9:12am.
‘Inspector, there’s a call for you.’
Inspector Garcia swivelled on his chair and peered over his reading glasses towards officer Ramos who was standing at the open door to the interrogation room.
‘A Diego Sanz?’ said the young policeman.
Garcia hurried to collect his notebook and pen, rose from his seat, glanced at Johansson, who remained sitting opposite him. ‘I apologise. I must take this call. I shall not be long’.
He gestured at the police officer to follow him out of the room where, in a hushed tone, he said, ‘You speak some English, right Antonio?’
‘Yes, sir. A little.’
‘Good. Stay in the room with them until my return. Act like you are extremely bored. Keep yawning. I want you to tell me if they say anything to each other.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Pay attention, and don’t let on that you understand anything. Got it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Garcia let the policeman shut the heavy door, then strode towards the desk sergeant. ‘You have a call for me, Rafa?’
The desk sergeant nodded, gestured towards the phone receiver that lay on the desk.
‘Put it through to my office.’
Garcia strode along the hall, closed his office door behind him, and sat down at his desk before picking up the telephone receiver. ‘Hombre, how are you?’
‘Jesus? Hi, I’m good, yes, but what’s up down there? I just got a message to call you. My secretary said it sounded urgent.’
‘Indeed, yes. Thank you for calling back so quickly.’
‘So, tell me.’
Garcia reached into his jacket pocket for his cigarillos before realising that he still did not have any.
Mierda! He cleared his throat, turning away from the door. ‘I have a situation here. It involves our German neighbours.’
‘What kind of situation?’
‘I have one dead.’
‘Joder’.
‘Uh-huh. A South African, one of their security people. He was shot. Twice in the back and then once at close range to the back of his head. And it seems another person is missing. A teenage boy, the son of one of the most influential of our German community here. His father, Señor Navarro, called our wonderful Police Commissioner to tell him that his son disappeared from their house sometime in the last forty-eight hours.’
‘Mierda. Do you have a suspect?’
‘It appears, for now, that it has something to do with an Englishman.’
‘An inglés?’
‘Yes, he bought a property in our pueblo several months ago. We arrested him early this morning. He was armed with a pistol and the dead man was lying in his yard. We also found his female assistant tied up in a car and unconscious.’
‘Then it is easy, no?’ said Sanz. ‘An open and shut case if ever I heard one.’
‘Alas, it is not so simple, amigo. The bullets we found next to the dead man do not match the calibre of the Englishman’s pistol.’
‘Hmmm, so there was someone else involved?’ said Sanz. ‘This is most intriguing. How can I help?’
‘Do you think you could see if you lot at the Interior Ministry have anything on him? His name is Blackman. Harry Blackman.’
‘I can make some discreet enquiries with the records team here. And I’ll call our embassy in London. I have a friend there I can trust.’
‘Thank you, amigo. There’s one more thing. I have another man here. Also English. He turned up an hour ago. He says he is from the British Consulate in Gibraltar and appears to carry some influence with the Police Commissioner. His name is Weiland.’
‘Guy Weiland?’
‘Yes,’ said Garcia.
Sanz went quiet.
‘Diego, do you know this man?’ asked Garcia.
‘Hold on a moment, Jesus,’ came the response. Garcia heard his old friend place the receiver down before telling someone, presumably his office secretary, to go and fetch him a coffee and to close the door behind them. Sanz’s voice returned to the telephone a few seconds later. ‘My friend, can you not pass this onto someone else?’
‘There is nobody else. The fucking idiot who was due to replace me tomorrow, fell off his bicycle and is in hospital. That and it’s All Saints’ Day, so I only have four men.’ Garcia glanced at his office door, checking it was closed. ‘Why do you say this?’
‘Jesus, this could be more of a problem than you know.’
‘I had a feeling you might tell me this.’
‘I’ve never told you about your German neighbours,’ said Sanz.
‘Because I never asked.’
‘Are you asking me now?’
‘No,’ said Garcia. ‘I never wanted to know who they were, and I have no wish to. Not now, not ever.’
‘Jesus, I should not be telling you this.’
‘Telling me what?’
‘You must be very careful. This Weiland, he is not from the British Embassy. He works for the British intelligence services.’
‘A spy?’
‘Yes. With MI6.’
‘Why is he here?’
‘Not now, not here. Let me see what I can dig up. I will call you back later. And not from this phone.’
‘Thank you, Diego. I owe you.’
‘More than you know.’
Inspector Garcia approached the desk sergeant. ‘Did Ramos’s sister get my cigarillos?’
Sergeant Rubio replied with a barely discernible shrug.
Asking the impudent man for help was the last thing Garcia wanted to do, but the lack of nicotine was playing havoc with his concentration. ‘Do you have a spare?’
‘I’ve only got roll-ups.’ Rubio reached for a dented metal case and lighter at his side, handed it to the Inspector.
Garcia forced a grateful smile and plucked out one of the roll-ups, lit it, then inspected the gold-plated lighter which was shaped in the form of a reclining naked woman. A rather misshaped woman, he noted. ‘Nice lighter,’ he lied.
The desk sergeant grinned, revealing his yellow teeth. ‘My brother bought it for me for my fortieth.’
Garcia took a tentative drag of the roll-up. He detested the tar sticks that his colleagues smoked. Not only did they make him feel nauseous, they also triggered memories from his time as a soldier.
Not just the fighting. The forceful quelling of peasant protests. The nighttime arrests of suspected socialist sympathisers, union organisers, liberal politicians, writers, and poets.
The firing squads.
He shuddered, his eyes locked on the closed door to the interrogation room, while struggling to suppress a violent cough.
Officer Ramos peered back at him through the small glass window, then opened the door. Garcia dropped the barely smoked roll-up into a coffee mug and beckoned at the young man to come to him.
‘Well, did they talk?’
‘Yes. The inglés asked her if she still enjoyed working in Spain.’
‘That was it?’ Garcia asked. He glanced at the door, his eyes narrowing. ‘What was her answer?’
‘She said she had enjoyed it, but now she was very keen to work somewhere else. The inglés said he could help her settle in England if she wanted.’ Ramos frowned. ‘It was like they were saying something, but not really saying it, if you know what I mean?’
Garcia grinned, patted the young man on the arm. ‘Good work, amigo. Now do me another favour.’ He reached into his pocket and retrieved a handful of coins. ‘Run to the store and get me a packet… no, two packets of Aguila de Oro.’
‘But Inspector, didn’t the sarge tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’
‘The old dear that runs the grocery has gone to Sevilla to be with her daughter for All Saints. The store is closed for the day.’
Fuck! Garcia looked to the heavens. This was not a day to go without cigarillos, of that Garcia was certain. He took a deep intake of air, twisted the door handle, and went back into the interrogation room. The Norwegian woman
remained sat in her seat, her hands flat on the table before her.
‘I apologise for the interruption, Miss Johansson,’ Garcia said as he lowered himself down on the metal chair, putting the twinge of sciatica to the back of his mind.
He took his notebook and pen out from his inside jacket pocket, crossed his legs, and fixed the Scandinavian woman with his practised stare. ‘Please, you were telling me about Mr Blackman’s arrival in the pueblo.’
Four months earlier
Liv Johansson reached for a sketchbook that sat on the table under the villa’s porch and sneaked a peek inside it. The book belonged to Conrad Navarro, the teenager who was currently washing Harry Blackman’s sports car in the garage at the rear of the property. She leafed through the pages of pencil and ink sketches - landscapes, buildings, the old bridge that ran over the Río Blanco down in the valley, Manolo working on the villa’s roof, an old Mercedes - which she knew to belong to the boy’s father - and then, last, a group of sketches of her. A dozen at least. The figure’s hair was a little longer, the breasts more generous than her own, but the woman in the drawings was unmistakably Liv. She blushed. Was the boy smitten with her? She would have to tread carefully there, she thought.
She placed the sketchbook back on the table and reached for the glass of orange juice, but her attention was caught by the sound of a car struggling up the track road that led from the pueblo lower down in the valley. The noises of the strained engine and excruciating gear changes reverberated off the pine-crested cliff faces that angled upwards a quarter of a mile behind the property.
Could that be him already? She peered at the small silver watch on her wrist. It was approaching midday. Harry was not due at the villa for another hour. Perhaps it was just the postal van? She stood up upon one of the wooden chairs and peered over the wall - that bloody wall - in the direction of the sound, and caught sight of a black saloon making its way up the rudimentary road. It had left a plume of light blue smoke in its wake. The car passed a huddle of small white farm buildings a mile away, the nearest neighbouring dwelling to the villa.
It is him.
She downed the remainder of her juice, rose quickly from the table and leaned into the darkened interior of the building. ‘Manolo, Mr Blackman’s taxi is approaching,’ she called to the gardener. ‘Tell Señora Marrón, please.’ Without stopping for a response, she strode over to the team of builders at the wall. ‘The new owner will be here in a few minutes. No doubt he will want to inspect your work’. She spun on her heels, marched to the rear of the property to where the teenager, Conrad Navarro, stood at the front of the open doors of the garage, an empty bucket and sponge at his feet. He was pointing a black camera at the immaculate sports car inside.
Liv addressed the boy in his mother tongue. ‘Conrad, Herr Blackman kommt.’
‘Jarwhol,’ the boy replied before reaching for the bucket.
As he leaned down, she found herself staring at the camera that now hung from the teenager’s neck by its brown leather strap. A cold wave ran through her body. She had to steady herself.
‘Conrad?’
The boy peered back at her. ‘Ja?’
‘That camera. Can I see it?’
The boy placed the bucket down and lifted the camera over his head, handed it to her.
She placed her hands around the black device, cradling it as it were a sleeping kitten. Or a holy relic. She glided a thumb over a pair of scratches on the camera’s body. They had been painted over, but were noticeable nonetheless. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘Ruth gave it to me. For my birthday.’
‘The lady that runs the youth club?’
The boy nodded. ‘I have taken many photos with it.’
The strained engine sounds were getting closer. She peered in their direction, then back to the boy, forced a smile, and handed back the camera. ‘Come. We need to go meet the new boss.’
She hurried back to the front of the property to see Manolo straining to open the steel gate, ready to greet the new owner. Señora Marrón, the house maid, was hurrying down the villa’s steps. She struggled to remove a grubby apron from around her waist. Conrad sprinted from the rear of the villa and arrived at Liv’s side, wiping his hands on his denim shorts, an excited grin on his handsome face.
One of the builders put a cigarette between his lips, ready to light it, but Liv hollered his name and signalled at him not to smoke. She remembered distinctly from when she had met him at The Savoy in London that Mr Blackman held a profound dislike of smoking. The Spaniard frowned, shot her a look of disbelief, muttered something under his breath - no doubt something misogynistic - before placing the cigarette back into the packet.
The crunched gear changes and strained engine sounds drew closer. She felt a nervous sensation in her stomach. ‘Butterflies in the tummy’, her dear mother had called it all those years ago. It was only now that her real work would begin. She had to get to know this Englishman now. She had to find out as much about him as she could, and through whatever means necessary.
Lives would depend on it.
14
The beaches
Bray-Dunes, Dunkirk, France.
June 2nd, 1940.
Private Harry Blackman lifted his head up above the top of his foxhole amidst the grassy dunes of the evacuation beach to gaze at the devastation on the sands below. It was approaching midnight and there was but a waning crescent of a moon, however the distant flares, explosions and intermittent tracer fire overhead provided all the illumination he needed.
He tensed as the sound of an artillery shell shot overhead, before exploding a half mile out to sea. He lifted his head to see a tower of white water burst up, then fall back as a cloud of spray.
He knew that the majority of the defeated British Expeditionary Force and many of its allies had already escaped. There were hardly any vessels visible now. No movement on the sands. Only a few, like Blackman, remained as the rearguard defences. Them and the poor souls whose bodies now laid scattered across the sand, or in shallow makeshift graves.
The cosmopolitan melting pot of British, Canadian, French, Dutch, Belgian, French Senegalese and Moroccans, and even a few Indian mule herders - over three hundred thousand people it had been said - were now safely in England, or at least en route upon one of the hundreds of naval vessels and private craft that had formed the ragtag evacuation flotilla.
His weary gaze drifted from one end of the beach to the other, from the north-east to the south-west. The once-serene sands now played grim host to a litany of abandoned and destroyed vehicles. Lorries, cars, half-tracks, armoured cars, light tanks and farm carts; the carcasses of some of the desperate creatures that had hauled those wooden carts across northern France crumpled up beside the discarded wrecks. Burned-out trucks dotted the vista amidst blackened sands. The steel frames of their rear structures resembled, he thought, the charred rib cages of large, slaughtered beasts, smoke still rising from those most recently destroyed.
Every dozen yards or so, he spied the dark, twisted bundle-like shape of a soldier who would not be making the journey back across the English Channel. There would be no joyous reunion for the families of those men - comrades who had fallen within sight of the English coast and upon the foreign lands they had been ill-equipped to defend. He shivered. Was it the breeze? The exhaustion? His battle-torn nerves? Or the cast-iron certainty of his imminent capture or death?
Weapons, helmets, backpacks, ammo pouches, webbing, wooden crates, petrol cans, redundant personal effects, and discarded mess tins littered the flat sands. He watched as a small cloud of pieces of paper wafted back and forth in the light breeze. Shredded packaging, newspapers and photographs. Lost letters from loved ones, never to be seen again?
Small craters with darkened centres pockmarked the surface; the aftermath of incoming artillery shells and from the bombs of Göring’s demonic dive bombers that had preyed upon the defenceless men for several days now. The receding tide had once again deposited more resi
due of battle; the high-water line encrusted with countless pieces of equipment, wreckage, clothing, driftwood, and the dead.
He made out the silhouettes of two partially sunken destroyers protruding from the waves a mile out at sea. The final resting place of god knows how many souls? He swivelled around to face inland in the direction of the encircling German ground forces that must surely be readying themselves to spring their final trap.
‘Why haven’t they come at us yet?’ whispered Gus Ferguson, Blackman’s fellow soldier in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry regiment. He lay in a shallow dip a few feet away, peering down the iron sights of his Lee Enfield rifle, scouring for targets across the marsh land to the east.
‘Why bother?’ said Blackman. ‘They can just keep lugging shells and dropping bombs on us from a safe distance. They know that we’ve left everything on the beaches. Even if we get back to Blighty, we’ve lost all of our armour, artillery and equipment. We’re beaten and they know it.’ He gazed to his right, south-west, towards the port town of Dunkirk. Fires burned from a hundred buildings, their smoke rising up to the heavens.
The sound of a lonely patrolling single-engine aircraft droned high overhead - likely a German reconnaissance flight tasked with establishing if the Wehrmacht could finally move forward to mop up the few remaining Allied soldiers.
‘Not long now,’ said Blackman.
‘Did you hear what them SS bastards did to a bunch of our lads in that barn a week ago?’ said Ferguson.
‘I heard.’
‘Not much point in surrendering if that’s what the krauts do.’
‘I guess not,’ said Blackman, peering up to the heavens.
A voice called from the beach. ‘Harry! Gus!’
The two privates glanced in unison towards the strained voice of their sergeant attempting to locate them amongst the dark dunes. ‘Up here, Sarge,’ Blackman replied as loudly as he dared.
The sergeant scrambled up the loose sands and clumps of dislodged grass towards them. ‘Anyone else up here?’
The Dark Place: A historical suspense thriller set in the murky world of fugitive war criminals, vengeful Nazi hunters and spies Page 7
