Death in the Sun by Adam Creed

Moroccans sit on their haunches outside a hut made with corrugated roof pieces and pallets. One of them is in a Chicago Bulls vest and the other is bare-chested and wearing towelling jogging bottoms. They look stoned and stare at the ground as Staffe approaches. He says, ‘There is a man who wears a blue and yellow burnous. Where is he?’
    The men seem worried and shake their heads without looking up.
    ‘I can help him.’
    They shake their heads again.
    Pepa goes into her handbag and pulls out a small block of resin – maybe a spliff or two shy of an eighth. She holds it out to them, says, ‘He’s right. We can help him.’
    The men look at each other and one of them says, ‘You police? You can’t trap us.’
    Pepa pulls out her press card, shows it to them. ‘We’re not police. Just tell us and we are gone. You’ll never see us again.’
    ‘You got anything more?’ says the one in the Bulls vest. He casts a lazy smile towards Pepa and the sun catches a ruby stud in his left ear.
    Pepa puts the resin away, says, ‘You missed out.’
    ‘No.’ He holds out his hand. ‘You mean Yousef. Now give it to me.’
    Pepa hands him the resin.
    The man with the Bulls vest and the ruby stud inspects it and stands up, walks away and when he is twenty metres away, he pulls out a knife. It is a small, old penknife, but he looks as if he could stick you with it. He says, ‘They beat him. Then they took him away.’
    ‘Who took him?’
    ‘Who do you think?’
    ‘The police?’
    ‘Not police. But something close. You can tell when people are beyond the law.’

Ten

    Staffe hangs up the phone. Because of what happened to his parents, he never completed his degree, but he kept in touch with a couple of his friends from Merton College. A few years ago, he bumped into David Grice, a short-lived best friend. They went for a pint and Grice had told him there was a Gaudy coming up and that he was on the committee and could get Will on the list, if he would come.
    At the Gaudy, Staffe had talked to Jasper Newton who knew all about his parents. Jasper’s specialism is Spain and in particular its Civil War. The following week, he had called Jasper to talk more about ETA, Santi Etxebatteria, and their real levels of activity.
    This morning, five years on, he called Jasper again – to enquire about methods and rituals of torture.
    Jasper described several types of torture, leading to execution, and Staffe’s stomach slowly turned, and turned, until the professor’s supply of the horrific was exhausted.
    ‘Did you ever hear of anybody being buried and made to drink?’
    ‘Aah. The Caligula,’ Newton had said. ‘Caligula liked to seal off the route for a man’s piss. He’d use twine and then pour water into his victims until the bladder bloated and bloated and finally burst. Well, the Spanish weren’t as cruel as all that, but what they would do, to extract information, was bury a man, usually kneeling, up to his neck in the earth, and then pour water into him. It would be fast and furious and the man would feel like he was drowning.’
    ‘It sounds like waterboarding.’
    ‘This was the real thing. They would put a peg in the earth and use their belts to hold the poor man’s head back so his face pointed to the sky. It is just one of many . . .’ He had paused; said nothing more.
    *
    Staffe is shown through the small comedor of the Quinta Toro. There are two besuited fifty-year-old men at the bar, swigging brandy as if it is nothing to be ashamed of at eleven in the morning.
    The room is adorned head to toe with bullfighting posters and photographs, including one of Angel, the bar’s owner, shaking hands with King Juan Carlos. Otherwise, the place is empty.
    Jesús, the young officer who was at the plastic greenhouse, is in his father’s tiny office which has crates of beer and boxes of broad beans and sacks of potatoes stacked high. He stubs out a cigarette and immediately lights another, says, ‘You come asking