All that Glitters

by Les Cowan

  “We’re surely not going to leave Santiago without looking at the cathedral?” she asked, aghast. “The Camino is the most famous pilgrim route in Europe – and the oldest – and the cathedral is where they all heading for. We can’t miss it.” So it turned out the first thing they were looking for once they collected the hire car was a car park.

  As soon as Gillian set foot on the cathedral plaza, she realized how unprepared she was for what lay in front of her. The builders and sculptors seemed to have set themselves the challenge of not leaving any stone undecorated. Instead of a simple set of steps leading up to the entrance portico there was an elaborate twin flight of steps, each doubling back on itself, all inside a framework of ornate metalwork and railings on its way to the top and the incredible entrance arch. Then inside, the supposed relics of St James set in yet more ornate architecture and stonework, all beneath a soaring vaulted ceiling and a panoply of angels and demons. Not content with one architectural gem, the other side of the square had felt the need to set up in competition and claimed the oldest continuously functioning hotel in the world in the Hostal dos Reis Católicos. In fact, in every direction the whole city centre seemed to be like a sprawling outdoor museum or a history of Catholic piety and veneration in stone. And the throng of pilgrims lent a new meaning to the term “Catholic Mass”. The sheer number was impressive, but the most surprising thing was how unlike typical visitors to Spain they looked. Instead of standard beach and bar wear of T-shirts and shorts, the pilgrims looked as if they were just out of boot camp and were about to feature in an episode of Ray Mears’ Extreme Survival. Each one seemed to have their backpack, sturdy walking boots, wooden walking sticks or hi-tec aluminium poles, North Face jackets, and Aussie head gear. Gillian found the cathedral impressive but the pilgrims even more so.

  “There must be more than 500 of them in the square and the cathedral,” she mused, “times 800 kilometres each. That’s a lot of walking. I hadn’t realized that piety was so popular.”

  “Not everyone does it for religious reasons, though,” David remarked. “In fact, it’s probably the minority. It’s just a different sort of holiday for some – a rite of passage, self-discovery, open yourself to the infinite, meet interesting people, connect with history, and a heap more. But you’re right, it’s an interesting phenomenon. Even though I wouldn’t say it’s particularly religious for most, you’d have to admit there’s a spiritual component. They’re looking for something, even though most of them might not be that interested in organized religion.”

  “I think it’s more than interesting,” Gillian said, pulling out her iPhone and taking shot after shot, mainly of the people with the stone as a backdrop rather than the other way around. “This is the exact antithesis of those who think that science has the answers to everything, and anything you can’t prove and measure is meaningless.”

  “Wasn’t there was some Nobel physicist who said that science answers all the boring questions very well but doesn’t even attempt to answer the interesting ones? That’s to say, it does the whats and how manys but doesn’t even look at the whys. So maybe a lot of these folk are a bit like Sandy Benedetti, trying to make sense of it all, just not entirely sure where to look, so they give this a shot. I’m sure there are revelations on the way – that they go home enriched and fulfilled.”

  “As well as those who go back to the office still searching.”

  “I can cope with that. The only thing that frustrates me is not searching – not even thinking these are important questions, just taking things at face value and not looking any deeper.”

  “Ros.”

  “Sorry?”

  “My sister, Ros. You’ve just described her to a tee.”

  They spent another hour or so wandering around, did the short version of the tour, tried to ignore a certain amount of inevitable tackiness (Your Cathedral need you become a friend €25), then were on their way to find a bar when David noticed the time and thought they’d better get a move on.

  “Still a couple of hours’ driving to go,” he said. “I’d like your first view of Ribadeo to be in the daylight.”

  They tracked down the car again and finally made it out of town. Having only seen Madrid and the south, Gillian was surprised how green and growing everything was: green fields, woodland, dairy cattle, hills and valleys, instead of baked-dry plains and the remains of bleached-white scrubby grass around the feet of ancient gnarled olive trees.

  “It’s actually quite a lot like Scotland,” David commented. “The rainfall in Galicia isn’t too different from the Highlands; it’s just that it tends to fall on fewer days. At this time of year you get a torrential downpour, then ten days of sun, instead of overcast and drizzle nine days out of ten.”

  “And warmer,” Gillian added.

  “Yes – which does make a big difference. My granny used to consider it profligate if she had to turn on the heating before Christmas.”

  There were a couple of ways David could have gone but he favoured the short route and headed straight for Baamonde, then Vilalba, before hitting the coast at Foz and following their nose along the A8. Gillian was glad she wasn’t driving so she could gaze out of the window at rolling hills and plummeting valleys as the road took them up into the clouds over spectacular bridges and viaducts.

  “Switzerland,” she said as they passed the cathedral town of Mondoñedo far below. “It’s exactly like Switzerland without the snow.”

  “You should visit País Vasco,” David replied. “That’s even more so. I think they own the copyright on mountain scenery and the Swiss have to pay an annual licence fee.”

  Half an hour later they were at the sea.

  “The Bay of Biscay,” David said, pointing. “Or the Mar Cantábrico. Take your pick.”

  “All depending on whether you’re looking south or north I suppose,” Gillian added.

  “Exactly. Like Frances Drake. He’s a hero to Brits but to the Spanish he’s La pirata Drake. It all depends on your perspective.”

  “Or like DI Thompson?”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, I suppose from his perspective he was being cautious and not multiplying hypotheses. From our point of view he simply refused to see what was staring him in the face.”

  “You mean the suicide that wasn’t one?”

  “Exactly. I was beginning to think he was being deliberately obtuse.”

  “Which reminds me – I never asked what you were meaning in that dramatic exit speech at the case conference. Were you just suggesting that the police computers had been hacked – which we know – or that someone was deliberately leaking information?”

  “Leaking information and obstructing the investigation.”

  “Really. Is that what you think?”

  “I’ve no idea. I think I was only meaning the computers. But Charlie Thompson did take a lot of convincing to consider Mike’s death in another way. The guys that shot through your window could just have been waiting on the off chance; they could have seen something on a computer report or they could have been tipped off.”

  “Depending on your perspective.”

  “Indeed. You know you should publish something on ‘The Power of Perspective’. It could enter the language like ‘The Tipping Point’ or ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’.

  They drove on a few more kilometres in quietness, then David indicated, pulled off the motorway, and drove through a series of roundabouts and links that seemed to loop around the town coming in from the inland side.

  “Look,” Gillian pointed. “Parador Hotel. Pity the university doesn’t see how important it is for staff to get the best accommodation and service.”

  “Well, it must be the best because this is where Franco came for his summer holidays. Stayed in the Parador and went fishing when he wasn’t signing death warrants.”

  “Nice. Maybe I’m glad we’re going somewhere else.”

  The car they had hired had GPS but David had turned it off as soon as they were out of Sa
ntiago. Now he held up the address on a document Becky had given them in one hand and navigated deftly with the other. Before long he pulled up in front of a tall, narrow-looking section of a four-storey block.

  “Aparthotel O Retorno,” he announced. “¡Bienvenida Señorita!”

  Spade drummed his fingers on the desk and looked balefully at the document in front of him – a contract to provide investigative and analytical services for Police Scotland. Talk about sleeping with the enemy. Police Scotland, and England, and USA, and everywhere else were exactly who he spent his normal working life avoiding. It wasn’t that his business was supporting criminals doing criminal-type things and trying to hide it from proper law enforcement; it was just that how he found out what his clients wanted to know often did involve looking under rocks the government said were out of bounds. So, if Bad Guys A keep a bunch of secrets under Rock X, they may be, strictly speaking, within their rights to say, “That rock belongs to me and anything underneath it is private.” On the other hand, if what they kept under it was going to crawl out in due course and damage or destroy fairly decent start-up IT Company B, then maybe it was morally reasonable to give start-up blokes some help into poking around and turning over some rocks now, rather than later once the damage has been done – legally wrong but morally right. Not that different, in fact, from Bernstein and Woodward chatting on the phone with W. Mark Felt, then known as Deep Throat, in a search to uncover what Nixon’s aides were up to that night in the Watergate Hotel. The leaking of insider information was just as illegal then, and the powers that used to be at the White House would have cut off Felt’s balls without hesitation had they been sure of his identity; the fact that he took a risk and that the Washington Post was willing to publish it brought down Nixon and proved a turning point in investigative journalism. Spade knew he wasn’t as photogenic as either young reporter, but he liked to think he was in much the same business. In any case, an increasing proportion of his work seemed to be for corporations frightened of being hacked and losing valuable data who were willing to pay a friendly hacker big bucks to find all possible weaknesses and points of entry and stop them up. So that wasn’t only morally right; it was actually legally ok too. But it was still a different matter from a deal with the guys who would probably prefer that he didn’t exist at all.

  He was worried: to sign or not to sign – that was the question. The zombies the police employed as so-called IT investigators hadn’t even been able to understand the printout he’d given David Hidalgo, never mind catch the ball and run with it, so they had come back to him. In fact, they had even wanted him to attend a friggin’ case conference like some sort of technical office boy. He had told them they could stick that invitation where the sun don’t shine. But now he had a dilemma. He had had to relinquish as evidence the little red USB stick David Hidalgo and Gillian Lockhart had brought him, but its contents still troubled him. There was a lot that was troubling about this whole affair. Spade was used to fiddling around in anonymous servers kept in racks in warehouses in Cupertino or Shanghai. He was not used to people getting murdered a couple of miles away and nasty blokes keeping houses full of young women prisoner for fun and profit. The police were asking for his help in putting a stop to it and getting the bad guys – not a bad aim in itself, but once you started talking to the enforcers there was no telling where it might stop. Would they cotton on to some of the other things he did for a living and want to do a little enforcing in relation to that as well? The contract would probably be quite remunerative but frankly his needs were few and the safe under the desk was stuffed with fifties so what would he be gaining? Nevertheless, the idea of locking up those responsible and helping the girls get out and either go back home or try to stay and live a normal life in Edinburgh did appeal. David had contacted him after the case conference to let him know what was going on and that seemed to be the agenda. PGC were the bad guys and some pair called Blatov and Lubchenco certainly deserved to have their balls cut off. What to do, what to do? The aim was good but he wanted nothing to do with the authorities who needed his help to fire the gun.

  He flicked to iTunes to find something to calm his thoughts and provide some inspiration. He’d heard that some people would open their favourite book – be it the Bible or Shakespeare – and take whatever advice it gave as mystic guidance. iTunes served that purpose for Spade. What would he get today? Elvis Costello – interesting. And of Elvis’s output shuffle had chosen Spade’s favourite – his debut on Stiff Records, My Aim is True. Oddly appropriate. “Welcome to the Working Week” simply reminded him to get on with things and not delay. Not really much of a help. Thanks Elvis. I already know that. He knew he wasn’t a “Miracle Man” but he did own up to some “Sneaky Feelings”. If he didn’t do anything he’d no doubt end up feeling “Less Than Zero”. There was simply no point in “Waiting for the End of the World” or just standing by and “Watching the Detectives”. He clicked back to his favourite track again, “Alison”, which contained the line, “My Aim is True.” Spade had never been interested in religion other than as a backdrop to Black Sabbath records. But since David Hidalgo’s visit he had started reading, just out of curiosity. Now a saying of Jesus came to mind that seemed to sum things up very well: “Nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor secret that will not come to light.” He made up his mind. It didn’t really matter who else was aiming. Spade Enterprises was going to join in the duck shoot. Blatov and Lubchenco would wish they had never been born. But first he would have to call in a few favours from a pal in Minsk.

  Andrei didn’t get many birthday cards. He had more or less lost touch with his family these days. There was one older brother who had gone into politics and was always off being Very Important. Another had taken over the family farm once his dad had finally drunk himself to death. He only seemed to be interested in dairy yields and turnips. His mum had never recovered from years of abuse from his useless, drunken father and simply sat in the kitchen rocking back and forth, drinking tea from an ancient samovar and reading Pushkin. So who was there to send him a birthday card? In particular, who would have sent him a birthday card from Britain? He could only think of one person and found his fingers were shaking as he ripped open the envelope. It was a home-made affair with a childlike drawing of a forest and a castle on the front on rough sketchpad paper. As he opened the simply folded sheet and began to read he found he needed to sit down. Tati, Tati, my beautiful, lovely, joyful, sweet, funny Tati. What have they done to you? What have they put you through? How could anyone take such a rose and stamp it into the ground? He felt the tears pricking his eyes but he wasn’t sure if they were of compassion or rage. How dare they even touch such a holy thing, never mind what they had forced her into. Andrei’s business had been going very well, thanks to the firm foundations laid when Tati had been with him. Despite the potentially higher profits, he had steadfastly stayed away from the more powerful and addictive substances. His lines were strictly for fun. And he had even been branching out into legal and legitimate business – how weird was that? He secretly knew she would approve. It gave legitimate employment to half a dozen locals, all with their own dreams. From the moment he read what was in the card every ounce of spare energy, all his research capacity, and all the money his business was making would be devoted only to one goal: finding Tati and paying back in full for what they had taken from her. But first he had to find “David H: Pastor”. He had a hacker buddy in Minsk who might help.

  Max Blatov sat at his desk and smiled.

  “You’re getting things out of proportion, Mikhail,” he said. “It’s a setback, nothing more.”

  “How can you say that, Max?” the younger man demanded. “Getting rid of Mike Hunter was supposed to be the end, not the beginning. Now Benedetti’s talking to the police, we’ve had to move funds, the case conference named us both and linked it all back to Manchester, the church has had to close, and you call it a setback! And all because of that interfering little priest Hidalgo.”r />
  “Calm down, syabar,” Max said calmly, still smiling. “Look on the bright side. We still have access to all the computers, not to mention live contacts. There are too many high-profile customers who would go down with us. It’s not going to happen, believe me.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Mikhail insisted, stubbing out an only half-finished cigarette and lighting another. “The number of CID guys on the books is irrelevant while Hidalgo is still out there. That dumb-ass Dimitri missed a sitting target so he’s still in circulation. He’s a loose cannon. He shouldn’t be left rolling around on the deck. We need to make sure. And what happens if information gets into the wrong hands? We still don’t know what happened to the lists.”

  “Mikhail, Mikhail, you worry over many things,” Max said soothingly. “Only one thing is needful. Everything will be taken care of. Ultimately, if we have to move we will leave no trace behind.”