The Burning (26 page)

“No harm would have come to
you
…”

Salvador Abeja saw the moonlight dance on the blade in the man’s hand. He crossed himself and hoped that his mother had remembered to include her own son in her prayers.

O
n the edge of Seville’s ring road, near the river, stands a tower some forty-five metres high. It was once an ammunition factory, built for the manufacture of lead bullets. The blobs of molten lead were dropped from a cauldron at the top – cooling on the long drop – into a tank of water at the bottom. In more recent times it was converted into a camera obscura, or magic box: a type of periscope, combined with a projector, that allows the viewer a live overview of the whole city from inside the darkened tower.

The Englishman pushed back his hood and leant over the milky image that was projected on to the large white dish from the mirrors above. Seville moved in front of his eyes: people scurried, ant-like, across the square below, ladies walked dogs in the park and a solitary boat chugged along the river.

He had been watching the town from this vantage point since dawn and would stay watching until dusk, if he had to. As he cranked the handle to focus the image
and trained the lens on to the road that led into the city, he smiled, realizing that such a long wait would not be necessary. An ancient VW camper van spluttered along the ring road, sticking to the inside lane. It was a vehicle he was familiar with. Loved by surfers and hippies alike, a VW camper had been the transport of choice for his own travels across Europe nearly thirty years before. But this one was blue, painted with a beehive and had a large bee attached to its roof.

The Englishman watched as it drew alongside the park, directly underneath his viewpoint and, as if working to his instructions, came to a halt in a parking bay. He nodded to himself as the van door slid back and revealed its contents.

Seven children of varying ages. Six of them twins.

The Englishman took out his phone and began to type a text with a scarred finger.

The first thing that struck Rachel about Seville was the orange trees that lined the streets and surrounded the park. After the cold air of the Sierra Norte, the city was warm and bathed in sunlight, almost as if spring were in the air.

They had all slept fitfully. The French boys had slept out in the open air, not just because they were the hardiest of the group but because the rest of the van had voted them out on account of their smelly socks and trainers. Rachel had slept uncomfortably, stretched out on a bunk with Morag and Duncan curled against her like small
cats, while Adam had sprawled across the front seat of the van. She was not sure where Gabriel had slept, if indeed he had slept at all. Sleep never seemed to matter to him.

As she stepped out of the camper, Rachel felt a tingle, a sense of anticipation and excitement about the town that seemed to be carried on the breeze. She instantly liked the place. Gabriel seemed distracted, standing away to one side and staring into the distance at a tower on the far side of the park.

“Gabriel?” Rachel said. “The little ones are hungry again.”

He looked round slowly. Eating seemed to matter to him about as much as sleep did, and he sometimes became impatient with the constant demands for food. Now, Morag and Duncan looked up at him imploringly, clearly reading his thoughts.

“Please, Michael; we’re hungry.”

Gabriel realized he’d been caught out and laughed. “OK. But we can’t hang about here. We’re a bit conspicuous in the bee-bus. We need a change of transport.” He looked at Jean-Luc and Jean-Bernard, who were jumping up and snatching oranges from a tree, then throwing them at passing cars. “Can you two drive around the place a couple of times, get yourselves noticed, then head out of town to the east for a few hours, then get some new transport and come back and meet us tonight?”

“Sure,” Jean-Bernard said.

“What do we do with the camper?” his brother asked.

“Be imaginative,” Gabriel answered.

The French boys looked at each other. The prospect of racing a van round a ring road, then heading out of town to wreck it clearly appealed enormously. And finding a change of transport would be a breeze for two boys who had been hot-wiring cars since they could walk. They grinned at Gabriel and gave him a thumbs up.

“Cool,” Jean-Luc said. “Where do you want to meet?”

“We meet back here; beneath the tower. 12.15. That’s
fifteen minutes past midnight
, OK? It’s really important that you’re here on time.”

“Not a problem,” Jean-Luc said.

“Good,” Gabriel said. “Because we have a boat to catch.”

Rachel sighed as the French twins jumped back into the van. She had thought they might sit tight for a few days in this warm city. “A boat? Do we
have
to leave tonight? We’re so tired. And what’s with the time being so … specific?”

“When you see what happens at midnight, you’ll see why we need to be out of here by twelve-fifteen. Believe me.”

Rachel’s stomach sank as she realized she
did
believe him.

As the French boys gunned the engine of the VW and waved through the dirty window at Rachel and Adam, Gabriel smiled across at the little twins.

“How about ice cream?” he asked.

Duncan and Morag nodded enthusiastically and, as the camper van roared away down the ring road, the remaining
five of them set off across the park, away from the long, thin shadow of the tower.

Laura Sullivan and Kate Newman’s flight had arrived in Seville early that morning. Laura had picked up a hire car and, armed with a map on which she had drawn lines, cross-references and calculations, they headed north out of the city.

Kate sat in the passenger seat with the map spread out on her lap while Laura steered the hatchback out of the airport, on to the motorway and away from Seville.

Kate had said very little to the Australian since they had left Hope behind and Laura had seemed comfortable enough with the silence, as if it was no more than she had expected. But now, with the sun rising over the red earth of the Spanish countryside and her own feeling that they were following a trail that would lead to her kids, Kate felt a little more disposed to talk.

“Why are we heading out of the city?” she asked, unable to conceal the deep suspicion in her voice. “I thought you said they were in Seville.”

Laura cast her a glance, eager to regain Kate’s confidence. “I’m following a hunch,” she said. “More than a hunch. A
theory
. All the work I’ve done suggests a spot an hour or so outside the city. All the grid references point to a Bronze Age site in a national park called Sierra Norte. It’s so similar to Triskellion … it just stacks up that if they’re heading this way, Sierra Norte will be the first port of call.”

“Why?” Kate asked flatly, not looking at her.

“I don’t know,” Laura said honestly. “I just think … my research shows it’s the most likely place. It’s a Bronze Age site; there are caves, there are paintings. It sits on a line of sites I’ve traced across Europe. There’s a necropolis too…”

“A what?” Kate said, half recognizing the word.

“A burial place. A city of the dead.”

“You don’t think…” Kate’s voice went up in pitch.

“No, no, no … a place of
ancient
dead. And if I’m right, a place of … not entirely human dead.”

Kate sat silently for the rest of the drive, trying not to think about the implications of Laura Sullivan’s words.

They arrived at Sierra Norte about an hour later and followed the obvious track across the plain into a more mountainous area, covered with pines and thick banks of oaks. The track became bumpier as they climbed higher and Laura saw an old wooden sign on which someone had daubed
CUEVAS
in white paint.

“Caves,” she said. “I think we’re on the right track.”

They came to an area where the track flattened out into a wide clearing and boulders gathered around a large crack in a stony outcrop. Sweet chestnut and oak trees dotted the immediate surroundings. Laura stopped the car and both women got out.

“I can smell rosemary,” Kate said, sniffing the air and looking up at the bright blue sky. For the first time in weeks, a smile crept across her face.

Laura Sullivan rooted around, kicking at small stones, clambering up on to rocky ledges and looking at the savage land that stretched out before her; the same landscape that had remained unchanged for many generations. Then she saw something and jumped from the rocks and ran off, returning moments later.

“Over here, Kate,” she panted.

Laura beckoned Kate over to a spot where there were tyre tracks in the damp earth. Kate followed as Laura pursued the tracks for several metres into a clump of bushes, then through into a clearing that was protected from behind by the opening of a cave and from the sides by trees and tangles of thorns. On the ground were the remains of a campfire. Save for the tyre tracks, the scene could have been left by a caveman thousands of years before.

“They’ve been here,” Laura said. “Not long ago, either. The ashes are still warm.”

“How d’you know it was them?”

Laura took Kate by the wrist and led her to a spot several metres away where the clearing fell into an incline. There, in the flat, red earth, as if designed to be seen from above, someone had drawn the sign of the Triskellion with a stick. It was three paces across and bounded by a circle. A stone had been carefully placed on the point which faced south, back towards the city.

Laura Sullivan looked Kate squarely in the eye and smiled triumphantly. “
That’s
how I know.”

T
he ice-cream parlour was on a side street that ran between the river and one of the many small plazas or squares dotted along the banks. Like every other open space in the city, the square was decked with brightly painted flags and bunting, and the trunks of the orange trees were wrapped with necklaces of coloured lights, their bulbs as big as the fruit that hung from the branches above.

There was more decoration in the parlour itself; tiny lights had been strung across the ceiling above the booths and along the length of the polished metal counter. There was uptempo trumpet music blaring from a speaker on the wall and everyone in the place seemed to be in a good mood.

Adam watched a waitress hugging two of her colleagues and heard a group of customers cheering and clapping in the corner. Like others Adam had seen on the streets, many were carrying bright yellow jackets and had what looked like red scarves draped across their arms. “What are they all celebrating?” he asked.

Gabriel casually dragged one of the menus towards him. “It’s a saint’s day,” he said. “There’s a big fiesta later on.” He leant across to Morag and Duncan, who had already been studying the menus for five minutes. “Made your minds up?”

Rachel lowered the book she had been reading – the one Abeja had given her in Madrid about the churches of Seville. “That’s why we’re here today, isn’t it?”

Gabriel smiled.

“What?” Adam asked.

Rachel went back to her book and read aloud. “It’s the celebration of San Rafael. He was a traveller who came here in around 1500 and worked as some kind of healer, or shaman. Apparently he performed miracles, but the religious authorities didn’t like it, so he was hunted down, then burned alive five hundred years ago, along with anyone who followed him or refused to denounce him.”

“Nice,” Adam said.

“They made him a saint in 1850 because the Pope at the time felt guilty that he had been killed in the name of the church. But there are still some here who celebrate his death like it was a good thing.”

“At least they made him a saint, I guess,” Adam said.

“A bit late for Rafael,” Rachel said, reading on. “He was burned on the site of that church, where we parked the van.” She leant across and showed Adam a picture from the book.

Adam grimaced at the grisly image. “Is that all that was left of him?”

“Yeah, and we’re going to steal it,” Rachel said with sudden certainty. “Aren’t we?”

Gabriel shrugged. “It’s not really stealing if you’re just taking back what belongs to you.”