The Sentinel: 1 (Vengeance of Memory)

by Mark Oldfield

  She almost smiled, Guzmán thought, perhaps I really can be charming if I try.

  ‘So did our mystery señor say how he found out where I was?’

  ‘He said he telephoned the policía and they gave him the address of this comisaría.’

  ‘How strange. In the Special Brigade, we tend not to give out such details.’

  ‘You think he was lying?’

  He was amused by her surprise. But then, she wasn’t part of the job. Sometimes he forgot there was a world out there that didn’t revolve around issues of internal security.

  ‘And you’re certain he never mentioned his name to you?

  ‘No.’ She chewed her lip. ‘And I didn’t ask. I thought he might be one of your lot.’

  ‘Our lot?’ Guzmán asked.

  ‘La Policía Secreta,’ Señora Martinez said. ‘I didn’t want to get into more trouble.’

  ‘You aren’t in any trouble with my lot, señora. I thought I made that clear last night.’ Guzmán smiled. ‘You said he gave you something for me?’

  ‘I have it here.’ She rummaged in her handbag and took out a brown envelope. He took it, again noticing her chapped hands. Clearly a hard worker, this woman. Two jobs. Hostia: admirable. And not a real Red after all. Then he noticed.

  ‘You’ve taken off your wedding ring.’

  She blushed. When was the last time I was with a woman who blushes? he wondered, unable to recall if he ever had. He felt a sudden strange intimacy, strange because intimacy was alien to Guzmán’s life.

  ‘I had to – it’s embarrassing…’

  ‘You pawned it?’

  She nodded. Her pale eyes hinted at tears. She really is quite attractive. For her age, anyway.

  ‘Hard times call for measures to match.’ He looked at the envelope and saw his name, written in a thin, spidery hand.

  ‘Did this gentleman say anything else?’

  ‘He just said it was for Comandante Guzmán and that you’d be pleased to receive it.’

  ‘Did he say why he was delivering the note to you? After all, I only met you yesterday. No one who knows me would use you as my contact address.’

  She looked puzzled. ‘I can’t explain that, Comandante. I assumed he knew you’d be at my flat last night and thought you’d still be there in the morning. I seem to remember that was your original intention. I thought you must have told him you would be there.’ The reproach in her voice was clear. ‘Before you changed your mind.’

  ‘I told no one, señora. Not about my plans nor how they changed.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it, Comandante.’

  Mierda, Guzmán thought, this woman has an answer for everything. And more. She’d be a better assistant than Peralta. At least I can win an argument with him.

  ‘Well.’ He looked at the envelope and then back at her. ‘Shall I take a look?’

  She almost smiled. ‘Yes, I hate a mystery. Don’t you?’

  ‘Of course. Policemen detest mysteries. Vamos a ver.’

  His finger tore under the seal of the envelope, ripping the coarse brown paper open. Inside was a small folded piece of foolscap. He read it without speaking.

  Alicia Martinez waited.

  Guzmán stared at the paper.

  ‘Is it good news?’ The brandy had made her bold.

  Guzmán’s expression made her sit back in her chair, suddenly frightened.

  ‘What on earth is it, Comandante?’

  Guzmán got up, heedless of the pain in his leg and the blood trickling into his shoe.

  ‘Thank you for this, Señora Martinez. I appreciate it. If this man contacts you again, please telephone me immediately. You still have my card?’

  She nodded, a mixture of curiosity and trepidation on her glowing face. ‘I hope I haven’t brought bad news?’

  ‘No. Not at all. But you need to go now. I have things to do. I’m very busy. My apologies. Thank you for your assistance.’

  Startled, she moved clumsily to the door. Guzmán was staring at the scrap of paper again. He looked up.

  ‘I… adíos, Comandante.’ She fumbled with the door handle.

  ‘Wait…’ Guzmán said. ‘Take this.’ He held out the bottle of Carlos Primero to her. It was almost half empty, but it was very expensive: if she didn’t drink it she could sell it.

  ‘Gracias.’ She looked puzzled. But she took the bottle, he noticed, and placed it in the depths of her tattered bag.

  ‘And this.’ He held out several banknotes.

  ‘What do you think I am?’ she snapped. ‘I can’t take money from you.’

  ‘Take it and get your wedding ring back. I order you to, señora.’ He paused. ‘I mean, I’d like you to. To let me be of some assistance. I don’t want the money back. Think of it as being for services rendered.’

  ‘Services?’ Her cheeks were burning now. He liked to see her angry.

  ‘You brought me this.’ He held up the paper.

  She relaxed a little. ‘You still haven’t told me what it says.’

  Guzmán smiled. ‘That’s right. And the money should buy your silence. That’s all it is, a little bribe, una propina, not to talk about it. Nada más.’

  ‘If you say so. Thank you.’ She opened her purse and put the money into it.

  ‘It’s American money,’ Guzmán said. ‘You’ll need to change it. You’ll get a good deal. Do you know where to go?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then thank you for coming. Turn right outside and go through the doors at the end of the corridor.’ Guzmán sat back down at his desk. He heard her footsteps diminishing in the corridor and then the sudden bang of the swing doors. Guzmán smoothed the foolscap paper on the desk. He looked at it again and again, as if the intensity of his stare would somehow reveal something about the writer. The handwriting was feeble, almost childish. There was no address, nothing to identify where the note had come from. He read it once more:

  Sunday 11th January 1953

  Querido Leopoldo,

  After all these years, I learned you’re alive. God and his blessed mother have guided me to you. I’m coming to Madrid in the next few days and will contact you when I arrive.

  Hasta muy pronto,

  Un abrazito muy fuerte,

  Mother.

  Alicia Martinez pulled her coat tighter at the collar in anticipation of the raw cold outside the door. The sarge watched her as she passed the reception desk, studying the movement of her hips. She’d never make a whore, he thought. ‘Buenas tardes, señora.’

  ‘Buenas tardes.’ She didn’t look back.

  The big door swung open. Outside, it was snowing and the afternoon light had already started to dim. In the brief moment before the door closed, the sarge saw her breath hanging in the cold air. Then she was gone. The sarge took out a cigarette and, as he lit it, he heard Guzmán roar his name. He cursed, inhaling deeply before grinding out the cigarette on the stone floor.

  MADRID 1953, BAR FLORES, AVENIDA DE MONTE IGUELDO

  The afternoon light had faded by the time Guzmán led Peralta and the sargento into Bar Flores. Peralta had wondered about the wisdom of planning their strategy in a public place but Guzmán insisted they conduct the discussion somewhere that served alcohol. They sat at a table by the dirty window, looking out into the darkening street. A number of customers stood at the bar with a few more at the tables at the back of the room, all swathed in black tobacco smoke. The waiter brought their beer. Guzmán was at once annoyed by the beer, deciding it an unsuitable drink for a winter’s day. Once annoyed, he raged for several few minutes about the traitors and turncoats who abounded in the police and armed forces. He unleashed his diatribe with venom, poking the sarge in the chest at one point as a means of emphasising the fact that such treachery deserved sudden and massively violent intervention to put an end to it.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, jefe,’ the sargento protested, ‘I haven’t been grassing you up. Lay off. Pick on him,’ he nodded at Peralta, ‘he’s the one with connections at the top
.’

  ‘I wish,’ Peralta said. ‘My clout with General Valverde is precisely nil. It’s hard to imagine him disliking anyone quite as much as he does me.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ the sarge sneered.

  ‘That may have changed, Teniente, after the phone call I got from him,’ Guzmán said. ‘He’s mightily pissed off. Unfortunately, so is Carrero Blanco’s office.’

  ‘You’re in the shit, jefe.’ the sarge said.

  ‘I think you will find the actual expression is we are in the shit,’ Guzmán said, ‘all for one and one for all, no?’

  ‘I never shot up the Plaza Mayor,’ the sarge said glumly.

  ‘I wish it had been you who was shooting at me,’ Guzmán said. ‘Then I could have killed you and shut you up for good.’

  Peralta sighed. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere, sir.’

  Guzmán looked at him for a moment and then nodded. ‘For once, Teniente, you’re correct. Muy bien, let’s try and work out what’s going on.’ He looked across the table. ‘Sarge?’

  The sargento leaned back self-importantly. ‘Well, in my opinion…’

  ‘No,’ Guzmán interrupted, ‘I don’t want your opinion. Get the drinks in.’

  The sarge sullenly waved at the waiter.

  ‘Right. Notebook out, Peralta. Make some more of your excellent and lengthy notes,’ Guzmán said. ‘Start with the Dominicans.’

  ‘An odd lot,’ Peralta observed. ‘They don’t seem like members of a trade delegation at all. Not least since they have such weighty criminal records.’

  ‘I agree, they’re dangerous,’ Guzmán said. ‘And yet the US ambassador and that bloke with the Italian name vouch for them. A bunch of thugs and yet with highly respectable friends. Why?’

  ‘Maybe the Yanks thought it would be tough over here, so they brought a bit of hired muscle?’ the sargento said, taking the glasses of beer from the waiter. Guzmán paused and waited until the man had retreated to the bar.

  ‘I agree,’ Peralta said, adding to his pencilled notes.

  ‘Too simple.’ Guzmán shook his head. ‘They could bring soldiers in plain clothes, or police or secret service – like those goons they have at the embassy. They want to do business, not have the entire delegation arrested. You’d think they’d want to keep a low profile.’

  ‘Those greasers certainly aren’t keeping a low profile,’ Peralta said, still writing.

  ‘So that’s one question,’ Guzmán said, gulping down his beer and then calling for the waiter to bring more. He paused to wipe froth from his mouth. ‘Second question. Who shot at me last night?’

  ‘Well, jefe,’ the sargento grinned, showing more of his devastated teeth, ‘we could make a list of all the people who might want you dead. Mind you, I don’t think the teniente there has enough paper to write them all down.’

  Peralta thought about smiling but decided against it.

  ‘And they don’t seem like blokes who’d fuck up a simple ambush,’ the sarge said.

  ‘That’s reassuring.’ Guzmán said. ‘Next, who the hell is following us around?’

  ‘Someone’s been following us?’ Peralta asked in surprise.

  ‘The bloke in the black coat you mean?’ the sarge said.

  ‘You noticed him then?’

  ‘I noticed him right away,’ the sarge said. ‘I thought he was probably another one of Valverde’s lads, spying on us.’

  ‘I wondered about that,’ Guzmán said, ‘but then Señora Martinez came by yesterday and she’d a visit from him. Just how he knew she had any connection to me is puzzling. When we arrested el Profesor, you came out of her building after me, Sarge. Did you see anything?’

  ‘Didn’t see no one.’ The sarge shook his head. ‘I poked around in the mailboxes but there was nothing interesting. Then I heard you shouting for me.’

  ‘Someone must have seen me there,’ Guzmán said.

  ‘Jealous boyfriend?’ the sarge smirked.

  ‘One more like that and I’ll fucking hurt you,’ Guzmán snarled. ‘I hardly know the woman and someone gives her a message for me. Very odd.’

  ‘What message?’ Peralta scribbled notes furiously.

  ‘A message from my mother. She’s coming to see me. Soon.’

  ‘Nice.’ The sarge grinned. ‘A visit from Mamá. Maybe she’ll bake a cake, jefe.’

  Guzmán’s big fist smashed into the sarge’s forehead. The sarge flew backwards in an arc of beer, hitting the floor with a loud crash that silenced the café. Guzmán glared at those customers daring to show an interest. They rapidly returned to minding their own business.

  ‘Señores,’ the manager came around from behind the bar, ‘I will not have this behaviour in my bar. It is uncivilised. It’s—’

  Guzmán turned, lifting his coat away from the big automatic in its holster beneath his left arm. He let the manager look at the weapon for a moment.

  ‘Policía,’ Guzmán growled. ‘Are you interrupting us in the pursuit of our duty?’

  The man backed away, mumbling apologies. Guzmán called after him, ordering a bottle of wine and some tapas. The manager scurried behind the bar purposefully. Life returned to the café. The sarge dusted himself off and sat down, dripping beer.

  ‘No more lip, Sargento. Me entiendes?’

  ‘Lo siento, jefe. I didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘I did,’ Guzmán said. ‘But the question is, who’s this man in black who passes a message from my mother to a woman I’ve only just met?’

  ‘Aren’t you in touch with your mother, sir?’ Peralta asked.

  ‘My mother died in the Civil War,’ Guzmán said. ‘So it’s unlikely she’s going to go to the trouble of sending messages through some third party who just happens to be following me around. I want to know if this is linked to those Dominicans.’

  ‘Well, we know where the Dominicans were the other night,’ Peralta said, brightly. ‘Maybe they’ll go again – a taste of home, familiar territory.’

  Guzmán nodded. ‘Bar Dominicana. We’ll pay them a call. Qué hora es?’

  ‘Six thirty.’ Peralta moved to one side as the manager arrived with a bottle of his best wine and plates of omelette and sliced ham. He returned to the kitchen to bring them more food: sausages, anchovies, stuffed peppers filled with spiced pork.

  ‘The night is still young, señores,’ Guzmán said, taking a large bite of one of the peppers. ‘Excellent,’ he nodded appreciatively to the manager, ‘we’ll come here more often.’

  MADRID 1953, BAR DOMINICANA, CALLE DE TOLEDO

  There were plenty of lowlife bars in Madrid, Peralta knew, but the Bar Dominicana looked far, far worse than any he had previously encountered. The bar’s front windows were filthy, emblazoned with its name in large peeling letters. This was a place that reeked of trouble and they were still metres away from it. And, Peralta reflected, trouble was highly likely, since Guzmán had spent the last three hours drinking continuously. At Bar Flores, Peralta had been unable to look the owner in the eye when Guzmán refused to pay the bill when they left. In fact, now he thought of it, Peralta realised it was Guzmán’s drunkenness that worried him the most. A big, violent man was worrying enough when drunk. Such a man armed with a powerful automatic pistol was even more so.

  Though badly lit, the street was still not dark enough to hide the motley collection of prostitutes and beggars loitering in the grimy doorways of rundown buildings, each of which seemed to emanate the smell of cabbage and shit. Mainly shit, Peralta noted. As they approached the door, the sarge wandered off to bargain with a tall, bulky prostitute. While they argued loudly about her prices, Guzmán and Peralta entered the bar. And that, Peralta thought morosely, was their plan. What there was of a plan. The sarge would enter later and pretend not to know them. The rest was down to improvisation and intuition.

  The smell inside was rank, a fetid stew of body odours, cooking, drink, cigarettes and dirt. Peralta looked around in disgust. At the back was a long zinc-topped bar. Tables and chairs
– none of which matched or were even vaguely coordinated – were strewn around in an unsuccessful attempt to create the impression of a café. Against a wall in the back corner was a small stage and a piano. The entire place looked like one of the houses Peralta had seen as a kid where a bomb had fallen, killing everyone in the house and churning the occupants and their goods into bloodied chaos. This place, however, lacked the tragic presence by which the bombed houses evoked pity. Here, he felt only disgust.

  The customers looked them over with casual brooding resentment since Guzmán and Peralta’s clothes marked them out as possible policemen. Peralta met the eye of anyone who looked at him, noting with satisfaction they soon looked away. Guzmán also faced down some of the hostile looks, looks which became even more hostile when he lurched against a table and spilt the drinks of a ragged couple holding an intense and highly intimate discussion. To Peralta, they resembled a pair of harpies escaped from Goya’s caprichos. Guzmán ignored their wailed protests and made his way to the bar where an elderly woman with a painted face was serving. Fat and dissolute, Peralta thought she must be a failed prostitute fallen from hard times to harder ones and probably still travelling downwards.

  ‘Buenas tardes, señores.’

  Her voice was deep with a Caribbean accent. Peralta guessed she must be in her sixties but was disinclined to study her more closely because of the cluster of cold sores she sported around the lurid gash of her painted mouth. Her eyebrows had clearly been shaved off and then redrawn with a pencil some five centimetres above her eyes, giving her the look of a decaying clown. Guzmán leaned on the bar.

  ‘Mmm, big boy, what can I do for you?’ the woman’s voice was husky with smoke, drink and quite probably a whole genealogy of vice besides.

  Guzmán lit a cigarette, offering one to Peralta in a moment of generosity. Peralta lit Guzmán’s cigarette and then his own. The woman watched them.

  ‘Got a smoke for a lady?’ She placed one large, chubby hand on her hip.

  ‘Of course.’ Guzmán exhaled a cloud of smoke. ‘If you can find a lady in this place.’

  The painted face distorted for a moment and then cracked in a lopsided smile, revealing an incomplete set of brown teeth. Peralta looked away.