One

Dear Joe

This is the gist of the first day. It has proved to be a far more difficult task than I anticipated. I have to use a mixture of notes and recordings. I have bought a new mp3 recorder so I can load the audio files onto my laptop and then navigate through the material using the slider controls. Without that the task would be impossible. Obviously most of the proceedings are conducted in Spanish - otherwise you wouldn’t need me to translate! - but of course a number of the people called have been interviewed in English. Others will be handled the same way in the coming days. If at any point there is any confusion caused by language, I will try to indicate how and why this happened. I may be exceeding my brief, but I think this might eventually lead to some interesting material and avoid confusion.

It’s a strange experience, quite unlike anything else I have covered. It’s not a trial, because no-one knows if a crime has been committed. Well, of course, a crime has been committed. We all know that. But at the moment there is nothing that actually links any of these people to those other events of a month ago. The hearing is not dealing with that case, in fact it specifically cannot deal with anything linked to it because its own hearing is pending. At the same time, it is assumed that something will turn up that links these people with those events. It really is the strangest case I have ever worked on, because hearings on the murder cannot even start until all avenues that might link it with these people have been explored. There is another session of the inquest into the shooting planned for next week, but all that can happen is another adjournment. That one will remain a dead story until we learn more from these sessions. The murder case will have to remain ‘pending’ until this one is examined. It’s not every day that a town mayor and his wife are killed with absolutely no evidence or suspect, so they seem to be making up procedures as they go along.

So this is not a trial. The authorities have to establish whether there is anything to link any of these people with the shooting. If there is, they will be called as witnesses at the trial but, of course, they will have to find them first! They expect things to last several days, so what you might want to do is include a short piece in this week’s paper giving the basic background and then summarise what I provide over the next few days to create an in-depth report for next week. Just a thought.

Proceedings got under way on time at ten o’clock this morning. Judge Guillermo Pérez Molino is presiding. He is also the one who is in charge of the other case. It was a clear indication from the start that the authorities are convinced that the two scenarios are linked. He is one of three presiding judges for this hearing, however. It is not clear why there are three. Neither is it clear what the brief of this hearing might be. Everyone seems to know something, but no-one knows the full story. It’s all very exploratory and no-one seems to know what to expect.

The other two members of the bench are Don Alonso García López and Doña María del Mar. Señor García is not a local man. For some reason he has been brought in from the regional offices. The rumours are that he is a political appointee, drafted into the inquiry to keep an eye out, to fend off anything that might point in the direction of anyone with real power. There’s much potential embarrassment in some of the material to be discussed. María del Mar, on the other hand, is an unknown quantity. She is local, but until recently she has been associated only with corporate law and has worked on cases involving business disputes. She has only recently attained judicial status. There’s talk that she might be working for a company that was lobbying Mayor Pedro Onsoda, but lips are very tight on the subject.

And so to today’s proceedings. The judge began by giving a summary of recent events and so there is no point my repeating the details here, since you already know the basic material. Sometimes I will attempt to summarise, but whenever the material is important I will transcribe verbatim or near-verbatim accounts. I apologise for this, because it will make my account quite long. But I am sure you will agree that the material I choose to include in this way will justify the extra time taken to read it. Only then will you get a flavour of the difference in the material provided by the individual testifiers. Even after just one day, the differences are already quite fascinating. My first example of this comes from the very first witness, because the first person called to the stand was Jennifer Mason, the Cottee’s camp site neighbour. She was asked to introduce herself.

JM My name is Jennifer Mason. I live on the La Manca Camp site. Our mobile home has the plot next to the Cottees.

Pérez Molino continued to address her in English.

PM As you will know, Señora Mason, this is not a trial or even an official hearing. The circumstances of this case are very strange. At the moment, we do not know whether a crime has even been committed by any of the people who are the subject of this inquiry. You are invited to attend and to cooperate. You are not required to do so. It is an opportunity to examine the circumstances and material at our disposal. What we want to do is establish whether a crime has been committed and then, if so, who, if anyone, might be linked to other events currently under investigation and who, if anyone, has to be traced so they can be called before the court. Do you understand?

She nodded. She was clearly very nervous. She was visibly shaking.

JM I’ve never been in trouble with the law, Sir. I’ve never had anything to do with the police... Please...

PM Doña Mason, this is not a court. This is a hearing to gather information. There is no need to fear the outcome, because there will be no outcome. It is merely a search for information. We have asked you to testify here merely to help us understand what might have happened. Our role is merely exploratory, not judgmental. Do you understand?

Jennifer Mason nodded.

PM Now I understand that you were the person who provided the text file that we call the Cottee blog, a file that has been printed and circulated. Can you tell the hearing how this material came into your possession.

Pérez held up the folder containing the printed blogs belonging to Donald and Susan Cottee, the material that I sent to you immediately prior to this first report.

JM That would be Don and Suzie’s blogs? Well, it’s really quite simple. It happened by chance. It was about lunchtime on the Wednesday. My husband Ted and me had been out for a morning walk. We generally set off just after sunrise and have breakfast out. We walk a lot, Ted and me. We would have got home around eleven or so. We’d stopped for our café con leche as normal at one of the bars along the main road. Maybe half past... It was there that we met a couple who told the latest about the Mayor and his wife… but we didn´t take much notice to be honest. It was such a beautiful day. The sky was completely clear and blue, but it was quite cool for the time of year. I remember the sea along Levante beach was rough. That, coupled with the clear air and the light of the low early-morning sun meant that everything looked so special, so beautiful. We’d taken loads of photos. Ted and I are members of the University Of The Third Age photographic group. We meet every Thursday at the Norwegian old peoples’ home up the Sierra Helada. Well that morning our camera’s memory was completely full. We’d even missed a couple of shots on the way home. We wanted to download them so we could do some more in the evening, but our computer’s been on the blink. It’s still at the shop being mended. They say it needs a part and because it’s quite old they’re having difficulty finding one. So I told Ted I’d go and see if I could use Suzie’s computer to free up the camera’s memory. We have the same kind of camera so all I need to do is plug in and press the button. I’ve done it before. I thought I could leave the photos on her computer until we got ours back and then we could copy them across.

PM So you saw the Cottees at home at around eleven thirty that morning?

JM No. I only saw Suzie. . Don was out on the quad bike. He’d gone to fill it up with petrol ready for their trip in the afternoon. I only stayed half an hour at most.

PM Did you and Susan Cottee talk about the murder?

JM I can’t remember... but I don’t think we did. I was too interested in getting my photos. But I did tell her I’d had a chat with that couple over coffee... I can’t remember. I might have done. At the time I didn’t know...

Jennifer Mason paused for a long time. She seemed close to tears. She fiddled for a few moments in her bag. It was a formal lady’s handbag in white imitation leather. It had a pair of carrying straps and a heavy, metal clasp closure. It appeared to contain a large percentage of her worldly possessions. A clerk sitting to her left anticipated her search for a paper tissue and leaned across to offer a new packet he took from his jacket pocket. Jennifer Mason then fiddled with the pack for some time, trying to find the tab that would tear the plastic cover. It was a moment when a person on display was open to concentrated public scrutiny. I could sense almost everyone present eyeing her and I could almost feel their judgments. She is in her mid-sixties, but looks older. She has a worn look, somewhat used by life, its painful experience etched into lines that are now deep wrinkles across her face. Her permed blond hair had clearly been done specially for the occasion. A sleeveless pink blouse exposed a large purple and red butterfly tattoo near the top of her right arm and half of what seemed to be a name across her left shoulder blade. From my viewpoint this only became visible momentarily when she leaned forward or to the side, but everyone seemed to notice it. Her accent was broadly West Midlands, not a Birmingham voice, I think, but it bore many of the hallmarks of that region. I perceived a feeling that her opinions might be merely noted, that she might not be taken seriously. It was a position that was actually suggested by her own manner, which was nervous, neurotic, self-deprecatory. She took two or three minutes, a pause that seemed to last an age, to blow her nose, wipe her eyes, inspect the contents of the paper hankie, repeat the process, smooth her hair, adjust her lashes and check her face in a mirror she actually managed to find after another rummage through her bag. Pérez Molino remained patient and sympathetic throughout.

PM Sorry... I interrupted. You were about to visit Mrs Cottee. Please continue.

JM Well I knocked on the door and Suzie answered. She knew it was me because we’d got into the habit of having a chat almost every day sometime around one, not for long. Usually we would walk up the road to one of the cafés for a coffee. If the weather was on the blink, we stayed in and had a cup of tea. It was normally just a half an hour or so before she went off to The Castle. But of course this was a Wednesday...

PM A Wednesday?

JM It’s the day when Suzie didn’t go in to the pub until about seven in the evening. Her afternoon off. Her and Don often went off for the afternoon on Wednesdays. Every other day of the week followed the same pattern. Around three o’clock the car would come to pick her up. She was always driven to The Castle... or nearly always. There was the occasional time when Don took her on the quad bike.

PM She went there every day? Seven days a week?

JM Not at first. When they first arrived they were just like us other retirees. They did as they pleased. They joined a few things... the walking group, and the library - I have no idea what else... And Donald did his own thing from day one. He seemed to treat retirement like a greyhound race. When the date came up he was out of the traps and running, and he never seemed to stop. He was into everything from the start. It seemed that he’d only been here for a week or two when he got his quad bike. He was always off and away up into the hills on that bike. But it wasn’t his you know...

PM We are aware of that. There were other changes in the Cottees’ lives?

JM Yes. I suppose they were just settling in like we all have to do when we go to live abroad. Once we got to know them they were just ordinary people, but Donald really was keen to do his own thing.

PM And Mrs Cottee? She took a job?

JM When she first arrived, she seemed very quiet. She kept herself to herself. Ted and I couldn’t make our minds up whether to speak or just let them be. We thought she might be depressed or ill, or both. Then we thought they might have something to hide. They seemed a bit aloof, self-contained and not sociable. But then we soon got to know that she was ill, of course.

PM And then she took the job?

JM As I was saying, she did very little for a couple of months, but then we found out that she had decided to take on The Castle. She seemed to be part-time at the start, but after just a couple of weeks she started going in every day. She was always picked up by the same bloke in the same car, every day at the same time, except Wednesdays, of course. It was like clockwork. We thought it wouldn’t last, but she seemed to thrive on it, and she kept up the pace, even when, in recent weeks, when she began to look very much worse. She would never talk about it, but personally I think she knew she didn’t have long. After all, she had been told...

PM The man who drove the car - that would be ... Philip Matthews?

JM That’s right. Well I say that’s right, but I never really met the man, apart from saying an occasional hello or goodbye. We never actually spoke, because he never stayed around for long and usually didn’t even get out of the car. I suppose Suzie must have mentioned his name, but I don’t think I ever knew it until last week, when I read it in the paper. He would pick her up around three. He had been at work in the club since the morning. Suzie told me that he was the one that opened it up and got things going. But he and his wife didn’t actually work for Suzie. Officially they still answered to Mr Watson. They had their own office upstairs above the club. Suzie always said she just let them get on with things and didn’t interfere.

JM So Mrs Cottee went to work every day at three and always with Mr Matthews in the same car?

JM Always, except Wednesdays, of course. As I said, you could almost set your watch by them. Three o’clock is when she left. And she nearly always came back around two or three in the morning. As my husband Ted always said, you had good nights and bad nights!

Mrs Mason burst into laughter, and the members of the presiding council politely followed suit. There was a pause before Jennifer continued, without the need for prompt.

JM On the good nights, the same car brought her back...

PM This was the black Porsche Cayenne, the four-wheel drive vehicle?

Jennifer Mason nodded to confirm and was about to continue, but Pérez Molino interrupted.

PM I want to be absolutely clear for our records, Mrs Mason. The vehicle is a black Porsche Cayenne, four-wheel drive with tinted windows and having a German matricula - sorry, German registration?

JM I don’t know about anything technical, I’m afraid, but it did have German plates.

Jennifer paused for a moment, because it was clear that the three members of the council wanted to confer for a moment. They pored over a document that the clerk to their left retrieved from a box file stuffed with papers. I specifically heard Pérez Molino say the word “Later” to his colleagues. The issue of the car and its ownership is clearly important. He looked to the right and took a prompt from the stenographer. “You were telling us about good nights and bad nights, Mrs Mason?”

JM Oh, yes. Those were my Ted’s words. You see, we were always in bed, asleep by the time Suzie came home. On good nights, Suzie came home in a taxi. Occasionally - very occasionally - she came in the Porsche, but apparently it was Karen Matthews that drove her home. On the nights when Don went to collect her, she came home with him on the back of the quad bike, which, of course, woke up the whole camp site twice, once when he left and then again when he came back half an hour later. Sometimes even the taxis would wake us. Ted always used to complain when doors were slammed or we could hear a Diesel engine or even worse one of those two-way radios going buzz and tinkle at full volume while the driver had left his door open. But the next morning, if we hadn’t been woken up, Ted would always say that we’d had a Porsche sleep that night.

PM And the night of the fire? Was that a Porsche night?

JM It was, but we still woke up. There were voices. It was unusual. They got home...

PM You heard the voices of Donald and Susan Cottee?

She paused for a long time before answering.

JM I’ve thought about it, Your Honour. I’ve tried to remember, but I can’t say for sure whether I heard both of them, either one or the other, or neither. We heard some voices. There wasn’t any shouting. There was nothing to suggest that there was anything unusual, except that they parked the car, rather than just dropping her off. It sounded like people trying to be quiet, just like you would expect people to behave if they were trying not to disturb others. They weren’t whispering, but they spoke very quietly, too quietly to identify any of the voices - and they didn’t speak a lot. We heard the car pull in beside the van, which was unusual, because usually, it just dropped her off, turned round and went. But that Wednesday night, or should I say Thursday morning it pulled in and parked beside the van. The reversing lights reflected off the van at the back and shone through our curtains. We heard voices. The people were trying to speak quietly, and we could hear things being moved...

PM And how long did this last?

JM Twenty minutes, half an hour maybe. Then we heard the car doors being closed quietly followed by the engine starting. As it pulled away, Ted got out of bed to look. We can’t see across to the Cottee’s pitch from our bedroom window, but we can see a car turn right at the end of the row and then turn again to get to the main gate. He said he’d get up to have a look what was going on and he said, “That’s unusual. It sounded like there was a car full of people tonight.”

PM ...and it was then that you heard the bang.

JM That’s right. He’d barely finished speaking when there was an almighty bang. Our van shook and Ted stumbled. He cursed, finished putting on his dressing gown and went outside to see what had happened. I got up, but I needed to put something on and was half a minute behind him. By the time I got to the door, all I could see across the way was a ball of flame. I saw Ted run towards the van shouting Don and Suzie’s names.

PM And then there was a second blast...

Jennifer Mason did not answer. Pérez Molino again consulted the clerk to his left. The information he sought was clearly at hand.

PM And how is your husband now, Mrs Mason?

JM He’s a lot better, thank you. His face, arms and chest are a bit of a mess, but the doctors say he will recover and, if things go well, there won’t be bad scars. We’ll have to wait and see. It will take time. At least now he’s comfortable. He has a lot less pain.

There was a momentary consultation between the three council members. Pérez Molino then spoke again.

PM Mrs Mason, we were diverted. You started to tell us about what happened the day before the fire, on the Wednesday afternoon when you went to visit Susan Cottee. You were talking about a camera.

JM Oh yes. I told you we’d taken photos on our walk? Well I knocked on Suzie’s door which was open. She was getting ready to go out. I asked if I could do some photos and she said yes. Don’s laptop was already on. Suzie had been seeing to her emails, and she had left it on the logout screen, so I just closed the window and got to work. By the time she came out from the bathroom I had all the photos downloaded and on screen. We had a look at a few of them before she went back into the bathroom to do her face. She told me about their plans for the afternoon. Donkey was filling up the quad bike ready for a trip into the mountains for a barbecue. I really can’t remember where she said they were going. I’ve been trying to think back to what she said and what I think I recall is that she didn’t know where they were going. She mentioned a few names, but they were all places they’d been before. What she suggested was that they might be going back to one of those. But they were all Spanish names and they all sound the same to me. All I can remember was that it was a place where you go up some tracks to the top of one of the sierras where there’s some properly built barbecue places. She said they were having a big get-together with Mick’s friends. I mentioned that they’d not been away for their usual Wednesdays for a few weeks and she said something about being ill. I don’t remember if she said she had been ill or whether it was someone else. Anyway I do recall her saying that it was all cleared up now so their Wednesday get-togethers could start up again. I can remember her clearly poking her head round the panel to look at the screen while I was flicking though my pictures. She asked me what we were doing and I said nothing, but that we were going to the photo group meeting on Thursday morning. She said, “Why don’t you copy your photos onto the memory stick so you can take them with you this afternoon?” I’d never thought of that, but it was the obvious thing to do. I wouldn’t have to trouble her again to copy them. “There’s a stick on the shelf next to the computer,” she said and then disappeared behind the panel again. When I looked there were two. One was labelled ‘PHOTOS’ and I put that one into the slot. When the window opened, I saw it was full of files and folders. There were hundreds of photos on there. Some of them were taken at The Castle. There were performers, customers and I don’t know who else. Some of the photos weren’t new. They had been copied from prints. You could tell because some of them still had the photo border round them. Most of them, however, were Don’s photos, taken up in the mountains. Now I didn’t want to come between Don and his projects. I know how seriously he takes his projects, so I closed that memory stick down and tried the other one. When that one opened up, I could see there was just one file called dc090909.doc. It was a Word document and didn’t seem to be a very big file. There was nothing else on the stick, so I copied my files onto it. Suzie called out, “The stick’s Don’s. There’s nothing important.” I remember I said nothing. There was no need. I was convinced that the more important one was the one with the pictures, so I copied the folder with my own photos onto the other one. I said thank you, told her I was going and that I was taking the stick. She didn’t come out of the bathroom. She just said, “Tara,” and continued with her face. “Have a good barbecue,” I said as I left. I didn’t know, of course, that the Cottee’s van, Don’s beloved Rosie the Sundance, would get barbecued itself before the night was out, and that my poor Ted....

PM And the memory stick you took, that was the one that contained Donald Cottee’s blog, the document that has been printed here and supplied to this hearing?

Pérez Molino held up a hefty manila folder. Jennifer Mason nodded to confirm.

PM Just for the record, Part One of this report is a printout of the document that was stored on the memory stick that Señora Mason took from the Cottees. And this document is now the only thing we have relating to Donald and Susan Cottee.

Jennifer Mason looked visibly shocked.

JM The only thing?

PM We have checked everywhere - in The Castle, in the Watson’s house, in Paradise Club -and we have nothing whatsoever that even mentions the Cottees’ existence. We have even checked in their home town, Kiddington, but when they left they cleared their house, sold it and threw away everything they did not bring with them. We have contacted their daughter, but she has recently given birth and says she is unable to travel. She also claims to have nothing that belongs to either Donald or Susan Cottee. It seems that the parents were not on good terms with their daughter. What they had was in their mobile home and everything was destroyed in the fire. This document is quite literally all we have. I have one last question Mrs Mason. Was there anything about Susan Cottee’s manner when you spoke that morning that in any way suggested something was different, something had changed?

Jennifer Mason shrugged her shoulders. She looked up. She looked down. She fiddled with the straps of her bag, blew her nose again and then scratched her cheek.

JM It’s not for me... I shouldn’t say... No.

PM Anything, Mrs Mason... what is it that you want to say? I remind you that this is not a court. You are not under oath. If there is information that might help, we need to know.

JM Well, Suzie sounded different. She had been depressed. Ever since she and Don had come back from their last trip home, the trip when she was diagnosed... well, she seemed to get lower as each day passed. She cried quite a lot at first - never, of course, if Donald was anywhere near. And never, it seemed, if any other man was within hearing. It seemed that neither Philip Matthews nor that horrible Mike Watson knew anything was amiss. There was one day a few weeks ago when I stopped Philip Matthews as he drove into the La Manca Park to pick her up. I flagged him down. I asked him if anyone at The Castle had noticed what a state Suzie was in. He just shrugged his shoulders. He never said very much. Not that I’ve spoken to him more than a couple of times in my life, but he never seems to have anything to say. He’s a typical man, if you ask me. Anyway he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. But Suzie was very upset, and she was getting worse. A couple of times in the previous week when we met for coffee she just cried. She just sat there weeping. She talked at the same time, but I could see the tears in her eyes. But after that last weekend, she seemed to have perked up. She was putting on a face again...

PM Putting on a face?

It is a colloquial term that refers to the application of cosmetics by a woman, Your Honour.

JM Yes, she was putting on make-up again as well before going to The Castle. She hadn’t done that for weeks. She wasn’t bursting into tears at the slightest prompt. She seemed to be renewed, as if she had some new focus, some new motivation. She’d been like that months ago, of course, when she first took over at The Castle. It was as if she had rediscovered a reason to live. She was like that again for two or three days before she disappeared. I even said to her on the Tuesday, the day before she disappeared, that she seemed so much better.

PM And how did she react when you said that?

JM That was the strange thing. She didn’t react. In fact, it was as if she had completely ignored the comment. She simply carried on talking about something completely different, as if I had never opened my mouth. But she smiled. Now that was strange, given her recent state. She smiled a kind of knowing smile...

PM And she was in the same frame of mind on the Wednesday when you called in with your camera?

JM Exactly. Yes. That’s why she was in her bathroom. She was putting her face on ready to go out. She was so busy at it that she didn’t even come out to say hello. We’d not had coffee that day, of course, because I’d been out walking with Ted.

There was another pause here as the members of the council conferred. Jennifer Mason was looking more uncomfortable with the passing of each minute. The quiet was broken with a new question. The judge didn’t even look up.

PM One last question, Mrs Mason. You have spoken a lot about Mrs Cottee, but have said very little about Mr Cottee. Do you have anything to say about him?

JM Nothing, really. He was a typical northern male. He and Suzie were Jack Spratt and his wife, but the other way round...

Pérez Molino had clearly not understood. She repeated.

JM Jack Spratt would eat no fat, his wife would eat no lean. He was thin and she was fat. With the Cottees, it was the other way round. He was overweight and she hadn’t an ounce of flesh on her. Mind you she’d lost weight in those last few weeks... Donald was also a bull in a china shop...

There was again immediate confusion. Un elefante o un pulpo en una cacharrería, an elephant or octopus in a pot shop, I offered. There was a wholly inappropriate moment of mirth.

JM I had nothing to do with him, really. He always seemed completely bound up with his own things, his own ideas. It was as if he didn’t care too much about what other people thought of him. As far as I know, he spent a lot of his time alone, walking in the hills or riding his quad. When he wasn’t doing that he was reading, or going to the pub or typing on his computer. He never seemed to have the time to talk to anyone. That’s all I can say.

The council members conferred momentarily. Pérez Molino then expressed his own and his colleagues’ thanks. He then invited Jennifer Mason to step down from the stand, but was very careful to ensure that she left the room via the door on the opposite side from where she entered. They had thought long and hard about the structure of the proceedings and they wanted to ensure that the people called did not have chance to exchange views. I learned later that they had even arranged separate meeting rooms in the foyer. They had clearly been aware from the start that the heavily incestuous nature of expatriate life might on occasions endow something quite trivial - a passing remark, or a word out of place - with significance out of all proportion to its apparent importance.

It was about twenty minutes before the next person was called. I don’t know why there was a delay. There was a lot of muttered consultation between members of the council and the various clerks. Pieces of paper were passed back and forth, but there didn’t seem to be much going on. I suppose they were consulting their briefs, as these people say. Eventually, Pérez Molino nodded to the policeman by the door. He opened it, disappeared for only a second or two and then reappeared with Caspar Smit.

Caspar is Dutch. You would know that even before he opened his mouth. The Belgians say you can spot a Dutchman a mile away, except that they would use kilometres! The Dutchman is the one that thinks he’s bigger and better than everyone else. The Dutch, on the other hand, regard Belgians as slightly less than human. A well-known joke of theirs has a straight road with two signs showing ‘In’ in the foreground and ‘Out’ in the distance. It’s a Belgian maze, they say.

Well, as far as Belgians might be concerned, Caspar fits the bill. He breathes like a whale, has the presence of a bison and dresses like he just walked out of a boutique window. When he took the witness stand, he not only made a fuss, cleaning the chair with his handkerchief, he actually rearranged the entire stand, moving the low table to the side so he could reposition the chair to face the council members directly. As a consequence, he was three-quarters turned away from me. I didn’t miss a word he said, however, because he spoke loud enough to communicate with the courtroom next door. He also made a great point of putting his zipped bag onto the table at his side, retrieving a file from within and then opening it to study the contents of a sheaf of papers, squinting through half-lens spectacles that previously had swung across his front on a band round his neck. He even started the delivery of his material before he was asked.

CS Caspar Smit. I am the owner and manager of the La Manca Caravan Park, Benidorm. I am Dutch, from Bergen op Zoom in the Netherlands. I have lived in Spain for eighteen years, am a Spanish resident, NIE X-6564332-T.

He spoke in English, completely unaccented apart from the general Dutch tendency to chew the vowels. Pérez Molino seemed a little taken aback. He paused to consult before continuing.

PM Thank you for coming. Mr Smit. I believe you have details of the Cottee’s arrangement with you?

CS Thank you for the opportunity to put my side of the case...

Pérez Molino was again visibly taken aback. He interrupted, spoke forcefully and quickly. It was clear that the two men instinctively felt they might be in competition for dominance.

PM This is not a ‘case’, as such. Neither is it a trial. As yet, we have no idea if there is even anything to investigate. We do have a case in progress, which may or may not be related to what we are discussing in this investigation. I must remind you that what we are discussing may only be speculation, but there is a feeling that the people who are the subject of this inquiry might have something to contribute to those hearings. At the moment, however, this is merely a fact-finding inquiry into the possible whereabouts of missing persons. None of them is charged or, as far as we know, directly involved in the other case. They have disappeared and it is our intention to review anything that might help us to trace them. I must remind you, therefore, that you should limit what you say to what is relevant to the terms of reference of this hearing. Please say nothing that could possibly have a direct bearing on the other case. On the other hand, if you are in possession of material indicating that any of the people who are the subject of this inquiry might have information that might relate to that other case, then you should of course tell us and make a statement to the police. Is that clear?

There was a flurry of papers while Caspar Smit remained quite motionless. It was amongst the three presiding members of the council that there seemed to be tension. García López seemed ill at ease, while Pérez Molino appeared to be in control. María del Mar remained placid throughout, but her calm was more of a statement of control than disinterest. Caspar Smit was clearly confused. There was a long silence during which no further prompt was offered. Eventually he began to speak, initially and obviously uncharacteristically without confidence. He had taken Pérez Molino’s statement as a personal put-down.

CS I have here the details you asked for.

Caspar opened a large ledger, leaned forward, his half-glasses perched on the end of his nose, and read his delivery, sounding the very epitome of rationality asserted.

CS Arrived twenty-ninth of February two thousand and eight. They booked by telephone, not via the internet. Throughout I dealt only with Mrs Cottee, who was always very business-like. I had hardly any dealings with Donald Cottee...

PM Twenty-ninth of February?

CS Mr Cottee must have planned it that way. I remember that the only thing he said to his wife as she signed all the papers to register was, “Look before you leap in a leap year, dear.” He said it at least ten times. That’s why I remember it so well. They parked in a temporary space for five days and then took the plot where they remained ever since. They paid all of their bills on time without the need of a single reminder. They are not unique on the site for doing this, but they come pretty close. Apart from complaints about noise, we have had no problems with the Cottees. The noise problems were infrequent, and all of them related to Donald coming home in the early hours on his quad bike. I did ask him not to use the bike at those times, but he said that sometimes he had to bring his wife home from the bar after closing time. I accepted this and never pursued the matter further. As time went by, Mrs Cottee tended to use taxis more often than anything else, so the problem disappeared... ...except when they continued after they got home.

Pérez Molino paused here. He flicked through a few sheets enclosed in plastic wallets, their crackling amplified by the near-silence that filled the room. Despite their best efforts at calming the atmosphere, the obvious tension that characterised relations between members of the council infected us all. Pérez Molino clearly recognised the paper he sought and paused again to read a single side of text.

PM Are you saying that they argued?

CS Yes. Sometimes. It didn’t happen often, maybe once or twice a week. It happened whenever she had been drinking. Donald once told me that in the last half hour of the evening, when The Castle was beginning to empty, then Suzie would sometimes have a couple of drinks, never earlier. Also, when they had a really good evening, the staff bought her drinks and she felt obliged to accept. The staff were very happy with Susan Cottee. She was doing a very good job and they were benefiting from her efforts, so they often showed their gratitude.

PM That fact had reached the owner of the camp site?

CS The whole of Benidorm knew it. The Castle is an iconic venue in this town. It’s a place that grew up on the back of the town’s tourist industry and specifically on the Britishness of that tourism. The fact that Susan had recreated its greatness after it had fallen into what I can only describe as neglect and disrepair has become a symbol for the town’s business owners, especially the British. With The Castle decaying, the centre of tourist life, specifically British tourist life, was shrinking. It was certainly in decline. Talk was going round that it was dying, that the place was beginning a radical change that would see a complete redefinition of its character, a process that would aim to attract a different market. Now one venue, of course, does not make a town, but The Castle was truly iconic, an emblem of the kind of tourism that we thought might be over. It seems that older British people, the ones who have been coming here on holiday for thirty years or more, no longer have any money. The days are gone when Spain was a cheap destination that allowed the British working classes to spend their year’s savings showing off to one another.

PM And Susan Cottee has restored The Castle to its former glory?

CS Indeed she has, or had. But she was recreating something that only appealed to a particular generation from a specific place. Her success could be neither emulated nor sustained.

PM Is that what she thought?

CS Who can say? I doubt it. Everything she did with the place suggests that she wanted The Castle to be the place it used to be. She might have been just trying to put the clock back. On the other hand, she might also have realised that she could create a niche to exploit that particular market. Either way, it was a success that was real, but a success that could only have lasted a couple of years at most. There is a diminishing clientele for that kind of experience. She could never have competed.

PM Competed with what?

CS Competed with the profit that would have been generated by the redevelopment of the whole site. The Castle is a large piece of real estate. There’s another couple of bars adjoining and, around the corner, a clothes shop that runs into the next street. Together, these properties occupy a large plot with access from two roads. It’s perfect for a residential block with parking underneath. There have been rumours for a couple of years that a development company had bought the land, and had done so one piece at a time under different operating names to hide its real interest. Their problem was that even though they owned the site, there were leaseholders, such as the British woman who owned the clothes shop. She had twenty or twenty-five years left on her lease and said consistently that she did not want to sell up. She had even talked about handing it on to her daughter. On top of that, the town council was worried about changing the nature of the area. For years this town has made its money from creating and then fulfilling the dreams of working-class Britons. And once a pattern has been learned and later assumed, those people who have an interest in perpetuating it simply refuse to admit even the possibility of change. An application was submitted to demolish that British strip and build a forty storey apartment block. It was to be aimed at wealthy Russian purchasers. But there was a faction within the council, perhaps a majority, who did not want even to consider the possibility. The rumours were that people from outside the town were involved, and that the developers were trying to buy off certain interests right across the political boundaries. They were offering incentives for a vote this way or that, but it was never clear who in particular was behind what was going on. There were rumours about other councils and prominent politicians being involved...

MdM We cannot discuss the involvement of any person who is not specifically mentioned in the brief for this hearing, Herr Smit. Can I ask you to restrict your comments to the subjects of our inquiry?

María del Mar’s interjection stunned the court. There had not been the slightest suggestion that anyone other than Pérez Molino would conduct these early proceedings. She was clearly referring to the murder of Pedro Onsoda. She made it crystal clear that no-one had the right to mention anything whatsoever relating to that case. How this would work out, given that one aspect of the hearing was to establish whether anyone who had disappeared might have substantive evidence about the two deaths, was not made clear. Pérez Molino simply stared to his left, directly at her. His eyes asked questions that his voice dare not speak. The silence that followed became a measure of the struggle for power that would ensue. Caspar Smit sensed this and gave his own push to the dynamic.

CS Basically if The Castle were to fail, it would have made the whole process a lot easier for the interested parties. The clothes shop was a joke. The other British bars between The Castle and the next junction were making no money. I am sure the leaseholders could have been persuaded to give up their interest.

PM Then why would those involved have given The Castle to Susan Cottee? If they would have preferred it to fail, then why make it a success?

CS Well the answer is obvious. Under the previous management, The Castle was ticking over. It was doing the kind of business it had been doing for some years. It wasn’t a disaster. But neither was it the sort of place where an investor would put new money.

PM And the continued existence of The Castle, given its iconic status, might block an application for redevelopment...

CS Probably. So then someone had the bright idea that if they could make the place fail catastrophically, spectacularly, then it could be left to become derelict - a process that might take less than a year - and so an application for change of use would then go through quickly.

PM And so they asked Susan Cottee to take over?

MdM Who is this ‘they’ you refer to?

PM I am sure, Señora del Mar, that you would not want me to place specific names on the record of this hearing, names that your last interjection specifically asked not to be mentioned?

MdM If there are allegations, I want to know...

It was here that Caspar Smit’s ‘Dutchness’ came to the fore. He had something to say and he wanted to say it. He just let it come out, delivering his entire contribution before anyone could interrupt.

CS The talk was that the people who owned the land wanted The Castle to fail. They wanted to redevelop the site and that meant demolishing the pub. The best way of doing that was to appoint a manager with no track record, no local knowledge, no contacts and no connections to help run the place. They also therefore needed someone naïve enough not to notice what was being done to them! The guy they had already was just a local hack, a fellow who has been around this town for decades without ever having made a success of anything, but also crucially he has always been a survivor. He has run bar after bar in the British sector and has become part of the town’s folklore. If he had stayed, the place would have continued as it had done for years. But he was sick. They offered him some money if he would stand aside and he accepted. Remember that he was still making a reasonable living from the place. He had to be persuaded to step down.

MdM They?

CS They offered him money to compensate him for his lost earnings. It was effectively a retirement package. He was part of their business, not just an employee. That allowed Susan Cottee to take over, making it look like the place was being re-launched. Their assumption was that after a few months the place would collapse financially and it would be seen merely as a business failure and not part of a plan to influence a political decision. Then they would let the place fall derelict. It would soon be an eyesore and then a priority for re-development.

MdM And why would someone like Susan Cottee take on such a brief?

CS Because she knew not one thing about what they were planning. She was on holiday, determined to live a dream retirement that recreated her youth. And she was completely naïve. She knew nothing about local politics. For her, The Castle was part of a heritage that was mostly her own past. Being British, she probably never even realised that politics exist anywhere apart from in the British context. She spoke no Spanish, so couldn’t talk about such things with anyone in the know, and frankly, she didn’t speak English very well either. Come on, madam, she was a perfect stool pigeon for these people.

A stool pigeon is... I anticipated a need for explanation. I was cut short.

PM Thank you. I am quite aware of this Americanism. Mr Smit, who were these people you call the owners, the interests?

MdM In my opinion...

GL Please...

He had not spoken until now. His stentorian voice suddenly demanded all attention, however. He did not need to ask twice, despite the fact that he seemed to have zero authority and considerably less respect. His cheeks flushed red as he spoke. He was obviously unused to this role and was far from comfortable playing it. If he was close to power, then he had never brokered it.

GL I remind the hearing that nothing related to the case of Mayor Pedro Onsoda may be discussed. This hearing relates only to the disappearance of six people...

CS Look, Sir, they wanted the site. They had submitted an application for a fifty storey block with two hundred apartments, each selling at two-fifty-ks and above. It’s a fifty million gross project. They would make at least twenty million clear. The Castle, even in a good year, would clear a thousand a night after costs, maybe a quarter of a million a year. Now that’s good money for a working-class pub aimed at low spenders from the north of England. But the world has moved on since such people mattered. What they wanted...

GL Please!

MdM You may not...

PM Go on.

CS ...what they wanted was for the place to fail so they could close it down.

MdM The argument does not make sense.

CS Miss del Mar, how many hotels do your clients own? I will not wait for your answer, because I already know that their business is poor. They are no longer making good money from those sites. The future for this town is residential development, not mass tourism. The interests that owned The Castle were fully aware...

MdM Herr Smit...

PM We have come a long way in our understanding...

Pérez Molino was suddenly in charge again. Strangely, though there was nothing in the hearing’s brief to suggest he might actually be leading the session, he seemed to assume that responsibility. He seemed almost relieved that his two colleagues had intervened and were now under attack. He revelled in his neutrality.

PM ... since my original question relating to the Cottees’ domestic arrangements. Can you please complete the point you began about what happened when they came home at night?

CS They argued.

Since discussion had moved back inside the mobile home parked on the La Manca site, both García López and María del Mar visibly settled back into their seats.

CS They argued when she had been drinking. She was on medication. She was ill. She couldn’t drink any more. It clearly reacted with the drugs she was taking. But when she came home after having a shot or two, she took it out on poor Don. She let him have it broadside. The poor man got no rest. She seemed to blame her illness on him and perhaps on everyone else as well. She seemed to want to punish those still alive for the fact that she was going to die. I had to visit their plot several times because people had complained about the shouting and screaming. She would call him every name you could imagine. I knew he would break one day...

GL I think...

MdM I object!

PM Thank you, Mr Smit. We will take note of everything you have said. So unless my colleagues have anything to add...?

It was a masterstroke. He gave them rope to hang themselves. He gave them an invitation to delve into the detail of what we had heard, and he knew they would duck it. What a tactician! One wonders who he is working for! The others indicated that there was no more they wanted to be said. Caspar Smit left the room.

Next onto the stand was Maureen Voros. At first sight she might just conform to your stereotypical reader, Joe. She’s from Manchester, overweight, sixty-ish but looks at least eighty. She has died black hair, ear-length, centre-parted. It looks greasy, and hangs in strands at the back, where it appears not to have seen a comb for some weeks. She has more than a hint of a bald patch. She waddles rather than walks, and looks like she rarely spends more than a minute or two on her feet in an average day. She has a thick Mancunian accent and holds her mouth like an open letterbox, but her voice is either a mutter, so quiet it can hardly be heard or a shout, bellowing out so loud it drowns everything else. Pérez Molino’s attitude towards her was tinged with contempt.

PM Name, please?

MV Maureen Voros.

PM Voros. Is that English?

MV It is if you say it in English.

Impatience was quick to surface and even quicker to find its expression.

PM I was asking if your name is an English name.

MV My father was Hungarian. He was a refugee in fifty-six. He was a professional footballer. He played for Accrington Stanley and then broke his leg. He settled in Stockport where I was brought up. And Stockport is in Cheshire. I heard you talk about Manchester. I’m not from Manchester. I’m from Stockport, a place where I have not lived for thirty years. I used to work in a baked bean factory. I stood by the side of the belt and picked out any beans that were broken or discoloured before they went into the cooker. And none of this has anything whatsoever to do with why I have been asked to come and sit here. I am losing money, you know. I am paid by the hour and if I don’t work, I don’t get paid...

PM You don’t have a Hungarian accent.

MV That’s because I’ve never been to friggin’ Hungary. I was brought up in Stockport.

PM But you were born in Hungary...?

MV I am fifty-two. That means I was born in nineteen fifty-seven. Nineteen fifty-six came along almost a full year earlier, if I am not mistaken. My father left Hungary in fifty-six and subsequently I believed he played a part in my conception. I have never been to Hungary. I never formally learned any Hungarian, except for a few words at home, such as köszönöm, igen, nem and szívesen, and I never used any of them. My father always wanted us to be one hundred percent British. He never even spoke any Hungarian at home, only English. I was born in Cheshire and lived in Stockport, which is not Manchester. It’s also not Lancashire, but Cheshire. I moved to Spain when I was twenty-one, by the way, and I have lived here on and off ever since.

PM So you speak Spanish?

MV No.

The pause that followed seemed to last an age. Pérez Molino shuffled papers back and forth. It seemed like he had nothing prepared for this witness.

MV If I’d called myself Maureen Jackson, you wouldn’t have asked those questions.

PM Jackson. Is that an English name?

MV Only when you say it in English.

PM Is that the name of your husband?

MV No. I was living with Anthony Jackson for a while. I used his name as well, because I assumed we’d get married anyway. Then he walked out and left me and I became Voros again.

PM Mrs Voros

MV Ms Voros

PM Ms Voros, can we get to the point? You are invited here today to give evidence to this preliminary hearing. We are interested in anything you can tell us that might offer clues as to the whereabouts of the missing persons. You have told us that you have lived in Spain for thirty years? Is that correct?

MV Yes and no.

A sign from the bench indicated that patience might be running short. Pérez Molino again reminded Maureen Voros that she had been invited to the hearing to offer information on the possible whereabouts of missing persons and that it would help if she provided clear answers to the questions asked. But she interrupted to continue her story. It was clear that she was going to tell it in precisely the way she wanted.

MV I did answer your question. The answer was yes and no. I have lived in Spain on and off since 1979. Originally I stayed for five years. Then I went back to Stockport, Then I came back here. Then I went back. Then I came here. Then I went back and finally I came here, which is where I am now, if you hadn’t noticed.

The sigh from the bench was comically drawn out.

PM What brought you to Spain?

MV The sun.

PM Did you come here for work, for pleasure, or for what reason?

MV I might look stupid, Señor, but inside this ugly head of mine there is a working brain. I do not understand why you are asking me these things. I don’t see that they have anything at all to do with the people who have gone missing. I know a lot about all of those people. I am willing to tell you anything you need to know. Not one fact I can give has anything to do with me or my background. But I will answer your question, out of politeness. I had separated from my Tony. We’d only been together for a couple of years, but he was treating me worse than the doormat. I came on holiday. I had worked on a baked bean production line for about five years, ever since leaving school, so I had an income and I had my own flat. I was lucky in that respect. My dad died in 1978. He had a heart attack. In fact he had several, but it really was the first one, the big one that mattered. It was an eighty-third minute winner by Daniel Bertoni that did for him. You see it was the first time since 1956 that he felt willing, able and - most importantly of all - motivated to support his home country. He’d left Budapest in 1956. He’d been shot off the streets in the demonstrations and daren’t ever go home. He never told me the details of how he managed to get to Vienna, but of course once he’d arrived he was granted refugee status. And that’s how he finished in Britain. He said he could already speak English. He was a footballer. He’d played for one of the big clubs in Hungary. He wasn’t famous, but he was well-known in the game and he had already played for his club right across Europe. He never said if he was capped as an international for Hungary, but I am fairly sure he was. I’ve never bothered to find out. I wouldn’t really know where to look. What he did keep telling us was that he could have been Puskas. He could have been Puskas, he said, if he’d been a striker rather than a clod-hopping centre-half, if he’d had ball skills rather than a boot and if, if only, he hadn’t been shot in the right knee during the uprising. He never had any mobility. His right leg was just about stiff. He could hardly bend it. He used to say that he could stand on it to use his left foot, the one that was supposed to be for standing on, or he could swing it like a pendulum when he took goal kicks. But it made him look clumsy. His name was known amongst people who knew their football, though, so it meant that when he had a trial with Accrington Stanley, they gave him the benefit of the doubt, hoping that he would recover some of his mobility. But it wasn’t going to happen. He only did two seasons and then he went onto the coaching staff. He stayed there just a couple of years more and then moved on. He was always involved with football, though he never got another job with a professional club - and, of course, the reason why he left Accrington was that they went bust and had to drop out of the league. My dad took it personally, said he’d been a kiss of death of the club. They’d employed him on the strength of his name, without realising he was a cripple. They had played him at centre-half and they’d lost every time he played because he couldn’t run any more. All he could do was foul the opposing centre forward or try to kick him over the stand if, that is, he could ever catch him. So he never had any money and he turned to drink. My mother left home. I can’t say I ever knew her. She’d gone by the time I was six. My dad said it was because of his depression...

PM Ms Voros...

MV Look, Pedro! Don’t look at me with that tone of voice. You asked me a question and I am trying to answer it. You asked me how I came to be where I am, here, in Spain, charring for Mick Watson and Susan Cottee, God rest their souls...

PM So you think they are dead?

Maureen took a long time to respond. Her voice, which, during her testimony, had become steadily stronger as she told her story, wavered, so that when she resumed, she began again in the same almost apologetic whisper with which she began. As she spoke, however, it followed the same pattern as before, with steadily increasing volume, speed and power, as if the words were first seeping out of a new leak before later rushing through an open fissure.

MV I don’t like to speak of death when it’s near. And I don’t like to say the names of the dead. It’s a thing for closed doors and curtains, a thing to be kept hidden, away from public view. Mourning is a separation from the living, like a confinement. You do your duty and then return to the world of the living, offer a smile and never ask for sympathy. You stand on your own two feet, if you’re lucky to have them intact. Unlike my dad, of course. His right leg was the death of him. That bullet wound was only a graze, but it found a weak spot and weakened it more. It finished him, if the truth were told. By the time he arrived in England he was already crocked. I reckon that’s why my mother left. She met him in 1957, sympathised with his cause rather than his person, married him almost as an act of charity, immediately bore his child and then realised she’d made a mistake. It was another six years before she finally admitted it and by then, of course, any action to compensate had to be drastic. So she left. She left him. She left me. She left her life. Where she went I do not know. He knew where she was, at least he had an idea, but he would never tell me. I used to ask him every day. Every morning over my cornflakes I used to say, “When’s my mama coming back?” I was about ten when I stopped asking. He never answered. I found out after I left school that she’d gone off with a director of a local firm. He had a chain of shops that sold bedding in Manchester, Stockport and some other places. He was probably on the board of a football club and met my mother through his dealings with dad. When he told her he was into bedding, her ears must have pricked up, because my dad clearly wasn’t by that time. Apparently she moved to a big house near Wilmslow. He was rolling in it. I never tried to get in touch with her. What was the point after all those years? After all, it’s the same distance from Wilmslow to Stockport as it is from Stockport to Wilmslow, and she never made an effort, at least that’s what my dad told me. Anyway, as I was saying, he had a heart attack. He’d done wonders for me. He had a steady job. It didn’t pay much, but it was at least regular. He was a football coach for amateur and semi-professional clubs, just part-time. And then in his spare hours he did coaching work in schools and the local sports centres. What he made up front stayed there and we lived off that. What he earned officially through the pay cheques went into the bank. When I left school at sixteen and took my job sorting beans, he let me settle down for a few months and then presented me with the deposit on a flat, in cash, straight out of the bank. He said he’d been saving it up so I could become a respectable, independent woman and, in any case, it wasn’t right that a man approaching his fifties should be sharing a house with a pretty little eighteen-year-old. I wasn’t eighteen yet, but I knew what he meant. He didn’t want people talking. I was never the most outgoing of girls. I always used to keep myself to myself. I had few friends. And the ones that I had tended to drop me after a while. I used to get chided at school because I lived with my dad and had no mother. They used to say stupid things about me and him. Don’t get me wrong. There was no reason for what they said. There was never any funny stuff going on in our house. I had a happy, normal childhood, except that I didn’t have a mother and my dad drank himself to sleep whenever he wasn’t working the next day so I had to put him to bed and clear up the mess. But isn’t that normal?

She paused, as if waiting for the question to be answered. Members of the bench and Maureen Voros stared at each other for half a minute or more. The clerks started to giggle.

PM I’m sorry Ms Voros. I thought that was rhetorical.

MV Don’t you call me that! It’s true. I came here this morning...

PM Ms Voros, please, please continue.

MV Well he gave me - in cash, mind you - a great big wad of notes. It was all in fivers. He said I should go down the road to the agent and put down a deposit on the flat in south Manchester I’d seen advertised in the paper. It was close to where I worked. It was in a poor area, but at least I could afford it. I still own it. I have it rented. It’s given me an income - not much - but at least something to tide me over ever since then. He said I should keep my head down, do as I was told, keep the pennies safe and then the pounds would look after themselves.

PM Ms Voros...

MV Just a minute, I haven’t finished. It was quite soon after then that I met Tony. I think he wanted an easy ride. After all, there weren’t many young women like me to be had, were there? I was young, pretty - I would never say beautiful, but I was a bit of a looker in my time - I had my own flat, I had a steady job and an income. And I was available. He was a bit of a spiv, a bit like our friend Mick Watson. He was a local wide boy, a big fish in a very small pond. I wasn’t sure how small the pond was until I came to Spain. That’s really when I started to live. It was, of course, a year after my dad died and Tony had threatened to walk out as well. As I was saying, my dad had a heart attack. He never felt he could support Hungary in 1966. I mean, 1966 and all that... He went to see them play, of course, but he just could not bring himself to say anything or proclaim his support in public. He missed the first game, because he was working. It’s a good job, perhaps, because they lost that one. But he went to Goodison to see them play Brazil. He never swore, my dad, at least he never swore away from a football pitch. But when he came home from that game, he was fired up. He was Farkas this and Farkas that. He was Bene, Bidi, Bici or something. He said that they should have kicked them over the stands and they did, but he thought they should have kicked them further. He was a passionate man, when it came to football. He went to Old Trafford to see them beat Bulgaria, came home just as fired up and then drank himself silly all night. I was only just turning nine years old, but I already knew how to move a drunk man, undress him and get him to bed, how to clear up a Technicolor yawn off a carpet, how to get stains out of loose covers and how to take my anger out on the bottles by smashing them to bits on the edge of the dustbin. But then he couldn’t travel as far as Sunderland for the next game. That was the quarter finals. He didn’t speak to anyone for about a week afterwards. They lost. They not only lost, they lost to the bloody Soviet Union, just about ten years to the day since the bloody Soviet Union had poked its nose into things in Poland and got things moving the wrong way for Hungary. Never before or since have I seen him so angry. That night, it was him who smashed the bottles after he’d emptied them. The mess took some clearing up, but I did it. I never complained. Never complained once. I never said a cross word, at least not in the house. I did have a habit of taking things out on my friends at school. I did get into quite a lot of trouble. It seemed to follow me around. But it was their own fault. People used to say stupid things about me. I’d give them one in the gob to shut them up and it usually worked. I got one in return from the teachers, so we were all square in the end.

PM The heart attack... your father’s heart attack?

MV That wasn’t in 1966. That was in 1978. They didn’t even qualify for 1970, you see, or 1974. Not that he would have anything to do with a tournament in Germany. In 1970 he supported England but surprised himself by admitting that Brazil were actually the best team in the tournament. In 1974 he didn’t speak to anyone for a month after Germany won, but when it came to 1978, he had the house decorated with red and green streamers. He was full of Hungary this and Hungary that, though when you pushed him, he really didn’t think they had much chance. I can remember him getting himself set up for the game. He had rented a new television with a bigger screen especially for the occasion. He had a couple of bottles ready and he had invited me round to sit with him. I was living with Tony by then and he had wanted to watch the game as well, but my dad wouldn’t have him in the house. He’d gone off in a huff to the pub because I went home to Stockport for the evening. Anyway, dad was in his element. Football on the tele and, for the first time in over thirty years, he felt he was going to have something to shout about and something that was pure Hungary, pure him, somehow. Well, it started going wrong from the first minute - even before then. Everything was wrong. He started calling the South Americans cheats even before they had walked onto the pitch. He said that the referee should have called the game off. I distinctly remember him talking about snow. It was snow this and snow that, about how the referee and linesmen must be able to see the lines, about how even a sprinkling of snow would have the ground-staff out with brooms to clear spaces around all the lines. You see in Argentina they had this tradition of throwing bits of paper. And that was also Argentina’s first game in the tournament - and they were the hosts. The ground was packed and everybody seemed to have brought a sack of waste paper. He went on and on, but there wasn’t anything on the pitch. The lines were all clear, but still he went on about cheats this and cheats that. He was getting himself all worked up. And then Hungary scored. It was one-nil to Hungary and I thought he had gone ballistic. He quietened down a few minutes later when Luque equalised and was absolutely quiet for about the next hour, even all through half time. He hardly even seemed to pick up his glass. Now I knew him in this mood. It was always best to give him a wide berth. It was when he got like this that he was capable of going over the top in a tackle with the aim of breaking the centre forward’s leg. I went to the kitchen and sat there reading a magazine. If only I’d stayed in the front room with him. He’d got the sound turned up loud, so I could hear everything. I think the neighbours could hear it as well. It was in the eighty-third minute that Daniel Bertoni got Argentina’s winner. I heard the cheering on the tele and, at the same time, a great big groan, which I assumed must have come from my dad. I daren’t go in. I knew it wasn’t a goal for Hungary, because he wasn’t shouting and screaming. It was a groan, so it had to be a goal for them. I waited ten minutes or so and there was some more noise. By the time I had plucked up the courage to poke my nose into the front room, the game was almost over. The second Hungarian player to be sent off that night was just walking off the pitch. A few seconds later the referee blew the whistle and the score came up on the screen two-one to Argentina. It was only then that I glanced across to the settee to see him slumped over, blue in the face and gasping for breath. I did my best. I was used to shifting him when he was a dead weight, but not used to it when he was dead. He wasn’t actually dead at the time, he just felt like it. He was still taking breaths, but they weren’t his usual, noisy, wheezes, more like lead feathers falling. I called for an ambulance, and it took half an hour to arrive. It would have made no difference. They couldn’t have helped him. He had another attack when he got to the hospital. He was dead before the morning and I inherited all one thousand six hundred and thirty-seven pounds eighty-six pence that were in his savings account, plus a hefty profit after selling the house and paying off the mortgage he’d taken out before the end of the nineteen-sixties. He was buried before the final and I was on my own. I never did know if anyone had ever bothered to tell my mother.

PM That was the year before you first came to Spain?

MV It was. Almost exactly a year. They always say that it takes a year for it to sink in.

PM Sink in?

Death, I said. Pérez Molino made a note of my mis-translation.

MV When my dad died, I was still with Tony Jackson, but he was as much use as a bacon sandwich at a Jewish wedding. Whenever I needed help, just a little shoulder to lean on, he would be off elsewhere. Anything that meant he had to give something sent him scurrying off. I was bored and fed up. I had some money in my pocket. It took a few weeks for me to see the light, but I knew I needed a change, so I booked a two-week package to Benidorm. It was still in the era when you booked yourself onto a holiday weeks, if not months in advance. You didn’t just get on a computer and buy a ticket. It meant going into town, seeing a travel agent, thumbing through brochures, choosing your hotel from the hundreds on show, all of which were white concrete with a swimming pool against blue sky, and then getting tickets. I made my mind up to go soon after Christmas, but I didn’t go on holiday until the following June. It worked. I met a few fellahs, and did what twenty-one-year-olds do when they meet a bit of all right in a disco. I got to the end of the two weeks and decided I was staying. I did a Shirley Valentine ten years before she did it. I got a job in the disco where I had been most nights and I have been there on and off ever since.

PM Shirley Valentine?

He looked across towards me. A film, I said, where a woman goes on holiday, has an affair and decides to stay because her life at home is boring and unhappy. It was set on a Greek Island.

PM Anything to do with the famous case on Zakynthos?

He had addressed the question to me. I was taken aback and didn’t answer for a minute or so. No, I replied, you are confused, Señor Pérez. I realise that you keep abreast of legal issues that arise out of tourism. I recognise that is your speciality. But the film was set in Greece and was made in 1989. The incident to which you are referring, where nine British women on holiday were arrested for taking part in an oral sex competition in a bar, happened only just over a year ago. Shirley Valentine had an affair with a hotel owner and it was a work of fiction.

MV And that was when I first got myself laid by Mick Watson, who was running a pub in 1979. But it wasn’t him that kept me in Spain. It was just the right place for me to be, and so I stayed. I remember it well. It was the summer of seventy-nine. It was my first trip abroad. I had to get a bus all the way to Luton to get the flight to Alicante. They made you feel like a celebrity in those days. You got a meal on the plane, and you even got a choice of main courses. There was a proper bus to pick you up at the airport and take you to your hotel. You weren’t just herded like so many cattle like today. I stayed at the Rio Park and walked down to the beach every morning. I wasn’t into staying out late at night in those days. I had just never done it. I did like to go out for a drink before dinner in the hotel, which was served in the evening, not in the middle of the day. On the plane I’d got friendly with a couple who had been to Benidorm before and they showed me around for the first couple of days. They showed me around, took me to different places. I was on my own and usually couples don’t like a single woman tagging along, but these two weren’t worried. I can remember it like it was yesterday. Every bar was playing Holiday by Boney M. There was Village People, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor and the Bee Gees. It was like being surrounded with disco, and I’d never really done anything like that before. I realised I’d lived a very sheltered life looking after my dad. All the new experiences really got me in the mood. I was determined to have a good time and threw caution to the wind. It was a year after my dad had died. I was ready to break loose. I remember we arrived on a Saturday. Almost everything changes over on a Saturday in this town. It took me until the Tuesday to really get into the swing. The couple I met on the plane showed me a few places, and on the Tuesday they took me to the Dogs for the first time...

PM The dogs?

It’s a bar, Sir, I said. It’s still there and until a few weeks ago it hadn’t changed. It has recently changed ownership and has a new image. It’s on Calle Lepanto. It used to be called The Dog’s Bollocks.

PM Bollocks?

Los cojones del perro, Sir, I explained. I realised immediately that this might need further explanation. It was an Australian theme bar, Sir. It’s a shop unit, part of the Europa Centre, which was quite new in 1979. The expressions, los cojones del perro, means something like being in with the garlic. It’s the place to be, the best in town. Australians also have venir con el langostino fresco.

PM Venir con el langostino fresco...

Indeed, Sir. In English it translates as come the raw prawn. It means tell a fib.

PM Fib?

A lie, Sir. Well, not quite a lie, more like something that stretches the truth a little. What is amazing reading this now is that at the time I had no intention of casting aspersions on the testimony of Maureen Voros, but Pérez Molino clearly interpreted my words in this way.

PM Are you suggesting that Ms Voros is not telling the truth?

MV I’ve never told a lie in my life, at least not without crossing my fingers.

PM I am confused.

I’m sorry, Sir. It’s my fault. Let me withdraw those comments, which were offered merely as an illustration. In Australia los cojones del perro, The Dog’s Bollocks, is the place to be, the best thing in town.

PM And is it?

MV No, it’s a dump. At least it became a dump. It was all right when it was new, but it was never more than a shop unit fitted out as a bar. But it had crocodiles coming out of the walls, Australian road signs and Foster’s on tap. In 1979 these things were real novelties for people who lived in south Manchester. It felt... romantic. Well we went there for a drink on the Tuesday evening...

PM Ms Voros, may I interrupt?

Pérez Molino had been growing more impatient with the passing of every second.

PM I do not understand why we are hearing all this detail about what happened thirty years ago. I want to get the hearing focused again on events of the recent past so...

MV What I am explaining, Señor, is completely linked to recent events, because the man behind the bar at the Dog’s Bollocks in nineteen-seventy-nine was a gentleman called Mick Watson. And Mr Michael Watson is a man whose recent exploits I know interest you a great deal.

There was a pause here. I timed it at a full minute when I replayed the recording. On second hearing, it was noticeable that during the pause, there was not a single sound, not even a murmur or a rustle of paper. It was at this point that I concluded that the council collectively already had their own idea of where guilt might lie in relation to recent events. But these words of Maureen Voros seemed to challenge these assumptions and each council member had individually and silently realised this at precisely the same time. Looking back, it was this revelation by Maureen Voros that placed her in an instant at the centre of the story, rather than a mere information provider. I decided to check when I got home. I made a couple of phone calls to friends and had them check the files. Maureen Voros was never called by the police to give a statement after the shooting. But in this hearing, Maureen Voros had the stand. At that point, she also had the theatre, and she knew it.

MV Now most women in that era came to Spain on holiday and had a fling with one of those gigolos, the sort of bloke that removes your dishes from your table during the day and then turns up to remove your knickers from your backside after dark. But I came all the way from my flat in Lancashire to get off with a blooming Yorkshireman!

PM So it was love at first sight.

MV Love? God, no. Just physical need. He’d been flirting with me and my friend all evening. He knew the other couple, because they had been there before on previous visits. I think that what he really wanted was to get his hands on the bloke’s wife, but he made it clear from the start that she was off limits, so Mick started to take more interest in me. I think it was his way of getting her riled up. He finished his shift at ten and we were at it in the hotel bedroom by quarter past. I remember it like it was yesterday, that first night. You don’t forget a man like Mick. It was like being woken up from a long, long sleep, a bit like Sleeping Beauty... but with Mick it wasn’t a kiss that woke you up. In Mick’s case it was something more substantial ... and certainly longer lasting. But, God, didn’t it wake me up! We didn’t bother with breakfast the next day ... or lunch either, for that matter. I lost count of... well, counting wasn’t what we spent our time doing. He left at three in the afternoon. He was already half an hour late for the start of his shift. He should have been at the Bollocks by two-thirty. He did repeat performances for the rest of the fortnight and it was then that I decided I wasn’t going home. I moved in with Mick and we stayed together for most of the next four years ... and full-time until that stuck-up bitch came along again.

PM Stuck up?

Someone who thinks she is of a higher social class than others - usually applied to those who have no basis for such a claim - afectación, Sir. There was another long pause, a moment of disarray, no less. The clerks left their seats to confer with the bench. The council members flicked through papers, compared notes and fired whispered questions back at the clerks who then rushed around in search of answers that they clearly didn’t find. There was much head shaking.

MV That’s put the cat among the pigeons.

She was speaking directly to me, and not because I was the official translator. It was as if she was offering a commentary, conscious of her ability, perhaps power to influence the proceedings. I also felt something more calculated, as if she knew she could place a remark via me directly into the newspaper reports of the hearing. The bench did not hear her comment and I tried to ignore it. Maureen Voros merely laughed. I felt she was positively enjoying herself, and that she might even have planned things this way. She was the one to break the silence. She knew that Pérez Molino had not heard what she said.

MV El gato entre las palomas, Señor. It’s a saying. It means that a threat has been introduced to the proximity of an unsuspecting and unprotected victim.

Levantar un revuelo, I offered, but Pérez Molino seemed not to be interested.

PM Ms Jackson...

MV Voros.

PM Ms Voros, we had no idea... There was no reference in any of the police material to suggest...

MV …to suggest that Mick and I were lovers? That we had lived together for four years in the early nineteen-eighties? Well let me tell you something else that’s not in your records. From now on you can call me Mrs Watson, because Mick and I were married in nineteen-eighty-one. We’ve separated since then, lived apart, got back together and repeated the process, upside down, back to front and sideways. But we’ve been married since then and certainly never divorced. It’s against my religion, Señor Pérez. Officially, legally, I am Mrs Maureen Watson, and I have the certificate here in my bag to prove it, if you’re interested. It’s never been annulled, not in any court anywhere in the world. Mick Watson was my husband, so I ought to be the sole beneficiary of his estate. His English will is lodged with Buckfast and Fastbuck of Bromaton, and his Spanish will was drawn up by Señora del Mar.

All eyes suddenly turned towards María del Mar, who said nothing and did nothing. She continued to look down at the open file before her, whose contents she was annotating. She had clearly expected to be mentioned.

PM Ms Voros, we are aware...

MV ...if there was an estate, of course. But, true to form, just like he had been all his life, he was in debt. All Mick Watson ever had was debts. He hadn’t a penny to his name, hadn’t my husband.

There was yet another long pause. Maureen Voros had sent the hearing spinning into territory no-one ever imagined it would visit. Clerks consulted with the council. Clerks argued with clerks. There was more nodding of heads, and much holding out of hands expressing a mixture of disbelief and powerlessness. There was time for a couple of telephone calls. At one stage, both Pérez Molino and his chief clerk were on the phone at the same time. Maureen Voros chuckled and leaned towards me. She suggested that the two of them were talking to each other in order to shut everyone else out. But like all people on the phone, the two communicants shouted loud enough for all to hear. The session was in complete disarray. It was Maureen Voros who spoke up, this time quite deliberately loud enough for all three council members to hear.

MV The cat’s already had a couple of those pigeons on offer, if you ask me.

She used the word ‘them’ rather than ‘those’, of course. I take this opportunity to remind you, Joe, that all of her testimony was delivered in a strong Lancastrian accent. There may thus be some words that have been recorded differently or even wrongly by the stenographer when you compare the accounts.

PM Ms Voros...

MV Mrs Watson.

PM Ms Voros, when and where were you and Mr Watson married?

Maureen opened her bag, a small, thin discreet wallet on a string, the type that you can buy for two euros in the Chinese shops. She had held it close by her side throughout. Now she hauled it up in front of her, as if presenting it to the hearing as evidence. She theatrically withdrew a sheet of paper and unfolded it very much in her own time. It had the feel of a performance. It was an original legal document, printed in at least three colours. The paper size was obviously custom, unlike anything you would find in a stationer.

MV It says here that on the fifth day of March nineteen-eighty-one that Michael James Watson of Calle Lepanto, Benidorm, Spain, married Maureen Jackson of Quinney Crescent, Moss Side, Manchester, in the Coco de Mer Beach Hotel, Praslin, Seychelles. Have you ever seen a coco de mer, Señor? It’s the exact shape of a woman’s thighs and hips. I brought one back with me. I’ve still got it. It’s had pride of place above the bar in The Castle for years. At least it had until that cow chucked it out...

PM Why did you call yourself Jackson when you weren’t married? Perhaps you really were married to Mr Jackson? And in that case any subsequent marriage to Mr Watson would be null and void.

MV Like I said earlier, I’d taken his name. It was so I could send the bastard a copy to frame.

PM And the marriage to Michael Watson lasted just two years?

MV I told you a minute ago that Mick and I were married in nineteen-eighty-one and we had been together before that. We have never divorced. Mick and I were living as husband and wife until two weeks ago, when he disappeared.

PM Two weeks ago...? There was nothing on our records. Why was none of this information offered to the police?

MV No-one asked. No-one was the slightest bit interested in my side of the story. No-one ever was.

PM But you said the marriage only lasted two years...

MV What I said was that I left him, walked out after two years. I left in nineteen-eighty-three, because that bitch had reappeared in his life. He had spent more time with her than with me. And when she left again, so did I, despite the fact that he came begging.

PM That bitch?

Una perra, Sir, I said. But that would be a literal translation. Puta, whore, would be a more accurate way to express the same meaning. Pérez shook his head and muttered. The words, however, were delivered so everyone could ear. It seemed to be a device to redirect the focus, quietly, a way of reminding everyone there was a lot of ground that had not yet even been mentioned.

PM ...and we have a lot of those in this case. We haven’t even started to talk about that side of things. Perhaps it would be better to wait until another day...

He then continued, but in full voice, addressing the hearing again.

PM Thank you, Señora Quejada. What I wanted to do was establish the identity of this… this bitch.

MV That bitch, the woman that reappeared in Mick Watson’s world in nineteen-eighty-one was someone called Mrs Susan Cottee. That at least ought to have been obvious to everyone. She was already pushing forty. He left me for an older woman! Do you think I was going to stand for that? There are limits, Señor Pérez. What would you have done? Well, I left him and later pissed off back to England. But we were still married. I did come back.

PM Is that marriage certificate legal? Is it a full marriage certificate in the United Kingdom, for instance?

MV No such place, Señor Pérez. England is where I come from, and I took advice. The certificate is valid under any definition of marriage in England and I still have it. While I was away there wasn’t a day went by when I didn’t remind the bastard that I still had a contract with his name on it. And, a year later, when she ditched him - exactly as I said she would do - I was back on his doorstep. I told you earlier that it’s always worked in my favour to have that flat in my name. I’ve always had somewhere to go and, at other times, an income to keep my independence intact. It’s called having the upper hand.

Se impuso a su rival, Sir. And also, ella lo dominó en su relación. It was clear that a working relationship was developing between myself and Señor Pérez Molino. On this occasion, all he needed to do was glance in my direction. I understood immediately that he needed a translation of the idiom and I supplied it in a way that hardly even interrupted the flow of the proceedings. What was interesting was that the moment he understood my translation, his expression changed. He smiled. He smiled a long broad smile and turned to face Maureen Voros, looking her straight in the eye.

PM And it seems, Ms Voros, Mrs Jackson who wasn’t or even Mrs Watson that was and apparently still is, you have retained that upper hand. I declare today’s hearing closed. You will certainly be called before us again, Ms Voros, at a date yet to be determined. In the meantime, you will be required to make a statement to the Guardia Civil in relation to the other matter.

MV I had nothing to do with that.

PM The hearing is adjourned.