‘OK, Amy, let me help you.’ He took a clean flannel and moistened it with hot water. She presented her face, eyes shut, and he began to dab and wash the blood from her hairline. She winced at the tang of the water, but said nothing. As he cleaned her wound, he questioned her.
‘I want to know more about that bar.’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘What I don’t get is…is…It wasn’t just that guy Miguel, the whole place was punchy. What did I do wrong? How did I upset so many people just by asking a couple of questions?’
Amy’s head was tilted, letting him clean her forehead. She was silent for a moment, and then she said:
‘OK, here’s the deal. Lesaka is one of the most nationalist towns in the Basque Country. Fiercely proud.’
David nodded, and took some paper towels, beginning to dry the deep but now unbleeding scratch.
‘Go on…’
‘And then there’s ETA. The terrorists. Miguel’s friends.’ She frowned. ‘They killed some Guardia Civil, just two weeks ago. Five of them, in a horrible bomb, in San Sebastian. And then the Spanish police shot dead four ETA activists. Madrid claims they were also planting a bomb. Basques are saying it was cold-blooded reprisal.’
‘Ah.’
‘That’s why there are police everywhere. It’s majorly tense. The Spanish police can be extremely violent when they are taking on ETA. It’s a vicious spiral.’
David sat back, examining his work on her wound. She would be alright; he would be alright. But there was something odd that he had noticed, something that was not quite alright.
When he had been washing the blood from Amy’s forehead, he had seen a scar. A strange and complex scar: curving arcs of some deep yet decorative cuts – hidden under her bright blonde hair.
He said nothing.
Her injuries treated, Amy was sitting back. She was cross-legged in her jeans and trainers, her hands flat on the bare floorboards.
‘So you wanna know what else you did wrong?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s take it in order. First you accused the guys of talking Spanish in a ferociously Basque-speaking area. That isn’t so hot. And then you must remember the political tension. As I explained.’
‘Sure. And?’
‘And…well…there’s something else as well.’
‘What?’
‘You said something quite provocative on top of all that.’
‘I did?’
‘You mentioned José Garovillo. That’s when I came across to try and help you, when you said that. I told them I knew you, that you were a bloody idiot, they should pity you –’
‘Er, thanks.’
‘I had to say that. Because when I heard you banging on about José, I knew you were in deep trouble.’
‘So…who is he?’
She gazed across the tepid water, in the plastic basin.
‘You don’t know?’
David felt increasingly stupid, and increasingly frustrated.
Amy explained:
‘José Garovillo is very old now, but he’s really quite famous around here.’
‘You mean you actually know him? You can help me find him?’
‘I know him well. I can email him today, tell him about you. If you want.’
‘But…Great. That’s great!’
‘Wait.’ Her face was unsmiling; she lifted a hand to slow his words. ‘Listen. A lot of people round here know Garovillo. Because he’s a cultural icon, one of the intellectuals who helped revive Basque language and culture – way back when. In the 60s and 70s. He was also a member of ETA in the 60s.’
‘He’s famous? But I looked him up on the net! There was nothing.’
Amy answered: ‘But he’s only famous amongst Basques. And in ETA he was just called José. You’d never see his full name written down…ETA people like to keep a low profile. And Garovillo has been a Basque radical since way back – he was interned by Germans in the war, over in Iparralde.’
‘Sorry?’
She turned and waved a small white hand at the window.
‘There. The land beyond! The French Basque Country, over the mountains. In 1970 he was arrested and tortured by Franco, and then by the Socialists. He used to drink in the Bar Bilbo, years ago. He’s pretty famous – or notorious.’ Her face was serious. ‘Not least because of his son…’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘His son’s name is…Miguel.’
‘The guy who attacked us…’
‘Is José’s son. The Wolf is José Garovillo’s son.’
David booked himself into a hotel on the outskirts of Elizondo, to wait for Amy’s email to José to do the job. The Hotel Gernika was nothing special. It had a small swimming pool, a modest breakfast bar, and lots of leathery old French guests on cycling holidays wearing alarmingly tight Lycra shorts. But that was fine by David.
With his money, his unaccustomed wealth, he could have booked into the best hotel in Navarre – but it didn’t seem right. He wanted to be inconspicuous. Anonymous and unnoticed: just another tourist in a nice but mediocre hotel. So he grabbed his bags and booked himself in, and spent the rest of the day staring from his humble balcony, gazing out at the mountains. The cirques and summits seemed to shimmer, knowingly, exulting in their own remoteness.
It was a hot and dusty day. In the evening he decided on a swim: he walked into the hotel gardens and stripped to his shorts, and dived in the blue inviting water of the pool. He gasped as he surfaced, the water was freezing, straight from the mountains, unheated.
His whole body was tingling, his heart was thumping, it was a perfect metaphor for his situation. Three weeks ago he was a bored and listless commuter, reading free newspapers on the train, drinking machine coffee at work, doing the daily rounds of nothingness. As soon as he arrived in the Basque Country he had plunged right into it, straight into this mystery and strangeness and violence; and yet it felt good. Shocking but good; bracing but invigorating. Like diving into a pool of freezing mountain water. Making his body tingle.
I am alive.
The next day Amy called him: she’d had an idea. She reckoned that he should maybe publish his story, to help with the puzzle. Amy said she knew a local journalist who was willing to write it up; her way of thinking was that the more people who knew the questions, the better the chance they might locate some of the answers.
David agreed to the idea, with only the faintest sense of reluctance.
They met again in the journalist’s spare white flat; the young, dark-haired writer, Zara Garcia, banged out the article on a laptop. The piece appeared in a Spanish newspaper just half-a-day later. It was immediately picked up and translated by some English language newsfeeds.
When David finally read the published story, on his own laptop, sitting with Amy in a little wifi cafe near the main plaza of Elizondo,