He was gripped by the disturbing thought that he would have to spend the next month alone, like some modern-day Robinson Crusoe, but checked himself. There had to be somebody around.
Just then, he heard voices coming from up the hill.
He made as if to shoulder his heavy backpack but put it down again. The one thing he could be sure of was that nobody was going to steal his baggage in this desolate place. Halfway up the hill, he realized he had made the right choice. Roberto kept himself fit, but by the time he reached the top, he was completely out of breath.
Now he discovered the source of the voices.
Two figures stood in the middle of the road, oblivious to his presence.
One of them was a tall, well-built man in his forties. Wearing a black raincoat, waterproof pants, and thick rubber boots, he had a round face and a bushy, white-flecked beard. The other was a boy of about fourteen, with pale skin, tousled blond hair, and green eyes that sparkled with anger.
The man was holding a cardboard box above his head, out of reach of the boy, who was jumping up and trying to grab the box. Every time he did so, the man just took a step back.
“Give them to me!” The boy was clearly upset. “They’re mine!”
“You want them?” said the man. “Here you are!”
He reached inside the box and threw something at the boy’s feet. When the boy bent down to pick it up, the man gave him a shove, sending him sprawling to the ground. The boy got up, covered in mud,his face red, and started jumping up again in a vain attempt to grab the box from the man’s hands.
“Go on, then, you little prick,” he mocked. “Pick them up; pick them up.”
Without stopping to think, Roberto strode over to them.
He’d never been able to stand bullies. Perhaps in other circumstances, he would just have remonstrated with the man or threatened to call the police, but the nearest police officer was on the mainland, more than an hour away. Roberto’s whole body ached; he was tired, wet, and in a rotten mood—a bad combination that set him off like flames beneath a bubbling cauldron.
Some people can keep their calm in any situation, whatever happens. Others have outbursts of temper that rage like a fire, short but intense. And then there are people like Roberto who generally belong to the first group but who, on occasion, lose their cool. He didn’t like it when that happened because then things got out of control.
But he couldn’t help himself.
A couple of years earlier, he’d gotten into trouble when sharing a trench with a unit of soldiers in a desolate corner of the Balkans while writing a series of articles on the sufferings of war. On another occasion, he’d almost ended up dead in a ditch while researching Mexico’s Gulf Cartel.
Nobody could say that Roberto Lobeira was a coward.
Before he’d had time to think, he charged up to the man and shoved him in the back. Caught unawares, the bully staggered, eyes wide in surprise. The box was jolted through the air and hit the ground, its contents spilling. Thor and Iron Man looked up at him from where they lay in the mud.
It’s a bunch of toys,Roberto noted in some part of his brain that seemed to be dispassionately observing events.It’s a load of superhero figures.
“What the fuck?” the other man shouted. “Who are you?”
“Leave the kid alone.” Roberto’s voice sounded as if it belonged to somebody else.
“This freak?” The man glanced at the boy, who was scrabbling about, picking up the figures scattered on the ground, oblivious to the altercation. “Who’s going to make me? You?”
“If I have to.”
The man glared at him, smiling derisively. Roberto could imagine what the man saw—a skinny stranger, five feet ten, his black hair plastered to his head, a tired expression on his angular face. The man was at least four inches taller than Roberto and must have outweighed him by a good thirty pounds. Beneath the man’s raincoat, Roberto could make out the bulging muscles that were the product of a lifetime of working on boats. From the man’s expression, it was clear he had made the same calculation and reached a similar conclusion. But it was already too late.
The man’s smile widened as he peeled off his raincoat and dropped it to the ground, leaving him freer to move. Roberto tilted his head to one side and took a step forward, the blood roaring in his ears. Maybe it was then that the man became aware of the look in his adversary’s face, the emptiness in his eyes, the abnormal determination behind the grimace.
“Fine,” grunted the man, suddenly hesitant. “There’s no need to—”
“Luis! Stop it right now!”
A woman of about forty was standing a little way off. She wore an old navy-blue sweatshirt, faded jeans, and muddy black rubber boots. Her body was wiry, and she had uneven features, her high, classic cheekbones bisected by a nose that was a little too long. She was attractive without being beautiful. She leaned casually on the shaft of a hoe, the iron blade at the end of it clearly sharp. In the right hands, that farming tool could just as easily make furrows in a person’s head. And Roberto had no doubt that her hands were exactly the right ones.
“Fuck’s sake,” groaned the man. “Stay out of this, Antía.”
“You started it,” she replied. The boy was cowering behind her legs like a beaten puppy. “Or am I wrong?”
