Tarifa Tales:A Londoner has been shot dead by five bullets

A Londoner has been shot dead by five bullets in a late night slaying close to The Point cafeteria in the Avenida del Prado in Nueva Andalucía, Marbella. According to police sources the 43-year-old had a police record in Spain. Officers are investigating his death and are keeping an open mind on the motive and who carried out the slaying.
The Briton, named as William Moy, is said to have been accompanied by a group of three people before his death. The emergency services received a 091 call to say a man had been hurt in a shooting but when medical teams arrived he was already dead.
The Point is in the Aloha urbanisation and the area was soon sealed off by police scientific officers. The investigations are being carried out by the National Police drug and organised crime squad, the Greco unit against organised crime plus the specialised and violent crime detachment.
HUNT FOR BRITONS
National police searching for the two gunmen, believed to be British, who shot the local police officer in an incident that occurred last week, have found the weapons involved in the shooting. They discovered a pistol and a revolver with a silencer inside a rubbish container near the Clínica Buchinguer. They also found nearby the burnt out Opel Astra used by the duo.
In another linked operation 200 officers from the Costa del Sol Drugs and Organised Crime squad poured into the Monte Biarritz, Diana and Golf Park urbanisations in Estepona. They acted after two police officers manning a control to search for the two gunmen were run down by a car that they had ordered to stop. No arrests were made but police believe the gunmen may be hiding out in the zone.
As the Costa del Sol News went to press the shot local police officer was still in a very serious condition at the Costa del Sol Hospital in Marbella. Married with two sons, the officer was on a breathing support machine and under sedation but was said to be making a slow improvement.

Tarifa Tales
Spain’s southern Atlantic coast was a long way from the ambleside coast of Northumberland and the predictable life of Her Majesty’s Prison. At one time I had had part ownership in a beach bar set at the end of a long broad pearl white sandy strip stretching in the south from the ancient walled harbor of Tarifa an old Spanish town dating back to the conquest of Spain by the Moorish king Tariq. a small town on the southernmost part of the European continent. It is part of the province of Cadiz, which in turn is part of the Andalucian region. The name "Tarifa" is derived from the Berber fighter Tarif ibn Malik.. This town is located at the Costa de la Luz and close to the Straits of Gibraltar, directly opposite the coast of Morocco, from which the lights of Tarifa are visible at night..

It was the only building for at least ten kilometers in any direction. Wind scarred single story, with small four paned windows, six letting bedrooms. The paint sand blasted and peeling by the constant exposure to Atlantic winds. During the summer we catered for northern European windsurfers mainly Swedes and Germans who flocked to the white sands.

During the winter the Atlantic gales blew in for weeks at a time giving us the name by the local Spanish villagers as The Windy City, which in reality was a only a cluster of crumbling fishing shacks. The stone built bar was the only substantial building. The scorching summers saw that all the shacks were fully let. In the winter we were lucky if we saw another soul. It was good to be back looking out of the Salt stained window. I saw a figure lugging a heavy leather suitcase with both hands. Tall, strong, heavily built, with a graying pigtail flying in the strong wind. Knurled hands white knuckled grasping the tarnished leather handles. The black broken nails digging into the rosy pink palms contrasted with nut brown, hairy arms. He stopped for a brief rest whistling tunelessly to himself. Grimacing he heaved the old Leather handle and struggled to the door. One tattooed fist crashed into the door pushing past he roughly grabbed a glass of whisky Picking it up he drank slowly like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste, but still looking about himself eyes stopping for a moment hesitating in the doorway for a split second then moving. "You old fucker" he said as if he was debating with a group of friends "Do you have anyone staying, what's business like." I asked that there were no people staying and it would be a couple of months before we saw any tourists. "Well this'll do for me. Help me in with my case. I’m a man of simple taste, simple food patties 'll do me" a slight Irish brogue became noticeable, reaching inside his leather jerkin he extracted a bundle of notes carelessly throwing them on the bar. When I'm threw that ask for more he said. On picking the notes up I was surprised to see that they were English notes neatly bundled, with plain white bands. They had no banks name on the bands. Aggressively he spat out at me "Just call me sergeant "Id never asked his name being intimidated by his brusque manner and I didn't ask for his passport either. I was only too pleased to accept the money. His clothes were worn. They had been expensive the cowboy boots were broken heeled, the jeans faded near white. I speculated whether sergeant was his name, or was it perhaps a description of a rank he'd held, but in which army?

The taxi's driver who doubled as the mail man from the village told us that he had driven him from a small town down the coast where he had got off a long distance coach. He had asked in fluent Spanish what bars let rooms on the coast. He'd been insistent that he needed a bar that was isolated, because he didn't like tourists, being a well-traveled man of simple tastes He kept his own counsel. All day he walked along the beach and threw the steep dunes clutching a pair of high powered binoculars. In the evening he sat in the bar next to the drift wood stoked fire drinking from his own bottle. Mostly he would not speak when spoken to, only stare sullenly, then spit into the glowing embers vehemently. The villager who infrequently visited us soon learned to leave him alone, and curtail their natural inquisitiveness. Every day when he returned from his walk he would ask whether there had been any calls for him, or had anyone asked for him At first I thought it was because he was expecting somebody but after a while I realized it was the opposite he didn't want to see anyone.

If anyone stayed overnight, which happened from time to time. He would look at them from behind the beaded curtain that hung in the entrance leading behind the bar, and then slip away. He became aware that I had noticed his behavior, so he asked me could I keep my eyes open and if another Englishman turned up to tell him before they met. He pressed a number of notes into my hand. This became a regular occurrence If we were alone . If I was looking after the bar, and he had been drinking whisky heavily, which had become an almost nightly occurrence only then would he start to talk. The majority was gibberish but in between the raving an odd sort of sense of cohesion would start to show threw the drunken babbling. Often it seemed as if he was talking to another person who only he could see and that person constantly argued and accused him. Of what I could not guess. Night after night as I heard this discourse with this imagined person I started slowly to realize that the personality that haunted the sergeant had been a partner in evil.. During these endless hallucinations he always spoke to the same person. Screaming crying, cackling asking for forgiveness then insanely laughing he would collapse eyes rolling in his head.

My sleep at this time became disturbed by a recurring dream. The dream was of a person hidden behind a heavy velvet curtain. As I apprehensively approached the curtain a feeling of dread would clutch me and as my hand touched the red velvet curtain and I slowly drew it back. I would awaken covered in sweat The sergeant appeared to be loosing control over his drinking and if. I awoke during the night as I often did I would hear him stumbling in the bar. muttering to himself and cursing in the foulest language. If any locals arrived as now tales of his exploits had spread to the surrounding villages. He would abuse any customer who appeared in the foulest Spanish. Far from losing customers. we now started to gain them. On the strength of the rumors that had spread amongst the surrounding villages about the strange exploits of the sergeant. The youngsters of the closest village boasted to there Girlfriends of friendship with him. Due to the renewed attention he became overly generous. Beware anyone who interrupted him during his monologues. After one particularly bad night as I supported him to his shack. I felt a hard object in his waist band. During the times he was on a drinking bout he never attempted to change his soiled clothes previously he had been clean. Now the strong smell of sweat and the odor of stale whisky followed clinging to him like a curse. Urine stained the front of his filthy jeans stale food and vomit was ground into his shirt as if a living fungus had invaded its host. The inside of the shack was chaotic. Partly empty bottles were strewn across the unmade bed there contents dripping threw the floorboards onto the yellow sand underneath . Collapsing on to the low brass bedstead he became immediately unconscious, snoring with his mouth wide open gasping for breath. The ancient leather suitcase was open curiously I stared as if mesmerized by its dark interior. The figure on the bed cursed and restlessly threw himself from one side of the bed to the other . there was a metallic clatter . A small pistol dropped at my feet I quickly bent down retrieving it from amongst the litter, slipping it into the waist band of my trousers.

It was not long after this that there occurred the first of the events that were to rid us at last of the sergeant though not of his affairs. The weather had been deteriorating. Mountainous seas crashed onto the beach the spume and spray lashing the windows. The ferocious winds threatened to blow anyone on the beach into the seas cavernous jaws. Great balks of timber were driven into the sand dunes by the ever increasing tides. It was a February morning very early a frosty morning the beach dappled with white rivulets of ice chasing the sandy furrows. The sergeant had risen earlier than usual and set out down the beach to try to alleviate the excesses from the night before. I remember his breath hanging as if smoke in his wake as he strode into the dunes. Not long after the door opened and a person entered who was a complete stranger to me. He was dressed in a double breasted jerkin. He wiped the sand from his highly polished black leather shoes as he straightened up he adjusted his silk tie.

Asking in Spanish for a small white wine and a bottle of mineral water. The accent was not Spanish perhaps south American. As I put
down The wine he asked me if I would join him. Saying that he had been in a village visiting friends, and it was there he had heard about the sergeant from the local youths. The south American explained that he had fought in many of the world's trouble spots and believed that he recognized the description of the sergeant as an old compatriot known to him personally as Bob. Who always described himself as the sergeant for that was the rank that he had held. The thought that the opportunity to visit the sergeant had been to good to miss. I told him he was out walking.

He inquired which direction he had gone. For the first time he relaxed and slowly a grin of satisfaction spread over his face. As if in a Faustian dream the countenance changed to one of complete malevolence Mesmerized by this change that had come over the stranger I completely failed to notice that he had taken the sergeants seat next to the fire. As I attempted to put the water down he leapt to his feet reached inside his leather jerkin taking out an large brown manila envelope the corners broken with age.