The Sentinel: 1 (Vengeance of Memory) (55 page)

‘You did that on purpose?’ The sarge was momentarily impressed until he saw Guzmán’s face. ‘Nah, thought not.’

Peralta put his pistol back in its holster. He seemed to be withering in front of them. His shoulders were hunched, his thin frame melting into the layers of shabby clothes.

‘He tried to pull a gun.’ Peralta’s voice was faint. ‘Then they tried to escape.’

‘Well, it’s done now,’ Guzmán said, looking round at the dead men.
‘Sargento?’

‘A sus ordenes.’
The pile of corpses had cheered the
sargento
up enormously.

‘Teniente
Peralta entered the room and was obliged to shoot three desperate criminals. That clear?’

The sarge shook his head. ‘There are four of them,
jefe
.’

Guzmán sighed.
‘Imbécil.
There are
three
, count them again. And get rid of this.’ He kicked the dead Dominican’s leg. ‘Get his wallet, any identification and destroy it. Get rid of his clothes and get rid of the body. Somewhere where it won’t be found for a long time.’

‘Understood,
Comandante.’

‘And you,’ Guzmán turned to Peralta, ‘had better come with me.’

Downstairs, the bar was milling with
guardia civiles,
checking identity documents, poking frightened customers with their rifle butts as they herded them against the bandstand. ‘Anything?’ Guzmán asked indifferently.

‘A couple of lowlifes we’ve been looking for, a few small-time thieves, nothing more.’ The corporal sounded disappointed. ‘The men with the whores were here because it’s cheap. And you can see why.’ He nodded over to a small group of women sitting around a table smoking. They were in various stages of undress, their dressing gowns and nightdresses even more tawdry under the baleful lights of the Bar Dominicana.

One woman looked over at Guzmán, her face a mask of thick make-up. ‘When can we get back to work, officer?’

Guzmán lit a cigarette. ‘When I say,
señorita.
Think of it as a little coffee break and enjoy being upright for a few minutes. We’ll need you to answer a few questions.’

The woman swore, although she took care Guzmán didn’t hear.

Guzmán looked at Mamacita, sitting bedraggled and handcuffed, the wig askew, quietly weeping, lines of mascara running down his face and mixing with his stubble.

‘Take it back to the
comisaría,’
Guzmán told the corporal, ‘and, while you’re at it, anyone else who seems even the slightest bit suspect.’

The corporal saluted and barked orders at his men. A truck was waiting outside and the prisoners were led to it. Guzmán walked over to the ramshackle bar, reaching for an unopened bottle of brandy. He took off the top and drank from the bottle before handing it to Peralta. The lieutenant swigged the brandy gratefully, but then choked and spluttered most of it onto the floor.

‘It’s a bit rough.’ Guzmán smirked.

He motioned for Peralta to sit down at one of the filthy tables. Peralta sat with his head down, morose, periodically tugging at the brandy. Guzmán took the bottle from him.

‘You did well,
Teniente,’
he said. ‘You were in a tight spot and you did what you had to. No one can ask for more.’

Peralta shook his head. ‘I let you down,
jefe.
I should have kept them covered, called for help so we could have interrogated them.’

‘In which case you’d be dead now,’ Guzmán said. ‘You did the right thing. You stayed alive.’

‘But you said
Almirante
Carrero Blanco ordered us not to touch them under any circumstances,’ Peralta muttered.

‘And no one has.’ Guzmán smiled. ‘You shot three criminals in the execution of your duty. There was no Dominican here,
Teniente,
do you understand? There was no fucking Dominican.’

‘I understand, sir.’ Peralta looked grey and much older.

Guzmán and Peralta sat, drinking brandy, watched by the hostile whores, while the
guardia civiles
carried out the bodies wrapped in sheets and laid them by the front door to await a truck. Peralta noted there were only three bodies. From the rear of the building he heard the low rumble of an engine.

‘The sarge will do a good job,’ Guzmán said. ‘He’s had lots of practice.’

‘I’ve never killed anyone before,’ Peralta said quietly.

‘Well, there you are,’ Guzmán was suddenly cheerful, ‘you’ve got an interesting story to tell the wife when you get home.’

Peralta thought about it for a moment and reached for the brandy again.

The sarge ambled back into the bar. ‘Whenever you’re ready,
mi
Comandante.’

Guzmán stood up and took a last mouthful of brandy. He looked at the bottle, scrutinising the label and then hurled it into the mirror behind the bar. Peralta flinched at the impact and leaped to his feet. His nerves were going. The whores appeared much less startled at Guzmán’s behaviour. The one who had spoken earlier got to her feet.

‘Oiga,
leave us somewhere to work. Have some respect.’

‘Respect? For you? Of course,
señorita,’
Guzmán snarled. ‘We’ll leave you alone for now, although you may see us again in due course.’

‘Well, let’s hope you’re paying customers next time,
señor,’
the woman laughed.

Guzmán looked icily at her.
‘Mujer,
if I was paying you, I’d expect change from a duro. Keep quiet, you bag of shit, and hope you don’t find yourself in one of our cells,
puta,
because if you do, you’ll wish you’d never been fucking born.’

The woman swallowed hard and stayed quiet. Guzmán followed the remaining
guardia
civiles
outside to the truck. The vehicle’s engine spluttered black fumes into the night. The cold air stank of petrol. There was laughing and joking as the men lined up to get aboard. Up the road, perhaps fifty metres away, was another truck, cloth-topped, military-looking.

‘That one of ours?’ Guzmán asked the sarge.

The sarge peered at the truck. ‘Don’t think so. We only had this one and the one from the
comisaría
for the prisoners. Anyway, we’ll soon find out, look, he’s reversing.’

The truck had started its engine and was slowly coming down the street towards them.

‘Looks like they’ve been having a fag while we did the hard work,’ the sarge muttered.

‘Cabrónes,
we could have been finished here if they’d lent a hand,’ Guzmán said.

The truck came closer. Guzmán, Peralta and the sarge waited, interested to see which branch of the police or the military had turned up so late. The truck stopped about twelve metres away and the canvas awning over the back fluttered open. In the dim light Guzmán saw dark shapes crouched over some kind of machinery. Then the driver of Guzmán’s truck put on his lights and the rear of the reversing vehicle was vividly illuminated as the light picked out men crouching over a heavy machine gun on a tripod, one of them holding a long ammunition belt. Guzmán saw a shadowed face and the glitter of a gold-toothed grin before the thin night air was torn apart by machine-gun fire.

BADAJOZ 1936  

The kid flattened himself against the rough bark of the tree. Three more African soldiers emerged from the long grass to join their comrades gathered around the bodies of the men they had just butchered. Of the Moors pursuing the fleeing Republicans, there were now nine left. Nine against three. Those odds were bad enough, but as the kid knew only too well, the enemy were better trained and battle-hardened. And eager to kill. Another figure appeared, carrying a large pack, moving slowly through the dusty shrubs. The kid remained motionless behind the safety of the tree, waiting, not raising his rifle yet, in case it attracted attention, even a hundred metres away.

The burning afternoon enforced a dazed torpor on the arid landscape. Suddenly, an unexpected moment of action took the kid by surprise. The corporal stood up from his hiding place in the long dry grass some six metres from the Moors. He had the advantage of surprise, and the gunshot echoed around the jagged slopes of the hillside as one of the Moors fell lifeless to the dry ground. The corporal struggled to work the bolt of the rifle, ejecting the cartridge and bringing the rifle up again, but this time more slowly as a volley of shots from the remaining Moors tore into him. Staggering, the corporal fired from the hip before falling to the ground, a small dust cloud rising around his body. His last shot had struck home – though not fatally – one of the Moors lurched drunkenly and dropped his weapon, clutching his belly as he fell. The rest closed ranks as they bore down on the corporal. Men grouped together made a good target. Resting his rifle on a branch, the kid squinted down the sight.
 

The Moors had reached the corporal. They were shouting and mocking, trying to determine if he was dead or merely pretending.
They would not know. The man with the tommy gun suddenly rose up behind them, the gunfire a deep metallic stammer raking the group of Africans only a metre or so away. The tommy gunner leaped forward, still firing into the bodies on the ground. He stopped, the kid saw him straining his neck forward to look for movement. There was. The wounded Moor struggled to his feet and shot the machine gunner, who fell as if pulled by an unseen cord. The brief silence was broken by the sharp crack of the kid’s rifle. The Moor crumpled to the ground. The echo died away and the silence that followed was strange and artificial.
 

The kid struggled to control his breathing. Sheltered by the wizened tree, he was now the last one. But how many of the Moors were still alive? Cautiously, he edged his head around the tree trunk. He could make out several dark shapes on the ground. And then he saw the man he had just shot stand for a moment before falling again. Heard him call out. ‘Guzmán. I’m hit.’
 

From the deep scrub the kid saw the figure with the big pack begin to run across the dry ground, quickly dropping to his knees as he reached the wounded Moor.
 

The kid had choices to make. Lowering himself to the ground, he began to drag himself forwards with his elbows, the heavy rifle gripped in both hands. Crawling like this in such heat was torture and he made progress slowly. Sweat stung his eyes and he paused repeatedly to wipe it away, listening for the sound of someone coming to the aid of the two men ahead of him. No one came.

19

MADRID 2009, CUARTEL DE LA GUARDIA CIVIL

This afternoon there was a queue waiting to pass through the scanner, some conference on global policing on the fifth floor. Galindez waited in line with Tali, discussing cross-national similarities between police officers. Finally, with the crowd of visiting cops dispatched up to the conference centre, they were able to take the lift to the forensic department.

‘I feel a lot safer here after what happened last night.’ Tali said. ‘Sancho must have followed us to the judge’s office from your flat.’

‘And we know now Sancho and Agustín are working together – which also means the
Centinelas
know I was at the archive. Sancho seemed very keen to stop us depositing the documents in Judge Delgado’s night safe – so he probably had an idea what was in them.’

‘I reckon those two are enforcers for the
Centinelas.’

‘It looks like it, although I’m sure it wasn’t them who grabbed the cop in the archive.’

‘No offence, Ana, but you were sure the guy in the archive was an old man. Now it turns out he was only thirty-nine.’

‘It was the way he was bent almost double – he must have been wounded and was trying to escape through the exit at the back of the archive. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with the Guzmán file, I might have realised what was happening and been able to help him.
Mierda,
a fine witness I’d make.’

‘Tranquila,’
Tali said. ‘It’s not your fault.’

Leaving the lift, Tali followed Galindez down the corridor and into the tiny cubicle of her office, watching as Galindez logged onto the network.

‘There’s an email here from Mendez. It’s the result of the DNA analysis.’

From: [email protected]

To:  [email protected]

Subject: re: Request for DNA Check

Ana María, DNA match established. Details of match:

Subinspector Enrique Bolin, Policía Nacional, dob.25/10/1970. d.14/08/2009.

Ana – this guy turned up dead two days ago, where the hell did you get this sample?

Mendez. 

‘This confirms that Bolin was definitely that poor guy I saw hide the file in the archive,’ Galindez said.

‘Stop beating yourself up, Ana. You couldn’t have known what was going on.’

Unconvinced, Galindez deleted Mendez’s email and opened the database. ‘Let’s see what we can find. They update the information every week. New sources of documents turn up all the time – births, arrests, intelligence reports, that kind of thing. Thank God for bureaucracy.’

‘How about killings in
la Guerra Civil?’
Tali asked.

A man’s voice came from behind her. ‘That depends on whether the killing was recorded. In
la contienda
they often didn’t bother with such niceties.’

Galindez straightened.
‘Capitán
Fuentes, I was just demonstrating the new database.’

Fuentes, short-clipped grey hair, tanned, stern military face. A big smile for Tali. He was holding a large manila envelope.

‘Pleased to meet you,
Señorita
…?’

‘Natalia Castillo.’ Tali smiled.
‘Mucha gusta.’
Galindez noticed Fuentes’ surprise as he shook her hand. She remembered Tali’s strong grip from their first meeting.