Free The Sentinel: 1 (Vengeance of Memory) by Mark Oldfield Page A

assiduously incorporated into her life ever since she began to take science lessons seriously in her teens. Although, she thought, peering down at the market through the soft gauze curtain, if she were honest, she owed her interest in science to Señorita Chavez, her science teacher.
    Señorita Chavez enthused her, sharing with Galindez the thrill of seeking out and accumulating data, and then understanding it using complex models of analysis and interpretation. Science gave Galindez a framework of knowledge that eventually inspired her to train as a forensic scientist. And how she had loved that training. Learning how to tackle the challenge posed by intangible, incoherent strands of evidence and rework them, translating the chaos and confusion of the crime scene into a coherent, credible explanation. That challenge, she had realised, was missing in her work for the guardia civil . In fact, her only real challenge so far had been to accept that her junior status doomed her to the crappy jobs. Inevitably, that meant war graves, even though forensic archaeology wasn’t her specialist field. But then, she thought, how much of a specialist did you have to be to wield a spade?
    So far, all she’d done was catalogue sites and excavate remains, even though, very often, local people had known exactly who was in those graves since the day they had been shot. No one cared about the dead. The politicians wanted to be seen to be doing something about addressing the casual slaughter of the War. So the guardia sent her on these futile journeys because of pressure from the politicians. That way, something was seen to be done. Something visible but inexpensive. Her job summed up then: cost-effective but pointless.
    She took one of Luisa’s books from the bookshelf and sat by the window. A faint eddy of warm air moved the diaphanous curtain against her arm. Outside, the sounds of the street grew louder. She skimmed through the book. One heading caught her eye: ‘How Should We Write the History of the Civil War?’ She began to read:
Most histories of the Civil War are moral and political projections from a contemporary perspective to one from regime, with its self-aggrandising and backward-looking hagiography was to align Spanish political and social life with quasi-mythical events and needs derived from a fictional golden past. This constant re-creation of a contrived and artificial history that justifies contemporary political ends clearly demonstrates the need for a history focused on the ways in which a society understands itself through its understanding of the relationship between ‘now’ and ‘then’. Doing history with practical intent must involve writing a history which needs to be – as Foucault has shown – a history of the present. We need to identify the contribution of the past to the thoughts and deeds of the present.
     
    A history of the present? Practical intent? The words appealed to Galindez. But the sentences which followed didn’t as she skipped through the turgid, repetitive rhythms of academia in full flow. Where was the clarity? The argument? Why couldn’t academics like Luisa write in plain Spanish? Reading further, Galindez noticed with annoyance that Luisa had little time for individuals in her grand theorising:
For too long we have accepted the notion that the slaughter of the war resulted from the murderous inclinations of individuals. Yet it is in the realm of ideas and ideologies that the seeds of destruction are sown: treating the war as a patchwork of disparate criminal acts lends nothing to our understanding and creates only a culture of blame intent on individualising culpability and stereotypically labelling its subjects.
     
    Christ, Galindez thought, Luisa wouldn’t make much of a detective. No role for the individual? Blame culture? She saw the implications clearly. No role for forensic investigation, or detailed inquiry, just a focus on ideas and grand theories. Luisa’s approach