The Sentinel: 1 (Vengeance of Memory)

by Mark Oldfield

  ‘A sus ordenes, mi Almirante.’

  ‘Always a pleasure, Guzmán.’ Carrero gestured for Guzmán to open the door. He emerged from Guzmán’s office and stamped down the corridor, flanked by his bodyguards. Once he had gone through the swing doors, Guzmán looked round for Peralta. It was time to begin work.

  MADRID 1953, CALLE CIPRIANO SANCHO

  ‘Who’s driving, jefe?’ the sargento asked, opening the door of the truck.

  Guzmán gave him a hard look. ‘Here’s a clue, Sargento: it’s not going to be me.’

  ‘A sus ordenes.’ The sargento moved round to the driver’s door and climbed in. Peralta squeezed into the middle of the front seat, pressed between Guzmán on one side and the handbrake and the sarge on the other. Guzmán lit a Ducado and began to fill the cab with thick pungent smoke.

  ‘I don’t suppose…’ Peralta began.

  ‘Hostia, buy some. I’ve told you before. I’m not a charity, Teniente.’

  The engine grumbled into life and the sarge reversed the truck. Reaching into his coat, he produced a battered packet of Lucky Strike. ‘Here, Teniente, have one of mine. Again.’

  Peralta took one, eyebrows raised at the sarge’s new-found generosity.

  ‘You’ve done it now,’ Guzmán said gloomily, ‘he’ll never buy a packet. You’ll have to get a crateful on the black market, Sarge. That’ll keep the teniente going.’

  ‘I’ll buy some I promise,’ Peralta said, knowing it was unlikely.

  ‘You can owe me, Teniente.’ The sarge grinned, his rotting teeth less visible in the darkness. He spun the wheel sharply and drove out into the main road.

  ‘You know there’s something I wanted to ask you.’ Peralta turned to Guzmán who was leaning against the cab door, eyes closed.

  ‘Just so long as you don’t keep me awake,’ Guzmán growled.

  ‘What do you know about the St Valentine’s Day Massacre?’

  ‘Sounds fun,’ the sarge said, turning to join in the conversation. ‘Was that one of our massacres? Where the Reds burned those priests alive? Or where—’

  ‘Yanqui gangsters,’ Guzmán interrupted. ‘Pretending to be police. They arrested some of their rivals and then shot them.’

  ‘Some people,’ the sarge said with mock disapproval.

  ‘Who cares anyway?’ Guzmán said. ‘Degenerate Yanqui criminals go round shooting one another – big deal. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Positano,’ Peralta said. ‘He was arrested for murder as a young man. Got off, no one knows why and his arrest records have disappeared. Then he turns up in the war and gets a prestigious medal.’

  ‘Didn’t we all,’ Guzmán muttered.

  ‘What if he still has links to the Mob?’

  ‘Keep going, Teniente,’ Guzmán said, suddenly interested.

  ‘Pues, suppose he was in the Mob but then gets called up to the army. He does all right in the military and then after the war he’s offered a good job with their Department of Trade.’

  ‘But he still keeps his links to the Mob?’ the sarge added. ‘Qué bueno. He’d be worth a fortune to them.’

  ‘Excellent, Teniente,’ Guzmán said, the tip of his cigarette glowing red in the darkness of the cab. ‘Positano scouts out opportunities for his gangster friends while on official business and the Dominicans provide the muscle to back him up. I think we’re making progress here, señores.’

  The truck slowed down.

  ‘That’s the street you wanted, jefe.’ The sarge pointed to a narrow side street. A single lamp threw thin grey light onto the trampled snow.

  Guzmán took out the paper and examined it in the flickering glow of his cigarette lighter. ‘This is it, all right.’

  ‘Mind if I do it, sir?’ the sarge asked. ‘Been a while since I did a visit like this.’

  ‘Be my guest, Sargento,’ Guzmán said. ‘Want my friend to help?’

  The sarge nodded and Guzmán slid the Browning from its holster and handed it to him.

  Opening the truck door, the sarge climbed down into the icy street, pushing the pistol into his belt. Freezing air flooded into the cab. Guzmán turned to Peralta.

  ‘Off you go, Teniente, I think you should accompany the sarge on this little errand.’

  ‘What about you, jefe?’ The sarge smirked.

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ Guzmán said. ‘I promise not to talk to any strangers.’ He leaned towards the open door. ‘By the way, Sarge.’

  ‘Sí, mi Comandante?’

  ‘Dales café, Sargento,’ Guzmán said, ‘mucho café.’ He slammed the truck door closed.

  ‘What was that the boss said?’ Peralta asked as they began to walk down the street.

  The sarge shrugged. ‘Shop talk.’

  The street was silent. Miserable houses, clusters of dilapidated apartments. The plaster on the buildings peeling away from the bricks, weather-worn paint hanging off the doors, dull light glinting through curtains and blinds. A normal Spanish street, Peralta thought.

  ‘Who are we after, Sargento?’

  The sarge shrugged. ‘Just a name, Teniente, that’s all I have.’

  ‘He must have done something?’ Peralta persisted.

  ‘You’d think so.’ The sarge looked at the numbers of the houses. ‘Here we are.’ He examined the names on the cluster of doorbells,

  ‘Are we likely to have any trouble here?’

  ‘No. No trouble, Teniente. We’re just delivering a warning,’ the sarge said, pushing one of the doorbells. A harsh ring sounded somewhere above and they heard a door open. Footsteps on the stairs. Peralta pushed the front door and they stepped into a bare entrance hall, with a series of ancient metal mailboxes. At the far end of the hall, wooden stairs climbed up into shadow. A man emerged from the shadow, descending the stairs into the pale light of the hallway.

  ‘Señor Roberto Flores del Rio?’ the sarge asked, politely.

  ‘That’s me.’ The man adjusted his thick spectacles. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Roberto? Quien es?’ A woman’s voice. Hurried footsteps on the stairs. A moment later there were two of them. Plump and middle aged. Peralta sensed their fear. He waited for the sarge to make the arrest.

  ‘What do you gentlemen want?’ the man asked. His wife moved behind him.

  ‘Nothing to be alarmed about,’ Peralta said reassuringly, holding up his identity card. ‘We’re police officers. We want to talk to—’

  Without warning, the sarge shoved past Peralta, unbalancing him. The teniente’s cheap shoes slipped on the smooth wooden floor and he fell, clawing at the wall for support. As Peralta fell, the sarge lifted the pistol and fired straight into the man’s face. The blast threw the man backwards onto the stairs and his body slid brokenly down to the hall floor, his head resting in a growing slick of blood, glinting black in the half light. The woman stood motionless, her eyes wide, her mouth open but strangely silent, her face covered with a speckled mask of her husband’s blood.

  Gasping and confused, Peralta tried unsuccessfully to struggle to his feet. He gaped at the sarge, seeing his right arm extended towards the woman, his gloved hand gripping the big automatic. Taking aim.

  The deafening blast made Peralta cry out. The woman fell across her husband’s body, hands clasped to the wound in her chest. The sargento stepped forwards and shot her repeatedly at point-blank range, the woman’s body shuddering at each blast, the hallway ringing with the percussive explosions. The air stank of gun smoke and burned clothing. And blood.

  The sargento turned to the door, grabbing the lieutenant by the arm and hauling him to his feet.

  ‘Anda, Teniente, we’re done here. Vamonos.’

  Peralta followed, stumbling on the icy pavement. He tried to speak.

  ‘Just keep going, Teniente,’ the sarge said. ‘Let’s get back to the truck.’

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ Peralta spluttered as he staggered after the sarge.

  They reached the vehicle and Guzmán lent a grudging hand in dragging the resistant teni
ente into the cab.

  ‘Drive, Sargento.’ Guzmán took his pistol from the sarge and began to reload it.

  Peralta shivered with shock, lodged between the two men. They ignored him.

  ‘Coffee for two,’ Guzmán said. ‘And you used a full clip, Sarge?’’

  ‘You said the almirante made a big thing about them deserving it so I put the lot into them.’ The sarge smiled. ‘With all that lead, they’ll need an extra pallbearer for the coffins.’

  Peralta’s head jerked as the conversation fluttered around him, trying to keep his undamaged ear towards whoever was speaking. ‘You shot them,’ he stammered.

  ‘What a detective. No wonder you joined the police, Teniente.’ The sarge cackled. Even Guzmán laughed.

  ‘He shot them technically, Peralta,’ Guzmán said. ‘Their deaths had already been decided on. All we do, Teniente, is follow orders. It’s what keeps the pay cheque coming.’

  ‘You can say that again.’ The sarge nodded.

  MADRID 1953, CALLE JOSE DELGADO

  At one o’clock, Alicia Martinez left the fishmonger’s shop, her work over for the day. It was cold, the buildings in the street imprecise in the pale mist as she made her way to the bus stop. In her bag was a large bream, a present from the fishmonger. Since Comandante Guzmán had spoken to her employers they had treated her with remarkable courtesy. He was clearly more important than she’d first thought. And more reasonable too. What had begun as an ugly episode had actually ended quite pleasantly. Surprising how things turn out, she thought: having an admirer. A potential admirer at least. He found her attractive, that was clear, despite him being horrible to her at first. Yet he’d behaved quite properly after that. The thought made her smile. Me. Thinking about a man. A policeman. So much had happened in the last few days to make her think, especially given the deadly monotony of day-to-day survival she had become accustomed to since the war. She still loved her husband, but he was gone now and she had no one. No one but little Roberto. It had never occurred to her that life might change from its constant daily drudgery but the comandante had introduced new complexity into her life. The possibility of change.

  A car glided past, slowed, stopped. Head down against the cold wind, she hardly noticed the car door slam, nor the footsteps on the snow behind her. A blow to the head sent her sprawling on the cold pavement, her basket spilling the bream into the snow. She struggled to her knees, dazed, looking up at the man towering over her, now dragging her to her feet. And then he seized her by the hair, forcing her towards the waiting car. She saw the open door, tried to struggle as she was bundled into the back seat, the man using his weight to pin her down. She squirmed, tried to reason with him, to get him to explain what was happening. She heard the sound of liquid in a container, the cap being removed and a sickening smell as a rough cloth suddenly covered her mouth and nose. Then she was fighting for breath, struggling under the man’s weight. She tried to call out but only drew in thick cloying fumes from the cloth, still struggling as the light began to give way to a deepening fog that clouded her thoughts. Alicia Martinez heard the men’s voices, distant, receding.

  ‘Her basket,’ one said.

  ‘Hostia, she’s got more than a basket to worry about when she wakes up.’

  The engine started noisily. And then the darkness took her. For a while at least.

  BADAJOZ 1936

  ‘Guzmán.’ The Moor’s voice was sharp and insistent. The kid lay in the dry grass, trying to contain his urge to gasp for air, knowing if he gave in, they might hear him. And then the Moors stopped shouting and fell silent. They were coming. He could hear one of the African soldiers approaching, could tell from the measured sound of the man’s boots on the desiccated soil how careful he was, suspecting an ambush, but coming on anyway, unafraid. The Moors had spread out, increasing the distance between them, making it less likely they could be cut down by one burst of fire. They were good soldiers, trained in a harsh land into the brutal ways of their masters and accustomed to ruthless and merciless warfare. This was ideal territory for them.

  The kid lay motionless, the world diminished to the haze of dried grass and shrubs he saw through the sight of his rifle. Nothing stirred. Sweat ran down his cheeks. The footsteps stopped. Now there was a painful silence, a silence that stretched the kid’s nerves more than the screams of the dying ever had. The grass moved. A shadow emerged through the parched undergrowth. The kid saw the uniform, the ammunition pouches, the long rifle with its wicked bayonet. He remained still, his rifle pointed at the man’s belly. To raise his aim would require movement and that would give him away. Instead he waited, sweat streaming down his face, the rifle unsteady in his shaking hands. The African looked round, slowly checking for signs of the enemy before he advanced, one slow measured step after the other. Over to the kid’s left someone shouted. The Moor’s head snapped round towards the sound and the kid lifted the rifle and shot the Moor in the chest, the report painfully loud, the recoil of the rifle hard against his shoulder. The Moor fell, his rifle clattering to the ground, smoke coming from the charred hole in his body. He lay on his back and did not move. Nor would he, the kid knew.

  There was more shouting. Two shots. A long, anguished scream. The sound of someone suffering, suffering while knowing that, although the suffering would end in death, death would be some time in coming. The screaming stopped and then started again, rising and falling, a demented fugue conducted by the men with the long knives. And now shouts in Spanish and Arabic. The sound of men running.

  The kid kept low, crawling through the scrub, finding a spot between two stunted trees where he could hide. Across the parched hillside, five of the African soldiers were gathered around something on the ground. One of them raised his rifle and thrust it downwards. They were bayoneting someone. Two people – the soldier who had lost his rifle and his mate. It took them some time to die. The kid watched it all. When the men were finally dead, he saw the Moors hacking at the corpses, lifting grim trophies in bloody hands. And then, a shout. The kid saw them turn and look back. One of them waved, beckoning. Guzmán had arrived.

  17

  MADRID 2009, CALLE DE LOS CUCHILLEROS

  ‘Que coño es este?’ Galindez threw the newspaper angrily onto the breakfast table.

  Tali looked up. ‘Is that Luisa’s piece about the new research centre?’

  ‘Bloody right it is. You know what? She criticises my contribution to the Guzmán project. Listen:

  This contribution from a member of the guardia civil represents – textually speaking – an example of the Guardia’s historical role of repression and control. History and historical memory do not lie within the conceptual calculus of mainstream science. In reconstructing the historical narrative of those found in these unmarked graves the tenets of positivist science do not obtain. We read this forensic report with its obsessive attention to detail, its analytic passion obscured or, perhaps, repressed by its reliance on cold, scientific detachment. As if the author were trying to detach herself from a scene so intense it must be buried in calculus and calibration; operationalising suffering into a two-dimensional sketch, an always provisional account of the technical and the probable.

  Nowhere in this mass of forensic detail do we approach anything resembling a coherent emotional narrative, nor does it deploy the necessary experiential vocabularies of cruelty and suffering needed to articulate lived human experience. Science will not – cannot – do this for us. The reconstruction and reformulation of life using restrictive pathologised understandings is limited. In short, we must restore the palimpsest.’

  ‘Palimpsest?’ Tali shook her head. ‘Dios mio. That’s from an essay by Derrida.’

  ‘You’ve read it?’

  ‘Some of it. Luisa’s very into his work. What you do is well outside her field of interest. Strange really, that she wanted you to join the team.’

  ‘She said she wanted my scientific expertise,’ Galindez said, suddenly defensive.

  Tali laughed.
‘She wanted you. And she got you for a while, mi corazón, even though it meant letting you stay on the investigation after you split up with her.’

  ‘But we agreed to differ. She’s been writing her part of the report knowing I was taking a different approach. Yet not only does she slag me off in this article, it’s also a blatant advertisement for her forthcoming book on the suffering of young Guzmán – how society is responsible for his deeds. She’s not only damning my contribution before it’s even finished, she’s making it look as if it’s the guardia civil who’ve written it to silence her and prevent her… what the fuck does she call it? Revoicing the victims. Dios mio, at least you can identify the arguments in my work, not like her wordy, lit-crit crap. Uncle Ramiro will go nuts if we get a load of bad press as a result of this.’

  ‘She set you up.’ Tali poured more coffee. ‘She wanted your expertise so she could bounce her intertextual work off it and make you seem as if you were censoring her attempts to stand up for victims everywhere.’

  ‘Well, it’s very negative. And sneaky.’ Galindez slumped back into her chair. ‘And she’s used this piece to support the university’s bid for European Union funds for the Centre for Textual Studies. With her at its head, of course.’

  ‘Ana María Galindez meet Luisa Ordoñez.’ Tali laughed. ‘She’s a sharp operator, cariña. Stand too close to the flame and you get burned, no?’

  ‘It makes me look an idiot and it’ll confirm all Uncle Ramiro’s prejudices about women and forensic scientists. I’ll probably be demoted to coffee lady – no, make that assistant coffee lady.’

  ‘You haven’t completed your work on the Las Peñas killings yet, mi amor.’

  ‘True. Hopefully, I’ll come up with something to challenge Luisa’s picture of Guzmán as a victim of circumstance.’

  ‘There’s a quotation in his diary about that, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, that line from Ortega y Gasset: “I am me and my circumstances.” It worries me.’