really wanted. Who was José Garovillo? What was this reference to churches? What about Granddad’s map?
The memory of Granddad was a discernible pain. David fought back the emotion; if he thought of his grandfather the thread of cognition could so easily lead to his parents. So he needed to do and not think; and he had one more severance to make, one more definite change to enact.
He picked up his mobile and pressed.
The phone rang in London.
‘Roland De Villiers. Yes?’
It was the normal snooty, self-consciously weary locution. The same voice that David had endured for half a decade.
‘Roland, it’s David. I –’
‘Oh for God’s sake. Rilly. David. Where are you now?’
‘Roland –’
‘You do realize your desk is piled high? I don’t care about your frankly peripheral circumstances. You are a professional, get a grip. I expect to see you behind that screen in the next hour or –’
‘I’m not coming back.’
A pause.
‘You have one hour to get back here –’
‘Give my job to that guy in accounts. The one who’s banging your wife. Bye.’
David clicked off. And then he laughed, quietly. He could picture his boss in his office, red faced with anger.
Good.
In front of him the motorway dipped and curved; they seemed to be cutting towards the middle of the city. Grey apartment blocks, stained by rain, stood to attention along the route.
The taxi driver looked up at David, mirrorwise:
‘Centro urbano, señor? Hotel Donostia? Sí?’
‘Sí. Er…sí. Yes. Centre of the city. Hotel…Donostia.’
The driver turned off the autopista and headed down into the wide and principal streets of the town. Large grey offices exuded an air of damp pomposity in the gloom. Many of them seemed to be banks. Banco Vizkaya. Banco Santander. Banco de Bilbao. People were scurrying past the sombre architecture, with umbrellas aloft; it was like a photo of London in the 1950s.
The Hotel Donostia was very much as it had appeared on the website: faded but formal. The concierge looked disdainfully at David’s creased shirt. But David didn’t care – he was almost delirious with tiredness. He found his room and fought with his keycard; then he collapsed into his oversoft bed and slept for eleven straight hours, dreaming of a house with no one inside. He dreamed of his parents, alive, in a car – with small wild horses, cantering across the road.
Then a scream. Then redness. Then a small boy running across an enormous empty beach. Running towards the sea.
When he woke, he opened the curtains – and gawped. The sky was bright blue: the September sun had returned. David pulled on his clothes, filled up on coffee and pastries, then called a cab, and hired a car at the railway station. After a moment’s hesitation, he rented the vehicle for a month.
The main road out of grimy Bilbao took him east towards the French border. Again he thought of his mum and dad and Granddad; he averted himself from the thought, and concentrated on the route. Was he going the right way? He pulled over at an Agip service station; its huge plastic logo – of a black dog spitting red fire – was overly bright in the harsh sunlight. Parked up, he took out the old map and traced his finger over the cartography, examining those delicate blue stars dotting the grey foothills. They looked like distant policelights, glimpsed through mist and rain.
Then he half-folded the map, and for the first time he noticed there was proper writing, in a different hand, scribbled on a corner of the map’s reverse. Seen in the stark sunlight the writing was very faint, and possibly in Basque, or Spanish. Maybe even German. The writing was so small and faded it was quite indecipherable.
It was another puzzle – and he was no nearer to solving any of it. But at least the map told him one thing: he was going the right way, into the ‘real’ Basque Country. He started the car once again.
The drive was hypnotic. Sometimes he could see the blue ocean, the Bay of Biscay, sparkling in the sun. Sometimes the road ducked instead through those dark green shady valleys, where the white-painted Basque houses looked like cuboid mushrooms, suddenly sprouted overnight.
At last the road divided, near San Sebastian; thence the smaller, prettier road headed for the interior: the Bidasoa Valley. It was as scenic as his research had promised. Tumbling mountain rivers ran down shady gorges, enormous oak and chestnut forests whispered in the delicate September air. Lesaka was close. He was