Death in the Sun by Adam Creed Page A

about him and three days later, he is in the ground.’
    Staffe sits on a beer barrel on the opposite side of the room to Jesús. ‘I don’t believe in chance. There is a reason why people do things; a reason for everything that happens. That’s all that we do, as police. We find out why.’
    ‘He was drunk.’
    ‘The dead man in the plastic was tortured, wasn’t he?’
    ‘Tortured?’ Jesús’s eyes are wide. He stubs out his cigarette on the floor.
    ‘I’ll bet there was a peg in the ground. Tell me, Jesús – am I right? And were there marks on his forehead?’
    ‘I was standing guard, outside. That’s all.’
    ‘Did you cut the rope that held him – or was it a belt? And did you have to dig him out of there? Did you lay him out and make it look as if he had just taken a little too much heroin?’
    Jesús leans forward and sighs heavily. ‘What’s it to you?’
    ‘Was he dead before they put him in the ground?’
    According to Manolo, Jesús got his job in the Guardia because of who his father is, because of this place. Knowing where his papas a lo pobre are sautéed, the young man isn’t talking. He says it by leaving.
    *
    From her desk, Pepa can see the castellated towers of the Alcazar. She thinks about the history, wonders if she did the best thing coming to the city, when her family wanted her to stay in Gabo. She looks down at her notes on the latest batch of demolition orders. Her instructions from the chief of the newspaper are to shame the outgoing mayor. She is to report how preposterous it is that these demolitions, urbanisations bought off-plan and principally by the English, are being pushed through.
    Her door swings open. Her chief chews violently on his nicotine gum, holds his head high, pince-nez balanced on the bridge of his nose. ‘I saw you at the funeral, Pepa. And I saw you leave. Where did you go with your new friend?’
    ‘I think he likes me. That’s all.’ She says this knowing he doesn’t; that, or he is a cold fish.
    ‘You know Raúl was a fine man.’ The Chief glazes over, looks wistfully at the Alcazar. ‘He could be a fine man, when he allowed it. And he was a friend.’ He pulls up a chair. ‘His reputation is his legacy. It’s all he leaves behind and we must protect him now. Now it’s too late. There is no story here. Do you understand?’
    Pepa has to look away, such is the intensity of the way he looks at her.
    ‘The feria is coming and there’s no space for new copy. We have to report the casetas and the corrida. You know how it is.’
    ‘You mean we shut up.’
    ‘Raúl’s demise leaves a vacancy. It will be advertised, of course. But I expect you to apply and I expect your application to be strong. We mourn, we move on. New life shoots up from beneath. That’s nature.’
    *
    Staffe pulls up by the bridge on the Mecina road in his hire car – a Cinquecento. Squeezing himself in at the Atesa depot, he had chuckled to himself, wondering if, in any estimation, he could be a Quijote. He doesn’t know what he is tilting at, for sure. As soon as he left the coastal plain, the Fiat began to struggle on the mountain passes. This car, quite appropriately, is more donkey than horse-powered.
    He eases himself out of the tiny vehicle and two workmen, resting in the shade of an olive tree, interrupt their lunch of ham and beer to laugh at him. The workmen have been tasked with repairing the bridge; the police tape has already been taken down, bundled up beneath the idling cement mixer.
    The bridge railings comprise a five-centimetre metal tubing frame, painted blue and stuck into a knee-high concrete base. Staffe approaches the bridge and is confused. The men appear to be working at its wrong end – the eastern, Mecina end. Raúl had breached the bridge at its western end – that is to say‚ on the Almagen side.
    Staffe peers down into the ravine, looks for the blood-soaked rag, colours of the Spanish flag, but he can’t see it. It was directly below the