Armada sniffed the air, then moved to the other side of the shed and did it again. But there was no hint of it in the air.
“It’s not here. He must keep it somewhere else. No doubt worried the distinctive smell might give him away.”
Maria was getting her nerve back, and she stepped into the workshop, her curiosity getting the better of her.
Armada was disappointed. He’d found Gregorio’s workshop, potentially the geographical centre of the case, and yet there was nothing here that helped. What had he been hoping to find? He wished Lucas was here. When it came to investigating physical spaces, it was where the boy shined. Sometimes, the most mundane items could help. It wasn’t something Armada was particularly good at. Perhaps he would try to bring the boy here later, in the hopes he would find evidence of who else had been here besides Gregorio Cordoba, Teo, and Aurelio Martinez.
After another twenty minutes or so of looking around, Armada found it difficult to keep his eyes open. The aching in his knees, which he’d been able to ignore for so long tonight, returned with a vengeance and now threatened to keep him up for the rest of the night. And he still had a long walk to get back to his accommodation.
“Come along, Señora. We should both be getting home. It’s getting very late.”
“Please, sir. You won’t tell the Lady what I showed you tonight, will you?”
“Of course not. And I especially won’t tell the Lady where you happened to get all this money.”
Maria looked up at Armada as he dropped a handful of the ducats they’d found into her hand. Her eyes opened wide.
“Thank you for your assistance tonight, Señora. It’s been very helpful. Now, if you don’t mind, I have one favour to ask. Can you escort me back to the university?”
Armada followed Maria closely, as his tired eyes made it even harder to see in the dim moonlight. He wondered if he could find his way back to the workshop in the daylight, when he was rested but when everything would look so different. He wondered if he could get all the way back without tripping and hurting himself. He wondered about Lucas, and about who could react so savagely to learning Gregorio’s secret.
But one thing he didn’t wonder about—where Gregorio kept his sulphur. And after a bit of rest, he would confirm what he already knew to be true.
Chapter Twenty
Lucas entered the tavern after a long walk, dreading every step he took toward Armada, who was waving to him from a table in the back. They were meeting in the parish of Sancti Spiritus, much too far from the university to risk running into any students. Also, meeting so early in the morning helped to guarantee that as well. The only students awake at this hour would be those attending a lecture and would have little interest in going all the way across town just for a bit of breakfast.
Lucas took his time weaving his way through the tables of the busy tavern. Every way he tried to go, there were other men trying to push past or crossing his path. Yet the mood in the room was subdued. There was none of the boisterous shouting or laughing that there was the night before. These men had a long workday ahead of them and were saving their strength.
Lucas didn’t want to be here. He felt everything had changed. He’d grown in ways the old man couldn’t possibly understand. Armada had never been to university. How could he know anything? Lucas had been accepted into one of the most exclusive colegios in Salamanca. He’d been matriculated. He was on the rolls now, so technically he was even a student.
Armada hadn’t done any of that for him. No, that had all been Julian. Armada hadn’t helped him at all. In fact, it was Armada who was preventing him from ever being able to study here. He had the money to pay his tuition, yet the old man wasn’t using it for that, was he? No, he was forcing Lucas to wander the countryside for his own redemption. But what of Lucas’s own? Was Armada even thinking of that? Because Julian was.
Lucas reached Armada’s table and plopped down in the chair opposite.
Armada smiled. “Lucas! I see you got my note.”
Lucas nodded, but said nothing. He’d resented finding Armada’s notes underneath his pillow telling him to meet him here. It was like being rudely woken from a nice dream. In fact, he’d have been fine if Armada had never contacted him again and left him to run around with the Bartolome boys in peace.
Kings for Bartolome, Bartolome for Kings! Lucas shouted in his own head. There was a warmth to it, a familiar flow. It brought him closer to his new friends, even though he was so far from them at the moment. He had to squelch the desire to shout it at Armada.
“So, how are things going in the colegio?”
“You mean San Bartolomé?”
Armada was taken back by Lucas’s spiteful tone.
“Yes, I mean San Bartolomé. With the murder suspect you were supposed to be speaking to.”
The use of the phrase murder suspect seemed offensive. It only made Lucas’s contempt grow.
“It’s fine.”
“Are you talking to them? Do they trust you?”
“Yes.”
“Have you learned anything? Is there a connection between Julian and Gregorio Cordoba?”
Lucas took a long time to answer.
“It hasn’t come up.”
“Ambrosio has been telling me you’ve been seeing a lot of those boys lately, to the detriment of your duties, in fact. Surely the subject of Gregorio Cordoba’s murder has come up once or twice?”
Lucas wanted anything to get him out of this conversation. He felt like he was betraying those who were most important to him. What would Julian and Marco and the rest of the boys think if they saw him here, talking to Armada? It would ruin everything. And Lucas would go back to being the lonely little boy, the victim whose parents were murdered and everyone just felt sorry for. There was no pride in that. No dignity. He couldn’t go back to that. Not anymore.
“They don’t talk about it much. They’re thinking about the election.”
Lucas briefly thought about telling Armada about the plans to blow up their own building to swing the election. There was still the question of where Julian had gotten the barrel of gunpowder in the first place, a question Lucas pushed to the back of his mind. It wasn’t important. It had nothing to do with the murder case. What right did Armada have to know about it? It was private colegio business, not for outsiders to know.
“Gregorio Cordoba had been a candidate in the election. And they still don’t discuss him?”
“No. I told you, it doesn’t come up!” Lucas shouted back to Armada.
Armada leaned back in his chair, staring at Lucas. The old man didn’t seem angry, which he’d been expecting. Just quizzical, as if trying to read Lucas’s thoughts.
Well, Lucas wouldn’t let him. His thoughts were his own. He knew what he was doing. He didn’t need Armada’s help anymore. So, Lucas stared at the table.
“Can I go back now?”
“Yes, but only if you come with me first. I need to show you something.”
Lucas gave out a sigh. He knew he was being a bit dramatic, but he didn’t care. The boys were back in the common room, drinking and talking about the election. Now that he’d been let in on the big plan to blow up their building, he didn’t want to miss a moment of it. And Armada was sensing this and taking his time, just to spite him. And he resented Armada for it.
“Come along,” Armada said gently, gesturing for them to leave the tavern. Lucas reluctantly followed, happy that at least they were not setting out to have one of their long, leisurely meals that took ages, ensuring he would miss everything tonight.
Armada barely looked at him as they walked toward the university. Lucas began to get nervous. Was Armada not worried they would be seen? What happened to all the preparation to avoid this? Had the old man gone mad?
But Lucas only sulked quietly as Armada took him across the main plaza where the market was in full swing, down the main thoroughfare of Rúa de San Martín and straight to the main entrance to the university.
“Sir, w
hat are we…?”
“Don’t speak, Lucas. Just follow.”
So Lucas followed as Armada took him up the stairs and down the long corridor, making it obvious where they were going.
Armada stopped in front of the office door and pointed to it.
“Do you remember this?”
“Yes,” Lucas said, avoiding eye contact.
“Tell me what it is.”
What kind of game was the old man playing?
“It’s the office where Gregorio Cordoba was killed.”
“Yes. Well, at least you remember that.”
Armada took a key from his pocket. “I’ve had it locked up since we got here and haven’t allowed anyone in to clean it. In case there were clues. And I made sure I was given the only remaining key.”
Armada deliberately turned the key to unlock the door, then he pushed the door open, gesturing for Lucas to follow.
Lucas didn’t want to. Already, the smell of rotting death was wafting into the corridor.
“Come along,” Armada said, the gentleness fading from his voice. Lucas knew that tone. There was no way he was going to let Lucas ignore his instructions.
Lucas followed Armada into the room and instantly felt ill. The odour was all-consuming and there were flies everywhere. Although the body had long been removed and buried, the blood that had been splashed about on the floor and the walls had been left behind. Flies were everywhere, buzzing about the desk and the floor beneath, each coated in blood that had rotted and turned black. The blood smeared on the walls and the knocked-over chairs in the back still had a red tint to it, as if to remind anyone what it once had been.
Lucas felt he was going to be sick in the room and tried for the door. But Armada had shut the door already and was standing in the path. Armada grabbed Lucas by the collar and forced him back into the middle of the room, his shoes sticking to black goo on the floor and making him even more ill.
“This is why we are here, Lucas. I want you to look. Open your eyes. Open your eyes!”
Armada shouted at Lucas, frightening him. Lucas opened his eyes.
“Look at what was done here,” Armada whispered. “The savagery. The brutality. This was no accident. This was no dispute that got out of hand. This was murder for the pleasure of it. And whoever did this has a thirst for death within them that cannot be quenched. And we are the only ones standing in their way of doing it again.”
Lucas bent over and was sick in the corner, sending the flies in the room into a frenzy.
“I know how it feels to be with those boys. It is intoxicating. I felt it too, with my garrison in Peru. It is a bond that feels deeper than friendship, deeper than family, deeper than anything you have experienced before. You may already feel as though you would lay down your life for them if they asked. Just as I did.”
Lucas tried to calm his convulsing stomach by breathing steadily, but it only seemed to make it worse.
“And someday, like me, you will see the foolhardiness of this. You will see how easy it is for them to use your loyalty against you for their own purposes. How corrupt such loyalty can make them. They will lie to convince you that your devotion to them must be absolute. That’s when you know to be wary.”
“They wouldn’t lie to me…,” Lucas said.
“The human voice is not like gold or silver; whether words are true or false, they sound alike,” Armada quoted.
Lucas knew Armada expected his usual response of “Calderon, sir?” Perhaps, to return them back to a sense of normalcy. But there was no normalcy here in this room. Not now. Perhaps not ever again.
“You cannot get too involved, Lucas. It is a lesson every constable must learn. We need our objectivity. The killer could be hiding amongst them, and they will kill again if we are too distracted by our loyalties to them.”
Lucas felt the dream of attending university begin to melt away, crowded out by the thought of Julian possibly being a killer. Could there have been a disagreement between them? Could Julian have killed Gregorio over the issue? Lucas looked around the room again, trying to picture Julian being in such a rage as to do all this.
It was just too easy to picture. Why? Armada had corrupted him in his own way. He had allowed Lucas a peek behind the curtain of life to see the wild beast that lay beyond. What had travelling with Armada done to his soul? He had been trained to suspect everyone he met of murder. There was hardly any chance of lasting relationships coming from that. So how long before darkness was all he could see in people anymore?
Perhaps that’s why it felt so good to be with the Bartolome boys. It was a taste of what life could be without the knowledge of death. It was built on hope for the future, about trusting people with your very life, about being able to consider the best of them rather than always looking for the worst.
But he wasn’t with the Bartolome boys, who were drinking and smoking and making a mess of the common room at the moment, their minds free from the weight of humanity’s impending mortality and its tendency toward savagery. No, instead, Lucas was here, standing in a room drenched with blood and making the horrific realisation that his stomach had calmed itself. Soon, he would be able to stand here as unaffected by the sight and the smell of this place as the old man.
Perhaps it was never his fate to be one of the Bartolome boys. How could he, having seen what he’d seen, knowing what he knew? Who besides Armada could ever relate to that? Perhaps it was never his fate to live as carefree as they did, drinking all day and never worrying about their studies, safe in the knowledge that a comfortable life awaited them. The weight of his past would possibly never allow that. The man who killed his parents had perhaps sealed him off from ever having a life like this, and he should just accept it.
“Julian knew Gregorio Cordoba,” Lucas said. “He was Julian’s favourite lecturer. Just before Gregorio was killed, Julian broke off all contact with him. He spent three days not talking to anybody. He was frightened of something.”
“That didn’t come from Julian. Someone else told you that?” Armada asked.
“There’s a graduate named Emiliano. I don’t know his last name, but he’s known Julian for years. Julian just hired him to bring in poor students from the local region to bolster the election results. And there’s one more thing….”
“Yes?”
Lucas took a minute to consider his answer. Although the effect of the smell wasn’t all-consuming anymore, there was the effect of the light coming in through the window, which reflected off the shiny tiles on the floor. It filled the room with an ambient light that was a mixture of the whiteness of the tile and the dark red of the rotting blood, casting a strange colour on Armada and, Lucas knew, his own face. It was as if the room was seeping into their skin.
“Julian has a small barrel of gunpowder in his possession. I think it might be related.”
“So, Julian did work for Gregorio…”
“Gregorio was making gunpowder?”
“It might be what this case is all about. Did he mention anything about where he got the serpentine? Or what he might be planning to use it for?”
Lucas tried not to pause too long. “No.”
Armada shook his head. “All right. Can you find out? Be discreet, of course, but we need to know. It would also be nice to know where he’s storing it, if you can.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lucas knew he should be telling the old man about Julian’s plans. But was it not enough to tell him it existed? What could Julian’s plans for it have to do with Gregorio’s murder? Nothing, as far as Lucas could see. So why not give Julian and the boys the chance to win the election? If they ever knew Lucas had helped to stop them, it would mean the end of his time with them.
And he couldn’t shut that door. He couldn’t completely let go of the dream of attending university. Not yet. It was just too tragic, too unfair. So much of this wasn’t his fault, so why should he be made to suffer? Why not indulge a bit of his desire to see Bartolome win the election? It still f
elt important, despite everything. That little bit of information was his own. It had been entrusted to him, and he would keep it safe. It wasn’t for Armada to know.
The fresh air that filled his lungs when he and Armada finally returned to the corridor was nice. But it was also unnecessary.
Chapter Twenty-One
Armada made sure the boys of the pupilaje were not in before approaching the front door of Ambrosio’s house. He walked round the building several times, slowly and carefully, listening through open windows for any signs of movement inside. He didn’t want any of them knowing what he was about to do. It would have raised too many uncomfortable questions and possibly put Lucas in danger.
Armada was trying not to think about Lucas too much, as he had a case to be getting on with. But he couldn’t help it. There was a nagging thought that he should have already pulled Lucas out of the pupilaje, away from Julian and the other boys and all they promised. But he may have already waited too long. Armada could see the look in Lucas’s eyes when the subject of San Bartolomé came up. The boy was already being seduced by their charms and questioning his loyalties. It had always been a danger. He’d thought Lucas could handle it, that he wouldn’t forget all that Armada had done for him after his parents died.
But it had been unmistakable. That little “V” shape cut into his forearm, the one that may never heal properly. It was a worthy symbol of what the boy was going through. Was that not a sign that Lucas had made his choice? It made Armada wonder, if one of the boys was the killer, would Lucas see it? Or would his loyalty to them completely cloud his judgement? He’d never tested Lucas in this way before. There was no way to know.
Armada thought perhaps he should make his peace with the fact that he’d overestimated the boy’s resolve and pull him out anyway. Lucas wouldn’t want to go, but there were ways to ensure he did, including telling his new friends exactly who he was and why he was here. But Lucas would be angry at him in a way he’d never been before. It was something their relationship may never recover from.
The Domingo Armada Mysteries Box Set Page 66
