‘Yes?’
‘Watergate.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Watergate, Vietnam and then quite a few of your own stories.’
‘That’s right. Is there a point to this intervention Miss Shah, or are you just showing me what a good memory you’ve got?’
‘No sir.’
‘Good. So today, we’re getting down to brass tacks. The basics. The things you lot will need to remember if you ever want to produce anything of value during your careers.’ Heads nodded. Carver turned to the overhead projector and shuffled it around on the desk, aiming the square head directly at the whiteboard. When Naz inevitably piped up again, asking what on earth this thing was, Carver was ready.
‘It’s like one of those Power Point presentations. Just not as flash.’ His students eyed the machine warily. William flicked the switch on the side of the projector on and it whirred into life. The smell of burnt dust filled the small classroom and a square of bright yellow light appeared on the whiteboard behind him. Carver slapped the first transparency down and glanced behind him.
SELUR NEDLOG EHT
‘Are you teaching us in Welsh today sir?’ Naz again.
‘Very funny, good one. Technical hitch …’ He flipped the transparency over.
THE GOLDEN RULES
He read the three words and waited while the students did the same, then he turned to face them.
‘If you remember nothing else after these next six months are up, then I want you to remember this. Two rules …’ He removed the first slide and slid the second into place.
1. Make it interesting
2. Don’t make it up
‘If you can manage these two things then there’s a chance you’ll make a living. Who knows? You might even make a difference.’
Clove-boy had his hand up.
‘If you gave us our phones back sir, we could take a picture of that.’
‘I don’t want you to take a bloody picture of it, I want you to remember it.’
He looked around the class; several of his pupils had already lost interest, one or two were repeating the rules back to themselves, their mouths moving. Down at the front, Naz had opened what looked like an old spiral-bound reporter’s notebook, the sort Carver himself preferred, although it was getting harder to find them. She was writing the rules down in careful capitals.
The ping of a mobile phone broke the silence and Carver gave the fire bucket an accusing stare before realising that the sound had come from inside his trouser pocket. He took the phone out and glanced at the screen before switching it off. The news it was alerting Carver to had something to do with naked pictures of an actress William had never heard of.
‘It’s another one of those bloody news alerts.’ Carver found the increasing frequency with which these urgent alerts popped up on his phone annoying and their choice of story, for the most part, baffling. ‘Does anyone know how to switch those things off?’ Naz’s arm went up.
‘I do.’
‘Fine. You can show me after the lesson.’
4 A Cursed Place
BROCHU, CHILE, SOUTH AMERICA
As Pablo walked up the side of the tarmac road in the direction of the old white Chevy, a shiver climbed his spine. A combination of the cold wind that cut right through four layers of clothes and straightforward fear. His boss had parked where he always parked, on the rise in the road just next to the Brochu sign, a sign that the local kids liked to take pot shots at with their rabbit-hunting rifles. Jags was standing next to the car, pushing against it and causing it to rock gently to and fro. He was broad in the shoulder and appeared slightly hunched in the back, although not in a way that suggested weakness or age, but rather a readiness. Tree trunks for legs and a barrel-like torso in grey T-shirt and black bomber jacket. His arms looked a little short in comparison with the rest of his frame, but they were the strongest thing about him. Pablo had seen this. A kid that the two men had taken for a drive one time had slipped from Pablo’s grip and run straight into Jags’ lifted arm. It was as though the boy had tried running through a steel joist. He hit the ground like a sack of rocks, his nose bleeding.
‘Dias.’
‘Dias.’
‘You look cold, smoke a cigarette.’ Jags offered the pack of Marlboro and Pablo fumbled one from the soft crumpled packet. His fingers were shaking as he placed the cigarette between moustache and lower lip. He waited patiently while Jags went through half the contents of an American motel-branded matchbook. The flame wouldn’t take in the damp morning air and Jags cussed repeatedly. When he eventually coaxed a flame, cupping it in his large hand and raising it up, Pablo studied his employer’s face. In the US, people assumed Jags was part Italian. South of the border he passed for Argentinian. In fact, he had no connection with either place. The long nose, slightly off-centred, was the first thing you noticed, followed by the eyes. These had no discernible colour, just two black slots in a weathered brown face. His dark curly hair was cut short, not military short but almost. Other than that, the face was solid and, at first glance, handsome.
While Pablo smoked, Jags took in the view. The sun was beginning to rise now – a ribbon of amethyst-coloured light appearing at the horizon. He felt his stomach rumble and turned to Pablo.
‘We should get some food. Eat something decent ’fore we do anything else.’
Pablo looked dubious.
‘Where?’
There was only one place in Brochu where outsiders like Jags ate – a barbeque restaurant done up to look like an old American diner, serving overpriced food for overpaid Yankees. Pablo had never eaten there, no one from the town ever did.
‘I passed a little roadside place. Ten miles back. We can head there and then take the freeway north afterwards.’ A route like this would take them in the opposite direction to town, away from where they usually worked.
‘The freeway north to where?’
‘I’ll lay it all out for you later. After we eat.’ Jags stamped the cold out of his feet and climbed back into the Chevy.
Once on the road, Pablo tried a little small talk, speaking in the slowed down Spanish that he usually used when they were together. Jags had told him in the past that he liked the practice. Pablo commented on the cold weather and the empty roads. His boss nodded along, understanding everything, but his half of the stilted conversation all came in English.
‘You do not want to speak your Spanish today?’
‘Not today.’
Pablo remembered something that Jags had said soon after they’d started working together. Something about men finding it harder to lie when they weren’t speaking in their own tongue. When he was cross-examining the union leaders, miners or local politicians that they picked up, Jags would often insist they speak in English. Pablo was quiet for a while, chewing all this over. It was Jags who broke the silence. ‘You’re right about the weather. Back in Ohio we used to call this kind of cold a calf-killing cold. Same thing here I guess.’
Pablo looked out of his window. Sure enough, the few farmers still left in the valley – the dozen or so who had refused to take the mining company’s money and go – had all moved their livestock inside.
‘You grow up in Ohio?’ In three years, this was the first piece of personal information that Jags had ever volunteered. There had been a few vague mentions of his time in the military, but nothing more than that, not until now.
‘Yup, Ohio. The Buckeye State. Right out in the boondocks …’ He glanced over at Pablo. ‘The middle of nowhere. I was born there and raised there. I was stuck there right up until the first day I could drive. Or drive legally. Then I got the fuck out.’
The roadside restaurant that Jags had seen was, in fact, a repurposed shipping container, planted on scrubland at the side of a Shell petrol station. It had a large red Coca-Cola sign hanging on the front and was flanked by two tired-looking palm trees. They parked in the petrol station forecourt and walked inside. The deep fat fryer was crackling into life down one
end of the counter and the chef stroke waiter stroke restaurant owner pointed them in the direction of a table next to the window. They were the first customers in and as soon as he’d done attaching an orange hose to the twin gas hob at the other end of his work station, the owner hurried over with two laminated menus.
‘Buenasdias, quieres comer?’
Jags nodded.
‘Un minuto, por favor.’ He took his time studying the handful of items on the menu then glanced up at Pablo.
‘What ya going to have?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You don’t want anything to eat? Steak? The stew? It’s on me. You should have something.’
Pablo shook his head. He didn’t want to explain to Jags why he didn’t want any food.
‘No thank you, just coffee.’ His boss could make him do a lot of things, but he could not make him eat.
‘Your call.’ He waved the owner over and ordered himself the steak and fried potatoes and coffee for two. He pointed at the fryer. ‘Las papas a la Francesa, si?’
‘French fries, si señor.’ The owner exchanged a glance with Pablo. Jags saw this look but chose to ignore it. As far as the waiter was concerned he was just another gringo – consultants they called themselves – Americans whose work inevitably had something or other to do with the Brochu mine. The locals hated them – hated but tolerated – because the copper mine was all there was and when the mine was gone, there would be nothing. So you had to make a living while you could. The restaurant owner would cut the potatoes into thin strips and fry them the way Jags liked, because if he did that, then maybe more Americans would come? The gringo was probably paid more in a day than the men who worked the mine got paid in a month, but it didn’t matter – what mattered was that there was work, not for everyone, but for just enough people to keep the town, the whole region, alive.
Jags worked his way steadily through the three-inch-thick rib eye and French fries; he ate the fat off the steak first and then the chips before starting on the meat. He ate more slowly than usual until a few other customers arrived, whereupon he cleaned the plate, put his cutlery together and raised his hand for the bill. He paid in cash, tipping generously. Outside he suggested they stroll around to the side of the restaurant and smoke another cigarette. It seemed to Pablo that his employer was in no hurry to go anywhere or do anything today and this was both unusual and unsettling. The sun had climbed above the mountains while they were eating, but it was cold still, and windy too. Jags listened to the wind pushing through the dusty palm trees – a dry clacking sound. It was a sound that Jags had come to associate with this place and one that he’d tried to put down in words. He glanced over at Pablo.
‘How would you describe that noise? The wind in those palm trees there?’ He pointed up at the trees.
‘Describe it?’ Pablo looked confused. ‘I don’t understand. It is just the air and the leaves, that’s all.’
Jags shook his head.
‘You have a poet’s name, Pablo. The same name as your great poet, but you’ve got no poetry in you, have you?’ Pablo gave an apologetic shrug and Jags dropped his cigarette and ground it out with the toe of his shoe. There was no need to demean the man, especially now. ‘We should go.’ They walked to the car, Jags keeping his back to the restaurant windows. He switched on the engine and turned up the heater. It was cold enough that they could see their breath. ‘So, how was that coffee?’
‘It was good, thank you.’
‘No problem. A good cup of coffee is as good as a meal … that’s what they say, isn’t it?’
Pablo looked at Jags.
‘In Ohio they say this?’
‘Yeah. In Ohio.’
They hit the freeway and Jags drove for twenty minutes, still heading in the opposite direction from Brochu, away from every other job that he had asked Pablo to help him with. So far everything about this day had been different, everything about it had been wrong. Eventually Pablo summoned up the courage to ask.
‘Where is the man?’
‘Which man?’
‘The poor bastard we’re going to kill.’
‘We’re not killing anybody today.’
Pablo felt a wave of relief flood through him. His thoughts turned first to food. The breakfast he could have had but didn’t. He kicked himself for not having thought to ask this question earlier. Jags turned and looked at his passenger. ‘How many times have we worked together, Pablo? You and me?’
‘What?’
‘How many have we killed?’
‘I have lost the number.’ This was a lie. Pablo knew exactly how many. Eight was the number. Eight men shot or beaten to death, their pockets filled with rocks and then rolled down the steep side of the Brochu dam into the filthy waters below. Most nights, unless he was blind drunk, Pablo had nightmares, terrible nightmares. The dream was almost always the same; he was hauling a dead body out of the back of a white Chevy and rolling it over the wall, down into the dam. Then suddenly the roles would reverse and it was Pablo who was in the water, drenched and slowly drowning. He could feel the stones in his trouser pockets rubbing against his legs, but for some reason his hands couldn’t reach them. He kicked and flapped around in the water, but it was futile – his body was too heavy to stay afloat. He was sinking. Struggling for just one more breath, he stretched his neck and opened his mouth, but it was too late. He was under. Looking up, he saw the polluted water close over his head. It was at this point in the dream that he would wake, dripping in sweat.
‘What are we doing then, Mr Jags?’
‘We’re meeting someone, a friend of mine, out at the old mine. That place you showed me that time.’
‘Hijo de Dios?’
‘That’s the place.’
Hijo had not been mined for many years; it was tapped out and derelict. Occasionally an entrepreneurial local would agree to take a small group of tourists there, to see what mining used to look like back in the old days, but only if they paid handsomely and in advance. It had to be a good amount of money – thirty US dollars per person or more – because the local people were superstitious and Hijo was an accursed place. Many hundreds of men and boys had lost their lives there.
Pablo doubted that his boss would even be able to find the old mine again without some help with the directions, but he was wrong. Jags took all the correct turns down an ever-narrowing series of roads and rock-strewn trails until Pablo realised that his employer must have visited the derelict mine without him – maybe more than once.
Jags brought the car to a stop within sight of the entrance. Above a cavernous hole in the rock face was a rectangular wooden sign with thick black lettering painted on it, informing you that you were about to enter Hijo de Dios. The white rock around the mouth of the mine was stained a dark brown, a reminder of the many blood sacrifices that had taken place here down the decades. A llama would be slaughtered, its blood smeared around the entrance and its organs removed and left in front of a carved figure that stood guard at the ingress to this and almost every other Chilean mine. These offerings were made by generation after generation of miners, anxious to placate the figure they called El Tio – not an uncle, but the devil himself, who they believed held their fate in his hands the moment they entered the mine. Jags had read a lot about this bloody tradition, out of interest but also for professional reasons. The devil was not a metaphor here. Pablo shuffled in the passenger seat.
‘Who is it we are meeting here?’
‘I told you already – a friend.’
Pablo nodded but he was unconvinced. Nothing about this day made any sense. Everybody knew the old mine was not a place you visited unless you absolutely had to. Only when a lot of money was on offer or, perhaps, if you were an idiot teenager, drunk or high on something and hoping that the many ghosts that haunted the place might scare your girlfriend into doing something she would later regret. Jags jabbed Pablo in the side with his elbow.
‘Wake up. Let’s walk. I’ll bring the flashlight.’ A
fter Pablo was out of the car, Jags flipped open the glove compartment and took out a torch and the envelope of photographs, which he stuffed inside his jacket pocket.
A crudely carved tribute to El Tio stood just inside the entrance to the mine. The red paint had flaked and fallen away in places, but the devilish figure was no less ugly for that. His black eyes bulged and the twisted horns on his head looked sharp enough to draw blood. At his feet were a few rusted tins of food, bottles of overproof spirits, pouches of tobacco, cigarettes and pornographic magazines. All these gifts were designed to preoccupy the devil for the duration of a miner’s shift or, more recently, a sight-seeing visit. If El Tio was kept busy there was a better chance he would let you enter and leave the mine unharmed. Jags smiled at the sight of the wooden devil and his pointless tributes, but Pablo looked away. His instinct was to beg one of Jags’ cigarettes, light it and place it between El Tio’s black lips as he had when they’d been here last time, but he knew his boss would only ridicule him.
‘Who is this friend that wants to meet you here Mr Jags?’
‘He’s a mining guy. He thinks there’s a seam of copper in here that got missed.’
‘A seam? After all this time? It is not possible.’
‘We’ll see.’ The pair left El Tio unbribed and walked across the threshold, into the darkness. Jags went first, the torch in his hand, while Pablo trailed reluctantly behind. Soon they had to stoop and then crouch as the tunnel narrowed and the ceiling dropped – first to a height of five and a half feet, then five and lower still. They moved in silence, the only noise was the sound of their breathing and water trickling down the black rock. Pablo let his mind wander. A seam of copper? There had always been stories that at the very centre of this mine, if you managed to dig far enough into the mountain, through the hardest rock and if the mine didn’t collapse on top of you, then eventually you would reach a huge ball of solid copper. A ball as big as an office building and worth a fortune. Maybe this was what Mr Jags’ friend had found? But this was just a story. They shuffled on; now and again the tunnel would divide and each time Jags took the right-hand turn. Pablo knew where they were heading – it was not far now. The tunnel veered right once more and then, quite suddenly, it opened out into a tall chamber. The space was perhaps three metres high and the same wide, but it felt huge compared to the cramped tunnels they’d been crawling through for the last twenty minutes. Big enough for Jags’ purpose.
A Cursed Place Page 3
