Free THE ENGLISH WITNESS by John C. Bailey

funicular ride up the cliff the following morning was quite
ravishing, as was the hike down the far side of the headland. The steep slope
down to the sea formed a lightly wooded semi-circle, lush and green in the
morning sunlight. The sound of the waves on the rocks drifted up from below,
accompanied by birdsong all around and the gentle, rhythmic chinking of beer
bottles in my little backpack. It was almost an anti-climax to emerge from the
stunted, scrubby trees into the rocky cove where I had arranged to meet the
infamous Gato.
    I called out two or three times in
greeting, but I was wasting my breath. My voice was completely drowned by the
thunder of the Atlantic breakers as they rolled in from the Bay of Biscay and
smashed against the rocks just yards from where I stood. In any event I seemed
to have the rocky cove to myself, but as I picked my way through the jumble of
boulders and outcrops that littered the shoreline my eyes were continually
sweeping the middle distance for any sign of the man I’d come to meet. Perhaps
that’s why I stumbled two or three times in the first few dozen yards, and it’s
almost certainly why I tripped over the corpse before I saw it.
    I was overcome with nausea at my first
sight of a dead body. Not that there was a lot of blood—in fact I thought for a
split second that I’d stumbled over a sunbather. Words of apology were already
queuing up on my lips before I realised the significance of the reddish-brown
stains on his white shirt. Even then my first impulse was to see if I could
offer any assistance, but it took only a moment to see that the victim was far
beyond any help I could give. And it was when I looked into the inert, staring
eyes that my stomach heaved.
    Once the gagging had run its course I was
able to examine the body more closely. It was clearly Gato. This was my first
sight of him, but even in death he closely matched the description I’d been
given. He’d been a big man: unusually tall for a pure-blooded Basque but
characteristically broad and well-muscled. The splayed nose and crumpled ears
spoke of his past as a prize-fighter, but his close-cropped hair had been thinning
on top and he exhibited the round belly so common among men of his ethnic
group. He appeared to have been shot twice: once high up in the right shoulder
and once just to the left of the breastbone.       
    In shock at my discovery, I stood for a
minute or two gazing distractedly at the corpse. I had no idea how to handle
this turn of events. I’d been brought up to trust the police, but the heavily
armed grises who cruised the streets of San Sebastián were infamously
harsh in their dealings with the public. I decided that the first step was to
consult my new friend Carlos; he’d set up the meeting and he seemed more
streetwise than I could claim to be.
    Retrieving my backpack from the ground, I’d
just begun to pick my way back towards the foot of the path when something hit
me in the small of the back. Spinning round, I saw nothing at first. Then
another pebble came sailing through the air, straight towards my face. Dodging
the missile just in time, I stumbled angrily in the direction it had come from,
and was about to launch into a tirade of abuse when I saw Carlos hunched down
between two boulders. He was clearly in a state of shock.
    “Hey, what the hell….?” I began, but then
saw that he had a finger to his lips while his other arm was frantically
gesturing at me.
    “Just get down,” he called out, as loudly
as a hoarse whisper would allow. “They’re still here.”
    “Who’s still here? What the hell is going
on?”
    “I’ve no idea, but my… Gato… is….”
    “Yes, I’ve seen him,” I acknowledged as I
squatted down beside him. “Come on, don’t we need to get to the police?”
    Carlos looked at me wide-eyed. “The
police?” he gasped, hunching down even further between the rocks. “Don’t be
stupid.” He took a moment to recompose himself before continuing,