Dead Line

FIFTY-THREE

Mateo didn’t mind the climb; in fact he was quite enjoying it. It was difficult to get much real exercise working in the hotel and his short body was getting podgy. But walking up hills was no effort to someone who’d grown up, as he had, in a city on a hillside, where the simplest walk – to the shops, to a tapas bar to meet friends – always involved a steep climb. The gentle roll of these Lowland hills was nothing to him.

But something was spoiling his enjoyment. He was bothered about what he was doing out here in the hills. What was the purpose of his trek? His instructions had been clear: walk south along the A823 and then, where a small stream passes under the road, turn off along a footpath and climb west just as the hills begin, then turn down a track and head north back towards the hotel. The directions were precise: when he turned back along the track, he was to stop after a third of a mile in a little wood that he would reach just after a stream so small he could easily jump across it. The trees were nearly all spruce and fir, it had been explained, so he’d see the only ash tree, hidden by its taller neighbours, once he had entered the wood. It was thirty-five paces from the mound of stones at the entrance of the wood.

Collect the package you’ll find at the tree, she had said, and then walk with the sun directly on your left and you’ll come back to the edge of the hotel grounds. She would be waiting for him on the southern edge of the golf course, near the tenth tee. Unless he got lost, she’d added tauntingly, he’d be back in time for the lunch service.

When she’d first asked him, he had been unwilling and suspicious – drugs, he had thought. With all this security around, it just wasn’t worth it. But Jana’s flattery – I know you are a strong man of stamina – had been working on him from the start.

Not to mention the money. £500 she had promised to pay him. He didn’t believe her at first, but she’d shoved the roll of notes under his nose, riffling their edges with her thumb like a deck of cards. His father had died the previous year, and his mother was doing her best to bring up his two younger brothers back in Ronda. If he could send her even half this money, it would make a huge difference.

So he’d squashed his doubts, and as he marched up the hillside, avoiding the clumps of fading purple heather, pushing his way through the high grass, he was thinking of what the money would buy. He was glad he’d worn jeans and not shorts as he brushed against a thistle hidden in the grass. The wind was picking up, and when the low cloud blotted out the sun, it was cold. In Ronda he would be sweating from this walk; here he was glad of his pullover.

He had asked Jana what this strange mission was about, but she’d said from the start that there were two rules: he would get half the money up front, half when he’d completed the task; and he wasn’t allowed to ask any questions. He’d insisted on asking one, though – could he get into trouble with the law? Jana had been emphatic: No, only if he insisted on knowing more about it.

In ignorance lay innocence, then, and any qualms Mateo had still felt had been assuaged when Jana had put half the roll of bills into his shirt pocket. And by the kiss she’d given him (he could still feel her lips on his) and by her murmur that he could have ‘the rest’ – and he didn’t think for a moment she was talking about £250 – after he’d done this for her.

He saw the pile of stones as soon as he reached the crest of the hill, and quickened his pace until he was almost running downhill. The ground levelled off and he slowed down as he entered the small patch of woodland, peering now in the gloom as the sun disappeared behind the thick foliage of the trees. He stopped, waiting until his eyes had adjusted to the dark, and walked slowly, counting. Four, five… fifteen… twenty… thirty… and before he reached thirty-five he saw the ash tree. Smooth-barked with horizontal branches, bearing leaves rather than needles. As instructed, he looked up and there, on the second branch, perhaps a dozen feet above the forest floor, he saw the package. A long black case, like a thin sports bag, tied to the branch by a carefully spun cocoon of dark green rope. Clever, he thought. You had to look hard to spot it.

He took a deep breath, then lifted himself up in one great heave onto the lowest branch, balancing carefully. Reaching up and feeling with his fingers, he found the knot securing the rope around the case. He used both hands then, teetering for a moment until, managing to steady himself, he undid the knot and pulled the rope slowly as it unwound, slithering around the case until it dangled like a snake from the higher branch. He reached up and grabbed the case by its handle, sliding it carefully off the thick branch. It was so unexpectedly light that he almost lost his balance, but gathering it to him, he half slid, half climbed down onto the soft earth below.

When he emerged on the far side of the wood clutching his prize, he was half blinded by the rising sun to his left, and he stopped to wait for a moment until his eyes had readjusted. But oddly they didn’t, and as he blinked, he realised that there was another source of light. It was then he heard the helicopter, as it suddenly appeared over the next hill, low and hovering, with a soldier in its open side door swivelling a mounted gun barrel in his direction and a spotlight shining from its undercarriage with amazing intensity.

Instinctively he turned away from the light and it was then he saw the soldiers – a dozen or more, crouched down along the edge of the wood, their weapons pointing towards him. They were close – maybe a hundred feet away – and coming closer fast, so he didn’t even think of running, but raised his hands high in the air, letting the case fall onto the pocket of grass, and wondering if Jana had been betrayed as well.