A Murder Most Watchful

by Jefferson Bonar

  There were almost fifty people stuffed into the meeting room. The most elderly of them sat on chairs that had been gathered around the table Armada sat behind, while just behind were the younger generation, who stood, hats in hands, pushing in shoulder to shoulder to make sure Armada heard the things they shouted at him.

  Behind them were those who were not directly related but came to offer their thoughts as well. They stood against the back wall or crowded around the outside of the two doors that were open to the street, craning their necks to get a view of what was happening inside.

  From the moment of Armada’s arrival, emotions had been running high. Martin had made a short speech announcing who Armada was and what he was there to ask them. Armada had barely gotten the first question out before everyone started talking at once, deluging him with the overwhelming sense of loss they were all feeling even six months later. For many people in this room, the wounds would never heal.

  And it showed on their faces, for these people saw little reason to hide it from Armada. They let their grief loose to swirl about the room on a wave of glistening eyes, voices gone hoarse from anguish, and a desperation for their grief to be heard.

  Armada took down a few notes, trying to go family by family to establish where everyone was when Esteban was killed. The information he got was not very helpful, as all these families claimed to be at home with each other at the time.

  He heard about the Cortina family, who lost their fourteen-year-old daughter after attempting to hide her in a cupboard. They lived down by the beach and were one of the first hit. Their father, a quiet man named Jose with a large moustache, had been one of the first to see the pirates approaching the beach, as he’d come back late from a day’s fishing. He ran back to the house and attempted to hide his family, but it was no use. The raiding party broke in, ransacked the house, set it alight, then ripped his daughter from his hands while his house burned. He tried to stop them and got a dagger plunged into his thigh as a result. Despite his injury, his family blamed him for their daughter’s disappearance rather than Esteban. They said he didn’t fight hard enough, a criticism he did little to defend himself against, perhaps seeing it as a form of punishment he deserved.

  Another family, the Alvarados, had lost their twelve-year-old son while attempting to flee to their cortijo in the hills. It was bad luck that they happened upon a group of pirates who saw them as an easy opportunity. If they had taken a different path or had been a few moments earlier, the Alvarados might have made it.

  As such, the reason for their son’s disappearance wasn’t placed with Esteban but with God. It was believed he must have been taken for a reason and that he would soon return to them. Despite having numerous other children, a place at the table was always set for their missing son in case of his return. None of them believed the boy was gone.

  The Villanuevas also believed their son would return to them, taking his abduction as a sign of their lack of commitment to the Catholic faith. Apparently the boy’s father had been struggling with questions of his faith for many years, and this was taken as a sign he should reaffirm. His wife was quite pious, having considered entering a nunnery at an early age, and now she believed her mission was to bring her husband back to the fold. Once this was done, she believed her deal with God would be fulfilled and her son would return. With such hope in the future, Armada couldn’t see how they would resort to murder.

  Which left the Encinases, whom he was interviewing now. It had been an exhausting afternoon, and Armada found his patience growing short. As he predicted, the petty grievances that always arose between neighbours and families whose lives were so entangled with each other were starting to come out. The entire meeting would soon descend into constant shouting, so Armada had to get his answers soon.

  “They’ve corrupted him,” a woman wailed. It was Ines Encinas, the mother of Floriana Encinas, the fourth and final abduction of the pirates that night. But she had little desire to talk about the raid and instead focused her rage on the soldiers in the company, who in her estimation had failed the pueblo due to their behaviour.

  “Martin warned us about those soldiers,” she yelled. “He warned us! And they failed us that night. My Jose, he’s too stubborn. He never listens. He ran around with that Captain Salinas all day and night. Gambling, drinking, everything! My Jose was a good man. He never would have done things like that.”

  “Yes, Señora Encinas, but what about after the raid?” Armada asked again. “I just want to know what—”

  “He’s a good man, that alcalde,” Ines said, ignoring Armada once again. She looked to Martin, who stood against the wall and smiled at her, nodding in acknowledgement. “He knows who our enemies really are. And it’s those soldiers up on that ridge! If they can’t keep us safe, then they need to go!”

  There were cheers all around the room, which were deafening. Armada looked to Jose, who sat next to his wife, saying little. He didn’t blame Jose. Ines was feeding off the energy in the room, and there was no stopping her now.

  But could it also be a bit of guilt? Ines was the first one to mention the army garrison when it came to how they felt after the raid. Her hatred, at least, was directed at the army men. Did her husband share the view? He was the one who owned, and knew how to shoot, the harquebus that injured the pirate. It could just as easily have been the one that shot Esteban.

  “Sadly, the damage has already been done,” Ines shouted at Armada. “My Jose was so corrupted he was seeing another woman. Almost every night after the raid. That’s how he mourned our poor Floriana. It tore me apart!”

  Ines swatted her husband on the shoulder, and Jose looked guiltier. The crowd was turning against him. His defence was to look humble.

  “He is seeing her almost every night. I’m left alone with no one. This is what the army brings to our pueblo!”

  “Was he seeing her the night Esteban was killed?” Armada asked.

  “Yes! I told you, he sees her almost every night now.”

  Armada put his quill down. There was no more need of notes. “Who is this woman?”

  “It’s that gypsy woman who lives in a shack down on the beach. She’s a witch, that one!”

  “Where is this shack?” Armada asked.

  Armada looked round the room and saw nothing but vacant, unknowing stares.

  “I don’t know. But she deserves her place in hell,” Ines said and spat on the floor.

  “You don’t know?” Armada wondered. He looked at Jose, who was staring at the floor.

  “Jose Encinas, where is this shack?” Armada asked. “What is this woman’s name? Tell me about her.”

  Jose looked up at Armada with wide, fearful eyes.

  “We aren’t here to examine anyone’s transgressions, Constable,” cried Martin from the back of the room. “Now, I think everyone has had a long afternoon and it’s a good time to call an end to this meeting.”

  “Those are not all my questions,” Armada said in protest.

  But the meeting was already breaking up. People were standing and starting private conversations with each other and ending any hope of maintaining order in the room. Some of the parents collapsed into tears at having to remember the events of that awful night and were surrounded by comforting families and neighbours, while others began arguing over the many petty disagreements that had come up during the meeting.

  Armada made his way to Martin and tapped him on the shoulder as he comforted the Alvarados, gesturing for the alcalde to meet him outside.

  “How did it go, sir?” Lucas asked, who was waiting for Armada under the canopy of a wilted ficus tree. “Sorry I left early, but there were too many people in there.”

  “Yes, fine. I just have one final question I need answered before we can leave.”

  A few minutes later, Martin joined Armada outside.

  “I’m sorry, Constable, but I have to protect the privacy of my pueblo,” Martin said.

  “And I have to protect their lives,” Armada said. �
��I can’t do that, however, unless you tell me who this gypsy woman is.”

  “Why is this so interesting to you, eh, Armada? Are you looking for a bit of female companionship for yourself?” Martin asked.

  “Don’t evade my question. Answer it.”

  Martin sighed. “She’s just some gypsy who used to squat in an old fishing shed by the beach. But I moved her off a long time ago, well before this whole thing with Esteban. She’s got nothing to do with this. Now, good night, Armada. You should get some rest.”

  Martin went back inside the town hall, leaving Armada fuming in the cold night air.

  “What is it, sir?” Lucas asked.

  Armada took a long breath. The grief in the room had been too much. The people were too loud, and they sat too close. It had affected his emotions, the sadness starting to seep into his soul as if he, too, had lost a child that night. He was thankful for the night air to help him collect his thoughts.

  “Seeing, Lucas. Not saw. Ines Encinas said her husband is seeing her. Which means this mysterious woman is still there. A woman like that sleeping with someone’s husband in a town this small, and no one knows who she is or where this shack is? That seems unlikely to me. And now I’m supposed to believe she is Jose Encinas’s alibi for the night Esteban was killed? And then to have Martin lie about her…”

  Armada felt his right hand shaking. “Perhaps Martin was right. We should get some rest tonight. After a sherry, of course.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Lucas could see the night was threatening to be a long one. He was sitting amongst the ruins of a cortijo whose roof had fallen in long ago. The ground was covered in bricks and broken roof tiles choked with weeds that made it difficult to walk around in. What was left of the room was bisected by the greying, rotted remains of fallen wood beams that had become wrapped in predatory vines, while the crumbling remains of the old stone walls did little to protect from the breeze.

  But it was the best Lucas could do. It was the only structure around that gave him a decent view of the little house at the end of the road where the Encinas family lived. From here, he could almost see the candle inside whose flickering light cast dancing shadows on the curtain. When the wind wasn’t howling in his ears, Lucas could hear the family talking as they ate their supper, unaware they were being so closely watched.

  “Do not make contact, Lucas,” Armada had warned. “Jose Encinas should never know you are there. After he leads you to this gypsy woman, you come straight back.”

  Lucas assured Armada he would. He was grateful to be trusted with a job like this. It had taken a lot of hounding of the old man. He couldn’t understand why Armada had been so reluctant to let him do anything important. It’s not like he was still that naïve eleven-year-old he’d been when Armada had first taken him on. He’d grown up since then. He could handle himself. Why couldn’t the old man see that?

  Of course, Armada didn’t yet know what had happened to him on the watchtower ladder. Lucas considered not telling him. How could he? It was too humiliating. But it made him wonder if there were other tasks that might send him into a panic in the same way. What if one day he got frightened going up a set of stairs? Or riding a horse? What if the old man’s life depended on it?

  It was so confusing. He had worked so hard to convince Armada to trust him with jobs like this one tonight. Lucas had felt so sure he could handle it. But what if he couldn’t? What if at any moment he was going to start panicking again? Could it be that he was a coward at heart? Perhaps he was delusional in thinking he could handle this and that he should do what Armada was always saying and focus on the tedious chores required of a normal page. Perhaps he should be grateful to be getting wages at all and leave the investigating to Armada before he ruined a case.

  But something didn’t feel right about that. When he’d first started out in Armada’s employ, he’d been much younger and had never travelled outside his home village. He hadn’t minded the endless cooking, cleaning, washing of clothes, tending to the mule, procuring provisions, and all the rest of it because it had been so exciting to be able to travel around to other pueblos and other parts of the kingdom and to meet so many new people. He’d already met more new people in the past few years than most ever met in their lives.

  As Lucas got older, however, he became more aware of what happened to his parents. Lucas watched as Armada caught killer after killer over the years, and he began to ask some difficult questions. Why hadn’t Armada been able to find the killer of his parents? Why was his case the one Armada couldn’t solve? It wasn’t fair.

  These questions burned in Lucas’s heart and led him to become interested in Armada’s work. He was always hounding the old man with questions, always wanting to know more. Armada understood where this desire came from, and it made him reluctant to share what he knew at first. Armada somehow knew Lucas would want to someday return to his home village to use what he had learned and track down his parents’ killer.

  This had made Armada worry Lucas would leave before he was ready. Finding criminals took the kind of patience that comes with age and experience, he’d said. Young boys like Lucas tended to want to jump into things much too early.

  But Lucas felt he’d been patient enough. It was time to start learning, and the way to do that was with jobs like this. But how long could he go before panicking again? He didn’t know, and that was the worst part of it all.

  The sound of a door opening distracted Lucas from his thoughts. A man was coming out of the Encinas house. The candle had gone out, and the house was quiet. The Encinas family must have gone to bed, and this man was Jose, sneaking away while his family slept.

  Jose began to hike up the hill towards the cortijo, following a small trail that led past it and over the ridge on the far side. Had Jose known he was there? Lucas had been careful when he’d come to this cortijo. But maybe he hadn’t been careful enough. Perhaps Jose had seen him and was now coming to kill him and bury him there.

  He may also be using the trail to get over the ridge. But there’d be no way to know until Jose got there. If he was just passing by, however, he would see Lucas sitting there against the wall. It was dark but not dark enough to hide Lucas from view. And the worst of it was he couldn’t move. The floor was covered in broken bits of clay tile, which Lucas knew from experience were very noisy when pushed around by the fleeing shoes of a frightened page.

  Lucas decided to chance it and held his breath as Jose arrived at the cortijo and continued walking up the hill.

  As soon as Jose was out of view over the ridge, Lucas sprang to his feet and scrabbled his way out onto the trail to follow. He found it difficult to mask the sound of his footsteps on the dried gravel of the path, so he kept his distance, always stopping to listen for Jose’s footsteps in the darkness ahead.

  The path took Lucas over the ridge to reveal a steep drop into a deep canyon on the other side. The path criss-crossed its way into a fold of the earth where the moonlight couldn’t penetrate and the sound of crashing waves echoed. It was somewhere in the midst of this dark canyon that Lucas picked up the sound of Jose’s footsteps crunching their way down to the bottom.

  Lucas took it slow as he followed the treacherous path into the darkness. The echoing here was louder with the sound of the ocean, which Lucas found masked the sound of his own footsteps. However, it also masked those of Jose, and for a while Lucas had lost track of him. The path, however, offered no alternative routes, so Lucas trudged on.

  Eventually the path led all the way down to the bottom of the canyon where Lucas’s shoes sank into the soft beach sand. Ahead of him, the stony walls of the canyon opened to reveal a tiny bit of beach, just ten paces wide, that glimmered in the silvery moonlight.

  A small shack had been built from stacked stones glued together with patches of crumbling mortar along one side of this tiny beach. Lucas realised this was the shack of the old gypsy woman he’d come to find that night. He’d done it!
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  Jose Encinas was just in front of him, making his way across the sand towards the door of the shack. As he approached, another man stepped out from behind the shack and greeted him. Lucas tried to determine who the other man was, but the moonlight was behind him, casting his face in shadow. And their conversation was lost in the din of the ocean waves crashing up on the beach and echoing through the whole of the canyon.

  Lucas needed to get closer. He needed to find out who this man was and what they were talking about. Perhaps catch a glimpse of the gypsy woman who lived inside if he was lucky. The whole case could rest on what he found out tonight, and Lucas got excited. He knew Armada would want him to return now. He’d done what he’d come here to do. But there was so much more to learn. Lucas couldn’t go back. Not yet.

  Lucas realised the soft sand of the beach masked his footsteps well. He could get quite close, and the two men would never know he was there. So he waited until the time was right and began to creep closer, poco a poco, until he was standing just on the other side of the shack from the two men. It was here that he could pick up pieces of their conversation between the waves.

  “It’s taking too long,” the other man whispered.

  “Going as fast as I can, but…” was all Lucas heard from Jose.

  Lucas peered through the darkness, hoping to see the other man’s face. But the man had his back to him now. Lucas figured if he could get round the back of the shack, perhaps that would give him a good enough angle to see the man’s face.

  Lucas took a step and was horrified to hear the cracking of wood under his foot. He looked down to find a rotted wooden floater from a fishing net that had been left on the ground under his foot.

  Jose and the other man had gone silent, looking in his direction.