A Broken Land by Jack Ludlow

Author:Jack Ludlow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780749008376
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Crossing the main square, now full of the column’s trucks, as well as the now-upright cannon and an abandoned fuel bowser, Cal and Florencia passed the communists, as before in a separate section by the steps to the church, their equipment neatly arranged and looking as smart as they had the first time he had seen them. Florencia took pleasure in telling Cal, in a voice loud enough for them to overhear, that ‘the cowards took no part in the battle, but stayed to the rear where they were safe’.

The only reaction she got was from one of the squad leaders, who looked at her with the same level of hate as she was displaying, then snapped his upraised thumb through his teeth, which meant Cal had to drag his woman away from what would have been a futile dispute.

‘Come on, let’s find out what your leader has in mind.’

They found Juan Luis in the office of the town mayor, sitting behind his desk: he, a left socialist, had been found hanging from the wide archway of the door that led to the courtyard of his house, with a notice saying he was a traitor pinned to his chest. Inside, his family – a wife and two daughters – had been raped and mutilated, then finished off with gunshots to the head.

In total, the insurgents had murdered some thirty-four of the town’s inhabitants before fleeing, taking with them those sympathisers who had not already fled to safety, the locals who supported their aims and had helped their ‘cleansing’. It had to be hoped that in raking those fleeing vehicles, some of those who had betrayed their fellow citizens to the Falange had been killed along with the blueshirts.

Having not long come off the phone to Villabova, Laporta was in a mood of quiet fury, and in reacting to Cal Jardine he showed scant gratitude for the fact that his bacon had been saved by the actions of the Olympians. A question as to the removal of the wounded got a very brusque response, almost a dismissive wave of the hand. About to remonstrate with him, Florencia beat Cal to it; she launched into a furious burst of Spanish invective, halfway through which Laporta started to laugh, his shoulders shaking.

‘My friend, she has just told me I am an ingrate.’ Then his hand went up to protect his face as Florencia, still yelling at him in Spanish, picked up the late mayor’s ashtray and made to throw it at his head; he was saved by Cal grabbing it out of her hand. ‘If she is like this in bed I wonder you have the energy to fight.’

‘I think you owe my boys a vote of thanks,’ Cal said, not in the least amused, now actually restraining Florencia with one arm round her waist, seeking to avoid her kicking legs and now suffering an equal number of insults as the man behind the desk.

The look on Laporta’s face changed immediately, and the laughter ceased.

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