THE ENGLISH WITNESS Read Free

reproduction that hung
from a hook on the wall facing him. He recognised it as Picasso’s “Guérnica”: a
wide canvas executed entirely in shades of black, white and grey, depicting a
stylised tableau of extreme violence.
    Miguel watched him closely, and waited
patiently for the Englishman to make eye-contact before answering. “Without
wanting to alarm you, I think we have to assume that,” he admitted. “On the
positive side, it wasn’t a specially well executed manoeuvre. But it was
certainly designed to frighten, and it was carried out without the slightest
regard for your safety, or ours, or that of the general public. And if you fail
to get the message, I’m in no doubt that things will escalate.”
    “But why? What have I done? What interest
could they possibly have in me?”
    “Señor Burlton, you do have a… shall we
call it a history? One that involved your deceased friend. We don’t know the
details, but we have to infer a connection between your visit to San Sebastián
and his abduction.”
    There was a long silence, during which
Jack stared fixedly at the nightmarish art reproduction on the wall. He did not
look away from it even as he began to speak. And when he finally began to talk
about the past, the last vestiges of his coherence and composure had vanished. “OK,”
he admitted. “Things happened. But they happened decades ago. My memory of them
is more than a little confused. I was…unwell. For months afterwards. Years, if
I’m honest.” More silence. “I still get flashbacks—sudden images and sounds in
my head that bring me to a standstill. You saw me down at the station, when the
gun came out—that was a mild one. And dreams...”
    Jack shuddered visibly before drawing a
deep breath and carrying on, a little more sure of himself now. “I have a jumbled,
impressionistic idea of what I lived through. But when it comes to the precise
sequence of events, it’s hard to put things in order. And it’s harder still to
distinguish what actually happened from forty years’ worth of bad dreams and
what-ifs. And anyway, to be blunt, I don’t see how something that happened in
the early seventies – something that seemed all played out at the time – could
reach down and do harm four decades later. There can’t be a connection. It has
to be a coincidence.”
    “There are few coincidences in politics, Jack.
May I call you that? And in Basque politics there are none. Nothing is ever
forgotten. Nothing is ever forgiven. But it’s a very private war, Jack—a very claustrophobic,
incestuous war. And I don’t know how the hell you managed to get sucked in. How
did it happen?”
    “It all started with a guy named Txako. We
smuggled him across the border and then somehow the secret police got onto us,
or at least onto me, at least I think it was the secret police, I don’t see who
else it could have been. And there was a guy named…hang on, it’s on the tip of
my tongue. Anyway, he...”
    “Slow down, Jack,” interrupted the
detective. “You’ve lost me already. We need to start at the beginning, and you
need to explain who people are as you go along. Above we’re going to need a
record. I’ve got a little digital recorder that I’m going to set running while
we talk, and in due course Julio will condense it down into a formal witness statement
for you to sign. He has a gift for interviewing witnesses and a rather elegant
way with words. I’ll be setting the agenda, but I think you’ll find him very
skilful at drawing out half-remembered details and helping you sort them into
their correct sequence.”
    “Hang on,” said Jack as Miguel reached for
the record button, “don’t you need to read me my rights or something?”
    “You’ve been watching too much
television,” answered Miguel with a smile. “You’re not under arrest. You’re not
even a suspect—just a guest freely helping us with our enquiries.” He pressed the
red button on a small, silver recording device.