The Prisoner of Heaven (The Cemetery of Forgotten 3)

‘That guy was a mole, put in here by the Nacionales to get information out of us with that yarn about having been locked up because he was a trade unionist.’

‘Sure, that’s why they pulled two fingers off him and goodness knows what else, to make it all sound more convincing.’

‘I bet he’s dining in the Amaya with his pals as we speak, stuffing himself with hake Basque-style, and laughing at us all.’

‘What I think is that he’s confessed whatever it was they wanted him to confess and they’ve chucked him ten kilometres out at sea with a stone tied round his neck.’

‘He did look like a spook. Thank God I didn’t open my mouth. The lot of you will be in a stew.’

‘You never know, we might even be sent off to jail.’

For lack of other amusements, the discussions rumbled on until, two days later, the same men who had taken him away brought him back. The first thing all the inmates noticed was that Salgado couldn’t stand up and was being dragged along like a bundle. The second thing was that he was as pale as a corpse and drenched in cold sweat. The prisoner had returned half naked and covered in a brownish scab that looked like a mixture of dry blood and excrement. They dropped him on the cell floor as if he were a sack of manure and left without saying a word.

Fermín took him in his arms and laid him down on the bunk. He started to wash him slowly with a few shreds of cloth he tore off his own shirt and a bit of water Bebo brought him on the quiet. Salgado was conscious and breathed with difficulty, but his eyes shone with an inner fire. Where, two days earlier, he’d had a left hand, he now had a throbbing stump of purplish flesh cauterised with tar. While Fermín cleaned his face, Salgado smiled at him with his few remaining teeth.

‘Why don’t you tell those butchers once and for all what they want to know, Salgado? It’s only money. I don’t know how much you’ve hidden, but it’s not worth this.’

‘Like hell!’ he muttered with what little breath he had left. ‘That money is mine.’

‘It belongs to all those you murdered and robbed, if you don’t mind the observation.’

‘I didn’t rob anyone. They’d robbed the people before that. And if I executed them it was to deliver the justice the people were demanding.’

?

?Sure. Thank God you came along, the Mediterranean Robin Hood, to right all wrongs and avenge the plight of the common folk.’

‘That money is my future,’ spat Salgado.

With the damp cloth, Fermín wiped Salgado’s cold forehead, lined with scratches.

‘One mustn’t dream of one’s future; one must earn it. And you have no future, Salgado. Neither you, nor a country that keeps producing beasts like you and the governor, and then looks the other way. Between us all we’ve destroyed the future and all that awaits us is shit like the shit you’re dripping with now and that I’m sick of cleaning off you.’

Salgado emitted a sort of rasping whimper, which Fermín took to be laughter.

‘Keep your sermons to yourself, Fermín. Don’t pretend you’re a hero now.’

‘No, there are enough heroes. What I am is a coward. Exactly that,’ said Fermín. ‘But at least I know it and admit it.’

Fermín went on cleaning him as best he could, silently, and then covered him with the piece of blanket they shared – teeming with nits and stinking of urine. He sat next to the thief until Salgado closed his eyes and fell into a sleep from which Fermín didn’t think he was ever going to wake.

‘Tell me he’s already dead,’ came Number 15’s voice.

‘Bets accepted,’ Number 17 added. ‘A cigarette that he’ll kick the bucket.’

‘Go to sleep, or to hell, all of you,’ said Fermín.

He curled up at the other end of the cell and tried to nod off, but soon realised he wasn’t going to sleep that night. After a while he stuck his head between the bars and let his arms hang over the metal shaft fixed across them. On the other side of the corridor, from the shadows of the cell opposite his, two eyes, gleaming in the light of a cigarette, were watching him.

‘You haven’t told me what Valls wanted you for the other day,’ said Martín.

‘You can imagine.’

‘Any request out of the ordinary?’

‘He wants me to worm out of you something about a cemetery of books, or something like that.’

‘Interesting,’ said Martín.