The Dark Place

By Damian Vargas

A Spanish police inspector, just days from retirement, is ordered to find a missing boy and to catch whoever had taken him, but quickly discovers that there are secrets that must be kept, a history that cannot be told, and that evil hides in dark places.

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Málaga province, Spain. 1970.
Captain Jesus Garcia of the Spanish Guardia Civil had never entirely believed that he would live to reach his retirement. After three decades of experiencing the worst of humanity, a comfortable state pension is just days away for the man, affectionately known by the younger police officers, as 'The Inspector'.

But when the son of one of the most influential members of his remote town's secretive community of German nationals goes missing, Garcia finds his tenure extended and he is ordered to direct his suspicion toward a recently arrived resident to the town, a retired British businessman and WW2 veteran. With the feared secret police on their way from Madrid, the pressure is on to find the boy and a culprit. Any culprit.

Garcia had survived the brutality of the Spanish civil war and the difficult years which followed by steering clear of situations such as this one, but he must now confront not only the legacy of his own past, but that of his troubled nation if he is to save the boy.

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Readers' praise for Damian Vargas and THE DARK PLACE.

★★★★★ "A gripping, well-written, and utterly believable suspense thriller that will have you hooked from start to finish!"

★★★★★ "Damian Vargas knows how to tell a story. Impeccably researched and told with heart. A really satisfying read."

★★★★★ "A proper page-turner and a somewhat different angle towards this part of history. Intrigue and drama by the bucketful…Vargas is getting better with every book."

★★★★★ "…feels really well researched…really well written with lots of twists and a great ending."

★★★★★ "…The author paints such a graphic picture of the characters and locations that it is easy to visualize the story, almost as if it's a film. The story draws you…I found myself unable to put the book down, turning page after page to see what would happen next."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Damian Vargas Fiction
• Release date: Dec 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223224532

Book preview

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

PROLOGUE: A MAN CALLED ‘ANDERS’

I still recall the encounter most vividly.

I was up in the hills, sitting on a dusty step outside the refugio, eating a sandwich. The sun was beating down on my exposed skin. I was forced to shield my face with my hand to make eye contact with the septuagenarian with his long white hair in a ponytail; the man who I shall refer to as Anders.

I can no longer recall quite how we got onto the subject of German war criminals who once lived in Spain, hiding from justice. However, what he told me has remained with me ever since; how a community of senior Nazis once lived in Malaga province, protected by the Franco regime.

A quick internet search will provide plenty of articles about escaped German war criminals who once lived in Spain - Otto Skorzeny and Leon Degrelle being just two - but what Anders told me sounded much more significant.

He had been a resident in Malaga province since arriving in Spain in the early 1960s.

‘I made a lot of money in the travel and tourism industry,’ he said, ‘and I now own several properties. Although I have no heirs to inherit them.’

A young man when he first came to the country, he had built a lucrative career as the European economies recovered in the post-war years, and as their tourist industries flourished. His niche had been to service the desires of the wealthy and powerful and he could, he said, ‘tell of a thousand scandals involving movie stars, musicians, footballers, businesspeople and corrupt politicians.’

However, the most interesting stories of all, he told me, involved a secretive community of German nationals who lived in an area inland from Fuengirola that the locals know as La Mesita Blanca. ‘You won’t find that name on any map,’ he said. ‘But it is a place high in the hills, about thirty kilometres inland, and was once full of Germans who escaped the Allies at the end of the war.’

This seemed beyond incredible at first, but it piqued my curiosity, and I think he could tell. I have held an avid interest in the Second World War since I was a young boy; ever since my grandfather first showed me his collections of wartime trinkets and told me a little about some of his escapades. I was unable to resist pushing Anders for more information.

He spoke of pale-skinned men and women in their fifties and sixties, with unsmiling faces and suspicious eyes. Men and women who would treat with contempt the Spanish workers who toiled in their gardens, who cleaned their houses, and who attended to the pools, but who were polite to Anders. ‘This was most likely,’ he surmised, ‘because of my blonde hair and blue eyes.’

I remember the searching gaze in those eyes and the short, one-sided twitch of his face as he delivered those words. I felt certain that it spoke of regrets long-since suppressed.

‘Most of the men lived alone. A few with their families. They each owned their own properties at the secluded end of the valley. Some had businesses. One bred horses. Several had wineries. And there was at least one import/export company. They would congregate in a big tavern that one of their number built in the 1950s. The building is still there today, but now it is quite different. Now it is like any other restaurant in any other Spanish village. Back in those days, it was like a Bavarian hunting lodge. The Spanish from the surrounding areas used to refer to the village as Little Munich.’

The Germans who lived there were, he explained, ‘Most protective of their privacy,’ and with good reason, it seemed.

‘But what were all these Germans doing in Spain?’ I asked him.

Anders looked at me with a quizzical eye and the faintest hint of a smile. ‘They had been hunted after the war had ended. But they were protected here. In those days, the approaches to the far end of the valley were guarded by Spanish soldiers. Nobody could go beyond the old pueblo without permission. There were barriers across the only paved road into the village. A stone watchtower sat on the hill above - a three-story building designed to resemble a water tower, but in which there were only men with binoculars and rifles.’

‘And these people, these war criminals,’ I continued. ‘Are you saying that they lived in complete freedom, without fear of consequence from their past? For how long? And why in that place?’

Anders spoke of a secure compound that sat on a plateau at the far end of the valley where the surrounding cliffs met to form a narrow ravine; a place he had only glimpsed himself, but where - some said - SS men had attended for rest and recuperation during the war years. It had been a veritable holiday resort for the worst of Hitler’s most loyal servants.

I was astounded and, I must confess, more than a little sceptical. ‘And this compound,’ I said. ‘Does it still exist? If I drove there now, would I find it?’

He gave me a philosophical smile and shrugged. ‘The old house might still be there but of the rest of the structures, not much remains, I would wager. By the time of the dictator’s death, in 1975, most of the Germans were gone. There was an incident, you see.’

‘An incident?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, in 1970, and involving an Englishman. He had bought a property to renovate and lived there for a short while. I only met him once. A woman who was once dear to me worked for him for a summer. It was how I met her.’

‘And how did this man’s presence affect things?’

Anders scratched at his grey stubble. ‘Some unfortunate events occurred, and the authorities became involved. It all changed after that.’

‘You’re not being very specific.’

He shrugged. ‘I never knew exactly what transpired. My friend was also a very secretive person and she took that knowledge to her grave. But the people that lived there realised that their time in Spain had come to an end. Most of them fled within a year. They travelled to Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. I organised the travel for quite a few of them. Some moved out east.’

‘You helped them?’ I asked, aghast. Until that moment, I had somehow failed to connect the old man’s declared profession with the incredible tales of which he was recounting.

He shrugged. ‘Of course. It was most profitable. Why not? If I didn’t, somebody else would have.’

‘But these people were war criminals, presumably with the blood of many people on their hands. They were monsters. Did that not trouble you?’

My change of demeanour had unnerved him, and I realised that our conversation was concluding. He took a short swig from his dented metal flask, screwed the cap back on, and pushed it into his backpack.

‘It was not my place to judge them, or to ask questions,’ he told me as he fastened his bag and rose to his feet. ‘I have seventy-three years in these bones, my friend,’ he said. ‘And I realised long ago that a man can either allow himself to become bogged down in the mud of other people’s footsteps, or he can seek a path untrodden. I chose the latter, and I have no regrets about that. What those men and women in that place felt in their hearts, I cannot know. It is for a higher being than I to examine those souls.’ He shook my hand, bid me farewell, and turned to walk away.

‘How do I find this place?’ I asked.

He had expected the question. He replied without pausing. ‘Take the main road from Fuengirola inland toward Coín. After about twenty kilometres, as you approach the valley that cuts between the dark hills, head west. Keep stopping to ask for directions to La Mesita Blanca. When people stop answering, then you will know you’re close.’

He nodded at me, as if knowing precisely what he had just set in motion, then strode away.

It took several minutes before ‘Anders’ had disappeared amongst the pine and cork trees a few hundred yards below me. I did not take my eyes off him the entire time, but it was not the old Scandinavian that I saw. My mind was already somewhere else; a place high in dark hills, to dangerous times long past, and to a place full of old men with secrets that cast long shadows.

Damian Vargas

July 2021

1

ARRANGEMENTS

Southern England.

Autumn, 1969.

It was raining in London.

It had been doing so for several days now, on and off. It wasn’t what anyone would term as being heavy, but rather that peculiarly British type of precipitation that does little to fill reservoirs but much to dampen the spirit. Filtering the world into a spectrum of grey. Focussing people’s attention only upon the few yards of pavement before them. The Brits have an apt name for it.

Drizzle.

It was mid-morning. The commuter traffic had already died down. Children were at school, and there was a disproportionately female make-up to the pedestrian population who meandered up and down the pavement along the suburban high street. Twenty and thirty-something mothers pushing prams, navigating around sixty and seventy-something grandmothers who struggled to haul fully laden shopping trollies. Men, past retirement age or jobless, strolling - seemingly without purpose, before furtively ducking into a pub or the bookies.

A middle-aged man, stocky, with curly ginger hair and a boxer’s nose, appeared in the doorway of a travel agency. He wore a green wax jacket, the kind that outward bound-types and former military men wore when on countryside excursions. He peered up at the sky, yanked his coat collar up, then stepped out into the rain and strode towards the pedestrian crossing.

Another man stood on the opposite side of the street, under the shadow of a concrete porch. He wore a long drab trench coat, a grey fedora hat and polished black shoes. He sucked on a final, rushed drag from his cigarette, flung it to the floor, then looked up the street and lifted one hand into the air as if hailing a taxi.

The man in the wax jacket pressed the button on the traffic light and stood waiting patiently for the lights to turn red.

Fifty yards away, a black saloon angled itself out from behind the two stationary cars in front of it as the traffic lights turned amber. Its engine throbbed at an elevated level of revolutions, the driver holding the clutch in.

Ready.

The lights turned to red.

The man in the wax jacket stepped onto the tarmac. He failed to register the squeal of tires as the black saloon lurched forward, crossed the white central dividing lines and headed onto the wrong side of the road.

Seconds passed before the man on the crossing turned his head, suddenly alert to the approaching car, but not yet comprehending its intent. He looked straight at it, then to the woman who was pushing a child’s buggy, about to start crossing the road opposite him. He raised both his hands in front of him and shouted a warning at her.

She froze, saw the speeding car that he was pointing at, then yanked her child back to the safety of the pavement. Just in time.

The man on the crossing stood no chance.

The saloon ploughed forward. Taking his legs from under him. Propelling his helpless body upwards. His shoulder slammed into the bonnet, his head into the windscreen with a sickening crunch - cracking the glass and spraying a red mist into the air. The car continued, still accelerating, as the broken body flew over its roof, seemingly weightless, rising ten feet in the air before falling back to the hard, wet road surface. Still. Lifeless. Blood pooling from under the red hair.

The saloon sped away, careening between oncoming vehicles, before disappearing from view down a side street.

Time stopped as onlookers struggled to process the scene before them.

A woman. Screaming.

A policeman appeared, sprinting towards the crossing, one hand holding his helmet to his head. He stopped, peered at the lifeless body, then pointed at a young man who had just stepped out of a nearby shop, wearing a striped apron. A butcher’s apprentice. The policeman, his index finger extended out like the snout of a gun-dog. ‘Call 999. Now!’

The man in the apron retreated back into the shop to do as instructed.

Women with prams averted their eyes and steered their small charges away from the appalling vista.

An older man with an umbrella approached the policeman who was now crouching over the body. ‘Is he dead?’

The policeman nodded.

‘That car must have been doin’ fifty at least,’ said the man.

‘Did you see the registration number?’ said the policeman.

The man with the umbrella shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. It happened so fast.’

The figure in the trench coat and hat watched the scene for a minute, then walked away towards a red telephone box. He yanked the door open, inserted a single coin and dialled the central London number that he had been made to memorise.

A male voice answered after one ring. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s done,’ said the man in the telephone box, then placed the receiver down. He pushed the door open, and stepped back out into the rain.

A police car was approaching, closely followed by an ambulance, their sirens competing for attention. Their blue lights pierced through the cold air, briefly painting a bright blue onto the grey, suburban gloom.

He turned his face away from the onrushing vehicles as they passed by, thrust his hands into his coat pockets, and strode away up the street.

He took no pleasure in what he had just done.

But orders were orders.

2

THE OWL

La Mesita Blanca, Andalusia, Spain.

October 31 st, 1970.

One day earlier.

Captain Jesus Garcia of the Guardia Civil, Spain’s militarised police force, sat at a table on the veranda of the Augustiner tavern, sipping at his espresso, watching the world go by. It was, he decided, a thoroughly pleasant autumn day.

It was approaching one o’clock in the afternoon. The establishment was beginning to fill up with locals seeking out a pre-siesta lunch, but, as usual, the tables nearest him remained unoccupied.

‘How about over here?’ a waiter suggested to a newly arrived patron and his female companion, while gesturing towards a table close to Garcia’s.

‘No, no, it’s okay. Let’s sit inside,’ the man replied stiffly, already turning back and directing his female acquaintance into the dark interior.

Garcia pretended to ignore the exchange, lifted the small porcelain cup to his lips and gazed at the rows of blood-red poinsettias; the plants in their black ceramic pots were being used to denote the tavern’s informal boundaries with the neighbouring cafe. He had long been accustomed to the reactions of others to his presence. It was not one he had ever sought to cultivate, nor was it something from which he took satisfaction from. Quite the opposite. What right-thinking person would want to inspire such explicit avoidance in other human beings? Except sociopaths, perhaps? Nevertheless, he had long come to accept it as a consequence of his vocation and for past events.

There had been a time when he had been somewhat more sociably acceptable. Back when his wife had been alive. How did she call it? ‘Integrated in the community’? That was it. He smiled at the thought of her regular scoldings for his long hours spent at the police station.

‘If you are not careful, you might suddenly find I am no longer around,’ she had told him. She had said that with a teasing glint in her eye, her tone playful.

How he wished he had heeded those words.

A Mercedes saloon crawled past, its engine purring like a resting tiger. Its silver paintwork spotless. Almost showroom-fresh, thought Garcia. A popping sound emanated from its tires as they rolled over the uneven, cobbled road surface. He recognised the passenger in the rear seat - Señor Navarro, a man in his fifties with greying blonde hair and an old duelling scar along his square jawline. He held Garcia’s stare, acknowledging the Spaniard with the faintest of nods.

He heard his wife’s voice in his head once more. ‘How can you know the people if you do not spend time amongst them?’

There are some people you do not want to spend time amongst.

He reached for his cigarettes. There were only a few left, and the brand - Aguila de Oro - was difficult to come by in his neck of the woods. His pueblo. He made a mental note to purchase more on his way back to the police station. The store where they kept a small stock for him would be closed the next day for the All Saints’ Day celebrations.

His eyes drifted to the menu on the table, a single sheet of beige card. The printed words in a Gothic script. He scanned the first of the available meals.

Schweinshaxe

Wiener Schnitzel

Knockwurst

Sauerbraten.

Pork knuckle, breaded pork cutlet, boiled sausage and roast beef stew. And, no doubt, served with accompaniments of potato pancakes, dumplings, fermented cabbage and thick, dark bread. He could not understand it. How did the town’s German residents manage to consume such heavy foods in the middle of the day? If he ate a meal like that at lunchtime, he would need a gallon of coffee to stay awake for the afternoon.

A fly landed on his hand and began making a meal of his fresh perspiration. He sucked on the cigarette, then directed a cloud of smoke at the insect.

‘Shoo fly, don't bother me,’ he half-sang, half-whispered as the creature zipped away.

Flies. Such curious creatures, he thought. They’re always around. No way to get rid of them. No matter how many sticky poison strips you hung from your walls and windows. No matter how many of the bloody things you might manage to swat. What natural purpose did they serve? Except to be spider food, of course. Creatures whose only existence was for the benefit of other, more superior creatures.

But wasn’t that the way of all animals? Even people?

He finished off his cigarette, ground it into the ashtray, then swallowed the last dregs of his coffee. He rose, reached into his trouser pocket to extract some coins, selected a few before placing them onto the table.

Gracias, he said to the waiter as he walked from the building. The man nodded with but a mere hint of eye contact.

La Mesita Blanca is a pueblo blanco - a ‘white village’. It is perched upon the north-eastern flanks of a huge, sweeping valley, its floor and lower haunches covered in dense pine forests, its upper perimeter formed by menacing, dark granite ridges in a giant horseshoe shape. It had been his place of work for more than twenty-five years since being transferred from Madrid. He’d given three decades of service, but that was coming to an end after tomorrow. Just one more day, then it would all be over. And then what? Would he feel any different as a civilian? He had no idea.

A thought occurred to him. Could it be I had never expected to reach this point?

As he strolled down the cobbled street, he reflected back on the advice he had been given by his mentor, Captain Velázquez, when he had first joined the police force after leaving the army in 1940. He had been handed a uniform, a revolver and a pair of handcuffs, then thrust out onto the Madrid streets; the same streets in which he had fought in bloody battles less than two years earlier. Streets that offered the likes of Garcia no smiles, no welcome, no sanctuary.

The banners that the city’s republican defenders had hung up on every street had once declared, ‘¡No pasarán!’ - They shall not pass! But under those banners he had passed as a soldier in Franco’s nationalist army, its ranks bolstered with battle-hardened Moroccan soldiers and Legionnaires.

He shuddered at the flashbacks in his head. Mercy had been in short supply in those times, and the fighting had been savage.

‘You must bend with the wind, Garcia,’ Velázquez had advised. ‘Whichever way it blows. For, if you don’t—’ The Captain had snapped a twig at that point to emphasise his sage warning.

It had been a credo that had served him well through the decades; offer no opinions about politics, the church, economics, international affairs, or your country’s leaders. Keep your head down. Do your job. Do what you are told. Don’t ask questions. Only those who were tough of skin and tough of heart got through those difficult times.

Those years had bred a nation of survivors, he thought. Tough people. People who did what they had to. Who got on with life, no matter what it threw at them.

Still, the times they are a-changin, as that American singer with the whining voice and long hair had insisted on telling the world. And Garcia’s life was about to change. He’d hand back his gun, his badge and the olive green uniform that hung in his wardrobe surrounded by mothballs. He hadn’t worn it for several years now - the unofficial privilege of possessing a senior rank in a provincial police station.

Perhaps people will sit next to me in public then, he wondered. Or maybe that institutionalised separation of peoples - between the law takers and the law enforcers - was one that could never be overcome?

He eyed a man who was clinging to a rickety-looking wooden ladder, painting the outside of his house. ‘Better finish that before the rain comes, Iñaki,’ he said.

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ the man answered in a weary tone.

Garcia watched as the man dipped a large brush into the pot, then slapped the white paint onto the uneven stone surface. Not too long ago, the man would have been applying the more traditional material of pulverised lime whitewash to his home. Many still did, the material adding another thick layer to the surface with each bi-annual application. Nowadays, however, you could drive to Coín to the store where they stocked all the modern emulsion paints. It was far easier to get hold of and to use. People liked ‘easy’ these days.

The times were indeed a-changin.

A group of four teenage boys were walking towards him. He stood aside to let them pass. They were German children who resided with their parents in their big houses at the upper end of the valley, near the old military compound. Residences that were surrounded by big walls and tall fences, and which seemed to Garcia to be more like prisons than homes.

The kids were speaking in their mother tongue, but he managed to snatch a few lines of their conversation - he’d picked up some of the language during the Civil War from the Wehrmacht advisors that had assisted Franco’s rebel forces. He sniggered. There had been some kind of get together the previous night, it seemed. They were talking about a girl they all liked, making boastful predictions about which of them would get to kiss her first.

Another foreign song came into his head. He couldn’t quite recall the lyrics - it went something like; boys watching girls watching boys watching girls go by, he thought.

It was his younger colleagues’ fault, he decided, as he walked on. They were always playing British and American popular music on the radio. It wasn’t that long ago he would have had them put on a charge if they had been caught listening to foreign radio stations, but these days you could hear such songs blaring from any number of hotels and B&B’s across the Costa. Or so he’d been told. He didn’t have much cause to venture far from the pueblo.

Not since he’d lost her. His Rosa Maria.

‘Inspector,’ a man shouted from across the road.

Garcia turned to face the approaching man, Manu, who owned the local carnicero. There was no such rank of ‘Inspector’ in the Guardia Civil, but a former mayor had once likened him many years earlier to ‘Inspector Narracott’, a fictional character from an old Agatha Christie novel, and the unofficial title had stuck. Garcia had never read the book. Maybe there was also a movie? He did not know, so had no idea if the nickname was being used in an endearing way or not.

‘What can I do for you, Manu?’

‘It’s that Inglés…’

‘Mr Blackman?’

‘Him, yes. Have you seen him recently?’

Garcia thought for a moment. ‘Not for a week or so. Why?’

‘He had his helper, that Swedish woman, come down and put in an order—’

‘Miss Johansson is Norwegian, not Swedish, Manu.’

‘Swedish, Norwegian… what’s the difference?’

‘Quite some, I would imagine. But go on. Tell me. What’s the problem?’

‘I’ve got five kilos of ground beef, pork chops and chicken sitting waiting for her to collect, is the problem. She was supposed to come two days ago. It’s taking up half my bloody freezer.’

‘Have you tried calling?’

‘Of course I have. What? You think I’m an idiot?’

‘But you got no answer?’

‘Which is why I’m telling you, Jesus.’

Garcia crossed his arms, and fixed the butcher with a headmasterly stare. ‘Manu. I must tell you that the Case of the unfulfilled meat order does not rank highly on the priorities of the Guardia Civil. If it is a problem, why don’t you drive on up to his villa and deliver the meat to him?’

‘She didn’t pay for delivery. And besides, I can’t. My van’s in the shop with gearbox problems.’

Garcia closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

One more day.

‘Fine. If he hasn’t collected it by tomorrow, and if you really can’t get anyone else to help, I’ll send one of the boys over in the patrol car to take you. Okay?’

The butcher considered this for a moment, then nodded. ‘Thank you. You’re a good man, Jesus.’

‘At least someone thinks so,’ he muttered as he turned to walk away.

The police station was situated on a side road from the steep cobbled street that ran down the hill to the main road that then led out of town. It stood alone, fifty yards from its nearest neighbour, surrounded by a white stone wall. The sharp incline played havoc on his knees and back, and he had a hand clamped tight to his lower spine by the time he arrived through the open doors.

The desk sergeant, Rafa Rubio, sat behind the counter, his head buried in a newspaper. He was a squat individual in his late forties, balding with bushy sideburns. His pistol hung in its holster from a hook on the wall behind him. The Inspector had repeatedly insisted that Rubio wear the gun, but the man never did as he was told. ‘I’ve told you before,’ he would argue, ‘it’s uncomfortable when I have to sit here all day.’

Garcia was too tired to try once more. And what did it matter? After today, the desk sergeant would be someone else’s problem.

‘Anything for me?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ said the desk sergeant without looking up.

‘No weapons permits to sign, or passports to check?’

‘No.’

‘No missing goats? Stolen bicycles? Quarrelling shepherds?’

Rubio peered up at him. ‘Is this what it is like when you are about to retire?’

Garcia grinned. ‘You’ll never know, Rafa. You’re going to die in that chair, you fat sod.’

He strolled up the corridor, passing the three empty cells and the interview room, arriving at his office. One of the young policemen waved at him from the door to the kitchenette at the end of corridor, his mouth full of food. Garcia nodded in return, then opened the door, stepped inside and switched on the light and the roof-mounted fan. He closed the door, then sat down behind his desk, his fingers massaging his back.

Only then did he realise that he had forgotten to pick up more cigarettes.

Joder!

He checked the packet. There were half a dozen left. He pulled open the desk drawers in the forlorn hope that maybe he had stashed a packet away at some point. No such luck.

No matter, he decided, as he plucked out one of the last few cigarettes. Just one more day left as ‘Inspector Garcia’. As long as the next day was as uneventful as this one, he’d survive.

3

ALL SAINTS’ DAY

All Saints’ Day falls each year on November 1 st.

It is also known in various places and by various peoples as ‘All Hallows' Day’, ‘Hallowmas’, the ‘Feast of All Saints’, or ‘Solemnity of All Saints’. It is a Christian solemnity to celebrate all the saints, including those who are no longer celebrated individually, either because the number of saints has become so great or because they were celebrated in groups, after suffering martyrdom collectively.

In Mexico they call it Día de los Muertos.

The Day of the Dead.

4

THE CALL

La Mesita Blanca, Andalusia, Spain.

All Saints’ Day, 1970.

2.25am

Inspector Garcia was dreaming that he was serenading a pretty young brunette in a bar in Malaga. A shrill ring from the grey Bakelite telephone at the side of his bed jerked him into consciousness.

‘Hijo de