Tapestry of Fear (16 page)

“Oh,” I said inadequately, the strength flooding back into my body, my joy so great I could hardly contain it.

“And of course there is something else I thought I ought to mention to you whilst I have the chance.”

“Yes,” I said eagerly. “Yes?”

“That Jose loves you.”

A glorious sweep of elation surged through me. Jose did love me, and nothing or anyone stood between us. I was overjoyed the whole world bright again. Rich and glittering and full of promise. Jose.
Jose
.…

I ran into the inn, pushing the beaded curtain away hastily.

“Good gracious!” Miss Daventry said. “ What on earth has Javier been saying to you?”

I grasped her hands, eyes shining. “You made a mistake. Back in Miguelou, you made the most awful, wonderful, mistake.”

“Has she taken leave of her senses?” Miss Daventry asked Javier over the top of my head.

“No, I've regained them. Listen, do you remember, that first night in Miguelou, when the boat was fired on?”

“It's hardly a thing that would have slipped my memory considering the circumstances we all find ourselves in.”

“I asked you if there were any local men on board and you said four. Among them Luis and Jose Villada. You said quite distinctly that Jose was Carmen's fiance.”

“Did I dear?” Miss Daventry asked vaguely. “ How foolish of me, but I'm sure I don't remember. Was it important?”

“
Yes
, because, don't you see? I fell in love with Jose and all the time I thought it was hopeless because he was going to marry Carmen!”

Miss Daventry sighed. “And you mean to tell me that in the past three days when you have spent so much time together, you never asked the man straight out?”

“It wasn't as easy as you think,” I said spiritedly. “We were hardly ever alone together, and besides I was waiting for
him
to tell
me.
After the way he greeted her in Bayonne I didn't think there was any question of it. I thought I'd been mistaken about his feelings for me.”

“You young people never cease to amaze me,” Miss Daventry said, shaking her head. “All this liberation of the sexes and it seems to get you nowhere. If I had been in your position I would have known how the land lay straight away. I remember in nineteen thirty-six when I was in love with General Ria.…”

“Jose could still be dead.” Romero interrupted her brutally.

I turned, the blood draining from my face. In the ecstasy of knowing he loved me, I had forgotten everything else.

“Oh God, what can we do?” I asked him. “We must do something. We can't just sit here, waiting.”

Romero drummed his fingers on the bar. “ They've been gone a long time now.”

“Not if they were both in cars and Garmendia managed to stay ahead.” Eugenio said, pushing his hair away from his eyes.

“Aren't you forgetting something?” Javier asked quietly. The men sat on their bar stools, watching him intently. “ Garmendia is no fool. I'm not so sure he would run from Jose.”

Silence hung, unbroken except for the drumming of Romero's knuckles.

“You mean you think Garmendia deliberately raced off in the car, leading Jose away from Cotanes?” Eugenio asked.

Javier nodded.

“Then if he did that,” I said, my mouth dry. “ It means Garmendia knew where he was going … and knew that when he had duped Jose into following him, that he would be able to kill him.”

“Yes,” Javier said miserably. “It does.”

Romero shook his head, toying with his glass. “I don't think so, Javier. Remember, Garmendia and Cia thought they had it all tied up here. Jose and myself took them by complete surprise. I doubt if Garmendia would have had a reserve plan up his sleeve.”

“I agree with Romero,” Miss Daventry said. “As far as Angel and Alphonso knew, all that was needed was that Jose should arrive in Cotanes. Nothing else.”

Javier sank back leaning against the wall, eyes closed.

“What made you come?” Pedro asked Eugenio suddenly. “You said we were fools to follow Jose here.”

“You were,” Eugenio said, holding his glass between his knees. “And so am I for changing my mind and coming as well. Just put it down to my better nature … and the fact that another bomb went off in Bilbao an hour ago. I know it couldn't have been Garmendia himself, but he was behind it. The whole movement is breaking up and moving into chaos. Have Garmendia free another week and we will be back to the same position we were in two years ago. Plus the fact that the only separatists not rounded up and being held in jail are the maniacs that have gone over to Garmendia. I sometimes wonder if he has the police themselves in his pocket.”

Romero said dryly. “ Not even Garmendia could manage that. Not on a big enough scale anyway. He's had the luck of the devil this last week.”

“You can say that again,” Javier said bitterly. “All our men arrested within twenty-four hours, or as many as makes no difference, and Garmendia and his mob rampaging the countryside from Bilbao to Bayonne, and still free.”

“I wonder,” said Miss Daventry, her face grave. “I wonder.…”

“Yes?” I prompted. “Go on.”

“Jose was driving the police car wasn't he? I was just wondering how far he would be likely to get on main roads in a stolen police car.”

Romero swore. “ Not bloody far … why the hell didn't I think of it.…”

I let out my breath slowly. “You mean you think the police have picked him up and that Garmendia has got away?”

“It would account for neither of them returning,” Javier said, opening his eyes, his face pale.

I swallowed hard. “And if they have … what will happen to him?”

Eugenio said after a few seconds silence. “ It depends on the amount of collaboration between the French and Spanish police forces.”

“But the French policeman at the farm wouldn't let the Spaniards search for us!”

“He was also a friend,” Eugenio said cynically. He stubbed his cigarette out and lit another. “A month ago a Spanish policeman, heavily armed, was shot twenty-five miles inside French territory by a separatist he was chasing. The policeman was called Azores and came from Madrid. He was taken to hospital for treatment and then escorted by the Spanish consul in Bayonne and the French security police back to the border. Later it was officially confirmed that Azores had had several companions. Two cars were also found deep within French territory. One containing a sub-machine gun and ammunition, the other car containing photographs of people alleged to be members of ETA and living in France. I mention this for two reasons. First, because it was important to us, as Basques, because though we have known about illegal Spanish police activity for years beyond the border, this was the first officially reported case. That is the reason the French are playing it cool at the moment. They don't want another public incident. Secondly, because it proves that the Spanish police are quite used to crossing the border after their quarry. If the Spanish officer and his men who chased you to the farm are still anywhere in the vicinity, then Jose will be forcibly taken back to Spain.…”

“And?”

“The sentence for killing a policeman is death by garotting.” Romero said, eyes anguished.

“
But he hasn't killed one!
” I protested hysterically. “ He hasn't killed anyone!”

“According to Spanish news sources he has,” Javier said gently. “And so have you.”

I grasped his hand, sick and shivering. Eugenio crushed his half smoked cigarette beneath his heel.

“I'm going to look for them. I'll take the left hand turn at the main road.”

“And I'll take the right,” Romero said. “ Javier, stay here and wait. One of them will return. Garmendia to collect Cia … or Jose to collect Miss Daventry.”

I watched them go and then returned bleakly to the bar. Even Miss Daventry's usual optimism seemed to have waned. Pedro sat at the top of the cellar steps, apparently keeping an eye on Alphonso Cia, and the barman stared listlessly at us with uncaring eyes.

I said. “I can't stand here doing nothing. I'm going for a walk.”

For a moment I thought Miss Daventry was going to suggest accompanying me and then I saw understanding in her eyes, and she said only: “ Don't go too far away, Alison.”

“I won't. I just want to be able to see the road, that's all.”

I walked over the cobbles that led from the square, back towards the bend where it curved out of sight, circling the steep hillside, till it levelled out amidst green fields. I would be able to see him coming, and long before the car climbed slowly into Cotanes I would know if it was Jose approaching … or Angel Garmendia.

I sat down on the cool of a crumbling stone wall and commenced my vigil, wrapping my arms around my knees, hugging them to me, trying to control my deepening anxiety as the snake-like road far below me remained stubbornly bare.

We had driven into Cotanes from the west, as had Eugenio, and Eugenio had said that the road had been deserted. Was it from the east then, he would come?

The road meandered into the far distance, a heat haze hanging over it so that my eyes ached as I looked down on it, wanting only to see the police car he had driven off in, dreading to see anything else, anything that could possibly be Garmendia returning. I pulled anxiously at the long grass and the thick weeds that grew around the foot of the wall, my fear escalating as the minutes passed and still there was no sign.

The possibility that he would not return was unbearable. He had to come back. He
had
to. I would see his face again and those amber eyes would gaze into mine and in the gold-flecked depths there would be joy and pleasure … and love.

In the brilliant sunlight something moved. I held my breath as the miniscule dot of a car sped out of the haze and down the road. Frantically I shielded my eyes, straining to see better. Like a toy the car sped between fields of waving grain and then onto the grassy plain that circled Cotanes. It was not a police car. The blood pounding in my ears I watched it as it turned off the road, beginning the long ascent to the village.

Slowly I rose to my feet, walking to the very edge of the road, standing there in my own private hell as I waited for Garmendia to sweep round the last bend.

I felt sick and dizzy and had no idea of what I was going to do as the throb of his car engine sounded faintly in the distance. The note altered, vibrating on the air as he changed down gears, the sound coming steadily nearer and nearer. My eyes stung with unshed tears as I waited for him, my heart empty of anything, even of hate.

Then he was below me, forcing his car round the last tortuous bend and I stepped out into the road, my mouth dry and parched, my heart hammering.

The sun glittered on his windscreen, temporarily blinding me and then he swerved to avoid me, the car bonnet smashing into the loose stone of the decaying wall, missing me by only a couple of feet.

I didn't move. Couldn't move. And then as my heart turned a somersault I said weakly: “Romero.…”

He slammed the car door behind him, walking towards me. I sat down suddenly on the wall, my knees weak, my head in my hands, my cheeks wet with tears of relief.

“Alison,” he said, and I wiped my tears away, lifting my head, saying thankfully:

“I thought it was Garmendia.…” and then I saw his face and my heart died within me.

He made no move towards me, simply stared at me with deadened eyes. I struggled to speak, my body bathed in sweat.

“Where … ?” I managed at last.

Romero said tonelessly. “ There's a deep quarry about ten, twelve miles away. The grass at the roadside was flattened by tyre marks … he must have been travelling very fast. The car was still burning. I couldn't get down to it … but there was no point. The fire was dying out and I could see the remains of his body still at the wheel …”

I turned my head, crying into the flower filled grass and then Romero put his arm around my shoulder, and leaving his car spread-eagled across the road, led me back to the inn, his shoulders hunched in grief and defeat.

The worst had happened as I had known it would. Jose was dead and I would never see him again. I remembered our last parting, when I had determindly kept my eyes averted from his, and the pain submerged me. Nothing mattered anymore. Somehow I would return to England, back to the office and to my life in London that I had never given one thought to in the past few days. It seemed impossible that so short a time could alter my life so drastically.

From now on, no matter how many people I was surrounded by, no matter how many friends I had, I would always be lonely. Without Jose I could be nothing else.

They stared at me, their faces white and shocked. Romero sat on a bar stool, staring down at the floor, his hands hanging loosely between his knees. Javier and Miss Daventry looked helplessly on, unable to offer any words of comfort, stunned into silence.

At last I said. “There is no point in staying here now.”

“No, of course not,” Miss Daventry said, rallying herself. “ How many of us can get into the car, Romero. All of us?”

He nodded. “All except Cia.…”

I had forgotten Alphonso Cia. Romero's voice was expressionless. Javier said. “Let the barman see to him when we have left. It is better for Cia that none of us go to him now.”

Miss Daventry adjusted her hat slowly and wearily. “Come along, Alison. And Romero. It is time we left.”

Dejectedly Romero slipped off his stool, putting his arm heavily round my shoulders as we began to walk to the door. It was Pedro who spoke. His gun was in his hand and he was pointing it at us, saying pleasantly. “ No-one is leaving.”

Incredulously Javier said. “Are you mad? The only person to come back here is Garmendia,” and then, more surer. “ You want to wait for Garmendia … to be revenged?”