City of Buried Ghosts (An Inspector Domènech Crime Thriller Book 2)

by Chris Lloyd

  Elisenda and Àlex exchanged a glance. Yet again, the investigation had thrown up another obstacle, a new name to be found. As Espriu had nothing more to add, they left her and headed back into the city centre, crawling along the bright red conveyor belt of frustrated brake lights. At Vista Alegre, Montse and Josep had one good piece of news for them.

  ‘We’ve been looking for the landlady where Ivan Morera was supposed to have stayed in Palamós,’ Montse told them. ‘She died some years ago and the house no longer belongs to her family, but we’ve tracked down a granddaughter, who still lives in the town.’

  ‘We don’t have a mobile number,’ Josep added. ‘Only a landline, and there’s no answer, so I’ve left messages for her where she works for her to get back to me.’

  ‘Good news,’ Elisenda told them. ‘He might never have shown up at the house, and the granddaughter might know nothing, but it’s worth pursuing. Keep me posted.’

  She told the two caporals about what they’d learned from Anna Espriu.

  ‘So we need to do what we can to go through any adoption records left from that time to see if we can get a possible name change.’

  ‘That’ll be impossible,’ Montse complained.

  Elisenda sighed. ‘I know, but do what you can.’

  Leaving the others to find what they could, Elisenda drove back out to La Bisbal and the court building.

  ‘I’ve had to order the two detectorists to be released without charge,’ Jutge Rigau told after he’d shown her into his office.

  Elisenda shook her head angrily. ‘What about the search of their house?’

  ‘Tat,’ the judge said simply. ‘Nothing of any worth. Nothing we could ever hope to prove they took from an archaeological site. Poch has given them a warning and told them they’ll be charged if they’re ever caught again, that’s all we can do.’

  ‘So much for stopping low-level crime.’

  Rigau held his hands up. ‘I’m sorry, Elisenda, I understand your frustration.’ Seeing her anger, he changed tack. ‘How are the other areas of the investigation going?’

  She told him of the news about Ivan Morera’s possible name change and about the landlady’s granddaughter in Palamós. ‘We’re unlikely ever to be able to find his adoption records.’

  ‘Not now,’ the judge agreed. ‘Madrid’s being even more obstructive than ever with coordinating investigations.’

  Elisenda laughed wryly. The Catalan and Basque police had only recently been excluded from another supposedly pan-Spanish criminal investigation initiative. ‘We’re on our own, Pere.’

  ‘If only. Any news on Ricard Soler?’

  She shook her head and thought of the other archaeologist from the 1981 dig. ‘Vanished without trace. Not seen since he left his apartment in Barcelona. And we still don’t know what we’re looking for with him, whether he’s a potential victim because he was another archaeologist who dealt with this trader or if we suspect him of being the killer.’

  ‘Well, thanks for coming all the way out here, Elisenda. I’m sorry we don’t have more promising news for each other.’

  ‘Not to worry. It’s on my way. I’m staying in La Fosca these days, it’s more convenient for the El Crit scene, here and Palamós.’ She explained about her sister’s apartment on the beach.

  He checked his watch. ‘I’d invite you to dinner,’ he told her, ‘but I’m afraid I’ve got another engagement tonight.’

  ‘Not to worry, I’ll probably go to Palamós.’ She told him of the hotel and of the votive shrine in the basement. ‘But the owner doesn’t like too many people to know about it,’ she warned.

  ‘I’m sure he doesn’t.’

  El Crit, 1981

  The landlady’s granddaughter, a snot-nosed little kid in a summer dress and T-bar sandals, eyed him warily. He’d had to tell her off for touching his things and she kept quiet now when she was there to spend the day with her grandmother.

  ‘Property’s property,’ he told her, but she ignored him and went back to drawing a picture of Naranjito, the kid in the shape of an orange to be used as a mascot for the following year’s world cup. She was forever doing the same picture.

  Giving up, he went out early and waited with a beer for Esteve Mascort to turn up, who came along half an hour late as usual in his brand-new bright-red Ford Escort, the new model that everyone seemed to want that year. His pussy magnet, Mascort called it. Together, they drove out to El Crit and parked another hour’s walk from the site. It was deserted when they got there, as it always was. If anyone were to come along, they’d tell them they were part of the official dig.

  ‘That’s new, isn’t it?’ Mascort had said, pointing at the Walkman, the first time he’d seen it. ‘Let me have a go.’

  Reluctantly, the student had handed it over and watched the other man stab heavily at the buttons. Mascort’s face registered disgust.

  ‘What is this shit?’

  ‘Orquesta Mondragón.’

  Mascort had handed the machine back. ‘You want to listen to some proper music, not this rubbish.’

  That evening, Mascort took the Walkman from the student and put a cassette of his own into it.

  ‘El Puma,’ he told him. ‘Pavo Real. Real music, not that nonce shit you listen to.’

  The student kept his face impassive as he watched him listen to another of the summer’s dated commercial abominations. He’d decided that if Mascort didn’t let him in tonight on what his plan for making money was, he was going to walk.

  When they’d finished working, and as if picking up on the student’s mood, the archaeologist insisted on the student staying with him at the dig after night fell and he’d turned the arc lights on. It was gone eleven o’clock and the student had missed his dinner at his lodgings. The student couldn’t help feeling annoyed as he’d paid for it.

  ‘Watch and learn,’ Mascort told him. ‘You’ll be able to afford to eat in the best places.’

  So the student watched, and what he learned was that the super-cool Esteve Mascort was thoroughly in fear of the man with the cold eyes and baby face who came to inspect what they had to offer him that night.

  ‘You just have to get into bed with the devil,’ Mascort told him after the man had gone, trying to regain some of his composure.

  I already have, the student thought.

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Elisenda could see Montse and Josep stealing glances at the fourth person sitting in her room on Friday morning. Àlex was too canny to be caught looking at him, but she knew he was summing the new addition up all the while.

  ‘This is Manel,’ she’d introduced him to the members of her team at the morning meeting. ‘And today’s his first day with us. I’m sure you’ll welcome him warmly and help him settle in with us in every way you can.’

  Àlex said a good morning, Montse smiled at the newcomer and Josep nodded once. Manel looked at each one in turn, appearing to size them up, and greeted them, a new accent in a room used to voices from Girona and Barcelona.

  ‘We touched on this at your interview, Manel,’ Elisenda told him, ‘but we’ll bring you up to speed on the investigations we have in hand at the moment.’

  She quickly explained of the thirty-something-year-old body at El Crit and the murder of Ferran Arbós and how they believed that the two killings were linked. She then let the other three tell him of the specifics of the two investigations and how they were tackling them. As the others spoke, she watched his reactions, hoping he’d get to fit in, knowing at that moment that the dynamic of the months since Pau had died was now gone. She wasn’t so sure that that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  She watched Manel nod along with the comments made in turn by Àlex, Montse and Josep, but say nothing in return. Where Pau had been slight but had underpinned the group with his off-the-wall intellect, Manel filled the room physically but remained silent, his bulk straining under an old-fashioned leather sports jacket, his presence yet to be known. His was a different, ostensibly more powerful
build from Àlex’s lean muscularity, but no more imposing for it. She closed her eyes for a moment and hoped that he would complement the others in her team.

  Elisenda tuned back in as Montse began to speak of the latest developments in the case. She’d been trying to find social security records for Ivan Morera, but had found nothing since July 1981.

  ‘What we don’t know now,’ Montse added, ‘is whether that’s because he is the body at El Crit or because he changed his name and has been living his life since. What we do have is the address in Barcelona where the Archaeology Service in Girona wrote to him. It turns out that that was the last couple to foster him. It’s strange that he was still using it as an address for correspondence in his mid-twenties, but the couple who fostered him are still alive and still at the same place. We can see them today. Besides that, I’ve also been trying to find a maternal relative of Esteve Mascort to see if he’s the El Crit body once and for all, but that’s turned up absolutely nothing. No dental records, either. I checked, his dentist died years ago, nothing on computer.’

  ‘The facial reconstruction might tell us something there,’ Elisenda commented.

  ‘No luck with Morera’s name change, either,’ Josep continued. ‘I’ll keep digging, but I can’t see us getting anywhere with it. What I do have is the granddaughter of Morera’s landlady in Palamós. I’ve spoken to her, and she remembers a student called Ivan staying there at that time, so it does look like he made it to Palamós that summer.’

  ‘Which means he could be our body at El Crit,’ Àlex commented.

  ‘We can see her this morning,’ Josep told him. ‘Anyone want to come with me?’

  ‘Actually, Josep,’ Elisenda interrupted him, ‘I’d prefer you to carry on digging into Morera’s name change here. I could also do with you having a word with Martí Barbena again to see if he remembers Morera. It’ll also let him know that we’ve still got him and Esplugues in our sights. Manel, you and I’ll visit the granddaughter to see what she remembers. Montse, you and Àlex visit the foster parents in Barcelona.’

  An unhappy Josep looked about to say something, but a look from Elisenda told him to leave it.

  ‘OK,’ she said to close. ‘We all know what we’ve got to do. Josep, show Manel where he can take a desk. Manel, we’ll be leaving in ten minutes.’

  Àlex hung around as the other three filed out. ‘Doesn’t say much, does he?’ he murmured.

  ‘Give him time, he’s got to find his place.’

  Àlex looked directly at her. ‘He’s got to make his place.’

  * * *

  ‘Why the cold case?’ Manel asked Elisenda on the road to Palamós.

  Elisenda drove because she knew the way better than he would and she felt that driving would be less distracting than giving directions while she got to know the new member of the unit. As it was, she found the creaking of his jacket every time he moved rather disconcerting. She was hoping it wouldn’t end up irritating her.

  ‘I thought we were a serious crime unit,’ he carried on. ‘I don’t see why we’ve got the cold case.’

  ‘The two are connected. To solve one, we have to solve the other. The order doesn’t matter. Neither does how old it is.’

  ‘It was over thirty years ago, Sotsinspectora. The Mossos weren’t even around then.’

  Elisenda used the roundabouts on the outskirts of Palamós to help her keep cool. ‘It’s a murder, Manel. A victim. How old do you think it has to be to cease to matter?’

  He thought for a moment as a delivery lorry trundled past. ‘Five years? Ten years tops?’

  ‘That was a rhetorical question. It never ceases to matter. Not to the victim’s family, not to the law, not to the Mossos and not to me.’ She pulled out into traffic. ‘And not to you, either.’

  He nodded his head slowly as she drove. ‘OK.’

  She tried another way to get the feel of him. ‘Do you know this part of the coast?’

  ‘No.’ He laughed wryly. ‘The coast again. I thought I’d had enough with the Ebro Delta, now this.’

  ‘Miss Lleida, do you?’

  ‘I miss the mountains. You don’t have mountains here.’

  Elisenda pointed to the peaks visible far away in the distance in the blue winter sky. ‘Those are the Pyrenees over there. Mountains enough for you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Hardly on the doorstep.’

  She parked the car and decided not to ask him any more questions. The less he spoke, the less of a hole he dug for himself. They were in the streets behind the old Guardia Civil barracks, oddly still in use as an excise post, one of the powers to have stayed with the old Spanish police forces after devolution of most police duties to the Mossos d’Esquadra as it had national security implications. The town was turning out to be the latest to fall foul of the batting back and forth of politics between Catalonia and Spain. The port was supposed to be turned into a Schengen external border port, with a Guardia Civil and Policía Nacional complement for customs and immigration. That would allow cruise and cargo ships from outside the EU to stop off, bringing revenue into the area, but the renewed calls for Catalan independence had led to the Spanish government constantly deferring any decision in retaliation. In the meantime, nothing got done while lots of money was spent on things that might never happen and the Mossos still only ran a temporary station in the town in the summer. And they wonder why we want to go, Elisenda always thought.

  The old lady’s granddaughter let them into a stylishly furnished two-storey house in a quiet lane at the end of the steep street that climbed between the hospital and the barracks.

  ‘My grandmother used to live on the same street,’ she explained. ‘A little nearer the town centre, but we decided to sell it when she died because we didn’t want the Guardia Civil as neighbours.’

  ‘My colleague said that you remembered Ivan Morera, the student who stayed with your grandmother in the summer of 1981,’ Elisenda asked her after they’d been shown into a small but airy living room overlooking a narrow rear garden. ‘Is that right?’

  The woman, slim and in her late thirties and wearing a dogtooth check skirt and dark blouse, set down a tray with coffee and dry Maria biscuits on. Elisenda could imagine the grandmother doing the same thirty-odd years ago for her tenants.

  ‘I remember him. I was very young at the time, six years old, but he was mysterious, so he stuck in my mind.’

  ‘Why mysterious?’

  ‘He only stayed a week, which was odd. He was supposed to have been here for three months, but he just left.’

  ‘Did he take his clothes with him?’ Manel asked her. Good question, Elisenda thought, as she was about to ask the same one. ‘Did he leave anything behind?’

  ‘No, he took all his things away with him. I didn’t see him when he left, but my grandmother told me that he left with the bag he’d come with. He just told her after a week that he was leaving. He’d paid a month in advance, but when my grandmother offered to pay him back, he told her not to worry, he’d send her the details of how to pay him, but he never did. She told me all this years later, when I was older. She never heard from him again.’

  Elisenda recalled the words of Ivan Morera’s fellow student the previous evening, about how he was obsessed with money. It didn’t tie in with his apparent lack of concern for a month’s rent, which would have been a lot of money to a student.

  ‘It was definitely Ivan Morera who left with the bag, not a friend?’

  ‘It was definitely him, my grandmother said. No doubt about it.’

  Elisenda couldn’t get a picture of what must have happened. The signals were too confusing.

  ‘What else did you find mysterious about him?’ Manel asked.

  ‘Well, I only met him about three or four times. I used to spend a lot of time here when I was little as both my parents worked. But he was always very nice to me, until one day, he really shouted at me. My grandmother wasn’t there to hear it and I never told her because I was worried I’d done something wr
ong.’

  ‘What had you done?’

  ‘He had one of those personal stereos. A Walkman? I’d ever seen one before and he was always listening to it. So when he went out of the room one day, I tried it on and he caught me. He screamed at me and told me never to touch his things again. I was terrified. I’d never seen anyone so angry over a belonging before.’

  ‘Can you remember what tape was in the Walkman?’ Elisenda asked her.

  The woman laughed. ‘I’ve never forgotten. Orquesta Mondragón, it was. I’ve never liked them since.’

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Àlex walked out on to the bustling square in front of the central university building in Barcelona and took a deep breath. The air was warmer than in Girona. The sun’s meagre heat was convected by the buildings and pavements, mingling with the throngs of people herding past, vapour from cars and humans rising in a hidden and toxic mist around their heads. The atmosphere wasn’t as fresh as the moist Girona morning they’d left just over a couple of hours ago but it was still fresher than the stifling sensation of confused loneliness of the small flat he and Montse had just visited.

  Montse was waiting for him on the kerb, the slow traffic an arm’s length from where she stood. ‘We didn’t get much, did we?’ she commented when he joined her.

  Àlex shook his head, ignoring the pedestrians shuffling irritably past them.

  ‘Who’d get old?’ she added, instantly kicking herself in case it affected him.

  ‘Who indeed?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Fancy a coffee? I could do with changing chip.’

  He took her to a small and faded milk bar in the enclosed streets behind the square, where they both ordered hot chocolate. It felt comforting.

  They’d been to visit the elderly couple who had fostered Ivan Morera as a boy at the address given on the copy of the letter sent to him as a young man. The two people were a couple caught out of time in a crumbling apartment where the old now only stayed if they couldn’t afford to move.