A Cursed Place

by Peter Hanington

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘Twenty? Wow. Perhaps you should have gone for a cheaper funeral.’

  ‘My mother wanted him to have the best.’

  ‘I see. That figures.’

  Jags kept quiet for a while. He let the seriousness of Soledad’s situation sink in some more. ‘So your family’s got a big ol’ debt, but you’ve got no breadwinner.’

  She turned and glared at him.

  ‘What is this to you, American? What do you want?’

  ‘Like I say, I knew your father.’ Soledad looked him over properly now. He didn’t look like the other consultants that she’d seen, but who knew?

  ‘You said that already. And you work around the mine, whatever that means.’

  ‘That’s right and so I came to pay my respects.’

  ‘And now you have. So, goodbye.’

  ‘But not just that. I came ’cos I’ve got a proposal for you and your family.’

  ‘A proposal?’

  Jags glanced up at the mountains. The sky was darkening fast.

  ‘Yep. But I don’t much like to talk here and it looks to me like there’s a storm coming. Are you hungry? You look hungry.’ Soledad was grey-faced. Underneath a long black coat that Jags guessed was her mother’s, she was stick-thin. He knew how things worked in her house. Pablo Mistral and his three boys were served first and given the most, then Soledad served her mother, and only after all those mouths were fed would Soledad take what was left. ‘I can talk while you eat.’

  ‘Eat where?’

  ‘The American place, the diner.’

  ‘They will not let me eat in there.’

  ‘Yes they will.’

  They did, although the waiter sat Jags and his ashen-faced guest right at the rear of the restaurant close to the toilets. This suited Jags fine and Soledad did not notice, she was too overwhelmed simply at being inside the restaurant to care where she was sitting. As a child, she and her friends would hang around at the back of this building, torturing themselves, filling their nostrils with the smell of good beef being cooked over charcoal. Fresh fish, lemon, whole roasted onions and peppers and potatoes slow-baked in hot coal. In the past, some of this food had been farmed locally, but now almost everything came from elsewhere – freighted in from all over Chile or, in the case of the beef, flown in from Argentina or the United States. The waiter arrived with a basket of warm bread rolls, salted butter and a bottle of mineral water. He filled their glasses and Soledad wolfed down a bread roll and drank.

  ‘What is this water?’

  Jags took a sip of his.

  ‘It’s just water. Still water.’

  ‘It tastes … sweet.’

  Jags ordered for both of them – all the starters, the steak, the swordfish and every side dish on the menu too. He picked a Pinot Noir from the Casablanca Valley that he’d had before and liked well enough. It was way too much food for two people, but Soledad could take the rest home for her brothers and mother and deliver that along with Jags’ proposal.

  ‘How’s your mother holding up?’

  ‘Most of the time she is in bed. She has fallen in love with her grief. She loves it as much as she loved my father. More.’

  Jags nodded. He wasn’t great at conversations like this, but he needed to get her talking.

  ‘Your father was a good man.’ Soledad pulled a face; she considered putting her cutlery down then decided against it.

  ‘I thought you said you knew him?’

  ‘I did.’ He paused. ‘Sure, he made mistakes.’

  ‘Mistakes were all he made. Mistakes and children.’

  Jags laughed. As Soledad ate, the colour returned to her face and with it the confidence and the attitude that he hoped was going to make her useful. ‘My father was a mujeriego. What is that word in English?’

  Jags hesitated a second.

  ‘Mujeriego? It means … a womaniser.’

  ‘Yes …’ she paused. ‘A womaniser. I think I like it better in English, it sounds too pretty in Spanish. Too poetic.’ She was right. ‘If he had not killed himself, he would have left us. He was getting ready to leave my mother for his other woman.’

  ‘I see.’ It seemed that when it came to a match-up between Fred’s algorithms and Soledad’s instinct, it was a tie. While she ate and occasionally drank – she sipped while Jags gulped – Soledad recounted the many wrongs her father had done to her mother.

  ‘He would return from work filthy and wash in the kitchen sink. You know the mine, you know that the men can shower there but he would never do that. He would wash in front of us, dirtying everything in sight. Then he would watch her while she cleaned it.’

  Jags looked at Soledad.

  ‘I’ve seen men do worse.’ He’d seen this girl’s father do much, much worse, Jags thought. But then, on reflection, perhaps not. All the murderous acts Pablo Mistral had been involved in had been done under Jags’ instruction. This regular humiliation of his wife was something he’d thought of all by himself.

  ‘What kind of work did my father do for you?’

  It seemed that Soledad had an ability for reading minds.

  ‘He helped me run errands. Move stuff around.’

  ‘Was he good at it?’

  ‘He was pretty good, he was reliable.’

  ‘And I suppose you think one of my brothers will be good at this too, you think this is a job that runs in the family? I am guessing that this is your idea?’ Jags grinned. Her mind reading ability was not without limit. She had guessed at his old plan, but not the new one.

  ‘No, Soledad, I’m not interested in your brothers. It’s you that I want to offer a job to.’ He washed a mouthful of steak down with a swallow of red wine. ‘And I’m not asking you to do the work your father did, not at all. This would be different work, better work …’ He filled her wine glass, though she had scarcely drunk. ‘And not just for you, there would be work for your mother as well. Francesca isn’t it?’

  Soledad stared at the stranger.

  ‘My mother could work again?’

  Jags nodded. She didn’t trust him, he knew that. But then she didn’t need to trust him, she just had to want what it was he had to offer. To want it a lot. ‘My mother hasn’t worked in … a long time.’

  ‘I assumed not. I bet she was a different person when she did work.’ Soledad could not argue with this. Her memories of her mother from back when she was working were fond ones. Life had worn her down, her husband had worn her down, diminished her. But now he was gone.

  Jags explained to Soledad about the museum, how the company he worked for was planning to buy up an old farm not far outside Brochu. Soledad knew the place Jags was talking about. The plan was for a nursery for the miners’ kids, a community centre of some sort and a museum. The museum would celebrate the miners and mining, tell the story of Brochu and the Americans would return some of the petroglyphs they had dug up and taken away during the construction of the dam.

  ‘What would my mother do?’

  Jags explained that she could take her pick, she could either choose to work in the nursery or the museum and that either way she would be paid a starting salary of four hundred American dollars a month. Soledad took a sip of wine. This was incredible. Her mother would choose the nursery job, of course, and she would be good at it. Having a job like that could simultaneously save her mother’s life and put food in her brothers’ mouths. It would leave Soledad free to do what she wanted. Jags saw this thought process at work.

  ‘But you gotta remember this is a package deal, Soledad. Your mom only gets the gig if you take a job too. This is one of those non-transferable, non-negotiable deals, you understand?’

  ‘What would my work be?’

  Jags finished his wine in one swallow.

  ‘The thing about people, Soledad, is they need leadership. They need it like they need water. The men who represent the miners here in Brochu are a bunch of fuck-ups – excuse my language – they have been for years.’ This was true; what Jags
didn’t bother mentioning was all the work he’d done in the past to make sure it stayed that way. All those bodies buried in mud at the bottom of the dam. Now that Elizabeth Curepipe was going to take a more direct interest in Brochu, things were going to have to change. A new approach was called for and Jags had a feeling that Soledad was the key to that.

  ‘You already have a leadership role in your community.’

  ‘That is only for the … I do not have the English word … ceremonia.’

  ‘It’s pretty much the same word … your role is ceremonial.’

  ‘Yes, ceremonial.’

  ‘And people respect you because of that.’ Soledad stared at Jags.

  ‘Maybe.’ They both knew that it was more wariness or fear than respect that the people of Brochu felt towards Soledad. On the one night each year when she performed her ceremonial role – the same role as her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother before her – locals showered her with tokens of appreciation and kind words. The rest of the time they kept their distance. Soledad had no problem with that.

  ‘It’s All Souls’ Night soon and that is good timing for us. It will remind people who you are. Show them your leadership qualities.’ Soledad was getting an idea now of what it was this Jags was asking.

  ‘I am not a community leader. Certainly not a miners’ leader, the men who work in the mine would not accept me as their spokesman.’

  Jags refilled his glass.

  ‘You’re right there might be some resistance at the start …’ He took another swallow of wine. ‘But they’d come round to the idea. How about you speak to your mother, see what she says?’

  18 The Watching Man

  THE NEW FALLINGWATER HOUSE, CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA

  Fred stared at the screen on his desk. It was similar in size to a large television, but longer and thinner, landscape and concave. He placed his thumb and forefinger on the black pad at the centre of his keyboard and pulled his fingers together, as though picking something up. On the screen, the map of America’s West Coast became more detailed and he could see a sprinkle of silver lights, seven of them, gathered closely together. But not too close; separated by several feet, by walls and windows, each in a separate room, but all staying in a beachside hotel down in Santa Monica. The trip was sold as forty-eight hours rest and relaxation, before they headed off on their various assignments. Of course, every one of them knew that this was really just the last stage of the recruitment process. A chance to check that they weren’t screwing around, or fucking each other or meeting anyone they shouldn’t be meeting. The new recruits knew full well they were being monitored, just as surely as they knew that there were cameras inside the fire alarms and behind the bathroom mirrors. Why else did one of the women prance around so much, practically putting on a floor show for Fred every time she got out of the shower? It wasn’t really his kind of thing, but he liked the thought of her knowing that he was watching.

  He spread his fingers and it was all of the Americas he saw. Then again and it was the world, or most of it. The same silvery dots that were gathered together on the Pacific coast were sprinkled elsewhere, but individually. Down in South America, one dot. A couple in Europe, a few in North Africa and around the Middle East. Even China, or at the fringes of it anyway. All of them working for an assortment of masters, but all of them watched over by one man. He heard Elizabeth’s heels ricocheting down the hall and stowed the map away behind a complicated-looking spreadsheet.

  ‘Hey husband of mine, I’ve lost that speech I give when people want to hear about Dad, don’t suppose you’ve got a copy?’ Fred’s right hand skipped across the keyboard, his fingers scarcely seeming to touch the keys.

  ‘The high-tech hippies, yes?’

  ‘You’re a genius.’

  ‘It’s in your in tray … now.’

  ‘Thank you. The people in London want me to talk about the old man as part of this exhibition they’ve got going on … The Fathers and Mothers of Our Technological Future they’re calling it.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Guess how many men they’re celebrating and how many women?’

  Fred knew better than to guess.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Ten guys. Two gals. How’d you like that?’

  ‘About as much as you do Lizzie.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No one could be more pissed about crap like that than me. I’m gonna tell them so too … right around the time they ask if I want to sponsor a lecture theatre or a scholarship or whatever it is they end up asking for.’

  Fred looked back across his shoulder at his wife. ‘I could come to London with you, you know? Instead of Jags.’ Elizabeth walked closer and placed her hands on his shoulders.

  ‘I’d love that.’ Here came the but … ‘But I don’t think now’s the right time, you’ve already got too much on your plate and most of the stuff I’ve got to do over there is boring. Let’s fly back, just the two of us, later in the year. Do London and Scotland, a proper vacation?’

  ‘Sure.’ Elizabeth felt bad. She didn’t want to leave Fred disappointed; she ran her bright red nails though his hair and offered a consolation.

  ‘How about you wander over later on, when you’re done with work? I’ll stay up.’

  Fred and Elizabeth lived in separate halves of this house, known locally as Big Mac. The outskirts of Cupertino boasted plenty of extravagant and ridiculously expensive mansions and McMansions. The Curepipes’ house was bigger, better-located and more securely guarded than any. Its design was a copy of, or in Elizabeth’s words a tribute to, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House. Cut into the hills behind, it looked at first sight like half a dozen enormous, square-sided sandstone trays hovering above each other at irregular angles. These trays were separated by air and connected at the centre by a broad stone chimney. There were no natural waterfalls available in this part of California, so the falling water for the new Fallingwater House was pumped in a never-ending cycle, up the back of the house through hidden pipes before being released to cascade down over a rock façade at the front. For hygiene’s sake the waterfall was chlorinated, but after a while you stopped noticing the smell. Fred smiled and looked up from his screen, craning his neck to gaze up at her.

  ‘Sure that’d be great. I’ll just finish with this then I’ll stroll on over.’ Elizabeth matched his smile and headed back to her half of the house. She’d expected Fred to refuse her offer; he looked tired and she was tired herself. The chances were that he’d forget or get distracted, but she changed into a black silk slip just in case. She didn’t want to fuck, but these days some passionless kissing and a little tug and cuddle was usually enough to send Fred back to his side of the house happy enough.

  Fred waited until the sound of his wife’s high heels had receded before he opened the map up again. Down on the south-eastern tip of China one of the silver dots was on the move, crossing water and travelling, by the looks of it, at a considerable rate of knots.

  19 Chinese Rules

  THE HEADLAND HOTEL, HONG KONG

  The late-night call from Carver had asked more questions than it answered, but Patrick remembered that it was often this way with William. It had been good to hear his voice. Even better was the knowledge that Carver was actually willing to talk to him – after months of radio silence, Patrick had begun to think he might have been shut out forever. Less encouraging was the content of the call. A brief hello and how are you and then that cryptic message, which was obviously the point of the call: Are you in a position to help a friend of mine with something? It was as vague as that. No clue as to what this help might involve or who it was for but, of course, he’d agreed without hesitation because it was William doing the asking. That was pretty much it. Where are you staying? Room number? Someone will be in touch. Thinking about it now, he wasn’t even sure that William had bothered with a goodbye, maybe he’d just hung up. Patrick spent a while replaying the conversation and trying to see if there was more to it. The cal
l had come from a number Patrick had never seen before and it was brief and deliberately vague. Carver was obviously working on the assumption that the telephone might be tapped or listened to in some way and Patrick wondered about that for a while. Eventually this train of thought led him back to Rebecca, her urgent phone call, the weird story about being followed and how worried she’d sounded. He’d promised to call her straight back. He looked at his watch. ‘Oh fuck.’ Almost an hour had passed since he’d made that promise. He called her number and it rang until eventually her answerphone message clicked in. He hung up and tried again, but the same thing happened. He left a message – a rambling apology and a plea that she call him back when she could. Any time she liked. He fell asleep with the phone on the pillow next to him, although he suspected there was very little hope of Rebecca returning his call.

  Patrick had a fitful night’s sleep, punctuated by at least one trip to the toilet and brought to an abrupt end by the deafening ring of the hotel room phone, not a foot from his ear.

  ‘Hello? Becs?’

  ‘No. This is the telephone call you were told to expect.’ The accent was unmistakeable.

  ‘That’s McCluskey isn’t it? Are you the friend William was talking about?’

  He heard a sharp tutting sound down the other end of the line.

  ‘That’s a cracking start son, brilliant. I was about to say no names and there you went telling everyone mine. So, now I’ll say no more names. You understand? We’re playing Chinese rules from now. You get me?’

  ‘Yes, sorry.’ Patrick understood what Chinese rules meant; working with Carver he had learnt about the particular precautions you needed to take depending on which corner of the world you were trying to report from. Nowhere were the rules stricter than when trying to do any investigative reporting from China. In the past, Hong Kong had been different, the rules more relaxed, but from what McCluskey was telling him, that was no longer the case. ‘I dinnae know that this phone line’s tapped, but we’re going tae assume that either it is, or it soon will be. You and me have to find a reliable way of communicating.’