by Chris Lloyd
‘Four men?’ Àlex tried to bring her back to the point. ‘Did you tell the Mossos this last night?’
‘You didn’t ask me last night. Too busy making enough noise to wake the dead, you were. Four of them, there were. Talking Spanish, even though they were foreign.’
‘Foreign?’
‘Accents. All of them. Two of them, anyway. A couple of them sounded Spanish, the others were foreign. South American or something. They didn’t talk much and they shut up when I went past.’
‘Where exactly did you see them?’ Àlex was struggling to remain patient.
‘I told you. Outside Bofarull’s house. They were putting stuff into a car and talking. Shut up when I walked past. Right outside his front door, they were, don’t know what they were doing, but they stopped doing that too. Just got in the car and drove off.’
‘Did you see what sort of car?’
She shrugged and pulled the housecoat tighter around herself. ‘A car.’
Àlex pushed her for more information, but she couldn’t say the type of car or even the colour because of the distorted light from the street lamps.
‘Could you describe any of the men?’ he tried once more.
‘Foreign.’
Realising they weren’t going to get much more out of her, Àlex thanked her and he and Manel walked back to Bofarull’s house. Outside, they studied the symbol of the triangle with the three lines emerging from the point at the top.
‘They didn’t draw the line through it,’ Àlex commented, ‘because they were disturbed by the woman.’
‘But it is the lot we’re after,’ Manel agreed. ‘Nothing to do with this missing kid or the elections. Just another gang robbery. Bofarull’s house just fit the bill.’
Àlex continued to stare at the crude lines of the drawing. ‘So, he was just another victim of the robbers. It had nothing to do with Pere Vergés.’
He stared at the symbol, its outline blurring the harder he looked. Just as one piece of the investigations came into focus, others faded into the mist.
‘Where does that leave Vergés?’ Manel asked.
Àlex shook his head to clear it. ‘It doesn’t rule him out of the picture for Jaume’s disappearance. He might still be wanting retribution from Miravent or Comas. Even if he wasn’t behind the attack on Bofarull.’
Manel nodded at the symbol. ‘Vergés could even have tipped the gang off about this guy. Part of his revenge.’
Àlex considered that as he took his mobile out. ‘Possibly. Or his gripe is solely with Jaume’s parents.’
He was about to call Elisenda to let her know of their findings when his phone rang. It was the Mossos station in Palamós. Tempted to ignore it so he could call Elisenda, he answered it nonetheless and listened in increasing interest. At the end of the call, he hung up and stared at Manel.
‘Someone from a house in La Fosca has called Palamós. They’ve found a symbol on their house that wasn’t there yesterday. A triangle.’
Chapter Fifty-Three
A soldier in the uniform of the Terç de Miquelets, a regiment made up of local Girona volunteers in 1808 to defend the city from Napoleon’s troops, snapped to attention and watched his companions form a double column. Dressed like him in dark blue breeches and jacket with a crimson facing and two rows of brass buttons over leather gaiters and red and white laced espadrilles, they were slowly coming together in two rows, their muskets jostling for space over their shoulders. He placed his headgear on, a curious black brimmed affair like a truncated top hat with a bright red plume and left his wife and son to join their ranks. As he took his leave and walked across the cobbles on the square in front of the university, his mobile phone rang in his trouser pocket. Sheepishly, he grabbed at it to turn it off. The officer at the head of the column raised his eyebrows at him and he gave an apologetic look back.
Elisenda watched them march away from the square, heading for the cathedral and the climb down the rococo steps to the little square at the bottom. She’d rejoined Montse and her two charges in the middle of the second siege of the city. The French had breached the walls with cannon-fire but had been held back by the defenders. Now the miquelets inside Girona and the Spanish army outside were launching a raid on the French artillery to capture the siege guns. That would be the end of the second siege and of the re-enactments for the day. Sunday would see the third siege, which took place some months later in 1809.
As part of the crowd trailed in the soldiers’ wake to watch them steal out through the city walls, others waited expectantly in the university square. More joined them, huffing and puffing after the ascent of the steep stone steps that emerged opposite the main faculty or streaming down from the other two sides of the square, quickly filling the spaces left vacant by the retreating sound of the soldiers and their followers. They didn’t have to wait long. A blunderbuss sounded to the right, and a wail of bombards and shawms heralded the arrival of the cercavila. At its head, the leader appeared to be searching the audience. His gaze alighted on Elisenda and the people around her and he called a temporary halt to his band and bowed down low, doffing his hat with a flourish and half-smiling at her. The rest of the troupe made the most of the unplanned stop and bumped into each other. Sorting themselves out to the crowd’s amusement, they continued to the middle of the square and took up positions. A second blunderbuss sounded, flame flashing from its flintlock and the noise reporting back and forth amid the stone walls of the square and ringing in the audience’s ears.
The leader held his hand up. In the expectant hush, he waited, a smile slowly crossing his face. He spoke, his voice once again beguiling and authoritative.
‘There are three types of people. Those who have an education. And those who don’t.’
He waited until the penny dropped before continuing.
‘We are creating the third sort.’
Some of his troupe ran out in front of him and set up a makeshift classroom, the teacher at the front moving dynamically about, explaining some strange and fascinating concept. The children, a boy and a girl, looked on enthralled. On the blackboard, there were diagrams and pictures, equations and quotations vying for space.
The leader spoke now in a stage whisper. ‘I would say it’s the politicians who are doing that for us, but we’re all reflecting today so I’m not allowed to say things we already know.’
The crowd responded with nervous laughter, unsure where it was going. He returned to his normal speaking voice.
‘This is the picture they all have for us now,’ he said, sweeping his hat at the classroom tableau.
The teacher picked up a cane and strode forward to bring his cane crashing down on the desk. It split in two. More members of the troupe dressed as functionaries came out and separated the boy and the girl, forcing them to sit apart at their own half of the table.
‘Education. Back to the old days, back to the old values. Back to a time where you got what you paid for. And if you couldn’t pay for it, you didn’t get it.’
The tableau transformed. Now the teacher stood at the front, pretending to spout knowledge. The boy and the girl had moved further apart and were staring ahead fearfully. The blackboard showed a list of Spanish prepositions, something generations of children had had to learn parrot-fashion, but with some of the words misspelt.
‘We’re being sent back to a time when children were educated separately. Boys from girls, rich from poor.’ He looked pointedly at Susanna Miravent in the crowd. ‘The sacred from the profane. And when they take education back, you know what they’re doing, don’t you?’
The crowd giggled nervously, each individual afraid to reply.
‘They’re taking society back.’
The three figures in the tableau now stood up and began to sing Cara al Sol, the Fascist hymn that children were forced to sing at the start of the school day during the years of the Franco regime. Slowly, they raised their right arms in a salute. The crowd gasped. At the height of the salute, the three players su
ddenly burst into a smile and waved their hands, dancing off to the rear like bad music-hall stars. With an audible exhalation of relief and a release of tension, the crowd burst into laughter and applause.
The leader bowed down low and turned. He caught up with his troupe and joined them as they danced out of the square, slapping hands with the crowd as it parted, the bombards and shawms regaling their passage.
Miravent turned to Elisenda. ‘Are you really going to allow him to get away with that? It’s outrageous.’
Before she could reply, Elisenda saw a figure approaching them. It took her a moment to place him. It was Joaquim Benach, Jaume’s tutor at his school. He walked up to Miravent.
‘I just wanted to say how much I feel for you,’ he told the politician. ‘Jaume is such a nice boy.’
Miravent was momentarily nonplussed. Benach had to remind her who he was.
‘Of course,’ she said, her calm restored. ‘Thank you.’
‘If there’s anything I can do,’ he replied, ‘please, you only have to ask. I’m sure Jaume’s all right. I’m certain he’ll return safe and sound and that there’s really nothing to worry about.’
With those words, he turned and walked away as quickly as he’d arrived, to be quickly swallowed up by the people milling about the square. Elisenda lost sight of him almost immediately, but she had other plans. Making her excuses, she hurried off after the cercavila. She caught them as they were pausing between the university and the cathedral, under the trees on the tiny Plaça dels Lledoners. Some of them were drinking from plastic bottles of water, but the leader stood apart from the rest, breathing heavily. He looked more like he was trying to calm down rather than getting his breath back.
‘You push it a bit too far,’ Elisenda told him.
‘You really think so?’ He gazed at her, his eyes tired. Blinking a few times, he seemed to regain strength. Suddenly, the smile and the persona were back in place. She felt she’d seen the stage curtain reveal a momentary secret. ‘I’d say it’s the people I’m railing against who are the ones pushing it too far.’
‘Why education? Because Miravent sends her sons to private schools?’
‘Because I was a teacher. Because I hate the way central government is mangling and demolishing the education of our children to suit their own ideologies and to punish any part of the country that disagrees with them. They’re taking education back to the days when it served a wealthy, elite few and brainwashed generations into submission. They’re cutting the amount of time we’re allowed to spend learning in our own language and they’re forcing a time-warp religious indoctrination on us that we haven’t seen since Franco’s day. I’m not the one that’s pushing it too far.’
‘How do you know Susanna Miravent?
He looked surprised. ‘I don’t. Not personally. But we all know a Susanna Miravent. Sadly.’
Elisenda studied him intently. ‘Do you know her son?’
He laughed wryly. ‘No, I don’t know her son. I’ve never known her son. Just as I no longer know my own son.’
‘Can you tell me your name?’
Seeing the other members of the cercavila move off into the flow of people streaming past, he quickly followed them, being instantly engulfed in the torrent of bodies.
‘My name?’ he called back to her. ‘My name is…’
He said something, but his voice was swept away with the sound of a shawm and the babble of humanity tumbling through the narrow streets.
Chapter Fifty-Four
‘That is a triangle.’
Àlex listened to Manel’s words and continued to look at the marking scrawled on the gateway leading to a house in La Fosca. Just like Bofarull’s house, it had been marked in black felt-tip on the cabinet housing the meters, this time set into the wide stone gatepost at the entrance to the drive. Two lines emerged from the top of the drawing.
‘Is it what you’ve been looking for?’ the uniformed caporal from the Palamós station asked him. He’d met them at the road into the development of second homes and led them to the house, a modern building set back from the narrow road.
‘And it wasn’t here yesterday?’ Àlex asked him.
‘Apparently not. The owners are elderly and don’t go out much, but their daughter visited them yesterday and again today. She’s the one who contacted us as she’d seen it on social media.’
‘How did she tell you?’ Manel grunted, holding his phone up, looking for a signal.
‘Once she saw it, she drove to near the main road. You can get a signal there.’
‘Do her parents live here all the time?’ Àlex asked.
The caporal nodded. ‘All year round. They used to have an apartment in Girona, but they came out here when the husband retired and fell ill because the house is on one floor. He can’t climb stairs.’
They opened the gate and walked up to the house. Waiting on the porch, the daughter let them into the house. Her mother was sitting in the living room, looking small but defiant among a lifetime of bric-a-brac. On the coffee table in front of her was the same religious pamphlet they’d found at other houses. Àlex introduced himself and gave the two women some idea of the attacks that homeowners had been subjected to.
‘You really need to leave your home,’ he told the mother. ‘Can you stay with your daughter at least for tonight?’
The daughter replied first. ‘The problem’s my father. He’s bedridden and can’t be moved. Not without an ambulance, and even then it’s problematic.’
‘We can arrange transport for him,’ Àlex told her.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ the older woman suddenly said. Her voice had the brittleness of age but there was an underlying strength to it. ‘This is my home. I’m not being driven out.’
‘You aren’t being driven out, senyora,’ Àlex assured her. ‘It would just be while we sort out this problem.’
The woman shook her head vigorously, the veins on her neck taut under the loose skin. She turned to her daughter. ‘I’m not going. You know your father wouldn’t be able to take it.’
Àlex turned to the younger woman. ‘Does your father know about the symbol on the house?’
‘We haven’t told him yet. We don’t want to worry him.’
‘I’ve told him,’ the mother interrupted. ‘He has a right to know. And he feels the same. We’re not going anywhere. Let these people come, we’ll see them off.’
Àlex stifled a sigh and asked if he could see the bedroom where the husband was.
‘He’s asleep,’ the mother said. ‘I’m not disturbing him.’
Instead, Àlex walked to the window overlooking the front garden and asked the daughter to join him. ‘Is there any way you can convince her to stay with you for a few nights?’
The woman laughed almost bitterly. ‘If I do, it’ll be the first time in living memory.’ They both turned to look at the mother, scowling at Manel. ‘You’ve seen how stubborn she is.’
The two of them went back to the sofa where the mother was sitting and the daughter sat down next to her. The younger woman spoke to Àlex. ‘I have to say, if my parents won’t go, I’m staying here with them.’
Àlex looked directly at her. ‘You will all be at risk. These people are very violent.’
‘I don’t care,’ the mother said.
Àlex looked at them both. ‘If you’ll just excuse us for a moment.’
He beckoned Manel and the caporal from Palamós over and the three of them went outside.
‘Mad old biddy,’ Manel commented. ‘Does she want to die?’
‘She wants to stay in her own home,’ Àlex told him.
Together, they walked around the house. The garden covered two sides of the property, the front as far as the gate out into the road, and the side, which Àlex saw was where the kitchen was. Beyond the gate, there was just a small gap separating it from the little street, without even a pavement. The other side of the road was a copse of tall stone pines, offering no place for anyone to hide. He went out in
to the road and looked up and down. It was narrow and straight for some metres either way. Any van or cars parked there, staking the place out, would be noticeable. He walked back into the garden and looked back to the house. The property was small, with no place to keep any appreciable amount of Mossos hidden while they waited for the gang to attack. He rejoined Manel and the caporal.
‘There’s no way we’re going to be able to get enough people into here unnoticed to trap this gang. And we can’t allow the owners to stay.’
‘That lady’s not going anywhere,’ Manel muttered.
‘We can’t allow this to happen,’ Àlex said absently. ‘But I can think of one way around it.’
He asked Manel and the caporal to stay with the family while he drove to the main road to find a signal to call Elisenda.
Chapter Fifty-Five
The heels of her short lace-up boots thumped dully on the expensively-tiled floor as she walked across the living room. A stone in the tread of the right one scraped across the light brown surface of the floor like fingernails down a blackboard. The sound grated through the house.
‘Sorry, Catalina,’ Elisenda whispered to herself. Bending her leg at the knee, she picked the tiny stone out and looked for somewhere to put it. Shrugging, she threw it in the open fireplace and apologised to her sister again.
She was on her own in the room, pacing edgily in the spaces between and around the three large sofas. She stopped now and stood by the fireplace, her right foot raised on the cold grate. Sturdy chunks of wood and fine kindling were stacked in a neat pyramid in the centre, more a design statement at this time of year than in readiness to be lit. She turned around to face the room, the front door just out of sight at the top of three steps leading to the little hall. To her right, the darkness outside pressed against the window that gave onto the front garden and the coastal footpath. She was on display and had to fight an urge to turn the bright ceiling lights and floor lamps off so she could see out into the night. In front of her too were the two giant ceramic pots, stylishly distressed and supposedly held intact with giant staples, that Sergi her brother-in-law loved. So did she, but not in a minimalist, modern living room and most certainly not now. She had to suppress a whim to check there was no one hiding inside them.
