The Crowded Grave

from a sympathizer in the Spanish police who knew my father had been assassinated by the GAL in the dirty war. He said that I was entitled to know my father’s fate and to see he got a decent burial, a place where my mother could mourn.”
    “Do you know how to get in touch with him? A phone number or an address, perhaps.”
    “Only an e-mail address on Yahoo. He was very cautious about being contacted.”
    “So you knew he was ETA?” Isabelle asked.
    “I suspected it. It was pretty obvious. He said my father had been an ETA sympathizer, which was why he was killed. He said they’d probably kill him if they could. I didn’t know what to think. It’s quite something to learn that your father was assassinated for being a member of a terrorist group.”
    “And what do you think about that, about terrorism?”
    “I don’t think terrorism is ever justified in a democracy. Spain these days is a democracy and the Basques have a lot of autonomy.”
    “Have you ever been to the Basque country, looked up your roots?”
    “I’ve never been to Spain,” he said. “The only Basque roots I know about are the ones I dug up here.”
    “How often did you see Fernando, growing up?”
    “Every two or three years he’d come to Wales and always bought a present for me, a book or something about Basque culture. He always sent something at Christmas, usually mailed from France.”
    “When did he first talk about finding your father’s grave?”
    Teddy explained that he e-mailed Fernando from time to time to keep in touch. He’d sent an e-mail last October, after his summer on the exploratory dig at the St. Denis site when it had first become clear they had a potential Neanderthal grave. Soon after that Fernando had appeared at Teddy’s room at university.
    “He asked a lot of questions about the site and said he really wanted me to go back and work on it again,” Teddy said, smiling as he added that wild horses wouldn’t have kept him away.
    “Fernando came back to see me in January. This time he had the map and said he thought it was probably my father’s grave,” Teddy went on. “I didn’t believe him at first—the coincidence was just too extraordinary.”
    But Fernando had been positive, Teddy said. One of the problems the GAL had in the 1980s was the anger of the French authorities at the way Basque bodies kept turning up on their territory. So GAL had started burying their victims to avoid more trouble with the French. One of the killers apparently knew that the St. Denis site had already been pronounced uninteresting by Denis Peyrony so he reckoned it was a safe place for a burial. Now that there was digging there again, the Spanish police were worried that the grave was likely to be found and trigger a whole new controversy over the GAL’s activities.
    “So Fernando had a source inside the Spanish police?” Isabelle asked. “Did he say anything about this source to you?”
    “Only that he had access to the secret archives and had given Fernando the map.”
    “Presumably a new scandal over GAL and these illegal killings was just what Fernando wanted,” Bruno said.
    “I hadn’t thought of that,” Teddy replied. “But it makes sense.”
    “Have you had any contact with Fernando since you’ve been in France?” Isabelle asked.
    “No, and no reply to the e-mails I sent after finding the body. Mum hadn’t heard from him either, last we spoke.”
    Isabelle took a pen and pad from her bag and made Teddy write it all down in English as a statement and then sign it. She checked the wording, and promised to give him a photocopy.
    “Am I under arrest?”
    “Have you ever met any other Basques apart from Fernando?” she asked. Teddy shook his head. “Have you been in touch with anybody from outside the dig while you’ve been in France this time?” He shook his head again, saying “Just Bruno and the foie gras people and now you.”
    Isabelle turned to Bruno and raised an eyebrow. She was going to leave this up to him, which would probably mean thateach of them would spend a very difficult few minutes with the brigadier.
    “I have your word that you won’t leave St. Denis without my permission and that you’ll be available for more questions if we need you?” Bruno asked. Teddy nodded.
    Bruno suggested they go to the campground to drop their things. He’d talk to Monique and also let the magistrate know where they were. He proposed that they return to the dig so he’d know where to find