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

by Damian Vargas

  ‘No. Hildago’s father told me he’s still recuperating from his injuries. Cycling accident, wasn’t it? In any case, the man’s an imbecile, so I’m extending your duties for another week. Do not let me down. If I catch any shit for this, Garcia, rest assured, I’ll fucking bury you in it. You understand me?’

  Garcia held the receiver in his hand, smacking it against his forehead.

  La madre que te parió!

  ‘Garcia? Do you hear me? Garcia?’

  ‘I’ll be at the station in ten minutes, sir.’

  ‘Good. And this Blackman?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘If he’s involved…’.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Like I said, somebody needs to go down for this.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Keep my office informed the moment you have anything.’

  Garcia started to answer, but the Commissioner General had already hung up. He placed the receiver down, grabbed for the packet of cigarillos. He plucked out one from the few remaining, lit it and sucked in a lungful of the sweet smoke, coughed a few times, then scrambled to find his trousers and a clean shirt.

  It was going to be a long night.

  5

  Into darkness

  Cortijo Magdalena, La Mesita Blanca.

  All Saints’ Day, 1970.

  4.02am

  Inspector Garcia peered towards the half-open steel gates of Harry Blackman’s villa as the four police officers that accompanied him crept into the driveway, their rifles at the ready.

  It was just after four o’clock in the morning. The sky was cloud-free, the air crisp. A half-moon provided just enough light for Garcia to distinguish the topography around him and his men. They had torches, but he had ordered them not to use them yet; a bright light would make an inviting target.

  ‘Now listen,’ he whispered to his men. ‘Don’t go shooting at shadows. We don’t know for sure that Blackman has got anything to do with the boy going missing. It’s probably all some misunderstanding. For all we know, the kid and his friends are camping in the forest, getting drunk with some girls.’

  ‘But nobody else has reported that their children are missing, Inspector,’ said one of the other policemen.

  ‘Just be careful, is what I’m saying. Understand?’ He searched the younger men’s eyes, waited for their acknowledgement. ‘Okay. Move in.’

  Garcia led the way, the crunching sound of the gravel under his shoes doing nothing to mitigate the tension in his chest.

  ‘Do you see anything?’ he whispered.

  One of the younger officers peered into the shifting shadows at the front of the villa. ‘The woman’s car. It’s on the drive. The door is open. I think I can see somebody moving inside.’

  He peered at the car, squinting to make out what his colleague had described. A shadow moved. Why would anyone be sitting in their car at four o’clock in the morning?

  Garcia, who in 1939 at the end of the Spanish Civil War, had made it one of his few goals in life to never be shot at again, sighed, then pulled his revolver from its holster. He took in a long breath and urged his colleagues to move forward.

  The loose stones on the driveway continued to crunch under each footstep, no matter how carefully he tried to place them. It felt to Garcia as if the eyes of the universe above were watching his every move. Waiting for him to make a mistake.

  He approached the car and signalled first to the two men to his left to follow the inside of the tall perimeter wall, then to one of the officers to his right to cut across the lawn past the rose bushes, and around the other side of the villa. He signalled at the remaining police officer, young Ramos - a kid with a good heart but the brains of a donkey - to cover him with his rifle, as the Inspector crept towards the car.

  The vehicle, a light-coloured Renault, sat at an angle next to a flower bed, its front wheel embroiled among the plants.

  He spotted movement from inside the car and raised his pistol. ‘Señor Blackman, get out of the car.’

  There was no reply from inside the Renault.

  Garcia moved nearer, planting one foot down as quietly as he could before allowing the other to lift and traverse toward the stranded vehicle.

  Pasito a pasito.

  Step by step.

  Garcia had not survived combat and the three decades after that by taking unnecessary risks, and he was not about to start now.

  He heard a creak from inside the vehicle. A shadow moved from within.

  He took another couple of slow steps to the left of the car to bring himself parallel with the open driver’s door and with whoever was sitting inside.

  ‘Inspector Garcia,’ a woman’s voice called, strained and weary.

  He recognised the voice of Liv Johansson, the Norwegian woman who worked for Harry Blackman. He holstered his weapon and strode towards the open door. He switched on his metal flashlight and angled the yellow light into the vehicle’s interior. The Norwegian’s slender frame lay crumpled in the passenger seat. Her hands were bound and tied to the steering wheel. The shoulders of her blouse were splattered with dark red. There was a cut on her forehead, and her right eye was swollen.

  ‘You are hurt?’ he said, while helping her to sit upright.

  She gasped for fresh air, shook her head. ‘It’s not that bad’.

  Garcia waved at the young police officer to come forward while cutting the string with his pen knife. ‘You have a handkerchief?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘Good. Use it to apply pressure to the wound on her head. Keep her talking. Don’t let her drift off. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  She lifted a hand, grasped his arm. Her skin appeared even paler than usual, her blonde hair matted to the side of her face, eye liner smeared. She had been crying. From the wound?

  He thought not.

  She’s a tough one, this girl.

  ‘Who did this?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t see.’ Her breathing was laboured, her eyes flitting. ‘I was looking… looking for Harry. There was a man… he had a gun.’

  Garcia held his hand to the side of her face. Her skin was cold. ‘The man with the gun. Did you recognise him?’

  She nodded. ‘I’ve seen him around town. He coaches the children up at the old compound. Teaches them boxing. And sports.’

  ‘Peter Stangle?’

  Another nod. ‘Yes. I think that’s his name.’

  ‘Is he still here? Did you see him leave?’

  She gave him a weary shake of her head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember.’

  ‘Is the boy here?’

  The Norwegian frowned. ‘The boy?’

  ‘Joseph Navarro’s son, Conrad. He is missing.’

  Johansson’s eyes narrowed. Her eyes broke away from his stare. ‘I haven’t seen him.’

  Garcia sighed. ‘His parents have reported him missing.’ Garcia watched her eyes, carefully. ‘Are you certain?’

  She touched her hand to her bruised cheek, as if grappling with fractured recollections of the previous hours. She peered back at him, gripped his hand again with more strength than before. ‘I’m sorry… I don’t remember.’

  Garcia nodded, checked that the young officer was doing as instructed, then started up the driveway again, crunching step after crunching step.

  The two men on his left flank had halted at the old brick garage that butted up against the property’s imposing perimeter wall. The garage doors were open, Blackman’s British sports car visible within, its bonnet lifted. Above, through a gap in the curtain at the small window, could be seen the flickering glow of candlelight in the converted bedsit where Garcia knew Johansson to have resided since starting in Blackman’s employment.

  He sent the two men into the bedsit to check for occupants. They returned just a minute later, one of the junior officers shaking his head, but then pointed towards the side of the villa. Garcia peered into the darkness. He made out the silhouettes of climbing plants, an open window hatch,
rectangular-sculpted bushes. And then something else on the ground. Was it a body?

  Harry Blackman’s body?

  Garcia crouched even lower, triggering tinges of sciatica in his lower back and left leg. He knew that he would regret that later in the day.

  He stepped onto the paved walkway that ran from the front of the villa to the orchard at the rear. No more noisy footsteps, at least. His heart pounded in his ears, his throat and the roof of his mouth dry with the texture of an enamelled bedpan.

  He moved forward, step by step, until he stood over whoever was laid there on the pavement at his feet. He lifted his torch, swallowing as he did so. Was it Blackman? Was it the boy?

  The face of an adult male stared back up at him, eyes blue and unmoving, his hair blonde and cropped. His neck and jawline scarred with an old burn.

  Not Blackman, not the boy.

  The dead man was Peter Stangle. He was a South African who had provided private security services to some of La Mesita Blanca’s German community. His face was frozen in shock, his mouth wide open, teeth as white as fresh milk. A pool of blood surrounded the corpse. There was a dark, gaping hole in the side of his head. Another in his chest - an exit wound by the looks of it. He had been shot from behind.

  While trying to escape?

  Stangle was a downright unpleasant individual, and Garcia held little doubt that the man had lived a life that deserved such an ending. Garcia had heard the stories. The question was, who had killed him?

  Garcia closed his eyes, massaged his forehead. Two hours ago he had been fast asleep with just twenty-four hours left as a policeman, a thirty-year career about to be behind him. Now he had a dead man on his hands, a missing kid, and no sign of the Englishman who he had been ordered to bring in for questioning.

  A gunshot, the sound whip-cracking off the house and the surrounding wall. It had come from some distance away, but Garcia dropped to the ground in a heartbeat. Such instincts never leave a man. Not one who has come under fire before, and survived.

  He scanned the surroundings, saw nothing. ‘Where did that come from?’ he hissed at the two officers cowering behind the garage.

  ‘Over there,’ replied one of the men, pointing towards the land behind the villa. ‘It looked like it was fired upwards. Into the air.’

  ‘What’s he shooting at?’ said the second officer, crouching low. ‘The fucking moon?’

  Garcia tore his gaze away from the face of the corpse next to him and pushed himself up from the ground. His jacket sleeve was soaked in the South African’s blood.

  Mierde!

  He signalled to the two officers behind the garage to follow him. The leading man was more than ten yards away, yet Garcia still heard his nervous gulp.

  All three men crept forward alongside the villa, then into the exposed space in the orchard to its rear, through orange and lemon trees, almonds and walnuts - their fallen fruits squashing under Garcia’s shoes. His lower back was becoming uncomfortable, sweat dripping down the inside of his shirt.

  He heard a muffled sound again, quite close, just past the group of mature trees and mulberry bushes to his right. A man groaning?

  ‘Inspector,’ a voice whispered from his right. It was the other officer who he had directed around the right-hand side of the property. They were four again; Garcia with his pistol, the three uniformed police officers, each pointing their rifles into the darkened shapes ahead.

  Garcia signalled silently to his men - move forward.

  His colleagues were not raw recruits, but they were young and inexperienced, nonetheless. They had never faced a situation like this before. He hoped they could control their trigger fingers - both for Blackman’s sake, and for theirs. It is difficult to carry the faces of men you have killed. You see them in your nightmares, and in the faces of strangers and neighbours. On streets. In bars. They become like clinging ghosts. Forever around you. Reminding you of the things that you wish you could forget.

  Garcia knew these things only too well.

  He pushed his way through a dense patch of shrubs that lay between him and the sounds he had heard. It was dark, too dark to make out what form of flora it was. Leaves, twigs… and fuck, brambles.

  He cut the torchlight, ignored the sharp scratches to his hands and cheeks, the warm trickle of blood down the side of his face, and pushed onward.

  The four Spaniards were converging now, getting ever closer. He could hear the nervousness in their breathing. One pistol and three rifles aimed at the origin of the unidentified groans. Garcia swallowed, trying to encourage some saliva into his bone-dry throat, fighting to control the urge to cough.

  Failing.

  He felt the glare of his men’s eyes upon him. Too late now.

  ‘Mr Blackman,’ he called. ‘Harry, is that you? It’s Captain Garcia of the Guardia Civil’. He turned his head to the right, to orient his left ear, the good one, towards the shadows ahead. Sniffing. Laboured breathing. Like a wounded animal.

  He spied a shadow moving slowly ahead of him, a man sitting. Rocking. He signalled to the three police officers to stay where they were. He would go forward alone.

  The junior officers did not need telling twice, and lowered themselves to their knees.

  What are you doing, Jesus? On this day of all days? Send one of the men. You’ve done your part for the police force. For your country. Let one of those young pups be the hero this morning.

  He shook the unwelcome thoughts away. ‘Harry, I’m putting my weapon away. I’m coming to you. Don’t do anything stupid.’

  Don’t fucking shoot me, you mad English bastard!

  Garcia edged forward. The moonlight was crowning above the craggy clifftops above. It made it even harder to discern who, or what, he was walking towards.

  ‘It’s Captain Garcia. I just want to help you.’

  He pressed again on the metal flashlight and lifted it to the horizontal. The yellow beam traversed the scene, scattering light across the uneven ground past gnarled stumps of vines and saplings tied to their bamboo supports, upon an old stone grinding wheel, some rusted iron agricultural equipment, a snaking black hose pipe, and onto the block wall to the rear of the plot of land.

  And then he saw the Englishman.

  Harry Blackman was sitting on a wooden bench facing the Inspector. At his side, Garcia spotted a small semi-automatic pistol. Behind him, a terraced hillside that rose to the height of a two-story house with a juvenile olive tree every ten paces, the moonlight glimmering through wisps of cloud above the crest of the towering, jagged, black rock face beyond.

  Garcia took slow, measured steps forward until he was less than a car's length away.

  The ground in this area had somehow become sodden. His shoes squelched in the mud and he felt his socks dampen. He could not recall it raining.

  He lifted the beam of light towards the Englishman, alert to the gun beside him that remained pointed in Garcia’s direction. Blackman sat, swaying back and forth, staring in the direction of the villa. Had he even registered the Inspector’s presence?

  ‘The dead man at your property,’ said Garcia ‘His name was Peter Stangle. He worked for Mr Navarro. He came here because he believed you have Navarro’s boy. Did you shoot him, Harry? Did you kill Stangle?’

  Blackman stopped swaying, but offered no reply.

  Garcia tried again. ‘Do you have the boy? Conrad Navarro, is he here?’

  ‘I need a doctor,’ said the Englishman. His eyes were wet, listless. He was shivering, ghostly-pale, and cradling his left arm with his right. His shoulder hung at an unnatural angle.

  ‘I’ll help you, Harry. But I need you to tell me what happened.’

  The Englishman arced his head towards Garcia, grimacing as he did so. He shivered, and his breath condensed as he spoke. ‘The things we have to do.’

  ‘What things?’ said the Inspector. ‘What have you done?’

  Garcia stared at Blackman, desperately trying to assess if the risk to him and his men. Was this som
eone who has faced demons, or who has unleashed them?

  This was a puzzle that was very much incomplete and, suspected Garcia, one that was only going to become more complicated. Nonetheless, it was he who would have to complete it - the commissioner general of police had made that perfectly clear. An innocent teenager had gone missing.

  Sensing his three colleagues squatting behind him, and picturing trembling fingers grasping ill-maintained weapons, he waved his free hand behind to make them hold their position, then looked back at Blackman. ‘Harry, do you know where the Navarro boy is?’

  The Englishman offered no response, his eyes dropping to the damp ground.

  ‘Harry. Conrad Navarro. Do you know where he is?’

  Garcia inched forward, his shoes almost submerged in the muddy puddles, praying that the Englishman would not reach for the pistol.

  ‘Harry?’

  6

  Lessons

  Peterborough, England.

  Spring, 1928.

  It took Arthur Blackman more than an hour to walk from where he worked at the Fletton brick works in Peterborough back to the small, terraced cottage where he lived with his wife Agnes and their seven-year-old son, Harry.

  Arthur did not mind the four-mile walk along the banks of the River Nene. Not on a crisp spring afternoon, such as this one - a trip that, more often than not, included a habitual excursion to the Botolph Arms for a swift ale or two.

  Arthur arrived back at the family home that evening fuelled by several such pints, and still riled up by the pub landlord’s public admonishment of his lecherous advances towards a young barmaid.

  ‘Talk to me like that again,’ Arthur had warned the younger man, ‘and I’ll punch your poxy lights out I will,’ before adding, ‘…you Eyetie bastard.’

  The younger, and far larger, landlord - a former prizefighter in his hometown of Napoli in Italy - had fixed Arthur with a steely grin as two of the establishment’s other patrons had ushered their inebriated acquaintance towards the door. ‘You are barred, Arthur Blackman,’ the big Italian had shouted as the wooden door closed behind him.