The Butcher Beyond

by Sally Spencer

  They were teetering on the edge of their first argument – an argument that neither of them wanted. Perhaps they would have found a way to resolve it amicably, or perhaps it would have developed to the point at which they almost came to blows. They were never to find out, because at that moment a breathless clerk from the hotel appeared at their table.

  ‘I have been looking everywhere for you, Señor Woodend,’ the young man gasped.

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’ Woodend said.

  And already he could feel his entrails turning to water.

  ‘Señora Woodend …’ the clerk said.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She … she is ill. She has been taken to the hospital.’

  Woodend was finding it difficult to take in air – difficult to speak.

  ‘Which hospital?’ he said, forcing the words out.

  ‘There is only one hospital in Benicelda,’ Paco Ruiz told him. ‘I will drive you there.’

  Thirty-Three

  The workshop was in the back room of a house in the old part of town. It differed from most establishments of its nature, in that all the tools of the trade – the numerous bottles of coloured inks, stacks of paper of various qualities and various ages, the expensive camera – were on open display.

  And why shouldn’t they be? Pablo Vasquez asked himself.

  The police weren’t going to raid him, because he was under the protection of the most important – and probably the most corrupt – policeman in the whole of Benicelda.

  Not that it was always a soft option, being protected by López. The Captain wasn’t an easy man to handle. He was vain. He was short-tempered. He was greedy. But then, Vasquez supposed, that was almost the definition of any captain in the Guardia Civil. And if there was one thing which could be worse than dealing with him, it would be not dealing with him.

  Vasquez heard a knock on the door – three short raps, a pause, two long raps. He stood up, crossed the room, and drew back the bolts. Though he had just been thinking about Captain López, it was still something of a surprise to find the man himself standing there.

  López looked quickly over both shoulders, up and down the street, before stepping over the threshold.

  Once he was inside, Vasquez quickly bolted the door behind him. ‘I was not expecting you, my Captain,’ he said.

  ‘Weren’t you?’ López replied. He frowned. ‘Does that mean you have not completed the work I set you to do?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I mean, it is finished but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘They are saying in the town that you have arrested the Frenchman for the murder of the Alcalde.’

  ‘And so I have.’

  ‘Then … then I do not see why you would need my help any more.’

  ‘Your help?’ López asked, with a sudden dangerous edge creeping into his voice.

  ‘My … my assistance,’ Vasquez said, then, seeing that López’s frown was continuing to deepen, he asked desperately, ‘What do you want me to call it, my Captain?’

  ‘You need call it nothing at all. I give you orders, and you obey them. We are not partners in any sense of the word. We are not even associates! Is that clearly understood?’

  ‘Y … yes, my Captain.’

  ‘Then show me the work you have done for me,’ López said.

  Vasquez led him over to the bench.

  As the Captain examined the documents, his temper seemed to improve. ‘You asked me why I still needed these papers now that I had arrested the Frenchman,’ he said.

  ‘Y … yes, I did. But if you don’t want to tell me …’

  ‘I will tell you. Listen and learn. There are only two kinds of people in this world, Vasquez. There are those like you, who grub along from day to day, hoping that things will not go wrong – and are always caught on the hop when they do. And there are people like me – who can see beyond their own noses and plan ahead. I will never end up in gaol – something which is almost certainly your fate – because I am always ready for the unexpected. That is why, though your tiny brain sees no need for me to have documents any more, I have still come to collect them.’

  ‘I … I have made a good job of them,’ Vasquez said.

  ‘You have made an excellent job of them,’ López said. ‘But then a mule will make an excellent job of carrying my baggage and my cat will make an excellent job of catching mice. I expect excellence. The moment you cease to be excellent, your usefulness to me is over, and your life as a convict will begin.’

  Vasquez looked down at the floor. ‘I am well aware of that, my Captain,’ he said.

  López nodded. ‘Good, then we truly do understand each other.’ He reached into his jacket pocket, and produced a wad of banknotes. ‘I’ve brought you your money.’

  Vasquez licked his lips at the sight of the cash. He felt a powerful urge to reach over and snatch it from López’s hand, but he knew that would be a very big mistake.

  ‘I want no payment,’ he forced himself to say. ‘That you allow me to continue with my work is reward enough for me.’

  López nodded again. ‘Perhaps you are gaining a little wisdom after all,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you, too, are finally learning to look ahead.’

  Vasquez, who had devoted many hours of painstaking labour to the documents, watched as López picked them up and thrust them roughly into his pocket. He winced at the Captain’s lack of care with his precious work, but he knew that it didn’t really matter. In fact, the professional in him recognized, the rougher López was with the documents, the better they would be.

  Thirty-Four

  Joan was lying on a bed in the intensive care unit, with tubes running from her into pieces of machinery whose function Woodend couldn’t even begin to guess at. She was pale and drawn, but at least she was conscious.

  ‘Are they lookin’ after you, lass?’ Woodend asked.

  Joan gave him a half-smile. ‘It’s a hospital,’ she said. ‘What else do you expect them to do?’

  Woodend’s grin owed more to relief than amusement. Joan might be weak, but at least she was still his Joan.

  ‘What happened?’ he said.

  ‘Since there wasn’t much chance of seein’ you, I thought I might as well go for a walk. I was just outside the hotel when it hit me.’

  ‘When what hit you?’

  ‘This pain in my chest. Like indigestion, only a hundred times worse than any indigestion I’ve ever known. I tried to reach the nearest bench, but my legs just wouldn’t let me. I fell over, Charlie! In the street! It was all very humiliatin’.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Woodend said.

  ‘Watch your language!’ Joan warned him.

  ‘It’s a hospital, not a church,’ Woodend told her. ‘Anyway, what I meant was, you’d no cause to feel humiliated. You couldn’t help bein’ taken ill. What do they think it was?’

  ‘A heart attack. They’re almost certain it was. They think it was quite a mild one, but they say I’ll still need plenty of rest, which means you’ll have to go in a minute.’

  ‘Aye, I suppose I will,’ Woodend agreed.

  ‘Anyway, you’re probably itchin’ to get right back to work on that case of yours.’

  Woodend felt as if he had been struck in the stomach with a sledgehammer, wielded by a very large – and very angry – navvy.

  ‘The case doesn’t matter a toss to me,’ he protested.

  ‘Your cases always matter to you, Charlie. That’s just the way you are,’ Joan said, her tone suggesting that it was his dishonesty at that particular moment – rather than the obsession which drove most of his life – that she really disapproved of.

  ‘Anyway, the investigation’s all over, bar the shoutin’,’ Woodend said awkwardly.

  ‘Then you should be off celebratin’ with your new mate, Paco.’

  That’s just what I was doin’ while they were sticking all them tubes in you, love, Woodend thought guiltily – except that it hadn’t turned o
ut to be much of a celebration at all.

  ‘I want to stay here,’ he said.

  ‘They won’t let you stay here. There’s sick people to deal with, an’ they don’t want you gettin’ in the way.’

  ‘Then I’ll go an’ sit in the waitin’ room.’

  ‘There’d be no point in that. They won’t let you see me again until the mornin’, so you might as well go back to the hotel, have a few pints an’ then get your head down.’

  ‘If you’re sure,’ Woodend said hesitantly.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be off then.’

  He had almost reached the door when Joan said, ‘Charlie?’

  He turned round. ‘What is it, love?’

  ‘I was just thinkin’.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘All your life you’ve drunk like a fish, smoked like a chimney an’ lived off greasy food. An’ I’m the one who gets the heart attack. Odd, isn’t it?’

  ‘Odd?’ Woodend repeated. ‘It’s not odd! It’s bloody unfair – that’s what it is.’

  Paco Ruiz entered the foyer of the hotel where the brigadistas had been staying – where all of them, with the exception of Sant, were still staying. He was very clear about his reasons for being there. He was looking for evidence – any evidence – which would prove that he had been right, and Woodend had been wrong.

  He recognized the man behind the desk. His name was Manolo, and several months earlier, when he had landed himself in trouble, it had been Paco who had pulled him out.

  The desk man positively beamed with pleasure when he saw who was entering the lobby.

  ‘Señor Ruiz,’ he said. ‘What a surprise.’ A look of concern crossed his face. ‘You don’t want a room, do you? You haven’t fallen out with that lovely señora of yours?’

  Paco grinned. ‘No, I haven’t. I’m here to ask a favour.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘I wondered if it would be possible to see the Frenchman’s room.’

  ‘For you, most things are possible,’ the clerk said, but he made no move towards the pigeon holes which held the keys.

  ‘I’ll need some way of getting in,’ Paco suggested.

  The clerk looked puzzled for a moment, then smiled. ‘Oh, I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘But on this occasion, a key will not be necessary.’

  ‘It won’t?’

  ‘No. The door is open. The maid is in there at this very moment, parcelling up the Frenchman’s things.’

  ‘So the police have finished with the room already, have they?’ Paco asked, surprised.

  The other man shrugged. ‘The first time they came, when they were searching for evidence, they were upstairs for a long time. The second time – after the Frenchman had been charged with the murder – they had no sooner gone up than they were coming down again.’

  ‘So the second time they didn’t really search at all?’

  ‘That’s right. They said they had all they needed, and as soon as I’d sent the Frenchman’s possessions to the Guardia Civil barracks, I could have the room cleaned and let it out again. I didn’t argue with them. We’ve probably already lost three days rent, since I don’t imagine the Frenchman will pay for his stay here. So it’s time the room started earning its keep again.’

  Paco thanked the clerk, and made his way upstairs. He had not expected to hear crying as he approached Sant’s room, but that was just what he did hear.

  He looked into the room. A young maid – little more than a child – was on her hands and knees, peering under the bed and sobbing.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Paco asked.

  The maid jumped up so quickly that she banged her head on the bed, but the pain did not seem to bother her half as much as the fact that someone had seen what she was doing.

  ‘Are you from the police?’ she asked, panicked.

  ‘No,’ Paco said gently. ‘I am a friend of Manolo’s. He sent me upstairs to see if you were all right.’

  ‘Then he knows,’ the maid moaned. ‘And soon, everybody will know. My mother! My father! My friends! They will all know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘They will say I stole it. But I swear to you, I did not.’

  ‘Why don’t you calm down, take a deep breath and start at the beginning,’ Paco suggested.

  The maid nodded, then gulped in air as if she had been on the point of suffocating before he arrived.

  ‘I clean this room every day,’ she said. ‘I do a good job – a thorough job – just as they taught me to.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  ‘The last time I cleaned it was just before the policemen came.’

  ‘Which time? The first? Or the second?’

  ‘The first. I cleaned all the cupboards – even in the corners. And then I turned over the mattress, and saw that something was hidden there. It must have been valuable, don’t you think, or the señor would not have bothered to hide it like that?’

  ‘Valuable to him, at least,’ Paco agreed. ‘What did you do when you’d turned the mattress?’

  ‘I put it back where I found it. And now it is gone! The señor cannot have taken it away, because he has not been back. And the room has been kept locked, except when the police were here. So where has it gone? They will blame me. I know they will blame me.’

  ‘No one will blame you,’ Paco said soothingly. ‘I promise you that.’

  ‘Truly?’

  ‘Truly. Now tell me exactly what this valuable thing you found under the mattress was.’

  And the maid did.

  Thirty-Five

  Woodend had almost reached the main exit of the hospital when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He stopped and turned around, to find himself facing a tired-looking young man in a white coat.

  ‘You are Señor Woodend,’ the man asked.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I am Doctor Sanchez.’

  ‘Are you one of the doctors who looked after my wife?’

  ‘No, I … I have been very busy with another patient. That is why I am here now. This patient of mine is dying, but he wants very much to talk to you. Will you come?’

  ‘I’d be glad to, if it’ll help, but I don’t really see what good I can do for him,’ Woodend said. ‘Are you sure it’s me he wants to see?’

  The doctor nodded. ‘He was very insistent about it.’

  ‘But I’m not a doctor, or a priest. I’m a policeman.’

  ‘I know. He kept saying, “Get me the English cop. I need to talk to the English cop.”’

  It was the slight American twang the doctor put into the last few words which gave it away.

  ‘This patient of yours isn’t called Mitchell, by any chance, is he?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘That is the man,’ the doctor agreed.

  They had put Mitchell in an isolation room at the end of a long corridor. The air was full of the cleansing scent of antiseptic, but even that didn’t quite manage to mask the stink of impending death.

  Mitchell himself was lying on the room’s single bed, though his wasted body seemed to make hardly any impression in the mattress. His face had turned the colour of sulphur, and despite all the drugs that had been pumped into him, it was clear that he was still suffering agonies.

  His eyes flickered, acknowledging Woodend’s presence. ‘Whatever else you might tell me, don’t – for God’s sake – try to persuade me that this is just a temporary relapse,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t,’ Woodend promised him. ‘You’re dyin’, Mr Mitchell, and we both know it.’

  Mitchell forced a grin to his pain-wracked face. ‘They promised me another month at least. Think I can sue?’

  Woodend returned the grin. ‘No harm in tryin’. What was it you wanted to see me about?’

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in my confessing to having killed Durán and his bodyguards, is there?’

  ‘None. I’ve got a boss back in England who’ll believe almost anythin’ if it suits him, but even he wouldn�
�t swallow the idea that you’d had the strength to carry out the murders.’

  Mitchell’s eyes flickered ‘In that case, I want you to find another way to get Sant released,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not one to turn down a dyin’ man’s request,’ Woodend said. ‘I’d do almost anythin’ you asked of me – but I can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not? He’s innocent.’

  ‘That’s not the way the evidence points, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What evidence?’

  ‘Sant is an expert with a throwin’ knife an’—’

  ‘He was an expert with a throwing knife. And I should know that better than most – I saw him use it often enough in the old days. But he couldn’t do it now.’

  ‘Sorry, but that’s not true,’ Woodend said. ‘Up until recently, he was instructin’ the French Foreign Legion.’

  ‘He taught the Legionnaires the techniques of his skill. But he couldn’t demonstrate those techniques himself – not after that night on the beach.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I told you he took a bullet in the shoulder, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘If we’d been able to get him medical attention right away, it might have mended properly. But we couldn’t. We were on the run from Durán, and the whole of Franco’s army. It was months before we got him to a doctor, and by then it was too late. Sant can’t throw a knife like he used to, because he can’t raise his right arm above shoulder level.’

  ‘I see,’ Woodend said, noncommittally.

  ‘You don’t believe me.’

  ‘I think it’s the easiest thing in the world to fake an injury. If I’d been plannin’ to do what he did, I’d have faked it an’ all.’

  A look of total despair crossed Mitchell’s face, only to be replaced, a moment later, by the faintest shadow of fresh hope.

  ‘The night Durán was killed, we were all in the hotel,’ he said. ‘Do you know about our sleeping arrangements?’

  ‘Aye. Sutcliffe shared a room with Roberts, Sant shared a room with Schneider, an’ you were alone.’

  ‘And do you know why things were arranged in that way?’

  ‘Sutcliffe thinks you wanted to be alone because that would give Durán a chance to kill you – an’ that just might lead to his own downfall.’