The Marks of Cain Read online

  ‘Then he heard the row.’

  ‘Yes. And he walked out. Saw me. With you.’ She grimaced. ‘And did his favourite thing.’

  The explanation was good, if not perfect. David still felt the echo of an unexplained space, a dark blur on the image. What else was she not telling him? What about the scar on her scalp?

  He stopped thinking as the waitress placed some olives on their table.

  ‘Gracias,’ he said. The girl nodded and bobbed and replied in that thick guttural Spanish accent: kakatazjaka…Then she waved to a friend across the cobbled plaza, and made her way back to the bar.

  ‘You know it’s funny,’ said David, half turning to Amy. ‘I’ve not heard any Basque being spoken. Not yet.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’ve been in the Basque Country for two days. I’ve seen it written on signs everywhere. But not heard anyone speaking it.’

  She gazed at him from under her blonde fringe – as if he was retarded.

  ‘That girl spoke Basque just then.’

  ‘…She did?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Amy’s denim jacket was off; David noticed the golden hairs on her suntanned arms as she reached again for her glass of wine.

  ‘And all the guys in Lesaka,’ she said, tilting her glass. ‘They were all speaking Basque. Hence their anger when you tried talking Spanish.’

  David cocked an ear, listening to the chatter of the waitress. Kazakatchazaka.

  Amy was right. This was surely Basque. And yet it sounded like they were talking a very bizarre Spanish. And he’d been hearing it all along without realizing.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘it took me a while, when I first came here, to realize I was surrounded by Basque speakers. I just thought they had over-the-top Spanish accents.’ She looked beyond him – at the whitewashed church walls. ‘I think it’s because Basque is so strange, the ear and the mind can’t entirely comprehend what’s being heard.’

  ‘Have you learned any?’

  ‘I’ve tried, of course! But it’s just impossible, weird clauses, unique syntax.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Here’s an example of how mad Basque is. What’s the first phrase you learn in any foreign language?’

  ‘“Do you speak English?”’

  ‘Comedy genius. What else?’

  ‘…“Can I have a beer?”’

  ‘Exactly. Une bière s’il vous plaît. Ein bier bitte.’

  ‘So how do you say “Can I have a beer” – in Basque?’

  Amy looked at him.

  ‘Garagardoa nahi nuke.’

  They sat there in the sun, in tense but companionable silence. And then a gust of wind rippled the parasol. David looked left: clouds were scudding in from the west, thicker clouds were rolling down the nearest Pyrenean slope, like a white sheepskin coat slowly falling from the shoulders.

  ‘OK,’ said David. ‘How do we know Miguel isn’t going to just turn up here, and follow you? And hurt you. I don’t get it. You seem calm. Fairly calm anyway.’

  ‘He was drunk. He’s only ever hit me once before.’

  ‘He’s done it before?’

  She blushed. Then she quickly added: ‘He usually hangs out in Bilbao or Bayonne – with the other ETA leaders. He rarely comes to Navarre, might get seen. We were just very very unlucky. And anyhow I’m not going to let that bastard chase me away.’

  Her final words were defiant: the slender nose uptilted, eyes wide and angry.

  David saw the conviction and the sense in her statement; but he still felt queasy and tense. Just sitting here in the autumn breeze. Doing nothing.

  ‘OK. Let’s go and see the churches on my map.’

  Amy nodded, and rose; when they climbed in the car the first flickers of drizzle were spitting on the windscreen.

  ‘How quickly it changes. In the autumn.’

  The rain was a majorette’s drum-roll on the car roof. David reached in the glovebox and took out the precious paper; carefully unfolding the leaves, he showed her the map that had brought him halfway round the world.

  He noticed her fingernails were bitten, as she pointed at the asterisks.

  ‘Here. Arizkun.’

  ‘You know it?’

  ‘I know of it. One of the most traditional Basque villages. Way up in the mountains.’ She looked squarely at David. ‘I can show you.’

  David reversed the car. He followed Amy’s lucid directions: towards France and the frontier, and the louring mountains. Towards the Land Beyond.

  The villages thinned as they raced uphill. Ghosts of fog were floating over the steeply sloping fields, melancholy streamers of mist, like the pennants of a departing and spectral army.

  ‘We’re right near the border…’ she said. ‘Smugglers used to come over here. And rebels. Witches. Terrorists.’

  ‘So which way?’

  ‘There.’

  Amy was indicating a tiny winding turn off – with a sign above it, just perceptible through the mist.

  The road to Arizkun was the narrowest yet: high mountain hedges with great rock boulders hemmed them in, like bigger people trying to bully them into a corner. More mountain peaks stretched away to the west, a recession of summits in the mist.

  ‘On a clear day you can see right into France,’ said Amy.

  ‘Can barely see the damn road.’

  They were entering a tiny and very Basque village square. It had the usual Basque pelota court, several terraces of medieval stone houses, and a bigger stone mansion, adorned with a sculpted coat of arms. A wyvern danced across the damp heraldic stone: a dragon with a vicious coiling tail, and feminine claws.

  The village was desolately empty. They parked by the mansion, which was spray-painted with ETA graffiti.

  Eusak Presoak, Eusak Herrira.

  Beneath this slogan was an even larger slash of graffiti. Written in the traditional jagged and ancient Basque script, the word was unmistakable.

  Otsoko.

  Next to the word was a black stencil of a wolf’s head.

  The Wolf.

  Amy was standing next to David, looking at the graffito.

  ‘Some of the Basque kids worship him…’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cause he’s so perfectly ruthless. A brilliant killer…who comes and goes. Who never gets caught.’

  She was visibly shivering. She added:

  ‘And they admire the cruelty. Of course.’

  ‘Miguel is…especially cruel?’

  ‘Rhapsodically. Voluptuously. Poetically. The Spanish torture Basque radicals, but Miguel tortures them right back. He frightens the fuck out of the Spanish police. Even the anti terrorists.’

  Amy leaned to look at the graffito. David asked:

  ‘What kind of tortures?’

  Her fringe of blonde hair was dewed with water in the mist. ‘He buried one Guardia Civil guy in quicklime.’

  ‘To destroy the evidence?’

  ‘No no no. Miguel buried the man alive, in quicklime, up to his neck. Basically he dissolved him. Alive.’

  Abruptly, she walked on. David jogged after her, together they walked down a damp stony path, between two of the older Basque houses. David looked left and right. Brown and thorny sunflowers decorated the damp wooden doors, hammered fiercely to the planks. Some of the wayside thistles had been made into man shapes. Manikins made out of thistles.

  The silence of the village was unnerving. As they paced through the clinging mist, the echo of their footsteps was the only noise.

  ‘Where the hell is everyone?’

  ‘Killed. Died. America.’

  They were at the end of the lane. The houses had dwindled, and they were surrounded by rocks and thickets. Somewhere out there was France, and the ocean – and cities and trains and airports.

  Somewhere.

  Abruptly, a church appeared through the mist. Grey-stoned and very old, and perched above a ravine which was flooded with fog. The windows were gaunt, the location austere.

  ‘Not exactly
welcoming. The house of God?’

  Amy pushed at a rusty iron gate. ‘The churches are often like this. They used to build them on older sites, pagan sites. For the ambience, maybe.’

  David paused, perplexed. Odd circular stones, like circles balanced on squares, were set along the path to the church door. The stones were marked with lauburus – the mysterious and aethereal swastika. David had never seen circular gravestones before.

  ‘Let’s try inside,’ he said.

  They walked down the slippery cobbled path to the humble wooden church door. It was black, old, wet – and locked.

  ‘Damn.’

  Amy walked left, around the side of the church – shrouding herself with mist. David followed. There was a second, even smaller door. She twisted the rusty handle; it opened. David felt the lick of moisture on his neck; it was cold now, as well as gloomy. He wanted to get inside.

  But the interior of the church was as unalluring as the exterior. Dank and shadowy, with unpainted wooden galleries of seating. The reek of rotten flower-water was intense; five stained glass windows filtered the chill and foggy daylight.

  ‘Curious,’ said Amy, pointing up. One of the stained glass windows showed a large bull, a burning tree, and a white Basque house. Then she elaborated, still pointing at the window.

  ‘The Basques are very devout, very Catholic. But they were pagan until the tenth century, and they keep a lot of their pre-Christian imagery. Like that. That house – there –’ she gestured to the main window ‘– that’s the exte, the family house, the sacred cornerstone of heathen Basque culture. The souls of the Basque dead are said to return to a Basque house, through subterranean passages…’

  David stared. The stained glass tree was burning in the cold glass light.

  ‘And the woman? In the other window.’

  ‘That’s Mari, the lady of the witches.’

  ‘The…’

  ‘Goddess of the witches. The Basque witches. We do not exist, yes we do exist, we are fourteen thousand strong.’ She looked at him, her eyes blue and icy in the hanging light. ‘That was their famous – or infamous – saying. We do not exist, yes we do exist, we are fourteen thousand strong.’

  Her words were visible wraiths in the chill; her expression was obscure. David had a strong desire to get out; he didn’t know what he wanted to do. So he made for the little door, and exited with relief into the hazy daylight. Amy followed him, smiling, and then immediately headed left. Away from the path, disappearing behind the stage curtains of fog.

  ‘Amy?’

  Silence. He said again:

  ‘Amy?’

  Silence. Then:

  ‘Here. What’s this? David.’

  He squinted, and saw her: a vague shape in the misty graveyard: female and slender, and elusive. David quickly stepped across.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Another graveyard…With derelict graves.’

  She was right. There was a secondary cemetery, divided from the main churchyard by a low stone wall. This cemetery was much more neglected. A crude statue of an angel had fallen onto the soggy grass; and a brown cigarette had been contemptuously stubbed out – in the angel’s eye. Circular gravestones surrounded the toppled angel.

  A noise distracted them. David turned. Emerging from the mist was an old woman. Her face was dark. She was dressed in a long black skirt and a ragged blue jumper, over which she was wearing a T-shirt imprinted with Disney characters; Wall-E, The Lion King, Pocahontas.

  The woman was also deformed. She had a goitre the size of a grapefruit: a huge tumorous growth bulging out of her neck, like a shot putter holding the shot under his chin, getting ready to throw.

  The crone spoke. ‘Ggghhhchchc,’ she said. She was pointing at them, her goitre was lividly bulging as she gabbled, her face vividly angry. She looked like a toad, croaking.

  ‘Graktschakk.’ She pointed at them with a long finger, and then at the neglected graveyard.

  ‘What? What is it?’ David’s heart was pounding – foolishly. This was just an old woman, a sad, deformed old woman. And yet he was feeling a serious fear, a palpable and inexplicable alarm. He turned. ‘Amy – what is she saying?’

  ‘I think it’s Basque. She’s saying…shit people,’ Amy whispered, backing awkwardly away.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘She says we are shit people. Shit people. I’ve no idea why.’

  The woman stared. And croaked some more. It was almost like she was laughing.

  ‘Amy. Shall we get the hell out?’

  ‘Please.’

  They scurried up the path, David tried not to look at the woman’s enormous goitre as he passed; but then he turned and looked at her goitre. She was still pointing at them, like someone accusing, or denouncing, or laughing.

  They were almost running now; David stuffed the map in his pocket as they escaped.

  The sense of relief when they made the car was profound – and preposterous. David pressed the locks and turned the engine and spun the wheel – reversing at speed. They rumbled over the cobbles, past the stencil of Otsoko – the silently grinning black wolf’s head.

  Amy’s mobile phone bleeped as they crested a hill: the telecom signal returning.

  ‘It’s José Garovillo. It’s José.’

  ‘So.’ His excitement was real; his fear was repressed. ‘What’s his response?’

  She looked down, reading her message. ‘He says…he is willing to meet you. Tomorrow.’ She shook her head. ‘But…this is a little odd…there’s something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He says he knows why you are here.’

  7

  The tiny four-seater plane soared across the windswept fields of Shetland, heading for the rough blue sea already visible in the distance.

  ‘It’s just a twenty-minute flight,’ said the pilot, above the loud engines. ‘Might get a bit bumpy when we reach the coast.’

  Simon Quinn was squeezed in the back of the minuscule plane alongside DCI Sanderson; sitting next to the pilot was DS Tomasky.

  The speed of events was bewildering. Simon had learned only the previous afternoon, while watching Shrek with his son, Conor, that there was another murder case, linked to the Primrose Hill knotting. And already he was here: flying across the lonely, sunlit cliffs, with the words of his excited editor at the Daily Telegraph still reverberating in his mind: you know the cliché, Simon: murder is money. Our readers will lap this up. Go and have a look!

  It was certainly a juicy story. He could envisage the headlines – and the byline photo. But there was a mystery here, too. All he had been told was that the new victim, Julie Charpentier, was also old, and she was from the South of France. But the circumstance which had apparently clinched the link, to the satisfaction of the police, was the fact that the woman was tortured. The details of the ‘tortures’ were, so far, unrevealed.

  When he’d heard about the murder, he’d had to beg Sanderson to take him along; promising him some very nice coverage in the resulting article. The DCI had yielded to the journalist’s pleas – with a laconic chuckle: ‘Make sure you bring a strong stomach. They kept the corpse there for a few days so we could see it.’

  The plane raced over the cliffs, out to sea. Leaning forward, the journalist asked the pilot:

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Sorry?’ The pilot – Jimmy Nicolson – lifted one of his earphones, to hear better. ‘Didnae catch it. Say again?’

  ‘What’s it like, living on Fowler?’

  ‘Foo-lah,’ Jimmy laughed. ‘Remember what I said. Foula is pronounced Foo-lah.’

  ‘Yep. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the pilot answered. ‘We’re used to people not knowing about us.’

  ‘You mean?’

  ‘Since they evacuated Saint Kilda, Foula is the most remote inhabited place…in the whole of Britain…’

  Simon peered out of the window at the oceans. Chops of foam were mere flicks of whiteness against the enormous wastes of water. For sev
eral minutes they flew on in silence. He felt his stomach churn – he didn’t know if it was the nauseating rollercoaster ride of the airplane, or his apprehension at visiting the murder scene. Yet he was also adolescently excited. Headlines. He would get headlines.

  ‘There,’ said Jimmy Nicolson. ‘Foula!’

  Just perceptible through the sea-haze was a small but gutsy outcrop: a looming outlier of treeless, grass-topped rock, surmounted by steep hills. The cliffs looked so enormous and the hills so daunting it was hard to believe anyone could pitch a tent on the island, let alone find enough flat space to build a house. But there were houses there: small crofts and cottages, tucked against the slopes.

  And now they were banking towards Foula’s only landing spot. A patch of green turf.

  Sanderson laughed. ‘That’s the airstrip?’

  ‘Flattest part of the isle,’ said Jimmy. ‘And we’ve never had a crash. Anyway if you overshoot, you just end up in the sea.’ He chuckled. ‘Hold onto your bonnets, gentlemen.’

  It was the steepest descent Simon had ever made in a plane: they were plunging headlong towards the airstrip, as if they intended to plough up the fields with the propeller. But then Jimmy yanked fiercely on the joystick, and the plane tilted up, and suddenly they were coming to a stop, ten yards from the vandalizing waves.

  Tomasky actually applauded.

  ‘Nice landing.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jimmy. ‘Look now, here’s the widow Holbourne. And Hamish Leask.’

  Already the red-cheeked locals were slapping Jimmy on the back, and helping him to unload stores from the hold of the little aircraft; a few of them were nodding respectfully at DCI Sanderson. A tall red-haired man, in a police uniform, came over and introduced himself to the Scotland Yard officers.

  ‘Hamish Leask. Northern Constabulary.’

  Sanderson smiled politely:

  ‘Of course. We talked. Hello!’ He gestured. ‘This is the freelancer I mentioned. Simon Quinn. He’s covering…things for the Telegraph.’

  ‘Och, yes. A proper newspaper.’ Leask shook Simon’s hand with crushing vigour. Before the journalist could reply, Jimmy intervened: