The Snow Gypsy(47)
“What are you doing here?” He loomed into view, his head silhouetted against the slice of pale-gray sky revealed by the open door. He had a hunk of bread in his hand, and he bit off a big mouthful, swallowing it without chewing.
Rose doubted that he had even noticed her leaving the tavern with Nieve. She didn’t want to contemplate what he’d been doing all night. “I wasn’t waiting for you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said. “It was too late to go back to my room, that’s all.”
“Where’s Lola?”
“In bed.”
“What time did she get back?” She could hear the foreboding in his voice.
“I . . . I’m not sure. I was asleep. Why do you ask?”
“A man was knifed to death last night. Antonio Lopez.” His eyes searched her face.
Rose held her breath, afraid that anything she said would betray the fact that she knew.
“He wanted to marry Lola—did she tell you that?” Cristóbal shoved his dog off the chair and sank down onto it. “People are saying she had a fight with him in the tavern—pushed him away when he tried to put his arm round her. And half an hour later, he was found under the Gate of the Pomegranates with a knife in his guts.”
“That’s . . . terrible.” She stared at her feet, unable to look at him.
“You say you didn’t wake up when she came in? How was that? She must have walked right past you!”
“I . . . I had a lot to drink last night.” She’d had only one glass of wine. But he wouldn’t know that. “I put Nieve to bed, then just collapsed out here. I vaguely remember Lola coming in—she called good night to me, I think—but I couldn’t tell you what time it was.”
“Well, she’d better have a good story.” Cristóbal grabbed a poker from a hook on the wall and jabbed it into the embers of the fire. “The police are going to be buzzing around here like flies.”
As if on cue, Chico started barking. Gunesh came running from the back of the house, and the two set up a racket that brought Juanita stumbling into the room in her nightdress.
“Why are they barking?” She rubbed her eyes, staring at Rose. “What’s going on?”
Before either Rose or Cristóbal could reply, there was a loud thump on the door.
Chapter 17
Lola sat shivering in a basement cell in the headquarters of Granada’s Guardia Civil. They had taken her in her nightclothes, not even allowing her to grab a shawl to keep out the chill of the subterranean prison they had frog-marched her into.
All she could think of was Nieve. Her pale, frightened little face as she watched the nightmare unfolding. The police hadn’t cared that she was there. If Rose hadn’t taken Nieve’s hand and led her back to the bedroom, the child would have heard every sordid detail of what had happened under the Gate of the Pomegranates.
He tried to rape me.
They hadn’t seemed to care about that, either. Perhaps if she had been the daughter of the mayor, or a blonde-haired tourist, they would have believed her story.
Gitana. Puta. Gypsy. Whore. She had heard them muttering the words under their breath—words that, in their minds, were interchangeable. She had killed a man whose only crime was loving her enough to want to marry her. That was how they saw it.
As she stared at the dirty floor, numb with cold and shock, something else occurred to her—something even more terrifying than the prospect of standing trial for murder. They would take Nieve away. The authorities would be told that the Gypsy murderess had a child. There would be no question of Nieve being allowed to stay with Cristóbal and Juanita. She would be whisked away, and Lola would never set eyes on her again.
Rose set off for the police station less than an hour after Lola was arrested. Nieve hadn’t wanted her to go. She had clung to Rose’s skirt with tears welling, as if she was afraid to let her out of her sight.
“I have to try to help Mama.” Rose had wanted her to understand. But how could she explain it to a child? That her mother wouldn’t stand a chance of being believed because she was a Gypsy, that she needed someone outside the community to plead her case, someone the Guardia Civil couldn’t simply ignore as an illiterate troublemaker.
She had left Nieve sobbing into Gunesh’s fur. Juanita had been sitting on the bed with her, the baby in her arms and a bowl of cherries in her free hand. But the child would not be comforted. The sight sent liquid steel shooting through Rose’s veins. She would do whatever it took to make them listen.
The desk sergeant looked very young. Not much older than Lola. He eyed her with barely concealed disdain until she took out her passport and shoved it under his nose.
“?Es usted británica?” You are British?
The surprise was clear to see. He had pigeonholed her the moment she walked through the door—the slanting cheekbones, the brightly patterned skirt, the dangling copper earrings.
“Sí.” She pointed to the place on the passport where her profession had been written in. It said “Veterinarian,” but that was a term he was unlikely to understand. “I’m a doctor,” she said, pronouncing the words slowly and clearly in her best Spanish accent. “And I work for the king of England.” It wasn’t really a lie: during the war the royal vet had brought two of King George’s dogs to her after reading about her herbal cure for distemper.