1503936082 by Mari Jungstedt

Author:Mari Jungstedt [Jungstedt, Mari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503936089
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Published: 2016-05-01T23:00:00+00:00

41

The foreman, Alvaro Mendez, was in a lousy mood. Not that he was normally a cheerful guy, but now he was really irritated. The well-to-do farmer he worked for had called and complained that the watering system out by the biggest papaya field had broken down and told him to check on it immediately. It was Sunday, Alvaro’s only day off. The fact that he’d gotten up in the middle of the night because his son wet the bed and couldn’t go back to sleep didn’t make things any better.

Alone out in the field, he brooded about what could have caused the problem. He knew it had to be remedied right away. It hadn’t rained for months. The water in the system came from rainwater ponds up in the mountains and was transported through pipes down to the orchards in the Tasarte Valley. Without them, they wouldn’t be able to do any farming. Here in south Gran Canaria, with an average of three hundred sunny days a year, it was crucial to make use of what little rain fell.

Up at the field he discovered that the lock on the chain that hung on the high fence by the entrance had been broken off.

He swore silently. Someone must have come in and pulled apart the water pipes at the connection point. It had happened a few times before—some idiotic surfer had decided to have a drinking party in the fields. He cursed the damned foreigners who didn’t have the sense to stay in their home countries. They had no respect for ordinary people who toiled from morning to night to afford the things tourists took for granted.

He stepped over the network of black rubber hoses lying on the ground. Everything appeared to be in order. He’d expected bottles and shards of glass on the ground, but it looked just like it had the other day when they’d finished the harvest. No one seemed to have moved anything. The palmlike papaya trees grew close together and the vegetation was dense, even though the branches were now cleared of the green, pear-shaped fruits. When he pulled back a branch to get a better view, he caught sight of something that made him freeze. At first he wasn’t sure what it was, and he had to take a few steps forward. An old, black, rusty iron bed was partially hidden among the trees.

“What the hell?” he exclaimed. “Is anyone there?” he called. Whoever had dragged the bed there was presumably asleep. But how in the world did they transport it here? And why go to so much trouble to sleep outside when you could just as easily lie right on the ground?

It had to be some young people who’d been fooling around and drinking and then fallen asleep drunk. Once again he called but got no answer.

At a loss he stood there for a moment, wondering whether he should go back to the car to get his tools. Wake whoever was lying in the bed and then get them—and the bed—out of the papaya field.

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