by Chris Lloyd
‘Tracking down the students,’ he explained. ‘I’m focusing first on male students working on the dig in summer 1981. There were five, two addresses still valid and the parents still alive. I’ve called numbers for both. No reply at one, the mother at the other said her son was a teacher in Barcelona, so he’s not our man, but I’ve got his details to interview him later.’
‘Good work.’ She felt sad for the first time that morning on hearing Àlex’s voice. Like the way he worked now, the timbre was still the same, but it had been weakened, lost its edge. ‘I wanted to ask you something, Àlex. You know Mosso Paredes, don’t you? Any thoughts?’
Àlex looked frankly at her. ‘You want him for the team. Yeah, he seems good, but he’s only a mosso. I thought we were after a caporal.’
‘We are. I’ll have to see what I can do.’
At another desk, Montse put her phone down and looked at Elisenda.
‘That was the wife of Esteve Mascort, the missing archaeologist. Widow,’ Montse corrected herself. ‘He was declared dead in 1991. She still lives at the same address in Sant Narcís.’
‘Good. Have you made an appointment?’
‘She didn’t want to see us.’
Elisenda turned to face Montse.
‘Is that right? Meet me with a pool car outside. She’s not getting any choice in the matter.’
Chapter Eleven
Ferran Arbós had an agreement with his neighbours. He didn’t make a noise before they set off for work at eight-thirty in the morning, and they didn’t object when he ignored them or told their children to get lost when they came around selling raffle tickets to pay for the end-of-year school trip. They all shared a peaceful village between Palafrugell and Palamós that most outsiders only knew as some vague place that flashed by to the side of dual carriageway linking the two towns. Older drivers remembered it as somewhere inconvenient you had to slow down on the fast main road before the new one was built.
He lived on the edge of Vall-Llobrega furthest away from the noise of the traffic. It was why he’d moved there when he’d retired. The quiet, the gentle hush of narrow streets meandering gently through old village houses and smart new villas behind their stone walls and careful lawns, hidden from fast cars by tall and implanted palms and pines.
In fact, the noisiest part of the village was the room where Ferran Arbós sat now, quietly whistling an old Catalan sea shanty to himself about someone’s grandfather who went to Cuba. Most of the villagers had gone to work, certainly the ones in the other modern houses on the one-sided street facing the low foothills of the Gavarres mountains in the distance. The others in the older houses were still here, working in the fields or at home, but far away enough not be disturbed by him.
In an airy room tacked on to the side of his house, well-lit and warm in the winter, baking in the summer were it not for the air conditioning, he looked at a piece of stone and considered it. A shape was forming in it. A hollowed-out circle, with a stylised sailing ship at its heart. He selected a round-headed chisel and struck it with the mallet in his hand, chipping at the surface of the round, smoothing it. With the noise of the stones spattering the floor and the effort of the short, sharp blows he was giving, he stopped whistling. Pausing to consider his work, he forgot what tune he’d been playing in his head. He found he did that a lot these days, since retirement, despite the surprising new turn his life had taken as a sculptor exhibiting in local galleries.
The usual hush between hammer blows was broken by another sound. He looked up, unsure of what he’d heard. It sounded like one of the doors in his house, one that he’d been meaning to oil for weeks. He’d probably forgotten to shut it, like so much else he forgot these days.
Putting his tools down, he wandered off to the room where the door was. It was closed. He turned and went back to his studio, tutting at himself for imagining things. Sitting down on his stool in front of the chunk of stone, he reached for the hammer and chisel, but they were nowhere to be found.
Looking around, he tutted at himself one last time in irritation, trying to remember where he’d put them.
Chapter Twelve
They went on a curious tour through a potted history of Girona’s new town, crossing the river from Vista Alegre and following Carrer Emili Grahit to the end.
‘I saw photos of Emili Grahit not so long ago,’ Montse told Elisenda as they waited at the lights at the junction with Carretera Barcelona. ‘It was all dirt, with trees down the middle. You could see cars pulled up between the trees, parked.’
Elisenda looked in the side mirror at the wide avenue teeming with cars and modern apartment blocks. ‘I’ve seen those pictures too. They’d probably only be from about the same time as Esteve Mascort went missing.’
‘Hard to believe now.’
Past the concrete railway bridge, they both entered a Girona that had changed in their recent lifetime when the high-speed train line had been brought into the city. Once a simple two-lane road, Passeig d’Olot was now a bustling central artery, with filters and junctions and traffic lights.
‘Still lousy for traffic,’ Elisenda commented.
They turned left on to Avinguda Sant Narcís, getting deeper into the suburb of the same name, where more of the city’s history paraded by on either side of them. To the right, low terraced houses built in the early twentieth century, to the left, the taller apartment blocks of the 1960s and 1970s. The right painted white, the left in muddy pastels. As they drove further into the neighbourhood, the buildings on the right gave way to the more utilitarian apartments of the post-civil war period. The left was filled with new car parks and modern commercial and residential blocks, built in the last few years.
The street they wanted dated from yet another snapshot in time, when part of Sant Narcís was designated a garden suburb in the 1950s for the immigrant workers from southern Spain looking for jobs in Catalonia. Low whitewashed houses, some with the rarity of a garden, that had once been homes for the poor were now rather more upwardly mobile, even if they’d never become entirely fashionable.
‘Number eighteen,’ Montse said, looking for somewhere to park.
Standing outside a whitewashed house with a smart red-brick porch, she rang the bell. The door opened and a trim woman in her late fifties wearing a long chunky pullover over a tight black skirt answered.
‘Senyora Eulàlia Esplugues?’ Montse asked.
The woman sighed. ‘I said I didn’t want to see you.’
‘Caporala Cornellà, we spoke on the phone. This is Sotsinspectora Domènech.’
The woman went to close the door. ‘I’ve got nothing to say.’
‘We believe your husband’s body has been found,’ Elisenda said before Eulàlia Esplugues shut it completely. ‘He was murdered. We can interview you here or at the police station.’
The woman hesitated, a look of shock on her face. ‘Murdered? I thought the bastard had just left me.’
Elisenda and Montse exchanged a glance as Eulàlia Esplugues invited them in. Crossing the small hall into the kitchen to the right of the front door, Elisenda saw that little of the original interior of the house remained. The left-hand side was designer-rustic open plan, with La Bisbal tiled floors and a large open fireplace in the corner of the room, next to sliding glass doors leading out on to a terrace and a small garden beyond. In the past, the lounge would have been divided into two tiny rooms. Ahead, a pared-down blond wood staircase with no banisters rose steeply to a semi-landing under a high window. It wasn’t a long drop to the floor, but it gave a dizzying feel. The whole of the downstairs was painted a dazzling white.
Esplugues led them into the kitchen, which occupied the whole of the right-hand side of the ground floor and was dominated by a huge central fireplace, open either end. Rows of pipes ran under the grate, supplying hot water and heating to the rest of the house, Elisenda presumed. Wood and kindling were arranged in the hearth, but no fire lit. The woman showed them to a table and put a smoke-blackened aluminium cafetera
on a modern stove at the far end of the room. She was obviously calming herself after the news. Elisenda signalled to Montse, who carried on making the coffee, and invited Esplugues to sit down.
‘I appreciate this is a shock, even after all this time,’ Elisenda told her, ‘but we need to ask you some questions.’
Esplugues gathered herself. ‘Not really a shock. I never thought I’d see him again. I hoped I’d never see him again. But I didn’t think he was dead.’
‘Hoped?’
She let out a small laugh, filled with bitterness. ‘He was a complete bastard. A womanising, self-centred, philandering piece of shit who made sure I never had enough money to do anything.’
Her vehemence took Elisenda by surprise. ‘But you were still married when he went missing?’
‘Only because there was no divorce at that time. If there had been, I’d have divorced the bastard within a year of marrying him. Your only recourse in those days was legal separation, and believe me, that was firmly stacked against the woman. Or get the church to have the marriage annulled, which would have meant that my son would have been regarded as illegitimate. I wasn’t going to allow that.’
Montse brought a tray with the coffees over and set it down on the table.
‘So his disappearance must have been a great relief,’ she commented, taking a seat.
‘Not really. The exact opposite, in fact. I was counting down the days. The divorce law was about to be passed and was supposed to be coming into effect that year, 1981. In the end, I could have filed proceedings in the August, and we’d have been divorced by the following summer. As it was, I had to wait ten years before I could declare him dead. All the time, worrying he was going to come back, unable to get married again.’
‘Do you know of anyone who would have wanted him dead?’ Elisenda continued.
‘Me for one.’
‘Should you have a lawyer present, Senyora Esplugues?’
She looked shocked but waved the suggestion away. ‘Why? I don’t need one. It’s just a thing you say. I sometimes felt I could happily have strangled him because he made my life such a misery, but I would never have done anything. Least of all with the possibility of divorce just around the corner. If you’re looking for people who would have wished him harm, I’ve no doubt there were plenty of husbands around at the time who could cheerfully have seen him dead. Maybe some other poor woman or two who’d also believed his lies.’
‘Do you know of anyone in particular?’ Montse asked.
She shook her head sharply. ‘I never wanted to know. I didn’t want to have to see someone in the street or in a shop who I knew was laughing at me. This is Girona we live in.’
‘Does your son live in Girona?’ Elisenda wanted to know. ‘We still need to identify the body we’ve found to make sure it is your husband, although everything points to it being him.’
‘Why would you want to see my son? I don’t see how he could help.’
‘DNA. We’d like to take a swab from him to match it with the body. That way we’ll know for certain that it is your husband.’
Esplugues stared at Elisenda for a while, seeming to be wrestling with something. Elisenda kept quiet, not wanting to put her off saying whatever it was she had to say. Eventually, the woman gave a little laugh, more ironic this time.
‘You can take a DNA sample if you want, but it won’t do you any good. He’s not my husband’s son.’
Elisenda and Montse looked at each other.
‘Two could play the little games my husband delighted in. And before you ask, the real father died some years ago, of a heart attack. We were never together. He was married too.’
‘Right,’ Elisenda said slowly, digesting what she was hearing. ‘Do you know of any of your husband’s living relatives we could test?’
‘His father’s still alive. He lives in a home.’
‘His mother?’ Montse asked, writing down the name of the nursing home.
‘She died just a few years after my husband went missing.’
‘Do you still have any photos of your husband?’
‘Do I look like I would?’
Elisenda thanked the woman and got up to leave, after first asking Montse with a glance if she had any further questions. The caporala gave a slight shake of her head and they allowed Esplugues to show them to the door.
‘I’d really like my son to be kept out of this,’ she told them quietly. ‘He doesn’t know about his real father.’
Elisenda nodded, considering. ‘I’m sure there’s no need for it to come out.’
She and Montse walked back to the car in silence and got in.
‘Girona back then sounds quite a soap opera,’ Montse commented.
Elisenda laughed wryly but sat deep in thought.
‘Did you notice one thing she didn’t ask? She didn’t seem curious about where her husband was found. Or how he died.’
Chapter Thirteen
‘We’re going to have to organise getting a DNA sample from Mascort’s father,’ Elisenda told Montse in the car on the way back to the station. ‘But to do that, we first have to tell him we believe we’ve found his son. It’s going to have to be done very delicately.’
‘I’m OK to do it, Sotsinspectora.’
Montse waited like a runner on the blocks to cross the Onyar back to the east side. Drumming her fingers lightly on the wheel, she took the first half-opportunity in the flow of cars to accelerate quickly into the fray of the large Plaça dels Països Catalans roundabout.
Elisenda studied her. ‘OK. Take Josep with you.’
She watched Montse consider her answer as she waited impatiently at the next set of lights. ‘I’ll need to take someone from Científica with me to take the swab. I think any more than two of us would be too much for the father if he’s elderly.’
Elisenda had to agree. ‘OK. Arrange it with the nursing home. If they have any objections to us taking a swab from the father, let me know and we’ll get an order from Jutge Rigau.’
Montse snatched a glance at Elisenda and laughed. ‘A judge?’
‘Seriously,’ Elisenda told her. ‘He actually seems keen on letting us do our job. We also need to take a close look at Eulàlia Esplugues, see how much water her story holds. We should also check up on her son’s real father. See what he was doing in 1981.’
Back at Vista Alegre, Elisenda left Montse to park the car and went to the Serious Crime Unit office. Josep was in front of his computer.
‘I’ve found the woman and one of the men from the 1981 dig,’ he told her the moment she walked in. ‘The man lives in Barcelona and is retired. He left the project in February 1981, but he might still be of interest. The woman was there until the dig was wound up. She’s one of the curators at the City History Museum here in Girona.’
‘Good news. Arrange times to visit them with Àlex. Don’t let them know we’re going to be paying a call on them.’
Her phone rang and she held a hand up to Josep in apology.
‘Elisenda,’ the person at the other end said. ‘Pere Rigau.’
She was about to comment on talking about him only a moment ago, but a note in his voice told her not to.
‘There’s something I think you need to see.’
She listened in silence as he spoke.
‘I’ll be with you in about thirty minutes,’ she finally said, hanging up.
Montse appeared along the corridor, and Elisenda was on the point of telling her to get the pool car back out, but another thought occurred to her.
‘Josep, have you seen Àlex?’
‘He’s having a coffee.’
Elisenda called his number and he answered immediately, telling her he was just walking into the building.
‘Jutge Rigau has just called,’ she explained to the three other members of her team when Àlex arrived a few moments later. ‘I get the feeling our case is about to be taken up a notch, so I think we should all see what Jutge Rigau has just told me about. Anything you have pending
with the Mascort investigation, put on hold until we get back.’
She told them more of what the judge had said on the phone as they drove along the same road leading northwest towards the coast that she’d got used to taking the last few days.
‘It looks like the victim was staged,’ she ended.
None of the others spoke.
‘Vall-Llobrega,’ Josep read on the sign as Montse raced down through the gears to come off the dual carriageway. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever stopped here.’
‘No real reason to,’ Montse replied, glancing at him next to her in the front seat and quickly looking back to the road.
They cruised past narrow old village houses into a street of modern, moneyed villas, where a blue, red and white Seguretat Ciutadana car was blocking one side of the road, a mosso on duty controlling who went in and out. It was Caporal Fabra from Palafrugell. He called them through.
‘Bad business, this,’ he told them.
Another patrol car and a Científica van were parked outside a house, a second mosso at the gate. A small throng of elderly ladies in nylon housecoats and whiskery men in wrinkled jackets and allotment trousers stared at the house without expression, stepping aside grudgingly to let Elisenda and her team walk past.
Jutge Rigau was waiting for them in the garden, pacing slowly by a squat olive tree reaching up from of a bed of dust and coarse gravel. Sergent Poch from the Local Investigation Unit in La Bisbal was with him. Both were wearing forensic whites, unzipped and with the hoods down, their masks hanging around their necks. A third man, also in whites, was sitting on the edge of a large flower tub filled with weeds, his body rocking rhythmically back and forth, his eyes closed.
‘Thanks for coming, Elisenda,’ Rigau told her. He looked pale.
Elisenda introduced the judge and Poch to the others in her team. They’d already met Àlex, who stood apart from the small group, staring at the front door into the house. A white-suited Científica came out of the building, looking at the screen on his camera, clicking through the images. He looked up and saw the newcomers, but turned and went back inside without a word.