The Marks of Cain Read online

  ‘And you?’

  Her smile was brief. ‘Thanks. Go this way.’

  David twisted the wheel, his nerves tautened by the idea of Miguel, ‘the Wolf’. The barman and the drinkers had obviously dissuaded Miguel from further violence: but maybe the Wolf would change his mind.

  The Wolf?

  David sped them urgently out of the little town, past the Spanish police, past the last stone house; he was agitated by all the puzzles. What had happened in the bar? Who was Miguel? Who was this girl?

  He realized, again, that her Spanish had been spoken with a British accent.

  What was she doing here?

  As they raced down the narrow road, through the sylvan countryside, he sensed that he had to inquire, that she wasn’t just going to tell him too much, unprompted. So he asked. Her face was shadowed with dapples of sun – light and dark shadows that disguised the bruising on her face – as she turned. His first query was the most obvious of all.

  ‘OK. I guess we go to the police. Right? Tell them what happened.’

  He was astonished when she shook her head.

  ‘No. No, we can’t, we just…can’t. Sorry, but I work with these people, live with them, they trust me. This is ETA territory. And the police are the Spanish. No one goes to the police.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘And what would I say anyway? Mmm?’ Her blue eyes were burning. ‘What do I say? A guy hit me in a bar? Then they would ask his name…and I would have to say the Wolf. And there, that’s it – then I’ve betrayed an ETA hero, a famous ETA fighter.’ Her expression was grimly unamused. ‘That would not be good for my longevity. Not in deepest Euskadi.’

  David nodded, slowly, accepting the explanation. But her replies had triggered more questions: she worked with these people? How? Where? And why?

  He asked again, outright, about her situation. She turned away from him, to stare at the mellow green fields.

  ‘You want to know now?’

  ‘I’ve got a lot of questions. Why not now?’

  A pause, then she said:

  ‘OK. OK. You did try to save my life. Maybe you deserve to know.’

  Her slender face was set in determined profile, as she offered her answers.

  Her name was Amy Myerson. She was Jewish, twenty-eight, and from London, where she’d been educated, taking a degree in foreign languages. She was now an academic at San Sebastian University, teaching Eng Lit to Basque kids. She had fetched up here in the Basque Country after a couple of years backpacking. ‘Smoking too much hash in Morocco. You know.’

  He managed a smile; she didn’t smile in return. Instead she added: ‘And then I found myself here, the Pays Basque, between the forests and the steelworks.’ The spangled sunlight from the trees was bright on the windscreen. ‘And I also got involved in the struggle for independence. Met some people from Herri Batasuna, the political wing of ETA. I don’t support the violence, of course…But I do believe in the goal. Basque freedom.’ She was looking out of the window again. ‘Why shouldn’t they be free? The Basques have been here longer than anyone else. Maybe thirty thousand years. Lost in the silent valleys of the Navarre…’

  They were at the main Bidasoa highway; huge cement lorries were thundering past. Amy instructed him:

  ‘Turn right.’

  David nodded; his lip was still throbbing. His jaw ached where the pistol butt had smashed across it. But he could tell he clearly had no broken bones. A life of looking after himself, as an orphan, had made him a good judge of his physical condition. He was going to be OK. But what about her?

  Amy was gazing his way.

  ‘So. That’s my autobiography, not a bestseller. What about you? Tell me your story.’

  It was only fair: she should know too.

  Swiftly he sketched his strange and quixotic situation: his parental background, the bequest from his grandfather, the map and the churches. Amy Myerson’s blue eyes widened as she listened.

  ‘Two million dollars?’

  ‘Two million dollars.’

  ‘Christ. Wish someone would leave me two bloody million dollars!’ Then she put a hand to her pretty white teeth. ‘Oh God. You must be grieving. Stupidest remark in the world. I’m sorry…It’s just…this morning.’

  ‘It’s alright. I understand.’ David wasn’t annoyed. She had just saved him from a beating – or worse – as much as he had saved her. He remembered Miguel’s dark eyes glaring.

  ‘Take this left here.’

  David dutifully steered them off the main road; they were on a much quieter highway now. Ahead of them he could see a wide and sumptuous valley, leading to hazy blue mountains. The upper slopes of the mountains were lightly talced with snow.

  ‘The Valley of Baztan,’ said Amy. ‘Beautiful, no?’

  She was right: it was stunning. He gazed at the soothing view: the cattle standing knee-deep in the golden riverlight, the somnolent forests stretching to the blue-misted horizon.

  After ten minutes of admirable Pyrenean countryside, they pulled past a tractor repair depot, then a Lidl supermercado, and entered a small town of dignified squares and little bakeries, and chirruping mountain streams that ran past the gardens of ancient sandstone houses. Elizondo.

  Her flat was in a modern development just off the main road. Amy keyed the door and they snuck in; her flat had tall windows with excellent views of the Pyrenees up the valley. With their slopes draped with ice and fog, and the summits looming blue above, the mountains looked like a row of Mafiosi at the barber’s, white-sheeted to the neck.

  A row of killers.

  He thought of Miguel as Amy busied herself in the kitchen. Miguel, Otsoko, the Wolf. The immensely strong muscles, the tall dark shape, the deeply set eyes. He tried not to think of Miguel. He glanced around the apartment: the walls were sparsely decorated but the bookshelves were full of heavyweight literature: Yeats and Hemingway and Orwell. A mighty volume called The Poetry of Violence.

  What did she teach these kids at San Sebastian University?

  Then he swivelled: she had returned, carrying paper towels and flannels and antiseptic cream, and a plastic basin of hot water; together they knelt on the bare wooden floors, and tended to each other’s wounds. She dabbed at his lip with a white flannel; the cloth came away red and brown with old blood.

  ‘Ouch,’ he said.

  ‘Not broken,’ she said. ‘Brave soldier.’

  He waved away the absurd compliment; she bent to her task, squeezing the flannel in the water, making soft crimson blooms of his blood. Then she spoke.

  ‘We could go to the doctor…but we’d just have to sit for six hours to get a stitch, maybe. Don’t see the point. Mmm?’

  He nodded. Her expression was serious, impassive and reserved. He guessed there were still a lot of things she wasn’t telling him yet; but then again he hadn’t yet asked her the truly probing question: why had Miguel attacked her, so instantly and angrily?

  ‘OK, Amy, let me help you.’ He took a clean flannel and moistened it with hot water. She presented her face, eyes shut, and he began to dab and wash the blood from her hairline. She winced at the tang of the water, but said nothing. As he cleaned her wound, he questioned her.

  ‘I want to know more about that bar.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘What I don’t get is…is…It wasn’t just that guy Miguel, the whole place was punchy. What did I do wrong? How did I upset so many people just by asking a couple of questions?’

  Amy’s head was tilted, letting him clean her forehead. She was silent for a moment, and then she said:

  ‘OK, here’s the deal. Lesaka is one of the most nationalist towns in the Basque Country. Fiercely proud.’

  David nodded, and took some paper towels, beginning to dry the deep but now unbleeding scratch.

  ‘Go on…’

  ‘And then there’s ETA. The terrorists. Miguel’s friends.’ She frowned. ‘They killed some Guardia Civil, just two weeks ago. Five of them, in a horrible bomb, in San
Sebastian. And then the Spanish police shot dead four ETA activists. Madrid claims they were also planting a bomb. Basques are saying it was cold-blooded reprisal.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That’s why there are police everywhere. It’s majorly tense. The Spanish police can be extremely violent when they are taking on ETA. It’s a vicious spiral.’

  David sat back, examining his work on her wound. She would be alright; he would be alright. But there was something odd that he had noticed, something that was not quite alright.

  When he had been washing the blood from Amy’s forehead, he had seen a scar. A strange and complex scar: curving arcs of some deep yet decorative cuts – hidden under her bright blonde hair.

  He said nothing.

  Her injuries treated, Amy was sitting back. She was cross-legged in her jeans and trainers, her hands flat on the bare floorboards.

  ‘So you wanna know what else you did wrong?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let’s take it in order. First you accused the guys of talking Spanish in a ferociously Basque-speaking area. That isn’t so hot. And then you must remember the political tension. As I explained.’

  ‘Sure. And?’

  ‘And…well…there’s something else as well.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said something quite provocative on top of all that.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘You mentioned José Garovillo. That’s when I came across to try and help you, when you said that. I told them I knew you, that you were a bloody idiot, they should pity you –’

  ‘Er, thanks.’

  ‘I had to say that. Because when I heard you banging on about José, I knew you were in deep trouble.’

  ‘So…who is he?’

  She gazed across the tepid water, in the plastic basin.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  David felt increasingly stupid, and increasingly frustrated.

  Amy explained:

  ‘José Garovillo is very old now, but he’s really quite famous around here.’

  ‘You mean you actually know him? You can help me find him?’

  ‘I know him well. I can email him today, tell him about you. If you want.’

  ‘But…Great. That’s great!’

  ‘Wait.’ Her face was unsmiling; she lifted a hand to slow his words. ‘Listen. A lot of people round here know Garovillo. Because he’s a cultural icon, one of the intellectuals who helped revive Basque language and culture – way back when. In the 60s and 70s. He was also a member of ETA in the 60s.’

  ‘He’s famous? But I looked him up on the net! There was nothing.’

  Amy answered: ‘But he’s only famous amongst Basques. And in ETA he was just called José. You’d never see his full name written down…ETA people like to keep a low profile. And Garovillo has been a Basque radical since way back – he was interned by Germans in the war, over in Iparralde.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  She turned and waved a small white hand at the window.

  ‘There. The land beyond! The French Basque Country, over the mountains. In 1970 he was arrested and tortured by Franco, and then by the Socialists. He used to drink in the Bar Bilbo, years ago. He’s pretty famous – or notorious.’ Her face was serious. ‘Not least because of his son…’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘His son’s name is…Miguel.’

  ‘The guy who attacked us…’

  ‘Is José’s son. The Wolf is José Garovillo’s son.’

  6

  David booked himself into a hotel on the outskirts of Elizondo, to wait for Amy’s email to José to do the job. The Hotel Gernika was nothing special. It had a small swimming pool, a modest breakfast bar, and lots of leathery old French guests on cycling holidays wearing alarmingly tight Lycra shorts. But that was fine by David.

  With his money, his unaccustomed wealth, he could have booked into the best hotel in Navarre – but it didn’t seem right. He wanted to be inconspicuous. Anonymous and unnoticed: just another tourist in a nice but mediocre hotel. So he grabbed his bags and booked himself in, and spent the rest of the day staring from his humble balcony, gazing out at the mountains. The cirques and summits seemed to shimmer, knowingly, exulting in their own remoteness.

  It was a hot and dusty day. In the evening he decided on a swim: he walked into the hotel gardens and stripped to his shorts, and dived in the blue inviting water of the pool. He gasped as he surfaced, the water was freezing, straight from the mountains, unheated.

  His whole body was tingling, his heart was thumping, it was a perfect metaphor for his situation. Three weeks ago he was a bored and listless commuter, reading free newspapers on the train, drinking machine coffee at work, doing the daily rounds of nothingness. As soon as he arrived in the Basque Country he had plunged right into it, straight into this mystery and strangeness and violence; and yet it felt good. Shocking but good; bracing but invigorating. Like diving into a pool of freezing mountain water. Making his body tingle.

  I am alive.

  The next day Amy called him: she’d had an idea. She reckoned that he should maybe publish his story, to help with the puzzle. Amy said she knew a local journalist who was willing to write it up; her way of thinking was that the more people who knew the questions, the better the chance they might locate some of the answers.

  David agreed to the idea, with only the faintest sense of reluctance.

  They met again in the journalist’s spare white flat; the young, dark-haired writer, Zara Garcia, banged out the article on a laptop. The piece appeared in a Spanish newspaper just half-a-day later. It was immediately picked up and translated by some English language newsfeeds.

  When David finally read the published story, on his own laptop, sitting with Amy in a little wifi cafe near the main plaza of Elizondo, he felt anxiety as well as excitement. The article was headlined ‘Bizarre Bequest Leads to Million Dollar Basque Mystery’.

  It had a photo taken by Zara of David holding up the map; the newspaper offered an email address where people could get in touch with David, if they had any ideas that might help.

  The journalist had left out the connection with José Garovillo: she’d explained that it was too incendiary and provocative in the political climate. Reading the article, David decided this omission had definitely been a good idea; he already felt exposed enough by the newspaper piece. What if Miguel read it?

  He shut the laptop and looked at Amy, in her purple denim jacket and her elegantly slender jeans. She looked back at him, silent, and blue eyed; and as she did, he felt the oddness of their situation – like an inexplicable shiver on a very warm day. Already they were sort-of friends: forced together by that horrible and frightening scene in the Bar Bilbo. And yet they were not friends; they were still total strangers. It was dissonant.

  Or maybe he was just unnerved by the noise in the bar. The slap and laughter of kids playing pelota, the peculiar Basque sport, in the square outside, was very audible. Children were thwapping the hard little pelota ball against a high wall. The noise was repetitive and intense. She glanced his way.

  ‘Shall we go somewhere else?’

  ‘If you have time.’

  ‘Academic holiday. And I’d like to help, while my students are off shooting the police.’ She smiled at his alarmed response. ‘Hey. That was a joke. Where do you want to go?’

  ‘I want to start looking at the churches. On my map…’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘But first…I’d like to go somewhere I can have a proper drink.’ He looked at her for a long moment, then he confessed: he was still feeling the nerves, the fear, the aftereffects of Miguel’s attack.

  ‘Let’s go for a glass and talk,’ she said.

  A few minutes’ driving brought them to a hushed little village; the sign said Irurita. Old men sat snoozing under berets, outside cafes. Parking the car by the village church they walked to one of the cafes; they sat under a parasol. The clear mountain air was refreshing, the sun was warm. Amy ordered some
olives and a bottle of the chilled local white wine that she called txacolli.

  The waitress served them at their shaded table with a nimble curtsey.

  Amy spoke:

  ‘You haven’t asked me the most obvious question of all.’

  He demurred; her expression was serious.

  ‘You ought to know this…if I am going to introduce you to José.’

  He drank some of his cold fresh wine, and nodded. ‘OK. If you insist. Why did Miguel attack you? He came out of nowhere, then…assaulted you. Why?’

  Her answer was fluent:

  ‘He hates me.’

  ‘Why?’

  She pressed her hands together, as if praying. ‘When I first came to the Basque Country I was…as I said, very interested in ETA. The cause of independence. I thought it was a laudable ambition, for an ancient people. I even sympathized with the terrorists. For a while. For a few months.’

  ‘And…’

  ‘Then I met José. The great José Garovillo. We became very good friends, he showed me where to buy the best pintxos in Bizkaia. He told me everything. He told me he had renounced violence, after the fall of Franco. He said terrorism was a cul de sac for the Basque people, within a democratic Spain.’

  ‘But his son –’

  ‘Disagreed. Obviously.’ She gazed straight at David. ‘But then José got me a job, teaching English at the university. And you see…a lot of the kids who come into my class are very radical, from the backstreets of Vittoria and Bilbao, ready to die for ETA. The girls are even more fierce than the boys. Killers in miniskirts.’

  Her lips were pink and wet from the txacolli. ‘I see it as my task to maybe steer them away from ETA, from violence, and the self-destruction of terrorism. So I teach them the literature of revolution: Orwell on the Civil War, Yeats on the Irish rebellion. I try to teach them the tragedy as well as the romance of a violent nationalist struggle.’

  ‘And that’s why Miguel hates you? He thinks you are working against ETA.’

  ‘Yes. I knew he’d been abroad for a while, though I did hear a rumour he was back. But I thought it was safe to go see my friends in the Bilbo. But he must have been in the bar already. Hanging out in one of the back rooms, with his ETA comrades…’