THE DISDAIN AND CALMNESS OF MARTYRS

Death bore the form of an apparently happy family. The form of a trouble-making boy. The form of a timid daughter with a taste for mathematics. The form of a four-eyed father with books piled up on the bedside table. The form of a suspiciously attractive woman.

Death bore the form of death.

Couples arguing next to some abandoned thoroughfare, music blaring, car horns, the shouts of a tramp cursing the divinity… The window was open, and the symphony of the city made its way through that place of contact between the room and the outside world. The walls were stained with the colours of the neon sign of the Chinese restaurant opposite. A timeworn sign of intermittent colours projected on to the emptiness of the room. Red, yellow, green, red, yellow, green. I could feel the immensity of Beth all around me, as if the city had been squeezed into those four walls. I hadn’t thought about that for some time, the immensity… For a while I’d been watching the little red lines on the alarm clock, trying to guess when the minute would change. I would count under my breath. One, two, three, four… and so on, up to sixty. I would mentally follow the rhythm of time. I was hardly ever right. Most of the time, I was too slow.

I can’t remember the exact hour, but it was late. I’m sure of that. Five or six in the morning. I know because on the television screen they were trying to sell homemade remedies for hair growth, abdominal exercise machines and penis extenders. Those tacky shopping channels, whose presenter is a long-forgotten actress, tend to appear when the city is waking up.

I have to admit the ringtone on my mobile gave me a start:

Well, shake it up, baby, now (shake it up, baby)

Twist and shout (twist and shout)

Come on, come on, come on…

I let it ring for a while. I always do. I enjoy that song. I like listening to the hysterical screams of the girls. The multi-orgasmic shouts. The onomatopoeias of pleasure they let out every time John Lennon opens his mouth or moves his head from side to side. I always wonder what the Beatles must have done after they left the Ed Sullivan Show with that retinue of groupies who were only too willing to be the star of some sorrowful, melancholy chord. The title of a song named after some woman who acts as the pillar of a long-drawn-out chorus. Daisyyyyy, Maryyyyyy, Caaaaarry…

The mobile almost fell on the carpet. These contraptions do what they like. Technology and all that shit on the evolution of man. I sometimes think all these methods for lengthening life, all these evolutionary spasms that try to make our daily routines more simple by means of moisturizing creams, applications that teach you to fry an egg or what colours go together on a sunny day, are going to lead us down the road to extinction. Cause us to disappear without even realizing. To be slowly diluted. That’s right. Solutions for lifting your bum off the seat as little as possible. All this goes against the natural law. All this leads to an accident with ambulances breaking the night’s silence and a procession of hearses heading straight for the cemetery. An enforced diversion of existence. We have enslaved our own nature – restrained it, chained it, fucked it – and now it’s working for us on the basis of lashes and a crust of bread each day. That’s not good. One day, we’ll go back to the forest, to our original state. We’ll go back to instinct, impulse… I’m sure of it. I like to ponder these things when I’ve had a few drinks and am endeavouring in a cluttered room to provide the answers to some existential questions. What the hell are we doing here? I’m afraid of technology. That’s the truth. I’m afraid of falling asleep and waking up in the Matrix.

“Yes?”

“Gonçalves?”

“Yes, what’s happened?”

“Murder. Four people dead. All members of the same family. The lighthouse house on Gothard Island. See you there in thirty minutes.”

I remembered him. “Four people dead.” I couldn’t help it. “Members of the same family.” I remembered his cynical smile before I shot him. I remembered that look that conveyed horrifying messages: “I killed her. I fucked her. She enjoyed it. Your whore enjoyed it. I killed her.” I listened to all of that before pulling the trigger on that white afternoon. White because of the mist on the cliff that gave the landscape a terrible appearance. I could see his poisonous words twirling around me as if they formed part of some ritual. “Gothard Island.”

It couldn’t have been anywhere else. No. It had to be Gothard. That accursed remote island. No outsider is welcome on Gothard. Gothard and its law. Gothard and its popular trials. More and more shit.

I had a bad feeling. A bolt ran through my body. It left my feet and exploded in my brains. Booooommm! I was hot. Then cold. Perhaps it was all just some ruse on the part of my subconscious to make me light up for the first time that morning. So I grabbed the lighter and blew out the cigarette smoke while lying in bed. From the pillow, I watched as the smoke, slow and thick, drew shapes. There was a horse. I exhaled. Then an eagle. I exhaled. A horse again. “I see it’s all about animals.”

I didn’t want to get up. I wanted to sink into the sheets. For them to swallow me up until I achieved a pleasurable death. Can death be pleasurable? Yes, it can, why not? It’s been years since I came up with a different alternative. That’s right. Death as the solution to the problem. I have been withheld by my loss and, although the door to my cell is open, I don’t want to go out. I’m not searching for freedom, I’m just waiting for time to pass in this damp corner of the world. Waiting and waiting. Destroying myself. Loss. Oh, yes, loss is hard. Very hard. Anne Marie. Death.

These kinds of crimes used to excite me. The blood, the mutilated bodies, the stab wounds… I was possessed by a sense of curiosity. Then came an anxious wish to impart justice. To do the same to the one who had committed the crime. An eye for an eye. The Code of Hammurabi. Had they let me, God knows what I would have done. Anne Marie changed everything. After that, nothing was ever the same again. Blood was no longer an elixir. Violent scenes chased ecstasy away. The wolf turned into a sheep. Now it’s as if the sentiments have reached their maximum form of expression. Before that, they were made of iron, now they’ve gone soft and turned to liquid, and I think about the victims, their past, the fact they’re no longer going to be able to fulfil their dreams, everything they’ve left behind. I think about the fact they’re dead, the cruelty of that. They no longer exist. And then I cry. It’s an unavoidable impulse. The cosmos turns off the lights, and I drink myself into a stupor.

I decided to abandon my lazy exile, the siren’s voices being emitted by a far too comfortable mattress, and to head to Gothard. The thought of crossing the long bridge to the island gave me the shivers. I pulled out one of Freddie Hubbard’s records. Nothing like a bit of slow trumpet to give the cold, grey morning a bit of ambience. Jeans, white shirt, blue tie, checked trousers and black shoes. Squatters in a half-empty wardrobe. The record was turning to the rhythm of this fucked-up world when I shut the door. I could still hear the sound of Freddie as I waited for the lift.

“Can’t you see the little blue light on the roof of the car?” I said to the guardian.

“Inspector, you know I’m only doing my duty.”

“Yes, but it’s up to us to solve the crime.”

“You know we also…”

“Yes, I know about that,” I interrupted him. “Your popular juries. I wonder how many innocent people you have hung. Enough of that, there are four corpses waiting for me over there.”

The guardian isn’t to blame. Or perhaps he is. Blasted traditions. Far too old. Far too absurd. The guardian of Gothard has the task of opening the gate at one end of the bridge to provide access to the island. He has to stop, ask questions, gather data and so on. Who goes in and who comes out. He used to dispose of the means to blow the bridge up in case of war. Great warriors protecting their people. Skilled in the use of sword and bow. They always knew what they had to do in the face of a threat. Strategists. Bah! All myths and legends. Now it’s just a civil servant who is destined to disappear. The guardian was Gothard’s, yes, but we all had to pay for him.

As I passed through the town, I couldn’t stop glancing at both sides of the road. Streets paved hundreds of years earlier. Thatched roofs. Those people next to their houses, following the car’s wake. What are they thinking? They look like people without souls. Without the ability to speak. Wax dolls. As if they lived to another rhythm, in another dimension, another universe. Perhaps they talk through their eyes. Or communicate by telepathy. It’s possible they have long conversations and arguments without even opening their mouths. What nonsense! Time here has ground to a halt. Gothard is a window on to the past. That’s how I see it.

I reached the lighthouse. That millenary tower. Tall and flushed. Beautiful.

The press were there already. Journalists and their photographic sodomy. Click, photo, click, photo, click, photo. And then come the little questions, the mikes in your eye, the pushes and shoves…

“I just hope she’s not here,” I pleaded to myself. But there she was – how could she not be? I’d have recognized those long-drawn-out eyes anywhere. I’d have recognized her just from the scent. The soft, sharp perfume that infiltrates your nostrils and endeavours to rip out your heart. To devour your organism without you realizing. To disembowel you so there’s nothing left, just wind in your belly. That’s right, that’s what she was like. Sora would do anything to get an answer. Anything at all.

“Inspector…”

“Go fuck yourself!”

Sora is a man’s perdition. A woman the male race would pay shedloads of money to spend the night with. I’m quite sure the female race would do the same. The way things are, intelligence is not a virtue when it comes to finding love. Those snotty sixteen-year-olds just want to squeeze the large breasts of a Barbie who’s spent hours in front of the mirror, waiting for the make-up to have its miraculous effect. Young men today don’t know what a woman is. A real woman. They fall in love with a mini-skirt, some high heels, the chromatic chemistry of golden hair that was once dark. Bah! Sora had it all. Intelligence, beauty and the mysterious instinct of attraction that made you turn your head to watch her as she walked past. She was the second daughter of Hikari Tzú, an adventurer from Japan who put down roots in Beth. The man turned up in the city, obsessed with this ageing Nikon, having travelled half the world. That was all he had left. The memory of trips he’d stored in an infinite number of photo albums. The everlasting memory of images. I envy the kind of people who can open the door to their house and never come back. That habit of heading off to see the world with just a rucksack containing the bare necessities. Not missing anybody or fearing for your life. Having an awareness of human nature, of everything the world hides, the kind of stuff that doesn’t appear on television. We have the feeling that anything that doesn’t appear on television doesn’t exist. How often I’ve wanted to do that! Ever since Anne Marie died, I’ve opened the door a hundred times. Then, when faced by the long corridor leading to the lift, I’ve crawled back to the sofa. I’m just a coward.

Sora had no scruples. I suppose opening her legs was easier than obtaining answers by a more noble means. It didn’t take much for her to get answers from me. A couple of nights of perverted sex. She was the first after Anne Marie. I suppose that has something to do with it. An hour after the newspaper was printed, I had the police commissioner knocking at my door. The little whore had published a report with all the details of the case. Procedures that sometimes verged on the illegal. That caused a furore in society. Politicians know what’s going on, but when ordinary people start wanting heads in baskets, they’re the first to go and buy a guillotine and to act as executioners. I was expelled from the Beth police force for almost two years on account of malpractice. In the article, she included stuff about my hallucinations, which started shortly after he sent me the first threatening letter. He used to say he would leave an emotional void in my life. “I’m not going to kill you, but you’ll wish you were dead.” That kind of thing. I soon started seeing enemies everywhere. It was an obsession against the rest of society. The anchormen on TV made fun of me. I saw people where there was nobody at all. My late grandfather would turn up in a cup of coffee. Corpses took control of my dreams… More and more images. I had to get some treatment. They forced me to get some treatment. To leave my money in the consulting room of a psychiatrist whose hourly rate was equal to the price of gold. Pills, pills and more pills… Intravenous medication.

“Take a deep breath before you go in. You’ve quite a spectacle waiting for you.”

“What do you mean? Because I’m late or because of the murders?”

Pietre took a long, hard drag on his cigarette. He contemplated the night’s landscape through the window. Tapped his fingertips on the frame, marking an indescribable rhythm. Tac, tac, tacatac… Suddenly blew out the smoke. Took another long, hard drag. In a couple of minutes, he’d finished the cigarette. He put his hand in his back trouser pocket and pulled out the pack so he could light another. He smokes far too much. I’m always telling him this. He acts as if I don’t exist. As if humanity doesn’t exist. It’s just him versus time.

“Because you’re late. The boss is inside. I don’t know how many sons-of-bitches he’s already attached to your name.”

It wasn’t because of the boss. It was because of the murders. Because of the scene. The crime. Pietre knew I wouldn’t like it. But then who likes four corpses? I used to enjoy this kind of thing, not anymore. Such images just go to prove the barbarity of man. Cruelty. Evil. The destructive impulse of the beast. That’s what we are. That’s right. Famished beasts. We pretend we’ve left our primitive state behind us. We walk upright with our iPhones in our pockets, listening to the most recent hits. We buy a carton of milk whenever we feel it’s necessary. We go into a shop and ply our plastic to take possession of a jersey we don’t really need. We programme appointments with friends to keep our friendship alive. We meet new people. Visit other countries. Try other cultures as if they were displays in the window of a confectioner’s. We deceive one another. Betray one another. No. There was no evolutionary leap. The evil in man is man himself. We were faulty when we came off the assembly line. And the fault is beyond repair. Everything seems to be going swimmingly so long as we have something to possess. We shouldn’t even be here.

That impulsive way of smoking gave Pietre away. It was the same whenever he saw a pretty lady. He had this problem with sex. He spent almost his entire salary on prostitutes. This caused him numerous problems. There are times sexual desire is like a wild animal. An uncontrollable impulse. That was the case with Pietre. It wasn’t the first time he’d been caught with a minor. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when he ran off with the Laurients’ daughter, this family that lived in the same block. Truth be told, the girl was a beauty. Any man would have lost his head over that girl. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed. But despite the nicely filled out body, she was only fifteen. Her parents filed a complaint, and luckily for Pietre the judge imposed a restraining order. The girl admitted their relationship had been consensual. She was crazy about him.

Pietre looked like the rebellious teenager in an American movie. A young man on the margins of the law. The anti-system that forms part of the system (we all form part of the system). Carefree, unshaven, wearing a leather jacket at all hours. There were times he reminded me of Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront. That’s right. A young man trying to leave his past behind, but somehow it’s a fact he’ll always carry with him. Perhaps he reminded me more of the actor who played that role in the film, Marlon Brando. A man who was always struggling with the fact of his own existence, walking a knife edge, not wanting to be here, but being here all the same and suffering because he’s such a coward. Or am I the one who resembles Marlon Brando?

Truth be told, I didn’t really care what Pietre got up to outside working hours, I just wanted him to behave when he was with me. To control himself. There were times he managed this better than others, but the fact is he was a good officer. One of the best.

The house attached to the lighthouse wasn’t so bad. The inside was a window on to minimalist decoration. A page in one of those magazines that tell you where to place the sofa and what colour to buy the curtains. On the outside, it retained its traditional charm, but the inside was all Andy Warhol (I’ve always had a weakness for Andy Warhol’s eccentric art). Its owner was Gothard’s schoolteacher. This four-eyes who’d studied in London and put down roots in the old house of his father, the island’s lighthouse keeper. The lighthouse didn’t work anymore. It was just an old emblem of the town in fairly good condition. Whenever a fleet of intruding ships approached the island, the lighthouse keeper would extinguish the beacon so the ships would lose track of their position. They would end up banging against the sharp rocks of the cliff. That was the general idea. The sea was never calm around Gothard. After that, the locals would walk down to the beach to retrieve the damaged ships’ cargo.

“I don’t know what you understand by thirty minutes, Gonçalves, but I can say I’ve had enough!”

“Boss… Thirty minutes… An hour… What does it matter? They’re still dead, aren’t they?”

“I won’t put up with this attitude anymore! I’ve overlooked it a hundred times. It seems you’re laughing at somebody, and I don’t like being laughed at. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“I won’t let you get away with it again. Next time, I’ll open proceedings!”

“Fair enough.” I didn’t give a damn about the proceedings, but I don’t blame the commissioner, I don’t make it easy for him. He was always going around with this asthma thingy in his shirt pocket. He had to take it every two hours, sometimes more frequently. His lungs were on the verge of retirement as a result of the compulsive doses of nicotine he took when he was a youth (and not such a youth). Add to that the fact he was a good eater and indulged a diet made up of meat and more meat. Rich, explosive dishes. He was an expert in a pig’s anatomy. His cholesterol level had reached red numbers. He didn’t care about this. “You have to die of something,” he would say. And then there was him. He had killed one of his daughters. The youngest. Sophie was thirteen. She was still a girl. No, I don’t blame the commissioner.

“Lúa will give you all the details. I suppose Pietre’s already told you, but it doesn’t look good. Ah! And watch out! The chancellor’s been hanging around, so careful what you say, remember this is Gothard.”

The boss put an arm around my shoulder and looked at me. I could read in his eyes, “I have to shout at you, it’s my job, but you know I’ll never open proceedings against you. Not you.” Or perhaps that was just my imagination. I don’t think so. The truth is the commissioner and I had spent many hours anchored to the counter of some bar. Alcohol made us lose consciousness on numerous nights (it still makes me lose consciousness). It was our way of forgetting about Anne Marie and little Sophie for a moment. I would end up weeping in the arms of a prostitute, paying her to take on the role of an impromptu psychologist. No sex. They would console me with a South American accent, and I would sleep in their arms, with tears in my eyes, until they told me my time was up and if I wished to continue, I would have to cough up. Business is business. The commissioner would stagger home, bumping into everything that got in his way. A photograph on the floor, a vase that smashed to pieces. Poor Rose, she would get out of bed to make tea for her husband, who was stuck in that November morning when the body of his daughter had been discovered in a street in the city of Beth.

The chancellor was Gothard’s mandarin. Something like a prime minister. He was elected every five years in a show of hands in the island’s main square, known as Wolf Tongue. Only men over the age of thirty could vote. That said, the vote was just an act. Pure theatre, so to speak. For as long as I can remember, the chancellorship of Gothard has been in the hands of the Faols. And the only candidate is a Faol.

It seems the Faols were the first family to inhabit Gothard – the island’s creators, its Adam and Eve – but the truth is they owned the old silver mine that lay beneath the cliff. All that’s left of the mine is tunnels and holes, but this didn’t stop them amassing a fortune that practically turned them into the island’s owners. Almost everything on Gothard belongs to the Faols.

I didn’t like having Aidan Faol clinging to my rear, emitting a catalogue of laws and customs through his twisted mouth. The chancellor got on my tits – I would have shot him in the forehead if they’d let me. I hate these landowners who create a whole kind of history around their surname in order to justify their possessions. I know what that all is. We have the same thing in Galataz. Landowners and local bosses, an unquestionable marriage: certified poverty.

The fact is the Beth police force hadn’t been able to lift a finger on Gothard without double-checking their movements with the chancellor. That all changed after the 1984 revolt. The Year of the Snake. The popular jury had sentenced a twelve-year-old boy to death for stabbing Brendo Cárthaig, one of the owners of Gothard’s bank. Brendo went to a better place (he’ll be burning in hell right now), and the sentence in Wolf Tongue square was unanimous. “Death.” In the face of that band of old, cadaverous vultures carefully perusing his every word and choice of syntax, the boy declared that the victim had taken him to an area of wasteland and sexually abused him. Repulsive, stomach-turning perversions. Poor lad.

Brendo Cárthaig had almost a hundred photographs of naked children in a folder hidden in one of the drawers of his desk. One of those drawers that can only be opened with a key. The thought of those photographs makes me nervous. Brings out the worst in me. The psychopath I carry inside, trapped between my ribs. The things I’d have done to that accursed banker. Stabbed to death? It was the best thing that could have happened to him.

The fact is the folder with the photographs wasn’t taken into account when it came to passing down sentence. At that time, the Beth police force had no influence on the island. The boy was sentenced to death by hanging because the old men on the jury understood the accusations against Brendo were false and therefore a lie. And lies on Gothard carry a heavy penalty. A very heavy penalty indeed. It just so happened, however, that Brendo Cárthaig was the brother of Siomha Faol, the chancellor’s wife. At some point in the past, an ancestor of the Cárthaigs had sold his daughter to some perverted Faol twenty or thirty years her senior. Trading in women as if they were sheep. Ever since, the Faols and the Cárthaigs had arranged marriages between their two families. One owned the silver mine, the other the island’s bank. An alliance that continues to this day. The things you can do with money. With power.

The parents of the boy who had been sentenced to death got in touch with the media in Beth. The news had hitherto unimaginable repercussions. The world fixed its gaze upon Gothard. The lunchtime news opened with images of Gothard from the air. Afternoon chats stopped disembowelling the lives of the famous for a moment and focused their attention instead on a boy who was destined for the gallows. The national government warned the chancellor not to carry out the sentence. And yet Gothard’s law is Gothard’s law, and the boy was hanged in Wolf Tongue square. That was just the beginning.

The government dispatched a diplomat to negotiate a new deal with the chancellor. The first condition was no more death sentences. That kind of law was obsolete at a time when freedom and democracy were making headway among ageing dictatorships.

The chancellor expelled the diplomat and proclaimed a Year of the Snake.

A Year of the Snake means that Gothard is on war alert. Nobody can enter or leave the island until further notice. Every family is equipped with weapons. The old cannons are loaded, and guardians are stationed in all four watchtowers at all times.

The red flags with their embroidered snakes only flew over the chancellor’s palace for a month. The government sent troops to the entrance to the bridge and blockaded the port. The inhabitants of Gothard do not live on air or rocks. The chancellor was forced to cede powers to the government. Gothard’s laws were no longer only Gothard’s.

There are no more death sentences or public hangings. The Beth police force deals with cases on the island, gathers evidence and passes it on to the popular jury. OK, the vultures still pronounce sentence, but they do this under the attentive gaze of the Beth police.

“I want to be informed about everything. What you’re up to. Who you’re visiting. Who you’re talking to. I want to know your movements on the island. Anything I can help you with, just call, but remember this is Gothard, things work differently here, still do. Gothard has its own laws,” the chancellor spat at me.

At that precise moment, I was reminded of one of those westerns in which the sheriff shouts that bit about “I am the law!” I was about to shout it myself. I was about to affix those words to Aidan Faol’s forehead. I held back. After all, as far as I was concerned, all of that, the whole island, was enemy territory. I didn’t like Gothard. I don’t like Gothard. I suppose they don’t like me, or us, much either.

Lúa was inside the room. We exchanged glances. I could see it all reflected in her eyes, as if they were a mirror. Who could commit such a barbarous act? Anybody can. On the outskirts of Beth, where the poorest districts are, people will stab you in return for a crust of bread. Meanwhile, in the centre, the apartments have hundreds of square metres, and all the owners have their own servants. That’s the reality of the city. For the rich to have money and possessions, there must be those who don’t. Who get by on a pittance. Pillaging within a single society. The new, legal form of slavery. Even though this has always gone on. We are the slaves of those who have more than us, and the things they have, they get as a result of our work. We don’t just work for ourselves. To pay the mortgage, the water, gas, to buy bread… We also work to make them rich.

The four bodies were lying on the floor of the sitting room. There was a lot of blood. I could barely bring myself to look at the two children. They were lying face downwards. The girl still had a pencil in her hand, and there was a colouring book next to her. The father was lying face upwards, his eyes open behind the glasses. It looked as if he were eyeing up some damp stain on the ceiling or wondering what colour to paint it next summer. On the table, an open book, Moon Palace. “Paul Auster,” I thought. He was at the point where it talks about Tesla and his wild hallucinations as an old man on the streets of New York (he hadn’t even got halfway). The teacher’s wife was beautiful. Even dead, she hadn’t lost her charm. Blonde and white. I wondered whether they might have sexually abused her before killing her. They tend to do that sort of thing in Beth.

I wanted to get the hell out of there. The stench in that room turned my stomach. They turned my stomach. The four dead bodies and all those images floating in my mind, imagining how it might have happened. The crime. I had to sit down for a while. What with all the flashes, the little signs with numbers, the tapes and all the paraphernalia of forensics, I felt obliged to take some time out. I was tired.

“Are you OK, inspector?”

“Yes, yes. It’s just I’m a little worn out. You know, not sleeping, stuff like that… What do we have here, Lúa?”

“Well. The man is Niall Haggerty, Gothard’s schoolteacher, a native of the island. The blonde woman is his wife, Laia Haggerty, born in Beth. As far as we know, they met up in London, where they were both studying. The boy, Ciarán Haggerty, is the couple’s young son, he’s five years old, and the girl is Lía Haggerty, she’s twelve and it seems she’s not his biological daughter. Laia got pregnant by another man when she was very young. When she met Niall, he adopted the girl as his daughter. We’re trying to find out who the biological father was…”

“Lúa, tell me something I don’t know.”

Lúa stared at the notebook she always held in her hand. She has it all written down there. She lifted her head and breathed in. Looked at me. “I was just getting there.” She didn’t say this, but she thought it. Lúa is a swan hiding behind an ugly duckling’s plumage. I’m quite sure with a short dress and a couple of lines of make-up she would make more than a man or two sit up and take notice. She’s beautiful. There’s no doubt about that. All the same, she doesn’t like to advertise the fact. Hers is an untidy kind of aesthetics. Grab the first four items of clothing in the wardrobe, as if getting dressed with your eyes closed. Levis, shirt, sports shoes… She didn’t seem to care all that much. She didn’t think about men or having children or going out partying. Then there was the question of her father. She lived with him, and the old guy had Alzheimer’s. He would disappear in the middle of the night and later be found, almost naked, a couple of miles from the house. At other times, the old guy thought he was someone else. A medieval knight, a superhero, a celebrity chef… Or else he might recall situations from the past he kept in a little box inside his polished mind. It should be said this attitude had started much earlier. At the time of the tragic accident. The Alzheimer’s had made it worse, and now Lúa’s father is on a one-way ticket to death. He’s heading straight for the precipice, and there’s no stopping him.

Lúa was a good officer – not like Pietre, but more disciplined. She always did what she was told. She always followed the rulebook. Never cut corners. She was a flesh-and-blood robot. She had a rosy future in the Beth police force.

“Yes, inspector. From what we can tell, they were murdered with a bladed weapon, a knife perhaps. The strange thing is there are lots of stab wounds. The pathologist will tell us once he’s done the autopsy, but we think there may be five on each body.” The pathologist’s report would later confirm that there were seven stab wounds on each body, which sounded like far too much of a coincidence.

I felt like throwing up. I almost vomited the coffee I had drunk. I couldn’t get the Haggerty children out of my mind. Two children, like two discarded objects.

“Are you all right?” asked Lúa again, with a look of concern.

I got up. I wanted to view the scene. Move around the room without moving. Observe every detail, as if I were a spirit and could see from every angle. That was my virtue. I walked without walking. I lifted the bodies without lifting. I touched everything without touching.

“Lúa.”

“Yes?”

“I want you to question all the inhabitants of Gothard. I want to know where they were yesterday. In particular, those who live near the lighthouse. Take statements from everybody. Search the house from top to bottom. Oh, and then inform the chancellor. Inform him after you’ve done what I told you.”

“But, sir, we have to inform him beforehand, the law of Goth…”

“I am the law!” I felt like saying. “Call him afterwards. We have to be a step in front. It must have been an acquaintance, Lúa. Possibly more than one. I’m sure of that. Imagine we’re talking about our things and stuff like that. Suddenly, I stab you with a knife. Bam! You would fall down wounded on the floor. Just like the Haggertys. You wouldn’t have been expecting that. You know me, you trust me. The girl has a pencil in her hand, she wasn’t afraid. The man has left the book open on the page he was reading. He was planning to continue. He didn’t throw the book aside or protect his children or search for some object with which to defend his family. No. They’re all here together. The four of them. It doesn’t look as if their bodies were dragged here. No, the bodies haven’t been moved. But there’s something that draws my attention.” Lúa was all ears. I am quite sure had someone stuck a needle in her at that moment, she wouldn’t even have flinched. “The broken windowpanes, the vase on the floor, the picture, the lamp… there’s something that doesn’t fit. There was no jostling, no struggle, no fight. So why all this mess? Were they searching for something? Or did they want to fake a robbery? It’s a botched job. It was someone they knew, I’m sure of it. Who discovered the bodies? Who informed the police?”

“The milkman.”

“The milkman? You’re having me on.”

“No, they still have that custom here.”

“What’s this? Heidi’s village?”

“The milkman always brings one bottle in the morning and another before nightfall. It was he who informed the chancellor.”

“The chancellor?’

“Yes, it was the chancellor who called the police. Everything has to pass through the chancellor’s hands. He has a lot of power here. All the power, it seems to me.”

“Mmmmm… interesting.”

I foresaw a difficult case. From the very beginning, I’d had a premonition. “This is going to be bad. This is going to be long.” An icy serpent crawled up my back. Gothard is always hard. Autistic. Mute. A parenthesis in reality. Heading in another direction. They don’t make it easy. I’d thought I would never come back. For a long time, I’d wanted to believe it had all been a mirage, an illusion that only came to life in the deepest sleep, something that never existed. A utopia. The subconscious. Deformed images. But now it was coming back, as real as it had always been. The last time I’d set foot on Gothard had been to kill him. Bang! Explosion and bullet with the name of death written on it. The body tumbled like a rock down the jagged escarpment. On coming back to Gothard, memory came with me and together with that, unsurprisingly, came Anne Marie.

I ANCHOR MY SHIP FOR A LITTLE WHILE ONLY

“It was the night of the crow. I heard it sing and jump with the full moon on top of the thatched roof. After that, it went away, but carried on singing.”

“Singing? Since when does a crow sing?”

Lúa looked at me. This didn’t stop the old woman picking up on the irony.

“You know what I mean, inspector. It was the night of the crow. I’m sure of it. And when the crow sings at that kind of time, it’s for only one reason. The premonition of death. That’s right, death.”

I hated all of that. Superstition. The divine. Miracles. “Thanks be to God.” Something beyond. Beyond? Where? What a pile of nonsense! The old woman dressed in mourning for twenty years, talking of crows that presage death. In Galataz, people leave whatever small change they have in the church’s basket. Prayers, supplications, are a form of merchandise as well. The local priest will then park a luxurious German automobile outside the church while the parishioners keep their bellies warm with cabbage soup and stale bread. My grandmother used to tell me in the old days a third of what the land produced went to the parish priest and another third to the landowner. When it came to the pig slaughter, the same thing again. During the fasts, whoever paid the aforementioned priest was allowed to eat meat. Albeit most of the families didn’t have enough money to buy themselves a steak. That’s how it is. I’ve always been convinced that all this question of capitalism started centuries ago with religion. Turning everything into a business. Without scruples and contrary to its sacred “ideology”. The Catholic Church, the oldest and most profitable company.

Mrs O’Quinlevan lived alone. She was well into her eighties. She invited us into her house. It was a poor house. Lacking in objects, but welcoming. She served us some tea made of rumahara, a herb that grows next to the cliffs on Gothard. The tea was good despite its obnoxious colour – the colour of dirty water. She brought us a dish with a couple of biscuits. They were soft. They’d probably been out for several days. Even so, at that hour of the morning, I was grateful for anything, especially this act of courtesy on an island that has always looked the other way. Mrs O’Quinlevan had a photograph of her son on the table. He looked tall and was dressed in a white shirt and a hat.

“His name’s Brian,” she said.

“Where is he now?” I asked.

Mrs O’Quinlevan lowered her head, took out a handkerchief and wiped her wrinkled forehead.

“He died. His ship went down. He was only twenty. Still a child. I was never able to bury him. That’s the sea for you. It takes away a son’s life and lets him fall very slowly to the bottom. The mother can only weep for an imaginary body that gradually fades from memory. I keep this photo here so as not to forget my son’s face, you see. That’s what I’m most afraid of. That I won’t be able to remember his eyes, his angled face, curved eyebrows. I’ve already forgotten his voice, his gestures, the smell of his shirt…”

“I’m sorry, madam.”

The house reeked of mourning. Grief. Pain. Tearful nights staring at the moon hanging in the dark. Sad memories. A wish to die.

The years had attached themselves to Mrs O’Quinlevan’s wrinkles. They had imposed a savage dictatorship on the old woman’s skin. The sign of a life that had been too long and hard. Afternoons out in the sun, scraping a living from the vegetable garden. A few potatoes and onions she could sell at Wednesday’s market in Wolf Tongue square. It had been like this for years. Some young man – perhaps not so young – from the island had made her pregnant when she was barely eighteen. At around that time, a man could possess a woman for the sake of pure enjoyment. Spontaneous release. They would grab a woman who was on her own, on some cart-track, and do it right there, among the rocks and gorse bushes. Then they would walk slowly away, as if the act constituted some kind of right. The woman was left alone in that corner of forced sex, crying, not understanding what had happened, wondering whether it had been a nightmare or real. In Beth, that kind of thing still goes on. Pregnant girls begging at the entrance to small shops in the outskirts. Old Town is full of them.

She never said who had done it. She bore the burden – or that’s what they would have her believe. “If it’s God’s will…” Religious rhetoric without any apprehension. Acceptance. It makes me sick.

“I know you don’t believe me. But that’s how it is. Always has been. ‘When the crow sings and jumps at night, then death will come and take a life.’ So the saying goes. I went outside and saw its white wings hanging in the air in the distance.”

“White wings?” I said. For a moment, I thought the old woman had gone soft. Had a screw loose or something.

“That’s right,” replied Lúa. “In Gothard’s mythology, animals have a very special meaning. The roe deer, for example, represents Máthair, the child goddess, and indicates fertile earth. It used to be forbidden to kill them. Now there are hardly any left jumping on the mountain. The crow is the messenger of Sìde, the god of time. The one who announces day and night. Dawn and dusk. That’s why the crow’s plumage is black during the day and white at night.”

“Yeah, right… So how do you know all of this?”

Lúa looked at me and then at the old woman. She took off her enormous glasses and rubbed her eyes with the palm of her hand as if searching for the time to come up with a suitable answer. But she didn’t need to come up with an answer. She already had one. The only one possible. Mrs O’Quinlevan and I waited patiently. I strained my ears as if Lúa were about to reveal the winning number in a lottery.

“My great-grandfather was from Gothard. Ed Braonáin.”

I was dumbstruck. I didn’t know Lúa’s family was from the island. Now I began to understand why she always scowled at me when I made some disparaging remark about Gothard. The funny thing was Mrs O’Quinlevan seemed even more surprised than I was. She was beside herself. The cup of tea fell out of her hands and smashed on the stone floor. For a moment, I thought it must have been this Ed who had made her pregnant, although the dates didn’t quite match. It had been only a small imaginary depravation. I always think of situations with some kind of morbid interest in them. I suppose it’s because of all the talk shows constantly being broadcast on the TV channels in Beth. The entertainment of ignorance. Panem et circenses, as the Roman poet Juvenal would have remarked. I can’t deny it, I regularly tune into these conversations that consist of shouts and accusations. I like to stick my butt into the imperfect lives of the famous. To learn about this, that and the other.

“My God, old Braonáin,” said Mrs O’Quinlevan. “I was just a girl, but my father took me to the square on the day he was killed. My father always said old Ed was the only brave man on the island, the rest were cowards. ‘And I’m the biggest coward of them all,’ he confessed. That’s right. Old Ed. The only one who resisted the power of the Faols and the Cárthaigs. He almost succeeded. The poor man looking down on the rich man from the top of the pyramid. But money buys wills. That’s how it was. Speech sets men’s hearts on fire when they think they’re under the boot of injustice. Money makes them switch sides in an instant. That’s right, old Ed. Poor man. I’m sorry about what happened, my girl. The whole family. He wasn’t to blame; deep down, it was all of us who killed Ed Braonáin.”

We said goodbye to the old woman at the door of her house. We hadn’t managed to draw any conclusions. Only that it was the night of the crow. Would you look at that!

I could see Mrs O’Quinlevan waving goodbye to us in the rear-view mirror. She probably hadn’t had a visitor in quite some time. I sensed a hint of sadness in her face, as if she hadn’t wanted us to leave.

We then headed to the tavern that is located in the port. Sailors normally stop here after disembarking from some ship. It’s what comes of a session of working at sea.

When people drink, they reveal what they shouldn’t reveal – or what they should.

“Lúa.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t wish to appear rude, but… why was your great-grandfather killed?”

Lúa sighed and stared at the green landscape on the other side of the car window. She then turned down the radio and sighed again.

“My grandmother told me this story hundreds of times. For her, it was an accursed memory. A family curse. I can understand why. It’s a sad story, not an easy one to tell. My grandmother was only a girl, she hardly remembered. She sometimes spoke as if it was just a dream, a hazy memory. I wish it had been, but it wasn’t. The fact is my great-grandfather worked in the silver mine. The mine was on its last legs. They had to dig ever deeper and narrower tunnels. Safety was compromised. You can imagine how things were back then. The Faols would hire children to go down the tunnels and retrieve the silver. Many of them fell by the wayside. It was hard work, and all for a salary that barely permitted you to survive. As the Faols and the Cárthaigs rotted away with their money, the rest of Gothard starved to death. Ed Braonáin believed that things could change. He encouraged the miners to put down their picks and go on strike. Everybody supported old Ed. The man was a good speaker, knew how to address the people. There were revolts, the workers shut themselves up in the mine. The Díon, the ones responsible for security on the island before the Beth police force came along, visited the mine. There were injuries on both sides. That said, the Díon, who were famous for their violence, comprised only nine or ten agents, so the miners overpowered them and shut them up in some police cells. Ed was a peaceable man and didn’t want there to be any deaths. He was fighting for what he believed was right. The chancellor at that time was Edgar Faol, Aidan Faol’s grandfather. Edgar was a cynical, conceited old man who after a couple of wines liked to be addressed as the ‘king of Gothard’. He was always banging on about his family’s nobility and antiquity, claiming they were the ones who had created Gothard Island. My great-grandfather went to negotiate a fair deal for the miners. He asked for a higher wage, financial compensation for those who had worked in the mine, and that children not be hired. The chancellor refused. ‘Gothard is mine! I’m the law here! You miserable little miner!’ People didn’t even have a crust of bread to put in their mouths, so old Ed and three of his comrades broke into the Faols and Cárthaigs’ larder, which was stuffed full of food of the highest quality. Ed and his three companions distributed it among the people. Gothard descended into anarchy. But let’s not forget the ones who wield power, the ones who hold the purse strings. Edgar Faol travelled secretly to Black Mouth, where he met up with the mafia bosses operating in Beth at that time. He offered them a healthy sum of money if they would help him get back control on Gothard. From that moment on, old Ed’s destiny was written in blood. The next day, early in the morning, some eighty men, all armed to the teeth, entered the island through the gate. There were lifeless bodies scattered on both sides of the roads. Miners, fishermen… people who’d supported the rebellion. My great-grandfather handed himself in to avoid any more deaths, and Edgar Faol summoned the people to Wolf Tongue square. There are two kinds of trial on Gothard. One of them is the ‘vultures’ trial’ in which the eight oldest men from the eight oldest families on the island act as jury. This kind of trial resolves private disputes. Thefts, misunderstandings, struggles over land, that kind of thing, whatever is not considered to be a general problem that concerns all the people. They are fast – and the vultures’ word is final. The other kind of trial is the ‘popular jury’ in which the jury is comprised of all men over the age of thirty, who represent the people. That said, such popular juries are advised by the eight vultures and the chancellor, who listen and direct with their opinions the inexperienced jury to make sure they take the right decision. Voting is done by a show of hands. It is then up to the chancellor to read the sentence aloud from the lectern at which he presides over the trial. My great-grandfather was sentenced to death by hanging as the person responsible for the revolts and disturbances on Gothard. Everybody raised their hand, even those he had previously fed. Even those he had gone on strike for. They all raised their hand. Even the comrades who’d accompanied him on the raid to the larder. They all betrayed him. There was money behind it. And power. They were bought off with the Faols and Cárthaigs’ cash. Everybody has a price. They all named their price. And, needless to say, it was paid. Having carried out the sentence, the chancellor expelled the Braonáin family from Gothard Island, forbidding them to return. The Braonáins chucked a couple of things into a suitcase and quickly left Gothard in order to start over in Beth.”

Lúa didn’t stop gazing at the landscape as she told her story. It was as if she were trying to recall it all through the eyes of her great-grandfather. To recall whether the fields had been the same shape, whether the grass had been that green, the rocks that grey, the road that narrow… She sometimes liked the idea that her blood contained the island’s genes. A supernatural link. Mystery. Being different from the rest. She liked all of that. Other times, she thought her family roots were just a bad memory that was gradually disintegrating in time. The moment would come when nobody would remember old Ed’s story. The truth of the matter is that the Braonáins survived in Beth and didn’t do too badly.

“Here it is. Looks like the whole thing is going to collapse,” I said.

Fritz’ tavern was ancient. Very ancient. About as old as the island itself. What with all the volcanic lava, the ash and explosions, Fritz’ tavern invited God to a drink on the seventh day. That’s right. It was located at the exit to the port. A sailor coming from the sea, the first thing he wants is to stop and down a glass of something. That desire can then be extended for hours and hours.

We opened the wooden door. There were five men sitting at the counter. They all stared at Lúa, as if they’d seen an angel who had come to rescue them from their solitary abyss. The fact is they were surprised to see a woman there. I took out my badge and slammed it on the table. I wasn’t in the mood for beating about the bush. There was only hostility in that place. The waiter sauntered over, wiping a glass in his hand.

“How can I help you?”

The waiter undressed Lúa with his look. I didn’t like that one bit. Perhaps he could see in her the beautiful girl that is hidden beneath all the untidy aesthetics she carries about with her, but I doubt it. I know that kind of look. All men see is a woman with holes to put it in. That makes me mad. I think about him on top of Anne Marie. I look at the waiter, but all I see is the face of him laughing before I shot him on the cliff.

“Did you know the Haggertys?”

The waiter carried on polishing glasses. He didn’t look at us. He pretended not to be interested in us. He moved from side to side. Cleaned one glass and put it in its place. He went at his own speed and didn’t give a damn that we were in a hurry. I interpreted this as a gesture of contempt. With that kind of attitude, the bartender was lining himself up for a free beating.

“We all know each other around here, officers.”

“Did they used to come here?” asked Lúa.

The waiter smiled. Lifted his head, placed an elbow on the counter and fixed all his attention on Lúa. He eyed her from top to bottom. From bottom to top. Lúa represented the next meaty meal for a large, hungry wolf.

“We only get sailors here, but you can come whenever you like. You’re sure to have fun.”

The men at the bar smiled and muttered some remark. I couldn’t quite make it out, but I could read their minds. I could see the words running along the veins of their brains. Obscenities travelling at high speed. Words of domination. Words aimed at describing sexual brutality. “Enough of the politeness.”

I took off my coat and chucked it on a nearby stool. Rolled up my sleeves and jumped inside. Grabbed the waiter and smashed his head on the table where the cash register was. Once, twice…

“You’re not laughing anymore now, are you?”

The five losers got up. One grabbed a glass ashtray, another pulled out a knife… Lúa took out her pistol and aimed it at them.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” she said.

I smiled. It was the first time I’d heard Lúa come out with a rude word. She was always so correct, so formal… The observer of rules had momentarily turned into an impulsive officer. That was the Lúa I wanted. A woman who exerted control.

The waiter’s face was covered in blood, and there were a couple of teeth on the floor.

“Is it so difficult to look someone in the face when they’re asking you a couple of questions? No, I don’t think so,” I whispered in his ear.

The waiter said something, but I couldn’t make it out. The fact is I was possessed. The situation excited me. I love being the bad guy. I was loving it right then. Later on, when I’ve cooled down, I don’t love it so much.

“Did the Haggertys used to come here – YES or NO?” I shouted.

“No!” replied the waiter.

“Do you know if they had any problems with someone? Any kind of quarrel?”

“No!”

“Where were you last Sunday between the hours of seven and midnight?”

“In… In… In… The bar. I’m always here. I li… I li… I live here. There… there are always customers.”

The tavern disgusted me. I let go of the waiter, put on my coat and told Lúa to take statements from the five men. I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke at a black and white photograph of Monroe (Happy Birthday…) that was hanging on a wall of the tavern. “Marilyn, as if there were no other women in the world,” I thought. The waiter lifted his hands to his face. He trembled when he saw the blood, and suddenly I felt a pang of guilt. Fuck, I was responsible for that!

“The chancellor will hear about this, officer. You can’t just do what you like when you’re here. This is Gothard! Fucking radam!” he cried.

“Radam.” That’s the word they use for people who are not from the island. It’s a derogatory term, like we were shit or something, rats crossing the bridge to spread plague in their streets. The sense of guilt vanished, and I felt like banging his face against the counter once more. I was on the brink of re-enacting the ritual. Taking off my coat, chucking it on the stool, rolling up my sleeves, jumping over the counter… but I stopped myself. That whiny bartender had had enough, although I had the distinct impression he deserved a couple more for good measure.

“This is Gothard, this is Gothard… I’ve had it up to here with that ridiculous sentence. You can tell whoever you like. I couldn’t give a shit about the chancellor.”

I threw my cigarette end behind the counter and slowly released the smoke I’d been holding in. The five men in Fritz’ tavern all had alibis. They were sailors and had been at sea on the day of the murders. That’s how people live nowadays on Gothard. When the silver ran out, they were forced to go to sea. Tuna fisheries near the coast that are in decline. Uncontrolled fishing. Hard work that gives only the boat owners money. And who are the boat owners? The same as always. The Faols and Cárthaigs.

Many of Gothard’s inhabitants had to pack their bags, open the gate and cross the bridge so they could live with dignity. Most of them came to Beth in search of a job that didn’t just let them reach the end of the month with the bare minimum.

I told Lúa to check their alibis by making a couple of calls. To ship-owners and skippers… To take statements from them as well. I was about to start the car when someone yanked open the back door and flung himself on the seat.

“Drive off at once! Pretend I’m not here…”

UPON A DOOR-STEP

I put the car in first and left the port without looking to see who the backseat invader was.

“Carry straight on and at the next crossroads turn left.”

Lúa turned around and nodded. She knew our guest. The man continued giving us directions.

We only went up. Steep, meandering slopes. Curves and more curves. The mountain was bare, a composition of rocks and gorse bushes. The few trees that could be seen were skeletal outlines. Rotten trunks without leaves, without souls… wax monsters.

It was windy, and the road was about to run out. I could see a large, stone cross. “Anam.”

Yes. We were on the mountain of souls. The highest peak on Gothard. Perhaps the most sacred place on the island before Christianity turned up with its obligation to worship a single God. Their God. To believe or to believe.

Mt Anam was the meeting point between the human and the divine. Between man and Máthair, the goddess who created everything.

According to Gothard’s mythology, Máthair travelled in a star that fell on the planet thousands of years ago. Máthair was a pale-skinned girl with long, ginger hair that covered her back and fell down to her knees. The child goddess jumped naked around the Earth with its overcast sky, rocky ground and rivers of volcanic lava. She was alone on a sad, desolate landscape. The devastated image after the battle. Hell.

Máthair herself came from a world that was very different. A world where there was fertile, damp land, green fields, thick forests, rivers of water… There were even other species apart from her own: the Bráthair. That was the name for animals (we also are animals) in Gothard’s ancient language. They all lived together in harmony. The religion of Gaia. What the earth produced was more than enough to survive.

Máthair took a small, pointed stone, made an incision on her left arm and let a few drops of blood fall into one of the rivers of lava that surrounded her. Suddenly, the lava in the river turned into sweet water. The girl took another stone and poured out a few more drops of blood. The stone fell apart and turned into seed, which Máthair then sprinkled with water from the river. A few days later, the seeds had turned into miniature trees.

This is how Gothard’s mythology describes the creation of the world. Its own Genesis. It took the child goddess more than a thousand years to give shape to the planet. The craftsmanship of the divine. I suppose, given the absurdity of it all, it’s a little more credible than the Christian version. From somewhere in the cosmos, an old octogenarian creates the world in six days, just like that, simply by wishing and ordering it to happen. The literary folk back then didn’t exactly outdo themselves when it came to composing that story. It took Máthair quite a lot more time and work. She couldn’t even rest.

The fact is the first inhabitants of Gothard worshipped the goddess (and the Bráthair) by planting trees, flowers, that kind of thing. By giving shape to the forest just as Máthair had done to the Earth. There was a deep-seated conviction about everything that sprouted from the earth. A strong communion between nature and humankind, as if they were made from one matter. It must always have been like that. The origin of everything. Harmony in the cosmos.

Meanwhile, according to the mythology, the inhabitants of the island lived only from crops. There was no sacrificing animals. This never even occurred to them because the Bráthair were their brothers. After that, I suppose a human’s natural instinct, power, dominion, hate… meant they started taming them, hunting them, killing and eating them. I don’t blame them for that, I couldn’t live without my ration of grilled meat and nice, juicy chips.

Text © Abel Tomé

Translation © Jonathan Dunne

This title is available to read in English – see the page “Novels”.