A Silent Death

by Peter May

Finally he lifted the phone and replayed the message. Toni, meet me in the car park at Eroski. I’m there now. We’ve got to talk. Then he replayed it again. And again. And again.

  The quality of it was even poorer than he remembered. Full of pauses and clicks, like a signal interrupted. He was certain she’d had no opportunity to leave that message after they had met outside Zhivago’s. It was always possible, he supposed, that she had called before he arrived. He was hazy on the exact timing. But it was his impression that he had got there before 14.47.

  The recording certainly sounded like her, and it had been enough to fool Antonio, who had been married to her for ten years. But if it wasn’t Cristina, then who was it and how had it been done?

  He took out his iPhone and opened the Voice Memo app. He replayed Cristina’s message and held his phone to the speaker to record it, then listened to it on his own phone. It was a good representation of a bad recording. He saved the file then attached it to an email addressed to a forensic audio expert he had worked with at the Met. Mick Allbright was a geek, as socially inept as Mackenzie, which was perhaps why they had got along. Mackenzie had no idea how much could be gleaned from such poor-quality audio, but if anyone could dissect it with accuracy, Mick could. He tagged it Urgent.

  Outside the heat struck him anew. The officer on guard had sought shade inside the doorway and looked guilty as Mackenzie emerged. But Mackenzie was preoccupied. Had things really got so bad between Cristina and Antonio that she had threatened to leave him? That’s what Paco said Antonio had told him. Mackenzie tried hard to re-conjure the conflict he had witnessed between the brothers-in-law at the golf course. He had been some distance away, but did it really look as if they had been arguing over a marital break-up?

  Across the road, the sun reflected off a dark glass globe mounted on the wall above the door of the mini-market. A CCTV camera. There was a good chance it had caught Antonio leaving the apartment. Mackenzie loped across the road, half-running, and was perspiring by the time he stepped into the comparative cool of the shop.

  The owner regarded him suspiciously from the far side of the counter and refused to let him review the footage. Some foreigner without so much as a badge or an ID! Mackenzie crossed the street and returned with the officer guarding the entrance to the apartment. This time the owner was reluctantly acquiescent. He led Mackenzie into a back room where an ancient PC whirred and groaned on a scarred table top. Footage from the camera, he said, was recorded on to an external disc and automatically rerecorded every forty-eight hours, wiping the previous recording in the process. It was less than twenty-four hours since Antonio had been murdered.

  Mackenzie pulled up a stool and scrolled back to the previous afternoon, pausing the time-code at 14.45 before setting it to play. The camera gave greatest coverage to the front of the shop, but the entrance to Cristina’s apartment across the road fell just inside the upper right corner of the frame. If Antonio’s car was parked at the kerbside it was out of shot. Mackenzie sat and watched the minutes tick by. No one came or went. A full five minutes passed. Surely after receiving the call, Antonio would have left straight away?

  Mackenzie was puzzled. He let the recording run for another five minutes. Nothing. By now Antonio would have had difficulty in reaching the Eroski Centre before the first reports of the shooting. A full fifteen minutes and there was no sign of Antonio. Which is when it occurred to Mackenzie that if Antonio had actually taken the call, there would have been no need for Cristina to leave a message. So how did he know to go to the Eroski Centre?

  He rewound, scrolling back a full ten minutes prior to the time of the call, then set the recording to play again. At 14.40 a scowling Antonio emerged from the apartment block, hands in pockets, fishing out his car keys as he went. He vanished out of shot. The last time anyone had seen him alive, apart from his killer, or killers. And a full seven minutes before the call from Cristina.

  Mackenzie left the mini-market with the hard disk in his pocket and the proprietor’s complaints ringing in his ears. It took him less than two minutes to cross the square to the police station and climb the steps to reception.

  The duty officer looked at him in surprise. Perhaps he thought that Mackenzie should have been at the funeral. Mackenzie laid the hard disk down on the counter. ‘I need to enter this in evidence,’ he said. ‘And I need you to do me a favour.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  It was late afternoon by the time Cristina got home.

  The Jefe had broken the news to her about Ana after the funeral. She had been furious. Boss or no boss, she laid into him. He had no right to keep something like that from her! But distress had displaced grief in her emptiness, and for a short while fear for Ana had replaced the heartbreak of losing Antonio.

  They had all returned to Nuri and Paco’s house, and despite her illness Nuri had done her best to feed them all. Neighbours had helped, arriving in constant procession with fish soup and goat stew and paella. But Cristina had been unable to eat. She had grilled the Jefe on every detail of Ana’s disappearance. Mackenzie’s sighting of her in the street with Cleland. The chase through the feria. The body found in her house. Neither she nor Nuri had the least idea who Sergio García Lorca might be, or what his connection to Ana was. If any.

  Now she was quite simply exhausted. A night without sleep. Twenty-four hours without food. Grief and fear an almost impossible double burden. Lucas had to be her focus now. She knew that. He had none of the mental and emotional resources to fall back on that she had. And, God knows, she had little enough of either herself.

  The officer stationed in the street outside the apartment was long gone, and she dragged herself wearily up the stairs, Lucas trotting at her side, his hand still clutching hers. He had been braver than she could possibly have believed. A day without tears. Few words, and a stoic smile for all the fussing neighbours.

  She paused for a moment with her hand on the door handle, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was their nest. How empty would it be without the man who had helped her build it? The first of many trials that lay ahead.

  As soon as she let herself in she knew there was someone in the apartment. Fear and shock stung the skin of her face and she quickly insinuated herself between Lucas and the living room as she stepped out of the hall to confront whoever might be there.

  The glass door to the balcony had been slid aside, and Mackenzie stood with his back to the rail, leaning against it and tapping on the screen of his mobile phone. He looked up, startled, as he heard her come in, and was immediately embarrassed, a physical intruder on her grief.

  ‘Who the hell let you in?’ she barked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘There’s an officer posted downstairs. Did he not tell you?’

  ‘There was no one there when I got here.’

  ‘Oh.’ He scratched his head. ‘I don’t know why they thought they needed one in the first place.’ He slipped his phone back in his pocket. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘How could you let that bastard get away with Ana?’

  Mackenzie reddened. Embarrassment and now guilt. ‘I didn’t . . .’ But there were no excuses. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘Yes. So am I. Sorry I ever did a colleague a favour. Sorry I ever went to that breakin at La Paloma. Sorry I ever had to set eyes on you.’

  Mackenzie lowered his head and wished that the ground would swallow him up. When eventually he raised his eyes again, she was standing in the living room with hers closed. Lucas stood at her side still clutching her hand, gazing at him with unglazed misery, his lower lip quivering. But still he held back his tears.

  Finally Cristina opened her eyes and drew a deep trembling breath. ‘I’m sorry. None of this is your fault.’ She paused. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He didn’t think that this was the moment to discuss the phone message, or the CCTV footage. And again heard Susan’s silent commendation for his uncommon discretion. He said, ‘I didn’t think it would be right for me to go to
the funeral. I hardly knew . . .’ Now he felt Susan’s metaphorical pinch on the arm.

  But Cristina had turned her attentions to Lucas. ‘Shall I put on the TV?’

  The boy shrugged, which she took as assent, and crossed the room to turn it on. There was an animated film playing, and cartoon voices filled the room to displace the awful silence. But Lucas wasn’t interested. He disentangled his hand from his mother’s, went out to the hall and into the room with his name on it. He shut the door behind him.

  Cristina stood for a moment. Helpless. Hopeless. Wondering what to do or say now. She glanced at the phone. All night she had wanted to hear the telephone message she had allegedly left. Now she couldn’t bear to listen to it. Maybe tomorrow . . .

  Mackenzie said, ‘I should go.’

  And suddenly she didn’t want him to. ‘Are you hungry?’

  He had not thought about it, but hadn’t eaten all day. ‘I suppose I am.’

  ‘They’ve been trying to make me eat for hours and I just haven’t felt like it. But I do now. And Lucas will need something.’ She tipped her head towards the kitchen. ‘I’ll see what I can rustle up.’ And she went through to rattle pans and forage in the fridge.

  Left on his own now, Mackenzie had no idea what to do. He pushed off from the railing and went into the living room, where he began gathering the toys and items of clothing that lay on chairs or scattered across the floor, and piled them on to the table. He found the remote for the TV and turned down the volume. Which is when he heard the faint sound of sobbing from Lucas’s room. He glanced towards the kitchen where Cristina was noisily busying herself to avoid thinking, and thought that he should probably do something. He would, if Lucas had been one of his.

  He went out into the hall and knocked softly on the door. The sobbing stopped almost at once. He knocked again, and a tiny voice told him to come in.

  Lucas was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands folded in his lap, tears shining on his cheeks. He glanced at Mackenzie then away again. Machismo dictated that Spanish boys didn’t cry. Mackenzie went and sat on the bed beside him. What to say? He had never really known how to comfort his own children in distress. Susan had been good at that. Finally he said, ‘My father committed suicide.’

  Lucas brought his head sharply round to stare up at Mackenzie with big dark curious eyes. Mackenzie had no idea why he’d said it. It was something he had not confided in anyone. Not even Susan. Preferring to perpetuate the myth he had grown up with that his father had died a hero.

  ‘He was a police officer. Tried to rescue a woman being held hostage, but only got her killed. He couldn’t live with that and hanged himself.’ There was an extraordinary sense of relief in saying it aloud for the first time in his life.

  Lucas blinked at him. ‘What age were you?’

  ‘Oh, I was just two. I didn’t know anything about it at the time. I didn’t learn about it until later.’

  ‘So it was just you and your mum?’

  ‘Well, no. They took me away from my mother. I was brought up by my aunt and uncle.’

  ‘Like Paco and Nuri?’

  ‘Yes. But no one’s going to take you away from your mum. She’ll always be here for you.’ He was scared now that he had frightened the boy and looked around the room for something to change the subject. His eyes lit on Lucas’s school jotter on the desk below the window. ‘Still having trouble with your maths?’

  Lucas nodded. And then a sad little smile. ‘Dad was hopeless at it, too. Maybe I take after him.’

  Mackenzie reached for the jotter and opened it up. ‘What are they teaching you?’

  ‘Percentages.’

  Mackenzie looked at him in surprise. ‘So what’s difficult about that?’

  ‘You’re kidding, right? I mean, it’s easy if its 10, or 100 . . .’

  Mackenzie said, ‘But if they ask you what is 17.5 per cent of some number that’s not a hundred, and you don’t have a calculator your brain freezes. Is that what happens?’

  Lucas nodded. ‘Yeah. Freezes is right. I just can’t think.’

  Mackenzie smiled. ‘I’ll teach you a little trick, then. It’ll unfreeze your brain and your teacher will think you’re a genius.’

  Lucas eyed him with naked scepticism. ‘How?’

  ‘Well, like you said, it’s easy to multiply or divide by 10 or 100. But if you were asked to find 17.5 per cent of say, 416, that would seem really hard.’

  ‘Yeah, it would.’

  ‘Because 17.5 is a really unfriendly number, right?’

  Lucas nodded enthusiastic agreement.

  ‘But any unfriendly number is just made up of friendly numbers, numbers that are easy for you to work with. So all you have to do is find friendly numbers that add or subtract to make 17.5. For example 10 plus 5 plus 2.5 make 17.5, right?’

  Lucas nodded again. And already light was starting to dawn. ‘5 is half of 10, 2.5 is half of 5.’

  ‘Exactly. So divide 416 by 10 and what do you get?’

  ‘41.6’

  ‘Right. So half of that is . . . ?’

  ‘20.8.’

  ‘And half of that . . . ?’

  ‘10.4.’

  ‘So all you have to do . . .’

  But Lucas was way ahead of him. ‘Is add those three numbers together . . .’ He grabbed the jotter and a pencil, wrote them down and added them up. ‘And you get 72.8.’

  ‘Which is 17.5 per cent of 416.’ Mackenzie grinned. ‘See? Told you it was easy.’

  Lucas’s dark eyes shone. It was as if a whole landscape of understanding had just opened up before him. ‘Can we try another one?’

  ‘Yes, of course . . .’

  *

  Cristina looked at the magnets arranged along the angle of the cooker hood. An ice-cream cone, a jukebox, a couple of minions – Bob and Kevin; a religious icon, a motorcycle. Each with its own memory of Antonio. A sticker for Pollo Pronto in Santa Ana, a carry-out chicken joint where Antonio would often buy them cheap take-home dinner on his way back from work. She wanted to tear them all off, wipe away the memories that right now were only painful. But a part of her knew, somewhere deep inside, they were memories that one day might bring pleasure rather than pain. And she would regret it if she’d thrown them away.

  She had improvised a tagliatelle carbonara and ladled it out of the pot on to three plates. The cooking time had been spent thinking about Ana. She wanted to phone the police station to see if there was any news. But she knew that if there were they would have called her. She carried the plates through to the table, and sighed as she saw the detritus that Mackenzie had piled there from around the room. She set the plates down, and with a single sweeping movement of her arm sent it all tumbling to the floor. Then marched through the hall to throw open the door to Lucas’s room. The sight that greeted her stopped her in her tracks.

  Lucas and Mackenzie were sitting together at the little desk below the window, poring over an open jotter, textbooks all around them. Lucas turned shining eyes towards his mother. ‘Señor Mackenzie is teaching me maths, mamá. It’s so easy. I’m going to be top of the class. And make papá really proud.’

  *

  By the time they had finished the tagliatelle Cristina and Mackenzie had consumed almost a bottle of red wine between them. Lucas had eaten quickly and retired again to his room to do more maths. But when Cristina had peeked in, he had been lying sound asleep on the bed with his jotter open beside him, his pencil still loosely clutched between crooked fingers.

  Rather than lubricating conversation between them, the wine had only made things more sticky. Mackenzie had quickly exhausted his very limited supply of small talk, and Cristina seemed less than inclined to speak at all. Only the background burble of the TV filled the silence in the room.

  Finally Mackenzie said, ‘Why did you and Antonio want to break up? Could you not have talked things through?’

  She turned eyes on him that blazed both anger and astonishment. ‘What are you talking about?’


  ‘You told Antonio you were going to leave him and wanted custody of Lucas.’

  She was on her feet now. ‘That is complete rubbish! Why would you even say something like that?’

  He was taken aback by her ferocity. ‘It’s not true, then?’

  ‘No, it’s not!’

  He was at a loss. ‘I was only here twice and you were fighting both times.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Couples fight! Don’t you ever fight with your wife?’

  He shrugged and tried to find a smile. He didn’t want to tell her just how much.

  ‘It doesn’t mean a thing.’ Almost as if she were trying to convince herself. ‘I think maybe it’s time you left.’

  He stood up, red-faced with embarrassment. Somehow he had only managed to make things worse, and was desperate to try and make up for it.

  ‘I found CCTV footage from the mini-market across the road. It shows Antonio leaving the apartment seven minutes before you left that message.’

  ‘I didn’t leave any message!’

  ‘That’s not even the point. How could he know where and when to meet you if you didn’t leave the message until after he’d left?’

  Which gave her pause for thought. But only for a moment. She glanced at the phone and knew she would listen to the message after all. Once Mackenzie had gone. ‘Go señor. Please.’

  He glanced awkwardly at his feet, then up again and nodded. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, I suppose.’

  She followed him to the door. But he turned before she could close it behind him. ‘It was Paco who told me.’

  She frowned. ‘Told you what?’

  ‘That you and Antonio were breaking up.’

  Her face creased with consternation. ‘Why would he say something like that when it’s not true?’ She breathed her exasperation. ‘Just go.’

  And she slammed the door in his face.

  *

  Mackenzie’s room at the Hostal Totana seemed cold and unwelcoming, in spite of the heat. A question of mood rather than temperature. He knew he had misspoken at the meal with Cristina, and it distressed him to think he had upset her. But still, he knew now that Paco had been lying about the argument with Antonio. Why?