Nyctophobia (24 page)

‘In my experience it’s the seers who need something, not the spectres.’ Alfonse drained his glass and set it down. ‘Such visitations are more about the living than the dead. You must ask yourself not what they did wrong, but what you have done.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The Car

T
HE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON
, Jerardo had a hospital appointment for an injection that would ease his arthritis, and as it was hurting him too badly to drive, Rosita accompanied him to the Santa Theresa Hospital in Estepona. It was Mateo’s last day at home before his bi-monthly New York trip, and he took Bobbie into Marbella so that she could have lunch with her mother, who was staying there overnight, attending some kind of fashion show.

The skies were cooler today, and grey cloud had locked itself in, screening out the sun all the way from the cliffs to the coast. I told myself that the light was nowhere near as low as it would be under similar circumstances in London, but even so I warily skirted the shadow of the trees as I headed for the property border to collect the mail.

I arrived just as the yellow postal van was pulling away. Bobbie had asked her father to send her a postcard from wherever his trips took him, but they turned up with hopeless irregularity. I found a pair inside the box, one with an out-of-date photograph of the
feria
at Jerez and one of the Sherlock Holmes pub in London. The wind had been ever-present for the last few days, and had battered the loose leaves from the trees. I stopped and looked at the altered view, the bushes and rocks of the lower road exposed for the first time since I had arrived.

I could see something yellow angled between the branches.

The wind caught the leaves again and shifted them, removing the view. Frowning to myself, I set off down the hill. As I drew close, an uncomfortable feeling began to settle in the pit of my stomach. I stepped up onto the empty roadway and followed its curve, waiting for the object to reveal itself. When I drew level with the site, there was nothing to be seen. I turned about. The blacktop ran around an outcrop of boulders that shielded passing drivers from a series of indentations in the landscape, where the runoff came down from the mountains. Sometimes eagles and vultures swooped and wheeled above this spot, searching for prey. I cautiously approached the edge and looked down.

There, almost completely buried by broken branches, was a canary-coloured Seat.

The vehicle lay tipped on its side, its offside wheel badly twisted. It appeared to have been there for some while. It was hardly surprising that no-one had noticed it; very few cars passed this way, and if they did it was usually because they were returning from the hills above, which meant that they coasted down on the other side of the road.

Puzzled, I clambered down the scree-covered slope. There was no-one inside the vehicle. The passenger-side window had shattered, so I peered in. A red Avis folder lay on the floor of the car. The door wouldn’t open, but I was able to reach inside and grab it.

The vehicle had been registered to Anne Constance Shaw. A London address had been hand-printed underneath in blue biro. My mother’s car. I tried to fit the pieces together, but drew a blank. What the hell was it doing here? I had watched Anne leave the house nearly six weeks ago, and had spoken to her twice on the phone since, but she hadn’t mentioned having an accident. Why would she hide such a thing?

I tried the boot. It opened easily but was empty, as was the glove compartment. The only thing that identified the car as the one hired by my mother was the rental agreement.

I tried to think what could have happened. Anne never did anything without a carefully reasoned plan. Her trip to visit me had been far from accidental. I wanted to call her, but I had left my mobile back in the kitchen.

As I headed back to the house, the familiar distant sound of thunder trundled over the cliffs.

I kept Anne’s number on speed-dial, not that I used it much. Too often our conversations had turned into arguments, and after the last time –

‘Hi, I can’t get to the phone right now, but leave a number and I’ll get back to you.’ Anne was never around to take calls in the day, and hadn’t a clue how to pick up her messages, so the process was always hit and miss. I left a short message and rang off. I waited, thinking, listening to the ticking in the rooms and halls, the endless counting down of time.

I tried to recreate events in my head. Anne said she had been visiting a friend of Sandy’s, but I had no idea who that might be. After our argument, she had left without waiting for her alcohol-high anger to subside, and must have driven off the road. But if she had deliberately chosen to abandon the car, how did she get to the coast? And if she’d had an accident, why didn’t she come back up to the house? Admittedly, it would have been difficult for her to swallow her pride and return, but the day had been scorching and she was half-cut. She wouldn’t have got far on foot.

I heard the key in the front door, and Bobbie came running in. I rose and handed her the postcards, trying not to show concern. ‘Look, two more for your collection. They arrived after Daddy came back from his last trip.’

Mateo was wearing his first sweater of the year. Like all people of Spanish descent, he started layering up the moment the thermometer fell below twenty five degrees Centigrade. ‘That’s because the cards go to the post office at Gaucia. I’m amazed anything gets delivered here at all.’ He kissed my cheek. ‘How are you doing? You look a little tired. Is Rosita back yet?’

‘No, she has to wait with Jerardo until he’s had his X-ray,’ I said. ‘I can make you a toasted sandwich.’

‘No, it’s fine, I’ll get something at the airport later. But you might be required to feed missy here, she’s not stopped eating all afternoon. I still haven’t packed.’

‘Mateo…’

He turned on the stairs to look at me; never more handsome, never more trusting. ‘Yup?’

I had been about to tell him, but the words fell away. He was leaving in a little over an hour’s time. What could he do if I told him about the car? It would only make him worry more, and he had enough on his mind. Right now it seemed that our love for each other was the only thing that made any sense. ‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘You need to get packed. Rosita insisted on folding your shirts.’

I sat in the drawing room and watched the view, the green gardens, the statue, the amber mountain edge, the dip of the coastline beyond. The shadows never changed. The effect was so subtle that I only noticed it when I went elsewhere, to the café in Gaucia, where Celestia constantly moved her table to stay out of the sun’s glare, or to Jordi’s library, where slivers of sunlight crept over the untouched shelves. Everyone else had to move to accommodate the sunlight except us.

And the Condemaines.

While Mateo was packing I rang my mother again, but as usual the call went straight through to her voicemail. When Mateo came back down with his bag I made him drink a cup of coffee, and sat watching him. ‘What?’ he asked, amused.

‘Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?’ I asked.

‘As long as I make you smile,’ he said. ‘I’ve been leaving you alone too much. After this trip things will be easier. I’m dreading it. Do you have any idea what the immigration lines are like at JFK? A nightmare. And when I get there I have to fire someone. I’ve seen enough of the unemployment crisis here to know how that feels. You will be okay, won’t you?’

‘If you remember to Skype me.’

‘I just don’t like to wake you.’

I smiled. ‘Wake me, whenever, wherever.’

He rose and came over to me, lifting me from my seat to take me in his arms. ‘My last big trip,’ he promised. ‘After that it will just be about the three of us.’

I kissed his chin, his lips. I touched his neck, his hairline. ‘Do you ever feel that maybe we don’t deserve our happiness?’ I asked.

‘That’s a strange thing to say.’

‘It’s just that when I’m with you I’m so content, I start to think it’s too good to last.’

‘If you want to feel guilty about being happy, you should convert to being a Catholic,’ he said. ‘Anyway, you deserve happiness.’

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘I’ve done nothing for you.’

He studied my eyes. ‘You really don’t see it? You’ve given me the world. After my marriage failed, I buried myself in work. I might never have been able to break out of that if I hadn’t met you.’ He brushed my cheek with the back of his hand and picked up his bag. Bobbie was dancing ahead to open the front door and ask questions about his return.

The feeling of foreboding would not leave me, as if this might be the last time I would ever see him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The Letters

I
WAS AWOKEN
by the sound of falling rain. My head was full of clouds, and would not be shaken back to life. Rising, I wrapped myself in my grey silk dressing gown and went to check on Bobbie, but found her room empty, her bed a mess. According to the clock it was nearly nine. That meant I had overslept. I had taken two Zimovanes the previous night.

I stood at the head of the stairs and called, but heard nothing. The house was empty and silent but for the ticking of clocks. In the kitchen I found a piece of cardboard propped against the olive oil bottle on the table; ‘Gone shopping with Rosita, we’re buying you a SURPRISE! xx B’.

I showered and made the beds, thinking that it would make a change not to leave all the clearing up to the housekeeper. I was putting away the bottle of Zimovane tablets when I saw the little brass key on my bedside table, and once again wondered why it didn’t fit any of the doors.

Because it opens something precious,
I realised,
not a door at all.
No woman would choose to wear a key on her bosom unless it unlocked something close to her heart.

I thought of love letters, and then I knew. The first time I had gone beneath the building to look at the old telescopic mechanism with Mateo, I had seen an ornate French
bonheur du jour
writing desk in the corner and had assumed it belonged to Francesco Condemaine. But it was too elaborate and delicate for a man. And I was now sure that whatever was inside it belonged to his wife.

Going to the staircase, I opened the door to the basement. The writing desk still stood there untouched. Its lid was down as before, but I could tell that the little brass key was at least the right size. It fitted smoothly, and unlocked the wooden panel on the front.

Inside, it was clear that nothing had been disturbed for the best part of a century. An old fountain pen lay on a blotter, next to a dried-out inkwell and a wooden rocker covered in peeling green felt, used for pressing letters. Several small sepia photographs in tarnished silver frames held portraits so small and faded as to be unidentifiable. A drawer stood on either side of the
escritoire
. One held a folded sheet of draughtsman paper, which I carefully opened out.

It was Francesco Condemaine’s missing sketch of the house, each room and passage carefully labelled. Everything was so tiny, precise and delicate. But I could see at once that there was something different about it. There were no servants’ quarters marked out at all. Instead there was just a gap between the rear wall of the house and the cliff. All I could think was that he must have changed his mind and added the rooms after finishing his design.

In the other drawer I found a bundle of letters tied with fine blue ribbon that proved surprisingly tough to break apart. Knowing that they would be in Spanish, I needed to show them to Jordi.

I found Jerardo in the garden, digging out the dried stump of a rose bush. ‘Could you take me into Gaucia?’ I asked.

He gave me a look that explained with perfect eloquence that he was not my taxi service, but finally creaked to his feet and dusted down his jeans, beckoning me to follow him.

He took the bends in the road with such ferocity that I was thrown against the door of the truck, but at least I was able to keep my window open and breathe fresh air. Depositing me in the town square, he barely stayed long enough to allow me to climb out.

I found Jordi in the library, half-asleep. He sat up sharply when I entered, smoothing down his hair and cleaning his glasses. ‘Senora Torres, it’s good to see you. I hope you are well.’

‘It seems I’m always asking for your help,’ I apologised. ‘I wondered if you would mind taking a look at these.’ I opened my bag and removed the letters and the floor plan, placing them before him. ‘And this is a rubbing I made from a headstone in the garden. I tried to translate it but some of the letters are faded. Let me at least make you some coffee while you take a look.’

‘The inscription is easy,’ he said. ‘It’s a famous passage from Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra;

“Here lies a gentleman bold

Who was so very brave

He went to lengths untold,

And on the brink of the grave

Death had on him no hold.

By the world he set small store–

He frightened it to the core–

Yet somehow, by Fate’s plan,

Though he’d lived a crazy man,

When he died he was sane once more.”

Jordi gave me an odd look. ‘Who did the headstone belong to?’

‘I think it’s the marker to the cemetery. It wasn’t attached to any particular plot, but then it was hard to tell if anyone was even buried there. It’s all so overgrown.’

‘I think you’re right – this would have been a general inscription for the family. An interesting choice. Let me have a look at the other stuff.’

While I waited for the water to boil, I glanced back and saw him poring over the pages in puzzlement. ‘What is it?’

‘The floorplan of the house,’ he replied absently. ‘I thought you said the servants’ quarters were sealed off.’ Setting down the coffee mugs, I came around his side to see what he was looking at. He tapped his finger on the plan. ‘There aren’t any servants’ quarters marked here. But there’s handwriting in the space, see?’