I feel the strain of caring too much about this small lump of rock, and without any means of making a difference the burden of care crushes my spirit. I have no idea how Celestino keeps up the noble fight. The island seems to bring out the best and the worst in people, and Celestino is too caught up in the battle, driven by a conviction that only by naming and shaming will the corruption end. He must have gotten too close to something. Has he been disappeared as a result? Five days have gone by. Five whole days. Long enough for the police to discover a body and knock on my door. I wish I could contact them. Tell them he's missing. Inquire about that burnt out car in Mancha Blanca, but I daren't.
All I can do is keep searching for answers. And hope those answers lead to my husband.
I down the rest of my espresso, leave a Euro by my cup and wave a thank you to Antonio coming out of the café carrying a large platter of tapas. I make it down to the other end of the plaza before I have to don my sunglasses.
Opening the mill house door, I have an inkling something has changed, although there's no evidence of anything different in the vestibule other than a hint of scent hanging in the air. It isn't the same as the one worn by that corpulent man pushing by Antonio at La Cacharra. I'm sure of it. This scent is muskier. Whoever has been here before has come back. Perhaps he's still here. Or she? On Tuesday, when I searched the building I didn't expect to find a body. This time, with a curdling feeling in my belly, I do. My reaction seems inexplicable, save for the influence of Richard and his crime writing. But fear, once lodged, is hard to shake. I take a deep breath as I go inside.
I can see without entering that the studio is unoccupied. There's no light filtering under the door and the windows are always left shuttered. Unless someone is there in the dark. I'm about to go in when impulse takes me and I decide to search the building again first. Establish that it, too, is empty.
On my way through the patio I pick a chunk of rock out of the rubble piled in its centre. It's a precaution, nothing more. I hesitate. Would it be better to search the upstairs first, or head through to the back? Someone could creep up behind me wherever I go. I choose the stairs, picking my way over the cracked and broken treads, steadying my ascent using the wall, avoiding holding the banister rail.
On the landing I picture myself, a light-framed woman in her late thirties dressed in a skirt and blouse, carrying a rock in her hand for self-defence. I feel ridiculous. Whatever would I do with it should the occasion arise? With sudden resolve, I march into each room in turn. Finding them in an identical state as before—nothing moved, nothing disturbed—I head back downstairs.
At the last tread, it occurs to me that the mill house must have an aljibe. Every dwelling in Haría has an aljibe. I berate myself for not thinking of it before. Richard, in his inimitable and unwitting way, has been flagging aljibes for days. So much for being a sleuth. I can't even see what is right in front of me. Dropping the rock in the rubble on my way by, I cross the patio and quickly inspect the other two rooms—both empty, windowless shells—no evidence anywhere of Celestino, or even that the building was once a mill. Then I make for the back door. It's bolted on the inside. I draw across the bolt and the door swings open. I enter a walled yard. Beyond a concreted area, weeds grow in the picón. Scanning the ground, I head around the side of the building towards a pair of high gates. There, half-buried by the picón, I find the access port to the aljibe: a heavy-looking concrete rectangle.
I kneel down and brush away the dirt and the grit, revealing a rolled metal handle. I grip the handle, testing the weight. The lid won't budge. Determined, I stand and bend and pull, bracing my back. It won't give. I straighten and decide not to risk another attempt. What am I expecting to find? —A body face down in the water as if Richard's plot has spilled into real life? My mind is playing games with me. Real detectives follow clues, not impulses. And it's transparent from the dirt and the grit lodged in the cracks that the lid hasn't been opened in years.
I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or relieved. Finding Celestino's body floating in an aljibe would not have been pleasant. Yet it would have provided closure, and heading back inside I confront anew my harried state of mind. I realise with a shock of concern that I've become accustomed to it; I've been feeling anxious for almost a week, long enough for the greater part of me to accommodate it as the new normal.
The scent still lingers in the vestibule. At least, I think it does. Or is it only in my imagination? I try the door opposite the studio and find it locked, confirming my suspicion that someone has visited the mill in the last two days. But that someone could have been Fernando. Maybe he gained access to that room. Found a key somewhere. Taken to wearing aftershave. Anything is possible.
Not knowing what I expect to find, I open the studio door and flick on the light. All appears to be the same. I stand in the doorway, an upwelling of sadness gripping my throat. His sketches, his paints, his brushes, his rags, the whole of him in this one room. Tears prickle and I'm about to leave when I see that his new artwork, previously on the easel, is leaning against the bench. There's another painting on the easel in its stead. The easel is angled away from me so I go over.
I'm staring into the face of the mayor of Yaiza. At least I presume it's him. Bentor Benicod, standing in regal pose before an antique desk. There are flags in the background, propped beside a large window with latticed panes. Benicod has a forthright face, with hard eyes and a prominent jaw; the smile he wears speaks of a smug, patronising manner, of a man with a strong sense of entitlement. The artist has evidently captured him well.
On the floor beside the easel, not visible from the door, two more paintings are leaning against the bench. I haven't seen either of them before and they do not appear to be Celestino's handiwork. One is a lively if tacky expressionist rendering of a restaurant scene. I picture it in Redoto's restaurant. The other is puzzling. That there's a third painting implies another switch. The work is minimalist, a strangely conceptual depiction of a piece of traditional pottery. It is notably distinct from the other two works and I try to imagine where such a painting might be found. Someone with money and a love of modern fine art? Could be anyone. I can only assume that one of Celestino's works is hanging in its place.
A rush of incredulity replaces the trepidation I felt upon entering the mill house. It's impossible to take the matter seriously. Unless he put the works there himself, Celestino is being set up. And if that's the case, and I'm fairly sure it is, then the methods are crude, childish, silly. More a schoolyard prank than anything sinister. Were it not for the fact that Celestino has disappeared I might have laughed.
I have to track down Fernando. If he's behind all this, then maybe he's playing some sort of practical joke. Although Fernando is as dour a man as they come. And what would he hope to gain from it? What would anyone be hoping to gain out of this except to make Celestino out to be an art thief? And a hapless one at that.
Unless Celestino really is setting himself up to be a Banksy-style provocateur and has staged the whole thing. I wouldn't put it past him. Only, if that were true, then he is implicating himself, not to the world at large, but to me. For it suddenly occurs to me that whoever put those paintings in his studio meant for me to see them. Perhaps Celestino is trying to tell me something. If he is, the way he's going about it can only be regarded cruel.
Hungry for clarity, I flick off the light and close the studio door.
Cursing myself for leaving the car at home, I put on my sunglasses and make my way back through the village streets as fast as I dare. I want to run, but I don't want the attention that would attract. I walk, trotting along every now and then when there is no one about and I won't be seen.
Back in my kitchen I toss the sunglasses on the table and retrieve from my shoulder bag the list of art galleries with contact numbers that Bill helped me compile the night before. Ignoring the flash of the answer phone light I pick up the handset and make to call the first number. I stop after three digits to play the message. I
t's only Kathy, asking for an update. With a twinge of disappointment, I press the delete button and return to the first number. My call goes straight to message bank. I hang up. The second number gets me through to a woman who says she doesn't know any Fernando Brena. I try the third, not expecting Fernando to have landed a job at the International Museum of Contemporary Art housed in Arrecife's Castillo de San José, ostensibly the most prestigious gallery on the island. As far as I know, he doesn't have the credentials for such a place.
Seven rings and a man answers. He sounds a little breathless. When I ask to speak with a new employee, Fernando Brena, he becomes confused and says he's never heard of him. Then he tells me to wait and he goes away from the phone.
Five minutes pass before he returns, even more breathless, to tell me that yes, a man by that name has started at the gallery. He can't tell me if Fernando is working today but I quickly thank him and hang up.
I'm out the door in seconds.
The wind blusters from the north, buffeting the car on the rise out of the village. I ease off the accelerator, wanting to feel more in control. It isn't until I reach the sweeping bend at the escarpment that I notice the black sedan in my rear vision mirror. I wish I'd had the courage to note the licence plate when I saw it parked in the street outside the house yesterday. Am I going crazy, adding twos and coming up with odd numbers? Perhaps, but I'm convinced that driver is following me.
I turn right at the Arrieta roundabout.
So does he, but there's nothing unusual about that; most of the traffic from Haría goes south.
Keeping an eye on the rear vision mirror, I follow the road to Tahiche.
He is still behind me, too far back for me to read the licence plate.
I go through the string of roundabouts to Arrecife. He follows.
I take the ring road, heading down to the port. He does as well.
It's a common enough route. No need for alarm. But it makes no difference to the apprehension stirring in me. When I pull up in the car park outside the Castillo de San José, I'm trembling.
The black sedan drives straight by, too fast to get a glimpse of the driver.
I unbuckle my seatbelt and sit back in my seat, the sun through the windscreen hot on my skin. I wait, keeping watch, but no black sedan pulls into the car park. Relieved but still shaken, I grab my shoulder bag and leave the car.
The old fort, part of the island's defences against pirates, is located on the southern edge of Arrecife's docklands, flanked landside by a swathe of warehouses and light industry. The fort overlooks the docks across a sheltered bay. It's a strange location for an art gallery, and hard to find due to minimal signposting. Visitors coming up from the south either have to fight their way out of Arrecife's confusion of narrow streets, or take the ring road like I did, and make sure they take the right exit at the roundabout and not miss the next left turn. Either way they have to make a special trip, for there is nothing else around to bring them here. The Castillo de San Gabrielle, situated in the heart of Arrecife, would have made a much better location.
Still, enormous effort has been taken to restore the fort. The car park is fringed with rows of palm trees. Flat basalt cobbles break the uniformity of the concourse. A formal garden of raked picón, decorated with a smattering of smooth basalt stones and a few boulders, and containing nothing save a row of sedges at the edges, greets visitors on their way to the museum entrance. The fort itself, a chunky and stout building of dark grey stone, stands proud on a low promontory. Man-sized turrets guard the corners. I pick my way across a pebbled path and a small, hinged bridge, the only passage over the dry and narrow moat several metres below. An attendant confronts me before I take a step inside, pointing behind me at a shipping container converted into a kiosk. 'Billete, por favour.'
'¿Cuanto es?'
'Nueve euros.'
Nine euros. I doubt I have that amount in my purse. I explain to him in Spanish that I've come to speak with Fernando Brena. The man refuses to understand me. He remains in the doorway. I repeat my request. The man looks nonplussed. Behind him, I spot another staff member and try to draw his attention. It's no use.
'Billete, mujer.'
I ignore his addition of 'woman' to the word 'ticket', finding his tone insulting. He's a squat man with a mean face and he begins to look impatient. I tell him I don't want to visit the gallery. I just need to speak with Fernando. A queue forms behind me.
'You have to pay nine euros,' the attendant says in English. 'Over there.'
He can speak English.
'I just want to speak with Fernando.'
'He isn't here.'
'Just go and get a ticket, for crying out loud,' a woman behind me says.
'I'm not buying a ticket because I'm not here to see the paintings,' I snap.
'Then get out of the bloody way.'
Defeated, I edge to one side and make my way back through the car park.
'Daft cow,' I hear on the wind.
As I pass the shipping container the man inside beckons me over.
'Can I help you?' he says when I enter.
He's a friendlier, relaxed looking man and in the aftermath of my humiliation I warm to him immediately.
'My name is Paula Diaz. I'm here to speak to Fernando Brena. I'm a friend of his.'
He frowns. 'You can't. He isn't working this morning.'
I groan inwardly. 'When will he be here?'
'This afternoon.'
Then I'll return.
The drive north seems quicker and I'm not trailed by mysterious drivers in black sedans. It isn't until I reach the turnoff for Tabayesco that my earlier anxiety returns with a thump. A black sedan is parked in the bus bay across the road. That has to be the same car. Almost no one on the island drives a black car. It just isn't that safe to merge with the landscape so effectively.
I wait for a break in the traffic and turn up the Tabayesco road. I take it slow, keeping an eye behind me in the rear vision mirror. My mind tilts sideways as the sedan pulls out of the bus bay, makes a U turn and enters the road behind me.
I resist the impulse to put my foot down and maintain a steady pace. The sedan holds back. It's a short stretch to Tabayesco. As I near the hills, the houses tucked away on the low side come into view. Then the road forks. I take the lane to the right and pull over beside a field of prickly pears. The black sedan cruises on up the left fork. With some relief, I carry on, rounding the next bend. Choosing not to park directly outside the Ramírez house, I pull up in a neighbour's driveway, cursing the lack of places to hide on this empty coastal plain. I lock the car, hoping it won't be in anybody's way for a brief time. Satisfied after a good scan about that no one is watching, I head up the street and round the side of the house.
Pedro waves to me through a window and beckons me into the kitchen. He tells me Kathy has taken the girls to Pilar's for lunch.
'It's you I've come to see.'
'Again?' He looks instantly uncertain. 'Still no Celestino?'
'Not a sign,' I say, realising as I speak that isn't exactly true.
'How many days?'
'Five.'
'I'm sorry.'
It seems an odd response.
'Café?' he says, unscrewing a coffee percolator.
I grasp about in my mind for a smooth way to broach the topic. Failing, I launch straight in. 'You work closely with Celestino on his anti-corruption campaigns.'
'You know I do.'
He has his back to me, tapping out old coffee grounds. I wish I could see his face.
'Did he give you any documents relating to the illegal hotels in Yaiza?'
No answer.
'Only, there was a folder among his things. A brand-new folder. I don't normally snoop through his private papers, but under the circumstances…'
'I understand.'
It's all he says.
He fills the bottom half of the percolator with water, sits the perforated basket inside and loads it with fresh coffee, taking his time tam
ping down the grains with his fingers before screwing on the top.
'The thing is,' I say, hoping he'll turn around, 'the folder doesn't contain much. Just a couple of press cuttings.'
'Maybe that's all he had.'
He lights the stove. The percolator sizzles, briefly.
'It did contain more, judging by its creases.'
'He said nothing about it to me.'
I don't press him. I have no idea whether to believe him. I'm not sure it even matters. All the material I translated into English to post on Celestino's website came from press cuttings. He has other information, official documents and letters and transcripts of text messages, but he never lets me see any of that and he never tells me where it all comes from. The source suddenly seems vital.
At last Pedro turns around. I study his face, the rugged pallor, the dominant brow beneath receding hair, the wide cheekbones, and cool reflective eyes. He remains standing, leaning back against the kitchen bench.
'Where do you get all your information for your campaigns?'
He stares down at the floor.
'It depends. Sometimes through freedom of information.'
'But you must know people with inside knowledge? Whistle-blowers?'
He shrugs. 'Like I said, it depends.'
'Pedro, please. He's been missing five days.'
Something seems to have occurred to him and he begins to look worried. The percolator gurgles. He waits a few seconds before turning off the gas. I say no more while he pours the coffee into cups.
A Matter of Latitude Page 19
