A Silent Death

by Peter May

  A familiar face in the crowd caught his eye, and it took him a moment to realize that it was Ana herself, tiny and swamped by the people around her. Like a piece of flotsam carried on turbulent water she vanished, appeared, then vanished again in all too fleeting glimpses. Swept away from him towards the Calle Portada. He called her name at the top of his voice, before remembering with embarrassment that she could not hear him.

  And then his heart stopped. Another face caught in the fading sunlight. Then gone. At first he couldn’t be sure, then there it was again. Cleland! And he was with Ana. He bellowed her name again, this time for Cleland’s benefit. It turned the man’s head sharply around, and for the most transient of moments their eyes met. Fifty metres apart. But the electricity between them passed at the speed of light. And then he was gone again. Ana, too.

  Mackenzie started ploughing his way through the bodies ahead of him to a chorus of protests and cursing.

  *

  Ana is hopelessly confused. She has lost control of everything. Her whole physical being, it seems, swept along on a sea of turbulent noisome humanity. All she can feel with any certainty is the iron grip of Cleland’s fingers around her arm. Pulling, dragging her through the tempest. She feels elbows in her ribs, a shoulder in her back. Someone’s foul breath in her face. She blenches, then panics, realizing suddenly that she has lost hold of Sandro’s harness. Gone is his warmth against her legs, his gentle navigation through troubled waters. She calls out his name, but feels only a tightening of Cleland’s grip.

  They are almost running now. She is breathless and fighting to keep her feet. The ground is sloping beneath them. Fewer people here, she thinks, but Cleland is relentless in forcing them on. Down, down. Another wave of bodies parting to let them past. Something is terribly wrong. She has no idea what, but she can feel Cleland’s anxiety.

  Then suddenly she collides with something unyielding and Cleland’s grip on her arm is broken. Her only security in this nightmare. She feels herself falling, as if through space. An age goes by, it seems, before she hits the ground. Hard, unforgiving asphalt that knocks all the breath from her lungs. Pain shoots through her shoulder. When she gasps for air it is the smell of deep, dark fear that she inhales. The stink of sweating horses. Manure. She can feel the clatter of hooves on cobbles all around her, and realizes with terror that she is in danger of being trampled to death.

  Then strong hands close around her arms and she feels herself lifted bodily from the ground and propelled forward. Her face brushes the secreting flank of a horse, the smell of it for a moment overwhelming all her other senses.

  *

  Perspiration almost blinded Cleland as he steered the helpless Ana through this maelstrom of neighing, rearing horses. Images dazzling him as he turned this way and that, avoiding flanks and hooves. Flat-brimmed Cordobés riding hats, red button-up tunics, ladies riding side-saddle in black and white flamenco skirts, heels scratching at his face. Horsemen screamed at him in a fury, a chorus of angry shouts rising from the crowd as one rider was almost unseated. But like the Red Sea, the passage he had cleaved through the procession closed again behind them. Straw-roofed floats drawn by tractors following on, a brass band belting out its discordant refrain, drums banging, cymbals crashing. A cacophony of horns and klaxons blasting into the hot air of the early evening.

  Only as he cleared the crowd lining the route did he dare to look back. There was no sign of Mackenzie. And the procession, in full flood, cut off his path of pursuit. Had the Scots copper made it through the procession, then Cleland might have been forced to abandon Ana to her fate. Which would have meant relinquishing his power over Cristina. But worse, he realized, it would have meant losing Ana herself. And for some reason beyond his understanding he did not want to do that. In any circumstance. In taking the life of Sergio he had somehow made himself responsible for her. Whether he liked it or not. It was the strangest feeling, being beholden to someone else.

  *

  A burly uniformed Guardia blocked Mackenzie’s path, stepping in his way to stop him from trying to break through the procession. Mackenzie saw Ana’s guide dog wandering bewildered among a forest of legs. Sheaves of hay passed before his eyes, children in white shirts riding on tractors, Policía Local in black uniforms and white helmets revving the motors of their Suzuki motorcycles. Sunlight angling between the rooftops reflected on their visors. All these cops within touching distance of Cleland and no way for Mackenzie to explain. No point in even trying.

  He shoved his way back through the crowds lining the procession, and started running along the narrow Calle Silva which followed a parallel course. With luck he would find a crossing point further along. This street was almost deserted, everyone pushing into the Calle Papuecas, one block north, to glimpse the procession. Toddlers hoisted on parental shoulders, children stretching on tiptoes.

  Two junctions further along, Mackenzie managed to cross the path of the parade before the horses arrived. He ran the length of another block, then cut back towards the street where Cleland and Ana had forced their way through. He found himself standing in a semi-deserted calle. The sounds of the feria carried to him from a block further over. He could see the throng pressing along the route of the cavalcade. But there was no sign of Cleland and Ana. And no indication of which way they might have gone. He bellowed his frustration into the jagged strip of sky between the buildings overhead and closed his eyes.

  From nowhere came an image of his father storming the psychiatric patient and his hostage in the close of some dark tenemental Glasgow street. The blade of a knife caught in his flashlight. Then blood, bright red and spurting, drawn in a smile across the soft flesh of a white throat.

  He opened his eyes in a panic to banish the image of his father’s folly. And all he could see was Ana’s pale face as it was carried off on the current of the crowd. The sins of the father, the failure of the son. A wave of fatigue and defeat surged through him and his legs very nearly gave way. He reached out to press his hand against a wall to steady himself, and felt the heat of the sun retained in the stone.

  What to do? With reluctance he turned to make his way back to Ana’s house. If Cleland had been there, then perhaps he might have left some clue as to where he was going. And more importantly, where he was taking Ana.

  *

  Ana is aware of the change in temperature as Cleland leads her up the stone steps from the Plaza de San Francisco and into the cool of the Iglesia Nuestra Señora de Los Remedios. She can actually feel the space opening up around her. In her imagination she can hear their footsteps echoing around the vaulted ceilings, can picture the golden candlelit altar. The air raises goosebumps on her naked arms, and she feels Cleland’s tension easing as his grip on her arm relaxes.

  ‘Light a candle for me,’ she says, and he leads her down the central aisle towards where she knows the candles burn in serried rows. They stop, and she can feel the warmth of the flames, and realizes that Cleland now has no way to communicate with her.

  She feels his surprise as she reaches for and finds his hand, taking it into both of hers. Slowly, carefully, she uses her index finger to trace on his palm the letters of the words she speaks. My name is Ana. What is yours? And waits to see if he has understood. It is not the tactile signing she took that teenage summer to learn. But it is simple, if slow, and anyone can do it.

  The holding of hands is reversed, and he traces his response in gentle letters on her palm. She almost smiles. Of course he understood. Whatever else he may be, he is not stupid.

  – My name is Jack.

  So now they are on first name terms. ‘Light two, Jack. One for each of us.’

  – What’s the point? You don’t believe in God. Neither do I.

  ‘I never said I didn’t believe in God, Juanito. Only that I had no time for Him. I light candles in the hope that one day He might burn in the same hell to which he has sent me.’ She pauses. ‘And you. We share the same hell, you and I.’

  She can tell by the h
esitation in his fingers that he has no idea how to respond. Finally, he lets go of her hand, and she knows that he is lighting the candles. The tiniest increase in the warmth that they generate. No matter how small, their two flames make an impression in the cold air of the church.

  A strange serenity suffuses her soul, and she closes her eyes to let the air escape her lungs in a long, slow draught. Now she knows what she must do. She reaches for and finds Cleland’s forearm, resting her hand upon it before giving it the gentlest of squeezes.

  *

  The Calle San Miguel was almost deserted now. The sounds of the festival a distant and discordant revelry carried on the cooling night air. The despacho de pan and the carnicería had closed early. A solitary elderly couple sat on one of the benches in the Plaza de Juan Bazán, the perfume of the flowers draped all around its walls hanging sweet and fragrant in the dying light.

  Mackenzie tried the handle on the door to Ana’s house, prepared to kick it open if he had to. But the door was unlocked and swung into darkness. To his right a door opened into a shuttered storage room whose barred windows gave on to the street. The staircase straight ahead of him climbed up into gloom.

  The first thing he became aware of was the smell. The fetid stink of decay, like opening a fridge where meat has been left to fester for weeks beyond its sell-by date. In his pocket Mackenzie found some bloodied tissues from earlier in the day and held them to his nose. This time to staunch the smell rather than the blood. And he began to climb the stairs.

  In the upstairs living room he found all the windows opened wide. The same in the bedroom. But the smell lingered in the confined windowless space of the upstairs landing, and hit him with the force of a physical blow when he opened the door to the box room. A plague of houseflies in here had been feeding on the corpse that sprawled on the floor beneath the open window. They had laid their eggs perhaps eighteen hours before and already there had been a hatching of maggots clustering in the mouth and nostrils. In a few days the maggots would generate more flies to feed on the secretions of decomposition and lay yet more eggs.

  Mackenzie kept his mouth firmly shut, pressing the tissues to his nostrils, and stepped carefully into the room. He crouched to turn the face of the cadaver towards him. A man maybe not that much older than himself. Dark hair starting to thin. It was not a face he knew. He let the head fall back to the side and saw the blood matted thickly in the hair around a wound on the back of it. The depression in the skull was so deep Mackenzie could only assume that this was the blow that killed him. There was very little blood on the floor. A smear of it, suggesting that the body had been dragged in here. But in any case, Mackenzie knew that if the blow had killed him, then the heart would have stopped pumping blood almost immediately. His skin was already marbling and tinted green.

  He stood up, shaking. Who was he? What was he doing here? And where in God’s name was Cleland taking Ana? And why?

  He moved back out on to the landing, taking care now not to touch anything. Ana’s whole house was a crime scene. He crossed the living room to the open window and breathed in fresh air, then fished out his phone to call the Jefe.

  In less than twenty minutes the house was crawling with cops and forensics officers from the Estepona HQ of the Policía National. Mackenzie was immediately sidelined and told he would be required to give a full statement later.

  It took the Jefe under thirty minutes to get there from Marviña. He was accompanied by the homicide officers from Malaga who had earlier arrived at the Eroski Centre to open the investigation into Antonio’s shooting. He greeted Mackenzie in the street, where the chief of the Policía National stood barking instructions into his mobile phone. When he hung up he approached the Jefe and the two police chiefs shook hands. ‘They found the blind woman’s dog wandering about down town, and we’ve had several sightings of a couple answering to the description of Cleland and Señora Hernandez entering the church.’ He shook his head gravely. ‘But nothing since. They’re gone, Miguel.’

  The Jefe said, ‘What about the dead guy?’

  The Estepona chief drew a clear plastic evidence bag from his pocket. It contained a laminated DNI card. Documento Nacional de Identidad. Mackenzie could see a photograph of the dead man on the front of it. He looked younger than the man he had seen upstairs. ‘ID card in his wallet. Sergio García Lorca. Aged forty-three. Certified deaf.’

  Certified dead, Mackenzie thought. He said, ‘What was his relationship with Señora Hernandez? Or Cleland?’

  The chief shrugged. ‘No idea.’ He did not like answering questions from Mackenzie. He nodded curtly and went back into the house.

  The Jefe flicked Mackenzie an apologetic glance. He said, ‘Shell casings at the Eroski Centre confirm two shooters.’

  ‘Or one shooter, two guns.’

  ‘Perhaps. But unlikely. The body’s been brought here to Estepona for autopsy. They’ll release it to the relatives tonight and he’ll be buried tomorrow.’

  Mackenzie raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘That fast?’

  ‘Bodies don’t last long in this heat.’ The Jefe nodded towards the house. ‘You should have figured that out for yourself by now.’

  But all that Mackenzie could think was that last night Antonio had been preparing a dinner of barbecued ribs for his family. Tomorrow his family would be putting him in the ground. Life was such a fragile and insubstantial thing, and you never knew when the candle lit by birth would be doused by death.

  The Jefe said, ‘Cristina’s taking it hard.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect her to take it any other way.’

  Then the Jefe hesitated. ‘Do you think there’s any truth in what Paco said? About Cristina wanting to leave him.’

  Mackenzie remembered the fractious exchanges on each occasion he had been at the apartment, but it was not something he was going to share with the Jefe. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That phone call still bothers me, señor. You say she was with you. But was she with you all the time? Could she not have made that call without you knowing? It would only have taken a few moments.’

  Mackenzie tried to recall if there had been a few such moments. But he shook his head. ‘Jefe, even if she had made the call, it wasn’t Cristina at the Eroski Centre.’

  ‘No.’ He hesitated a long time. ‘But someone there doing her bidding?’

  Mackenzie looked at him. ‘Do you really believe that?’

  The Jefe pursed his lips and shook his head in resignation. ‘No.’ He examined the backs of his hands. ‘Will you go to the funeral?’

  Mackenzie recalled the singularly impersonal ceremony for his aunt at the Glasgow crematorium. His uncle’s later tears. His own lack of grief. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that would be appropriate.’

  The other man nodded. ‘I hate funerals.’ Then made a determined effort to shake off his mantle of depression. He drew a deep breath. ‘Why don’t you come up to the house tonight, like we talked about. I could do with some company.’ He smiled sadly. ‘And someone who is going to appreciate sharing a good single malt.’

  Mackenzie thought that in the circumstances whisky sounded like a fine idea.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Streetlights snaked off up the hill from the simmering darkness of the empty hotel complex. Tiles flaked from rain-streaked walls. Unpruned palms and overgrown shrubs climbed the building, obscuring windows and doorways. Weeds poked a metre high from cracked tarmac in covered parking lots out front. And beyond the bridge that straddled the dual carriageway below, headlights raked the night, southbound towards the distant silhouette of Gibraltar.

  What little light remained in the sky glowed pink verging on purple. It lay in narrow bands along the distant horizon, where a bank of cloud obscured North Africa beyond a Mediterranean Sea that mirrored infinity. The moon had not yet risen.

  Cleland drew his black SUV into the cover of an overgrown gateway hidden beneath the main entrance to the hotel. When he had first arrived in this part of Spa
in the Condesa Golf Hotel had been a thriving business, its Thalasso Spa a popular attraction for holidaymakers and wealthy locals. Water drawn from the Mediterranean purified for the various treatments offered. Its restaurants serving Michelin-quality food.

  But something, Cleland knew not what, had gone wrong. A change in financial fortunes. The hotel had closed and lain empty for years, quietly decaying on the edge of the port without any indication that it would ever reopen.

  He grabbed a black bag from the back seat, then helped Ana down from the vehicle. She had shown no inclination to resist since leaving the church, following all his instructions with a quiet acquiescence. Holding her by the arm, he led her carefully past the entrance to the spa. Something opaque had been painted over glass doors to prevent anyone from seeing in, but vandals had used it as a base to scrawl their names, and the names of their lovers, and all their pointless profanities. An unbroken sticker pasted across the doors read Protegido Por Seguridad. It was impossible to see in beyond the reflections of willows and bamboo that pushed up from the dry river bed opposite.

  They hurried around a proliferation of uncut hedging that hung down over the pavement, to follow a curving walkway almost completely engulfed by advancing regiments of trees and bushes. Paint-peeling walls and glass balconies rose above them through three floors, and they had to fight their way past overhanging branches and trailing root systems to find the short flight of steps that led up to the main entrance.

  Cleland tore away red tape stretched across a gateway to the turning circle in front of revolving doors which had once swept guests into an impressive reception. Approaching from this angle avoided the security cameras. He had no idea if they still functioned, but he wasn’t going to take the risk. A side door was secured with a padlock and chain. He released Ana and set his bag down on the cracked pavings to take out a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters. They sliced through the chain like a hot knife through butter, and within seconds he was leading Ana into the fusty interior of the hotel.