Death in the Sun (9 page)

The Hospital Isabella is not a hospital. Its cloisters echo with learning, not suffering, for it now houses the University of Granada’s Faculty of History, but this time of year, the rooms for private study looking out into the courtyard are all unused. A gnarled old man dressed in a dark suit takes Staffe up a broad staircase to meet Professor Peralta.

In his grand room, Peralta is halfway up a ladder reaching for a book from the ceiling-high cases; he waves Staffe in, asks how his friend ‘The Jasper’ is getting on. Staffe tells him he seemed very well when they spoke and thanks the professor for seeing him at such short notice.

Peralta turns his back and resumes the quest for his book, overreaching for the volume. Staffe thinks he is about to fall and the old man in the dark suit chides him, but the book is successfully plucked and Peralta descends, says, ‘You are delving into our terrible war, so The Jasper tells me.’

‘I’m afraid I am interested in the methods of killing.’

Peralta shakes his head. ‘They found every way to kill a man in those insane years.’ He pauses, reordering his thoughts. ‘Each side was as bad as the other. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. One lot, in the name of everything egalitarian and with
Kapital
behind them, were killing priests and raping nuns. The others sought out reds where there weren’t any and executed them anyway – with the most horrible methods.’

Staffe says, ‘The method I think I know is truly terrible.’

‘I am putting the finishing touches to a conference next spring. For me, the integrity of the sourcing and verification must be impeccable. I have an academic deity to answer to and what you tell me may be published.’

‘What I know is hearsay, I’m afraid.’

‘You are asking me to be frank and honest, Señor Wagstaffe, so you must be the same.’

‘All I can say is that there is a crime under investigation. The
Cuerpo
seem to have a solution, but let us imagine . . .’

‘I cannot imagine, Señor.’

‘Two men are dead.’

‘The man in the plastic – is he one? That was a simple case of druggies killing each other. It made the papers here in Granada.’

‘A simple case? I suspect not. What if he had been buried to his neck and had his head strapped back, and . . .’

‘And drowned. Drowned in the earth – am I right?’

Staffe nods. ‘This is what I am speculating about.’

‘You said there were two dead.’

‘The other is a journalist.’

‘Ahaa, Gutiérrez. I never met him, but we get some of his feature articles in the Granada
La Lente
. They say he drove into a
barranco
as drunk as a monkey.’

‘It was he who covered the body in the plastic story.’

‘Is it to do with the Golf?’

‘Tell me about the water method.’

‘I have heard of such a method. The Jasper would call them “Caligulas”. But they are not. That’s just his Anglo-Saxon predilection. We don’t obsess about the Romans the way you do. Here, those few who talk about that method, we call them
“ladrones”
. They were executions claimed in the name of war, but were really to avenge matters of life. It is such things that underline the “civil” in our civil war and precisely the abominations that make it such a terrible war – beyond the imagination.’

‘The killings were over water?’

‘For some, the war was a screen. Imagine, your grandfather stole land or, more importantly, water from my grandfather. My family lived destitute for three generations – and then the war comes and they are with the Nationalists. I call myself a Republican, and I take your life – and your land and my water back. I call it war, and when the war is done – the war is done. We bury the war and let the water rise, Señor Wagstaffe – we preoccupy ourselves with getting on with the peace.’

‘And these crimes were committed by Fascists?’

‘It depends. Certainly, once they were in the ascendancy. But everyone was tainted.’

‘
Ladrones
,’ muses Staffe, smiling to himself.

‘You have a strange sense of humour, Señor.’

‘My hotel is the Ladrón Del Agua.’

‘I know it. It is for our new generation. A special place. Perhaps it bodes well.’

*

From her room, which remains precisely as she left it when she moved away from Gabo ten years ago, Pepa can see the Luna dune. It is a hundred metres high and for half her life, she wondered how the wind didn’t take it. Then her brother, Hilario, told her it is the wind that put it here; keeps it here. Soon after, her brother was taken – by the sea.

Above her bed is her prized poster of
Quadrophenia
. Hilario bought it from a website. It is signed by Pete Townshend and she looks away from it and back out to the sea, remembers her brother. She feels sad, and puts on a CD, plays ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ at full blast and waits for her father to come stamping up the stairs. It is her joke, to make her less sad, and she hides behind the door, waiting for him to come storming in, shouting, ‘Turn it down, turn it down,’ which he does, and she jumps out from behind the door and hugs him tight, her hands clasped tight around his chest and her face snuggled into his neck.

She can smell the sea on him. He is only a small man, a fisherman who did very well from all the fancy restaurants which the village sprouted in the boom. When the peseta turned euro – a black day for all Spain, according to her father – a spanking new Mercedes had appeared in the garage and a new fishing boat was bought, kept on a stand in Motril. The Merc comes out when they go to weddings and christenings; the boat has never been in the water.

‘I am so proud of you, my Pepa,’ he says.

She holds her breath, daren’t tell him that, for all her fancy clothes and expensive habits, she is slowly, surely, drowning in debt.

They hold each other tight for a while and her father eventually says, ‘Turn it down, for your mother’s sake. I don’t understand all this foreign business that consumes you. Where did that come from? It breaks my heart that you are not happy to be truly Spanish.’

‘I am, papa. I love Spain. I love Gabo and all my friends here.’

‘But you live with the Moors in the city.’

Pepa chastises him but he knows only what he knows. Fishing for his life, he has to fear everything he doesn’t know, and who knows the sea? Even this Mediterranean, a sea he has fished all his life, holds terrible depths. In these waters, and especially in winter, God can take you.

When Hilario was sixteen, and she two years younger, he had left school to learn his father’s trade. They hit rocks off Agua Amarga and the boat capsized. Her father had dived and dived until he found Hilario. He brought him home and carried him into the house, across his arms like an offertory, tears stained into his salt cheeks.

Her father looks at the poster Hilario bought for her, using his first wage packet. As if it’s too much for him to bear, he gives her a lingering kiss on each cheek, holds her by the shoulders and says he will see her at dinner.

Pepa returns to her papers. There is a whole list of
denuncias
relating to new building projects across Andalucia and one of them relates to a local developer who has built a four-star hotel two bays away from Gabo and right on an idyllic cove. As usual, the outgoing mayor, who granted the permissions and who is now living on Fuerteventura in a massive villa, is being shamed and the new mayor has swept in with his new brush. Pepa spends a couple of hours going through the demolition order on the new hotel, cursing the legal system. When she is done, she goes back to the list of
denuncias
. Near the top is Almagen: an order against an English couple, the Harbinsons.

Last winter, the Harbinsons’
cortijo
on the edge of the village suffered storm damage, like everyone else in the Alpujarras. The banks of their
acequia
, which serves water for all the farms below them, had burst. As a result, many villagers had been denied their water – hence the
denuncia
. But once the town hall looked at it and visited the Harbinsons, they declared the entire smallholding illegal. As it stands, the house is set to be demolished after a final court hearing in Granada.

She looks up a contact she has at the London
Times
. Every now and again, she writes as a stringer for him and this hard-luck story of paradise gone sour could appeal. She makes the call, wondering what the English policeman will be sniffing around at, right now; what use he might be.

*

Jackson lets himself into the apartment in Realejo. When he first came to Granada, Realejo was a down-at-heel
barrio
and its Campo de Principe was filled with furtive lovers and kids scoring dope. Now, the streets are lined with trendy bars and shops selling
objets d’art
, and the
campo
is like any piazza in any proud city in the world. The food’s gone downhill but the menus are in four languages.

He bought his place, which is the top floor of an eighteenth-century house next to the church of Santo Domingo, in 1985. Jackson gave six thousand bucks for it and earlier today, an agent came round to see him and sucked his teeth and banged on about
El Crisis
, finally said he would struggle to get quarter of a million for it.

The apartment has a knocked-through living room with a kitchen in one corner. On the northern side of the apartment is his old studio, though it is years since he painted. Now, whenever he comes, it is the opposite side of the building which sees the action.

Today, he feels nostalgic and unlocks the walk-in cupboard in the studio and takes out his stack of six Barringtons, lines them up along the wall, like captured soldiers. He gets a bottle of Wild Turkey and pours himself a tumbler, rolls a joint, and leans back in his Barcelona chair. He looks and drinks; looks and smokes; does it some more and remembers those bad, bad times. The best.

‘You fucker, Barrington. You bad fucker,’ he says as Wild Turkey slowly disappears. He fleshes out a sketch of Yolanda in pen and ink, from memory. The northern light, which he prefers, fades quickly and his thoughts turn to Manolo. Poor Manolo.

He telephones Yolanda and counts out a hundred euros for her. She has been on his back for a little extra – actually, quite a bit extra, but that is all she is getting.

While he waits, he puts on Patti Smith, full blast, and showers long and hard, one-handed. From the other, he drinks the Wild Turkey from the bottle, remembers more about the bad old days. It brings a little something to his face.

*

Yolanda is upset because Jackson doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t kiss her and isn’t at all charming. It takes him ages, too, and all the time she is down on him, he looks at those infernal paintings, muttering to himself.

She spits him out and takes the hundred euros he laid out. ‘You don’t have what I asked for?’

‘That’s plenty,’ he says, pouring himself a glass of bourbon. ‘You want some?’

‘I told you, I need a little extra.’

‘A little extra? Well, ask someone else.’

‘And you ask someone else, you bastard!’

‘I could do that.’

‘They wouldn’t put up with you. No one would. We’re done, all done! And don’t call me. Not ever!’ Yolanda fixes herself and slips the money into her clothes then storms towards the door.

But Jackson blocks the doorway, holds her and says, ‘Don’t be like that.’ Taking her by the shoulders, he turns her round, asks her which of the paintings she likes best.

‘Fuck yourself.’

He digs into his trousers, on the back of the chair, and slips a fifty-euro note between her tits.

‘I need more.’

‘Tell me. Which is the best?’’

Without hesitating, she points at the one on the end, by the window. ‘That one.’

It’s a seascape, with three people aboard a boat. In a tiny portion of the tempestuous canvas, there is a love story. It is, quite simply, genius – in a way which the other Barringtons are not.

‘I could love you, baby,’ he says. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

‘You could
show
your appreciation.’

His dick points up at her – hard as oak. Some women have said they don’t know how he does it. ‘You chose right, baby. But that’s all you’re getting.’

‘I never chose right, my whole life. You treat me right – next time.’

‘It’s been a funny couple days.’

When Yolanda is gone, Jackson puts Patti Smith back on and – as she swaggers through ‘Redondo Beach’, kind of like it’s out of the corner of her mouth but also, absolutely, from the centre of her soul – Jackson carefully places the seascape love painting to one side. He puts the rest of the canvases face down all over the floor and with a hammer and chisel, one by one, he dismantles the frames at each of their four corners. It takes until halfway through side two before he has a pile of wood and a stack of canvases. The wood, he carries to the hearth and puts it with the logs that surround his wood-burning stove; the canvases, this thin pile of five Barringtons, each bearing the dead man’s signature, he rolls up and secretes at the back of the cupboard.

‘It’s a long time till fucking winter,’ he says aloud, looking at the stack of wood and flopping out on his day bed. He got the bed in Tangier on a weekend with Barrington. He laughs aloud, remembering how they stuffed twenty bricks of hashish into the mattress. ‘Bad old times, you fucker,’ he says, reaching across, pulling the Wild Turkey by its neck, and opens up his sketch pad. In pen and ink, he doodles around with his likeness of Yolanda, and slides slowly to a deep sleep, the monochrome her falling to ground.

*

In Staffe’s room in the Ladrón del Agua, a portrait of Lorca hangs beside photographs of old Granada. Lorca, killed by the General’s men in the early days of the war. Peralta had told him that when Dalí, supposedly a friend of Lorca’s, heard that his friend was dead, he said, ‘
Olé
,’ knowing that the General was set to prevail in the War. Even though he was a Communist, Salvador was planning for the peace.