Collusion: Chapter 8
The lessons of Lorca, the Spanish civil war and what happens when neighbours turn on neighbours
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ll publish a section from the novel. Chapters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 are here for those who missed them. The story so far: What started as an investigation into right-wing football fans has escalated. Hiding out in Granada, indicators point to the Asov and Ukraine. Lorca and the Spanish civil war loom large over Ashton
Chapter 8: Casa Grande
If the mews house seemed to constrict Titch, the villa was more than ample even for a man of such prodigious size. He stood in the marble hallway and extended his arms wide. “Welcome to casa grande. You should be comfortable. Now, can you give me your phone and wallet? You can be traced by any calls and if you use your cards.”
Ashton had arrived on a separate, later flight. Cathy babysat him at the mews after Titch departed and then black-cabbed him out to Stansted. She nursemaided him all the way to security, where an invisible handover seemed to take place. Or maybe Ashton had just come to permanently imagine he was being watched.
He had landed in Malaga almost three hours earlier and had been told there would be someone waiting for him. Sure enough, a seedy-looking Spaniard approached him quickly and guided him to a car. He was expecting to be taken to somewhere on the Costa Del Sol but the driver – who appeared to speak little English – headed inland. Ashton took out his phone but the man snapped, “No telefono,” and so they continued in silence.
There was very little traffic on the motorway. It got colder as they drove north and Ashton, who had packed barely any warm clothes in anticipation of heading to sunny Spain, shivered. He could see from the signs that they were going in the direction of Granada but they passed through the city and drove for another 20 minutes before arriving in a small town that sprawled for a mile and then ended abruptly. At its edge was a street lined with high-walled villas on one side and a single property surrounded by waste ground on the other. Titch was waiting in the semi-isolated house.
An automatic gate opened on to a steep driveway and an underground garage. Once the car was inside and the entrance closed, Ashton’s escort indicated to get out. He unlocked a door and led the way up a flight of stairs to ground level. Titch was in the hallway.
After taking the phone, the host spoke in fluent Spanish to the driver and then, unexpectedly, kissed him tenderly. The pair touched like lovers for a parting moment and the man left.
“He’s a very,” Titch stressed the word, “good friend of mine. He is not quite as stern as he looks. He’s a taxi driver these days. Among other things. I seem to know a lot of them. Completely trustworthy. He’s the only other person you should trust while you’re here. Aside from me, of course.
“First things first. I’ll show you round and then we need to find out who we can trust back home. So, let’s lay down the conditions.”
They went on a tour of the house, starting upstairs. There was one huge bedroom, talking up a quarter of the floorspace, with an en suite bathroom and built-in wardrobes. That was Titch’s sleeping space. Next door was a small room with two single beds and across the landing was a substantial area with a double bed. In between was a bathroom.
“This is where you shall sleep.” Titch indicated the double. “As long as you obey the house rules.”
Ashton waited.
“I’m happy for you to come and go and be seen in the town,” Titch said. “The neighbours expect a lot of British visitors. What you cannot do is make contact with anyone in the UK, even Orlanda. You wouldn’t have a second phone hidden away, would you?”
“Of course not.”
“Because if you’re going to do anything silly, you can go in the basement. There’s no signal down there and it’s set up for people who need to be…” He thought for a moment. “Taken out of public view for a while. Your friend Killer – Wilson – knew you were with the lovely Ms York. He didn’t follow you because I checked. Someone, either deliberately or inadvertently, gave away your location. We cannot have that happen here. So, who knew you were going round there on Sunday night?” Clearly, Titch was still not satisfied with the answers from the interrogation in the mews.
“Orlanda. You.” He had not told anyone else.
“Who did the lady tell? I’m sure she never meant to put you – or herself – in danger but we can’t take any chances. Cathy will talk to Orlanda again. We need to find out what’s going on. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“In that case let’s go down and I’ll show you the living area. It is time for a beer. We shall leave my underground lair until tomorrow.”
The front door was huge and heavy-looking. On the right of it there was an office that was disappointingly conventional compared to the tiny surveillance centre in the mews. The kitchen, with a utility room, was on the left.
The main room was even bigger than the master bedroom. It was longer, thought Ashton, than a cricket pitch and twice as wide as a normal living area. There was a roaring log fire at the far wall, where the television and audio equipment were placed in front of two sofas. A long dining table dominated the other end of the room.
“This place is made for parties, I see,” Ashton said.
“Most certainly,” Titch agreed.
Again, there were carefully disguised bar fridges hidden in tasteful sideboards. “I’ll show you my aging cellar tomorrow,” the owner said. “For now, let’s enjoy a drink.”
Titch produced a selection of Garage beers from Barcelona. They started on Trinket, a 4.2 per cent session IPA and built up to the Soup DIPA at 8.5. Over the next few hours they tried six beers from the brewery. They skirted around the subject that had brought them both to this point.
Ashton was unnerved by the links to Ukraine. He had been thinking about the Donbass conflict throughout the day.
“I was there in 2011, a year before the European Championships,” he said. “To write a piece about the potential for hooliganism at the tournament. Donetsk felt like a place where violence was lurking just under the surface.”
He told the story of his experiences in the city that was now calling itself the capital of the Donetsk People’s Republic. It was a Uefa press junket and European football’s ruling body had put British reporters in dreadful lodgings – the Hotel Liverpool, decorated with paintings of The Beatles and Union Flags.
The group of writers – some from news desks, others from sports sections – attended Ukraine’s friendly match against France in the Donbass Arena and, afterwards, most of Ashton’s colleagues camped out in a subterranean disco below the hotel, ogling the local girls. It was a warm summer’s night, though, and he decided to look around the city. “I figured it was unlikely I’d ever go back to that part of the world again,” he explained.
“I went the wrong way. I was walking down this road and there was nothing open. It had gone midnight. I eventually came upon a kiosk where workers were standing round drinking beer. So I went and got one.”
One of the locals could speak a little English and struck up a conversation. Ashton told him the purpose of his visit and the man gave him some advice. “He said, ‘We’re Ukrainian. You are safe with us. Be careful with Russians. They are all alcoholics and would cut your throat for your wallet.’”
After finishing his beer – “Industrial cooking lager” – Ashton continued his journey, circling back towards the hotel by a different route. After another 20 minutes he stumbled upon a late-night bar. “I went inside and I got in a conversation with some customers,” he continued. “They weren’t used to seeing many westerners in this place. This time they were Russians.
“They told me that Ukrainians were all fascists and bloodthirsty killers and to avoid them.”
Titch laughed.
“And you know,” Ashton said, “I thought there was a tiny bit of truth in both versions. It was a moody place.”
Titch opened a can of Glassfinger stout and poured it into two glasses.
“It never ceases to shock me how quickly people turn against their neighbours,” Ashton said. “It’s happening now at home. Not as bad. Yet. But if fellas like Killer get their way it could get out of control.
“I mean, you saw it in Northern Ireland.”
“That’s a conversation for another day,” Titch said. “It’s too nice an evening to talk about what happened there. Let’s have another beer and an early night.” It was 4am. “We’ve got a lot of talking and thinking to do tomorrow.”
*
In the morning they completed the tour of the villa. Titch unlocked the back door and led his visitor into the back yard. It was impressive. The exit led to a large patio with magnificent views over a field towards snow-capped Mulhacen. It was breathtaking. The nearest houses in this direction were more than half a mile away. Ashton noted that the pool was on the north side of the building so would not enjoy the evening sun but no other properties overlooked the swimming area.
At the garage end there was a barbecue with a table under cover for diners. An eight-foot wall surrounded the property but the high patio allowed the men to survey the surroundings.
There were no houses on this side of the street for three-quarters of a mile to the west and half that distance to the east. Titch explained.
“This is perfect for me,” he said. “There’s an unbroken row of properties for 600 yards on the south side of the road. It’s a one-way street.” Ashton could see equally imposing villas only a matter of yards outside the front door but this house still felt isolated. “If you’re worried about anyone finding us, look at the land around us. It’s flat and there’s no cover on either side of the house. You can only approach from the east or west.
“Over that wall,” he pointed past the pool, “is an arroyo. You could sneak up that but, by the time you get to the villa, it’s a 30-foot climb to get over the wall and the vegetation is thick down there.” He chuckled. “And that’s before you get to the surveillance. Lights, alarms, electrified fence… We are very secure. Now downstairs.”
They went back inside to the basement. The first, long room was a fully kitted-out gym. The fitness equipment at the mews was not cheap but this was the highest spec. Adjacent to the workout area was a bar and cellar space with a door that opened to stairs that led to the pool. The majority of Titch’s beer was kept down here at precise temperatures. Above the serving counter was an impressive collection of glasses and a large-screen TV was mounted on the wall.
On the street side of the basement were two small, windowless bedrooms. “For people who need to keep a low profile,” Titch said. To Ashton they looked like cells. The last room on this side was a plain space, slightly bigger than a utility room but bare. It contained a table, two chairs and nothing else. It was suspiciously like an interrogation block. There was one more locked door which Ashton assumed was a communications hub similar to the one at the mews.
“Bad boys get to stay down here,” Titch said. “So don’t break radio silence.”
They went upstairs and conducted their debriefing in the airier office by the front doorway. “How did they know you were with Orlanda? Who knew you were there?”
Ashton thought. “You. No one else. She sent one of her staff out to buy beer for me.”
“They’ll be finding out from her in London,” Titch said. “Why were they waiting downstairs? Why didn’t they come up to the flat?”
Both mulled over the question.
“They were waiting for it to get quieter?” Ashton offered.
“No,” Titch said after a few seconds of thought. “They were probably waiting for you to leave. I think they wanted you.”
“They could have gone to her flat after I left.”
“No. They were visible in the hallway. They were planning to grab you as you came out of the lift all loved up. It’s not about her.”
“But…”
“Let’s run this back. You were working on a story about the Football Lads Action Group. They had been part of the mob who publicly abused Orlanda. But they did little more than call her a traitor. There’s no suggestion that they were involved in that hamfisted assassination attempt.”
“Well, even she said that the man was a local mental case.”
“We’ve been thinking about this the wrong way,” Titch declaimed. “Dear boy, she was just bait. A distraction. It’s all about you. They knew you would think the man in the lobby when you arrived was Orlanda’s minder. Then he called for our friend Killer. If you had come down in the lift after leaving the flat, they could have easily, er, extracted you. Especially on a quiet Sunday night.
“But why? Let’s start at the beginning.”
They ran through the conversation in the Royal Standard yet again. It yielded no further clues. Neither did the chase on the boat and through Flanders. Nothing seemed to add up. Although it was painful, they looked at the pictures of the waterboarding and discussed everything that had been seen and heard.
“We were talking about Ukraine last night,” Titch said. “Our friend in London spoke about Wilson’s time with the Asov. Could that be the link? He said that there were Metalist and Shakhtar ultras involved. There’s a football connection?
“We need to learn all we can about the Azov. The Donbass is like the Balkans. Full of bad characters with weapons. That would be another destination if ExSat want guns – and Killer has contacts there. I’ll speak to London and find out whether we can make any clear links.”
It took five hours of painstaking conversation with only a short break for food to get to this point. “Not much more we can do until we get a reply,” Titch said. “Let me show you around.”
They locked up the house and went outside. The street was messy: there was a fair amount of animal waste and, despite the size of the houses, there was a neglected air about the district. Titch turned right up a small sloping street and at the top of the rise a main road was visible some 500 yards away. In between lay waste ground pockmarked by a few unhealthy trees. Across the highway was a bar and a petrol station. Ashton assumed they were heading there but Titch had other ideas. A bus came around a sweeping turn to their left and stopped beside the pair at a derelict shelter. “Let’s go to the city,” Titch said and hopped on.
“Three euros each and it means we can both have a drink,” he said. “And you get to see the area.”
It was not much of a town, just a long road with very little infrastructure beyond the shopfronts of the main drag. To the right there was a church and what Ashton imagined was the traditional centre but the bus turned left into a more modern commuterland. Expansion stopped suddenly, though, as they travelled uphill. At the crest of the rise were dozens of shells of houses, their development curtailed fatally by the credit crunch more than a decade earlier. They sat like rotting relics of a different age.
The bus passed through a number of conurbations and traversed a large air force base before approaching the southern reaches of Granada. There was a huge, shining, new out-of-town shopping complex that seemed from its car park to be struggling for customers. Then, passing under the ring road, they were in the city proper. The journey had taken half an hour.
They alighted at a terminus, a mile or so from the cathedral, and strolled towards the centre alongside the Genil, a river long concreted into a deep, unnatural trough. It was bright but chilly.
“Tomorrow I’ll drive you around some of the sights,” Titch said, “but today we’ll walk the streets. This, dear boy, is one of the most beautiful places in the world.”
Ashton looked around. He couldn’t see it.
They strolled up an avenue of trees paved with marble and stone where people sat on benches and tried to seize the last of the afternoon sun. At the top was an open plaza but Titch turned right and led the way to a large – and to Ashton’s eye, gauche – restaurant called Chikito.
“That,” the big man said with evident satisfaction, “used to be Café Alameda, where Lorca and his friends created a debating society. A genius developed here.”
Ashton looked blank.
“Gabriel Garcia Lorca?” Titch stared at his friend with a disapproving expression. “You’ve heard of him, surely? You’re supposed to be a writer.”
The name rung the vaguest of bells.
“You disappoint me, young man. You are not familiar with the great poet? Well, this trip is fortuitous for your education.”
The restaurant was closed so they crossed the square and went to a small, unkempt café called Suizo. The décor was cheap and the furniture basic. “Lorca used to come here for coffee,” Titch said, ordering two draft Alhambra beers. “He is one of my heroes.” The lecture began.
For the rest of the evening Ashton listened while Titch instructed. He learnt about Lorca’s upbringing, his extravagant persona, wide-ranging talent and his homosexuality. It was all leading to the poet’s inglorious death.
In the bar at the Hotel Reina Cristina, Titch reached the part of the story that gripped him most. “Spain was a very fractured society,” he said. “It still is but in 1936 it was clear that there would be a right-wing uprising. Instead of running, Lorca stayed here. Why? Probably because he couldn’t bear to be away from his mother.” He laughed sadly.
“His brother-in-law became mayor of the city and was shot by the Falange. Lorca came to this property, which was a house owned by rich and powerful friends. It didn’t help. They came and arrested him here.”
Ashton merely nodded and listened.
“He was thought to be a socialist and known to be gay. They took him up into the hills north of the town with two anarchist bullfighters and a one-legged schoolteacher.”
This sounded so surreal that Ashton fought the urge to smirk.
“And they shot them. They may have shot Lorca up the arse. It may have been his cousin that pulled the trigger. It was less than a month after Franco came with the army of Africa to the mainland to start the Civil War.”
There was little Ashton could say. Titch sat gloomily for a few minutes before speaking again.
“I’ve seen what civil war does to people. The loss of a beautiful, harmless individual like Lorca encapsulates the pointlessness and savagery of it all. He was no danger to anyone. We can’t let fascists win. And they’re on the march again.”
He downed what was left of his beer. “I’m afraid I haven’t given you the best introduction to Granada, Michael. Tomorrow I will show you its better aspect. Now let’s go and try some local craft beer before we head off home. You’ll get a glimpse of what’s in store for you.”
The route to La Hermosa, the tap for Sacromonte beers, took them past many famous sites: the cathedral, the Capella Real, the Plaza Nuevo and down the banks of the Darro. The floodlit Alhambra loomed on one side of the river and the narrow streets of the Albaicin rose on the other. In the winter light it looked enchanting and Ashton even managed to shed his new-found fear of strangers and the dark. He now glimpsed the town’s beauty.
“I shall introduce you to Moorish Granada tomorrow,” Titch said. “But tonight it’s local IPA, pale ale and porter.” They tried all three Sacromonte brews, enjoying the tapas that came with each round. Complementary food had been served in each bar they visited. There was never any need to have a meal during a drinking session in this city. Even with the nightmarish tales of Lorca’s death, Ashton was beginning to feel like he was on holiday. He knew that sensation could not last.
*
“I think we’re getting somewhere,” Titch said as Ashton emerged from the house into the chilly morning sun. “The Azov’s fondness for Facebook has helped enormously. Look at this.” He pushed a tablet across the table and scrolled through a number of photographs. “Recognise anyone.”
The second man on the cross-channel ferry was there. Ashton was certain. “He was with Killer on the boat,” he said. “He chased me across Belgium.”
“Valtteri Susi,” Titch said. “Probably a nom-de-guerre. The surname means ‘wolf’ in Finnish. He’s at the centre of the aptly named Misanthropic Division, a neo-Nazi organisation that started in Ukraine and has links across the Continent. No doubt your ExSat and FLAG friends have close contacts with it. The ‘88’ tattoo doesn’t confirm anything but it makes it likely that we’re dealing with Misanthropic associates.”
“What more do you know about Susi?”
“Well, he earned a reputation as an explosives expert in the Donbass.”
“That is not good news,” Ashton said.
“No.”
“Let’s go back to the ferry. Are you sure they were chasing you? They may have thought you were following them.”
“How?” Ashton said. “They came up behind me fast, trailed me when I got off the motorway and then back on to it. It’s ludicrous to suggest I gave the impression I was following them. I was trying to get away.”
“Not really,” Titch said. “What might have tipped them over the edge is when you took the exit road. One technique for following someone is to stay in front of them until you reach a point where you cannot be sure where they are going next. Then you drop in behind. Going off and coming straight back on to motorways is an age-old method of doing this. They were probably confused by your presence. When you went down the slip road they might have thought you were letting them get ahead.
“I’ll bet if you’d have turned left or right and not gone straight back on to the motorway they would have gone on their way and left you alone. Your paranoia probably flipped theirs over the edge, Mike. After that, they needed to find out what you knew and, maybe, get rid of you.”
“But I don’t know anything.”
“They don’t know that. That could be our strength.”
A sick feeling came over Ashton again. Something told him that he could end up dangling like a piece of bait.
“What about the van they were driving? Can we trace that.”
“No sign of it – or the men in it – going in or out of the UK,” Titch said. “Anyway, another piece of the jigsaw.” He got up. “Right. I’m going to work out. We’ll take the car into town this afternoon and I’ll drive you to some of the more scenic spots. A friend of mine works at the Nasrid Palaces and he’ll let us in just after the last group of tourists leave so you can see the Alhambra properly without the crowds. They let too many people in at each time slot. Later, we shall have a pleasant meal.”
Downstairs, they both exercised on the gym equipment. When Titch was in a tee-shirt and shorts he looked much less fleshy than in normal baggy clothes. His arms were muscled and the force was obvious when he pumped weights. His legs were thick and rippled not with fat but power. The beer-belly was an issue but when he began running through a series of Tai Chi manoeuvres it was hard not to be impressed with the control and poise displayed by a man of his years and size.
“I hope I’m as fit as you at your age,” Ashton said.
“Too much beer,” the reply came, with a pat of the stomach. “Keep running as long as you can, dear boy. When my knees stopped working, I packed the weight on.” But the younger man had already realised that the fitness gap between the pair was much narrower than he’d believed.
The afternoon was one of the most interesting Ashton had experienced for a long time. They drove Titch’s Citroen Berlingo to Sacromonte Abbey and looked down the valley at the back of the Generalife and the Alhambra. That aspect was spectacular but Titch had more in store. His next stop was the Ermita de San Miguel Alto. “People say,” he boomed as his hands swept across the Moorish wall and the vista of the entire city, “that the best view is from the Mirador San Nicolas opposite the Alhambra. They are sadly misled. This is the place to come. Lorca understood.”
He began reciting a snippet of verse in Spanish before lurching into English.
“Saint Michael, covered in lace,
shows his lovely thighs,
in his tower room,
encircled by lanterns…”
He pointed at the figure of the saint in the alcove below the bell tower. “Intoxicating images,” he said. “The Archangel Michael, victor over evil, vanquisher of Satan. The battle continues.”
Ashton felt a slight chill wind run across the mountain but the view was magnificent. “You should bring Orlanda here in the spring or autumn,” Titch continued in a much less bombastic tone. “Here and the Nasrid Palaces. You shall see them soon.”
They drove down back into the valley and up again to Alhambra hill. There were big car parks up here but again there was a curious mixture of beauty and gore in Titch’s guided tour. Instead of turning towards the crowds, the driver directed the car towards the cemetery. They passed the entrance and stopped on the side of a narrow track and got out.
“During the Civil War they would bring prisoners up from the town, past the Alhambra, up to this wall,” Titch said, scrambling down the verge. “Travellers in the hotels would hear the trucks in the morning and then gunfire. The fascists would line their prisoners up and shoot them. Leftists, anarchists, atheists, trade unionists, gays and anyone they had a grudge against. Sometimes it was their neighbours. They were, more often than not, the same religion and the same nationality. Blood lust lies just below the veneer of civilisation.”
Ashton stared. He was fixated on the bullet holes. He was surprised that they were so low, about waist height.
“They missed a few,” he said, imagining a firing squad.
“No,” Titch said. “If you want to shoot someone and make sure they’re dead, what do you do? Shoot them in the head. The easiest way to do that is make the victim kneel down.”
They stood reflecting on the statement.
“If someone with a gun ever tells you to get on your knees,” Titch said seriously, “you probably have 30 seconds to live. Get down and it’s over. You have a choice to make. Fight or die on your knees. You’ll probably still end up dead, but I’m never kneeling.”
It had clouded over. A spot of rain touched Ashton’s hand. Titch was walking along the wall towards a green and white sign that explained the significance of the monument. “Look,” he said. Someone had scrawled ‘Franco’ seven times in red pen over the words. On the wall a vandal had sprayed ‘Mierda roja.’ A crack of thunder snapped over the Sierra Nevada. It would take more than water to wash away the hate.