A Silent Death

by Peter May

  Cleland was not accustomed to feelings of empathy. He never placed himself in others’ shoes, wondering what it might be like to be them. But for the first time since a distant childhood that he had long since banished from memory, he recalled standing in the playground being physically and verbally abused by his peers. Closing his eyes and ears to it all, as if somehow that could make it go away. Letting the pain wash over him like water, so that it would pass more quickly. Retreating into himself, a safe place where he was invulnerable, a place where he could hide until it was time to come out again and exact revenge.

  Only Ana, he realized as he stared at her, could never come out again. She was trapped in there, locked away for ever. She could never exact revenge. And even if she could, from whom would she seek that retribution? God? Fate? How unfair was that? It occurred to him then, with something almost like shock, that for the first and only time in his life he was feeling sorry for someone else.

  Which brought a further sigh. For he knew that no matter what he might feel in this moment it would not stop him from doing what he had come to do.

  He took several steps towards her to look at the computer screen that faced him. Then he rounded the desk to peer at the screen which faced Ana. He recognized the patterns of raised dots as braille, and marvelled at this technology that would allow him to penetrate her darkness and speak to her silence.

  Her head was slightly raised as he walked around her, turning to track his movements, like some feral animal following his scent. And he realized that’s probably exactly what she was doing. He returned to the screen with the winking cursor and sat down in front of it. Nobody had typed on it since Mackenzie earlier in the afternoon.

  – Ana, it has been my great pleasure to meet you. However, I must drag your niece away. We have a meeting soon at Marviña, and she is yet to take me for something to eat.

  Cleland knew instinctively that these were the words of the Scot with whom he had fought on the boat at the marina. Hadn’t Cleland himself been standing in a doorway out there in the street when Mackenzie left with the bitch?

  He scrolled quickly back and scanned Cristina’s account of her visit to the hospital with Nuri, her conversation with Paco. And he smiled. Such a tight little family. All gathering themselves before him to facilitate his feasting from that dish best served cold.

  ‘What do you want!’ Ana’s voice raised itself to an almost hysterical pitch, sudden and startling in the silence of the room.

  He scrolled back to the cursor and typed.

  – Hello.

  He was aware of some faint vibration alerting her to text on her screen. Trembling fingers lifted to read the dots that had raised themselves there. He watched as she recoiled in fear and confusion.

  ‘Sergio?’ she said, more in hope than in any real expectation that it might be him.

  – Try again.

  ‘Who are you?’ Full-blown hysteria now. And he enjoyed her fear.

  – I think, perhaps, your niece might have mentioned me. She and her colleagues are having such trouble finding me.

  The blood drained from Ana’s face, leaving it ghostly pale. She said, ‘Cristina is not responsible for that young woman’s death. You shot her.’

  She was unprepared for the force of the open hand that slapped hard across her face and very nearly knocked her from her chair. She cried out, as much in fear as in pain. Then more dots were raised on her screen.

  – She made me do it! And you are going to help me make her pay for that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The smell of barbecued meat filled the tiny apartment. Sliding glass doors to the balcony at the rear of the block were open, and the chatter of swallows dipping and diving in the warm night air outside was nearly deafening. The room itself resounded to the blare of a television whose volume was set far too high.

  Antonio was in the kitchen. Lucas sat at the table amidst a pile of books and jotters, his head tilted into an open palm, a pen twirling absently in his other hand, his eyes drawn towards a cartoon flickering on the TV screen.

  Mackenzie followed Cristina into the apartment as she strode across the living room to switch off the television. With only the birds now for competition, she shouted, ‘For God’s sake, what’s wrong with you people? Are you deaf? If the neighbours report us again we’ll be asked to leave.’

  Antonio appeared in his bare feet at the kitchen door wearing a T-shirt and jeans. His smile was less than welcoming. ‘And how was your day, darling?’ He nodded at Mackenzie.

  Cristina released her belt with its empty holster and let it fall on to the settee. ‘What are you cooking?’

  It sounded more like an accusation than a question.

  Antonio stuck his jaw out defensively. ‘I thought you might be pleased, not having to make dinner for once.’ His head tilted in Mackenzie’s direction. ‘Only I didn’t know we were going to have company.’

  Cristina sniffed the air. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Barbecued ribs.’

  She looked at him in astonishment. ‘You prepared them yourself?’

  His look turned sheepish, but still defensive. ‘I bought them at Mercadona. Oven-ready. They take just twenty minutes.’

  ‘Jesus, Antonio! We can’t afford to go buying pre-packaged food. It’s crazy expensive.’

  ‘It’s a treat,’ he said. ‘Just this once. I got commission on a sale today.’ Then, deflecting further argument, he nodded towards Lucas. ‘You’d be better off paying more attention to your son. He came home with his report card today.’

  ‘Is it bad?’

  But Antonio had already turned back into the kitchen. He called over his shoulder, ‘Take a look for yourself.’

  Cristina brushed past the embarrassed Mackenzie and found the report card half-buried under her son’s books. The boy assiduously avoided her eye as she scrutinized it.

  But a commentary on it came from the disembodied voice in the kitchen. ‘English and Spanish good. Maths and science well below average. Take a look at the teacher’s comments.’

  Cristina read aloud, ‘Lucas is a clever boy, but he just doesn’t try. His concentration is poor. He’s a daydreamer.’

  Mackenzie recalled similar comments on the report cards he took home from his teachers. Only, he could silence them all with his exam results.

  Cristina looked at her son accusingly. ‘A daydreamer, Lucas? What are you daydreaming about?’

  The boy’s simmering resentment bubbled to the surface. ‘About getting away from school,’ he shouted, his lower lip trembling. ‘Other kids have parents who help them. My dad wouldn’t know a prime number from a right-angled triangle. And my mum’s never here!’

  Mackenzie cleared his throat and said, ‘A prime number is a whole number greater than one, whose only factors are one and itself.’ And was startled by disbelieving eyes that turned in his direction. Antonio had reappeared at the kitchen door. But the silence occasioned by his outburst lasted only a moment. Lucas was on a roll.

  ‘And now you’re sending strange foreigners to pick me up from school.’

  Cristina frowned. ‘What are you talking about? What strange foreigners?’ She glanced at Mackenzie. ‘You?’

  Mackenzie shook his head, perplexed.

  ‘No,’ Lucas said, surly now. ‘At lunchtime. When I was walking back from Burger King.’

  ‘Burger King?’ Antonio was astonished. ‘What the hell were you doing at Burger King?’

  ‘Everyone else gets burgers for lunch. I get some crappy sandwiches that Mum makes.’

  But Cristina was not going to be deflected. ‘What happened when you were walking back from Burger King?’ Her voice was tight with tension.

  Lucas shrugged, as if it was nothing. ‘This guy in a big black car pulls up beside me and says he’s a friend of yours. He says he’s going to be picking me up from school someday soon and that I shouldn’t be afraid of him.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Cristina’s open palm was pressed to her chest. Then she gra
bbed the boy, almost pulling him from his chair. ‘Lucas, don’t you ever talk to that man again. Or anyone! I will never send anyone you don’t know to pick you up from school, do you understand me? Never!’ She held him by the shoulders, shaking him as she spoke.

  Antonio crossed the room and pulled her away. ‘Stop it, you’re frightening him, Cris.’

  Cristina’s voice rose in pitch. ‘He needs to be frightened, Toni.’

  Mackenzie kept his focus on Lucas. ‘How did you know he was a foreigner?’

  ‘He spoke to me in English.’

  ‘And did he give you his name?’

  Lucas nodded.

  ‘What was it?’ Cristina demanded. ‘What did he say his name was?’

  Lucas shook his head, tears welling in his eyes as he tried to remember. ‘It was Señor Clee . . . Clo, or Clan . . . something.’

  ‘Cleland?’ Mackenzie said.

  ‘Yes, that was it.’ Lucas seemed relieved to have remembered it finally.

  A cry of fear tore itself involuntarily from Cristina’s throat, and she drew Lucas into her arms, wrapping them around him and holding him so tightly he could barely breathe.

  The house phone rang shrilly, piercing its way through the charged atmosphere of the tiny apartment. Antonio crossed the room in two strides and picked it up. ‘Yes?’ he barked, then after a moment put his hand over the receiver and thrust it towards Cristina. ‘It’s Miguel.’

  Very reluctantly she released her son and took the phone. ‘Yes, Jefe?’ She listened intently, then closed her eyes in something like despair. ‘Yes, Jefe.’ A pause. ‘We’ll call for back-up if I think it’s necessary.’ She hung up and looked at Mackenzie. ‘Residents in an urbanization in the hills above Casares Beach have reported a blond-haired foreigner coming and going at night from an unfinished complex across the street. The Jefe wants us to take a look. He doubts if it’s Cleland, but . . .’ She shrugged.

  ‘If it is?’

  ‘We’ll call in the cavalry.’

  Antonio said, ‘And we’ll eat when?’

  ‘When we get back. You can keep the ribs warm, can’t you?’

  He shook his head. ‘Lucas and I will eat now. You can reheat whatever’s left.’

  Cristina said, ‘Just don’t let that boy out of your sight, Toni. Not for one minute. I’ll be back just as soon as I can.’

  Antonio’s anger finally burst through the veneer of constraint he had fashioned to save Mackenzie’s embarrassment. Clearly he didn’t care any more. ‘The boy’s right, Cris, you are never here, are you? And if it wasn’t for you and your fucking job there wouldn’t be any need to watch him like a hawk. The kid wouldn’t be in any danger.’

  An element of guilt spurred the anger in her retort. ‘And we’re supposed to live on what you earn, is that what you’re saying?’ But she wasn’t waiting for an answer. ‘If it wasn’t for my fucking job we couldn’t afford to send him to a half-decent school. We couldn’t afford to run a car.’ She saved the best for last. ‘And we couldn’t afford your membership of that fucking golf club. Think about that the next time you’re teeing off.’

  Husband and wife stood glaring at each other. Lucas gathered his books and ran in tears to his bedroom. Mackenzie stood awkwardly, wondering how to break the tension.

  ‘What’s your handicap?’ he said. And both heads turned towards him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  It was almost entirely dark by the time they reached the abandoned development on the hill. Mackenzie had followed Cristina in silence across the square to retrieve her SIG Pro from its lock-safe drawer in the downstairs gun room at the police station. They picked up the Nissan, and she had driven like a woman demented. Down to the coast and then east on the A7 to where a road branched off at a brightly lit family restaurant, before cutting its way up into the foothills of the Sierra Bermeja.

  Away to the west, beyond the shadows of jagged peaks that cut themselves darkly against the stars, the sky glowed faintly red in strips between layers of cloud.

  High up beyond the remains of what had once been some developer’s dream sat a walled and gated complex of villas and apartments assembled around tropical gardens and two swimming pools. In the darkness it shimmered in patches of hard light cast by lamps lining streets and walkways. Warmer light glowed in the windows of holiday apartments and permanent residences. It stood in sharp contrast to the abandoned and semi-derelict construction built into the hillside below.

  Cristina parked in the street opposite, and they climbed out of their SUV into the thickly fragrant night air. A warm wind blew gently across the hill, carrying the invasive chirrup of cicadas and the throaty croak of tree frogs. A plastic sign fixed to a wire fence advertised high-speed internet. Don’t pay the months you don’t use. 20MB download speed, wifi router + setup from 50€. Beyond it rows of apartments, some completed, others abandoned, followed the undulating contours of the Andalusian countryside. Red, yellow and white Lego-like cankers on a once agricultural landscape.

  Mackenzie sniffed the night air and realized that something more incongruous was also borne on the breeze. Woodsmoke. Who, he wondered, lights fires on a warm night like this?

  Behind a concrete retaining wall on the far side of the road, the part of the development exposed to view appeared almost complete. Tiled roofs, white-painted columns and arches. But like a smile without teeth there were no windows, and nature had reclaimed what must once have been intended as gardens. Tall grasses, bamboo, small trees and overgrown shrubs threatened to engulf the building. Its retaining wall was stained by the weather and smothered in graffiti, sidewalks crumbling where weeds had broken through the paving tiles.

  Cristina removed a torch from her belt and retrieved one from the glove compartment for Mackenzie. Their beams cut arrows of light through the darkness as they followed a rusted fence along the perimeter of the unmade road that ran below the inhabited urbanization above. As they rounded the curve of the street, white dust rose in the torchlight with every footfall. The construction behind the fence became more skeletal, like something assembled by children with plastic rods and buildings blocks. A shallow-pitched roof stood above the empty structure, supported only by brick walls and concrete columns. A labyrinth of stairways, empty lift shafts, corridors and apartment shells all stood open to the night. Beyond the fence, a ramp disappeared down into the darkness of what must have been intended as an underground car park.

  Broken glass crunched underfoot in the still of the night. The smell of woodsmoke was stronger here, more pungent. Ahead, the security fence stretched across the dusty white road preventing further progress. But someone had cut a hole through it with wire cutters, and a well-worn path beyond it led through the undergrowth to an area laid out for covered parking on the ground floor.

  Cristina stepped carefully through the hole in the fence and Mackenzie followed as she made her way to the top of the ramp they had seen from the other side. Their torches barely penetrated the darkness below. They stood for a moment, listening. But there was nothing to be heard above the racket of the cicadas. Mackenzie could see the torch trembling in Cristina’s hand. Her face was bloodless in its reflected light. She glanced at him briefly, before setting off down the ramp. He walked a metre or two behind.

  The ridged concrete descended steeply, and curved away to their left. As they reached the bend, the car park opened up below them. A vast area delineating the footprint of the building itself and supported on rows of square columns. Its surface remained unfinished and strewn with debris. Black pools of stagnant water reflected the light of their torches. There was no sign of life or habitation, and it was almost with relief that they climbed back up into the night.

  In a sky studded by stars, a three-quarters moon rose to cast its colourless light across the abandoned ambitions of the previous decade. Cristina and Mackenzie picked their way through the rubble and into the building. A staircase built around an empty elevator shaft climbed through two floors to the roof. They followed it up
to the first level where it opened out into a square concrete hall. A graffitied corridor ran off into the dark heart of the building. Gaping doorways, left and right, led into skeleton apartments. White powdery efflorescence crept from unsealed brick walls, rusted steel reinforcement causing floors and columns to crumble from creeping concrete cancer.

  Smoke hung now like mist in the beams of their torches. But the smell of it couldn’t mask the invasive stench of faeces and urine. Although it was still hot outside, it felt cold in here.

  A long way ahead, at the far end of the passageway, a pale light flickered in the darkness. A sinister murmuring reached them on fetid air.

  Cristina’s free hand rested on her holster. Although she was reluctant to draw her SIG, as a precaution she had unclipped the holster catch.

  They drifted cautiously along the corridor, side by side, apprehension burgeoning as the light grew stronger and the murmur louder, until they turned at the end of it into a large open area where brick dividing walls had been crudely demolished leaving only their footings to denote the layout of a dozen or more apartments. Umpteen fires burned among the rubble, huddled groups of ragged people gathered around them for light and warmth.

  The murmur of voices quickly faded as Cristina and Mackenzie raked the beams of their torches across the bizarre scene that unfolded before them. Only the crackle of dry wood on a dozen fires broke the echoing silence.

  ‘What the hell . . . ?’ Mackenzie’s voice was barely a whisper.

  Cristina glanced at him, then quickly refocused on the thirty or forty people grouped around the open fires. There were women with shawls and headscarves, hijabs and khimars, and men with beards and dark gaunt eyes. There were children who stared back at them from haunted faces, and babies that gurned for food. ‘Illegal immigrants,’ she said. ‘They arrive by the boatload from North Africa almost every day now. Washing up on the beaches, then hiding out in these abandoned developments. There are literally thousands of these places lying empty along the coast. Impossible to police.’