“Nothing’s wrong.” He tried to make his voice sound steady. “Everything’s fine.”
And with those few words went his last way out. His peace had been destroyed in a few short hours, and he’d been powerless to prevent it. He had become an accessory to murder and robbery.
“If only I had the book here so you could sign it.” Sobral clapped a frustrated hand on the SUV’s door. “You staying long?”
“A few weeks.” Roberto’s face ached; he was sure his artificial smile must have been obvious, but the ranger seemed not to notice. “Maybe not that long—I don’t know yet.”
“I should be back in a few days, weather permitting.” The ranger glanced warily at the boat bobbing alongside the jetty. “I hope I can get a signature then.”
“It would be my pleasure.” A flash of pain in his head almost made him vomit. “I’ll be here.”
“We’ll make sure he doesn’t go anywhere, don’t worry.” Luis Docampo winked at Roberto, as if sharing a joke. “Mr. Lobeira is settling in well. Turns out we have a lot of interests in common.”
“That’s great news. Tell Antía to pick up the SUV from the jetty and park it in the usual place. I don’t want salt water getting on the bodywork.”
“We will, don’t worry.”
Sobral rolled up the window and started the engine, and black smoke poured from the exhaust pipe. They watched the SUV driving the final part of the way to the jetty, where Sobral helped his companion hobble aboard the boat, even as the waves tossed it about. With practiced precision, they untied the moorings, and after less than a minute, the outboard motors roared to life and they were headed for the mainland.
The boat negotiated the growing waves, leaving white foam in its wake. Roberto, with every fiber of his being, wished he was on board. The farther the vessel went from the island, the more trapped and helpless he felt.
When the boat was no more than a speck on the horizon, someone breathed a sigh of relief. The tension, though not entirely gone, at least went down a notch. The air was still thick with menace, but a brief truce seemed to have been declared.
Roberto was surprised at the lump in his throat. The sheer enormity of the crazy situation was quite overwhelming. Ramón Docampo turned to him, no hint of a smile on his face now.
“Well, my friend,” he said simply, “now that we’re all in this together, there’s quite a bit for us to discuss.”
14
An Abandoned Graveyard
The next morning, while he was still in the brief lapse between the world of dream and waking life, relief washed over Roberto. The nightmare had been far more vivid and real than the ones that assailed him most nights, but at least it had nothing to do with the burden he had been carrying for almost four years now.
But then, as the final remnants of sleep melted away, the realization hit that what had happened the previous day was no nightmare. It was like a sledgehammer.
The money was real. The murder was real. A dead man really was lying in a freezer chest, on an island full of accomplices to murder, and he was the worst of them all.
Also real was the key hanging on the thin chain around his neck. Totally, absolutely real.
The day before, once the park rangers had left in their patrol boat, taking with them any semblance of authority or, indeed, sanity, the tension between the two clans had immediately resumed. Decades of rancor and mistrust, compounded by nerves and greed. Great riches had suddenly been dangled before everyone’s noses.
And he was quite sure they were all now trying to work out how to prevent their rivals from getting their hands on the wealth that had so unexpectedly appeared.
All that mistrust had led to the Solomonic decision to lock up the church and entrust the key to the only person on the island who was more or less neutral.
Not only was he an accessory to murder, but it seemed inevitable he would end up as a scapegoat if he didn’t go along with the conditions that had been imposed on him. There was no way out.
When he took his cell phone out of his parka pocket, he was sorely tempted to call Carmen Gavín. To talk to her, to explain everything that had happened. No doubt she would come up with a solution. “If you run into any problems ... I’ll make sure someone comes to get you.” Those had been her words. But as his finger hovered over the screen, just about to tap on her name, he stopped himself.
He couldn’t drag her into this mess. It wasn’t some protracted contractual dispute with a publisher, and it wasn’t a case of writer’s block. It was of a totally different order. Seventy-five million euros of dubious origin were stacked behind the altar of a small village church, and on them hung a huge sign painted in the most garish colors:Trouble. Above all, an innocent man had been murdered, and that would be a challenge even to someone as resolute as Carmen, especially since she was a thousand miles away.
Not to mention the fact that if he told her the whole story, she would be legally implicated. It might even make her an accessory after the fact. His mind raced with the ramifications.
He tried to apply himself to the novel for a few hours, and did manage to rough out a few pages, but he couldn’t put reality out of his mind. He needed to think.
Perhaps a walk around the island would help him get his thoughts in order. Boosted by the idea, after a bite to eat, he checked that his computer was plugged in and left the house.
It was even gloomier than it had been the day before. Black clouds covered the sky, threatening a downpour at any moment.
