A Coffin For Two

6

Until I eyeballed a skull at close quarters, I used to think that there was nothing as savage as the grin of a monkfish, cooked whole and taken straight from the oven.

Prim had returned from the peixateria — sounds so much more interesting than fishmonger, doesn’t it — beside the roundabout on the way into L’Escala, with two of the sublimely ugly fish, gutted but otherwise intact. We had cooked them whole, as we had seen it down in Meson del Conde, the restaurant on the lower side of the square, in a rich tomato and onion sauce, with sliced potatoes boiling in the juice.

Prim’s nursing experience came into play as she took them off the bone. All I could do was admire her skill, and stare back at the fish as they looked at me reproachfully, their huge mouths stretched in wicked smiles.

After that, we had an early night. Prim, unwakeable by an earthquake, fell into her usual depth of sleep while I dozed fitfully, dreaming occasionally of my dad, dressed as a pirate for Hallowe‘en, my nephew Jonathan, in a suit and speaking into a mobile phone, and Jan sitting cross-legged on the harbour wall at Anstruther, gazing out to sea through my big binoculars, with the wind ruffling her hair. As I looked at her, she lowered the glasses and turned towards me. ‘I know, Oz,’ she said. ‘See you.’ Then she went all fuzzy and turned, somehow, into Prim.

I was awake a couple of minutes before 2:55 a.m., the time at which I had set the alarm to ring. I cancelled it, slipped out of bed without waking Primavera — as if there was a chance — then put on my oldest jeans, sweatshirt and trainers, and went outside.

This time, Miguel was waiting for me out of sight, against the wall of the Casa Forestals. I didn’t see him at first, not until he stepped from out of the shadows, scaring me half to death. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that there was a full moon and a cloudless sky. Luckily it had occurred to Miguel. He had even catered for it. He beckoned me over to where the skeletons lay. As I stepped towards him I could see that he had set up a makeshift screen, a rough wooden framework covered with dark cloth. Behind it, we were screened completely from any insomniacs in the village.

The moon cast some light on the grave, but Miguel had added to it by wedging his torch between two rocks and directing its beam on to the coffin. ‘We have to move more earth, then lift the lid,’ he said. He handed me a funny sort of tool, a cross between a pickaxe and a shovel, with a short handle. Clearing the earth away didn’t take long, but raising the stone lid was a different matter. Since its original disturbance, soil had worked its way between the lid and base and had been turned by moisture into a form of cement. It took us twenty minutes of muffled chipping and levering with the sharp end of our implements before we could get the thing to budge. At last we swung it up and over, lowering it gently to avoid any chance of it breaking. The beam now shone full into the open coffin, reflecting on the white of the younger skull, and on the replica of my Dad’s Giorgio watch.

‘Okay, Miguel,’ I whispered. ‘That was the easy part. Now tell me, how the hell are we going to shift this poor bugger without him turning into a jigsaw puzzle?’

He looked at me, puzzled himself for a second until he caught on. Then he smiled, looking macabre in the torch light. I shuddered. Miguel has long canine teeth. I glanced up at the moon and looked furtively at him for signs of sprouting hair, or fingers turning into claws. ‘Like this,’ he said, and produced a bolt of black cloth, just like the one from which our screen was made.

Carefully, he spread it inside the coffin, beside the ragged skeleton. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we take care, and we roll him over into the sheet. See?’

I did as I was told. Together, very delicately, we reached behind and under the body, and very slowly, rolled it over into the waiting black shroud.

It worked. Almost. The skeleton moved in one piece. The skull stayed where it was, grinning at us as wickedly as one of those bloody monkfish. That almost did me in. Just for a second, I thought that the fish was going to make a return appearance. But I mastered the rising sensation at the back of my throat, as Miguel reached down and pulled the skull into the sheet, then wrapped it fully round the body.

We lifted it out, holding either end taut like a sack, and carried it down to the Minana pick-up. A long crate lay in the back. ‘In there,’ said Miguel. Very gently we laid our pal in his new, temporary, coffin.

Carefully, we smoothed out the marks where he had laid within the stone box, checking to make sure that not as much as a toenail was left behind. We replaced the lid, ajar like Jordi had found it, and putting some of the earth which he had removed back inside for luck. Then we dismantled our screen and smoothed out our footprints.

‘Come.’ Miguel signalled me to follow. He was in full command now, as we climbed into the Toyota truck. He allowed it to run down the slope, away from the village before switching on the engine and engaging gear. We drove quietly through the wooded track, then out on to the road and away from the village.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘Not far, but far enough. To the woods behind L’Escala.’

The journey took less than five minutes. He headed towards the town, but instead of going in, swung round past the hypermarket and on, up towards an area called Riells de D’Alt, where Prim and I had never ventured. He simply drove until the road ran out, then a bit further, into the edge of a wood, running the truck between the first few trees so that it was out of sight. Eventually he drew to a halt and reached for the torch.

He jumped out of the car, surprisingly nimbly and shone the torch on a deep ditch at the edge of the tree-line. It might have been intended for drainage, or as a firebreak, or both. ‘Over there,’ he said. Following his lead, I helped him unload the crate from the back of the truck and carry it across to the long trench. Together we lifted out the black sheet, and its contents, then lowered it into its new resting place.

‘Okay,’ said a coolly efficient Miguel I had not known before that night. ‘Now pull.’ Together we tugged the shroud, and the skeleton rolled out. We arranged the bones carefully, to avoid any suspicions that the body might have been moved.

‘That’s good enough. Now, some wood.’ He plunged back into the wood, with me on his tail. As quickly as we could we gathered fallen branches and other debris and placed them over the bones in a makeshift cover.

At last, Miguel stood up and beamed: a sardonic smile of satisfaction. ‘There, Oz. Now they can find the poor man, any time they like. And tomorrow before the men from the town hall came to work, I will call the mayor and tell him that my son has found a body from the Romans. All will be as it should.’

He looked at me. ‘We work hard. You want to go for a drink now.’ As I looked at him in astonishment he reached behind the driver’s seat of the truck and produced a flask and two clean glasses. In the moonlight he filled each with strong, smooth new red wine. We looked east as we drank, at the first intimation of the new day, away out on the edge of the sea.

We finished the flask in half an hour. Miguel spent the time telling me of his national service. He had served his time in the Spanish navy. Towards the end, his ship had been ordered to North Africa, to help in rescue and recovery following a Moroccan earthquake.

‘After that, my friend, tonight’s work was, as you might say, a slice of cake.’ He threw the last drops of his wine on the ground, as if to bless the poor sod we had just reburied.

‘Come, or the Senora Prim and the Senora Maria will think we went to the place beside the go-karts.’

‘What the hell is the place beside the go-karts?’

His smile lit up the dying night. ‘Ah, Senor Oz! I see there are things you still have to learn about L’Escala!’