Death on a Galician Shore Read online

  Domingo Villar grew up in Vigo, Galicia, and now lives in Madrid. His two novels have been top-ten bestsellers and shortlisted for several awards in Spain. Death on a Galician Shore won the 2009 Brigada 21 Prize for best crime novel in Spain, and Domingo Villar was named Galician author of the year. His first novel, Water-blue Eyes, also featuring Inspector Leo Caldas, is published by Arcadia. Death on a Galician Shore is his second novel.

  Copyright

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978-0-748-12005-5

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Domingo Villar

  Translation copyright © Sonia Soto 2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  To my father

  Contents

  Copyright

  The Green Mask

  Embers

  A Call from Estevez

  Excuses

  The Drowned Man

  The Jingle

  Justo Castelo

  Shadows

  Alicia

  El Eligio

  Insomnia

  Low Tide

  The Fish Market

  A Tall Man

  The Auctioneer

  Captain Sousa

  Cold Sea Wind

  A Solitary Boat

  The Green House

  The Carpenter

  Horizon

  Straight Lines

  Speculation

  Captains Courageous

  The Trawler

  The Bait

  The Skipper

  The Shipwreck of the Xurelo

  The Macana

  Spiral

  Cold Water

  The Promenade

  Underwater

  Unspoken Questions

  An Empty Niche

  Dominoes

  The Lost Fender

  A Truce

  The Lighthouse at Punta Lameda

  A Wake

  The Rock Pool

  The Sky-blue Boat

  Sea Bass Rock

  The Spanner

  The Blue Folder

  Old Sea Dogs

  The Map

  Cuttings

  An Old Report

  Fresh Air

  The Rustling Bag

  The Fortress

  A Catch at the Lighthouse

  Security Systems

  The Crew

  The Threshold

  A Former Policeman

  Rebeca the First

  A Packet of Cigarettes

  The Man on the Billboard

  An Empty Window

  The Song

  A Conjuror

  The Hunt

  Patrolling the Waves

  Resistance

  Night Vision

  The Tangle

  Little by Little

  Tyre Tracks

  Medication

  The Message

  Open Doors

  The Wooden Gate

  The Wheelchair

  Diego Neira

  Face to Face

  The Way Back

  The Blanket

  Solid Proof

  The Woman in the Yellow Dress

  The Driver

  The Winemakers

  The Tie

  Murmurs

  Free

  The Green Mask

  Inspector Leo Caldas got out of a taxi and, stepping over the large puddles on the pavement, entered the hospital. He made his way through the crowd of people waiting by the lifts and headed for the stairs. He went up to the second floor and walked along a corridor lined with closed doors. Stopping at the one numbered 211, he opened it a crack and looked in. A man in a green respiratory mask was asleep in the bed nearest to the window. The television was on, with the sound turned down. The other bed was empty and sheets were folded on top of the bedcover.

  Caldas glanced at his watch, closed the door and went to the waiting room at the end of the corridor. There he found only an elderly woman, her black clothes contrasting with the white of the walls. She looked up expectantly as Caldas put his head round the door. Their eyes met briefly before she looked down again, disappointed.

  Caldas heard footsteps behind him and turned around. His father was hurrying towards him down the corridor. Caldas raised a hand in greeting.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ asked his father in a whisper once they were standing outside the room.

  ‘Only from out here,’ answered Caldas. ‘I was late too. Have you spoken to the surgeon?’

  His father nodded: ‘He said it’s not worth operating.’

  Entering the room, the inspector’s father went to sit on the empty bed, wrinkling his nose in distress as he looked at his brother. Caldas remained standing.

  A drip was dispensing the contents of several vials into the emaciated arm of Uncle Alberto. Beneath the sheet, Alberto’s chest rose slowly, and then fell abruptly, as if each exhalation were a deep sigh. The sound of oxygen bubbling through distilled water and air whistling as it escaped from the sides of the mask drowned out the murmur of the rain outside.

  Caldas crossed to the window. He parted the net curtains and, through the double glazing, watched the lights of the cars stuck in traffic and the procession of umbrellas along the pavement.

  He turned, alerted by the hissing of the mask, which his uncle had removed in order to speak.

  ‘Is it still raining?’ Alberto whispered before replacing the mask.

  Caldas nodded, gave a small, close-lipped smile and jerked his head towards his father. His uncle was about to take off the mask again when his father stopped him.

  ‘Come on, leave that alone. How are you feeling?’

  The patient waved a hand and placed it over his chest to convey that it hurt.

  ‘Well, you’re bound to be uncomfortable,’ said his brother.

  After a moment’s silence, Alberto gestured towards the radio on the bedside table and looked at the inspector.

  ‘He says he listens to your programme,’ his father explained.

  ‘Right.’

  Alberto nodded and gave a thumbs-up.

  ‘He says he likes it,’ his father translated once again.

  ‘Right,’ said Caldas, then he indicated the muted television, tuned to a news bulletin: ‘I think TV’s more entertaining.’

  His uncle shook his head and gave another thumbs-up at the radio.

  ‘He says your programme’s better.’

  ‘Do you really think I can’t understand him?’ Caldas asked his father. ‘Anyway, it’s not my programme. I’m only on occasionally.’

  Caldas’s father looked at his brother – whose eyes were smiling behind the mask – and the inspector watched, fascinated, as they began to converse without the need for words, using only glances and facial gestures, communicating in the private tongue of those who have shared a childhood.

  *

  A doctor entered, to the evident annoyance of the patient.

  ‘How are things going, Alberto?’ he asked. The only answer was a flutter of the hand.

  The doctor lifted the sheet and felt several points on the patient’s abdomen. Beneath his green plastic mask, the patient grimaced each time the doctor touched him.

  ‘In a month you’ll be as good as new,’ the doctor said
as he finished his examination and, after winking at Caldas’s father, he left the room.

  The three men remained in uncomfortable silence until Uncle Alberto gestured for his brother to approach. The inspector’s father went over to the bed and Alberto removed his mask.

  ‘Can you do me one last favour?’ he said in a weary voice.

  Father and son exchanged glances.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Have you still got your Book of Idiots?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have you still got it or not?’ insisted the patient, straining to raise his murmur of a voice above the hissing of the oxygen.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Well, add that doctor to it,’ he said, pointing feebly at the door through which the doctor had departed.

  He breathed through the mask for a few moments before removing it again and whispering: ‘His name’s Doctor Apraces. Will you remember that?’

  Caldas’s father nodded and gently squeezed Alberto’s arm. His brother’s face wrinkled around the mask as he smiled. His breathing resumed its jerky rhythm when he fell asleep and the gurgle of distilled water continued.

  Outside the hospital, the inspector lit a cigarette and his father opened his umbrella.

  ‘There’s room for both of us under here,’ he said.

  Caldas moved closer to him and they set off towards the car park, to the accompaniment of a chorus of honking horns from drivers exasperated by the traffic jam.

  ‘You’ve got a Book of Idiots?’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ his father replied, not looking at him, and Caldas noticed that his eyes were moist.

  He was surprised because, though he had spent many nights after his mother’s death listening to the sound of his father weeping, he had never actually seen him shed a single tear. He decided to hang back a few steps despite the rain, and let his father give vent to his grief.

  In the car park, before getting into the car, his father asked: ‘Can I drop you anywhere, Leo?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Home. It’s quiet there.’

  ‘Will you be visiting him tomorrow?’

  ‘In the afternoon,’ said his father. ‘After lunch.’

  Caldas reflected that he could phone the superintendent first thing and take the morning off. And, with any luck, he’d get to the radio station late and that fool Losada would have to manage without him.

  ‘Well, I’ll come with you, and you can give me a lift back.’

  His father stared at him. ‘Are you going to stay at my house tonight?’

  ‘If you ask me …’ said Caldas.

  ‘Don’t you have work tomorrow?’

  Caldas shrugged, took a quick drag on his cigarette, threw it on the ground and climbed into the car.

  Embers

  In the months of anguish following the death of his wife, Leo Caldas’s father had sometimes visited the manor house where she had lived as a child, an old ruin consisting of little more than stone walls. Only the winery had withstood the years of neglect, half sunk into the ground so as to avoid sudden changes in temperature. Inside there remained some barrels, an ancient wooden press, a hand-operated bottle filler and a few other old implements. Walking around the estate, its terraced vineyard descending like an amphitheatre to the River Miño, the inspector’s father had found balm for his sorrow, a solace that the city denied him.

  One October, seeing the grapes ripen and rot on the vines, and cheered by the thought of spending more time there, he decided to start making wine again in the old winery. After several months of reading and seeking advice, he starting working a small plot of land close to the house.

  Every Saturday and Sunday, on the pretext of tending the vines, father and son rose early and drove out to the estate, a journey of almost fifty kilometres on winding roads that had to be made in stages, with the windows open, due to the young Leo’s carsickness.

  That March at weekends they cleared the land and, in April and May, they tore out the old barren vines. In the summer, making the most of the holidays and longer hours of daylight, they put up posts and wires to support the remaining healthy vines and the new ones to be planted that winter, after the harvest.

  For the first few years, as he extended the land under cultivation, Caldas’s father sold wine from the barrel or gave it to friends. Later, as the new vines began producing, he put his savings into modernising the winery so that he could bottle and sell the wine under label. He soon recouped his money, as the wine was acquiring a good reputation and, though the quantity increased with every harvest, he had no trouble selling it all.

  As soon as he was old enough to stay at home on his own, Leo gave up the torture of the winding roads and stopped accompanying his father to the estate. When he went to university, his father left his job in Vigo and moved permanently to his wife’s old family home, which he had gradually restored.

  The land, initially providing comfort in his time of affliction, was now a profitable business, and the nights of weeping were no more than a shadow in the memory.

  Wine, the downfall of so many men, had been his salvation.

  They hardly spoke during the drive. The modern roads were less tortuous, but Caldas still opened the window a crack and closed his eyes for the journey. He sank back in the seat and didn’t move, even when raindrops got in and spattered his face.

  Beside him, his father drove one-handed, gripping the nails of the other between his teeth without breaking them, while in his mind he travelled from his childhood to the hospital room.

  When they reached the estate, Caldas got out to open the gate and waited in the rain while his father drove through. Back in the car, on the way up to the house, he thought he saw a dark shape moving behind them. Through the rain-streaked rear window he made out an animal running after them.

  ‘Have you got a dog?’ he asked, surprised.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Isn’t it yours?’ he insisted, motioning behind them.

  Caldas’s father looked in the rear-view mirror for a moment and then said firmly, ‘No, it’s not.’

  All the way from the car to the front door, the dog bounded around Caldas’s father, barking. It leaped and shot off in all directions in the rain, spinning around within a few metres and galloping back, howling with delight, thrashing its tail and trying to lick the inspector’s father’s hands, face or whatever else he saw fit to proffer.

  ‘Look at the mess he’s made of my clothes,’ he complained as they entered the house. He shook his trousers and shirt, which the dog had smeared with dark mud, and went up to his bedroom. Caldas stayed downstairs.

  ‘Lucky the dog isn’t yours, then,’ he muttered.

  Circling the large dining-room table he made his way to the sitting room. He sat down on the sofa, facing the fireplace, which still contained the ashes and dead embers of a recent fire. Next to the coffee table, beside a pile of old newspapers, stood a basket of logs.

  His father returned, wearing a fresh change of clothes.

  ‘Shall I put some dry things out for you?’

  ‘Maybe tomorrow. I’d rather dry off in front of the fire. Can I light it?’ Caldas asked, pointing to the firewood.

  ‘If you think you know how …’ said his father disdainfully before slipping off to the kitchen.

  Caldas sighed and knelt down by the fireplace. He took two large pine logs from the basket and placed them in the hearth. Crumpling up a few sheets of newspaper, he pushed them between the logs and laid pine cones and vine prunings on top. He rummaged in his pocket for his cigarettes and lighter, and lit up with the same flame he held to the newspaper. Once it was alight, he sat on the sofa, smoking in front of the fire.

  His father returned with an unlabelled bottle of white wine. After opening it with the bottle opener on the wall, he left it on the coffee table and went to get two glasses from the cupboard.

  ‘This is the latest vintage,’ he said, filling the glasses with wine that was still cloudy. �
�See what you think.’

  Caldas laid his cigarette on the ashtray and thrust his nose into his glass. His father did the same.

  ‘It stills need to clarify, but as far as the nose goes, it’s ready,’ he said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘How do you like it, Leo?’

  The inspector raised the glass to his lips and swilled the wine around in his mouth for a few seconds before swallowing.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked his father, standing waiting for his son’s verdict.

  Caldas nodded several times then emptied his glass in one gulp.

  *

  They opened another bottle, from the previous year this time, and heated some of the soup from the fridge, made with slab bacon, beef broth, turnip tops, broad beans and potatoes. Afterwards they ate a local cheese with some of Maria’s home-made quince jelly.

  When they’d finished eating and had cleared the dishes, Caldas carried the wine to the coffee table and refilled the glasses. He sat on the sofa, facing the fire; he could have stared at it for hours. His father went to the bookshelves and stood searching for a couple of minutes, cursing under his breath until he found a small notebook behind the books. Its cardboard cover was so worn it was difficult to tell its original colour. Taking his glass, he went to sit at the dining table and leafed through the notebook for a while.

  When Caldas got up for more wine, he asked: ‘Is that the Book of Idiots?’

  His father nodded. ‘I wonder how Alberto remembered it. I haven’t looked at it for years,’ he said, turning pages full of names, of the fragments of life associated with each one. Then he took a pen and turned to the last entry in the notebook.

  ‘It was Dr Apraces, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the inspector and, glancing at his father, once again saw eyes glistening with unfamiliar tears.

  Caldas stretched out on the sofa and remained there for the rest of the evening, staring at the fire so that his father could weep with each glass of wine he drank.

  A Call from Estevez

  The next morning, Caldas took a change of clothes from his father’s wardrobe, had a long shower and went out into the courtyard between the house and the winery. After weeks of rain, autumn had called a truce and, though the sun was hidden by clouds, the new day was bright and still.