The Map

by T. S. Learner

  The curtain was drawn and the apartment was dark. Peering into the dim light, August could see only a stretch of the threadbare rug and the neck of the guitar lying at an awkward angle. He stepped into the room, the floorboard creaking beneath him – no one had attacked him so far. He reached out and switched on the light.

  Now he could see why the guitar had looked so strange. Someone had smashed the body open and the strings lay in a tangled mess, hanging off a curved hip of blonde wood. The chest of drawers had been pulled open and clothes lay flung around it. Posters had been ripped off the wall and pillow feathers drifted in the breeze created by the open door. There was no sign of Jimmy. Then August caught sight of something in the bed, something covered in a sheet. History and fear plummeted through his body like lead. Not Jimmy. Not after surviving so much.

  He started towards the bed, and Izarra began to follow him.

  ‘Better stay back,’ he warned her. He pulled back the sheet. The jazz musician’s ashen face was covered in white rose petals, his dead eyes now clouded over, staring up blindly, his mouth twisted in a howl.

  ‘Camarada,’ August whispered, then buckled over, his lungs, his heart, his whole body contracting in a wave of memory: the sight of Jimmy’s grinning face as the door of the Spanish prison cell he’d been locked in for three days swung open; Jimmy drunk and singing in a Madrid brothel the night before they marched to Jarama; Jimmy pulling a weeping soldier away from his dead friend moments before a grenade hit the very same spot.

  ‘Stand.’ Izarra slipped her hand under his armpits, trying to haul him up. ‘You must stand, August. Lock up your sorrow. You must. This is not what Jimmy would have wanted.’

  Pulling himself together, August straightened up, took a deep breath and, steeling himself, turned back to the corpse. He lifted a hand – the fingers were stiff and rigid. Rigor mortis had set in.

  ‘He’s been dead for over a day.’

  ‘Then why didn’t any of the neighbours find him?’

  ‘Jimmy was paranoid, a hermit. I doubt he even talked to the neighbours. Besides, they might have seen or heard something that frightened them. I should never have left, I should have stayed with him.’ August wiped tears from his face with a sleeve, walked over to the window and lifted it, letting in fresh air.

  ‘August?’ He swung back. Izarra was bent over, scanning the face. ‘This explains the rose stem.’ She pointed to a small wound, little more than a scratch, on the cheek. He joined her and crouched down to examine it. The cut bore the imprint of a thorn.

  ‘But that means he must have been killed just after I left him the night before last and whoever murdered him was able to break into my hotel room in the time I took to get back. That simply isn’t physically possible.’

  ‘It also means whoever killed Jimmy knows that you have the chronicle.’

  ‘But I walked straight back.’

  August cast his mind back to the trip between the apartment and the hotel room on that night, then he remembered escorting the young stripper back to her apartment. Had he been set up? If so, it meant that someone was tracking his every move.

  He pulled the sheet further away from the body. Jimmy was still dressed in the same clothes August had last seen him wearing. There appeared to be no visible mark or bullet hole on Jimmy’s torso or head. August pushed the shirt collar away from the neck. A thin red mark ran like a band around Jimmy’s neck. August immediately recognised the mark from his missions in occupied France with the SOE.

  ‘He’s been garrotted. It’s a favourite with the elite operatives. Just the kind of thing a company guy might choose. Quiet, efficient, no mess.’ His voice began to crack. It was harder than he thought to stay detached. ‘Stalin’s dead, buddy, just thought you should know,’ he told the corpse as he turned the collar back up.

  ‘Company guy?’

  ‘CIA, Central Intelligence Agency, the guys Tyson now works for.’

  ‘Maybe Tyson came back, maybe he was looking for the chronicle?’

  August glanced over at the front door. There were no signs of it having been damaged.

  ‘I don’t think so. No signs of forced entry. Whoever it was Jimmy trusted them enough to let them in voluntarily.’

  They were interrupted by the sound of a police siren growing louder as it turned into the street. August scanned the room. Outside the window, he could see the black iron railings of a fire escape. He grabbed Izarra’s hand and pulled her over to the window.

  ‘C’mon, we have to move.’ He hoisted the window up and Izarra climbed out onto the fire escape; in seconds he’d joined her. As she started down the steep ladder he carefully pulled shut the window behind him. Minutes later they had climbed down and out onto a back lane that led them, past rubbish bins, straight back to the busy square of the place Pigalle and comparative anonymity.

  15

  ‘Seems like it’s already getting complicated. You sure you want to come along for the ride?’ Back at the hotel room August stood at the small table, sorting the information he did have into piles. It was his way of trying to contain the overwhelming sense that, after weeks of assuming he was the hunter, he’d become the hunted. He had to regain control and the only way he could now think of was through trying to second-guess Tyson’s next step.

  ‘I’m here to avenge my sister’s murder but also do the best for my people.’ Izarra’s voice had changed: colder, more authoritarian. There was a click, one August recognised instantly. Izarra now held her Walther in her hand. Peering down the viewfinder, she was busy checking the gun.

  ‘I assume you can use that.’

  ‘I told you, La Leona trained me.’

  ‘There’s only six bullets in the clip, that kind of limits your choices,’ he tried joking, but Izarra’s face remained grim and taut. She finished cocking the gun.

  ‘Don’t panic, I’m a good shot. Tyson doesn’t know I’m with you. This gives you a big advantage. Don’t forget this.’

  ‘I won’t, and I’m sorry. I should treat you as my equal.’

  ‘I am your equal, perhaps even your better.’ She slipped the gun into a small holster hidden under her jacket.

  ‘Yet you missed me that time you were shooting at me in the forest.’ Buoyed by her professionalism, he couldn’t resist teasing her. To his amusement, Izarra blushed.

  ‘Perhaps I was shooting just to frighten you.’

  ‘Congratulations, it worked, I’m still frightened.’

  ‘Frightened or terrified? I have been told I am also good at terrifying men.’ One eyebrow shot up ironically, and to his surprise he realised she was flirting. He paused, perplexed by the mixed signals.

  They heard the screech of a car pulling up at the kerb. August moved to the window. In the street below two plain clothes men climbed out of a black Mercedes. They looked like police as they raced up the steps of the hotel.

  ‘Grab your things, we’re leaving,’ he said.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, now!’

  August bundled his notes into the satchel and grabbed the rucksack with his Rolleiflex and travel clothes still packed into it. Three minutes later they were both out in the corridor. They heard the shudder of the lift as it reached their floor. He looked down the hall – they wouldn’t have time to get to the back stairs. He pushed Izarra up against the wall and pretended he was making violent love to her. To his relief she understood the ploy immediately, wrapping her legs around him. From the corner of his eye he watched the two men exit the lift. Stopping, one of them glanced in their direction. August buried his face in Izarra’s hair, hiding his features, and the detective turned away.

  ‘Fucking rabbits. What’s wrong with a bed?’ the taller one remarked, in French, to the other.

  ‘Pierre, you need to get laid,’ the other retorted then began banging at the door of August’s room. A second later they had kicked it down. Once they were inside the room, August pulled away from Izarra and they moved swiftly towards the elevator.

  ‘The
y are probably looking for just one man alone, so we both go back to the foyer and leave as inconspicuously as possible, just another normal couple,’ he told her, as the lift descended.

  Outside, August hailed down a taxi and told the driver to take them to Gare de Lyon. As they pulled away from the kerb he stared out the back window looking for possible tails. The streetscape appeared normal – there were a few people on their way to work, two students flew past on bicycles, and a cop lingered at the corner chatting to a man smoking outside a butcher’s shop. A lorry collecting rubbish passed the taxi. A well-dressed matron with a small grey poodle on a lead crossed in front of them, the continuum of ordinary life unfurling like clockwork under the afternoon sun. Too much like clockwork, it made August nervous. The sense of being watched was palatable, but where were the watchers?

  August turned back to the cab. With a pang of regret he remembered Jimmy’s corpse, lying abandoned, probably on its way to a morgue by now. Where would they bury him? In a pauper’s grave no doubt, unless the US Embassy picked up the bill, and August had a strong feeling they would not. It seemed a tragically anonymous end to an extraordinary life, but then Jimmy himself was a staunch atheist. He would have found the anonymity of a pauper’s grave ironic. August made a mental note to return some day to pay homage.

  ‘Who were they?’ Izarra broke into his reverie. ‘Tyson’s men?’

  August’s mind flashed back to the detectives in the corridor, their well-spoken, even educated French – too educated for local detectives and they were definitely not CIA or Americans.

  ‘Probably Interpol.’

  ‘Interpol is looking for you? But Jimmy has only just been murdered.’

  ‘I think it’s related to a small mess I left back in London, but Jimmy’s death isn’t going to help. As an ex OSS operative, his death is bound to cause some heat.’

  Izarra studied him quizzically. ‘I don’t really know you, do I?’

  ‘You know enough. Besides, we just spent the night together and made wild love against a wall, who knows what the next few weeks will bring.’ This time she smiled.

  ‘Where next?’ she said.

  ‘Avignon.’

  ‘This is to do with the chronicle?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You’re so certain of it. Doesn’t it frighten you?’

  ‘No, it excites me. Izarra, I’m following my instinct, but I really believe your ancestor was on the brink of discovering something extraordinary. The question is, did he find it?’

  She studied his profile, the mark of the old wound running down one cheek, the nose that looked as if it might once have been broken.

  ‘The Falangists did that to your face, didn’t they?’

  He looked at her sharply.

  ‘I recognise the scars.’

  ‘Jimmy saved my life. I owe him, just like I owe those men who died beside me in Spain. Tyson will pay, for all of it, the massacre, your sister’s death, Jimmy’s murder.’ His words emerged more passionately than he had intended, and he noticed the cab driver watching him in the rear-view mirror.

  Sitting in the back seat, the two of them fell into an awkward silence. Just then the cab swerved around a corner and threw them together. To his chagrin he felt the same bolt of desire at the touch of her skin. He shifted away, embarrassed, as Izarra righted herself, smoothing down her hair that had flown across her face.

  ‘Jimmy van Peters was a good man,’ she said, softly.

  ‘I know, I shall miss him,’ he replied, now noticing that she never, ever apologised.

  ‘But we will finish what he began. At least he has that and maybe now he is finally with my sister.’

  ‘I wish I could believe that.’

  The two detectives searched the small room carefully. The taller one pulled the small hand towel from the towel rack with the tips of his fingers – it was damp.

  ‘He’s just been here.’

  The other, staring down at the rickety single bed, with its cheap side table and lampshade with a mended tear in the fabric, felt the pillow. The cover was still warm.

  ‘You’re right, but whoever this August Winthrop is, he is not an American with money. Look at this pigsty, not even my cleaning lady would stay in such a place.’

  ‘So he’s a murderer, not a bank robber.’

  In lieu of an answer, the detective pulled the mattress off the bed and down onto the floor, where it collapsed, sending up a little cloud of dust, causing both men to sneeze.

  Pressed against the iron grid of the bed was a bloodstained album cover. The detective held it up triumphantly. He looked at the scrawled signature on the front.

  ‘Voilà, Pierre. The guy could not resist collecting a souvenir.’

  The two men leaned over the album. Jimmy van Peters stared out from the group shot of the jazz band, half his face dyed red by the bloodstain, like an omen.

  ‘But what was his motive?’

  ‘We will leave that to our British friends.’

  ‘But both the victim and the murderer are Americans.’

  ‘Oh, the Americans are interested as well. I don’t know who Monsieur August Winthrop is, but he has a lot of people engrossed in his little escapades.’

  Olivia stared up at the shuttered farmhouse. It looked like it had been closed up for some time, but that didn’t make sense. She’d been in Irumendi for over two days and she still hadn’t discovered why August had been drawn to the place. She knew it must have something to do with Shimon Ruiz de Luna, but what exactly? The locals were under the illusion the American was a visiting professor, those who would actually talk to her, and no one seemed prepared to talk about the mysterious family he had opted to stay with, not even that idiot of a café owner. If anything, they appeared frightened, as if they were being watched. She walked thoughtfully around to the side of the house and found the barn door. She pulled it open. The barn, situated on the ground floor of the farmhouse, as was characteristic of the region, was empty, but the cow manure looked fresh and the hay had recently been raked into the feeding bins. The woman Olivia had originally encountered two days before might have suddenly gone away, but someone was tending the animals. The woman, striking and wary, had displayed a coiled violence that had put Olivia on her guard immediately and there appeared no vulnerability in her persona that might have given the Englishwoman some power over her. Yet the young Basque had lied, Olivia was convinced of it; she’d known exactly who August was. More than that she’d sheltered him in her farmhouse.

  Olivia paced thoughtfully across the old stone floor. Each step brought new knowledge of what lay beneath, and there was something uneven about the floor’s vibrations – a fault in the magnetic field. Her senses led her to a particular bale of hay sitting by itself, pushed up against one corner. She moved it away and found what she was looking for.

  The hiding hole was cool, giving off a faint smell of damp and something more musky – mice perhaps. Olivia stood in the rectangular hole and looked up at the light filtering in from the barn above. It was the shape of a coffin standing upright on its end, she decided, fighting a faint feeling of being suffocated: the remnants of a past persecution in an earlier part of her long life. But it was a space resonant with history. She placed her hands on the cold bricks then ran them across the surface. Within seconds, she’d found the loose brick. Was this it? Was the chronicle hidden inside? Battling a great wave of excitement, she steadied her hands as she carefully removed the brick and felt inside. There was nothing but a single sheet of parchment, which she held up to the light shining weakly in from above. Squinting, she read the archaic French. It didn’t surprise her – she’d known all about the missing young monk for centuries. It was one of the whispered rumours that had been carried through the generations of believers, and for good reason, Olivia had encouraged it. What was surprising was that the witnessing was reported at all – she’d never known that until now. Had they known? she wondered. The letter was a revelation but it wasn’t the chronicle. Swallow
ing her disappointment, she replaced it behind the brick, then, after checking everything was as it was before, hauled herself back up into the barn.

  At the far side she saw a ladder leading up to a door in the ceiling. It was bound to lead into the main house, Olivia noted. She could feel August Winthrop now, the echo of his presence trailing like a ribbon around the house and up the front steps. She began to climb the ladder.

  Tracing the sense of him, Olivia had woven her way through four of the main rooms: the kitchen, two bedrooms and the main sitting room. Although the house had been locked up, it felt like the occupants had just left and in a hurry. There was still an apron hanging off the back of a kitchen chair, a tap was dripping and an abandoned jacket lay on a couch. She knew August had been there but there was no physical sign of him now; the only man’s clothes she’d found were in a small back bedroom in a single chest of drawers; they obviously belonged to a young local. The house itself, although clean and sparse, was notably empty of furniture and Olivia suspected the family, once moneyed, had been forced to sell off their heirlooms.

  She’d almost given up her search when she came across a smaller study that was an adjunct to a bedroom that appeared to belong to the young woman she’d met two days before. There was a framed print of Franco on the wall that surprised Olivia, knowing the local antipathy towards the dictator. It was this photograph that had intrigued her enough to enter. The study had a low uneven wooden ceiling and a small upright leather and wood sofa along the opposite wall, beside a secretaire. Olivia walked over and ran her hands across the top of the desk and down its wooden sides, trying to fathom the personality and intention of the last person to sit at it. Eventually, she opened the cover of the secretaire. Apart from a few bills stuffed into its compartments, it appeared empty. She pulled open a top drawer and discovered an old flag neatly folded, an ikurriña, the flag of the outlawed Basque Nationalist movement. It seemed like an extraordinary contradiction to have one of these (ownership alone was enough to have one arrested in Franco’s Spain) and a print of the dictator himself hanging up in the next room. But Olivia had already gleaned that the young Basque woman who lived in the house had secrets – not all of them political.