The Marks of Cain

He didn’t know whether to mention it.

Sanderson was off his haunches and saying, briskly: ‘You’ll need to get her to Pathology in Lerwick, right?’

‘Aye, we’re flying her out this afternoon. Kept her too long. But we thought you might want to see the scene first, Detective. Seeing as it is so…unusual.’

‘Lifted anything?’

‘Noo. No signs of forced entry – but that means nothing on Foula, people don’t lock their doors. No prints. Just…nothing.’

He shrugged; Sanderson nodded, distractedly.

‘Yes. Yes, thank you.’

Tomasky mused, aloud. ‘O moj boze. Holy Mother. The face.’

Sanderson came back: ‘Quite something.’

Simon was puzzled, as well as horrified. He was still thinking about her feet. The weirdness of it all. He turned.

‘So the big question is…what links this woman to Françoise Gahets?’

Sanderson was gazing about the room. ‘Yup. We’re on it,’ he said, pensively. ‘She was from Gascony. Isn’t that right, Hamish?’

‘Aye. French Basque Country near Biarritz. Came here with her mother when she was very young, sixty or seventy years ago.’

A sober pause enveloped them; the moan of the ceaseless Foula wind outside was the only noise, carrying the faint bleats of sheep.

‘Enough?’ said Hamish.

‘Enough for now,’ Sanderson answered. ‘We’ll want to speak to her friend, of course.’

‘Edith Tait.’

‘Maybe tomorrow?’

The Shetland inspector nodded, and turned to Jimmy Nicolson.

The good cheer of the pilot had quite departed. ‘She was such a grand old gal. Came here after the war they say. Now look at her.’

He put a shielding hand to his eyes, and walked out of the room.

Leask sighed. ‘Foula is a tiny wee place. This has hit them hard. Let’s go for a walk.’

He led them outside into the cold bright air. Jimmy Nicolson was sitting in his car, passionately smoking a cigarette. Tomasky wandered over to join him, but Hamish Leask was already hiking in the opposite direction: up the nearest hill. He turned and called over his burly shoulder.

‘Let’s climb the Sneug! I feel a need to clear my lungs.’

Simon and Sanderson glanced at each other, then turned and pursued the Shetland officer.

The incline was austere, it was too exhausting to talk as they made their ascent. The journalist found his blood thumping painfully in his chest as, at last, they crested the top of the mighty hill.

The wind at the top was fierce. They were on the edge of a sudden cliff. He edged closer to the drop to have a look.

‘Bloody hell!’

Seagulls were wheeling at the bottom of the cliffs, but they were minuscule flakes of whiteness.

‘Good God. How high is that?’

‘One of the biggest sea-cliffs in Europe, maybe in the world,’ said Leask. ‘More than half a mile down.’

Simon stepped back.

‘Very advisable,’ said Leask. ‘The wind can whip you off these clifftops – and just flip you over the edge.’ Hamish chuckled, soberly, and added, ‘And yet you know what…what is truly amazing?’

‘What?’

‘These cliffs kept the Foulans going for centuries.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Look. See here –’ The Shetland officer was pointing at some distant atoms of birdlife, halfway down the enormous rockwall. ‘Puffin yonder, they nest on the cliffside. In the old days, when food ran low after a long winter, the local men would climb down the cliffs and steal the eggs and the chicks. It was a vital source of protein in the bad times. Baby puffin is very tasty – lots of fat, ye see.’

‘They’d climb down these cliffs?’

‘Aye. They actually developed a strange deformity. Like a kind of human subspecies.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The men of Foula. And Saint Kilda too.’ Hamish shrugged, his rust-red hair riffling in the wind. ‘Over the centuries they developed very big toes, because they used them for climbing the cliffs. I suppose that was evolution. The men who climbed best happened to be the ones with big toes, so they got wives and had well-fed children, and passed on their big toes.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Quite serious.’ Hamish smiled serenely.

But Simon was not feeling serene; the talk of the weird toes of the Foulans had brusquely reminded him. What he saw. The old woman’s bare feet. He had to mention it.

‘Guys. Can we, ah, get out of this wind?’

‘Of course.’

The two policemen, and the journalist, walked down to a hollow, then lay back on the dewy turf. Simon said: ‘You mentioned toes, Mister Leask.’

‘Aye.’

‘Well. It’s funny but…Julie Charpentier’s toes…Did either of you notice?’

Leask looked blank. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘You didn’t see anything unusual about the victim? Her feet?’

‘What?’

Simon wondered if he was making an idiot of himself.

‘The toes of her right foot were deformed. Slightly.’

Sanderson was frowning.

‘Go on, Simon.’

‘I think the word is syndactyly. My wife is a doctor.’

‘And syn…’

‘Yes. Syndactyly. Webbed toes. Two of the old woman’s toes were conjoined, at least partially. It’s rather rare, but not unknown…’

Sanderson shrugged. ‘So?’

Simon knew it was a big guess. But he felt sure he was onto something.

‘Do you remember the woman in Primrose Hill? What she was wearing?’

The change in Sanderson’s expression was sudden.

‘You mean the gloves. The fucking gloves!’

Before Simon could say anything else, Sanderson was on his feet and speaking on his mobile; the DCI took his phone a few yards down the sunlit slope, talking animatedly all the while. The wind was too boisterous for Simon to hear the conversation.

He sat in the cool yet dazzling sun, thinking of the woman’s pain, her lonely screaming pain. Hamish Leask had his eyes shut.

A few minutes later, Sanderson returned, his normally ruddy face whiter; quite pale with surprise.

‘I just called Pathology in London.’ He turned towards Simon. ‘You were right. The gloves were concealing a deformity; Pathology had already noted it.’ He looked away again, staring at the distant ocean. ‘He said it was digital syndactyly. The Primrose Hill victim had two…webbed fingers.’

The sea birds were calling from the cliffs below.

8

They took the Bidasoa Road through the misty green valley, chasing the tumbling river downhill, and then shaving a sudden right, up into the hills, into another Basque Navarrese village, past the obligatory stone fountain and the deserted grey fronton. David could sense the small tightness of anxiety: what did José Garovillo know? What was he going to say?

The village was called Etxalar.

David said the word Etxalar out loud, practising the pronunciation; Amy smiled, very gently.

‘No. Don’t say the x like an x, you say tchuhhhh.’

‘Etch…alarrrr?’

‘Much better.’

They were stalled behind a cattle truck. Amy seemed distracted. She asked him, apropos of nothing, about his past life, London, America, his job. He sketched a few details.

Then she asked him about his lovelife.

He paused – but then he confessed he was single. Amy asked why.

The cow in the truck stared at them, reproachfully. David answered:

‘I guess I push people away, before they get too close. Perhaps because I lost my parents. Don’t trust people to hang around.’

Another silence. He asked, ‘And you? Are you attached?’

A silence. The cattle truck moved on, and they followed, accelerating past small orchards of pear trees. At last Amy said, ‘David, there’s something I should tell you. I’ve been lying. At least…’

‘What?’

‘I’ve not been giving you all the information.’

‘About what?’

The green-blue of the mountains framed her profile. Her conflicted thoughts were written on her face. David offered:

‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.’

‘No,’ she answered, ‘you deserve an explanation. And we are going to meet José, Miguel’s father.’

Amy turned and regarded David; there was a tension and yet an audacity in her expression.

‘We were lovers. Miguel was my boyfriend. Years ago.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I was twenty-three. I’d just arrived in the Basque Country. I was alone. Young and stupid. I never mentioned it…Because I guess I am…ashamed.’

David turned the wheel as they drove around a corner; the trees and hedges shivered in the slipstream as they passed. He had to ask: ‘You knew he was ETA. And yet you…?’

‘Slept with him?’ She sighed. ‘Yes, I know. Muy stupido. But I was young like I say and…young girls go for bastards, don’t they? The bad boy. That Heathcliff shit, the older man bollocks. Even the glamorous violence.’ She shook her head. ‘I guess it had some juvenile allure. And he was mysterious. And he’s smart and good looking and a famous guy, famously strong and active.’ She forced a weak smile. ‘He looks a bit like you, actually. Except older and a little thinner.’

‘Except I don’t mutilate, torture and kill people and…I don’t hit women in bars.’

‘Of course. Of course. I realized this myself after about two months, that he was just a nasty piece of work. And…’ She shrugged, awkwardly, then confessed. ‘And there was something sick about him, as well. He was kinky. In bed. I dumped him after two months.’

David didn’t know what to say; her honesty was disarming.

He tried another question as they sped past a farmhouse.

‘Do you still have contact?’

‘No. Not if I can help it. But sometimes it’s inevitable. Miguel introduced me to his dad, to José, who is still a good friend – he helped me get my job. And I really love my job…The same way I love these mountains.’ She sighed. ‘But Miguel is always bloody there, lurking, he’s pursued me ever since…You know what you did in that bar, that was very brave.’

‘Did he hit you when you were together?’

‘Yes. That’s when it happened. He hit me once and that’s when I dumped him. Bastard.’

He thought of the scar on her forehead. It didn’t quite match a scene of domestic abuse. But he didn’t want to pry further. The farms were turning into forests, they were slowly ascending the mountains.

‘Amy. Thanks for telling me.’ He looked at her. ‘You didn’t have to tell me any of this. In fact, you don’t have to do any of this.’

‘I’m in it now.’

‘Kinda.’

‘Not kind of,’ she said. ‘Definitely. And besides, I feel a…rapport. With your situation.’

‘How come?’

‘Because of my own family.’ Light, spiteful rain spattered the windscreen. ‘My father died when I was ten, my mother started drinking soon after. My brother and I practically had to look after ourselves. Then my brother emigrated to Australia. And yet my drunken mum and my distant brother – that’s all I have left, because the rest of my family died in the Holocaust – all those ancestors, the cousinage. They all died. So I guess I feel…a bit of an orphan.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Not unlike you.’

Amy’s yellow hair was kicking in the cool rainy breeze through the car window. Her monologue seemed to have calmed her; she seemed less alarmed.

‘Take the right here. Past the chapel.’

He turned the wheel obediently.

‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘I sometimes wonder if my Jewishness explains my attachment to the Basques, because they have such a sense of who they are, and where they belong. They’ve been here for so long. One people, living in one place. Whereas the Jews have wandered, we just keep wandering.’ She rubbed her face, as if trying to wake herself up. ‘Anyway. We are nearly there.’

David changed a gear as he took a final corner. He thought of Miguel Garovillo, the lean, menacing features, the dark and violent eyes. Amy had assured him Miguel was not going to show up at his father’s house. José had guaranteed he would not be around.

But the way Miguel had come for Amy in the bar was just too hard to forget. Wild and violent jealousy. Something more than jealousy. A kind of lustful hatred.

Amy gestured. ‘Slow down – it’s the little road here.’

It was a shaded and very rutted track, that seemed to lead directly into the misty mountain forests. Carefully David nudged the car through the muddy narrows; just as the wheels began to slither they turned into a clearing and Amy said: ‘There.’

The house was tiny, pretty, brightly whitewashed, and trimmed with green wooden shutters. The rain had stopped and spears of sunlight lanced the evanescing fog. And standing in front of the house, proudly waving a beret, was the sprightliest old man David had ever seen. He had very long earlobes.

‘Epa!’ said José Garovillo, looking at David very closely as he climbed out of the car. ‘Zer moduz? Pozten naiz zu ezagutzeaz?’

‘Uh…’

‘Hah. Don’t worry, my friend David…Martinez!’ The old man chuckled. ‘Come in, come in, I am not going to make you speak Basque. I speak your language perfectly. I love the English language, I love your swearwords. Fuckmuppet! So much better than Finnish.’

He smiled and turned to Amy. And then his smiling face clouded for a moment as he regarded the fading bruise on her face.

‘Aii. Amy. Aiii. I am so so so sorry. Lo siento. I hear what happened in the Bilbo.’ The man shuddered with remorse. ‘What can I do? My son…my terrible son. He frightens me. But, Amy, tell me what to do and I will do it.’

Amy leaned close and reassured him with a hug.

‘I’m fine. David helped me. Really, José.’

‘But Amy. El violencia? It is so terrible!’

‘José!’ Amy’s response was sharp. ‘Please. I am completely OK.’

The elderly smile returned.

‘Then…we must go and eat! Always we must eat. When there is trouble the Basques must eat. Come inside, Davido. We have a feast to satisfy the jentilaks of the forest.’

There was no time to ask any further questions; as soon as they sat down they were presented with food and drink, endless food and drink.

Fermina, José’s much younger wife, turned out to be a fervent cook; with dark eyes and bangled arms she served them traditional Basque food from her miniature kitchen, all of it rapturously introduced and explained by José. They had fiery nibbles of Espelette chillies skewered with tripotx – lamb’s blood sausage from Biraitou; they had a Gerezi beltza arno gorriakin – a cherry soup the colour of claret served with a white blob of crème fraiche; then the ‘cheeks of the hake’ decorated with olives; this was followed by unctuous kanougas – chocolate toffee – and soft turron nougat from Vizcaya, and Irauty sheep’s cheese next to a daub of cherry jam, and all of it sluiced down with foaming jugs of various Basque ciders: red and green and yellow and very alcoholic.

Between the courses of this enormous meal, José talked and talked, he explained the origins of the beret amongst the shepherds of Bearn, he declaimed on the splendours of the ram-fighting of Azpeita, he showed David a cherished ormolu crucifix once blessed by Pope Pius the Tenth, he spoke mysteriously of the cromlechs in the forests of Roncesvalles built by the legendary giants and the mythical Moors, the jentilaks and the mairuaks.

It was exhausting – but also engaging, even hypnotic. By the end David felt obese, drunk, and something of an amateur linguist. He had almost forgotten the fierce grip of anxiety, and the reason why he was here. But he hadn’t wholly forgotten. He could never wholly forget. El violencia, el violencia.

It was hard to forget that.

David looked at Amy. She was gazing out of the window. He looked back.

José was sipping a sherry; Fermina was busy in the kitchen, making coffee it seemed. It was the right moment. David filled the silence, and asked José if he’d like to hear the story, the reason for David’s mission to Spain. José sat back.

‘Of course! But as I said in my texting message, I think I know the answer already. I know why you are here!’

David stared at the old man.

‘So?’

He paused dramatically. ‘I knew your grandfather. As soon as Amy told me the name, Martinez, I knew.’

‘How? When?’

‘Long time ago – so many years!’ The old man’s smile was persistent. ‘We were childhood friends in…in Donostia, before the war. Then our families fled to France in 1936. To Bayonne. Where they have the Jewish chocolate. The best chocolate in the world!’

David leaned close, asking the most obvious question.

‘Was my grandfather a Basque?’

José laughed with a scornful expression – as if this was a surreally stupid query.

‘But of course! Yes. He did not tell you? How very typical. He was a man of…some enigmas. But yes he was a Basque! And so was his young wife, naturally!’ José glanced pertly at Amy, and then back at David. ‘There now, David Martinez. You are Basque, in part at least: a man of Euskadi! You can play the txistu on San Fermin day! And now, have I answered all your questions? Is the mystery solved?’

David sat quietly for a few seconds, absorbing the information. Was this all there was to it? Granddad was a Basque, but never admitted it?

Then David remembered the map, and the churches. And the inheritance. How did that fit in?

‘Actually no, José. There is more.’

‘More?’

Amy interrupted: ‘José…The stuff in the papers. The bequest…The map. You didn’t see it?’

‘I never read the newspapers!’ José said, his smile slightly fading. ‘But what is this other mystery? Tell me! What else must you know?’

David gazed Amy’s way, with a questioning expression: she shrugged, as if to say, go on, why not, we’re here now.

So David began. He told the story of his grandfather, and the churches, and the bequest. As he did, he reached in his pocket and pulled out the map, marked with blue stars.

The atmosphere in the cottage was transformed.

Fermina was standing by the kitchen door, wrapped in a consternated silence. The old man was frowning as he stared at the map. Frowning very profoundly: almost tragically. He looked almost…bereaved.

Shocked by the effect of his story, David dropped the map on the table. It was as if the light in the room had dimmed; the only brightness came from the soft white pages of the map itself.

José leaned over and took the map in his hands. For a few minutes, he caressed the worn paper. Opening it, he examined the blue asterisks, muttering and mumbling. No one moved.

Then he looked up at David.

‘Forget about this. Please, I beg you. Forget about this. You don’t want to know any more about the churches. Keep your money. Get rid of this map. Go back to London. Por favor.’

David opened his mouth. No words emerged.

‘Take it away,’ said José, handing the map back. ‘Get it out of my house. I know it is not your fault. But…get it out of my house. Never mention these matters again. Ever. That…that map…the churches…this is the key to hell. I beg you both to stop.’

David didn’t know what to do; José’s wife was wiping her hands on a cloth, still at the door to the kitchen. Wiping her hands over and over, full of nerves.

The tension was heightened by a noise. José Garovillo looked up; the scrunch of the gravel outside the house was distinctive.

A red car was pulling up.

Amy had a hand to her mouth.

‘Oh no…’

José was gasping.

‘But no! I told him not to come. I am sorry, I told him you were coming but I asked him to stay away. Barkatu. Barkatu. Fermina!’

The very tall man climbing out of the car was unmistakable: Miguel Garovillo. A second later he was pushing the farmhouse door and was inside the house, tall and wild and glaring – at Amy and David. And gazing at the map in David’s hand. A little twitch in his eye was quite noticeable, likewise a slender scar above his lip.

‘Papa!’ said Miguel, his voice rich with contempt.

The son had his hand raised; for a ghastly moment it looked like he was actually going to clout José, to beat his own father. José flinched. Fermina cried out. Miguel’s black eyes flashed around the room; David saw the dark shape of a holster, under the terrorist’s leather jacket.

Fermina Garovillo was pushing her son away, but Miguel was shouting at his father, and at Amy and David, shouting in Basque, his words unintelligible – the only thing that was obvious was the ferocious anger. José shouted a few words in return – but weakly, unconvincingly.

And then Miguel shouted in English. At David. His deep angry voice vibrated in the air.

‘Get the ffffffuck out of here. You want the whore? Then take her. You take all this shit out of here. Go now.’

David backed away. ‘We’re going…We’re going…’

‘First time I hit you. Next time I shoot you.’

Amy and David turned and ran into the yard and jumped in the car.

But Miguel followed them outside the house. He had taken out his gun, he was holding a black pistol in the air. Holding it – as if to show them. David got the strange jarring sense of something inhuman about him: a giant. A violent jentilak of the forest displaying his strength and anger. The gun was so very black. Glinting in the watery sunlight.

David urgently reversed. He spiralled the wheel – and at last they turned, revving in the mud, and then they rocked down the track, skidding out onto the road.

For half an hour David drove fast and hard, into the green grey foothills, just driving to get away.

When the panic and shock had subsided, David felt a rising anger, and a need to stop and think.

He pulled over. They were halted at the edge of a village, with a timberyard on their left. The distant Pyrenees seemed a lot less pretty now; the pinetops of the forest were laced with an insistent and smothering mist. A church, surrounded by circular gravestones, sat on a hill above them.

Everything was damp, everything around them was faintly, ripely, perceptibly rotting away in the damp.

David cursed.

‘What. The. Fuck.’

Amy tilted her face, apologetically.

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘What?’

‘Sorry…’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘But…’ She shook her head. ‘But it is. Maybe you should go home, David. Miguel is my problem.’

‘No. No way. This is my problem too.’

‘But I told you what he is like. Murderously jealous. He…really will…do something. He might even…’

‘Kill me?’

She winced.

David felt the surge of a rebel spirit.

‘Fuck him. I want to know the answers.’ He started the car and negotiated the road slowly for a few minutes. ‘I want to know it all. My grandfather wouldn’t have sent me here – sent me into all this – unless he had a reason. I want to know why.’

‘The map.’

‘Exactly. The map. You heard what José said, saw how he reacted – there is something – something –’

He was searching for a way to describe the complexity of puzzles; his next words were interrupted.

‘Don’t stop.’

‘What?’

‘Drive on.’

‘What?’

David felt the cold possibility constrict around his heart.

Amy confirmed.

‘Miguel. In the car. Right behind.

9

Her eyes were locked on the mirror. David copied her gaze.

‘Jesus.’ He squinted. ‘Are you sure? Is it the same one?’

‘Numberplate. It’s him.’

The road ahead was narrow, the fog was thickening as they climbed the mountainside.

‘But…’ David gripped the steering wheel tightly. ‘Was he there all along? Following?’

‘Who knows. Maybe he followed us. Or…’