The Exile (30 page)

And even if Ochoa wasn't captivated by her appearance, there was something else that made it likely he would open up to her: he wanted his money. Her story was credible enough: administrative errors made it necessary to verify a few details before the payments could resume. Particularly details about his past. And then, some light conversation about his time in the
guardia
. All of it captured by the small digital recorder in her bag.

‘
Hijo de puta
.' Galíndez slapped a hand to her forehead as a truck pulled out in front of her, forcing her to brake sharply. Her hand wavered over the horn, about to blast him until she saw the parking space he'd vacated. She parked quickly and checked the recorder was working before setting off for her appointment with Señor Ochoa.

Ochoa's building was located on an anonymous steep hill lined with shops, their metal shutters pulled down and locked, the walls covered in graffiti. Plastic sacks of garbage awaited collection in doorways. A few of the sacks had split open, spilling their contents onto the cobbles, and a ripe smell hung in the warm air.

As she passed a gift shop, Galíndez paused to read a sign offering palm readings without an appointment. Tempting though it was, the shop was shuttered and had been for some time from the look of it. A sign on the door:
Closed Due to Unforeseen Circumstances.
The effects of the recession struck everywhere.

The building was halfway up the narrow hill, skulking beneath a patina of grime. Dirty windows, shutters askew, curls of paint peeling from the front door. Galíndez scanned the list of residents' names next to the doorbells.
Machado-Garcia... Barzon... Robles... Ochoa
. Flat three, fourth floor. It was a couple of minutes before ten. Perhaps Ochoa would be impressed by her punctuality. She pressed the bell and waited. There was no response from the speaker by the door and she rang again. And then again, this time with short angry stabs of her finger.

‘Forgotten your key? I'll let you in.'

A young man was standing behind her, holding out his key. Galíndez thanked him and stepped back to let him open the door, following him into a dingy entrance hall that smelled of wet plaster. She paused by the row of mailboxes on the wall and waited as the young man went into one of the ground-floor apartments before she made a move.

There was no lift, she realised. That was a pain – literally. Ochoa's flat was four floors up: four flights of narrow stairs in these tight boots with their precarious heels. And when she got there, he might not even be in. The only way to find out was to go and knock on his door. Loudly. She walked to the stairs, wincing at the sharp tap of her heels on the tiles.

As Galíndez reached the next flight of stairs, she waited, hearing the footsteps of someone coming down. A figure emerged from the shadows, an elderly man in a fedora and a well-cut dark suit. He had been handsome once, she imagined, and though his face was creased by the years, his eyes were still sharp and alert. As he reached the bottom stair he saw her and with a charming smile swept off his hat, exposing his bald head as he held an arm towards the stairs and waited with old-fashioned courtesy for her to pass.

‘Muchísimas gracias
.' Galíndez stepped past him onto the stairs, trying hard to keep her balance. ‘You wouldn't be Señor Ochoa by any chance?'

‘I'm afraid not
,
I've been visiting my sister. I don't know anyone else in the building.'

‘Thanks anyway.'

‘
De nada. Adiós.
'

The fourth floor was depressingly familiar, the windows just as unwashed as those on the landings below. Three
pisos
on this floor. One on either side of the stairs, a third tucked down a small corridor. She saw the number on his door as she approached, grateful for the threadbare length of carpet that muffled the sound of her heels.

Ochoa's door was half-open and she paused, listening for the sound of someone inside, hearing only the faint drone of traffic from the street. She put her head round the door. ‘Señor Ochoa?' No one answered and she called his name again. When there was no reply, she went in.

From the look of it, the flat hadn't changed its decor in sixty years. The hall had a sour odour of fried food and neglect. The first door she came to was open and she saw an ancient bathroom with a stained toilet and tiny bath. Further along the hall was a bedroom, the curtains tightly drawn, throwing the room into sepia half-light. Ochoa certainly wasn't house-proud. The bed was unmade, the sheets and blankets pulled back carelessly. He must have been searching for clean underwear, since his socks and pants were strewn haphazardly over the grimy carpet. Very haphazardly, she thought, suspicious now. This chaos wasn't an old man's untidiness. Someone had been searching the place.

Cautiously, Galíndez went down the hall into the shabby living room. Ochoa only had a few pieces of dilapidated furniture. A TV set on a fragile-looking stand at one end of the room, a tattered sofa by the window overlooking the street and an old armchair near the door to the kitchen. And sitting in the armchair was Señor Ochoa.

Or rather the late Señor Ochoa, his head tilted back, his mouth open in the rictus of sudden death, his dentures hanging from his mouth. Identifying the cause of death didn't need her expertise. She saw the loop of wire tight around his neck, the trickle of blood where it cut into his skin.

Galíndez noticed a smell of urine as she bent over to touch his hand. He was still warm. She swore, loudly. Someone had garrotted a man who probably worked with Guzmán on the morning of her visit. She doubted it was a coincidence. No one knew she was coming here and it seemed unlikely Ochoa had told anyone, since he thought she was his new handler coming to reinstate his special payments from the
guardia
.

Galíndez paused to take stock, knowing she should dial 062 and call the killing in. If she didn't make the call, she'd be breaking God knows how many sections of the Code of Conduct. But then, if she did call, they'd want to know what she was doing here posing as Teniente Galíndez. That would also prevent her searching the flat again, a course of action that was rather appealing now she couldn't question Ochoa. No, it was unthinkable not to notify the
guardia
. This was a clear-cut case of murder, for God's sake. She knew what she had to do.

Her mind made up, she went down the hall and used her elbow to close the front door. Back in the living room, she checked under the carpets and behind the sofa. When she found nothing, she rifled through Ochoa's pockets. Nothing there either: just a dirty handkerchief and a few coins. Somewhere in the building a door slammed, interrupting her fevered speculation about the motive behind Ochoa's killing. The wire round his neck was Guzmán's signature method. That suggested Ochoa's death could be linked to his time at Calle Robles, though she had no definite evidence to show Ochoa worked with the
comandante
. That was why she was here. Perhaps it was also why the killer had paid him a call. Her skin prickled as another thought occurred: what if the killer was Guzmán himself? What if he knew she was coming here and didn't want his ex colleague talking to her?

She looked round, desperately seeking some niche or alcove where Ochoa might have hidden something that would throw light on his relationship with Guzmán. After twenty minutes she groaned with frustration. She'd searched every room now and found nothing.

Every room but one, that was, Galíndez thought as she went into the kitchen. Rows of shelves teeming with ancient packets and boxes, jars of condiments that looked as if they dated back to the Civil War. It would be easy to hide something in one of those. There were an awful lot of them for a single man and she doubted Ochoa was much of a cook.

Twenty-five minutes later, the kitchen was in a state of Galíndez-induced chaos. Every jar of flour, coffee and all the other containers Ochoa had amassed over the years had been opened, their contents emptied over the shelves or into the sink. And she'd found nothing. Staying here any longer was just pushing her luck. She frowned at the noise of her footsteps on the stone tiles.
These fucking heels.

She paused, suddenly aware of a change in sound as she neared the door. She went back into the kitchen and took a few steps, hearing the brittle timbre of the heels modulate as she stepped on the tile nearest the door. The other tiles produced a more muted sound. She tapped the suspect tile with her heel again, harder. The noise was deeper, more resonant. Hollow
.

Ochoa's carving knife slipped into the thin gap between the edge of the tile and its neighbour. With a little encouragement, the tile lifted cleanly from its resting place. Galíndez prepared herself for the disappointment of seeing wooden joists below as she lifted the tile, a few pale strands of cobweb trailing from the underside. But something gleamed in the dark recess below and she reached down to lift out a small metal box, the kind used for camera accessories. Inside was a cardboard folder, contents bulging. She opened the folder and saw an unlabelled reel of 8mm film. So Ochoa made movies? She put the reel to one side. That would have to wait until she found a suitable projector. Underneath the folder was a sealed envelope and beneath that a few black and white photographs held together by a paper clip. She examined the envelope, seeing the short message written on the front:

In the event of my death, this is for the attention of Señora Remedios Ochoa.

Segismundo Ochoa, 23 Abril, 1982

Ochoa's will, she guessed, wondering if Señora Ochoa was still alive. In any case, it wouldn't hurt to take a look. She slipped her finger under the flap of the envelope and opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper bearing one sentence.

I never stopped looking for you.

Galíndez folded the paper and shoved it into her pocket, allowing herself a cynical smile. True love would have to wait, there were other things she needed to attend to. She reached for the wad of photographs and slipped off the paper clip keeping them together.

The first picture was strange. Almost entirely black but for a distorted grey rectangle. She peered at it, starting to recognise the unusual angle from which it had been taken, realising the cameraman was standing on a flight of stone steps leading down into what appeared to be a dungeon. As she looked closer, she realised it wasn't a dungeon at all.

It was a cellar. The cellar she had visited only a few days ago in Legutio. She felt a chill as she realised the difference between what she'd seen that day and this picture. What she'd seen a week ago had been the aftermath. Three long-dead people with no hope of identifying their remains. This photograph showed them alive.

Four chairs in a row, a metre or so between each. There were people tied to the chairs, the detail of their faces lost in deep shadow. Despite the warmth of the day, Galíndez's hands were cold as she turned the photograph and saw Ochoa's inscription:
Morning of March 10th 1937, Villarreal.
Steady, careful handwriting. Unlike the word scrawled underneath:
Before.
The ink used to write the word was different from that used for the caption. Ochoa must have added this annotation at another time.

The next photograph lay face down. She looked at Ochoa's writing on the back. Now, his annotation read Evening of March 11th 1937. Once again, a word scrawled below: After. After what? she wondered, though only for the moment it took to turn the photograph over.

The camera flash spilled bleached light over a scene of carnage. Taken from a similar angle to the other, perhaps even on the same step. The four dark shapes were transformed into a tableau of savage horror. On the far left, a metal chair lay on its back, empty. Just as she would find it seventy-three years later. The occupant of the chair to its right was slumped forward, still bound in position, his long hair spilling forward over his face. Something gleamed on the chest and thighs, reflecting the flash of the camera. Something shiny. A similar gleam around the feet as well. Blood. Lots of it. Blood that one day would reveal itself, glinting with the blue light of her luminol spray.

Looking at the next prisoner, Galíndez saw a similar configuration: the slumped body, the gleaming blood-shadow. This one must have been bound tightly: the body was still upright, though it had no head, just a ragged stump of neck. And now, the final victim, half buried in rubble. Something strange about the head, it seemed too small for an adult. Then she remembered: the top of the skull had been sliced off. A skull that was now in a plastic bag in her cupboard at the lab.
What the fuck happened?
If she'd come here a day earlier, she might have asked Ochoa that question, might even have found out why Guzmán had carried out these killings.
Mierda
, Ochoa might have been able to identify these people.

This wasn't the time to sit round asking questions with a corpse just across the room from her, his dentures dangling from his mouth. It was best to get out while her luck held. And then, as she closed the box lid, she froze as she heard someone turn the handle of the front door.

Carrying the metal case under her arm, Galíndez crept towards the hall. She was four floors up with no way out other than the stairs. She cursed herself for trying to be too clever, dressing up to get Ochoa talking but neglecting other details like staying alive.

Something pushed against the front door, straining it against the hinges. Whoever it was had put their shoulder to the door, trying to see if it would open quietly. The door shook but held firm. They'd have to smash it open if they wanted to get in and that would carry a risk of alerting the neighbours. Another thought: what if it was the good guys, the
policía
or
guardia
? No matter who it was, she was in trouble. And then a faint rustle as a piece of paper slid under the door. Footsteps fading as the person went back downstairs. Galíndez went to the door and retrieved the paper. A handwritten note.