Cayetano Mojarro

Cayetano Mojarro is 58 and has fished sardines in Punta Umbría since he was 12. Born in the village itself, the son and grandson of fishermen, he has never spent more than a week away from the sea. He goes out every night with two nephews in the same boat and has the reputation of never coming back with an empty net, even on full-moon nights, when the sardines flee.

He lives in a whitewashed fisherman's cottage a few steps from the dock, with a yard where nets dry on clotheslines, a patio with a fig tree and a small wood-stove kitchen. He sleeps by day, wakes in the late afternoon, eats bread with olive oil and grilled sardines and prepares the boat lamp before heading out. He says little and looks at the ground when a uniform approaches.

He is short and broad, with sun-cured skin and deep wrinkles, unshaven gray stubble and thick hands scarred by net cuts. He wears a worn black beret, a faded blue wool shirt with the sleeves rolled up, patched trousers held by a rope and always-wet espadrilles. He gives short answers, looks sideways and only loosens up when the subject is the state of the sea.

About the briefcase, his account is that of a man who only did what he should: Friday morning he was hauling in his net on El Portil beach when he saw a body floating face down, in a life vest, with a briefcase fastened by a chain. He dragged it to the sand and ran to call the Navy. He goes out fishing at 1:30 every night, and his boat sits right in front of the Naval Command.

Cayetano knows the fisherman who found the body and who sits at night in front of the Naval Command is, for anyone wanting a culprit, a convenient answer. When the detective says he opened the briefcase and took out the letters, he asks, offended, whether that is what he gets for pulling a dead man from the sea. It could be the honest hurt of a simple man treated as a suspect. It could be someone who prefers silence to a question that shames him. The detective will have to decide which.