It was a dolorous task, observing the results of crimes, enquiring of the victims what they had seen, how they had been treated. All too often they would be shaking, scared, injured, with blood seeping from filthy rags bound about knocked heads, or over the stumps of fingers where they had tried to deflect a blade. And all too often they were dead, like the poor girl yesterday.
Death was the most depressing part of it all. It was not unnatural to be upset by the death of a young woman, but Munio felt the same sadness whether it was a child, a youth or an old person. His mournfulness had increased greatly since he became Pesquisidor. There was no sense in the early death of a fellow before his time. Or her time.
All were used to the misery of loss. No one could have escaped it, especially after the dreadful famines which affected the whole of Castile in the years from 1301. He had heard that other places had suffered too, especially since 1316, but the loss of so many in his own town was enough woe for him. There was only so much sadness a man could cope with.
There had been good times, it was true. He had fallen in love, he had married, fathered a pair of boys who were even now apprenticed to a friend who would teach them discipline and the rudiments of business, and his wife Margarita was a loyal, sensible, contented woman, who was a source of delight to him, and a continual relief. Without her, he would never have been able to cope with the stress of the last few months looking into so many crimes.
It was hard to believe that so many people who were only here to show their religious convictions or to beg forgiveness for a crime could cause so much mayhem, but that was the case.
And now there had been another murder.
He followed the young man who had found the corpse, and stood over the bundle of filthy clothes, his nose twitching at the metallic smell of blood. It repelled him as ever.
‘Who would want to kill an old chap like him?’ he wondered aloud.
‘There was another beggar here. She screamed when he fell,’ the lad said. He was a short fellow, with the crooked leg that spoke of rickets when he had been a child. His pale, shocked features were pox-marked and scrawny, as though he hadn’t had a filling meal in weeks.
‘Where is she?’ Munio asked.
‘Dunno. I heard her scream, and saw this man fall, and then she ran off. The murderer must have stabbed the old sod and then bolted back down that way,’ he said, pointing back towards the square.
‘Did you see who the beggarwoman was?’
‘I’ve seen her, yes, but I don’t know her name.’
‘Oh, good!’ Munio sighed with weary acceptance. In his experience, people who thought that they recognised someone near a crime, whether it was a witness or the perpetrator, were invariably wrong. In the heat of the moment, they always seemed to impose their own bigotries or hatreds on the scene and, in short, saw what they expected to see. It was rare that he had learned much of any use from ‘witnesses’ to a crime — except where the criminal was caught red-handed.
Usually, of course, that was what happened, he reflected as he hunkered down beside Matthew’s body. The man who killed was there, tripped over or grabbed by passers-by, and held until the Pesquisidor arrived. Normally, there was the smell of old wine on the man’s breath and he confessed bitterly, his motive some imagined slight or insult in a tavern, or some ancient feud reignited by alcohol.
This was not that kind of death, surely. ‘You say she screamed when this man fell, and then the killer approached him?’
‘Yes.’
‘So he was already on the ground before the man reached him?’ Munio said, brows raised. ‘The killer saw him fall to the ground, and then stabbed him?’
That he had been stabbed was not in question. There was a sharply cut section of material in the front of his breast, a little to the side of the breastbone. The knife must have been thrust in forcefully and it had penetrated the heart instantly so far as Munio could see, because there was little blood. When he lifted the robes and pulled the shirt aside, there were no other stab wounds that he could see. The old man’s thin ribcage stood out plainly, the ghastly slit where the blade had penetrated showing as a dark cut with a dribble of blood.
It was a miserable figure, this corpse. At least the woman yesterday had been fully fleshed. This man was skinny, each bone defined. His chin was covered in a grey stubble as though he hadn’t been shaved in a week or more, although he was proud enough not to want to remain unshaved. Most beggars accepted their status and grew long beards. Not this fellow.
Matthew, Munio thought to himself. He had seen the man often enough, as had everyone who lived in the city. His stumbling gait was well known to all, as was his independence. He always stood apart, as though he was too proud to accept his lowly position. Munio was not the only man who had wondered about Matthew’s past. Odd. He was the one beggar who remained unbending and unsociable, yet he was the one whom all knew best. He was a loner, but that made him significant. It made him seem important.
There were other differences between Joana’s corpse and his. She had died as the result of a maddened attack, whereas Matthew had been disposed of in a simple, direct manner. A single stab wound, and that was that.
Munio considered that contrast as he sat back on his heels. Perhaps Joana had not merely cast off a past lover; maybe she had taken another woman’s man, and the spurned mistress had taken her revenge? In contrast, this beggar Matthew may have been cut down because he had known something, or seen something.
Whatever the reason for his death, Munio was not sanguine about finding his murderer. The sad fact was, that when there was no killer caught at the time, it was unlikely that anyone would be found later.
Was there a chance that the two deaths were in some way linked?
Munio stared down at the body. It was not very likely. The methods of death were so different, the means too, and any connection between an old man and a young, fresh woman was all but inconceivable.
‘So you heard her scream, saw him fall, and then the murderer went to him? Very well. Now we should seek the woman.’
A woman who was terrified for her own life, since she was a witness to a murder. Munio sighed to himself. Someone who was that scared would be hard to find.
Chapter Fourteen
Running away from the place, Afonso knew that his attack was mad, that he had been a fool, but he couldn’t help it. When that bastard son of a Moorish slave and a Venetian whore, that piece of hogshit, Matthew, had wandered away from the square looking so smug, Afonso had felt the strings of his gut and bowels start to tighten like he was about to be sick. He couldn’t help it. He’d chased off after him, running along the alley.
But he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and found himself in a dead end. He had to run back, then up the next connecting lane.
It was a grim place, stinking of piss and shit, and he’d slapped his sandals through pools of damp, trying not to think of the mess that fouled his feet, ankles and shins. The smell was enough to hint at what lay all about. He was relieved when, diving round the corner of one house, he found himself in a wider opening, and was able to look about him in the blindingly bright sunshine.
Left was a tavern with a single tree outside, a cobbled yard a little like one of his own, back in the village where he had been born — in Gradil, in Portugal. In the road next to his father’s olive farm, there had been a place much like this, a small building with a triangular court before it, and one solitary olive tree, he recalled. From there, on the side of the hill, you could look eastwards over the broad space of the land, with the olive trees and grapes ripening on the vines. It was always peaceful there, quiet and good. A man like his father could sit and gaze at the view with a jug of his best red wine beside him in the hot summer evening, while a few pieces of fish or meat cooked on his open fire.