“You’re joking,” replied Pampín, his eyes wide open. “I wouldn’t go up there if you paid me.”
Roberto didn’t answer. The trail of blood on a lonely path pulled at his reporter’s instincts with the insistent force of a tugboat.
Accompanied by a reluctant Pampín, he followed the trail. Every few yards, there was another drop of blood, leading them on like the breadcrumbs in a fairy tale. Finally, they came to the top of the hill and stopped at a drystone wall.
“Holy Mother of God!” muttered the poacher, crossing himself. “This is the work of the devil!”
Next to the wall, somebody had built a small structure of branches, anchored firmly to the ground. Tied to the branches with twine was the dismembered body of a rabbit, like some macabre imitation of the crucifixion. Whoever was responsible for this scene had carefully opened the animal up and taken out its intestines, arranging them around the corpse like colored streamers in a complicated, indecipherable pattern.
“It’s got no head,” Pampín murmured anxiously. “Where’s the head?”
In my fridge, inside a plastic bag.
“That doesn’t matter.” Roberto crouched next to the dismembered animal in search of clues. “Do you have any idea who might have done this?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” Pampín again crossed himself and took a step back. “The devil’s work, I tell you. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”
Roberto gave him an inquisitive look. Pampín seemed genuinely terrified. Here was a hard man, someone who risked life and limb daily on wave-battered rocks, now trembling like a child at the sight of this small, headless animal.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?”
But Pampín didn’t deign to answer, and instead turned around and set off back down the path. Roberto got out his phone and took a couple of photos of the rabbit before following the poacher. A thousand different ideas occurred to him, but one in particular stood out.
Whatever had happened the previous night, it had not been the work of an animal or some coincidence. Someone, whoever that might be, had left a message for him on his very doorstep. And, while he didn’t know what the person was trying to say, they clearly weren’t friendly.
Pampín was already on his way, pack over his shoulder.
“Hang on a moment!” shouted Roberto. “Are you sure you haven’t seen anything like this before?”
By way of a response, Pampín merely crossed himself again and kept going, almost at a run. At the last moment, he turned his head.
“Talk to Elvira!” he said. “She’ll explain it better than me.”
“Elvira? Who’s Elvira? Where can I find her?”
“Elvira Couto, the old woman who lives by Melide Beach, at the far end of the island,” the poacher shouted over his shoulder. “She knows about these things! Tell her Pampín sent you!”
And without another word, he set off, almost at a run, leaving Roberto Lobeira with a head full of unanswered questions.
4
Elvira
Roberto hesitated, but eventually, with a shake of the head, he took the neatly folded map of Ons from his pocket. Melide Beach was at the northeast tip of the island, away from the main cluster of houses. There was no proper road there, but he reckoned it wouldn’t take him long.
He set off to find Elvira Couto, hoping to solve the mystery.
He’d thought it might take him fifteen minutes to get there, but soon realized he’d misjudged both the distance and the terrain. The narrow track, barely wide enough for a couple of people, zigzagged erratically as it clung to the coast, rising and dipping with the contours of the landscape.
From time to time, as he rounded a corner, he would startle a rabbit that would instantly scamper away, but apart from those and the eternal seagulls and cormorants, there was no other sign of life.
He might as well have been the last man on the face of the earth.
After more than half an hour, his ankles aching, he followed the track around a hairpin bend that gave way to a gentle downhill slope. The track ended at a short flight of cracked cement steps, and here a hand-painted sign with faded lettering identified a nudist beach.
He looked around. He thought it would be an incredible place to swim naked in the summer, but right now—with a chilly wind, and thedamp air trying to penetrate the defenses of his expensive parka—stripping off was the last thing he could imagine wanting to do.
The beach was a solitary expanse of fine white sand stretching away into the distance. The waves breaking on the shoreline sent foamy ripples across the wet sand, with the cloudy sky reflected in the sheet of water left in the foam’s wake. It was one of the most beautiful scenes he had ever set eyes on.
