by Mark Pryor
“Is that your word or his?”
“His, and he was right.” Barsetti leaned forward. “But the point I’m trying to make is that you probably think his murder had something to do with his work with clients in the sex trade here. I’m telling you, you’re wrong. It was no different to him than showing someone to a church or the Picasso museum.”
“Maybe,” Hugo said. “It may have seemed like that to him, but not everyone is so . . . naïve about the trade. Whatever his take on it, Mr. Barsetti, there are a lot of unpleasant people in that business.”
Barsetti sat in silence, so Hugo pushed on, not sure what he should be asking but not willing to let the Italian go just yet.
“Do you know anyone in the import-export business, by any chance?” Hugo asked.
“What kind of imports and exports? Like Gregor Freed?”
“I suppose. Who else do you know?”
Barsetti shrugged. “Lots of people, I’m sure. I bet some of our clients do that kind of work.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
“No, not really.”
“And you’re still not willing to share your client lists with us?”
“We do that and we might as well shut down the business. It’s hard enough keeping . . .” His voice tailed off.
“Keeping what?” Hugo asked. “Keeping Rubén Castañeda’s death a secret?”
“You expect us to call his clients and tell them, ‘Hey, Rubén was murdered, but don’t worry, you’re in safe hands’?”
“What have you told them?”
“Nothing. If someone asks, we’ll say he left the business.”
“His death will be public knowledge soon; his name will be in the press. His clients will just have to run a quick search on him and they’ll find out what happened.”
“Possibly, but that’s our approach. You should talk to Nisha, she makes those decisions.”
“That OK with you?”
“That she decides? Of course, it’s her business.”
“But if it goes down the tubes, it’s your livelihood.”
“Ha!” Barsetti looked up and gave Hugo a tired smile. “You forget who I’m married to. I’ll be just fine.”
“Your wife doesn’t mind you visiting Casablanca?”
Barsetti stared at Hugo for a moment. “It’s not what you think.”
“What do I think?”
“Don’t play games with me. I had my reason to go in there and it has nothing to do with you.”
“Since Rubén Castañeda was killed, pretty much everything has something to do with me. Especially when you’re hiding information from the police.”
“I’m not hiding anything.”
“Then tell me what you were doing in there, if not getting drunk and . . . finding a little companionship.”
Barsetti drained his coffee cup. “Like I said, nothing to do with you.”
“Fine.” Hugo took out his phone and pulled up Delia Treviño’s picture, the mugshot Garcia had sent to him earlier. He placed the phone in front of Barsetti and watched his face. “You know who that is?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Barsetti dragged his eyes from the phone. “Why not? I don’t know her.”
“Aren’t you curious why I’m asking about her?”
“So tell me.”
“That storage locker that doesn’t belong to Estruch. Rubén Castañeda’s storage unit.”
“What about it?”
Hugo tapped the picture on the phone. “We found this young lady in it today.”
“What do you mean . . . ‘found’?”
“She was dead, Leo. And her insides had been scooped out. What do you make of that?”
Hugo watched as Barsetti’s red face drained to white, and his lips trembled. He put both hands on the table and, unsteadily, pushed himself up. His voice was a whisper. “I told you. I don’t know her. I don’t know her.”
Barsetti turned and staggered to the door of the café, pausing to look over his shoulder at Hugo for a moment. He opened his mouth as if to say something. Hugo waited, but the Italian seemed to change his mind, and instead shoved the door open and stepped outside into the street.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Chief Inspector Garcia sent a car for Hugo and Tom early the next morning, wanting a meeting at police headquarters to discuss where they were and where they needed to head with the investigation. He’d laid out coffee and croissants, the latter piled high on a large plate on the conference table in his office. Tom sniffed the air as they walked in.
“Now that’s what I call hospitality.”
“French style, to make you feel at home,” said Grace Silva. “And you’re welcome.” She was perched on the edge of the table with a cup of coffee next to her. “For once I didn’t have to pay out of my own pocket.”
Bartoli Garcia was sitting behind his desk and looked up. “You are already overpaid, Silva, so either stop your complaining or I’ll get someone else to fetch breakfast.”
Silva winked at Hugo. “That a promise, jefe?”
Garcia chuckled and shook his head in mock exasperation. He stood and walked around his desk to the conference table, taking a seat in front of the croissants. He helped himself to one, and a napkin. “Sit, everyone.”
A shuffle of chairs later and they were in work mode, all except one of them, who was more intent on choosing the biggest pastry and topping off his coffee cup.
“When you’re ready, Tom,” Hugo said.
“Sorry, just prepping. Fire away.”
“Gracias,” said Garcia, clearly not meaning it. “I wanted to update you on our latest victim and coordinate what happens next. A lot of moving elements, and a missing girl, so let’s not waste time.” He took a sip of coffee. “Now then. Delia Treviño was twenty-five years old. Bad childhood, worse teenage years, and her adulthood is bottom of the barrel, as you say. We’ve had uniformed officers and some detectives try to talk to her associates, I’m not sure she had friends, and so far no one knows anything.”
“Family?” Hugo asked.
“Father is dead, brother has been in prison for the last three years, and her mother hasn’t seen her in nearly a decade.”
“Where does she live?” Tom asked.
“Her last known address, the one in our records, is an apartment building in the north of the city. She’s been gone a long time—the current resident doesn’t know her, and the property manager doesn’t remember her. The associates we talked to said she went from friend to friend, staying a few nights all over the city. Oddly, no one had seen her for the past two weeks, which may be nothing more than some questionable people trying to distance themselves from her murder. The bottom line is that we have no good address for her.”
“People like that make good victims,” Hugo said. His head was beginning to hurt, a dull throb that seemed to echo and amplify the voice of Bart Denum, as if his friend were sitting there whispering in Hugo’s ear for him to get on with it, to find his little girl. “No connection at all to Castañeda or Estruch or . . . anything useful?”
“One thing, though it seems a stretch,” Garcia said. “She has ties to a couple of gangs in Barcelona. It’s not a huge problem here and they tend to stick to their own turf, but our young lady is documented by the city police’s task force as associating with members of several gangs.”
“That unusual?” Hugo asked. “You’d think most people would stick to just one.”
“Depends,” Silva said. “I’ve done a lot of work with them, mostly prevention and trying to rehabilitate people wanting out, mostly girls. Anyway, people who are on the fringes of society also operate on the edges of the gangs. The people who sell their daily helping of marijuana, as opposed to dealable amounts of drugs, the people who sell them guns and sex. No one much cares what their affiliations are, as long as they don’t flaunt another gang’s colors.”
“Why do we care about gang stuff in this case?” Tom chipped
in.
“Because,” Silva said, “one of the gangs she was affiliated with is a prison gang out of southern Spain. Los Matadores.”
Hugo sat up straight. “The Matadors?”
“Right,” Silva said. “To be honest, I don’t really get the connection because Los Matadores are a prison-only gang. In other words, unlike your American Bloods and Crips, once you’re out of prison, you don’t really have anything to do with them. You just join when locked up, defend each other, and then,” she shrugged, “that’s it.”
“Like the Tango Blast gang in Texas,” Hugo said. “Same deal.”
“It may just be a coincidence,” Silva said. “But with those drawings on the wall, it’s an interesting one. That reminds me, we did identify the person who leased the storage unit a month ago. It was paid for in cash, which isn’t helpful, but the owner did require identification, which he took a photocopy of.”
“Fake ID?” Hugo guessed.
“Actually, no.” Silva said. “But it might as well have been.”
Hugo sank back in his chair. “Rubén Castañeda.”
“Right,” Silva said. “The surveillance cameras are mostly fake ones, by the way. The two that work are by the entrance and the office. I have men looking at the video from the last couple of weeks to see if anyone else we know went in or out, but that’s a slow process. Another dead-end for now, I’m afraid.”
Hugo shook his head and looked at Bartoli Garcia, hoping for a glimmer of news, the thinnest of new threads for them to follow. As insistent as Bart’s voice was, urging him on, Hugo was even more unsettled by the silence that was Amy, a black hole that was expanding inside him, a growing pain in an already-fragile heart.
As if reading his mind, Garcia shook his head. “Not much good news regarding Señor Castañeda, either. We’ve looked at him as closely as we can but see no connection to either the Treviño girl, or bullfighting. Nothing at all.”
“Dammit, we’ve got to come up with something,” Hugo said. “Time’s running short, and we can’t keep running into dead-ends.”
“What do you suggest?” Garcia asked gently.
“I’ve talked to Barsetti, and he’s hiding something,” Hugo said. “It may only have to do with his marriage, but I showed him a picture of Delia Treviño and he went weak at the knees. Can you send some people out to talk to her associates again, but this time show them a picture of Barsetti?”
“Sí, of course. What else?”
“Look into the gang connection. Maybe Los Matadores are sticking together out of prison. Maybe they’re making money through selling human organs, or maybe they don’t like it when members try and leave them. I don’t know, but can you look into both angles?”
“Today.”
Tom spoke up. “What do you think about going public? Seems to me we’re a little mired here and could use whatever information we can get.”
“I agree,” said Silva.
“You may be right,” Hugo said. “But if we go that route, there’s no turning back from it.”
“What do you mean?” asked Garcia.
“He means be prepared for a shit-storm,” Tom said. “Every loon with a conspiracy theory will call in and tell you why the government has her. Every delusional wacko will call to tell you they’ve just spotted her hang gliding over the Old Town. And if it’s a slow week in the US, be prepared for half a dozen irritating media types to start following and reporting on your every move. Also, just being practical, remember that a pretty girl missing in a foreign city is a great news story, but a shitty tourist logo.”
All eyes turned to Chief Inspector Garcia. He was a policeman, Hugo knew, not a politician, but if his job was anything like that of his counterparts in the States, the people he reported to would look at this with one eye on the businesses and restaurants that would suffer from negative publicity. And if they were concerned about that, Garcia would be, too.
“I think,” Garcia said finally, “that I will let other people worry about the image of Barcelona. I will focus on catching the criminals.” He looked around the table. “I will need to make a few calls first, of course, let some people know this is coming.” He fixed his eyes on Hugo. “Your friend, Claudia, perhaps she can contact me this afternoon and we can arrange a statement. Get it on the news this evening.”
“Sounds good, I’ll have her call you,” Hugo said. “In the meantime, I’ll talk to Nisha Bhandari, and maybe one of you can pay a visit to Todd Finch.” He stood. “Let’s not sit around and wait for this press conference, folks. We’ve got to get a move on because Amy’s out there on her own somewhere, and so far this investigation simply hasn’t been good enough.”
They all turned as the door to Garcia’s office swung open and his secretary, Micaela Galaviz entered. She looked around the room, as if sensing the tension in the air.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But there’s been an incident you should know about.”
“An incident?” Hugo asked. “Not another murder, please.”
“No, Señor, not that,” Galaviz said. “It’s your friend Bart Denum. He tried to escape.”
Hugo stood by Denum’s hospital bed, looking down at his friend. A swathe of bandages circled his head, and his right wrist was shackled to the railing of the bed. A machine in the corner of the room beeped softly, keeping tabs on Denum’s heart rate, while a policeman stood outside his room, keeping tabs on visitors.
Chief Inspector Garcia stood behind him, silent, waiting.
“You know,” Hugo said, “in Switzerland it’s not illegal to try to escape custody. They recognize that being held prisoner runs counter to every instinct a person has, that the desire for freedom is innate and so powerful that people cannot help but act upon it. So if you try to escape from prison, they don’t add time to your sentence.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t tell that story to every murderer and psychopath you ever captured.”
Hugo turned and smiled sadly. “I didn’t capture any in Switzerland.”
“And you know we’re not there, sí?” Garcia held up a finger to silence Hugo’s response. “I would also bet money that even if the Swiss don’t punish you for escaping, they will hold you accountable for injuring someone during your attempt.”
“Yes, true,” Hugo admitted.
“Then you’ll understand that any plan to release him is now impossible.”
Hugo couldn’t argue, knew it would be futile. “Are your men seriously injured?”
“No, thankfully—for them and for your friend.”
The story, as Hugo understood it, was that Bart had lain on his bunk not responding to guards when they brought him food. They’d ignored him and tried again an hour later, but seeing that he’d not moved and was still not responding, two of them entered his cell. Bart leapt up and attacked them, shouting that he was leaving, that he needed to find Amy, and all three had fought in the cell for two minutes until one of the guards had swept Bart’s feet from under him, bringing him crashing to the floor. According to the policemen, the American’s head hit the edge of the metal bunk on the way down, rendering him bloody and unconscious. Hugo had no reason to doubt their story but, from the marks on his body and the fact that he was still unconscious, he wondered if the two burly guards hadn’t spent a few extra seconds administering their version of justice to the oblivious Bart as he lay on the floor.
“So what happens now?” Hugo asked.
“He lies here until he wakes up, and then he goes back to his jail cell.”
Hugo shook his head. “This is all so wrong.”
Garcia’s tone softened. “Bueno, I understand why he did what he did. That he has emotional problems and that he wants to find his daughter. But it is out of our hands now. We must focus on finding Amy so that when he wakes up we have some good news.”
He was right, of course, Hugo knew that. He bent and took his friend’s limp hand and gave it a squeeze. “I keep telling you this, Bart, and I promise it’s true. I’ll find Amy
for you. One way or another, I’ll find her, no matter what it takes.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The chief inspector left Hugo at the hospital when he was summoned by his superiors to explain why an American was attacking Barcelona police officers in their own jails. Ever the pragmatist, Hugo thought, Garcia had said, “Well, this’ll give me a chance to talk to them about the media appearance we’re planning.”
On the sidewalk, Hugo watched for a moment the procession of people coming and going from the hospital, the sick, the worried, and the newly recovered. The occasional blare of a siren announced newcomers as ambulances nosed through the crowded pedestrian crossings, but those lost in their own world of pain and sickness paid no heed to the arrival of others, barely looking up at the whoop of the siren and the flash of angry lights.
A taxi dropped off a man with a worried look on his face, and Hugo made a snap decision, hailing it before it could melt into traffic. He dug into his wallet and pulled out the card Nisha Bhandari had given him. Gregor Freed seemed tangential to the investigation, but Hugo had a few minutes, and the direct path hadn’t given them any answers. Why not try a side street?
The cabbie headed south toward the docks, and Hugo reached for his phone to dial Claudia. She answered immediately. “Hey,” he said, “I need to see a friendly face. What’re you up to?”
“Not much,” she said. “I worked on a press release, just a very rough draft for you guys if you ever want to take a look. Killing time as much as anything, though.”
“Thanks. Turns out we will be needing that today.”