The Cassandra Sanction Read online

  Then it was just seven against one. The rest of the gang were out of their seats and converging on the Spaniard in a chorus of angry yelling. The barman was banging on the bar and yelling that he was going to call the police, but nobody was listening and the situation was already well out of control. The Spaniard ducked another punch and returned it with another neat jab to the ribs that doubled up his opponent. But the alcohol was telling on him, and he didn’t see the next punch coming until it had caught him high on the left cheek and knocked him off his feet.

  The six who could still fight closed in on him, kicking him in the stomach and legs as he fought back furiously and tried to get up. One of them grabbed a chair, to slam it down on the Spaniard’s head. Raising the chair high in the air, he was about to deliver the blow when it was snatched out of his hands from behind. He turned, just long enough to register the presence of the blond stranger who’d got up from the corner table. Then the chair splintered into pieces over the crown of his skull and he crumpled at the knees and hit the floor like a sandbag.

  The English boys stopped kicking the Spaniard and stared at Ben as he tossed away the broken remnant of the chair and stepped over their fallen friend towards them.

  ‘All of you against one guy,’ Ben said. ‘Doesn’t seem fair to me.’

  One of them pointed down at the Spaniard, who was struggling to his feet now that the kicking had stopped. ‘What you taking his side for?’

  Ben shrugged. ‘Because I’ve got nothing better to do.’

  ‘You saw what he did to Stu,’ said another.

  ‘Looked to me like Stu had it coming,’ Ben said. ‘As do the rest of you, unless you do the sensible thing and leave now, while you still have legs under you.’

  The Spaniard swayed up to his feet, looking uncertainly at Ben.

  ‘You’re going to be sorry, pal.’ All remaining five moved towards him. Except for one, whom the Spaniard caught by the collar and dragged to the floor, stamping on his face. The first to reach Ben lashed out with a right hook that was instantly caught and twisted into a lock that put the guy down on his knees. Ben kicked him in the solar plexus, not hard enough to rupture anything internally, but plenty hard enough to put him out of action for a while.

  Ben let him flop to the floor, rolling and writhing, as the next one stepped up. Wiry, shaven-headed, this one looked as if he fancied himself as some kind of Krav Maga fighter, judging from the jerky, spastic little moves he was pulling. Ben blamed action films for that one. He let the guy throw a couple of strikes, which he effortlessly blocked. Then hooked the guy’s leg with his own and threw him over on his back. A tap to the side of his head with the solid toecap of Ben’s boot was enough to make sure he wouldn’t be getting up again any time soon.

  The fight was over after just ten seconds. The last man standing, obviously smarter than his friends, fled from the bar followed by the one the Spaniard had punched in the ribs, still winded and clutching at his side as he hobbled towards the exit. Six inert shapes on the floor, among the wreckage of broken chairs and glass, were going to need an ambulance out of there. The barman was on the phone, jabbering furiously to the police.

  The Dane had slipped out of the door in the middle of the action, as if he’d finally noticed the commotion and decided to continue his reading somewhere less distracting. Ben hadn’t seen him leave.

  The Spaniard turned to Ben. He was breathing hard and blood was smeared at the corner of his mouth. ‘I appreciate your help,’ he said in slurred English. He wobbled on his feet and Ben had to grab his arm to stop him from keeling over.

  ‘Just evening up the odds a little,’ Ben said. ‘You were doing okay until then.’

  The Spaniard wiped at his lips with the back of his hand and gazed at the blood. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I just went crazy.’

  ‘Believe me,’ Ben said. ‘I’ve been there.’

  The Spaniard looked mournful. ‘He shouldn’t have said that about her.’

  ‘I think he knows that now.’ Ben glanced at the unconscious mound on the floor. That single punch had knocked the big porker out cold. Two hundred pounds of prime gammon, taken down in a single blow by a man fifty pounds lighter. The Spaniard obviously had some hidden talents, when he wasn’t drinking himself stupid.

  The barman had finished on the phone and was venturing beyond the hatch to inspect the state of his premises and glower at the two men still standing in the ruins. ‘Someone’s going to pay for this!’ he was yelling in Spanish.

  ‘We should leave before the police arrive,’ the Spaniard said. ‘I live just a couple of minutes from here.’ He paled. ‘Jesus, I feel terrible.’

  ‘Nothing a couple of pints of strong black coffee can’t fix,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s get you home and sobered up.’

  Chapter Two

  Neither of them spoke much as the Spaniard led the way from the bar and through the narrow, uniformly whitewashed streets of Frigiliana’s old Moorish quarter. Ben followed a few steps behind, watching as the Spaniard tried to hold a straight line and had to keep steadying himself against walls and railings. Ben thought about all the times he’d walked out of bars and pubs with a skinful of whisky and some other guy’s blood on his knuckles, and wondered if he’d been such a sorry sight as this. Never again, he vowed. But it was a vow he’d broken enough times to know he’d probably break it again, some place, some time.

  Ben’s left arm felt a little tight and sore after his exertions. A few months earlier, he had been shot from behind at close range with a twelve-gauge shotgun. The surgeon who had pieced his shoulder blade back together had done good work, but he still had pain sometimes. In time, he knew, the twinges would fade, even if they never faded away to nothing. It wasn’t the first time he’d been shot.

  ‘This is it,’ the Spaniard muttered, stopping at an arched doorway on a sloping backstreet. Every inch of the house’s exterior was painted pure brilliant white, like every other building they’d passed, bouncing back the light and warmth of the afternoon sun. The Spaniard fumbled in his pocket and found a ring with a heavy old iron key. After a couple of stabs, he managed to get it in the lock and shoved the door open.

  Ben followed him inside. He had no intention of staying any longer than it took to make the guy a remedial cup of coffee and see him settled safely out of harm’s way. Ben himself had been rescued more than once from the perils of a drunken stupor. The last time it had happened had been in the French Alps; his saviour on that occasion had been a massive Nigerian guy named Omar, who’d brought him home rather than let him get picked up by the local gendarmes. Looking out for the Spaniard was a way for Ben to put something back, make himself feel like he’d done something good.

  The Spaniard’s home was simply, economically furnished. The walls were white inside as well as out, hung here and there with tasteful art prints. The living room had a single sofa with a low coffee table between it and a TV stand. A large bookcase stood against one wall, heavy with titles on history and philosophy and classical music CDs. It wasn’t the typical home of a bar brawler. The Spaniard was evidently a cultivated guy, within a certain budget. Bookish, scholarly even. But from the mess in the place, it was just as evident that for whatever reason Ben had found him drowning his sorrows in the bar, his comfortable little life had lately fallen apart. Clothes lay strewn about the floor. The sofa was rumpled as though it had been slept on a lot recently. Empty beer cans lined up on the coffee table gave off a sour smell of stale booze.

  Ben glanced around him. A corner of the room was set aside as a little study area. Above the desk hung a crucifix, to the left of it a framed degree certificate from the University of Madrid, awarded to one Raul Fuentes for achieving first-class honours in English. To the right of the cross, a poster was tacked to the wall depicting a forlorn-looking polar bear cub alone on a melting ice floe that was drifting on unbroken blue water under a bright and sunny sky, with the legend STOP GLOBAL WARMING NOW.

  Next t
o that hung a smaller framed photo of the Spaniard, grinning and laughing on a white-sanded beach somewhere hot, with his arm around the shoulders of a strikingly beautiful dark-haired woman. She was laughing with him, showing perfect white teeth. It was a happy picture, obviously from a happier time not so very long ago.

  ‘Raul Fuentes,’ Ben said. ‘That would be you?’

  The Spaniard nodded. He slumped on the rumpled sofa. Leaned across to pick up one of the beer cans to give it a shake, in case there might be some left inside.

  ‘No beer for you,’ Ben said, stepping over to snatch it from his fingers. ‘Which way’s the kitchen? I presume you have coffee in the place.’ Raul Fuentes flopped back against the cushions and sighed, wagged a hand in the direction of a door.

  The kitchen was a mess, though Ben could tell it hadn’t always been. Copper saucepans hung neatly on little hooks above the worktop, next to a shelf with a collection of cookbooks. An ornamental wine rack was loaded with a selection of decent bottles that Raul hadn’t yet got around to emptying down his throat. The ones he had filled the bin and stood around the surfaces, along with more empty beer cans and piles of unwashed dishes. Ben shoved them to one side and set about making coffee.

  Raul had a real percolator and real fresh-ground beans. Ben approved. The instant stuff was essentially dehydrated military rations, popularised during successive world wars. You shouldn’t have to drink it unless there was no other choice.

  As he waited for the coffee to bubble up on the stove, Ben thought about the picture on the wall above the desk and wondered whether the woman in it was the reason behind Raul Fuentes’ troubles. She’s not worth it, mate. The yob’s words had evidently touched a nerve.

  When the coffee came up, he poured the contents into two cups. Straight, black, as it came. Milk and sugar were trivial nonessentials at a time like this. He carried the cups back into the other room and set one down in front of Raul.

  ‘Drink it while it’s hot. It’ll do you good.’

  Raul slurped some, and pulled a face.

  ‘It needs to be strong,’ Ben said.

  Raul braved another sip. ‘I don’t even know your name,’ he said, looking up.

  ‘Ben,’ Ben said.

  ‘You’re not from around here.’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘You’re English.’

  ‘The half of me that isn’t Irish.’

  ‘What are you doing here in Frigiliana?’ Raul asked. ‘Are you on vacation or something?’

  Ben wasn’t about to reveal to a stranger how he’d been wandering aimlessly through Europe for the last couple of months, never lingering long in one place, staying in cheap hotels to preserve his savings, travelling by public transport wherever whim or random choice took him.

  ‘I wanted to see the castle,’ he said.

  Which, as far as it went, was true, although Ben hadn’t been aware of the existence of the ancient Moorish fortress – whose ruins topped the hill overlooking Frigiliana – until he’d happened to pick up a discarded magazine on the bus from Sevilla, just for something to read. Then, just for something to do, when he’d got off the bus he’d made the long, hot, dusty hike up the hill to visit the lonely ruins that marked the site of the battle of El Peñon de Frigiliana, where in 1569 some six thousand Christian soldiers had stormed the last stronghold of the Moorish empire and spelled the final end of Muslim rule in Spain.

  Once he’d got to the top, Ben had wondered why he’d bothered. He’d seen all the battlefields he ever wanted to see in his life, both ancient and modern. The remains of the fortress didn’t look much different from crusader ruins he’d observed in the Middle East or the smoking rubble of killing zones in Afghanistan, from back in the day. It was a sad old place, haunted by the same ancient ghosts as all such places inevitably were.

  Ben had perched on a crumbled wall and smoked a few cigarettes while looking out over the valley below, then got thirsty and come wandering back down the hill into Frigiliana to find a cool drink. The rest of the story, Raul didn’t need telling.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you showed up when you did,’ Raul said after another grateful slurp of coffee. It seemed to be reviving him a little already. ‘I can’t believe the way you went through those idiots. You must be some kind of seventh-dan Aikido master or something.’

  ‘It’s just a few simple tricks,’ Ben said.

  ‘Tricks.’ Raul considered that for a moment. ‘Well, whatever, you saved my ass from a serious beating back there. Probably saved my job, too. Respectable schoolteachers aren’t supposed to get into drunken fights and turn up at school all bruised up.’

  ‘You teach English?’ Ben said, glancing in the direction of the degree certificate.

  Raul nodded. ‘In a secondary school, just a few kilometres from here.’

  ‘It’s the middle of the week. Is there a holiday?’

  Raul said quietly, ‘No, I … I’m taking time off.’

  Ben didn’t ask why. ‘Respectable schoolteachers don’t generally have such a useful right jab, in my experience.’

  Raul gave a sour laugh. ‘I was an amateur boxing champion in my teens. It’s been years since I so much as threw a punch. Stupid.’ He sat hunched over with his elbows on his knees, toying with his cup and frowning. ‘I shouldn’t have gone in there in the first place. As if I hadn’t already got enough booze in this place to drink myself into a hole in the ground. Maybe I was looking for a fight. Maybe I wanted it to happen.’

  ‘Whatever it was about,’ Ben said, ‘it’s none of my business. I’m going to finish up my coffee and get out of here. Do us both a favour and try not to get yourself killed with a repeat performance, okay? A broken heart’s not worth getting beaten to death over. No matter how pretty she is.’ Ben pointed back with his thumb at the picture over the desk.

  Raul hung his head down so low that it almost touched his knees. He whispered, ‘Was. And she was more than that. She was a lot more.’

  Ben said nothing.

  ‘See, everything anyone says about her now has to be in the past tense. Even I catch myself doing it. As if she really had gone, as if she were no longer a part of the world. That’s what the police would have everyone believe.’

  Ben still said nothing.

  ‘And now Klein says it too,’ Raul murmured. ‘I thought maybe he’d see it differently, but he’s just like the others. Nobody but me can see it’s just bullshit.’ He closed his eyes, held them shut for a few moments. When he opened them, they were bright with wetness. ‘And so there it is. Catalina’s dead. That’s what I’m supposed to believe, too. But I can’t. I just can’t. So I won’t talk about her as if she were. Everyone else can play that game. Not me.’ He put the coffee down on the table. ‘You were kind to help me. But it’s no good. I’m just going to keep drinking. I’m going to drink until I can’t think about anything any more. Except another drink.’

  ‘I can’t stop you,’ Ben said. ‘But you’re going to have to get off your arse and pour it yourself.’

  Raul looked at him. ‘Some friend you are.’

  ‘I’m not your friend, Raul.’

  Ben looked at Raul and felt the depth of his pain. But Ben also sensed he was in danger of getting drawn in. There was an untold story here, and he didn’t want to hear it.

  He drank the last of his coffee and stood up. ‘I’m sorry your life turned to shit. I’m sorry your girlfriend died.’

  Raul Fuentes raised his head from his knees and slowly turned to look at Ben. The muscles in his face looked tight enough to snap.

  ‘Not my girlfriend. My sister. She’s my twin sister. Don’t you get it? That’s how I know they’re wrong.’

  Chapter Three

  Ben felt a brother’s grief hit him like a fist to the face. He went silent. Glanced again at the woman’s picture over the desk, and now he could see it. The similarity in the eyes, the nose, the cheekbones. The same fine, lean Latin features. He looked back at Raul, feeling suddenly torn between walking aw
ay and staying to hear more.

  ‘My sister did not kill herself,’ Raul said, with as much absolute rock-solid unflinching certainty as Ben had ever heard in a person’s voice. ‘My sister is alive.’

  Ben made no reply. He hesitated, then sat down again. It was the least he could do for the guy to listen.

  ‘They’re saying she drove her car off a cliff into the ocean,’ Raul said. ‘Just let it roll right off the edge. They say it was suicide.’

  Ben could imagine it. The beautiful dark-haired young woman in the picture sitting at the wheel. Her face strained with terror and resolution as she let off the handbrake and let herself trundle towards oblivion. The car falling into space, plummeting down to smash itself to pieces as that fragile body inside it was pummelled and broken. He pictured torn metal and shattered plastic and bloodied glass. But something about the picture was wrong. Something Raul didn’t believe. Ben remained silent for a moment longer before he said, ‘Are you going to tell me there was no body inside the car when they found it?’

  Raul’s eyes brightened visibly, the way a prisoner’s on death row light up when they tell him about the last-minute stay of execution that’s just been granted. ‘Exactly. All they pulled out of the water was an empty car. What does that tell you?’

  ‘It tells me the body could have been flung free of the car, Raul.’ He hated dashing the guy’s hopes like that. But better to face reality than to be tormented by wishful fantasy for the rest of your life.

  Raul flinched as if Ben had pulled a gun on him. ‘How would you know? How can you assert something like that?’

  Ben wished he’d said nothing at all. The thing he’d wanted to avoid was happening. He was getting sucked in. ‘Tell me where this happened, Raul.’

  Raul calmed a little and replied, ‘Germany. Catalina moved there, for her work. She’s a scientist. Well, kind of a bit more than that.’

  Still resisting speaking about his sister in the past tense, Ben noticed.