Cozy Mystery Book Series Set In The Canary Islands
Canary Islands Mysteries by Isobel Blackthorn
Series excerpt
They headed up a dirt track about halfway between the coast and the cliff, and a few minutes later, the minibus came to a halt in a small parking area below the house. Once the passengers had decanted, Fred sidled up to Richard and said, ‘You were very quiet during lunch. Are you alright? You seem a bit off, if you don’t mind my saying. Man-to-man, as it were.’
The entire group was in earshot. Clarissa saw a look of exasperation appear in Richard’s face. The poor man. What an irritation it would be to have a reader turn up with nothing on his mind but to annoy and harangue.
She was about to remark, but a disturbance distracted her. Before Francois could intervene, Simon had marched off up the steep path to the house with the lads trailing behind. Francois called after them, but his voice was lost on the wind. He marched on up behind them, no doubt hoping to stop them before they went too far.
The others followed, Vera and Carol maintaining a steady stride and clearly fit for their size and age. Fred and Margaret kept pace. Richard appeared determined to keep up. Helen struggled, pausing now and then to lean against the stone wall for support. Clarissa hung well back, taking her time. She knew better than to power uphill with a sore hip, panting in a calima.
She passed wide terraced fields edged with neat dry-stone walls, fields that might have been farmed but were fallow. She took in the imposing house up ahead, more a fortress tucked beneath the cliff as it made its final and steep ascent to the crest, a fortress overlooking the long stretch of beach in the mid-distance below. In the thickening dust haze, Cofete could scarcely be seen.
About halfway up the drive she began to wish Francois had taken them right up to the house. She thought he’d decided to make them all walk as some sort of punishment. She’d never encountered a more bad-tempered and indifferent guide.
The so-called farmhouse sat proud on the final strip of terraced land, but instead of a normal façade with doors and windows, Villa Winter presented its visitors with a very high and imposing stone wall that appeared to serve as the dwelling’s foundations. The two corners of the wall were finished off with square turrets, each sporting a small casement window set about two-thirds of the way up the front wall – too high for anyone outside to peer in – and topped with a stone parapet.
The house itself sat above the stone wall and sported a somewhat austere veranda contained within a series of stone arches. A low-pitched roof of terracotta tiles completed the look. Attached to the front of the house on the far side was a large round tower. The whole edifice was more imposing close up than she’d imagined viewing photos on the internet.
She stopped to catch her breath, the tower capturing her gaze. She was about to carry on when a figure appeared in one of the uppermost tower windows. Appeared, and then was gone. At least, what she thought to be a figure. Could have been a ghost. Her skin broke out in goose bumps as though in agreement. Although the apparition might just as well have been Simon or one of the lads.
When she at last reached the back entrance to the courtyard where the others had congregated, she found Vera and Carol still a little breathless, Helen seated on a large boulder, flushed and looking done in, and Richard, panting and mopping his brow with a handkerchief. Fred and Margaret stood like stanchions, scarcely out of breath. The lads hung back, chastened, and Francois and Simon were nowhere to be seen.
The door to the courtyard was open. Clarissa caught site of a man in dusty overalls making repairs to a low concrete wall inside. He stood as she watched, wiped his hands on a rag and disappeared from view. Not long after, an engine fired up. Then a car emerged from the far side of the villa, roared past the tour party drenching everyone in dust and headed off down the long drive.
A few moments passed before Francois and Simon exited the courtyard. Francois was furious, his face, never pleasant, worsened by a deep frown and a downturn to the lips, expressions enhancing the lopsided quality of his face. He was impossible to look at.
‘We are about to enter Villa Winter,’ he said with a snarl. ‘You must stay together in one group. No one is to walk off. Do you understand? Also, parts of the house are not open to visitors. Doors are locked. You must not try to access the areas that are sealed. Before we look around, I will now tell you about Villa Winter. Come.’
He ushered the group into the courtyard with an impatient wave of his hand. As the tour party arranged themselves around him, Clarissa drank in the setting. A series of rounded arches along three walls flanked a loggia that provided access to various rooms. The loggia was edged with concrete planters. Entry to the loggia had been provided at each end of the courtyard’s rear. Someone had decided to do something with the outdoor space. A pair of straggly fig trees clinging to life occupied one corner and succulents grew in the planters. A curious model village of Cofete had been created in the soil in the centre of the courtyard, fenced off with rope. Farm tools hung decoratively on whitewashed walls. From this purview, the terracotta roof tiles leant a welcoming Mediterranean feel to the building. Standing in this courtyard, it was possible to forget about the strange bunkers below and the imposing tower. Although an upward glance and there it was, rising above the roofline at the northwest corner where a recess in the roof provided for small walled balconies, one in each wall.
Richard came and stood beside her and fumbled in his pocket. He extracted a voice recorder and managed to hold it out of Francois’s view by making to step behind Margaret, requiring Clarissa to take a step to one side. She observed the doors of the house, as many as she could see. She felt watched.
Francois read off a script, beginning his introduction with, ‘General Gustav Winter was born in Germany in 1893 and moved to the Canary Islands in 1925. He was an engineer with a long association with these islands. He’d been working on projects in Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria since 1915. He was also one of over a hundred German residents in Spain accused of being a Nazi agent. His behaviour, some say, was highly suspicious.’
‘There were calls for his repatriation to Germany,’ Fred said to Margaret, loud enough for the others to hear.
Francois glared at him.
‘Don’t interrupt me, please.’
‘I wasn’t interrupting, thank you. I was talking to my wife.’
‘Be quiet.’
Fred sucked in his breath. He was about to make a retort when Margaret prodded him.
Francois went on. ‘There were calls for Winter to be put on trial, but Spain did not hand him over and he died in Las Palmas in 1971.’ He paused, waiting until he had everyone’s attention. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, many believe you are standing in a secret Nazi base.’
The reaction was mixed. Without waiting for comment, he turned and led the group across to the loggia entrance on the north side of the villa and along to where a door stood open.
‘The villa was used as a hideaway,’ said Vera as the party followed Francois into the house.
Steve glanced at her. ‘It was used to repair U-boats, I heard.’
‘That theory has been debunked.’
‘You think?’
Francois stood with his back to an impressive fireplace, one arm raised to gain attention. There was some resistance as the group were keen to take in the space they were in – a sparsely furnished living room – but Francois was insistent. Once the tour party were all gathered in front of him, he said, ‘Pedro Fumero would have shown you around but he cannot be here today.’
‘And he is?’
‘His grandfather helped build this house, and Pedro’s aunt and two uncle lived in the house until recently. So, Pedro knows more than anyone about Villa Winter. His family lived in very bad conditions, let me tell you.’
Vera looked around. ‘I can well imagine. I wouldn’t like to spend one night out here. This place has a real vibe to it.’
Clarissa agreed. She’d been on countless ghost tours and this was one of the few occasions she felt a sense of unease.
‘I thought a Spanish building company had bought the property from Winter’s descendants and evicted the Fumero family,’ Fred said.
‘That’s correct,’ said Francois in an effort to hold on to narrative control.
He lost it in the next instant when Helen said, ‘That’s an outrage.’
‘It’s just business,’ Fred said, using his patronising tone. ‘They own the place; they have every right.’
‘What will they do with it?’ Steve said.
‘Open a hotel probably.’
‘I read Winter was a radio operator and military operative,’ Carol said, clearly eager not to let Fred trumpet solo. ‘That the OSS had evidence on him from 1947.’
‘The OSS?’
‘The old CIA.’
‘And I heard the house was built in 1946,’ said Richard.
Heads turned. It was the first sentence he’d uttered since the tour began and he was instantly contradicted, not by Fred but by Francois, who seized the chance to regain the upper hand.
‘Señor Fumero is certain the building was built much earlier,’ he said coolly. ‘Winter bought the land off the previous Spanish owner and took control of the whole of the Jandía peninsula when Franco took power.’
‘That was 1936, then,’ said Fred.
‘I heard the house was built in ’37,’ said Carol.
‘Two years before the start of the war.’
‘Right in the middle of the war.’
‘I meant the Second World War.’
Francois puffed out his cheeks. He might have been irascible by nature but given the behaviour of the tour party, any guide would have felt consumed with frustration at this juncture. The only other time Clarissa had been in a similar situation was a tour of Beaumanor Hall in Leicestershire, the entire experience ruined by one self-appointed authority and one upstart with attitude determined to bring him down. The tension in the tour party had grown intolerable, and, after suffering an hour of endless interruptions and contradictions, Clarissa managed to break off on her own. She planned on doing the same this time if only to rid herself of the insufferable Fred Spice.
There were whispered side conversations as the group fell into disarray. Richard appeared to have given up with his voice recorder and Simon inched further from the huddle.
‘In 1937,’ Francois said, raising his voice almost to a shout, ‘Winter signed a lease for the whole of the Jandía peninsula from the Conde de Santa Coloma, based in Lanzarote. He then left for Germany to seek funding. In 1939, Jandía was declared a military zone and the local people were barred entry. It appears Franco and Hitler had come to an agreement.’
‘If this is true, then it compromises Spain’s status in the war,’ Helen said, stealing the conversation but then not taking it any further.
Seeing the others considering her remark and no doubt realising he hadn’t a hope with this lot, Francois left them to it and went over to Simon who seemed determined to head off. The two men talked in low whispers.
Meanwhile, Vera was nodding slowly. ‘They were neutral, weren’t they? Spain, I mean.’
‘Supposed to be,’ said Fred. ‘But Spain supplied Hitler with volunteer soldiers and minerals. And here in the Canary Islands, Franco gave Hitler logistical support.’
‘Payback for Guernica,’ said Helen.
‘You could put it like that. One of the biggest threats to Britain in the early part of the war were the U-boats. They sunk an awful lot of ships.’
‘What’s this got to do with Spain?’ asked Margaret.
‘Spanish ports were refuelling the U-boats.’
‘It’s rumoured Hitler and Eva Braun escaped here in a U-boat and then fled to Argentina,’ Carol said. ‘Just thought I’d throw that in.’
Helen said, ‘You’re right. Alberto Vazquez-Figueroa wrote about it in his book Fuerteventura. He painted the villa as a kind of Nazi pleasure palace.’
‘This house was never meant for pleasure,’ Vera said grimly.
‘True,’ Carol said with a backward glance at her friend.
Carol’s gaze then met Clarissa’s and she quickly turned away without so much as a smile. Flashing into Clarissa’s mind was the sudden observation that all through lunch, while she had been happy not to engage with the others, none of them had bothered to engage with her, least of all Carol and Vera, two women whom she might have thought would have made a point of including her.
The history lesson continued, each of the contenders for most knowledgeable person in the room vying for supremacy.
‘The locals were kept out of Jandía until the 1950s,’ Helen said. ‘That was when Franco removed the fence that spanned the sand dunes near Costa Calma.’
‘The Germans even had their own airstrip,’ Steve said. ‘Isn’t that right?’
‘Didn’t we drive by an airstrip on the road between the two lighthouses?’ chimed Dave.
‘We did. But Winter had an airstrip down towards Cofete. You can see the lines of stones on Google Maps.’
Realising he now had a chance to steal the audience, Fred puffed himself up to his full height, which wasn’t much, and, in an authoritative voice, said, ‘What you have to remember is there are many, many lies. Winter even had his own sons either believing or telling lies. One has it the airstrip was needed in case his wife required urgent medical care, after having a difficult childbirth, apparently.’
‘As if,’ said Steve.
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘I think we can safely say Winter had strong Nazi connections and was able to use those to gain investment to build the harbour in Morro Jable,’ said Helen. ‘He had a plan to electrify the whole island and build a cement factory.’
‘What a guy.’
Helen shot Steve a cool look.
‘I’m sure he was popular among the locals. Some of them, anyway.’
‘There were rumours Winter was supplying fuel to the U-boats,’ he said in response, keen to press home his U-boat theory.
‘As Helen says, his economic plans for the island gained German subsidies, that much is proven,’ said Fred, seizing dominance once more. ‘As is the fact that U-boats were present in the Canaries. U-boats docked in Las Palmas six times in about two months in 1941, which triggered an official complaint by the British consul. And it is understood local island ports were used by tanker ships that would then meet up with U-boats out at sea.’
‘How do you know so much?’ said Steve.
‘Has he swallowed an encyclopaedia or something?’ Vera said mockingly.
‘He’s seen the documentary,’ Carol muttered.
‘I heard that,’ said Margaret.
‘I don’t mean to be offensive, but your husband doesn’t know when to shut up.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
Margaret clenched her fists. Clarissa stood poised to intervene when Francois came over and said, ‘There’s no doubt in my mind Gustav Winter was supplying provisions to U-boats. Señor Fumero even found an old U-boat battery here.’
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