The Marks of Cain

6

David booked himself into a hotel on the outskirts of Elizondo, to wait for Amy's email to Jose to do the job. The Hotel Gernika was nothing special. It had a small swimming pool, a modest breakfast bar, and lots of leathery old French guests on cycling holidays wearing alarmingly tight Lycra shorts. But that was fine by David.

With his money, his unaccustomed wealth, he could have booked into the best hotel in Navarre — but it didn't seem right. He wanted to be inconspicuous. Anonymous and unnoticed: just another tourist in a nice but mediocre hotel. So he grabbed his bags and booked himself in, and spent the rest of the day staring from his humble balcony, gazing out at the mountains. The cirques and summits seemed to shimmer, knowingly, exulting in their own remoteness.

It was a hot and dusty day. In the evening he decided on a swim: he walked into the hotel gardens and stripped to his shorts, and dived in the blue inviting water of the pool. He gasped as he surfaced, the water was freezing, straight from the mountains, unheated.

His whole body was tingling, his heart was thumping, it was a perfect metaphor for his situation. Three weeks ago he was a bored and listless commuter, reading free newspapers on the train, drinking machine coffee at work, doing the daily rounds of nothingness. As soon as he arrived in the Basque Country he had plunged right into it, straight into this mystery and strangeness and violence; and yet it felt good. Shocking but good; bracing but invigorating. Like diving into a pool of freezing mountain water. Making his body tingle.

I am alive.

The next day Amy called him: she'd had an idea. She reckoned that he should maybe publish his story, to help with the puzzle. Amy said she knew a local journalist who was willing to write it up; her way of thinking was that the more people who knew the questions, the better the chance they might locate some of the answers.

David agreed to the idea, with only the faintest sense of reluctance.

They met again in the journalist's spare white flat; the young, dark-haired writer, Zara Garcia, banged out the article on a laptop. The piece appeared in a Spanish newspaper just half-a-day later. It was immediately picked up and translated by some English language newsfeeds.

When David finally read the published story, on his own laptop, sitting with Amy in a little wifi cafe near the main plaza of Elizondo, he felt anxiety as well as excitement. The article was headlined 'Bizarre Bequest Leads to Million Dollar Basque Mystery'.

It had a photo taken by Zara of David holding up the map; the newspaper offered an email address where people could get in touch with David, if they had any ideas that might help.

The journalist had left out the connection with Jose Garovillo: she'd explained that it was too incendiary and provocative in the political climate. Reading the article, David decided this omission had definitely been a good idea; he already felt exposed enough by the newspaper piece. What if Miguel read it?

He shut the laptop and looked at Amy, in her purple denim jacket and her elegantly slender jeans. She looked back at him, silent, and blue eyed; and as she did, he felt the oddness of their situation — like an inexplicable shiver on a very warm day. Already they were sort-of friends: forced together by that horrible and frightening scene in the Bar Bilbo. And yet they were not friends; they were still total strangers. It was dissonant.

Or maybe he was just unnerved by the noise in the bar. The slap and laughter of kids playing pelota, the peculiar Basque sport, in the square outside, was very audible. Children were thwapping the hard little pelota ball against a high wall. The noise was repetitive and intense. She glanced his way.

'Shall we go somewhere else?'

'If you have time.'

'Academic holiday. And I'd like to help, while my students are off shooting the police.' She smiled at his alarmed response. 'Hey. That was a joke. Where do you want to go?'

'I want to start looking at the churches. On my map…'

'OK.'

'But first…I'd like to go somewhere I can have a proper drink.' He looked at her for a long moment, then he confessed: he was still feeling the nerves, the fear, the aftereffects of Miguel's attack.

'Let's go for a glass and talk,' she said.

A few minutes' driving brought them to a hushed little village; the sign said Irurita. Old men sat snoozing under berets, outside cafes. Parking the car by the village church they walked to one of the cafes; they sat under a parasol. The clear mountain air was refreshing, the sun was warm. Amy ordered some olives and a bottle of the chilled local white wine that she called txacolli.

The waitress served them at their shaded table with a nimble curtsey.

Amy spoke:

'You haven't asked me the most obvious question of all.'

He demurred; her expression was serious.

'You ought to know this…if I am going to introduce you to Jose.'

He drank some of his cold fresh wine, and nodded. 'OK. If you insist. Why did Miguel attack you? He came out of nowhere, then…assaulted you. Why?'

Her answer was fluent:

'He hates me.'

'Why?'

She pressed her hands together, as if praying. 'When I first came to the Basque Country I was…as I said, very interested in ETA. The cause of independence. I thought it was a laudable ambition, for an ancient people. I even sympathized with the terrorists. For a while. For a few months.'

'And…'

'Then I met Jose. The great Jose Garovillo. We became very good friends, he showed me where to buy the best pintxos in Bizkaia. He told me everything. He told me he had renounced violence, after the fall of Franco. He said terrorism was a cul de sac for the Basque people, within a democratic Spain.'

'But his son — '

'Disagreed. Obviously.' She gazed straight at David. 'But then Jose got me a job, teaching English at the university. And you see…a lot of the kids who come into my class are very radical, from the backstreets of Vittoria and Bilbao, ready to die for ETA. The girls are even more fierce than the boys. Killers in miniskirts.'

Her lips were pink and wet from the txacolli. 'I see it as my task to maybe steer them away from ETA, from violence, and the self-destruction of terrorism. So I teach them the literature of revolution: Orwell on the Civil War, Yeats on the Irish rebellion. I try to teach them the tragedy as well as the romance of a violent nationalist struggle.'

'And that's why Miguel hates you? He thinks you are working against ETA.'

'Yes. I knew he'd been abroad for a while, though I did hear a rumour he was back. But I thought it was safe to go see my friends in the Bilbo. But he must have been in the bar already. Hanging out in one of the back rooms, with his ETA comrades…'

'Then he heard the row.'

'Yes. And he walked out. Saw me. With you.' She grimaced. 'And did his favourite thing.'

The explanation was good, if not perfect. David still felt the echo of an unexplained space, a dark blur on the image. What else was she not telling him? What about the scar on her scalp?

He stopped thinking as the waitress placed some olives on their table.

'Gracias,' he said. The girl nodded and bobbed and replied in that thick guttural Spanish accent: kakatazjaka…Then she waved to a friend across the cobbled plaza, and made her way back to the bar.

'You know it's funny,' said David, half turning to Amy. 'I've not heard any Basque being spoken. Not yet.'

'Sorry?'

'I've been in the Basque Country for two days. I've seen it written on signs everywhere. But not heard anyone speaking it.'

She gazed at him from under her blonde fringe — as if he was retarded.

'That girl spoke Basque just then.'

'…She did?'

'Yep.'

Amy's denim jacket was off; David noticed the golden hairs on her suntanned arms as she reached again for her glass of wine.

'And all the guys in Lesaka,' she said, tilting her glass. 'They were all speaking Basque. Hence their anger when you tried talking Spanish.'

David cocked an ear, listening to the chatter of the waitress. Kazakatchazaka.

Amy was right. This was surely Basque. And yet it sounded like they were talking a very bizarre Spanish. And he'd been hearing it all along without realizing.

'Don't worry,' she said, 'it took me a while, when I first came here, to realize I was surrounded by Basque speakers. I just thought they had over-the-top Spanish accents.' She looked beyond him — at the whitewashed church walls. 'I think it's because Basque is so strange, the ear and the mind can't entirely comprehend what's being heard.'

'Have you learned any?'

'I've tried, of course! But it's just impossible, weird clauses, unique syntax.' She lifted her chin. 'Here's an example of how mad Basque is. What's the first phrase you learn in any foreign language?'

'"Do you speak English?"'

'Comedy genius. What else?'

'…"Can I have a beer?"'

'Exactly. Une biere s'il vous plait. Ein bier bitte.'

'So how do you say "Can I have a beer" — in Basque?'

Amy looked at him.

'Garagardoa nahi nuke.'

They sat there in the sun, in tense but companionable silence. And then a gust of wind rippled the parasol. David looked left: clouds were scudding in from the west, thicker clouds were rolling down the nearest Pyrenean slope, like a white sheepskin coat slowly falling from the shoulders.

'OK,' said David. 'How do we know Miguel isn't going to just turn up here, and follow you? And hurt you. I don't get it. You seem calm. Fairly calm anyway.'

'He was drunk. He's only ever hit me once before.'

'He's done it before?'

She blushed. Then she quickly added: 'He usually hangs out in Bilbao or Bayonne — with the other ETA leaders. He rarely comes to Navarre, might get seen. We were just very very unlucky. And anyhow I'm not going to let that bastard chase me away.'

Her final words were defiant: the slender nose uptilted, eyes wide and angry.

David saw the conviction and the sense in her statement; but he still felt queasy and tense. Just sitting here in the autumn breeze. Doing nothing.

'OK. Let's go and see the churches on my map.'

Amy nodded, and rose; when they climbed in the car the first flickers of drizzle were spitting on the windscreen.

'How quickly it changes. In the autumn.'

The rain was a majorette's drum-roll on the car roof. David reached in the glovebox and took out the precious paper; carefully unfolding the leaves, he showed her the map that had brought him halfway round the world.

He noticed her fingernails were bitten, as she pointed at the asterisks.

'Here. Arizkun.'

'You know it?'

'I know of it. One of the most traditional Basque villages. Way up in the mountains.' She looked squarely at David. 'I can show you.'

David reversed the car. He followed Amy's lucid directions: towards France and the frontier, and the louring mountains. Towards the Land Beyond.

The villages thinned as they raced uphill. Ghosts of fog were floating over the steeply sloping fields, melancholy streamers of mist, like the pennants of a departing and spectral army.

'We're right near the border…' she said. 'Smugglers used to come over here. And rebels. Witches. Terrorists.'

'So which way?'

'There.'

Amy was indicating a tiny winding turn off — with a sign above it, just perceptible through the mist.

The road to Arizkun was the narrowest yet: high mountain hedges with great rock boulders hemmed them in, like bigger people trying to bully them into a corner. More mountain peaks stretched away to the west, a recession of summits in the mist.

'On a clear day you can see right into France,' said Amy.

'Can barely see the damn road.'

They were entering a tiny and very Basque village square. It had the usual Basque pelota court, several terraces of medieval stone houses, and a bigger stone mansion, adorned with a sculpted coat of arms. A wyvern danced across the damp heraldic stone: a dragon with a vicious coiling tail, and feminine claws.

The village was desolately empty. They parked by the mansion, which was spray-painted with ETA graffiti.

Eusak Presoak, Eusak Herrira.

Beneath this slogan was an even larger slash of graffiti. Written in the traditional jagged and ancient Basque script, the word was unmistakable.

Otsoko.

Next to the word was a black stencil of a wolf's head.

The Wolf.

Amy was standing next to David, looking at the graffito.

'Some of the Basque kids worship him…' she said.

'Why?'

'Cause he's so perfectly ruthless. A brilliant killer…who comes and goes. Who never gets caught.'

She was visibly shivering. She added:

'And they admire the cruelty. Of course.'

'Miguel is…especially cruel?'

'Rhapsodically. Voluptuously. Poetically. The Spanish torture Basque radicals, but Miguel tortures them right back. He frightens the fuck out of the Spanish police. Even the anti terrorists.'

Amy leaned to look at the graffito. David asked:

'What kind of tortures?'

Her fringe of blonde hair was dewed with water in the mist. 'He buried one Guardia Civil guy in quicklime.'

'To destroy the evidence?'

'No no no. Miguel buried the man alive, in quicklime, up to his neck. Basically he dissolved him. Alive.'

Abruptly, she walked on. David jogged after her, together they walked down a damp stony path, between two of the older Basque houses. David looked left and right. Brown and thorny sunflowers decorated the damp wooden doors, hammered fiercely to the planks. Some of the wayside thistles had been made into man shapes. Manikins made out of thistles.

The silence of the village was unnerving. As they paced through the clinging mist, the echo of their footsteps was the only noise.

'Where the hell is everyone?'

'Killed. Died. America.'

They were at the end of the lane. The houses had dwindled, and they were surrounded by rocks and thickets. Somewhere out there was France, and the ocean — and cities and trains and airports.

Somewhere.

Abruptly, a church appeared through the mist. Grey-stoned and very old, and perched above a ravine which was flooded with fog. The windows were gaunt, the location austere.

'Not exactly welcoming. The house of God?'

Amy pushed at a rusty iron gate. 'The churches are often like this. They used to build them on older sites, pagan sites. For the ambience, maybe.'

David paused, perplexed. Odd circular stones, like circles balanced on squares, were set along the path to the church door. The stones were marked with lauburus — the mysterious and aethereal swastika. David had never seen circular gravestones before.

'Let's try inside,' he said.

They walked down the slippery cobbled path to the humble wooden church door. It was black, old, wet — and locked.

'Damn.'

Amy walked left, around the side of the church — shrouding herself with mist. David followed. There was a second, even smaller door. She twisted the rusty handle; it opened. David felt the lick of moisture on his neck; it was cold now, as well as gloomy. He wanted to get inside.

But the interior of the church was as unalluring as the exterior. Dank and shadowy, with unpainted wooden galleries of seating. The reek of rotten flower-water was intense; five stained glass windows filtered the chill and foggy daylight.

'Curious,' said Amy, pointing up. One of the stained glass windows showed a large bull, a burning tree, and a white Basque house. Then she elaborated, still pointing at the window.

'The Basques are very devout, very Catholic. But they were pagan until the tenth century, and they keep a lot of their pre-Christian imagery. Like that. That house — there — ' she gestured to the main window '- that's the exte, the family house, the sacred cornerstone of heathen Basque culture. The souls of the Basque dead are said to return to a Basque house, through subterranean passages…'

David stared. The stained glass tree was burning in the cold glass light.

'And the woman? In the other window.'

'That's Mari, the lady of the witches.'

'The…'

'Goddess of the witches. The Basque witches. We do not exist, yes we do exist, we are fourteen thousand strong.' She looked at him, her eyes blue and icy in the hanging light. 'That was their famous — or infamous — saying. We do not exist, yes we do exist, we are fourteen thousand strong.'

Her words were visible wraiths in the chill; her expression was obscure. David had a strong desire to get out; he didn't know what he wanted to do. So he made for the little door, and exited with relief into the hazy daylight. Amy followed him, smiling, and then immediately headed left. Away from the path, disappearing behind the stage curtains of fog.

'Amy?'

Silence. He said again:

'Amy?'

Silence. Then:

'Here. What's this? David.'

He squinted, and saw her: a vague shape in the misty graveyard: female and slender, and elusive. David quickly stepped across.

'Look,' she said. 'Another graveyard…With derelict graves.'

She was right. There was a secondary cemetery, divided from the main churchyard by a low stone wall. This cemetery was much more neglected. A crude statue of an angel had fallen onto the soggy grass; and a brown cigarette had been contemptuously stubbed out — in the angel's eye. Circular gravestones surrounded the toppled angel.

A noise distracted them. David turned. Emerging from the mist was an old woman. Her face was dark. She was dressed in a long black skirt and a ragged blue jumper, over which she was wearing a T-shirt imprinted with Disney characters; Wall-E, The Lion King, Pocahontas.

The woman was also deformed. She had a goitre the size of a grapefruit: a huge tumorous growth bulging out of her neck, like a shot putter holding the shot under his chin, getting ready to throw.

The crone spoke. 'Ggghhhchchc,' she said. She was pointing at them, her goitre was lividly bulging as she gabbled, her face vividly angry. She looked like a toad, croaking.

'Graktschakk.' She pointed at them with a long finger, and then at the neglected graveyard.

'What? What is it?' David's heart was pounding — foolishly. This was just an old woman, a sad, deformed old woman. And yet he was feeling a serious fear, a palpable and inexplicable alarm. He turned. 'Amy — what is she saying?'

'I think it's Basque. She's saying…shit people,' Amy whispered, backing awkwardly away.

'Sorry?'

'She says we are shit people. Shit people. I've no idea why.'

The woman stared. And croaked some more. It was almost like she was laughing.

'Amy. Shall we get the hell out?'

'Please.'

They scurried up the path, David tried not to look at the woman's enormous goitre as he passed; but then he turned and looked at her goitre. She was still pointing at them, like someone accusing, or denouncing, or laughing.

They were almost running now; David stuffed the map in his pocket as they escaped.

The sense of relief when they made the car was profound — and preposterous. David pressed the locks and turned the engine and spun the wheel — reversing at speed. They rumbled over the cobbles, past the stencil of Otsoko — the silently grinning black wolf's head.

Amy's mobile phone bleeped as they crested a hill: the telecom signal returning.

'It's Jose Garovillo. It's Jose.'

'So.' His excitement was real; his fear was repressed. 'What's his response?'

She looked down, reading her message. 'He says…he is willing to meet you. Tomorrow.' She shook her head. 'But…this is a little odd…there's something else.'

'What?'

'He says he knows why you are here.'