The Butcher Beyond (28 page)

López frowned. ‘I see,' he said. ‘If that is true, then I clearly have the wrong man.'

‘An' the wrong
knife
,' Woodend said.

‘How can it be the wrong knife?'

‘Because it's
Sant's
knife.'

‘I don't understand. If Sant is not the killer, then the knife cannot belong to him.'

‘But it
does
,' Woodend insisted. ‘He's had it for nearly thirty years, an' though he hasn't been able to throw it since the ambush on the beach, he always carries it around with him as a good luck charm.'

‘Then the real killer stole the knife, and used it for the murder,' López suggested.

‘Wrong again,' Woodend told him. ‘The knife could only have been used in the murder if it had been dropped into the rose garden
at the time
of the murder. After all, it's not likely that the killer would have risked comin' back to the scene of the crime the next day, now is it?'

‘The knife
was
dropped in the rose garden at the time of the murder,' López said.

‘No, it wasn't. It was still in Sant's room the next mornin'. The maid saw it when she was cleanin'. But later, after you'd been to the room yourself, it was gone. An' later still, it appeared in the rose garden. It's like I first thought – it was planted there. An' you're the one who planted it.'

‘What do you want?' López asked.

‘Want?' Woodend repeated innocently.

‘If your only aim had been to get Sant released, you would never have brought up the problem with the knife. But you
did
bring it up – and that can only have been to gain leverage over me. So I ask you again, Señor Woodend, what is it that you want?'

‘Well, what Señor Ruiz here would like is for you to prove, to his satisfaction, that you didn't kill the
Alcalde
yourself,' Woodend said.

‘What!' López exploded.

‘You heard me.'

‘You believe that
I
killed the
Alcalde
?'

No, Woodend thought. No, I don't. I was never really convinced by Paco's argument, an' now I've seen the look on your face I'm sure I'm right – because
nobody's
that good an actor.

‘I did
not
kill Durán,' López continued. ‘I may have arrested the wrong man, but I am still convinced that one of the
brigadistas
is the murderer.'

‘Which one?'

‘Whichever one of them it was who betrayed the others.'

‘What are you talkin' about?' Woodend demanded.

‘You must know the story as well as I do, by now. Two hours before the
brigadistas
arrived, Durán's militia moved the fishermen out of their shacks and began to dig pits for their machine guns in the sand. And why did they do that? Because they knew for a fact that the
brigadistas
were coming. Because somebody had betrayed them.'

‘But the traitor could have been anybody,' Woodend said. ‘One of the fishermen might have sold them out. Or one of the villagers who was providin' them with food. That seems a lot more likely an explanation to me than that one of the
brigadistas
did it.'

‘That is what I would have thought, too, until I found a very interesting document among Durán's personal papers.'

‘A document!' Woodend sneered. ‘How convenient for you that a document should turn up – just at the right moment to implicate one of the
brigadistas
in even more dirty dealin's. An' exactly what is this
document
of yours? A scrap of paper in a handwritin' which
could
be Durán's – if you looked at it in the right light? A scribbled note in which he confesses that he had an English spy workin' for him?'

‘No, nothing like that,' López said, with a confidence which
almost
convinced Woodend that he really did have something of value.

‘I don't suppose we could see this document of yours, could we?' the Chief Inspector asked sceptically.

‘But, of course,' López replied. ‘As long as you promise that in return for my showing it to you, you will abandon this crazy idea of yours that I was the one who planted the knife in the rose garden.'

‘You don't really expect me to buy a pig in a poke like that, do you?' Woodend asked.

‘I don't understand the expression.'

‘You don't really expect me to agree to pay your price before I see if what you have is worth it?'

‘Perhaps not. But once you
have
seen it, I will have lost all bargaining power.'

It seemed as if they had reached an impasse. Woodend chewed the problem over in his mind for a second.

‘If what you've got is real proof that there was a spy in the
brigadistas
' camp, I'll forget all about how the knife found its way into the rose garden,' he said. ‘You have my word on that.'

López nodded.

‘Very well,' he said. He swung his feet off the filing cabinet, reached into the drawer, produced a yellowed piece of stiff paper, and held it across the desk for Woodend to take. ‘Here is all the proof you need.'

Woodend looked at the document. It was a printed form, with some of the spaces on it filled in with typewriting. ‘Tell me what this means,' he said, passing it to Paco Ruiz.

As Ruiz examined the document, the frown on his forehead grew deeper and deeper. ‘It is a bank transfer form,' he said finally.

‘Is it genuine?' Woodend asked.

‘I am not an expert on forgery, but it looks real enough to me.'

Then it probably was, Woodend thought. ‘Go on,' he said.

‘It is dated late 1939. It talks about a lot of other attached documents, because, at the time, it was very difficult to transfer money out of the country without a great many formalities being gone through.'

‘So the money left the country,' Woodend said impatiently. ‘An' where was it sent to?'

‘To London. To a company called Gee-Gee Trading Ltd.'

‘Was it a lot of money?'

‘A very large amount. Almost a fortune.'

And there was no doubt how the money had been raised, was there? Woodend thought. It had come from the sale of what had been in those boxes that Durán had killed upwards of forty men to get his hands on. It was blood money!

He was beginning to see things clearly for the first time. Medwin hadn't been killed by Durán's men at all. He had been killed by the same person who had killed Durán himself. And the key to both those murders lay in a deal which had been struck up early in 1939.

Bits of previous conversations, which he had stored away in his mind, now began to fit together. He was almost sure that he knew who the murderer was. He just needed one more thing to confirm it.

‘I want the photographs,' he told López.

‘Which photographs?'

‘Which photographs do you bloody well think? The ones of the
brigadista
camp! The ones the murderer took!'

R
oberts was sitting alone at the table in the square which Woodend and Ruiz had been using since the investigation began. He did not look surprised when the other two men sat down beside him. In fact, he might almost have been expecting it.

‘Can I help you gentlemen?' he asked.

‘We think so,' Woodend replied. ‘You see, we're looking for what my friend Paco here calls “the butcher beyond”.'

‘Very cryptic,' Roberts said. ‘And what does that mean, exactly?'

‘It means that we're not lookin' for the man who killed your comrades – that was Durán, an' he's dead himself now – but we
are
lookin' for the man who made it possible for the killings to take place, an' he's—'

‘The butcher beyond,' Roberts said. ‘I see. Very clever. But what I still don't understand is why you'd want to talk to me about it.'

‘The first time I interviewed you, you referred to Mitchell as “Ham-'n'-Eggs”,' Woodend said. ‘Back then, I thought it was a slip of the tongue – a very helpful slip of the tongue from our point of view. But it was no such thing, was it?'

Roberts smiled. ‘Wasn't it?'

‘No, an' if I'd known you better then, I'd have realized it immediately. You never raise the stakes at the poker table without havin' at least some idea of how your opponent's goin' to react to it. You never bet on a horse unless you think you know somethin' that's goin' to give you the edge. A man like you doesn't say anythin' – doesn't
do
anythin' – before he's thought out all the consequences first.'

‘I'm flattered you have such a high opinion of me,' Roberts said. ‘But what, pray tell, was the point in revealing Mitchell's nickname to you?'

‘It was the most indirect way you could come up with to let me know that you'd all been mates for a long time. An' there was a bonus in doin' it that way, because, since it involved a cravin' for some pretty ordinary food, you were also tellin' me that you'd been together through some pretty hard times. It was a signpost, if you like, pointin' me towards the fact that you'd all been
brigadistas
.'

‘And why would I have wanted to do that?'

‘Because
brigadistas
are still not welcome in Spain. Once the authorities had found out what you were, you'd have been out of here on the next plane out. That would have meant that nobody would have got the chance to talk to Durán.'

‘What you meant to say was “Nobody would have got the chance to
kill
Durán”.'

‘No, I didn't. You didn't mind whether he lived or died. But if your mates were determined to kill him, you were very concerned that he shouldn't
say
anythin' before he died.'

‘We think that one of the
brigadistas
who isn't here – one who was too ill or too old to come back with you – is a very rich man,' Paco said.

‘Interesting,' Roberts replied. ‘And what led you to that conclusion?'

‘It's the only supposition which fits the facts,' Woodend told him. ‘The traitor was faced with two choices, you see. He could come back to Spain and try to bury the truth. Or he could disappear before the truth came out.'

‘Disappearing would have been the easier option,' Paco Ruiz said.

‘It would indeed,' Woodend agreed. ‘The traitor didn't have to stay in England. There's lots of places in Europe for a feller to hide, if he knows his way around. And if he didn't fancy Europe, he could go the States – or even South America. An' what would be the chances his old comrades could track him down? Virtually nil!'

‘Unless one of his old comrades was rich,' Paco said.

‘A rich man, you see, could hire the best private investigators that money could buy – a whole team of them, if needs be. They'd keep lookin' and lookin', and eventually they
would
find the traitor. An' once they'd done that, of course, he was a dead man.'

‘So burying the truth was not just one option,' Paco said. ‘It was the
only
option.'

‘From what you've said, I take it you think that I was the traitor,' Roberts said.

‘We
know
you were the traitor,' Woodend said. ‘The photographs prove that.'

‘What photographs?'

‘I can pick out everybody else on them,' Woodend said, ignoring Roberts's claim to ignorance. ‘Medwin, Sutcliffe, Mitchell, Dupont, Schneider – they're all there. There's a lot of other lads, too.'

‘And we have a second set of pictures – taken of the dead on the beach,' Paco said. ‘Several of the faces from the first set are missing from this one, because some of the
brigadistas
survived.'

‘But there's only face that's missin' from the
first
set,' Woodend said. ‘An' whose do you think that might be, Mr Roberts?'

‘Mine?'

‘Yours,' Woodend agreed. ‘An' the reason your face is missin' is because you were the one takin' the photographs.'

‘Why would I take photographs?' Roberts asked.

‘Because Durán insisted on it. He should have handed the treasure over to the advancin' Nationalist army, but he had no intention of doin' that. So anybody who knew what was in the boxes had to die. He calculated he'd kill most of them in the ambush, but it was possible that a few of the
brigadistas
might escape. If that did happen, he'd have to hunt them down – an' he'd need photographs for that.'

‘Anybody could have taken the pictures,' Roberts said. ‘It could have been one of the villagers who brought us food.'

‘None of them would have stayed long enough to photograph everybody in the camp,' Woodend said. ‘It had to be an inside job.'

Roberts smiled again. ‘True,' he said. ‘“You've got me bang to rights.” Isn't that the phrase?'

‘This isn't a game!' Woodend said angrily.

‘Of course it is,' Roberts replied. ‘Life is a game. Or if it isn't, I've unwittingly been playing by the wrong set of rules.'

‘So you admit you betrayed your comrades?'

‘Why not? You seem to have put together a pretty good case, and when I know the deck's stacked against me, the only thing to do is fold.'

‘Since you knew all about the ambush, why were you on the beach yourself?' Woodend wondered. ‘Surely it would have been easy enough to slip away in the darkness?'

‘The others might have smelled a rat if I'd suddenly disappeared. Anyway, that would have been cheating.'

‘Cheatin'!'

‘It would have been like slipping a card from the bottom of the pack. If you're a true gambler, there's no pleasure in winning unless you've taken a risk. And what a risk that was! If I died, I'd get nothing. If I survived, I'd be a rich man. It was the ultimate challenge. I've never felt so alive in my life.'