Chapter 11 Consequences
Consequences
Everyone turned their heads in unison, in a gesture that would have been comical in any other circumstances. A man was striding down the path toward them.
“It’s the poacher,” grunted Luis Docampo. “What’s that lunatic doing here?”
“It’s Víctor Pampín,” whispered Antía, unaware that Roberto had already met him the previous day. “A hermit who lives at the other end of the island. He’s a bit strange, but he’s harmless. He doesn’t interfere with anybody, and he just gets on with his life, fishing for shellfish on the rocks.”
“Cover that money up quick!” hissed Luis. “Don’t let him see it!”
Someone produced a faded blue tarpaulin and pulled it over the wheelbarrow. Beneath it, all that could be seen was a bulky form that could have been anything.
When Pampín reached the group, stopping and resting on his pole, he gave them a quizzical look.
“What’s going on here?” he asked.
“There’s nothing going on here, Víctor.” Luis Docampo spread his arms wide and offered up an apparently sincere smile. “We’re just shooting the breeze.”
“The Freires and the Docampos having a friendly chat on a January afternoon.” Pampín looked doubtful. “Sure, Luis. You’re pulling my leg.”
“Aren’t we allowed to talk to each other?”
“I’ve never seen you spend more than ten minutes together without ending up at each other’s throats.” His eyes came to rest on Roberto, and he frowned, surprised to see him there, but he had the good sense not to reveal that they’d already met.
“Okay, Pampín,” Rosalía interrupted. “And what are you doing here? You don’t usually come down to the village.”
Pampín’s only response was to look at the flat blade at the end of his pole, as if he had just noticed he was holding it.
“I’m glad you’ve asked me.” His tone hardened. “I guess you know why I’m carrying this scraper, right?”
“You’ll have been collecting goose barnacles, I imagine,” Rosalía Freire said. “How should I know?”
“Don’t play the innocent with me!” The man’s angry outburst took them by surprise.
“You know perfectly well what’s happened!
This morning, I saw two of your nephews sniffing around Con da Fervenza, and when I went down a bit later, they’d scraped the place bare!
There wasn’t a single barnacle left! Not one! ”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rosalía replied.
Behind Pampín’s back, two members of the Freire clan exchanged a guilty glance. Roberto sighed. This was just what he needed. Not only had Pampín turned up at just the wrong moment; now an argument about poaching had kicked off.
“Don’t treat me like a fool!” yelled Pampín, going red in the face. “We agreed that Con da Fervenza is my territory. I’m the only one who can collect there! Your family doesn’t have any right to be there!”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Rosalía’s voice was ice-cold. “Anyway, this isn’t a good time. It would be better to talk later.”
“I don’t want to talk later! I want explanations now!” Pampín shouted. Just then, his glance fell on the wheelbarrow beneath the tarpaulin, and a suspicious expression came over his face. “What have you got there?”
“None of your business, Víctor,” Ramón Docampo said curtly. “Listen to Rosalía and get out of here.”
“Like hell I will!” the poacher snorted. “I’m not going to let you lot make a fool of me! You always act as if the whole damn island belongs to you. And I’m sick of it!”
“Back off, I’m telling you,” warned Ramón, but the man, overcome by rage, ignored him.
“I bet that wheelbarrow is full of shellfish from my beach! And I want them back!”
Later, Roberto would ask himself what would have happened if Pampín hadn’t made as if to remove the blue tarpaulin from the barrow. If he had instead been content to grumble and utter a couple of threats.
But he would never know, because Víctor Pampín grabbed the end of the tarp, about to reveal what lay beneath, and—with that simple gesture—set off the terrible chain of ensuing events.
It all happened so fast. Rosalía Freire grabbed Pampín’s arm to stop him.
He pushed her away. She stumbled, and one of her feet hit a slab that had been loosened by the winter rains.
That was enough to make her lose her balance.
Her arms windmilled as she tried to stay upright, but she toppled backward.
Antía stepped forward, trying to stop her mother from falling, but she was too far away.
Her sudden movement startled Pampín. Maybe the man was completely beside himself, or maybe he thought Antía was trying to attack him.
Who knows. Whatever the reason, in a reflex gesture, he raised the scraper and landed a heavy blow to Antía’s ribs, causing her to double over and groan in pain.
After that, it was as if everything were taking place in slow motion. Roberto saw it all happening in a blur. It took him a second to realize that it was Diego, and another to understand what was about to happen. But it was too late.
“Leave them alone!” yelled the boy, his eyes wide. “Don’t hurt them! Bad man! Bad, bad, bad!”
Diego was holding a hammer, the same one Roberto had used to break open the chains. In one clean movement, he brought it down on Pampín’s head before the man had time to defend himself.
There was a sickening crunch. Pampín staggered, dropped his pole, and took a couple of steps backward.
Dark red blood trickled down his forehead.
He raised his hand to his head, incredulous, and when he withdrew it, saw that it was stained red.
For a moment, he stared at his sticky fingers, as if he couldn’t understand what was happening.
Then his eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed, like a puppet whose strings had suddenly been cut.
And that was all. No more than twenty seconds could have passed, but Roberto felt as if time had stopped and he was trapped in a nightmare. Nobody moved a muscle; they were too shocked to say anything.
Diego, who was standing next to the fallen man, stared at him, unable to process what he had done.
His gaze shuttled between the man and the hammer in his hand, and back again, as he searched for the connection between the two things.
Suddenly, it hit him like a bolt of lightning, and he began to shake uncontrollably.
“Diego!” groaned Antía, still reeling from the blow to her ribs. “Diego! Oh dear Lord! What have you done?”
The boy was shaking like a leaf, his mouth opening and closing silently, the expression on his face that of a cornered animal. A dark stain began to spread across his crotch, and Roberto realized that the boy had just pissed himself.
Rosalía Freire had dragged herself to where Pampín lay and was checking for his pulse.
“He isn’t breathing,” she muttered. “He’s dead!”
“Fucking hell, the moron’s killed Víctor Pampín!” Luis Docampo broke the silence. “Who would have thought he had the balls!”
“Shut up, Luis!” shouted Antía, hugging her brother, who was weeping inconsolably.
“I didn’t mean to . . . I didn’t mean to . . .” He looked at his sister with eyes brimming with tears. “He was hurting both of you . . . I didn’t mean to . . . no, no, no, no . . .”
“Shh, honey, shh.” Antía held him tight as he sobbed. “Don’t look, darling. Don’t worry, it’s all over.”
Roberto racked his brains, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
In a flash, things had taken an unimaginable turn.
Not only were seventy-five million euros of dubious origin piled up next to him, but now they were accompanied by a corpse.
Things could hardly be worse. They were all up to their necks in it.
Diego had reacted impulsively, driven by his limited capacity for reason. He had sought to neutralize a threat, without understanding the scope of his actions. As a result, a dead man was lying on the ground.
“Antía, Helena, get the kid out of here.” His voice conveyed a confidence that he did not feel. “Now.”
“What are we going to do?”
“For now, just try to calm him down.” Roberto’s mind was whirring.
“I won’t let them take him to prison.” Antía’s ferocious tone, like a lioness, startled him. “It was an accident.”
“Nobody’s going to take him,” Roberto replied, although he knew that wasn’t true. “Get him out of here. We’ll take care of this.”
“I’m serious. I won’t let them arrest him.”
“And I promise that nothing will happen. Please, get him out of here. Now.”
Antía looked at him uncertainly until an expression of relief filled her eyes.
She whispered a silent thank you, and the three women—Helena, Rosalía, and Antía—took Diego away up the path.
The boy had entered a catatonic trance, and his head nodded backward and forward as he emitted terrifying, incoherent sounds.
“I can’t believe it.” Luis Docampo had bent down to pick up the bloodstained hammer, and inspected it, still in shock. “It was all so fast . . .”
“What will happen to him?” asked Tristán Docampo, who hadn’t opened his mouth until then. “Is what Antía says true? Will he go to prison?”
“I don’t have a clue.” Roberto shook his head. “I doubt it. They’ll take his circumstances into account.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“I don’t know.” He pressed his fingers to the side of his head, detecting the first signs of a migraine. “We need to think.”
“Not so keen to call the police now, are we?” mocked Luis Docampo. “Bit of a different picture now, isn’t it?”
Roberto wasn’t sure what to say. The man might be cruel, but he was right.
It had been an accident, with a whole crowd of witnesses who could testify to it.
But that would be the least of their problems when the Guardia Civil’s green uniforms appeared on the island.
Maybe Diego wouldn’t go to prison, but he would certainly end up in some kind of juvenile center or health-care institution, far from the island and his family, swallowed up by the system.
It was a cruel fate for a kid who had only wanted to help; a kid who, just a few hours earlier, had saved his life.
He couldn’t let that happen to him.
And yet, there was no alternative.
Antía and her family would hate him forever, and he would be responsible for every terrible thing that happened to poor Diego, but try as he might, he could see no way out.
They were all in a terrible mess.