I dropped the driver off at his garage on the Villa Carlos road, then took the shortest route to the waterfront, cutting down the General Sanjurjo to the Plaza Espana. It was getting dark already, the lights on in the shops and the narrow streets thronged with people, most of whom seemed there just to meet their friends and express their pleasure at the return to normality. And when I finally reached the waterfront even the Passo de la Alameda was full of people come to look at the Spanish warships anchored off.
There was considerable activity at the three Naval Base jetties, a coastal minesweeper coming alongside with what looked like a fishing boat in tow and a fishery protection launch pulling out. Standing off was a fierce little warship that I knew, the Barcelo-class fast attack patrol boat that Fernando Perez had taken me over one hot September day the previous year. All this, and the destroyers, with the Manuel Soto,the big white ferry from Barcelona, towering over the Muelle Commercial, was enough to give the Menorquins back their confidence. There was a lot of drinking going on in the port, an air of gaiety, and at the bottom of the Abundancia I had threaded my way through a crowd of about a hundred dancing in the street to a guitar,'
Past the turning off to the right that led to the Naval Base and La Mola, I was suddenly on my own, the road ahead empty. Nothing now to distract my mind as I put my foot down, pushing the little car fast towards the crossroads and the turning to Macaret and Arenal d'en Castell. There is a garage on the right going towards Fornells. Its lights were on and I stopped there briefly to obtain confirmation from Senora Garcia that a convoy of vehicles had in fact passed along this road in the early hours of the morning. She had been woken up by several very noisy motor bikes ridden flat out and was actually standing at her window looking out when the line of vehicles passed. She had counted them — nineteen Army trucks and over thirty private cars, all heading towards Fornells. The Guardia Civiland the Army had already, questioned her about the numbers and she had told them that all the vehicles had been crowded with men. I asked her if she had seen a woman in any of them, but she said no, it had been too dark.
Back in the car it seemed an age before I reached the crossroads. The scent of pines filled the night air. I passed the turning down to Addaia, swung left into a world of gravel and heath littered with the desolate dirt tracks of the tentative urbanization,and then, suddenly, there was the half-finished villa that Miguel had built and I had bartered for that catamaran. It stood four-square like a blockhouse on the cliff edge, the desolate heathland dropping away below it to the sea.
It was there for an instant in my headlights, the window openings of the upper storey still boarded up, a forlorn sense of emptiness about it. I didn't stop. He wouldn't have left her there. I was already on the slope of the dirt road we had driven down to leave Petra's Beetle at the Arenal d'en Castell hotel. The villa where we had watched them arming up was so crouched into the slope that I was almost past it before I glimpsed the wrought-iron gate in the low wall.
I slammed on the brakes, then backed. But when I got out of the car, I didn't go straight in. I just stood there, too scared to move. The windows, opaque in the starlight, were like blank eyes in a stucco skull and I was scared of what I'd find. The blackness of the heath, the sound of the sea snarling at the rocks, and the villa silent as the grave. What would they have done to her? For Christ's sake…
I braced myself and reached for the latch of the gate. Only one way to find out. But God help me, what wouldI find? I tried to still the thumping of my blood, blot out my too-imaginative fears. I was never in any doubt, you see, that she was there. The house, with just its upper floor peering over the rim of the slope, its silence, its air of watchfulness — it seemed to be telling me something.
I jabbed my elbow against the largest window, the crash of glass loud in the night, the stillness afterwards more pronounced. I put my hand in, feeling for the catch. The window swung open. I had to go back to the car then for the torch I had left on the passenger seat. After that I moved quickly down through the villa's three levels and on down the steps into the cellar. I stopped there, the beam of my torch directed at the rack of bottles and the flat metal sheet on which it stood. Was that how we had left it? I couldn't be sure.
The rack was almost too heavy for me on my own, but emptying the bottles out of it would have taken time and by now I was desperate to know what waited for me in that rock passage below. The air in the cellar was still and very humid. I was sweating by the time I had managed to shift the rack clear and I stood there for a moment, gasping for breath and staring down at that metal sheet. I thought I could smell something. The dank air maybe. I took a deep breath, stooped down and pulled the corrugated iron clear of the hole.
I was certain then. It was the sweet, nauseous smell of decay. I called, but there was no answer.
I bent down, my head thrust into the hole, and shouted her name, the echo of it coming back to me with the soft slop of the sea. No answer, and the passage below empty for as far as the torch would reach. It was ten feet or more to the floor of it and no way of climbing out if I made the jump. I tried to remember what Lennie had done with the rope we had used. I was certain he hadn't had it with him when we had left the villa to run back to the car.
In the end I found it up in the top level, lying under a chest. He must have kicked it there just before we left. I grabbed it up and ran back with it down the stairs, back into that cellar, fastening it to the bottle rack as we had done before. In a moment my foot was in the first of Lennie's loops and I had dropped through the hole and was in the water-worn rock passage below shouting her name again. And when there was no reply, I followed my nose, the blood pounding in my veins as I turned a bend, the blowhole passageway narrowing to finish abruptly in the pale yellow of the matchboarding where we had heard the sound of their voices and the truck's engine as it backed up to the garage doors.
One of the lengths of boarding was splintered now. It had clearly been prised off and then nailed roughly back into place. But it wasn't the splintered boarding that held my gaze. It was Miguel's body.
He was lying just as he had fallen after being stuffed through the hole in the boarding, his eyes open and staring and the back of his head smashed in. There was blood mingled with the rock dust of the floor, smears of it on the fresh wood of the boarding, and his eyes reflected dully the light of my torch. The sight of him, and the smell… I turned away, feeling suddenly sick. And then I was hurrying back along the blowhole passage, doubt mingled with dread, wondering what they would have done with her. If they had killed her, then no point in bringing the body here. A weight tied to the feet, then overboard and the Balearic lobsters would do the rest.
I ducked past the rope and when I reached the second expansion chamber and could see the water-worn passage falling away and the scaffold poles rigged over the blowhole, I stopped. There was nobody there. I was shouting her name again, but it was a futile gesture, only sepulchral echoes answering me and the slop of the sea loud in my ears.
I was turning away when I thought I heard something. It was a high sound, like the scream of a gull. I stood there for a moment, listening. But all I heard was the sea, and nobody would go down into the cave itself without diving gear, for the entrance to it was deep under water and in a gale… And then it came again, high and quavering.
I flung myself down the slope, slamming into the scaffold poles and gripping tight as I leaned out over the hole, the beam of my torch almost lost in the expanse of water that flooded the cavern below. The tide seemed higher than when Lennie and I had looked down at it, the beach no more than a narrow strip and only the upper fluke of the rusty anchor above water. I didn't see her at first. She had retreated to the far end of the beach, her body pressed back against the rock wall of the cavern, so that all I could see of her was a vague shadow in the yellowing beam.