Death on a Galician Shore (28 page)

He returned home the following day, the Saturday, at around one o’clock. He found the house empty, clean and tidy. He remained there, and when it got dark he went to bed.

He didn’t get worried until the Sunday morning when he saw that his mother hadn’t slept in her bed. He then phoned Irene Vazquez, a close friend of his mother’s. She, too, had not heard from Rebeca since the Friday afternoon and, after hearing the boy’s account, went with him to the police.

Diego Neira stated that he didn’t know who the two men were and hadn’t even seen one of them properly, only silhouetted in the darkness. But he’d got a good look at the other one, who’d headed back to the port. He’d passed very close to the shack where Diego was sheltering from the rain and the road was well lit.

He was wearing waterproofs and rubber boots, like those used by fishermen. He looked about thirty, and was slim with a shock of very fair hair. Diego Neira had never seen him before.

Caldas reread the boy’s description of the stranger. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

He got up and went to his office. There, at his desk, he read through the report once again. Then he dialled the number of Galicia Police Headquarters and, for the second time that evening, asked to be put through to Nieves Ortiz.

‘Did you get the report?’

‘Yes. Thanks,’ said Caldas. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing else in the file?’

‘Absolutely, Leo.’

The inspector sighed. ‘Could there be a more comprehensive report somewhere else?’

‘There shouldn’t be,’ said Nieves.

‘Could you check?’

‘Now?’

‘Do you mind?’

‘I can try. But why the rush? It was over twelve years ago, wasn’t it?’

‘It may have something to do with the case I’m working on.’

‘What was the missing woman’s name again?’

Caldas read out the name on the report. ‘Rebeca Neira,’ he said. ‘Rebeca Neira Diez.’

The inspector took his ashtray from the drawer and lit a cigarette, as Nieves tapped away on her keyboard at Police Headquarters.

‘I can’t find anything else on the computer, Leo,’ she said a moment later. ‘But let me have another look in the archives. Give me three minutes and I’ll call you back.’

Caldas thanked her and hung up. If the missing persons report was the only document in the file, perhaps the woman had turned up. But he was sure the fair-haired man the boy had seen was the fisherman who had been found floating in the seaweed on the beach in Panxón thirteen years later.

Caldas wondered why José Arias and Marcos Valverde had lied, why neither of them had mentioned that they’d sheltered from the storm in the port of Aguiño. He wanted to hear their answers and watch their faces, and find out why they had set sail again despite the storm, in seas so heavy that their boat had foundered.

He picked up the phone again and called Estevez.

‘Do you know what time it is?’ said his assistant.

Caldas looked at his watch: it was twelve thirty.

‘Were you asleep?’

‘No,’ muttered Estevez.

‘I don’t think the
Xurelo
was on its way back from fishing when it sank.’

‘It happened over twelve years ago,’ groaned Estevez. ‘Couldn’t you have waited till Monday to tell me?’

‘I need to speak to José Arias and Marcos Valverde. I want to know why they hid this from us. Will you come and pick me up at seven? I’d like to be in Panxón when Arias gets back from fishing.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘When you say tomorrow you mean in seven hours’ time?’

‘That’s right.’

Estevez gave a deafening snort. ‘Tomorrow’s Saturday, Inspector.’

‘I know.’

‘Couldn’t we ask him about it on Monday?’

‘The fish market’s closed on Mondays, Rafa,’ replied Caldas. ‘Will you pick me up at seven? I’ll wait downstairs.’

He extinguished his cigarette and went to the toilets to empty the ashtray. As he was rinsing it, it slipped from his fingers and broke in half in the washbasin.

Holding a piece in each hand, Caldas approached the woman who cleaned the police station.

‘You don’t have some glue by any chance, do you?’ he asked, motioning towards the trolley loaded with containers that the woman was pushing with her foot.

‘No,’ she replied, staring at the two halves of the ashtray. ‘Anyway, even if you stick it back together, it’ll never be the same.’

Five minutes later Nieves Ortiz called him back.

‘I’ve had a look, Leo, but I can’t find anything other than the report I sent you. That must have been it.’

‘Do you know if they still live in Aguiño?’

‘There’s no record of a change of address,’ she said after checking.

Caldas read the police identification number on the report. ‘Would
you be able to tell me whose badge this is?’ he asked, and read out the number.

‘Let’s see,’ said Nieves, tapping on the keyboard at the other end of the line. ‘It was Deputy Inspector Somoza’s.’

‘Was?’

‘He’s no longer with the police,’ she said. ‘He retired eight years ago. Do you need anything else?’

‘No, that’s all, Nieves. Thanks so much. Sorry to have bothered you.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, and then asked: ‘How’s Alba?’

‘Fine,’ replied Caldas tersely.

‘Say hello to her from me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell her to look after you,’ she added. ‘And not let you work so late.’

The inspector swallowed hard. ‘I will.’

He hung up and rose from his desk. He took his raincoat and the copy of the missing persons report and threw the pieces of ashtray into the wastepaper basket. The cleaner was right: once something had been broken, it could never go back to the way it was.

At seven in the morning it was still pitch-black. The inspector stood waiting in the lobby of his building. After a few minutes, headlights drew up outside and he hurried out. He climbed into the car, leaned back in the passenger seat and opened the window a crack to let in fresh air.

‘Morning,’ he said. Estevez’s only response was to press his foot down on the accelerator.

They drove down the Avenida de Orillamar and continued beside the sea until they reached Bouzas. In the shipyards there were no lights or any trace of the glow of welding that lit up the skeletons of half-built ships during the week. The only illumination was the neon sign of a nightclub across the street, throwing light on the young people queuing to get in, determined to extract a few more hours of fun from their Friday night.

As they turned off the ring road and on to the coast road, Caldas filled Estevez in. He told him about Captain Sousa’s intention, relayed by radio to another skipper, to shelter in port when the storm broke and that the nearest port was Aguiño. He said he’d found a reference to the disappearance of a woman from the village in one of the newspaper cuttings given to him by the priest of Panxón. He added that he’d got hold of the missing persons report filed by the woman’s son, in which the boy described one of the men he’d seen talking to his mother on the night of the storm.

‘Listen to this,’ said Caldas, unfolding the report. ‘He says the man was about thirty, wearing waterproofs and rubber boots. He was slim
with very fair hair.’ He put the report away. ‘Justo Castelo was twenty-nine. How many fair-haired fishermen that age could have landed in a small fishing village like that one?’

Estevez shrugged.

‘I’m sure it was him,’ Caldas went on. ‘Don’t you see? The night the
Xurelo
sank it had been in Aguiño, and they weren’t simply fishing, as they claimed.’

‘Do you really think it’s significant?’

‘I don’t know. But this is all we’ve got to go on and I want to see if it leads anywhere.’

‘So what happened to the woman?’ asked Estevez, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

‘Rebeca Neira? I don’t know – the missing persons report is all I found.’

Estevez gave him a hard stare. ‘That’s it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bloody hell, Inspector. In that case, nothing happened.’

‘I know,’ said Caldas. ‘But if the boat was in Aguiño, I want to know why neither Arias nor Valverde mentioned it. When I asked Valverde why they hadn’t sheltered in a port, do you know what he said? “You’d have to ask the skipper.” Well, now I want them to tell me. I want to know why they hid it from everyone, I want them to tell me what happened that night, to explain again exactly how Antonio Sousa drowned.’

Estevez shook his head doubtfully. ‘Do you still think Sousa has something to do with Castelo’s death?’

‘Don’t forget the things painted on the rowing boat: the word “Murderers” and the date of Sousa’s death, 20 December 1996. It can’t be a coincidence. There has to be a link between Sousa’s death and Castelo’s, and I think the other two know what it is. Otherwise why would they be so evasive when I mentioned the captain’s name?’

‘Maybe it’s just a painful memory.’

‘Maybe,’ said Caldas, closing his eyes again and craning towards the open window. ‘But in that case they needn’t have lied.’

As they arrived in Panxón, with Monteferro a vague, dark shape against the sky, Estevez said, ‘One thing, Inspector.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Today’s Saturday. I shouldn’t be here.’

‘Nor should I,’ said Caldas.

‘Are you taking the piss?’ snorted Estevez. ‘We’re here because of you.’

‘This isn’t just a whim of mine, Rafa.’

‘Well, it certainly seems like it. Couldn’t we have waited till Monday?’

‘I told you, there’s no fish market on a Monday.’

‘So what?’

‘What do you mean, so what?’

‘That fisherman doesn’t dematerialise on days when there’s no market. It wouldn’t make any difference if we waited till Monday and questioned him at his house.’

‘One man’s already dead, Rafa, and there could be more. Time is important. You know that.’

‘Of course I do. But time’s important for the living as well,’ snapped Estevez. ‘You can do what you like with your own weekend, but it’s not fair to take other people’s free time as you please.’

‘As I please?’

‘Yes. It seems to bother you that other people have a life outside work.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. It doesn’t matter to you whether you phone at night or during the day. To you it makes no difference if it’s a Tuesday, Friday or Sunday. All days are the same. You pick up the phone and off you go without even bothering to ask if someone’s busy or not.’

‘If this is because of yesterday, I didn’t realise how late it was when I called,’ said Caldas apologetically.

‘Because of yesterday, and the day before, and today …’ Estevez, who’d spoken in bursts, now paused, as if taking aim before delivering the
coup de grâce
. ‘It’s not my fault if you don’t have a life,’ he said, ‘but you have to understand, not everyone’s like you.’

Caldas hunched in the passenger seat, not knowing what to say, and Estevez added, ‘You know I like to talk straight.’

‘Right,’ the inspector replied, closing his eyes again.

They arrived in Panxón at seven thirty. They parked under a street lamp, near the slipway, and waited in the car with the heating on and headlights off. On the water, they could see the lights of Arias’s and Hermida’s boats. The two fishermen were emptying the contents of their traps into black baskets, which they would later unload on land.

‘Can I take a look at that report?’ asked Estevez.

Caldas handed it to him, and his assistant held it up to the light from the street lamp.

‘Did you notice the surname, Inspector?’ said Estevez after a moment.

‘Whose?’

‘Mother’s and son’s,’ said Estevez. ‘They’ve both got exactly the same surname: Neira Diez.’

‘She was a single mother. Look at their ages.’

‘The boy fifteen, the mother thirty-two,’ read Estevez.

‘She was only a kid when she had him.’

At a quarter to eight the auctioneer arrived in his van. He parked outside the fish market, opened the metal shutters and switched on the lights.

Soon afterwards, Ernesto Hermida’s wife in her white apron made her way between boats down to the water’s edge to wait for her husband. The old fisherman drew up at the bottom of the slipway in his rowing boat and handed her the baskets, which she dropped to
the ground. Then, each holding a handle, they lugged the baskets one at a time up to the fish market.

Arias was in his orange waterproofs. He, too, had filled two baskets, but he carried them easily up the slipway, watched greedily by several seagulls.

At two minutes to eight, Caldas and Estevez got out of the car and headed towards the market. Hermida’s catch was already set out on the long metal table – shrimp on the right and crabs on the left – beneath the sign cautioning against eating, drinking, smoking and spitting inside the building. It smelled more strongly of the sea inside than out.

From the entrance, the policemen could make out José Arias’s dark hair and orange waterproofs. He was crouching, sorting his catch. He handed each tray to the auctioneer as he filled it, to be weighed and set on the table.

There were almost a dozen people waiting for the auction to begin. Caldas recognised the two women and the man with grey sideburns who’d divided the catch between them the last time. They were circling the table, like wolves around a flock of sheep. The other buyers showed less interest.

The auctioneer finished weighing the catch, checked that all the trays were marked with their weights and positioned himself behind the table. Then he puffed out his top lip and blew out the air suddenly.

‘Let’s begin, it’s five past eight,’ he said, rubbing his hands. Then he called out, ‘I’m selling shrimp! I’m selling shrimp!’

The buyers moved up to the table, as if drawn by a magnet. Hermida and his wife also stepped forward to follow the progress of the auction. Arias, however, went on cleaning out his baskets, as though it had nothing to do with him.

‘We’ll start at forty-five euros,’ the auctioneer announced, indicating the trays of shrimp wriggling in the cold blue light of the fluorescent tubes.

Then he took a deep breath and began calling out prices as if reciting the letters of the alphabet: ‘Forty-five, forty-four and a half, forty-four, forty-three and a half, forty-three, forty-two and a half, forty-two …’