' It's the first show of concern she's graced him with in a long time. He sees in it an opportunity.
'I stumbled. Turned on my ankle. I'm having to do a lot of walking. Stay on my feet.'
'I'm sure you'll make good use of that.'
He emits a short laugh. Seizing the moment, he says, 'Paula, do please consider what I'm about to say.'
'Ask.'
'Ask? No, I'd like to hire you.'
'Hire me?'
'For your expertise. I've given up on the aljibe.' He refrains from telling her why. 'I think a body would be better placed in one of those water tunnels. The ones in the cliff. Only, I need a guide. What with my back.'
'I can't, Richard.'
'Why ever not?'
'I just can't.'
She looks about to cry.
'Then what can you tell me about them? For example, do those tunnels reach the water galleries?'
She manages to recover herself. 'I believe so. But access is probably impossible.'
'You've been there, though?'
'Not yet. Last I heard the main one was closed due to vandals.'
'Damn.'
'Richard, with your back the way it is, you'll never make it. The path is uneven and rocky. And if you do manage to get inside the tunnels you'll just about be crawling along on your hands and knees.'
Richard is crestfallen. It must show on his face, for she follows with, 'There's a lower path though, which might be worth exploring.'
'And why's that?'
'A German man built a house down there. At the bottom of the cliff somewhere near Haría.'
'Someone lives down there!'
'Not any more. He died. But I understand he was quite an eccentric. He built a swimming pool, right at the water's edge.'
'I'd love to see it.'
'You'll need a guide. The path is in disrepair. And you'd need to pick a nice calm day at low tide.'
'All sounds a bit treacherous, Paula.'
'I thought you were looking for somewhere for a body.'
'I am. But it's no good if I can't pay the place a visit. There's the matter of authenticity. I have to make sure I have my facts right.'
A thoughtful look appears in her face. 'You're after somewhere remote, right?'
'Yes, yes, remote.'
'There's a near abandoned fishing village west of Tinajo that might interest you. Tenesar it's called.'
'Sounds perfect!'
In a sudden about turn she says, 'On second thoughts, you mustn't go there. Celestino says it's more or less off limits to tourists. The locals don't want us there.'
Exasperation rises up in his chest and he has to fight to contain it. 'I'm not a tourist,' he says in a low voice. 'This is research.'
'Even so. We, I mean, us Brits, we need to give the locals some privacy. After all, we've practically taken over their whole island as it is.'
'Very well, then, Paula. Have it your way. But I'm desperate. You must know of somewhere, preferably nearby.'
'I tell you what. Go to the mareta in the valle de Temisa. That won't be all that hard to reach. It's secluded and very pretty. Might be just what you are looking for.'
'Sounds fascinating. But won't you take me, Paula? Please.'
'Richard, I'm not a tour guide and I'm too busy. But I can explain where it is and how to reach it. You'll be fine.'
She reaches into her shoulder bag and extracts a notepad and pen. Without further ado, she sketches a rough route, with an X to mark the spot. She rips the paper from her pad with a flourish.
'There,' she says and hands it to him.
He studies the spidery line wending its way to its destination.
'The Mareta,' he says slowly.
'Better than The Aljibe. But it should be La Mareta, Richard. You can't mix up your languages like that. It sounds dreadful.'
She's right. La Mareta has a good ring to it. He thanks her and walks away, already abuzz with ideas for a plot. Paula has come up trumps and he hasn't needed to part with a single Euro, not even for a coffee. She's missed an opportunity, the foolish woman. He might have been the solution to her financial ills. Still, if she wants to give herself away like that, who is he to quibble.
Wasting no time, he hurries back to the house to fetch his car. Fifteen minutes later he's in Famara. Heading for the cliff, he drives around the back of a swathe of bizarre-looking semi-circular holiday lets and, ignoring the rollers breaking along the beach, he follows a low track until it peters out. He leaves his car and continues on foot. It's an inhospitable place, the terrain rocky scrub. The path narrows but is at least in reasonable shape and he feels assured he's agile enough to cope with it. Only, the cliff becomes steeper the further he goes, until he feels it towering above him. And the ocean below churns like a washing machine. He hasn't made it that much further when the wind suddenly picks up. Still, he presses on, the path deteriorating with every step. He thinks he sees the swimming pool up ahead but whatever it is soon disappears from view. He begins to feel dreadfully exposed.
He reaches the landslide Paula mentioned, and is pondering if he dares edge across it when the wind gusts and a king wave pounds the rocks below him, covering him in spray. A rush of blind panic washes through him and he all but loses his nerve. He only just manages to turn back around without losing his footing and slipping to a certain death.
He regains his compo
sure and his resolve on his return to civilisation. After a late and leisurely lunch in Teguise and an examination of Paula's mud map, he drives back to Haría, taking the Tabayesco turn off after the switchbacks, and pulls over at the last ravine where some effort has been made to create a parking area.
He surveys the terrain and although rugged, it's more favourable than anywhere he's recently been. He clambers up what amounts to a goat track and finds the mareta without too much difficulty. But once he's there, it starts to rain. He can scarcely believe his luck. He stands there getting wet, convinced it's only raining in that bit of the valley; he can see the eastern coastline lit by glorious sunshine. It's only a light shower, not much more than drizzle, but it's enough to soak right through the thin shirt he has on. Still, he will prevail. He goes to the edge of the mareta, not much bigger than a swimming pool, and pictures a body floating in the murky water. Face down, as readers of cosy mysteries don't like blood and gore, and he's had to forego his venture into another work of crime after conceding to himself that his knowledge of police procedures on the island is non-existent.
The mareta has been cut into the hillside. Water trickles in from a small pipe emerging out of a hunk of rock. He notices in the far corner a pair of iron gates leading into a tunnel. The gates are open. Keen to escape the rain he walks over and ventures inside.
The ground is damp and rock strewn, the roof little more than head height. It takes a few moments to adjust to the gloom. He wishes he had a torch. He has it in mind to hover at the entrance but a pertinacious wind carries in the rain. Careful where he treads he backs in further. Three steps and he feels something soft against his ankle. He looks down. It's a hat. A woman's hat, wide-brimmed. He reaches down and picks it up. And there, slumped on the ground not a metre from where he stands, he makes out the figure of a woman, seated with her legs straight out in front. It's an odd posture. He's about to say hello when he sees that her head is hanging forwards.
The realisation that she's dead makes him sway. He drops the hat and steadies himself against the wall and inches away. For all the crime novels he's written, he's never seen a dead body. He isn't even curious to take a closer look. Instead, he rushes back outside to the mareta.
Panic slowly gives way to curiosity. There was no blood, none that he could see. It's unlikely she was murdered in situ. More likely the body was dumped. He squints into the mizzle, surveying the bluffs and gullies above. It's too rugged to drag a body, there would be nothing left of it by the time it got here, although someone could have rolled it down from the road at the top. It's a long way though, and completely visible. Which means someone parked down on the Tabayesco road and hauled it up the gully. Whoever it was would have to be strong. And determined. A man. A scoundrel. Maybe he had an accomplice.
And who is this villain? A local perhaps? A tourist? An expat. Someone with an axe to grind. About what and with whom? His wife? A lover? That all sounds sordid. His secretary then. And the victim could be a holidaymaker interfering in his business. Someone who has discovered a secret. Was it an opportunistic murder? An act of impulse? Or an accident, and the culprit was forced to cover it up? A plot begins to manifest. He feels the buzz of characters forming in his imagination.
The weather clears on his descent and he's feeling somewhat assured that he can make the story work when he trips on a rock and loses his footing. Toppling backwards he lands on a bit of soft ground just inches from a jagged boulder.
It takes a few moments to recover from the shock. He picks himself up and scrambles down to his car, wet and sore and convinced he'll be crippled for weeks.
He not only lost his footing, he's lost all affection for his new plot. He should have gone to that abandoned village Paula mentioned. Off limits, she said. Off limits? Since when is anywhere on Lanzarote off limits? Then again, he isn't in the mood for a repeat of his recent experiences. A complete revision of his ideas is called for. He'll have to come up with an altogether different sort of plot.
Arrecife
I watch Richard head up the plaza and disappear before making my way over to Pedro's café. La Cacharra is alive with patrons; remarkable for a Thursday morning, and almost all the outdoor seating is taken. I spot a free table set to one side of the café entrance, nestling beneath the boughs of a laurel tree, deeply in the shade.
I sit with my back to the restaurant wall and remove my sunglasses, grateful for the solitude. Richard is a draining companion at the best of times but when he's endeavouring to contrive a plot, he's insufferable. At least I managed to provide him with a modicum of inspiration. It continues to amaze me that he knows so little about Lanzarote.
The bustle of the café, the familiarity, the oasis of the plaza with its exotic laurels and eucalypts, there is nowhere on the island to match it. Yaiza speaks to me of a civic pride born of new wealth, Teguise of the wealth accumulated by the Spanish colonists and honourable Lanzaroteños largely through trade with the Americas. In Haría, the ancient capital, I sense a different sort of wealth, that of a relative abundance of water and tillable land. I heard the valley referred to recently as the bohemian north, in reference to the artists and market traders and alternative types living up on this little plateau, drawn by the seclusion, and the softer, greener, though no less dramatic views. Looking around it's a fair assessment.
I catch Antonio's eye as he goes by laden with dirty plates, and he acknowledges me with a quick smile.
It's good to see La Cacharra thriving. There are places on the island that speak not of wealth but of its opposite, poverty, and of the struggle and the hardship that comes with it: suburbs in the hinterland of Arrecife where the housing is cheap and the facilities poor; where unemployment and crime are, for the island, high; where locals, paid a pittance in the tourism industry, struggle to make ends meet; where the bank foreclosure signs speak of a deep resentment fomenting out of sight of the promenades, for it's always a local forced into financial ruin, forced to watch as their home is sold off for cheap to a foreigner.
It hasn't taken four years of living on the island to ascertain the demographics, the inequalities, and the entrenched, systematic, taken for granted corruption that affects the daily lives of every resident in large and small ways. 'Corruption always makes the poor poorer while enriching the rich'. And Celestino is beside me again, with his tape-loop diatribe on the evils of the powerful cartel dictating the island's affairs. But when it comes to corruption, nowhere, and no one, is immune.
Something about the barren landscape seems to make everything stark, as if any impurity will inevitably be flagrantly exposed. This condition isn't merely figurative, it's born out in hard fact, visible to the naked eye. The ruin of an ancient dwelling disappears and appearing in its stead is a large white abode replete with extensive concrete patios. Or a restaurant. Or a swimming pool. Even after the sweeping raids and protracted court cases and the near loss of Lanzarote's biosphere status, illegal constructions are springing up as though from nowhere. Business as usual and nobody bats an eyelid. Except for Celestino and others like him in the so-called bohemian north, those few prepared to take the risk and speak out.
Antonio approaches with my usual espresso.
'¿Algo más?'
I shake my head. Angela cooked a large breakfast; to set me up for a big day, she said. I'm grateful. It was hard to get through but I feel better on a full stomach.
'Celestino?'
I shake my head again, this time despondently. Thursday means four more days until the commission winner will be announced and five days since Celestino disappeared. Five days? I've begun to doubt I'll ever see him again.
As Antonio walks away, a man pushes past behind him and I catch a waft of his scent. Aftershave, presumably, and it's potent, the sort that lingers. Probably expensive. I look after the man with interest; try to recognise in the corpulent figure turning the corner by the bank anyone I know.
My gaze settles on the diners eating late breakfasts and early lunches. I let the hub
bub of talk and laughter wash over me like a benevolent wave, and as I stop listening and the wave recedes, I'm flotsam on an empty beach and I feel suddenly set apart. I sip my espresso. It's hot and bitter and suits my mood as the full weight of my problems bears down on me.
I feel guilty, guilty for being here, guilty with no excuses, not even motherhood. I try to tell myself I'm hardly responsible for the corruption but it's no use. Like so many others, I came to the island to escape my humdrum life and Britain's dismal weather. I thought I was moving to paradise. Instead I've encountered hardship and strain, tempered only by the landscape that never fails to exhilarate, and my love for my child and my man.
I don't consider myself a typical British migrant. Is there such a thing? Yet my presence on the island is in some fundamental way the cause of all the overdevelopment. For without tourism, without home-in-the-sun migration, the goings on wouldn't occur. Or would they? Corrupt men and women don't manifest from nowhere. They form a percentage of every population the world over. Worse, others far more powerful than those at the local level, cruise about the planet like great white sharks on the lookout for the next killing field, lured too by tax-haven benefits, and by nations with weak, insubstantial laws and ineffectual governments. After what I've read on Celestino's website, Lanzarote seems well suited. It's this binding of local with international, this twinning of dark power, that those like Celestino find so difficult to arrest. Perhaps that's why I haven't wanted to engage. It's always seemed too hard and too dangerous. And the corruption too ingrained.
Perhaps Lanzarote's story has always been one of tenacious survival, and over recent decades good ambassadors have sought to preserve, and then to restore the island's dignity. The landscape exemplifies power, raw power, the apocalyptic power of the earth and its extraordinary capacity to transcend the devastation. It's as though these two types of extreme power, the one wantonly destructive, the other transformational and restorative, have manifested in the human population too. Then there are those who don't give a fig. I glance around. Do any of these diners care? Or haven't they bothered to pack their values in their suitcase along with their sunscreen? With my background in tourism, it hasn't taken much to realise hedonism is corruption's accomplice.
A Matter of Latitude Page 18
