Ava McCarthy - Hide Me

Hunter’s voice cut back in. ‘That’s as far as I’d got on Riva. But you don’t need this now anyway, do you?’

Harry picked at a fraying thread on her duvet. ‘I suppose not. But I’ve got a few more names. If you had the time, it might be interesting to find out about them.’

‘What for? You said you weren’t going to do it.’

‘And I’m not. You were right, one dead hacker’s enough. But it doesn’t stop me being curious.’

Hunter was silent. The line crackled with unspoken suspicion, and Harry rushed on, giving him the names of Chavez’s crew.

‘Zubiri doesn’t seem to know too much about them. I shouldn’t really tell you any more, but if you can find anything out, I’d be interested.’

The silence stretched on, like a taut rubber band straining to snap. Eventually, Hunter said,

‘How long will you be out there?’

Harry wound the fraying thread tightly around her thumb, choking off the circulation till her fingertip turned white.

‘Only a few more days.’ She glanced at the map on the bed beside her, eyeing the red-inked route. ‘There’s just something I need to do before I leave.’

Chapter 11

‘I just cannot understand what you’re doing over there. It’s totally bizarre.’

Harry, resisted the urge to make faces into the phone. Her mother had uncharacteristically initiated the call, and so far had used the word ‘bizarre’ three times.

‘I mean, San Sebastián, Harry. Why on earth?’

‘I’ve already explained.’ Harry rounded a bend in the path, her calf muscles knotting against the steep climb. ‘I’ve taken a job here.’

‘In your father’s hometown?’

‘Is there a problem with that?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Harry heard the testy snick-snick of a lighter as her mother fired up a cigarette. She pictured her mouth puckered like a drawstring purse around it, the sunken cheeks accentuating her dramatic bone structure. Her mother was one of the few people who could still smoke with an air of vintage Hollywood.

Harry tugged her map out of her jeans. She’d been walking uphill for the past half-hour, and by her calculations she had to be almost there. She glanced over her shoulder. The road wound away from her in serpentine loops, the traffic now a distant sigh. She continued along the climbing path, the morning sun toasting her bare arms.

Her mother exhaled a hard, impatient puff. ‘It’s quite a coincidence, though, wouldn’t you say? Ending up there, of all places?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What kind of answer is that? Is it a coincidence or isn’t it?’

Harry winced, and considered dodging the question, but what would be the point? Like a bullet from a machine gun, there’d be plenty more where that one came from.

‘The job’s just one of the reasons I came here,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

Harry closed her eyes briefly. The urge to duck the conversation was overwhelming. She tightened her grip on the phone.

‘It’s really not a big deal, Miriam.’

She’d been calling her mother by her Christian name since the day she’d turned eighteen. Her mother had never objected. In fact, she’d seemed relieved, as if she’d never really liked being called Mum. Not by Harry, anyway.

‘If it’s not a big deal,’ Miriam said, ‘then why all the secrecy?’

‘There’s no secrecy. Look, I just thought I’d take the opportunity to do a little digging, that’s all.’

Miriam sucked hard on her cigarette, the line almost crackling with the hiss of flaring embers.

The Martinez lineage never had much airtime when Harry was growing up. Her mother had always managed to sideline the topic, and oozed disapproval whenever Harry and her father spoke Spanish around the house. Not that it happened often. Her father’s long absences and his stint in prison had turned Harry against him for a while, and until recently she’d been more focused on shutting him out than on embracing his family tree. But now all that had changed.

Miriam exhaled.

‘If, by digging, you mean looking up your father’s family, then I think you’re a little late.’ She expelled the last of the smoke with a short laugh. ‘They’re all dead, as far as I know.’

‘Not all of them.’ Harry leaned into the climb, head down. ‘What about Olive?’

Her mother paused. Harry rounded another bend, then stopped. The shadow of a crucifix pooled across the road in front of her like an inkspill. She looked up to see a yellow sandstone church, its gothic spires piercing the sunlight. Crazy-paving brickwork jigsawed across its façade. Next to it was an archway and a sign that read Cementerio de Polloe.

‘That woman’s not family,’ Miriam said eventually.

‘She had a child with Dad’s brother, didn’t she?’

‘And that’s all she did. She never married Cristos, had very little to do with any of us after he and Tobias were killed.’

Harry crossed the small courtyard and tried to recall Olive’s face. She hadn’t seen her since she was four or five, and the memory was hazy: black hair, white skin; sullen mouth too large for her plain face. To a child, she’d looked ugly.

Harry stepped under the archway and into the cemetery. A ribbon of tarmac unravelled into the distance, lined by gloomy, monolithic tombs. The birds seemed noisier this side of the archway, but maybe it was just that all the other sounds had died away.

‘Harry? Are you still there?’

‘I’m here.’

‘You can’t want to talk to that woman.’

‘Why not?’

‘She was nothing to do with us. That’s probably why she left. She didn’t belong, and she knew it.’

Harry experienced an odd pang on Olive’s behalf. Someone else who didn’t belong in her mother’s world.

She shook the feeling off and strolled along the tarmac, eyeing the ornate crypts on either side. Some were bigger than garden sheds, and designed like mini-churches with their own spires and stained-glass windows. Harry noted the elaborate coats of arms on the doors and raised her eyebrows. This was how the wealthy got interred.

Miriam’s throaty voice cut back in. ‘Anyway, who knows where Olive is by now? She could be anywhere.’

‘She’s still here in San Sebastián.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Dad told me a couple of weeks ago.’

‘And how on earth would he know, after all this time? Keeping in touch is hardly one of Salvador’s specialities.’

Harry recalled her father’s chronic domestic truancy and had to admit, her mother had a point.

Harry made her way further along the avenue. The cemetery was laid out in a vast grid that must have stretched for almost half a mile. Daubs of colour stippled the view: reds and yellows; lilacs and pinks. The sea of flowers spoke of a recent church ceremony, and their sweet scent drenched the air.

‘You know how they died, I presume?’ Miriam’s voice sounded thick with smoke. It had deepened over the years to a near-masculine pitch from all the tar. ‘Cristos and Tobias, I mean?’

‘Dad always said it was a car accident.’

‘Well, that’s one way of putting it. Sal never did like to face unpleasant facts.’ She paused to inhale on her cigarette, then said, ‘They were killed twenty-odd years ago in an ETA car-bomb attack.’

Harry stopped in her tracks. ‘Jesus. I didn’t know that. Poor Olive.’

Miriam made a vexed sound, as though sorry she’d inadvertently evoked sympathy for an old enemy. Harry pictured her peeved expression, probably heightened by the knot of silver-blonde hair that yanked her brows into a haughty arch. She looked a good decade younger than her sixty years, though Harry often wondered what would happen if she loosened her hair. Would her face collapse like a punctured sack of flour? She couldn’t remember ever seeing her mother without her merciless topknot. Maybe it was just another way she had of staying in control.