A Silent Death

by Peter May

  Gil pointed his finger at different figures on the screen and rattled off a handful of names. ‘But we still haven’t been able to identify everyone in the group.’

  Suddenly Mackenzie spotted what it was that had jumped out at Gil, and he felt goosebumps raise themselves on his arms and shoulders. Emerging from the back of the group, in deep conversation with Rafa himself, came the familiar smirk of Jack Cleland. The two men were sharing a joke, and Cleland looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Gil said, ‘I only know the face now because of what’s happened in the last few days. At the time we checked him out and he came up clean. Ian Templeton, an expat Englishman enjoying an early retirement along the coast at La Paloma.’

  ‘A Scotsman,’ Mackenzie said quietly, and felt a sense of shame that he should share a nationality with this man. A dull pain in his ribs reminded him of their encounter as he shifted uncomfortably in the back seat.

  ‘Whatever. British. Now, of course, we know exactly who he is.’

  ‘And these are his associates.’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘Is the surveillance ongoing?’

  Gil sighed. ‘I’m afraid not. Resources are limited and we weren’t getting anywhere.’

  Mackenzie said, ‘We need eyes on all the principals in this group ASAP. Cleland’s deal is imminent. The drugs are on the move. Almost certainly someone in this gang of charmers is involved. And my feeling is it’s going to be goods for cash. Cleland’s not going to want to leave any kind of electronic footprint in his wake.’

  ‘I’ve already put in the request,’ Gil said.

  Mackenzie leaned into the front to stab his finger at the phone and pause the video. ‘And what about trying to put names to some of these? The ones you couldn’t identify at the time.’

  ‘How?’

  Mackenzie nodded towards the restaurant. ‘We go in and ask.’

  Gil laughed. ‘No one in there’s going to talk to us.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Fear, señor.’

  Mackenzie said, ‘We’re the cops. They should be afraid of us.’

  Gil leaned confidentially towards the back of the Kia, lowering his voice as if someone might overhear them. ‘What you don’t understand, señor, is that like everything else around here, Zhivago’s is Russian-owned. Our financial people looked into its business background and found that it actually trades as an escort agency. A classic money-laundering scam. It’s almost certainly mafia-owned. So the staff will be a lot more frightened of their employers than they are of us.’

  But Mackenzie was not to be deterred. He opened the back door and stepped out. ‘Well why don’t we go and see?’ He held open the passenger door for Cristina. ‘And it might help to have a uniform along.’

  *

  A shiny wooden walkway bordered by two hedges led through open glass doors to a bar that simmered in semi-darkness. It was flanked on either side by dining areas extending under canvas into the gardens, qualifying them as outdoors, and therefore legal smoking areas. Behind the bar, rows of high-value wines nestled side by side on tiered racks lit by hidden spots. No prices on display. If you could afford to drink these, you didn’t need to know how much they cost. The place was deserted except for a solitary barman polishing glasses behind a shiny dimpled zinc counter. It was still too early for the Spanish to eat.

  Gil showed him his ID. ‘I want every member of staff out here now. Kitchen included.’

  The barman was a pale thin man in his early thirties, prematurely balding. He cast them a surly look. ‘What . . .?’

  Gil slapped his palm on the counter. ‘Now! No questions asked.’ Mackenzie admired Gil’s authority but thought that he was probably showing off for Mackenzie’s benefit.

  Within three minutes seven kitchen workers, including the chef, a maître d’, two servers and a sommelier had joined the barman. They regarded the three police officers in sullen silence from behind the bar. Gil placed his phone on the counter and started the video at the point where Rafa, Delgado and Cleland were leaving the restaurant along with Vasquéz, as part of the bigger group.

  ‘These people are all regulars here. There must be a record of bookings, credit-card payments . . . I want names.’

  Dead eyes turned in silence towards the video. Not a flicker in any of them. Of recognition or anything else. Mackenzie could hear the tick-tock of a clock somewhere behind the bar.

  ‘Well?’ Gil’s raised voice forced eyes to lift themselves again and look at him blankly. All he got for his trouble was a surly shaking of heads.

  But the younger of the servers, a female in her late teens with the pallid pan-faced features of a Russian country girl, couldn’t keep her eyes from straying towards one of the tented eating areas. Cristina followed her glance but could see nothing until she took a step to her right, and realized for the first time that the restaurant was not as empty as it had seemed. A solitary diner sat in the smoking zone, obscured by an enormous lacquered cabinet with a large-screen TV playing info videos about Italian wines. A thick-set man with his hair shorn to a bristling black stubble, he was eating alone at a table for two. His muscular torso stretched a white T-shirt with camouflage patches to bursting point. Oversized gold-rimmed sunglasses sat on a squat nose, a chunky gold watch on a thick left wrist. He had a cigar in one hand, his mobile phone in the other, and was trying very hard not to be noticed. Cristina recognized him immediately as one of the group in the video. In her mind’s eye she saw Gil’s finger stabbing at his phone screen and immediately pulled back a name. Alvarez.

  As soon as Alvarez realized she had seen him he was on his feet. So quickly that his table crashed to the floor, dark glass smashing to spill syrupy green olive oil on red terracotta tiles.

  ‘Hey!’ she shouted after him.

  But already he was pushing aside a canvas flap and barging through the hedge beyond it, ripping his T-shirt and drawing blood from taut biceps. Cristina saw now that he was wearing long khaki shorts and Roman sandals, his skin the colour of mahogany. He sprinted off across the lawn. Without thinking, she started after him. Running out across the boards between the hedges, capsizing one of two menu stands that stood on either side of the entrance, and feeling the sudden heat of the afternoon sun hitting her like a club. She screwed her eyes against its sudden glare and saw Alvarez running at speed down the long avenue that led towards the port, arms pumping like pistons. Here was a man who did not, at any cost, want to talk to the police.

  Cristina had covered less than 50 metres in pursuit before the taller fitter figure of Mackenzie overtook her, flying past in the afternoon heat, long legs devouring the ground and quickly reeling in the gap between himself and the fugitive.

  Sunlight strobed between the shadows of trees lining the avenue. Another 20 metres and Mackenzie could hear the distress of the man he was chasing. Desperate lungs gulping in air and pumping it out again, oxygen spent. His muscle mass gave him strength, but neither speed nor stamina. Mackenzie was catching him.

  Alvarez glanced over his shoulder and the fronds of an overhanging willow swept the sunglasses from his face, revealing the fear in his eyes, and the realization that he was never going to outrun his pursuer. He veered right into a narrow street lined with cars, and then left into a service lane running between villas.

  Mackenzie felt the discarded sunglasses crunch beneath his foot as he followed Alvarez into the narrower street. But by the time he turned into the service lane there was no sign of him. It was fully shaded here under thick foliage in fragrant purple blossom, almost dark after the blaze of sunlight in the street behind him. He stopped, thinking that the other man must somehow have turned off, and was quite unprepared for the shape that emerged from the shadows, swinging a fist like a Belfast ham full into his face. Even as he fell backwards and his head struck the paving stones he felt blood flooding his mouth. Light filled his head. As he blinked to clear it he looked up and saw Alvarez standing over him, legs apart, a pistol held
two-handed at arm’s length and pointing directly at his chest.

  All thirty-eight years of Mackenzie’s life spooled backwards through his mind so fast that they were gone in a moment. How short life really was, how insubstantial and fleeting all those burdensome memories, scattered in an instant like the ashes of his aunt in the flower garden at the cemetery. Breath escaped from his lips in a long sigh and he screwed his eyes tight shut in preparation for the bullet that would kill him. He wondered if it would hurt. Did pain outlast life, straddle the divide? And what next? Darkness and silence? Like Cristina’s aunt?

  But a shout pre-empted the bullet. So piercing and prolonged that it forced him to open his eyes again. Alvarez was still there, the gun still pointing at Mackenzie’s chest. But the man’s eyes had lifted and were focused beyond them both, back along the lane. Mackenzie craned his neck and saw Cristina silhouetted against the sunlight in the street behind her, pistol drawn. She held hers too in a double-handed stance, its muzzle directed straight at Mackenzie’s would-be killer. She could shoot him before he could raise his weapon to fire at her. If he shot Mackenzie she would kill him. It was a classic stand-off. And Mackenzie found himself an almost neutral observer. Having already accepted death, he had somehow banished fear.

  He looked back up at Alvarez. The man was caught in an agony of indecision that seemed to last a lifetime, before finally he took a calculated risk and simply turned and ran, sprinting off into the gloom, almost certainly fearing the bullet in his back that never came.

  Cristina arrived to kneel beside the prone figure of Mackenzie, breathless and glistening with sweat. Fear and darkness dilating her pupils so that they almost obliterated the irises. She holstered her gun. ‘Señor, are you alright?’

  Mackenzie wiped blood from his face with shaking fingers. ‘Apart from a busted nose and a split lip, I think I might live.’

  She helped him to sit upright and produced paper hankies from somewhere for him to hold to his nose. He spat out blood and his words were muffled by his hand and the hankies. ‘You know they say that if you save a life you are for ever responsible for it?’

  ‘Do they?’ She seemed unimpressed.

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Well, Señor, I think you are big enough and ugly enough to look after yourself.’

  He shook his head. ‘Except today. When you did it for me.’ He felt a huge wave of gratitude towards her. ‘Gracias señora. For my life.’

  She helped him to his feet as a perspiring Detective Gil finally appeared, fighting for breath, at the far end of the lane. When he saw them he leaned forward to support himself on bent knees. ‘He got away then?’ he gasped.

  Mackenzie said, ‘No, we gave him a business card and he promised to call.’

  *

  By the time they got back to Zhivago’s, both the restaurant and the wine store were closed. There was no sign of the staff. Everyone had gone. Mackenzie had stopped the blood leaking from his nose, and from somewhere Cristina managed to produce wet wipes to clean the dried smears of it from his face. They stood in a disconsolate knot under the blazing sun in the car park, certain that eyes were trained upon them from behind smoked glass windows in the Russian club across the road.

  Gil said, ‘If the financial branch can make the money laundering stick, then maybe we would have leverage against the owners of this place to reveal the identity of their customers.’

  ‘No time,’ Mackenzie said. People always quoted the maxim, follow the money. And they were right. But it always took too long.

  Gil nodded. He knew it, too. He shrugged. ‘Well . . . I’ll get back to the office and see what I can do.’ He fished a business card from a back pocket and held it out for Mackenzie. ‘You can get me at this number.’ Mackenzie took it, and a look passed between them. Gil found a reluctant smile. ‘You can pass it on to Alvarez when he calls.’

  As the Kia slipped out of the car park, leaving Cristina and Mackenzie leaning against the bonnet of his car, Mackenzie’s phone rang. He lifted it from his breast pocket.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Señor, is Cristina with you?’ He recognized the Jefe’s voice at once, and something in its gravitas put him on immediate alert.

  ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ He glanced up to see Cristina looking at him apprehensively.

  ‘What is it? she demanded. Mackenzie held up a finger to silence her.

  The Jefe said, ‘I was hoping to make this easier for her, but I don’t see how. It’s Antonio. Her husband. He’s . . .’ Mackenzie heard him gasp his frustration. ‘There’s been an incident.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Ana is close to hysteria. Cleland has been gone for hours, leaving her in the dark and silent world which only technology can penetrate. A world into which she has been plunged alone once more since his departure. She doesn’t know if he simply unplugged her computer, or whether he turned off power at the mains. But living without her technology now is almost like trying to breathe without oxygen.

  Her distress is heightened by an increasingly pervasive and unpleasant odour. Sandro has not been over the door since early this morning, and it is just possible that he has been forced to empty his bowels somewhere in the house. In the last half-hour he has been repeatedly pushing his nose against her leg. Finding his head with her hands she has felt his anxiety. He is almost certainly whining, perhaps barking too. Though it would be so unlike him. And he is not responding to her attempts to calm him.

  She gets out of her chair and feels her well-travelled path to the kitchen to fill his bowls with food and water. He follows her, but is making no attempt to eat or drink. His front paws are up now on her thighs and her waist, very nearly knocking her over. He never jumps up.

  She pushes him away and speaks sharply. Something she never does. And immediately regrets it. But it must have brought a response, for she can no longer feel him within touching distance. As she makes her way in the dark to her bedroom she is terrified that somehow she might trip over him.

  The odour is less invasive here. She crosses to the window and fumbles for the catch to open it. But it is already open. She can feel the hot air from outside seeping into the room, and is aware that she is having trouble breathing.

  A prickle of perspiration stings her face as she makes her way into the tiny hallway at the top of the stairs. Out here the smell is much stronger. The heat is nearly overpowering, and the air seems to fibrillate almost tangibly against her skin. She feels Sandro pushing hard against her leg again and reaches down to place a hand on his upturned head. She is certain now that he is barking.

  An overwhelming sense of dread slowly envelops her. Invisibly invasive, like nuclear fallout. She reaches forward and finds the handle on the door to the box room where Cristina or Nuri sometimes stay over on the fold-up single bed against the far wall.

  The stench hits her immediately, like a physical blow, and it is all she can do not to be sick. A heavy scent, like rotten eggs. And something else, almost sweet, like sugared ammonia. She feels flies battering against her face. There has been a problem in here before with regular hatchings, but these are frenzied. She feels several crawl into her mouth and spits in disgust, stumbling forward waving her hands about her face. But somehow Sandro has insinuated himself between her feet and she falls heavily to the floor.

  Her hip and shoulder are bruised from the fall, and it is with difficulty that she overcomes the pain to get to her hands and knees. Crawling forward now, seeking some leverage to help her back to her feet. Until her hands find something soft beneath them, smooth and abnormally cold in this heat.

  The stink is so all consuming now that her olfactory senses have very nearly shut down. It has ceased to be so much an odour as a wholly engulfing sensation of fear.

  With both hands she explores the planes and curves of the softness emerging from the miasma that consumes her, only now admitting that it is a body lying on the floor before her. A body from
which all warmth has long since departed. Muscles stiffened by rigor mortis, skin crawling with maggots. Her trembling fingers track up along the buttons of the shirt to the neck, and the faintest stubble on the chin.

  She knows the features of this face. Features etched in her memory from twenty years ago, and remembered again from only yesterday. The smooth curve of the brow, the hair thinning now across the crown. The face of the man who had come looking for her again after all these years, only to meet his fate at the hands of a psychopath. His blood sticky like glue on her hands.

  Her scream is filled with horror, and pity, and pain. A cry in the dark heard by no one. Not even herself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Mackenzie’s foot was pressed hard to the metal, engine screaming, and still it was all he could do to keep his underpowered Seat in touch with the blue and orange flashing lights of Cristina’s SUV.

  It had been a roller-coaster drive from Marbella on the AP7, vehicles pulling over at the sound of the siren to let Cristina past on the off-ramp from the motorway, and at the Estepona roundabout. Now they flew under the overpass at the Condesa Golf Hotel, and the lights of a whole body of police vehicles and ambulances became visible in the parking area outside the Eroski Centre. Advertising hoardings stood atop a double-storey yellow building with red shutters on the second level. Dia Maxi. Supermercado. Helicopteros Sanitarios. Marlows Fish and Chips. Behind it, brick-coloured apartment blocks stepped up the hillside, and palm fronds rattled in the heat of the late afternoon breeze.

  Cristina nearly overturned her vehicle as she wrenched the wheel hard right at the roundabout and turned down into the car park. She was out of the SUV and running for the ramp to the underground car park before Mackenzie had even brought his car to a stop.