Trash - Andy Mulligan [56]
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Raphael.
The name on the stone was Pia. Then, Dante. Pia Dante. I looked down at Rat. ‘Oh my,’ I said, and I felt so sad. ‘That’s the little girl.’
I thought of the photo, of the little schoolgirl with her wondering eyes, and felt so bad. We’d all thought she was alive, or hoped she was.
Rat said, ‘He lost everything, man …’
‘He was sending her to school,’ I said. ‘That’s what the paper said.’
‘It was in the letter too,’ said Gardo. ‘The letter to Mr Olondriz. If it comes to your hand, then you know I am taken. Ask after my daughter, please – use any influence you have, for I am afraid for Pia Dante now.’
We were quiet a moment, and then I jumped down.
‘What now?’ I said. ‘What are we expecting to find here? What do we do?’
Gardo said, ‘I don’t know.’
I said, ‘A message, maybe? Look for another message …’
‘Where?’ said Rat. ‘Where’s he going to put it?’
We all looked around wildly, maybe thinking there’d be a letter, or some other clue – but it seemed pretty hopeless – it all seemed like a dead end.
‘We’ve got this far,’ said Gardo, getting angry like he does. ‘There must be something!’
‘Nothing,’ said Rat. ‘Where’s there to look, and what are we looking for? I think he was taken and killed before he could do anything.’
‘Maybe the police have been and got it?’ I said. ‘They tracked it other ways, maybe.’
Gardo sat down again. ‘Why is this so crazy?’ he said.
I sat next to him, and we thought and thought, but there was nothing to think. Then, right by us, a big family arrived, pressing into the graves with a load of candles and a cooking stove, so we moved off across the path and found a quieter place, higher up.
‘Look,’ I said. I couldn’t let it go. ‘If he had all that money … If he got away with it – if he really had a fridge full of money … Are we thinking he buried it here, with his wife and kids? Why would he do that?’
‘To come back later and get it,’ said Rat. ‘No one’s going to break open a paid-for grave, are they?’
‘The police would,’ said Gardo. ‘If they had even one slight suspicion. That’s why the code. If the police had got the letter we got – if they did what we did – went to the prison and saw Mr Gabriel … he would not have let on about the Bible and the book-code. So they would never have got this far.’ He smiled, and said what we all knew: ‘The man was smart.’
‘OK,’ said Rat. ‘So José Angelico knew he could trust Gabriel Olondriz. Gabriel was like the … guardian of it. Without him it’s never found. If it’s in there, even.’
‘You think it’s in there?’ I said.
‘It’s in one of them,’ said Gardo. ‘Maybe.’
‘You want to break open three graves?’ I said. I couldn’t believe I was even thinking about it. I knew I couldn’t do it.
Gardo stood up then. He walked up and down, and I could see him thinking so hard his eyes were bulging, getting madder and madder. ‘It can’t be!’ he said. ‘You don’t do that, do you? You don’t bust open your family grave! What about an empty one? Maybe there’s a broken one nearby …’
We looked around, and there were several. You could see what looked like trash, or maybe bones. Who wanted to sort through that? One thing for sure was they weren’t places you’d leave anything valuable. Gardo was beginning to really lose his cool, and I could see why – we’d come all this way, and had the police all over us – he’d been almost taken, fought his way out … and all for nothing? He looked at me and said, ‘What do we do, Raphael?’ and I didn’t know. I just looked at him, and Rat was looking from him to me then back again.
It was just at that moment, as we were gazing around, that we heard a voice.
It was a small voice, and it was calling down to us, and was almost blown away by the wind. But we just caught the sound, and looked up to see a tiny little girl.
‘What are you looking for?’ she said.
3
Raphael, Gardo and Jun-Jun (Rat):
She was sitting up on the graves, higher than us, so she was looking down. She was hard to see, because like I said she was so small, and there weren’t so many