Death on a Galician Shore Page 17

  Beside this photograph, in bold type, it read: ‘Search for Xurelo Skipper Resumed’. The article recounted how the search for the skipper of the shipwrecked vessel had been delayed until the afternoon. Only two Sea Rescue Service helicopters were involved, as bad weather had so far prevented lifeboats from putting out to sea.

  On subsequent days the newspapers only ran brief items on the search for the skipper. A week after the sinking, by which time the search had been called off, a life jacket from the Xurelo had been found out at sea. After that, there was nothing more until 28 January, when Antonio Sousa’s body, after more than a month in the water, had been found tangled in the nets of a Vigo trawler.

  Caldas started reading the article but soon fell asleep, overcome with exhaustion.

  He dreamed he was swimming in a storm and in the waves, a few metres away, he could see a fisherman in yellow waterproofs. ‘Help,’ shouted the man, eyes wide with terror, ‘my hands are tied, I can’t swim.’ Caldas struggled towards the fisherman, but by the time he reached him he had disappeared underwater.

  He awoke with a start, covered in sweat, just as he had as a boy when he dreamed that he was swimming beside the drowned pharmacist. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. It sounded as if there was an elephant trumpeting inside the flat.

  It took him a couple of seconds to recognise the solo. He had the feeling Louis Armstrong was laughing at him as he sang huskily: Exactly like you.

  Unspoken Questions

  On Thursday, Caldas woke early, showered and set out for the station with his hands in his pockets and the blue folder under his arm. The streetlights were still on and, though the rain had stopped, they shone down on a city drenched by the night’s downpour.

  In his office, he reviewed Clara Barcia’s notes again. At nine thirty he went out for coffee and his first cigarette of the day. When he got back, between glancing at the clock and wondering when Estevez would deign to turn up, he photocopied the cuttings about the sinking of the Xurelo so that he could return the originals to the priest in Panxón, and reread the report on the recovery of Sousa’s body.

  Almost without thinking, he took the slip of paper Trabazo had given him from his pocket and dialled the number on it. Then he lit another cigarette and took two deep drags.

  ‘Gerardo Sousa?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m Inspector Caldas, from Vigo Police Headquarters.’

  ‘So you’ve decided to call.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Dr Trabazo said he’d given you my number.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘He asked me to be friendly.’

  Thank goodness. ‘Have you got five minutes?’ asked Caldas.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Did Dr Trabazo say why I wanted to speak to you?’

  ‘No,’ said Antonio Sousa’s son.

  ‘Did you know that Justo Castelo’s body was found washed up on the beach on Monday morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Has anyone told you the circumstances of his death?’

  ‘No,’ he replied. Caldas thought he sounded resigned, rather than curt.

  ‘His hands were tied.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘I heard something like that, yes. He committed suicide, didn’t he?’

  ‘He may not have.’

  ‘So you’re looking into who …’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Caldas with relief, thinking that Sousa’s son was going to make things easy for him. But he was wrong.

  ‘That’s why you’re calling?’

  ‘Well …’ said Caldas, drawing on his cigarette for strength to continue the conversation. ‘Castelo had received threats recently. Did you know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Someone painted a date on his rowing boat. The date of the sinking of your father’s boat,’ he said, sure that Sousa’s son already knew. ‘Beside it was the word “Murderers”. Do you know who might have done it?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘I’m sorry if this is stirring up painful memories.’

  Sousa’s son cleared his throat.

  ‘How did you get on with Castelo?’ asked Caldas.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From the day my father died, he never looked me in the eye again. Nor did the other two. They stared at the ground as they gave us their condolences.’

  ‘They never told you what happened that night?’

  ‘They didn’t have the guts to. Arias even left the village.’

  ‘Why do you think they behaved like that?’

  ‘I’m not the one to ask, Inspector. You should be talking to Arias or Valverde. They’re still alive, aren’t they?’

  Caldas took a drag of his cigarette to stop himself saying, ‘For now.’

  ‘So what do you think happened?’

  ‘All I know is that none of them lifted a finger to pull my father from the water. They were close to the coast and wearing life jackets. They could have saved him, but they escaped like rats. They were cowards.’

  Caldas dragged again on his cigarette.

  ‘Are you aware that some people in Panxón claim to have seen your father alive?’

  ‘I left the village so I wouldn’t have to listen to that kind of thing any more, Inspector. I was suffocating. I realise now that I didn’t get far enough away.’

  Hunched in his chair, Caldas listened to the rest of Gerardo Sousa’s story. Two years after the sinking, a fisherman had arrived in port claiming to have seen his father out at sea on his boat. Since then, not a year went by without someone reporting a sighting of the Xurelo.

  ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘I don’t know what they’re seeing, Inspector. But the Xurelo was dynamited and removed from the water in pieces years ago. You can check.’

  The man did not mention his father’s fate again and Caldas decided not to press him. He didn’t ask about the macana or get him to say how he’d identified the body in the autopsy room. But there was one question that Sousa’s son had to answer.

  ‘Just one more thing, Mr Sousa,’ said Caldas, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘Could you tell me where you were last weekend?’

  ‘Here, in Barcelona. I was working.’

  ‘May I ask where?’

  ‘I’m a sound technician. I work in radio,’ he said. ‘Like you.’

  Estevez arrived at ten. He looked as cheerful as he did when Superintendent Soto told him to subdue unruly detainees down in the cells.

  ‘I thought we were going to Panxón?’ he said.

  Caldas nodded and took his raincoat from the rack.

  He climbed into the car, opened the window a crack and closed his eyes. He thought of Sousa’s son, his grief, the stifling atmosphere of the village that had driven him away, and his job as a sound technician that meant he had been a long way from Panxón at the time of the murder.

  An Empty Niche

  The smell of low tide pervaded the village as they got out of the car. After asking around, they found José Arias’s house, a two-storey building at the end of a narrow street. Caldas rang the bell several times but no one came to the door.

  ‘You see! We should have got here earlier,’ he complained. ‘After a night’s fishing there’s no way he’s going to get up.’

  ‘Let me have a go,’ said Estevez, elbowing the inspector out of the way and ringing the bell insistently.

  Getting no reply, he placed an ear against the door, listening for movement inside. He must not have heard anything as he started beating on the door, first with his knuckles then with open palms.

  It was Estevez’s fault they had got to Panxón late. Had they arrived early, as Caldas originally wanted, they would have found Arias selling his catch at the market. A guilty conscience was making Estevez strike the door ever harder.

  ‘Stop it, Rafa,’ said Caldas, remembering Castelo’s shattered shed door. ‘We’ll come back later.’

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nbsp; Estevez stopped and went to stand beside the inspector, swearing under his breath. Suddenly, as if propelled by a spring, he rushed at the door, giving it a kick that almost tore it from its hinges.

  ‘Arias, open up, police!’ he yelled, furious, hammering on the door with his fist.

  The inspector pulled him away with difficulty.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  He saw with relief that the door was still in place, though a crack in the wood revealed where Estevez had kicked it.

  ‘You don’t want to wake him up any more?’

  Caldas wondered what the hell Estevez was on – LSD? Not knowing what to reply, the inspector threw up his arms and looked upwards. A woman was standing on the balcony of the house opposite. Her hair was full of curlers and she was staring fixedly at Estevez.

  Caldas glanced round at the other windows, but the woman in the curlers was the only person looking out. With all the commotion, he was surprised there weren’t more people on their balconies.

  ‘Does José Arias live here?’ he asked the woman, pointing at the front door.

  ‘He does,’ she replied, her curlers shaking slightly.

  ‘Do you know if he’s in?’

  ‘I assume he isn’t,’ she said, adding before she disappeared inside: ‘He’s not deaf.’

  Caldas decided to pay Alicia Castelo a visit. Maybe she knew why her brother had phoned Arias the afternoon before he died.

  They rang the bell and an elderly woman came to the door. She was too sprightly to be the dead fisherman’s invalid mother.

  ‘We’d like to speak to Alicia Castelo.’

  ‘Alicia’s not in,’ said the woman. ‘It’s just her mother and me here.’

  ‘Do you know where we might find her?’

  The woman nodded gravely. ‘At the cemetery.’

  Estevez drew up beside the railings, through which they could see walls topped by rows of dark stone crosses.

  ‘The graveyards here are so pretty,’ murmured Estevez, and Caldas agreed. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard his assistant admire Galician cemeteries.

  At the entrance, Caldas paused to contemplate the ranks of houses stretching from the foot of the promontory down to the sea.

  It was hard to imagine that the area had once been sand, with the Gaifar dunes extending inland for several hundred metres. This was how it had been for centuries, until developers were given the go-ahead and the dunes were buried beneath holiday homes, reduced to a tongue of sand so narrow that in winter it disappeared at high tide.

  In the cemetery at Panxón a narrow alley led off either side of the central avenue. The wealthiest families had vaults decorated with sculptures, but mostly the dead lay in niches set into the stone walls, one on top of the other in groups of five, each covered by a small roof with the name of the family engraved beneath. The roofs were surmounted with crosses.

  Fallen flowers marked the path taken by the cortège the previous afternoon, and Caldas and Estevez followed it down one of the side alleys. Some graves bore photographs of the dead together with their names and dates. Almost all showed pictures of elderly men and women, and Caldas felt sure that none would have wanted to be remembered in this way.

  Further on, on a name plaque beneath a cross, Caldas read: TRABAZO FAMILY. One of the niches was empty, and he frowned as he thought of Captains Courageous and Manuel the Portuguese fisherman.

  Following the trail of flowers, before they reached the steps that led to the lower part of the cemetery, they passed a small area dotted with simple crosses.

  ‘The unknown fishermen who’ve been washed up on the beach lie beneath those crosses,’ said the inspector. ‘The people of the village gather the bodies of the drowned and bury them here.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘A friend told me.’

  Alicia Castelo was crouching, placing flowers in a niche without a plaque. She wore black and her hair was tied back in a ponytail, like the day before.

  They greeted her and she explained that, though the plaque wouldn’t be in place until the following day, her mother had asked her to tend her brother’s grave.

  ‘We’ve ordered white stone, like our father’s,’ she whispered, indicating the niche above, also decorated with fresh flowers.

  She said that her husband was still in Namibia. He’d been away for three months but his stint was coming to an end the following week. He’d be returning home and staying for at least a month.

  ‘There’s not much he could have done even if he’d been here,’ she said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Have you come to talk to me?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Her blue eyes lit up. ‘Have you found out who killed him?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Caldas. ‘Do you remember telling us that he had nothing to do with the other crewmembers of the Xurelo?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Well, your brother phoned one of them the day before he died. In fact, it was the last call he made.’

  ‘One of his crewmates on the Xurelo?’ she said with surprise. ‘Which one?’

  ‘José Arias.’

  ‘My brother called him?’ she said, her face incredulous.

  ‘Yes. We’ve checked all the calls made from his phone. The last one was to Arias’s house. We thought you might know why he called him.’

  Alicia Castelo covered her mouth with her hand. ‘No, I don’t know,’ she faltered. ‘Have you spoken to him?’

  Caldas glanced at Estevez. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We haven’t been able to, yet.’

  As they walked back to the car, Estevez stopped and pointed to one of the name plaques.

  Caldas read the inscription, in white letters on dark marble: ‘Antonio Sousa Castro, boat captain, 4/7/1933–20/12/1996’. There was no photograph, and only a rusty container of flowers.

  ‘There’s your skipper,’ said Estevez.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Caldas. ‘Maybe.’

  Dominoes

  In the Refugio del Pescador, four fishermen sat playing dominoes at one of the marble tables by the window. They’d seen José Arias first thing at the fish market, but not since. As his boat was still moored in the harbour, they assumed he was at home sleeping.

  After a coffee, the two policemen left the bar. The calm sea reflected the grey sky and Justo Castelo’s traps stranded on the jetty. There was still no news of his boat.

  They made their way through the village to the narrow street where Arias lived. From a distance they could see the mark left by Estevez’s kick on the solid wooden door. They rang the bell several times but there was no answer.

  They were about to leave when the door of the house next door opened and a woman came out.

  ‘We’re looking for your neighbour, José Arias,’ said Caldas as she passed.

  ‘I know,’ she said, and Caldas recognised the woman who’d looked down from her balcony earlier. She was no longer in curlers but still stared at Estevez with distrust. ‘He went out early,’ she added.

  ‘Do you know where he was going?’

  The woman said she didn’t and asked, ‘Are you really from the police?’

  Caldas showed her his badge.

  ‘I’m Inspector Caldas.’

  ‘The one on the radio?’ she said. ‘Dr Trabazo’s friend?’

  Caldas was amazed at how fast news travelled.

  ‘We’re all very fond of the doctor,’ she said. ‘No one can understand why they made him retire. You should see his replacement.’

  ‘You’re not happy with him?’

  ‘He’s nice enough,’ she said. ‘But God help anyone who falls into his hands.’

  ‘Right,’ smiled Caldas. ‘I believe Arias hasn’t been back in the village long?’

  The woman’s expression changed. ‘I’m not one to talk.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not,’ said Caldas, knowing that the time had come to listen.

  The woman told them that her neighbour had come back from
Scotland, where he’d lived for a time after the sinking of the boat. It was rumoured that he’d left a wife and children behind there, but nobody knew for sure. Arias was a quiet man, which was fine by her. He didn’t disturb her even though he came in from work so early, and he didn’t drink any more. The Scottish woman must have domesticated him. On his days off he went to a bar in the harbour for a game of dominoes or stayed at home and watched TV.

  ‘Did he ever have guests?’ asked Caldas.

  ‘More lately,’ said the woman enigmatically, before falling silent.

  ‘More?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything,’ she said self-importantly. ‘But sometimes he had people back.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know …’

  ‘El Rubio?’ asked Caldas.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Startled, the woman glanced at Arias’s front door and then at the other end of the narrow street. It seemed that this wasn’t a question she’d been expecting.

  ‘Did Justo Castelo come round here?’ asked Caldas.

  José Arias’s neighbour knew she’d said too much. She’d walked into a trap of her own making and now tried to extricate herself. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘When was he here?’ asked Caldas, blocking her retreat.

  The woman glanced again at the end of the street and then at Estevez. He was standing back but she obviously still found his presence intimidating.

  ‘No one will know you’ve spoken to us,’ said Caldas.

  ‘I don’t like to meddle …’ she said apologetically.

  ‘I know. Please don’t worry,’ said the inspector gently before continuing to press her: ‘You saw Justo Castelo?’

  ‘Once,’ she said eventually.

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Friday or Saturday, I’m not too sure.’

  ‘Last week?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He came to Arias’s house?’

  The woman nodded. ‘They talked for a while, not long. Then El Rubio left.’

  ‘Could you hear what they were talking about?’

  ‘When El Rubio arrived he was saying, over and over, “I can’t take it any more”.’

  ‘What about Arias? What did he say?’