The Dark Place: A historical suspense thriller set in the murky world of fugitive war criminals, vengeful Nazi hunters and spies

by Damian Vargas

  ‘How about over here?’ a waiter suggested to a newly arrived patron and his female companion, while gesturing towards a table close to Garcia’s.

  ‘No, no, it’s okay. Let’s sit inside,’ the man replied stiffly, already turning back and directing his female acquaintance into the dark interior.

  Garcia pretended to ignore the exchange, lifted the small porcelain cup to his lips and gazed at the rows of blood-red poinsettias; the plants in their black ceramic pots being used to denote the tavern’s informal boundaries with the neighbouring cafe. He had long been accustomed to the reactions of others to his presence. It was not one he had ever sought to cultivate, nor was it something which he took satisfaction from. Quite the opposite. What right-thinking person would want to inspire such explicit avoidance in other human beings? Except sociopaths, perhaps? Nevertheless, he had long come to accept it. A consequence of his vocation and for past events.

  There had been a time when he had been somewhat more sociably acceptable. Back when his wife had been alive. How did she call it? ‘Integrated in the community’? That was it. He smiled at the thought of her regular scoldings for his long hours spent at the police station.

  ‘If you are not careful, you might suddenly find I am no longer around,’ she had told him. She had said that with a teasing glint in her eye, her tone playful.

  How he wished he had heeded those words.

  A Mercedes saloon crawled past, its engine purring like a resting tiger. Its silver paintwork spotless. Almost showroom-fresh, thought Garcia. A popping sound emanated from its tires as they rolled over the uneven, cobbled road surface. The passenger in the rear seat, Señor Navarro, a man in his fifties with greying blonde hair and an old duelling scar along his square jawline. He held Garcia’s stare, acknowledging the Spaniard with the faintest of nods.

  He heard his wife’s voice in his head once more. ‘How can you know the people if you do not spend time amongst them?’

  There are some people you do not want to spend time amongst.

  He reached for his cigarettes. There were only a few left, and the brand - Aguila de Oro - was difficult to come by in his neck of the woods. His pueblo. He must remember to purchase more on his way back to the police station, he told himself. The store where they kept a small stock for him would be closed the next day for the All Saints’ Day celebrations.

  His eyes drifted to the menu on the table, a single sheet of beige card. The printed words in a Gothic script. He scanned the first of the available meals.

  Schweinshaxe

  Wiener Schnitzel

  Knockwurst

  Sauerbraten.

  Pork knuckle, breaded pork cutlet, boiled sausage and roast beef stew. And, no doubt, served with accompaniments of potato pancakes, dumplings, fermented cabbage and thick, dark bread. He could not understand it. How did the town’s German residents manage to consume such heavy foods in the middle of the day? If he ate a meal like that at lunchtime, he would need a gallon of coffee to stay awake for the afternoon.

  A fly landed on his hand and began making a meal from his fresh perspiration. He sucked on the cigarette, then directed a cloud of smoke at the insect.

  ‘Shoo fly, don't bother me,’ he half-sang, half-whispered as the creature zipped away.

  Flies. Such curious creatures, he thought. They’re always around. No way to get rid of them. No matter how many sticky poison strips you hung from your walls and windows. No matter how many of the bloody things you might manage to swat. What natural purpose did they serve? Except to be spider food, of course. Creatures whose only existence was for the benefit of other, more superior creatures.

  But wasn’t that the way of all animals? Even people?

  He finished off his cigarette, ground it into the ashtray, then swallowed the last dregs of his coffee. He rose, reached into his trouser pocket to extract some coins, selected a few before placing them onto the table.

  Gracias, he said to the waiter as he walked from the building. The man nodding with but a mere hint of eye contact.

  La Mesita Blanca is a pueblo blanco - a ‘white village’. It is perched upon the north-eastern flanks of a huge, sweeping valley, its floor and lower haunches covered in dense pine forests, its upper perimeter formed by menacing, dark granite ridges in a giant horse shoe shape. It had been his place of work for more than twenty-five years since being transferred from Madrid. He’d given three decades of service, but that was coming to an end after tomorrow. Just one more day, then it would all be over. And then what? Would he feel any different as a civilian? He had no idea.

  A thought occurred to him. Could it be I had never expected to reach this point?

  As he strolled down the cobbled street, he reflected back on the advice he had been given by his mentor, Captain Velázquez, when he had first joined the police force after leaving the army in 1940. He had been handed a uniform, a revolver and a pair of handcuffs, then thrust out onto the Madrid streets; the same streets in which he had fought in bloody battles less than two years earlier. Streets that offered the likes of Garcia no smiles, no welcome, no sanctuary.

  The banners that the city’s republican defenders had hung up on every street had once declared, ‘¡No pasarán!’ - They shall not pass! But under those banners he had passed as a soldier in Franco’s nationalist army, its ranks bolstered with battle-hardened Moroccan soldiers and Legionnaires.

  He shuddered at the flashbacks in his head. Mercy had been in short supply in those times, and the fighting had been savage.

  ‘You must bend with the wind, Garcia.’ Velázquez had advised. ‘Whichever way it blows. For, if you don’t—’ The Captain had snapped a twig at that point to emphasise his sage warning.

  It had been a credo that had served him well through the decades; offer no opinions about politics, the church, economics, international affairs, or your country’s leaders. Keep your head down. Do your job. Do what you are told. Don’t ask questions. Only those who were tough of skin and tough of heart got through those difficult times.

  Those years had bred a nation of survivors, he thought. Tough people. People who did what they had to. Who got on with life, no matter what it threw at them.

  Still, “the times were a-changin”, as that American singer with the whining voice and long hair had insisted on telling the world. And Garcia’s life was about to change. He’d hand back his gun, his badge, and the olive green uniform that hung in his wardrobe surrounded by mothballs. He hadn’t worn it for several years now - the unofficial privilege of possessing a senior rank in a provincial police station.

  Perhaps then people will sit next to him in public, he wondered. Or maybe that institutionalised separation of peoples - between the law takers and the law enforcers - was one that could never be overcome?

  He eyed a man who was clinging to a rickety-looking wooden ladder, painting the outside of his house. ‘Better finish that before the rain comes, Iñaki,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ the man answered in a weary tone.

  Garcia watched as the man dipped a large brush into the pot, then slapped the white paint onto the uneven stone surface. Not too long ago, the man would have been applying the more traditional material of pulverised lime whitewash to his home. Many still did, the material adding another thick layer to the surface with each bi-annual application. Nowadays, however, you could drive to Coín to the store where they stocked all the modern emulsion paints. It was far easier to get hold of and to use. People liked ‘easy’ these days.

  The times were indeed a-changin.

  A group of four teenage boys were walking towards him. He stood aside to let them pass. They were German children who resided with their parents in their big houses at the upper end of the valley, near the old military compound. Residences that were surrounded by big walls and tall fences, and which seemed to Garcia to be more like prisons than homes.

  The kids were speaking in their mother tongue, but he managed to snatch a few lines of their conver
sation - he’d picked up some of the language during the Civil War from the Wehrmacht advisors that had assisted Franco’s rebel forces. He sniggered. There had been some kind of get together the previous night, it seemed. They were talking about a girl they all liked, making boastful predictions about which of them would get to kiss her first.

  Another foreign song came into his head. He couldn’t quite recall the lyrics - it went something like; “boys watching girls watching boys watching girls go by”, he thought.

  It was his younger colleagues’ fault, he decided, as he walked on. They were always playing British and American popular music on the radio. It wasn’t that long ago he would have had them put on a charge if they had been caught listening to foreign radio stations, but these days you could hear such songs blaring from any number of hotels and B&B’s across the Costa. Or so he’d been told. He didn’t have much cause to venture far from the pueblo.

  Not since he’d lost her. His Rosa Maria.

  ‘Inspector,’ a man shouted from across the road.

  Garcia turned to face the approaching man, Manu, who owned the local carnicero. There was no such rank of ‘Inspector’ in the Guardia Civil, but a former mayor had once likened him many years earlier to ‘Inspector Narracott’, a fictional character from an old Agatha Christie novel, and the unofficial title had stuck. Garcia had never read the book. Maybe there was also a movie? He did not know, so had no idea if the nickname was being used in an endearing way or not.

  ‘What can I do for you, Manu?’

  ‘It’s that Inglés…’

  ‘Mr Blackman?’

  ‘Him, yes. Have you seen him recently?’

  Garcia thought for a moment. ‘Not for a week or so. Why?’

  ‘He had his helper, that Swedish woman, come down and put in an order—’

  ‘Miss Johansson is Norwegian, not Swedish, Manu.’

  ‘Swedish, Norwegian… what’s the difference?’

  ‘Quite some, I would imagine. But go on. Tell me. What’s the problem?’

  ‘I’ve got five kilos of ground beef, pork chops and chicken sitting waiting for her to collect, is the problem. She was supposed to come two days ago. It’s taking up half my bloody freezer.’

  ‘Have you tried calling?’

  ‘Of course I have. What? You think I’m an idiot?’

  ‘But you got no answer?’

  ‘Which is why I’m telling you, Jesus.’

  Garcia crossed his arms, fixed the butcher with a headmasterly stare. ‘Manu. I must tell you that the “Case of the unfulfilled meat order” does not rank highly on the priorities of the Guardia Civil. If it is a problem, why don’t you drive on up to his villa and deliver the meat to him?’

  ‘She didn’t pay for delivery. And besides, I can’t. My van’s in the shop with gearbox problems.’

  Garcia closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  One more day.

  ‘Fine. If he hasn’t collected it by tomorrow, and if you really can’t get anyone else to help, I’ll send one of the boys over in the patrol car to take you. Okay?’

  The butcher considered this for a moment, then nodded. ‘Thank you. You’re a good man, Jesus.’

  ‘At least someone thinks so,’ he muttered as he turned to walk away.

  The police station was situated on a side road from the steep cobbled street that ran down the hill to the main road that then led out of town. It stood alone, fifty yards from its nearest neighbour, surrounded by a white stone wall. The sharp incline played havoc on his knees and back, and he had a hand clamped tight to his lower spine by the time he arrived through the open doors.

  The desk sergeant, Rafa Rubio, sat behind the counter, his head buried in a newspaper. He was a squat individual in his late forties, balding with bushy sideburns. His pistol hung in its holster from a hook on the wall behind him. The Inspector had repeatedly insisted that Rubio wear the gun, but the man never did as he was told. ‘I’ve told you before,’ he would argue. ‘It’s uncomfortable when I have to sit here all day.’

  Garcia was too tired to try once more. And what did it matter? After today, the desk sergeant would be someone else’s problem.

  ‘Anything for me?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said the desk sergeant without looking up.

  ‘No weapons permits to sign, or passports to check?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No missing goats? Stolen bicycles? Quarrelling shepherds?’

  Rubio peered up at him. ‘Is this what it is like when you are about to retire?’

  Garcia grinned. ‘You’ll never know, Rafa. You’re going to die in that chair, you fat sod.’

  He strolled up the corridor, passing the three empty cells and the interview room, arriving at his office. One of the young policemen waved at him from the door to the kitchenette at the end of corridor, his mouth full of food. Garcia nodded in return, then opened the door, stepped inside and switched on the light and the roof-mounted fan. He closed the door, then sat down behind his desk, his fingers massaging his back.

  Only then did he realise that he had forgotten to pick up more cigarettes.

  Joder!

  He checked the packet. There were half a dozen left. He pulled open the desk drawers in the forlorn hope that maybe he had stashed a packet away at some point. No such luck.

  No matter, he decided, as he plucked out one of the last few cigarettes. Just one more day left as ‘Inspector Garcia’. As long as the next day was as uneventful as this one, he’d survive.

  3

  All Saints’ Day

  All Saints’ Day falls each year on November 1st.

  It is also known in various places and by various peoples as ‘All Hallows' Day’, ‘Hallowmas’, the ‘Feast of All Saints’, or ‘Solemnity of All Saints’. It is a Christian solemnity to celebrate all the saints, including those who are no longer celebrated individually, either because the number of saints has become so great or because they were celebrated in groups, after suffering martyrdom collectively.

  In Mexico they call it Día de los Muertos.

  The Day of the Dead.

  4

  The call

  La Mesita Blanca, Andalusia, Spain.

  All Saints’ Day, 1970.

  2.25am

  Inspector Garcia was dreaming that he was serenading a pretty young brunette in a bar in Malaga. A shrill ring from the grey Bakelite telephone at the side of his bed jerked him into consciousness.

  ‘Hijo de mil putas,’ he cursed, his hand searching for the pull switch for the bedroom lamp. The light stabbed at his eyes as he reached for his glasses and glanced at the clock on the wall opposite. ‘Two twenty-five…what the fuck?’ He reached for the receiver and pulled it towards his ear. Whoever it was, they’d better have a damned good reason for waking him at this ungodly hour or—

  ‘Garcia?’

  The Inspector instantly recognised the concerned voice, Filipe de Burgos, the commissioner general of police in Andalusia. ‘Yes, sir,’ Garcia responded, sitting bolt upright.

  ‘What kind of shit show are you running down there?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

  ‘I’ve just has a call from someone who lives in your village. A Mr Navarro. Do you know him?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He’s a… prominent member of our local community.’

  ‘Well, this Navarro thinks someone has taken his son.’

  An icy wave enveloped Garcia. He thrust his legs out from under the bedding and sat up. ‘I’m sorry, did you say Conrad Navarro has been abducted?’

  ‘That’s what it sounded like. I struggled to understand him, to be honest. It was a bad line, and he has a strange accent.’

  ‘Mr Navarro hails from Germany originally, sir,’ said Garcia.

  ‘Ah, that explains it. Navarro and his wife are in Granada for a few days. They left the boy alone at their house. He said he’d received a call from one of his employees an hour ago. A South African chap called Stangle.’

  ‘Pete
r Stangle,’ said Garcia. ‘I know of this man.’

  ‘Apparently, this Stangle fellow went to check on the boy and found the house empty. He’s out looking for him now. Personally, I think the boy’s probably around some tart’s house having a bit of fun. He’s fifteen, for Christ’s sake. My boy’s the same age. Horny as a hound on heat, he is. But this Navarro…’.

  ‘Yes sir?’

  ‘He seems awfully connected, if you know what I mean?’

  ‘I do, sir. Yes.’

  ‘Friends in high places and all that. He practically threatened me. So take it seriously, you hear me?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘And another thing, Garcia.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘He mentioned another man. An Englishman.’

  Garcia stared at the telephone receiver, a pain building in his chest and a cold sweat emerging from his forehead. ‘An Englishman?’

  ‘Yes. By the name of… Blackman, I think he said. You know this man also?’

  ‘Harry Blackman, yes sir. He bought a house in the village earlier this year’. Garcia’s synapses were firing into life like lightening, accessing memories of events, meetings, locations and conversations. He had an immediate and almost disabling sense of foreboding.

  ‘Navarro is convinced this Blackman is involved.’

  Garcia stared at the phone.

  Not this day. Of all days, not this one.

  ‘I’ve got the Boss and half the fucking government here in Sevilla next week,’ the Commissioner General continued. ‘If this escalates, they will crucify me.’

  ‘I’ll find out what’s happening.’

  ‘Yes, you will. And if it turns out something has gone on…well, you know how this works. You’ll need to pin the blame on somebody, and you’ll need to do it fucking quickly.’

  ‘Sir, maybe it would be better if you put Detective Hildago on this? This is actually my last day on the force and—’