Chapter 12 The Hammer
The Hammer
His headache was getting worse, and now he felt a drop of water on his cheek, followed in rapid succession by two more. He looked up and saw that the clouds had darkened and it was starting to rain.
“We have to get the body out of here.” Ramón Docampo pointed at Pampín with his cigarette. “It’s going to get soaked.”
“We can’t move it until the authorities and the pathologist arrive. They’ll have to take photos and record all the details . . .”
“Hold it, Lobeira.” The old man rested one of his heavy, calloused hands on Roberto’s shoulder in an almost intimate gesture.
“You’re a man of the world, and I’m sure you know all about police procedures and magistrates and the rest of it .
. . but you don’t have a clue about how this island works. ”
“What do you mean?”
“When it rains, all the water runs down from up there . . .” He pointed at the hills, dotted with empty vacation homes.
“And it will find the easiest route to the sea. That route runs along this road. If we don’t get the body out of here, it’ll get totally soaked.
It might even get washed away if it rains hard. We have to move it.”
Roberto nodded. He was starting to feel completely overwhelmed.
“Okay,” he agreed reluctantly. “And where will we put it?”
“Our little supermarket is just over there.” Ramón pointed to an aluminum door plastered with faded, soft-drink stickers. “It’s empty right now.”
Ramón Docampo thrust his hand into his pocket and brought out a bunch of keys, which he gave to his son, Luis. As he handed them over, he whispered something into his son’s ear, and Luis gave a discreet nod.
“While we sort this business out, I suggest we put the money away.” He tipped his head in the direction of the wheelbarrow, which the previous few minutes had put out of people’s thoughts. “We can’t leave it out in the rain.”
“Locked away in your shithole of a store?” One of the Freires spat on the ground. “Fat chance.”
“Where then?” Ramón replied. “In one of the hovels you lot rent out, so that you can keep guard over it?”
You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. Roberto saw that there was a very real chance of more violence breaking out.
“Isn’t there some neutral ground, somewhere that’s acceptable to both families? The church, say?”
Behind him stood a modern brick building adorned with the ugliest bell tower imaginable.
After a tense pause, everyone agreed.
“Okay, in the church,” said Ramón Docampo reluctantly. “We’ll take care of it. You and Luis deal with Pampín. Let’s get a move on!”
That was enough to jolt everyone into action.
While some opened the doors of the church wide, others hurried to raise the wheelbarrow into the air, like a bizarre parody of an Easter procession, and carry it up the steps.
Roberto watched them disappear inside, from where he heard muffled voices.
He couldn’t tell if they were talking about the murder they had just witnessed or what to do with their share of the money.
The sense of unreality, of sliding at full speed down a slippery slope, was only accentuated by his migraine.
“Come on, Mr. Smart-Ass,” said Luis Docampo with his strange, twisted smile. “Quit daydreaming and help me move the corpse.”
Roberto took the body by the ankles, and Luis grabbed it under the arms. Pampín was heavier than he looked, and Roberto’s muscles soon began to burn as he struggled toward the supermarket.
When they reached the store, they laid him on the ground so that Luis could unlock the door.
Inside, the place was dark and smelled slightly mildewed.
He could just make out a long counter, behind which was a series of shelves that in the summer would be stacked with products but just now were half empty.
The freezer compartments—lying open, the electricity turned off—were like the abandoned sarcophagi of a lost civilization. With one final effort, they lifted the corpse onto the long wooden counter.
“And now what?”
“We should stick him in one of those freezers.” Luis Docampo pointed at one of the chests, as if he’d read Roberto’s mind. “We can’t leave him on the counter, can we?”
“Aren’t they disconnected?”
“So what?” Luis said. “We’ll stick him in there and—”
Just then, a groan came from behind them. They both spun to face the counter, where Víctor Pampín’s body was trembling slightly.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” groaned Luis. “The bastard’s still alive!”
Roberto ignored him and leaned over the poacher.
The man had opened his eyes, his expression blurry and disconcerted.
His chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly, and he opened his mouth as if to speak.
When he managed to focus on Roberto’s face, he gripped one of his hands, in a mute request for help.
A huge wave of relief overcame Roberto. The blow hadn’t killed Pampín; it had just knocked him out. He was disoriented and weak, but there was nothing that the right medical care couldn’t fix. No doubt he’d have a fractured skull, but that was nothing compared to the nightmare they’d been facing.
The situation was still an absolute mess, but at least it wasn’t murder. And Diego wasn’t a killer.
Everything might turn out all right in the end.
“Give me some room.” Luis Docampo appeared at his side. “Let me see.”
Pampín was now breathing more evenly, and Roberto stepped to one side, without releasing the man’s hand.
Then, without saying a word, Luis Docampo took the hammer from his belt and brought it crashing down on the poacher’s skull.
One, two, three times.
With the final blow, blood spurted out and splashed their faces.
Roberto staggered back. The whole place was spinning, and he could hardly breathe. He had just witnessed a display of pure, primal violence, but Luis Docampo’s face didn’t betray the least sign of emotion.
“Now he’s dead,” he muttered, as if it were completely natural.
Roberto was unable to utter a single syllable. He grabbed on to a display stand full of yellowing postcards to keep himself upright, and tried to process the horrific scene.
“What have you done?” he asked in a hoarse whisper. “The man was alive. He was alive, you maniac!”
Luis’s only response was to shrug and put the hammer, which had blood and hair sticking to it, back in his belt.
“You killed him!” Roberto pointed at him. “You murdered him in cold blood!”
Luis Docampo opened his eyes wide and affected a surprised expression.
“Me?” A twisted smile spread across his face. “You seem to be a bit confused, my friend. It wasn’t me.”
“What the hell do you mean? I saw you with my own eyes!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Luis wiped a spot of blood from his cheek. “The only thing I know is that the Freire freak attacked the poor guy with a hammer and killed him. You saw it too.”
“He was alive! He was still alive!” replied Roberto.
“No, he wasn’t. He was already good and dead. And a whole load of witnesses will say the same thing.”
“You won’t get away with this.” Roberto put his hand in his pocket and took out his phone. “I’m going to call the Guardia Civil right now and tell them what’s happened.”
“And what are you going to tell them?” Luis took a step toward him, and Roberto backed off, suddenly aware that they were alone and the door was a long way away. “That I killed him?”
“That’s right.”
“You know what I think?” He leaned on the counter, just inches away from the corpse, as if he were waiting to buy some bread.
“From my point of view, you have three options. The first is to call the Guardia Civil and stick with the version that it was the Freire kid who killed this stupid busybody.”
“No way.”
“The second”—Luis raised two thick fingers—“is to confess that he was alive when we brought him here but that you killed him.”
Roberto stared at him incredulously. “What . . . what crazy shit is this? That’s nonsense.”
“Not at all.” Luis pursed his lips and shook his head sadly. “I saw you do it with my own eyes.”
“You’re out of your mind.” Roberto unlocked his phone.
“Think carefully,” Luis warned as he patted the hammer with his gloved hand. “This is the murder weapon, and as far as I know, the only prints on it are Diego Freire’s . . . and yours.”
Roberto Lobeira stared at the hammer in horror. The same hammer he had used to break the chains on the damn bundle of cash a while earlier. The same hammer that was, no doubt, covered with his fingerprints.
“Now tell me.” Luis Docampo’s voice had acquired a gentle, reasonable tone, the tone of someone explaining something to a child.
“If you call the authorities and they turn up here . . . who do you think they’re going to believe?
You, with your crazy account of a senseless murder .
. . or me, backed by my relatives, who’ll swear that when they heard Pampín’s cries, they came running and saw you finishing him off?
And that’s before we get onto the subject of your fingerprints on the murder weapon . . .”
Roberto felt the jaws of the trap closing pitilessly around him.
“You had a motive, I guess. You wanted to keep the money, even though we didn’t agree. Pampín threatened to call the police and . . . well, there’s not much more to explain, right?”
Roberto had closed his eyes, like a child hoping for the monsters in his closet to disappear, but it was futile.
He was screwed. Completely and utterly screwed.
“Three options,” he whispered.
“What?”
“You said I had three options.” He struggled to articulate the words. “What’s the third one?”
Luis Docampo took a step toward him and put an arm around his shoulder as if they were old friends.
“The third option is the best,” he said.
“You keep your mouth shut, you don’t say anything to the authorities, and you accept that the Docampos and the Freires divide the money equally between us.
You renounce your share, because you’ve already told everyone that this business is immoral, indecent, and all that crap.
Then, you spend the rest of your time on the island shut away in your cottage, writing, jerking off, or doing whatever the hell you feel like, and at the end of it all, you leave.
That way, we can all forget about this nasty business.
What do you reckon, my friend? That’s a good solution, isn’t it? ”
“You’re forgetting one thing.” Roberto pointed to Víctor Pampín’s lifeless body. “Him. Someone will miss him, sooner or later. People will start to ask questions.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Luis replied calmly.
“In a few days’ time, we’ll toss him over a cliff.
Everyone will just assume that he slipped and fell, or that he was washed away by a wave while he was out scraping goose barnacles.
By the time the seagulls have finished with him, he’ll be so disfigured that nobody will even notice the hammer blows. Your hammer blows.”
Roberto was gripped by a terrifying certainty. Luis Docampo, the same man he’d shared a beer with that morning, had him at his mercy. The islander had played his hand quickly, and what was worse, Roberto could see no way out.
He should have seen it coming. He’d been told that the rules were different here on the island. That they did whatever was necessary to survive.
The man had told him clearly and directly, but he hadn’t understood. His brutal acts were suffused with the cruel pragmatism of someone who had to struggle each day to survive, of someone who had suddenly been presented with a golden ticket to escape from that vicious cycle.
He had underestimated the Freires and the Docampos when he had thought they were just a group of islanders caught up in trivial squabbles.
The hatred they professed for each other was exceeded only by the overriding need to outdo their rivals.
Something told Roberto that distributing the money fairly between the two clans wouldn’t be as easy as Luis wanted him to believe.
“We’re going out to join the rest of them now,” Luis Docampo informed him. “So what are you going to tell them?”
“That I agree that you can all keep the money,” Roberto acquiesced pathetically.
“And what else?”
“That I renounce my share.”
“That’s the way I like it.” He patted Roberto’s back. “Right, let’s stick the body in one of these freezers and get the fuck out of here.”