The Armada Legacy

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The address on the ripped-out page from Forsyte’s book was in the province of Granada, Andalucía, in the deep south of Spain. When Ben checked out the location, he could see Butler had been right about Juan Fernando Cabeza being reclusive. The historian had chosen a home high up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, some way east of Granada City and just about as remote as anywhere in Europe. His old university still had him listed on their website as a former faculty member, offering a blurb about his various academic achievements, accolades and publications. Cabeza’s birth date was 1966. The image of him on the site showed a craggy-faced man with a serious expression and unusually fair hair and pale eyes for a Spaniard. Ben committed the face to memory.

After a few hours’ snatched sleep in the car, he boarded the earliest possible flight from Gatwick to Málaga, the airport nearest his destination. Another two hours later he was touching down on Spanish soil, dragging his heels impatiently through customs and hiring a Volkswagen Touareg four-wheel drive. His head was aching badly and he’d barely eaten a thing for two days, but a powerful, furious inner force kept driving him on.

Ten-eighteen, local time. Brooke had now been missing for over fifty-nine hours.

Ben’s last time in Spain had been a brief but eventful visit to Salamanca the previous September, when the weather had been hot and sultry. This time round, the dashboard thermometer read minus four and plummeted down two degrees further as he bypassed Granada in the Sierra Nevada foothills, 130 kilometres east of Málaga, and wound his way up and up into the mountains.

The scant traffic thinned out to almost zero the higher the road climbed, and he saw nothing for miles and miles except endless snowy forests of oak and pine. He had to stop frequently to check his bearings. Once he almost collided with a curly-horned mountain goat that burst out from the roadside shrubbery and darted across his path. On and on the road led him, often buried deep in snow and almost impassable in places, climbing ever more steeply until he could see the snowy mountain peaks rearing up above the clouds like something out of a dreamscape.

It was early afternoon by the time Ben caught his first glimpse of the house through the trees, checked his map again and knew he’d come to the right place. By then the road had dwindled into a narrow track that was virtually invisible under a blanket of white. If any other vehicles had made it up here recently, all trace of their passing had been covered in the last snowfall. Judging by the heavy sky, another was due before long.

The final hundred or so yards to the house were blocked by a fallen pine trunk that looked as if it must have come down in a recent winter storm, and drifts too deep even for the 4x4 to negotiate. Ben got out and began trudging through the crisp snow, his legs sinking in knee-high. The cold air was stunning after the warmth of the car. Condensation billowed from his mouth. He dug his hands deep in his jacket pockets.

He paused at the fallen tree to brush away the clumps of snow from his jeans and observe the house. It was a long, low building except for the round, ivy-clad, two-storey tower that dominated one wing. The stonework was as white as the snow that had drifted high up against the foot of the walls. Thick bushes and spreading pine trees had grown in close all around. He could see no sign of a vehicle, but guessed that Cabeza’s car or truck must be parked behind the wooden doors of the garage built into the ground floor of the house. Straining an ear over the constant whistle of the cold, biting wind, he was sure he could hear faint music coming from somewhere inside. Someone was at home.

He could hear the music more clearly as he approached the foot of the building. It sounded like Beethoven, being played loudly from one of the rooms within the round tower.

The front entrance to the house was at first-floor level, on a raised terrace skirted by a wrought-iron railing. Ben climbed the slippery steps and tinkled the little bell that hung from an ornate bracket by the door. It didn’t surprise him when there was no response. The Beethoven was blaring loudly enough from inside to drown out anything short of a shotgun blast. Maybe Cabeza was deaf, he thought. He tried the door and found it unlocked. Creaking it open a few inches, he peered in and could see the woody interior of a living room with exposed beams and a tall stone fireplace.

‘Hello?’ he called out in Spanish. ‘Anyone here?’

Still no sign of life except for the music. Ben kicked the snow from his boots and stepped inside the house. He looked around him. The scent of freshly-brewed coffee drew his eye to an open doorway to his right, and the kitchen beyond. He walked in and touched the coffee pot by the stove. It was warm, and so was the half-finished cup sitting on the table next to an open newspaper.

The music was still playing in the background. Ben made his way back through the living room towards the sound. Through another door was a hallway that led to the first floor of the tower, a round library completely encircled with wooden bookcases crammed with thousands of volumes and periodicals. Next to a little reading table was an iron spiral staircase leading upwards to a neat circular hole in the ceiling. Ben climbed the steps and found himself emerging into a hallway on the tower’s top floor with a door on either side of him.

The music was coming from the left hand door. Ben knocked lightly, then more firmly. ‘Hello? Professor Cabeza?’ He waited for a reply, but all he could hear were the strains of Beethoven from behind the glossy wood. If Cabeza was inside the room, he didn’t want to scare the man by walking in unannounced – but he couldn’t wait out in the hall forever, either. He gently opened the door and stepped inside.

The semicircular room was bright and spacious, lit from above by a large skylight and from the east and west by a sweeping, curved expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out through the pine trees over the snowy forest and the peaks in the distance. Historical prints hung on the walls. More books and papers lay in heaps and piles everywhere: on the floor, on a side table and among the clutter of the large desk by the window. But what Ben was looking at was the high-backed leather chair facing away from him, and the man he could see sitting in it.

All that was visible of the chair’s occupant were the top of his head and his zip-up tan leather ankle boots. His fair hair was unkempt. He was completely still and looked from behind as if he were gazing dreamily out of the window, so taken up with the soaring orchestral music that he was oblivious of anything else going on around him.

‘Professor Cabeza?’ Ben said.

No response.

‘Are you Juan Fernando Cabeza?’ he asked again, more loudly. Still nothing.

The Beethoven was blaring from a powerful little stereo system in a cabinet. Ben had had enough of it. He stepped across and turned the music abruptly off.

Silence flooded the room like cold water. Ben looked back across at the leather chair, expecting Cabeza to react. What that reaction would be, he’d no idea – outrage, indignation, terror, maybe; as long as the guy didn’t keel over with sudden heart failure, Ben was sure he could get him talking with more or less gentle persuasion and find out whether coming all this way was going to prove a wild goose chase or bring him any closer to finding Brooke.

But Cabeza didn’t so much as twitch at the sudden stopping of the music. Was he asleep? Comatose from drink or drugs? Dead? Ben edged closer, moving round the chair so that he could see the tip of the man’s left shoulder and his legs as well as the top of his head. He was wearing a beige fleece jacket and brown corduroys.

Ben was about to reach out and shake the back of the chair when something moved on Cabeza’s desk.

It was only a minute movement, and Ben only registered it for a tiny fraction of a second before he realised what it was and how he needed to respond to it.

The desk lamp was a metal Anglepoise, chrome-plated to a mirror finish. What Ben had seen was a reflection in the lampshade.

The reflection of something behind him, moving fast towards him.

The reflection of a man with a gun.