I wondered, as I often did, about Rosa and what she was doing now. She had eventually married, not a civil guardsman, but a small-holder from Andalusia. Had she slogged herself to death in some godforsaken Andalusian olive grove? What did she make of modern Spain with its computers, cars, materialism, small families, abortion, contraception, democracy, liberty and postmodern modernity? Had any of us imagined that the country would change to such an extent? I don’t think so. And somewhere along the line we probably regretted the changes too. Hadn’t we loved Spain precisely because it was different and out of date, non-European, almost African in its colours, lifestyle and expression? Now it was like every other European country. Bound together by the European Union, it still had its own cultural expression, but, in essence, this expression was the same from Stockholm to Madrid. At least where the young were concerned. And it was American. It was only in the bullring that the old Spain survived as a kind of museum for a lost individuality. The rest was moulded by the incessantly grinding, global media machine, of which I was a prosperous cog.
Maybe it was my age that made me increasingly question my profession. Maybe it was just my subconscious preparing me for the catastrophe. Maybe that’s just the wisdom of hindsight.
In any case, I was walking along lost in thought, surrounded by the reassuring life and hubbub of the city, when two men blocked my path. They were tall and trim, mid-30s, in well-cut suits.
“Señor Lime?” one of them said.
I stopped.
“You’re under arrest,” said the other, while the first one, with the unerring hands of the expert, pulled my arms behind my back and snapped on the handcuffs.
4
They drove me the few hundred metres along Calle Alcalá to the headquarters of the security services and the police, a massive, old red building on Puerta del Sol. The centre of Spain, where the distance marker reads zero and the walls in the looming building have absorbed the forgotten screams of the condemned and the tortured. They were firm but polite when they took away my mobile phone and the little Leica I always carried and put me in the back of the car, one of them holding my head to make sure I didn’t bang it on the doorframe. The car was a big, white Seat. There were no handles on the inside of the doors, but I was placed securely between the two plain-clothed officers anyway. I sat like a child wedged in tightly between two adults. My shoulders pressed against theirs, which felt confident and fit and muscular. The driver pulled away without a word and without turning round. Like the other two, he was close-cropped, elite corps style. They didn’t answer when I asked why I had been arrested. Spain is a constitutional state, but with plenty of violent crime and an active terrorist movement like ETA, the security forces and the police are not quite as subtle as they are in Denmark. The State’s response to the violence, and the consequent erosion of the concept of justice, lowers the threshold of what is acceptable. Only 20 years earlier I would have been terrified. At that time the police still beat confessions out of people they didn’t think they could secure a conviction against, or who they had already decided were guilty. Even though the Basques maintained that the Guardia Civil still did it, I wasn’t worried about outright physical abuse. I asked again why they had arrested me and didn’t get an answer. The handcuffs were cutting into my wrists and digging into the small of my back and it was uncomfortable when the car accelerated or turned a corner and I couldn’t cushion myself properly. The security officers smelled of tobacco, garlic and a rather cheap men’s eau de cologne. It was depressing to be sitting there between them, watching the radiant and anarchic Madrid life going on outside as if nothing had happened. As if life could just carry on without me. I wanted to shout out to the pedestrians carrying their belongings, to the lovers walking hand in hand, to the frantic businessman with his attaché case, to the road sweeper in his yellow waistcoat with his little cart, to the well-dressed women on their way back to work after the siesta, to the school children in their blue uniforms, to the motor scooters, to the cars, “I’m stuck here. Help me. Stop the traffic. How can you carry on as if nothing has happened?”
The driver hadn’t switched the siren on, and the traffic slowed us down. The windows were tinted, so even if someone I knew had walked past they wouldn’t have spotted me. I tried to get my rapid breathing just a little under control and told them that I wanted to ring my lawyer, but they ignored me. I was sufficiently well-versed in the law to know that if they wanted they could find the right loophole in the anti-terrorism legislation which would allow them to keep me in isolation for 48 hours at least, maybe even for three days. I wasn’t a terrorist, but perhaps an examining magistrate wouldn’t worry about a little detail like that if the right Minister pushed the right buttons. As we drove into Puerta del Sol and I saw the familiar yet suddenly so remote newsstands, lottery ticket sellers, the swarm of people teeming out of the metro exit, maybe heading up the hill to the El Corte Inglés department store to do something as everyday as the shopping, my brain began to function again. I breathed slowly and deeply, in the way Suzuki had taught me so very long ago.
There was a Minister who would go to great lengths to prevent his happy home life and political career as a respectable Christian Democrat from being destroyed by a series of photographs taken by Peter Lime. He had reacted swiftly, but a politician today who doesn’t appreciate that the media acts at lightning speed wouldn’t have become a Minister in the first place.
The Seat turned left and drove alongside the ponderous building which housed the police headquarters, swept past two guards armed with machine guns, who looked as though they were pregnant in their bulky, brown, bulletproof vests, and drove into the courtyard. There were several parked patrol cars, a water cannon and a number of white Seats in which the riot squad thought they drove around inconspicuously, but I didn’t get to see much else. They pulled me out of the car, grasped hold of my elbows and led me through a low side door into a dark corridor. We went down a staircase, made a right turn down a long corridor and down another flight of steps that led into a large room with a shabby, stained desk. A warder in a grey uniform was sitting behind it. A sports newspaper was lying open on the table, the headline announcing Real Madrid’s latest triumph. There was an empty coffee cup next to it. The warder didn’t say a word either, but he had clearly been expecting me. He walked in front of us down another long corridor lit by the glaring light of naked bulbs encased in wire netting. The corridor was lined with blue cell doors. He stopped at the fourth door and opened it. My handcuffs were unlocked and wrenched off. I gasped and was just about to protest when one of them grabbed hold of my ponytail, yanked backwards, then let go and shoved me violently between the shoulder blades so I stumbled into the cell.
I fell down flat. My hands were numb and not much use. I hit the floor with a hollow sound and lay winded on the cement trying to rally myself as the door clanged shut and I heard the harsh, horrible sound of a key being turned twice in the lock. I was incarcerated.
I lay there for a while trying to pull myself together, the blood tingling in my hands. The corridor was silent, as if the cells were soundproof. I got a creeping feeling that they had put me in the old torture cells used during Franco’s dictatorship. If their aim was to frighten me, they were succeeding. I would happily have done a barter, my freedom for 20 photographs of a horny Minister, but his henchmen didn’t know Oscar and Gloria. To them the police were still fascist pigs and the lackeys of those with vested interests. They would move heaven and earth to get me out. They would use every legal means, but they also wouldn’t hesitate to use the pornographic photographs of the Minister and his mistress as blackmail, should that prove necessary in order to free their friend from the claws of the bourgeois state.
I took comfort in that as I got myself up off the floor and sat on the narrow bed covered with a thin blanket. I also took comfort in the thought that all this was probably just a clumsy attempt at intimidation. They didn’t have a case at all. They didn’t have any evidence. They
hadn’t even gone through the usual routine of taking a mugshot and fingerprints.
A glaring lightbulb, also covered with heavy wire netting, hung from the ceiling about three metres over my head. The walls were a dirty yellow and bare, painted with a smooth thick paint which didn’t look like the kind you could scratch messages on, as we like to imagine prisoners doing. A hole in one corner passed for a toilet. There was a wash basin, with rust stains running down to the plug-hole, and a little table bolted to the wall. The door sported its little peephole like a piece of jewellery. You could look in, but not out. They hadn’t taken away my belt, nor my comb or shoelaces. Maybe they couldn’t care less if I committed suicide. Maybe they would be pleased if I did. My knees hurt and my wrists hurt, so I drew my legs up under me, placed my hands on my knees, closed my eyes and looked inward, as Suzuki had taught me to do, until my mind was blank, my breathing calm, the pain eased and a small, bright dot between my eyes was the only thing my consciousness registered. I found my way into the nada that Suzuki had taught me to find, and which he called wa, when it was necessary to stop time. Then seconds pass slower and slower until they almost stand still, vibrating and bright, and the only point of concentration is the small, luminous dot, which Suzuki described as the innermost chamber of the soul. My luminous dot emerged from the faces of my two loved ones, who smiled at me and gave me peace of mind.
So when they came to get me later in the evening, I was hungry and thirsty, but I was feeling composed and in fighting spirit. The same two men and the fat warder entered the cell. They didn’t handcuff me again, but made do with taking a firm hold of my elbows. I demanded again to be allowed to ring a lawyer or home, but they didn’t respond. They took me up to a small room and made me stand against a white wall. Then the rituals started. They took my photograph and fingerprints, still without saying anything more than was absolutely necessary, and led me into a small courtroom.
The examining magistrate was a heavily built, middle-aged man who looked down at me over the top of a pair of narrow reading glasses. He had big, bushy, grey eyebrows and a receding chin. The stenographer was a woman. She was wearing a blue skirt and blouse and didn’t look at me.
During the first stages of a criminal case in Spain, the magistrate acts as both magistrate and investigator. He has to establish whether or not an offence has been committed and if there are grounds to proceed with prosecution, or whether the accused should be released. This magistrate looked like someone who could quite easily be one of the Minister’s friends. He had tried to conceal his weight under a well-cut suit. His tie was dark and muted. He looked like a funeral director whose business was doing very nicely.
The two silent officers made me sit on a chair in front of the magistrate, who exercised his right to look down on me. They positioned themselves behind my high-backed, uncomfortable chair. The magistrate rummaged through some papers and asked if my name was Peter Lime, if I had residence permit number such and such, and if I lived on Plaza Santa Ana in Madrid. And if I understood the Spanish language. I answered yes to everything, while making every effort to remain calm. After we had established that I was who I was, I spoke.
“I haven’t had the chance to speak to a lawyer. I’ve been given neither bread nor water since my wrongful arrest. My family must be frantic with worry and terrified because they don’t know where I am.”
The magistrate didn’t appear to have a sense of irony, or any other human qualities.
“You will speak to the court when you are questioned, otherwise you will remain silent.”
He looked down at his papers and then again over his reading glasses at me.
“On the 3rd of June you were in Llanca in Catalonia.”
I couldn’t hear the question mark, so I didn’t answer.
“The accused will answer the question,” said the magistrate. It was terrifying. I was dependent on the decisions of one single man. The Minister had long tentacles. It couldn’t be anything else. During all the ups and downs of my adult life, I had clung to the fact that I was a free man, not at the mercy of the authorities or the capricious whims of a regular employer.
“It is correct that I was in Llanca,” I said.
“Using a form of martial art, you physically assaulted an officer from the Justice Department and threatened another?”
“That is not an accurate interpretation of the facts,” I said.
“And the correct interpretation is?”
“I defended myself against two men I didn’t know, who were attempting to steal my cameras and wreck my job,” I said.
“What is your job?”
“I’m a photographer.”
“What were you taking photographs of that day in Llanca?”
“I am not obliged to disclose that or anything else. I want to speak to a lawyer,” I said, my anger mounting.
“The criminal investigation department in Llanca have witnesses,” said the magistrate. His face was expressionless and his eyes were as cold as a dead fish.
“I would like to confront them face to face,” I said.
“They live abroad. It will take a little while to locate them.”
“My lawyer?”
“All in good time.”
“Then I’ll be happy to come back at that time.”
He looked over his glasses again.
“It is alleged that you have trained in karate for many years. One could say that your body is a weapon, a lethal weapon.”
Again, I couldn’t hear a question, so I kept silent.
“Is it correct that you are a black belt in karate?”
“That is correct.”
That seemed to please him immensely. At any rate, the suggestion of a smile slid across his face. He rummaged through his papers again. I realised that he was having difficulty thinking of anything to ask me. The case was flimsy. He was doing a friend a favour that had to be given a thin layer of judicial varnish.
But then he dropped the bombshell that made me really nervous. He looked down over his glasses.
“It is alleged that over the years you have had contact with members of the terrorist group ETA. Numerous contacts?”
“Alleged how?”
“Is that correct?”
“No,” I said.
“Reports of recorded conversations, marked confidential, have been submitted to the court. Surveillance reports, marked confidential, have been submitted. There has been contact.”
“What year?”
“That is immaterial.”
“No. The former members of ETA with whom I have had contact, and only professionally I might add, were all granted amnesty in 1977,” I said.
The magistrate remained poker-faced, but I could tell he was ill-prepared. The whole case was. They were using intimidatory tactics and they hadn’t had much time. They’d got my file from their extensive secret archives and quickly concocted something which they assumed would hold water for a couple of days. He extricated himself from his predicament by bringing the preliminary hearing to a close.
“That will have to be investigated. You will be held for three days in isolation, as permitted by law, while inquiries continue. Thereafter you will be brought before the court again. On that occasion your lawyer will be present.”
Incommunicado was the Spanish word he used for isolation. It was used often in the Spanish judicial system. It gave the police three days in which to find and submit additional material so that the custody order could be maintained, and it could be months before there was an actual trial or the charge was dropped. I was beginning to get seriously worried. Even in democratic Spain, the clan-like fellowship between those in power still meant a lot. I had wreaked havoc in very powerful circles, and they were prepared to use every available contrivance and loophole in the system.
“I insist on being allowed to ring my wife and my lawyer,” I said with mounting desperation in my voice. My mouth was dry and the palms of my hands wet.
The investigating magistrate tur
ned to the court stenographer who looked as if the whole affair was boring her to tears. He wasn’t a complete idiot. At least I hoped not. I clung to the fact that he must know he had a very flimsy case that wouldn’t hold water, and would safeguard himself against reprisals by making sure that the formalities were as they should be. At any rate, he dictated:
“Enter in the record! The accused will be held in isolation for three days as of now, in accordance with Article 189, Section 4 of the Criminal Code. The criminal investigation department will notify the accused’s wife of the said detention. The accused may consult with his lawyer for two hours before the next sitting of the court, scheduled for five o’clock in the afternoon three days from now. The first preliminary hearing will be heard in camera and may not be reported in the press. Until the appointed meeting with his lawyer, the accused may not receive visitors. The accused is entitled to 30 minutes of outdoor exercise every day, on his own. The accused will be offered the Bible or other religious literature as reading material, but will not be allowed access to radio, television or newspapers. The accused will be provided with normal provisions and hygiene as applicable for those held in isolation. The preliminary hearing is closed.”
He stood up, and the rest of us did too, and I was led back to the cell, the door slamming behind me, a sound that now was rather more sinister. The system had just shown me that I was a very small human pawn in a game manipulated by the powerful. But as one of the powerless I was grateful for small mercies, and I found myself thanking the chilly magistrate for letting the police get in touch with Amelia. She would he beside herself with worry by now, but once she had given it some thought she would ring Oscar and Gloria.
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