‘You can’t, so avoid them all. There’s a track, opposite the football ground; if you follow that it will take you all the way to Sobrestany. From there you can get to Ulla, and on to Verges; you’ll be in the clear by then.’ He handed me the bag. I took a look inside, found all the things he had mentioned, plus a couple of bottles of water and what looked like sandwiches, wrapped in silver foil. ‘On your way now. I’ll take your bike back to L’Escala and hide it in my garage. Call me on the mobile when you get to Granada; the unlock code is four zeroes and the number of mine is in the memory of yours. But remember, call only me, no one else. You can’t even send Tom a text or you’ll risk being traced. That’ll be the hardest part, I know, but you have to deal with it.’
I retrieved my mountain bike from the summer house, we walked to the back gate, and stepped outside. The street was deserted and the only vehicle in it was a small, battered four-by-four; looking at it I realised that it would take another act of faith to accept that it could get me to Granada.
‘The key’s in the ignition,’ Gerard told me. He took my hand, put it to his lips and kissed it. ‘God bless you,’ he whispered. ‘It may be that when your troubles are over, our troubles will begin.’
Thirty-three
I found the track that Gerard had described; it was rough and even in the rattletrap I was driving I had to go cautiously in the dark, for you can find potholes on those dirt roads that an elephant could hide in. It took me to the hamlet they call Sobrestany, though, and from there I was able to plot my way out of the area without tripping over any junctions at which the police were likely to be waiting.
It took me almost an hour to reach the trunk road south, but when I did, it was quiet and I was able to pick up some speed. I followed it as far as Girona Airport, where I switched to the trunk road that goes to Vic.
Gerard’s route had been well planned. It took me inland, then south, through Manresa and beyond, skirting Llieda. For some reason I felt safer once I knew I was out of Catalunya, and off the patch of the Mossos d’Esquadra. I drove on through the night, but it’s a thousand kilometres from L’Escala to Granada and eventually there came a time when I couldn’t go any further. Fuel was becoming an issue too. I’d topped up once already in a small town garage but the petrol gauge wasn’t the most accurate I’d ever seen.
I stopped in a parking area near a place called Vilastar and put my head down for a couple of hours. Once I judged that the tiny town would be properly awake, I found a gasolinera, filled up the tank, and then went exploring until I came across a small hostel, where I took a room. I almost dropped myself in it by speaking Catalan as I checked in, but remembered where I was at the last minute and switched to my most polished Castellano, explaining the odd time of my arrival by saying that my car had broken down further on up the road and it had taken me the best part of the night to get moving again. The owner bought that story without question, and showed me to a room with a comfortable bed and a nice en-suite shower room, for which I paid cash, in advance. I spent most of the day asleep, until early evening, when I judged it safe to chance a meal in the small restaurant. I had decided that I was going to travel during the hours of darkness, and so just after nine, I left my key on the counter and got back on the road.
I’d been worried that I might find the night humidity a problem the further south I went, but I hadn’t reckoned for the fact that much of the route was high above sea level. As it happened, the Suzuki’s heating system was well knackered, so keeping warm was my main difficulty. Eventually I decided to grin and bear it, letting the cold help me by keeping me focused. All the same, I was happy when the sun rose on that Sunday morning, and happier still when the road grew wider, almost to autopista standard, and the signs told me that I was almost in Granada.
I stopped for coffee and a croissant in a roadhouse, having first checked that there were no television cameras in evidence. The last thing I wanted was to have driven all that way only to be fingered by CCTV. As I ate, I dug out the address that Gerard had written down for me and found it on his street map. As he’d said, it was in the heart of an area called the Albacin, on the other side of a river from the Alhambra.
The city was bigger than I had expected, and the traffic much heavier. I was also surprised by its modernity; I’d been expecting it to be ancient, and heavily Moorish, but what I found as I entered were shopping centres, a science park and a conference centre, all very twenty-first century. Eventually, though, I found myself on something called the Grand Via de Colon. . for an Italian, Columbus gets a lot of exposure in Spain. . and as I reached its end, and turned into the Street of the Catholic Kings, I had my first real view of the Alhambra and of the way in which it dominates the city, perched on its great rock.
I followed Gerard’s instructions to the letter, even though they took me along a crazy wee road running alongside the river, about a car and a half wide, where I had to take turns with tourist pedestrians for much of the way. Eventually it opened out on to something called the Paseo de los Tristes, ‘the passageway of the sad’. It looked pretty cheerful to me, with bars and restaurants on my left as I drove along, serving tables on the other side of the street, all of them with an unobstructed view of the Alhambra.
I turned left at the end, then took another left at the top of a steep hill, then a right, then a left until I began to feel dizzy, and for the first time, lost. The road narrowed all the time, but I kept an eye out for the sign that marked the end of the journey, and finally, there it was, rising up ahead of me. . Cuesta de los Cabras, Hill of the Goats, and rarely was a road better named.
It was a dead end, and Gerard’s house was almost at the end; stone built and painted white, with a tiled roof. There was nothing to say that I couldn’t park there, and so I did. I gave the red-hot bonnet of the Suzuki a pat of thanks as I climbed out and dug the key out of the bag.
The place was dark as I stepped inside. There was no entrance hall; I found myself in a big room; it was mercifully cool, for the shutters were closed. I gave myself time to let my eyes adjust, until I could see where everything was; heavy wooden table with four chairs to my left, with two doors beyond, two central heating radiators (Gerard had told me that it gets cold in Granada in the winter), two chairs to my right on either side of a fireplace, big plasma television in the corner. . not that rustic then. . and patio doors facing me, locked from the inside. I sniffed; for an unoccupied house the place smelled fresh. I supposed that he must employ a housekeeper, or perhaps his aunt was still alive and looked in on the place.
I went across to the twin doors, turned the key in the lock and opened them. The shutters were secured by small bolts top and bottom. I unfastened them, pushed them open, and stepped outside on to a tiled terrace. . to find myself staring directly across at the full width of the Alhambra Palace, a huge structure that seemed to go on and on. It was the first time I’d been able to take a proper look at it. I gasped; I’d never seen anything quite like it.
Once I’d stopped gawping I looked around. A flight of steps led down to a garden area. I frowned as I saw it, and imagined Gerard, enraged, and beating the crap out of his brute of a father. I stepped back inside, to banish the vision as much as anything else, and explored the rest of the house. There was a kitchen off the living room, but it wasn’t what I’d expected. The units and the lighting were modern, there was a gas combi boiler on the wall, the range cooker was as impressive as mine and a large American fridge freezer stood in a corner. I took a look inside. There were two unopened cartons of UHT milk in the fridge, and half a dozen tins of San Miguel, but nothing else. The freezer was well stocked though, with peas, broccoli, pizzas, fish, chicken, vacuum-sealed pork fillets, butter, and three round sliced loaves. I’d gone shopping in Carrefour with Gerard once and this was exactly the sort of stuff that he’d bought, the sort of food he wolfed down when we were out or when he ate at my place. He went away on leave once a year. ‘On retreat,’ he said, and I’d never asked him where, but it seemed that now I knew.