23

THEY HAD ARRIVED half an hour ago. Since then, the morning had strengthened its chill grasp on the valley. But there had been no other change, no breath of wind to blunt the silence, no hint of movement to lessen the isolation. Derek shifted in his seat and gazed around once more, at the sheer slopes on either side and the flat, unbroken body of water between, at the ever bluer gulf of sky above their heads and the narrow winding road down which they had come.

They had left Corunna the previous afternoon and covered the 230 kilometres to Castro Caldelas by early evening. There they had spent the night in a miserable room above the village’s liveliest bar, before setting off again at dawn, following the prescribed route down into the deeply cut gorge of the Sil river, zig-zagging round the terraced vineyards and rocky outcrops until they had reached the reservoir at the foot of the gorge and the concrete bridge across it which was their destination.

Frank had turned the Land Rover round to face uphill. He had not explained why and Derek had not asked him to, for the possibility that they might need to make a speedy departure required no explanation. Derek was glad, in a way, not to be able to see the bridge from where he sat. He would see it soon enough, when Galazarga and his men arrived and he would have to set out across its slender span to meet them. Or to meet one of them. Whichever one it was.

If Charlotte had asked him outright to do this, he would surely have refused. But she had not asked him. She had promised he would because she could do nothing else. And now he was about to keep her promise for the same reason. How strange it seemed, how foolish – and yet how inescapable.

He was on the point of looking at his watch to see how much longer they would have to wait when Frank laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘They’re here,’ he murmured.

And so they were. Two vehicles, one a sleek black limousine, the other a small red van, had appeared on the road and were heading down towards the bridge. No other traffic had passed them in either direction. It had to be them.

Derek watched, transfixed, as the two distant objects moved steadily on, obscured briefly by boulders and bushes, but clearly visible more often than not as their descent continued. Then he did look at his watch. The time was eight fifty-three.

Frank opened his door and climbed out. Derek did the same and joined him at the back of the Land Rover. He could not avoid looking at the bridge now, at its stolid grey legs planted in the water above their own reflections, at the blurred line of the railings which he would shortly follow to its centre.

The two vehicles slowed as they reached a flat stretch of road at the water’s edge, vanished behind one last outcrop, then reappeared, cruising to a halt ten yards or so short of the bridge. It was eight fifty-five exactly.

‘Prompt, aren’t they?’ said Frank.

‘Let’s hope they stick as closely to all the arrangements.’

‘Nervous?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think it’s not too late for you to back out. I’d happily go in your place.’

‘But they specified me. So, it has to be me, doesn’t it? If anyone’s to break the agreement—’

‘Let it be them, eh?’

‘Let it be nobody. That’s all I ask.’

Doors opened and closed on the other side. A figure recognizable as Norberto Galazarga conferred with the driver of the van, who climbed out, walked to the back of his vehicle and pulled the double doors wide open. A girl scrambled out, dressed in jeans and a baggy sweater. Was it Samantha? Derek had met her only once, in vastly different circumstances. He could not say for sure. But he wanted it to be her. Very much.

‘It’s nearly nine,’ said Frank.

‘I’ll move when it’s exactly nine. Not before.’

‘All right. But keep calm. And be careful.’

‘I will be. Very careful.’

Galazarga walked forward to the limousine and leant in for a word with one of the occupants. Then he stepped back to allow his interlocutor to climb out. He was a tall, frail-looking man wrapped in a large overcoat. Derek had just begun to wonder who he might be when Frank said: ‘It’s nine on the dot.’

Derek started walking. He patted his jacket pocket and heard the rustle of the envelope containing Ortiz’s statement. He did not hurry, but still rounded the bend sooner than he had expected and found himself gazing along the length of the bridge, judging with his eye the point at which he would stop. He looked neither to right nor left, ignoring as best he could the watery expanse on either side, the walls of boulder and scrub ahead, the untouchable ceiling of blue above. He measured each pace as he took it, yet with each one the ground seemed to grow less solid, the information feeding his senses less reliable.

Then he saw the other man, entering his field of vision at the opposite end of the bridge. It was the frail figure in the overcoat, his height exaggerated by his emaciated frame. He was silver-haired and stooping, gingerly in his movements and clearly very old. Something about the way he held his right arm established his identity beyond question.

Derek reached the middle, stepped on to the kerb at the side of the road and placed one hand against the railing. The old man came on. His face was hook-nosed and narrow, lined with a mosaic of creases like the dried mud of a drought-stricken river. One corner of his mouth and the corresponding eyelid drooped as if he had suffered a stroke, but his chin jutted stubbornly and his gaze was unwavering. Beneath the overcoat a starched white collar and tightly knotted black tie could be seen. As he walked, the sunlight caught a gold signet-ring on his left hand, standing out even more prominently than his swollen knuckles. His right hand was gloved and rigid, swinging at his side. Derek wondered if Frank had yet realized who he was. He had come a long way to settle a debt with this man. And now he was expected to stand aside and waive the debt, while Derek bargained for the life of a stranger.

‘Mr Fairfax?’ the old man asked as he stopped a few feet away. His voice was faint and reedy, as lightly accented as Galazarga’s, but with none of the insinuating sweetness of tone. His watery eyes roamed across Derek’s face, searching for clues, probing for signs of weakness.

‘Señor Delgado?’

‘Yes.’ He moved on to the kerb and laid his right arm along the railing, his gloved hand coming to rest no more than a few inches from Derek’s fingers. ‘You have brought the document?’

‘Of course.’ He reached slowly into his pocket and withdrew the envelope. ‘It’s all here.’

‘Except the map.’

‘I explained that to Señor Galazarga.’

‘Yes. You explained. And so did Miss Ladram. But tell me again. Why did Miss Abberley destroy the map?’

‘To seal the secret of the gold for ever. To draw its poison.’

Astonishingly, Delgado smiled. ‘What a wise lady she was.’

‘You … You approve?’

‘I admire the reasoning, certainly. I am eighty-eight years old, Mr Fairfax, and materially well provided for. The gold has never meant less to me than now. When I look back at all the things I did to obtain it … When I hear how an English spinster finally cheated me of it … What am I to do but smile?’

‘But … if you don’t care …’

‘Why did I have the girl abducted? That was Norberto’s idea. He wants the gold for the leisured future it will buy him after I am dead. I see my own desire for it burning in him still. He is my son, but he is not my heir. His mother was … a servant. Thus my sin is his disqualification. And thus he sees the gold as the only inheritance he can hope for. Whereas I see it, with the infuriating piety of old age, merely as a curse. And I do not wish to curse him. For his sake, I am glad the gold is lost for ever.’

‘Yet you still want Ortiz’s statement?’

‘Of course. He died taunting me with its existence. He died knowing I would never be able to rest until I had found it and destroyed it. Map or no map, I must have it.’

‘Then take it.’ Derek held the envelope out and was surprised when Delgado grasped it with his right hand, the fingers closing expertly around one end and flicking up the unsealed flap. He lifted the contents out with his left hand and began leafing through them, scanning the pages as he went.

‘Ortiz’s writing. Yes, I recognize it, even after all these years. The bold strokes of a Catalan anarchist. The whiplash serifs of the one victim I have never forgotten.’

‘Victim?’

‘My victim, Mr Fairfax. One of many. Are you surprised I admit it?’

‘I suppose … I expected …’

‘Dissimulation? Denial? What would be the point? Here, on this bridge, seen but not heard, we can say anything we like. You are a stranger to me. We will never meet again. Thus I can confess my sins to you more freely even than to my priest. For I hold the proof now, in Ortiz’s own hand and words. I am safe at last. It is all here, as you promised. All that I hoped to gain from Miss Abberley when I visited her in Rye forty-eight years ago. How well I remember that smug little English seaside town where she outmanoeuvred me over the tea cups and damask napkins, where the methods I had perfected of beating and crushing and squeezing the truth from my victims were useless. When, do you suppose, did she realize she could defeat me?’

‘I don’t think she was trying to defeat you.’

‘Perhaps not. But she did. She and Ortiz and Tristram Abberley between them.’ Reaching the last sheet, he sighed, shuffled them together and slipped them back into the envelope.

‘What will you do with it?’

‘Burn it. Make certain the secret cannot outlive me. Ensure Norberto cannot use it to destroy my granddaughter’s opinion of me. When I learned of his contact with Tristram Abberley’s biographer—’

‘It wasn’t you McKitrick came to see?’

‘No, Mr Fairfax. It was Norberto, seeking the means to make himself rich and me worthless in Yolanda’s eyes. She knows nothing of any of this. She is the bright jewel of the barren years I have lived since her father … was taken from me. Yolanda deplores what I fought for fifty years ago. But she respects me for having fought, for having believed. If she discovered I was a traitor even to fascism, if she learned I was a thief in the midst of war … I would die twice. Once, as I shortly must, at God’s bidding. And once, more agonizingly, in her wide and trusting eyes.’

‘All this,’ said Derek slowly, ‘Samantha’s abduction, her father’s murder—’

‘Of which she is unaware.’

‘Not for much longer. She’ll know soon enough. But what she won’t know is why.’

‘But you will know, Mr Fairfax.’

‘Yes. To protect your reputation.’

‘Does it seem worth it?’

‘Not remotely.’

‘It would not, to you. But you are less than half my age. When you are as old as I am, you will understand that how we are to be remembered is the only thing that really matters.’

‘And how are you to be remembered?’

‘As a relic of bygone values. As a hard but honourable man. Not as a thief or a murderer. Not as a traitor or a torturer. Not now I have this.’ He patted the envelope and smiled faintly. ‘You are thinking I was all those things, are you not? And you are right. But now you will never be able to prove it. Nobody will.’

Suddenly angered by his complacency, Derek said: ‘So much for your reputation. What about your conscience?’

‘I do not have one. I lost it, along with my right hand, in the service of my country. When I sided with the insurrectionists in July 1936, I did so because I thought they would win. Others fought for their beliefs, we all lost. But I only lost a fortune in gold. They lost everything.’ His gaze drifted past Derek, towards the Land Rover and the figure standing beside it. ‘Who is your companion, Mr Fairfax?’

‘He served with Ortiz in the International Brigade.’

‘Ah. I might have guessed.’

‘Ortiz saved his life during the retreat from Teruel by giving himself up. He didn’t know until recently what happened to Ortiz. But now he does.’

Delgado’s mouth set in a stern line. ‘It would have been better for him to go on not knowing. Better by far.’

For a moment, Derek was tempted to ask exactly how Ortiz had died. Delgado knew. He had been responsible. He had given the orders and watched while they were carried out. Perhaps he had even— But no. Derek would not ask. If he did, he might be told. And if he knew, how could he pretend to Frank that he did not? Ignorance was, in the end, their only salvation.

As if reading his thoughts, Delgado said: ‘Tell him this for me, Mr Fairfax. Ortiz died knowing he had lost everything. And yet he knew also he had won. I did not realize it at the time, of course. But, as the years passed, the havoc his secret would wreak in my life, if it were ever known, grew and grew, till it was a stormcloud large and dark enough to blot out all my achievements. That was his victory. He saw it at the end. He knew what it would mean. He understood. And, later, so did I.’

‘Is that supposed to … to excuse what you did?’

‘No. We are not here to offer or grant excuses. We are here to honour a bargain – and to end my conflict with the family of Tristram Abberley. I have what I came for. And you shall have the same.’ He turned and waved stiffly with his right hand.

As Derek watched, Galazarga led Samantha clear of the two vehicles, holding her by the elbow. When they reached a bollard at the end of the bridge, he released her and she started forward hesitantly, then began to hurry, walking clumsily, as if short of practice. She looked haggard and distraught, her hair matted and dirty, her clothes creased and worn. Her eyes were wide and staring, her cheeks hollow, her lips parted in exhaustion and disbelief.

‘You need fear no tricks or surprises, Mr Fairfax. Norberto would not dare to disobey me to my face. Take the girl back to her mother. It is time, I think, for us all to go home.’

‘Sam?’ said Derek, stepping into her path for fear she would otherwise walk straight past.

She pulled up. ‘Yes. I’m Sam. Who … Who are you?’

‘A friend of Charlotte’s.’

She frowned. ‘Don’t I … Aren’t you …’

‘We met once. But that doesn’t matter. Just carry on to the Land Rover. Another friend is waiting for you there. I’ll follow.’

‘All right.’

As she walked on, Derek glanced round at Delgado. But he had already turned and started back towards the other side of the bridge, where Galazarga stood waiting for him, his face icily expressionless. Soon, Derek would be alone on this narrow way across the water, this transitory meeting-point of half a dozen destinies. Delgado’s secret was safe. But so was the gold. Nobody had won. Unless it was Beatrix. Only she had consistently wanted an end to the greeds and grudges of fifty years ago. And now she had had her way. It really was, as Delgado had said, time to go home. Eagerly, Derek swung on his heel and began to retrace his steps.