Canary Islands Mysteries - Books 1-3

5. Haría-1

The room is dark, the weak light of dawn barely squeezing through the c****s in the shutters. Beside me, lying on her side and breathing steadily, Gloria sleeps. Under her arm is the toy rabbit Celestino"s favourite uncle gifted when she was born; once plump, furry and white, with ears all straight and true, now much-loved, one-eyed and grey, the ears droopy, fur thin from the wear of a tight hand.

My eyes feel puffy and I remember crying as I lay beside Gloria, small tears of frustration over her disappointing birthday party, which transmuted into a gush of anguish over the vicissitudes of my married life.

The wind has dropped and I can"t hear any rain. Still dressed in yesterday"s clothes, I slip out of bed and go to the kitchen. Angela, an early riser, is making coffee.

"Sleep well?" she says without turning around.

"Sort of."

I take up the chair at the table"s end. Hoping to hide the puffiness around my eyes, I direct my gaze at the window. Thin mats of cloud drift across the sky.

"I need to nip back to Haría. Check on the studio, and the house."

"At least eat something first."

Angela comes over and hands me a cup brimming with milky coffee. I feel her eyes on my face as I take it.

"Mum, can I leave Gloria with you?"

"It will be our pleasure," Bill says, entering the room in his brown check dressing gown.

I wrap my fingers around my cup, feeling the warmth penetrate my skin.

He hovers. "Try not to worry. There"s bound to be a reasonable explanation. Something to do with the storm."

I can find little reassurance in his words and when Angela sets down cereal and toast I can"t muster the will to eat.

The road glistens, puddles yet to evaporate on the stretches still in shadow. The narrow streets of Máguez are empty save for the odd car parked up hard against a whitewashed wall, but that is not strange. The village with its ancient, cuboid farmhouses, their shutters and doors the same shade of green, maintains quietude when the rest of the island swarms with activity the whole year round. Like Yé and Guinate, two tiny villages a few kilometres further north, here the tourists are few and they pass straight through.

I head south. Before long, the village gives way to open fields edged with low stone walls. Despite my eagerness to discover what has happened, I drive carefully up the steep rise that separates Máguez from Haría, avoiding the silt smears on the road. At the crest, the village of Haría begins, and I wend my way down more narrow streets, built for feet and the occasional cart, streets scarcely wide enough for two cars to pass.

Down in the village centre, I park outside the front yard gates of the old mill house, mounting the right wheels on the pavement. I have to wait for a slow stream of oncoming cars to go by before opening the driver"s side door.

Celestino"s old blue car is nowhere in sight.

Mine is a Renault, a white ex-rental hatch and I dislike driving it. When I moved to the island I hadn"t wanted a car. Right through my pregnancy I was determined to rely on Celestino and buses. Even now, I spend as little time as I can behind the wheel, having regretted buying the vehicle the very day I drove it home from Arrecife. I took the scenic route via Teguise and up over the mountain, Peñas del Chache, to find the vehicle losing power down the switchbacks to Haría. I had to freewheel much of the journey. The alternator had died.

I push the mill-house door half-expecting it to open, but it"s locked. I push again to make sure, thinking the rain might have caused the wood to swell, but it doesn"t budge.

The windows facing the street are shuttered, and the only access around the back is through the front yard gates, which are always padlocked. I knock and wait. Knock again. I can hear a faint echo inside. I press my ear to the door but hear nothing more.

"Celestino." I call as loudly as I dare, taking a quick glance up and down the street.

I knock and call again. No response. I do my best to quell the tension tightening my chest, reasoning away an image of him prostrate on his studio floor. People don"t get murdered in Haría. They just don"t. And he"s in good health. People don"t drop down dead in their late-thirties. It"s unheard of.

I return to the car and drive on a short way to the tiny church of San Juan, set in a swathe of tarmac at the convergence of several streets, making it easy to turn around and head back the way I came. The village looks as it does on any other day, aside from the moisture on the parts of the road still in shade. Closed in by dwellings and high, whitewashed walls, it"s impossible to assess the storm damage. It"s only when I pull up outside our home that I see that the barranco opposite, usually a dry stream bed, is wet and littered with debris, and part of the wall on its far side has collapsed. Storm water must have risen to the height of the road; silt fans out, drying as the day warms.

The street is still. No sign of Celestino"s car, but he usually parks in the garage round the back. Anticipation stirs in my belly. I"m across the street and out the front of our little old house in a second. I push my key in the lock and take a breath as I open the door.

The hallway is dark. I remove my sunglasses as I step inside. My eyes are slow to adjust to the dim. I almost trip over one of Gloria"s toys. I curse and shove whatever it is to one side, realising as I do that Celestino is almost certainly not here; the door to the patio is as I left it, closed.

I pull open the door and nudge a wedge of wood under its base.

The wind rustles the leaves of the tree in the patio centre. Rainwater brims in Celestino"s chunky pot plant saucers. On the far side of the patio, a canvas chair left out is half dry.

Foliage sparkles in a sudden burst of sunshine, shards of white brilliance. I wince and turn and squint, the morning sun too bright on the kitchen wall. I go in to find the room as I left it; uncommonly clean and tidy, with the dishes washed and left to drain, the pans put away, the bench tops clear of condiments; and the shelves above, cluttered with jars of this and that, arranged in some sort of order. On the small table set to one side of the room are three green placemats, Gloria"s plastic cup drained of its contents, and a few coloured pencils that belong in the tin on top of the small bookcase nearby. There is no indication that Celestino has been in the room since I left for Máguez yesterday. When I open the fridge, the level of milk and juice look about the same and there is no food to be taken, just a near empty jar of artichoke hearts, another of pimientos in oil, and a half-used bottle of passata.

I deposit my bag, sunglasses and keys on the table and check the bathroom, accessed via a short passage off the kitchen. Finding the room undisturbed—toilet seat down, shower curtain drawn back, lid on the toothpaste—I go and unlock the back door which opens into the garage. The absence of his car comes as no surprise—he drove to the studio and has clearly not returned home—but disappointment prickles anyway. The atmosphere of this new reality I find myself in feels surreal, as though I"ve entered a life belonging to someone else.

I lock the door and make my way through the kitchen and the patio to the main hallway. Gloria"s bedroom is on the right. It"s in its usual disarray, her toys strewn across the floor, bed covers crumpled in a heap in the middle of the mattress.

The door directly opposite leads to the two tower rooms: a small square living room, with main bedroom above. The wooden staircase set against the near wall renders the living room even smaller. There"s nothing noticeably different, no empty coffee cup, no open book lying face down, or any other evidence of Celestino"s recent presence. What did I expect?

I climb the stairs cautiously, a tread at a time, taking in the sharp creaks as each tread yields to my weight. This is the last room in the house, the only place Celestino could be if he"s here at all. I stop halfway and brace myself, forcing myself on, wanting to find him, craving the relief I would feel at the sight of him, and not wanting him here all at once, for if he is here, in what state will he be? Unconscious? Dead? Ridiculous thoughts, I tell myself, as I reach the last tread.

I don"t know how to feel when I see that our bedroom, like the rest of the house, is exactly as I left it. The bed made in a haphazard fashion, clothes dotted about on chairs, on the floor. It is impossible to tell if any of his are missing. The books on each of the bedside tables appear unchanged. I check the wardrobe and his chest of drawers. All look normal. I go to the window overlooking the patio at the rear of the property. No sign of Celestino"s car in the laneway.

Finally, I turn to his home office crammed into the far corner of his side of the room. The old wooden desk he borrowed from his studio in the mill house seems no different. The drawers are locked as anticipated. Glancing at a small pile of manila folders on the floor underneath I hesitate. Knowing how annoyed he"ll be if he discovers I"ve riffled through his papers, I leave them undisturbed. Besides, I doubt he would leave anything that private lying around. The desk top is empty save for his computer and, open atop his keyboard, the letter acknowledging receipt of his application to secure a commission of indigenous artworks for La Mareta, a stately home soon to be opened to the public.

With the letter in my hand, I sit down on the bed, my search of the house complete. I take in the DRAT letterhead, feel the weight of the paper. The letter is a harbinger of hope, our future salvation locked into its print. The winner will be announced in eight days. I can"t help feeling Celestino"s absence as a betrayal. As though he"s run away to escape the responsibilities that might lie ahead of him if he won. It"s a ridiculous thought but even as I dismiss it, my mind traipses back to the worst days of our marriage, to a time when my frustration over our hand-to-mouth existence peaked.

It was a few months ago, and the local newspapers were filled with coverage of La Mareta, the first articles detailing how generous King Felipe VI was in gifting the former royal residence to the island, journalists singing the praises of all the dignitaries concerned. I was reading one such article in the local paper when Celestino walked into the kitchen and dumped his satchel on the table.

"La Mareta, another example of Manrique"s genius," he read aloud over my shoulder.

"It"ll attract tourists in their thousands."

"Bah!"

I looked at him strangely. Surely even he could see how the island benefited from using Manrique as its emblem. Yet he wasn"t alone in his attitude. An editorial in the same edition went on to cite a growing sense of injustice in the hearts of activists and community groups in the island"s north. Yet again, the ordinary people were shut out.