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

by Chris Lloyd

  ‘No,’ Elisenda whispered.

  Caught in the sharp beam of three torches was Jutge Rigau, sightless through his thick-rimmed spectacles as ancient skulls in a glass case.

  El Crit, 1981

  The student watched as Esteve Mascort scraped away at the earth in the trench. The heavy rain falling incessantly since earlier that night instantly washed almost everything he scraped back, but he kept going. He had to. The dealer would be there shortly and he had to feed the man’s need for artefacts. The student knew that Mascort was as afraid of the dealer as he himself was of Mascort. He watched the archaeologist in annoyance, wearing his Walkman, listening to his music. Just one of the prices Mascort had demanded for allowing the student in on his scam, although he’d scored a petty victory that night, swapping the other man’s El Puma for his own Orquesta Mondragón.

  ‘Go and get me a coat?’ Mascort called to the student now, his temper evil.

  ‘There isn’t a spare one.’

  ‘Give me yours then.’

  The student had handed it over without any complaint and retreated to the shelter of a low pine for a brief respite from the downpour. While he was standing there, a figure emerged from the path to the other side of the dig. The student gasped, keeping the noise to himself, as the dealer wasn’t expected for another couple of hours. He’d be furious if they hadn’t found enough items for him to sell.

  The student saw Mascort stand up. Through the rain, he saw him tense up, startled at the newcomer, but then relax and lean back against the side of the trench. His laugh, mocking and unpleasant and by now so familiar to the student, sniggered through the trees. The other figure said something that the student couldn’t hear through the rain, and Mascort laughed again, louder this time, and longer.

  The other figure jumped down into the trench and picked up something from the ground. A mattock. The student watched it swing in an angry arc, whistling through the rain. Under the sound of the torrent, he heard a second noise, a sickening thud as the mattock buried itself in Mascort’s forehead. He fell instantly, like an animal poleaxed in an abattoir, the tool so firmly embedded in its victim that it was wrenched from the attacker’s grasp.

  The student thrust his hand into his mouth to cover up any noise he might make. He watched the other figure stand over Mascort for a few moments and then simply walk away, oblivious to the rain thundering down on them.

  The student waited under the trees for a good half an hour after the killer had gone to make sure they didn’t return. When he was certain that no one was going to be coming back, he cautiously left his shelter and walked over to where Mascort lay face-up in the trench, the mattock jutting out of his forehead, his eyes seeming to stare at the student. He tried closing them but couldn’t.

  Angling the light away, the student was struck by another clearing further down the incline from where the dig was. Looking back to the dead man in the trench, he thought.

  He’d found his skull.

  He’d also made his decision.

  Chapter Forty Nine

  ‘I buried him,’ Sucarrats told Elisenda in the interview room in the Mossos station in La Bisbal. ‘I don’t know who killed him, but I didn’t. I buried Mascort in a grave I dug at the bottom of the slope, and when the dealer came, I told him that Mascort was no longer working for him and that I was. The problem came when they realised that the site was more extensive than they’d first thought and Mascort’s body suddenly reappeared.’

  ‘Which is why you’d used your position as a councillor for years to veto plans for funding the El Crit dig.’

  ‘I had no idea when I buried him that the settlement was going to be so important.’ He shrugged. ‘Ah, well, such is life.’

  ‘When did you change your name?’

  He smiled at her, the slick hair back in place, the clothes cool once more. ‘Ah, my name. Poor old Ivan Morera, as poor as a beggar’s wallet. He had to go.’

  ‘So you found your real mother’s name and changed to that instead?’

  ‘Not at all. I never found out who she was. But I used that confusion of the time to change my own. I just picked a name out of the phone book and claimed I’d lost my ID card when I was working abroad. For all the mind-numbing bureaucracy in those days, it really wasn’t as difficult as you’d think.’

  Despite herself, Elisenda was enthralled by Sucarrats’ casual telling of his story. ‘Why did you react when you saw Ricard Soler?’

  ‘I tell you, I don’t know who Ricard Soler is. I recognised the name as one of the archaeologists who was supposed to be on the dig, but I never met him. The only one I ever knew was Mascort. What startled me was when you mentioned the judge who you’d told about the shrine in the cellar. You told me his name. Rigau.’ He shivered involuntarily. ‘He was the scariest person I’ve ever met. Rigau senior, that is. He had a killer’s eyes and none of the scruples.’

  ‘But you still you took over Mascort’s business to trade with him?’

  He shrugged. ‘I wanted the money. I have fine tastes, you’ve seen my hotel. And I only worked with him for as long as I needed to until the hotel started to make enough for me to live well. It was a huge relief not to have to work for Rigau anymore. And a bigger relief when the old bastard died. I slept easier in my bed after that. Until Mascort’s body was found. But even then, I thought I was safe. I’d forgotten Rigau had a son. I only saw him once, when he was a kid. Rigau doted on him. Little wonder he grew up to be the killer his father wasn’t.’

  Wasn’t, Elisenda thought. We’ll come back to that.

  ‘And the son doted on the father,’ she told him. ‘We’re certain now that Jutge Rigau killed Ferran Arbós and we think he did it to protect his father’s name, and consequently his own position as a judge. Because his father had killed Mascort, he was afraid that Mascort’s body being found would lead the investigation back to him. It was his form of veneration.’

  Sucarrats laughed wryly. ‘Which is ironic, when you think of it.’

  ‘Ironic? You said the son is the killer the father wasn’t.’

  He considered for a moment. ‘I couldn’t see who it was that night because of the rain, but Mascort didn’t react to his killer in the way he would have to Rigau. He was scared stiff of him. He wasn’t scared of the person I saw that night. And Rigau always came by boat. The killer came from the other way, along the path that led to the road. I’d stake everything I own on Rigau senior not having killed Mascort.’

  Elisenda got up to leave. ‘You know you’ll be charged with not reporting a crime, illegal burial, trading in illicit antiquities and faking your identity?’

  He gave her his most charming smile. ‘It all happened a long time ago. A different country in a different age. I can afford good lawyers. I’ll be all right.’

  She went outside and stood in the corridor.

  ‘Yes, you probably will,’ she muttered to herself.

  Another of her jobs that night was to go and see Miquel Canals in hospital in Palamós.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,’ she told him.

  He stared back at her. One eye was covered by the heavy bandage wound around his head. ‘You’re a cop. It’s what you do. That much never changes.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Did you catch him?’

  ‘We caught him.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  She told him as much as he needed to know. ‘You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily he knew it wasn’t you he was after.’

  Canals gestured to his head. ‘Very lucky.’

  He had been lucky, though, the doctors had told Elisenda. It had been a glancing blow with the hammer. Had it been a more direct hit, the outcome would have been very different. She didn’t tell him that.

  ‘How did you get away?’ she asked him.

  ‘I don’t really know. He just didn’t come after me a second time. So I ran out and into my house. I barricaded the door and didn’t come out until your lot came to find me.’

  Elise
nda nodded. She’d sent Àlex and Manel to find him. She didn’t tell him that either.

  With nothing more to do that night, Elisenda spent what she knew would be her last night in La Fosca, drinking a lumumba alone on the chill terrace and watching the phosphorescence glitter on the Mediterranean.

  Chapter Fifty

  She drove the next morning. It seemed more official than taking the kayak, no matter how much she wanted one final view of the land from the sea.

  Maria was making coffee. A second cup was on the table waiting for Elisenda.

  ‘Ricard Soler not here?’ Elisenda asked her.

  Maria shook her head irritably. ‘That man never knew when something was over. He told me he came when he read about the body being found at El Crit. Old fool thought I needed protecting.’

  ‘You did. Why didn’t you tell me who he was when I first mentioned him?

  ‘Not important. I thought he’d get the message and just go. He didn’t.’

  ‘Especially when he read about Arbós’s murder in the paper,’ Elisenda muttered. She’d realised as she was watching the sun come up at La Fosca an hour or so ago that it must have been Jutge Rigau who’d given the details to the press in an attempt to flush out anyone who might be of interest to him, to his own need for protection. Of himself and of his father’s memory. Picking up the piping hot coffee, she let out a slow sigh. Flora was stretched over her favourite rocking chair, the noise it made as it moved softened by the rug placed underneath it. Elisenda leaned across and stroked the dog’s head.

  ‘I spoke to the judge this morning,’ she told Maria. ‘A different one. The supermarket is refusing to drop the charges against you for taking food from the bins. You’ll still be fined.’

  Maria shrugged. ‘It’s to be expected. You might think you’ve got your new police and your new judges, but nothing ever really changes. At least in my day you knew where you stood. The cops and the justice system and anything that came from the Franco regime were rotten to the core and made no bones about it, the rest of us just had to put up and shut up. How’s all this going to leave your lot looking now?’

  Elisenda wanted to argue otherwise but didn’t have the energy. She knew she had to remain focused. She’d asked Puigventós the same question late last night when he’d turned up at El Crit beach with Albert Riera and a Científica team from La Bisbal, her own question to the inspector searching under the glare of the arc lamps set up at the scene. She and Puigventós had been watching the forensic team and the pathologist working under the body of the judge hanging from his own shrine. The town’s other judge was standing silent some distance away, pulled from his sick bed and pale in the spotlight.

  ‘This could kill my unit,’ Elisenda had worried. ‘Between what happened last year and this, I don’t see how we can survive the scrutiny we’re going to come under now.’

  ‘Quite the contrary,’ Puigventós told her in a quiet tone. He half-gestured to the dead man on the wall. ‘This will be the saving of the Serious Crime Unit. Judges are such powerful, high-profile figures, the media will delight in the downfall of one of them. And what a downfall. And the public doesn’t necessarily equate them with the police. All this will serve to do is take attention away from us and point it at the legal hierarchy, the whole system of instructing judges and courts. The Mossos are the ones who stopped an abuse of power, brought a killer to justice and solved an old crime. We’ll finally be painted in a good light.’

  At the time, Elisenda found it hard to think he was right, but the calm of the sunrise over the sea began to make her see that there was a lot of truth in what Puigventós said. She hoped so.

  Although the inspector couldn’t help the sting in the tail.

  ‘But don’t forget you’re a unit, Elisenda. At least you’re supposed to be a unit. Sergent Albiol left a new officer alone in a car with a prisoner, excluding him from the team, from the moment of victory, if you like. I don’t want to see a recurrence of that.’

  ‘The moment called for it,’ Elisenda argued, although she had to admit that she’d also questioned Àlex’s motives in leaving Manel in the car. She knew she’d not only have to speak to Àlex and the rest of the team, but also find a way to smooth Manel’s rough edges. She hoped that wasn’t going to become the next threat to her unit.

  ‘Elisenda,’ Maria called to her, bringing her back to the moment. She could see the older woman studying her with concern. ‘I have something for you.’ Maria went into the bedroom and came out with a box of artefacts. ‘They were taken by Esteve. It’s about time they were given back.’

  Elisenda looked at the items in the old wooden fruit crate lined with newspaper. Most of them were broken shards of something Elisenda couldn’t identify. People had been killed for them, she mused, putting the box down on the table.

  ‘Is that all that’s left?’

  Maria busied herself, her back to Elisenda. ‘That’s all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and put food out for the dogs.’

  ‘Please do,’ Elisenda told her.

  She watched Flora unfold herself from the rocking chair and follow the woman out into the fresh air. The previous night’s wind had died down to reveal a splendid blue sky. Elisenda sighed and got up. Glancing out through the front door, she moved the rocking chair back and folded the rug up. There were no rings embedded in the floor, or latches. Just a square of loose boards that came away when she prised them up with the end of a coffee spoon.

  Elisenda shone her torch into the space left. A bracelet glittered back at her, Indiketa she imagined, or Greek. In the centre was a kylix, more humble than the one that had been returned to El Crit. The design in the middle was of a man and a woman holding both hands together. The border was simpler than the first one she’d seen, with just a curved line snaking around the edge. Something else glittered in the torchlight. She reached down to pick it up. A St. Christopher medallion, still shiny.

  ‘Oh, Maria,’ she whispered.

  In the space in front of the kylix was a small bundle of material. Reaching in, she carefully unfolded the fabric and breathed out deeply. Wrapped inside was a skeleton. A baby.

  ‘I told you I’d never had an abortion,’ Maria’s voice came from behind her. ‘That much was true. I had a baby. But she died four hours after she was born. No one worried about an unmarried mother leaving a hospital without being discharged in those days.’

  ‘The baby in the foundations,’ Elisenda said. ‘The Indiketa custom.’

  ‘He wouldn’t accept that it was his. He said it could have been anyone’s. He told me to have an abortion. He just laughed at me when I told him I’d given everything up for him.’

  ‘So you killed him.’

  ‘It was a moment of anger. I thought he’d be found the next day and I’d pay for what I did. I never understood what had happened to him until his body was discovered all these years later. What will happen to me?’

  Elisenda gently wrapped the tiny bones up again in the blanket and stood up, she looked directly at Maria.

  ‘I have to do what is right,’ she told her.

  Chapter Fifty One

  Àlex stood outside the bar on the nondescript modern square by the river and stared at the door. The two toughs who’d muttered something to him on the Friday night walked past him again, and again they spat on the floor and made some comment. Again, not so loud that Àlex could hear what it was. They still weren’t that confident. Àlex watched them open the door and disappear into the dingy bar.

  Waiting just one moment longer, Àlex walked slowly to the bar and pulled the door open, letting the lights of the square illuminate the harsh faces of the men standing at the counter. He walked up to the bar, the two men behind it sneering openly at him, the bigger one with his arms folded across his broad chest. The smaller, dangerous one turned to wink at the two toughs, standing at the bar. One of them lit up a cigarette.

  His eyes fixed on the young tough, Àlex reached out and pulled the cigarette from his mouth, ma
shing it out in the ashtray picked out in the halogen beam pointing down at the scuffed wood surface of the counter.

  ‘Smoking in a public place is illegal, boys,’ Àlex told them.

  He picked up the lighter, resting on the flimsy packet of cigarettes lying on the bar, and reached into his inside jacket pocket. He looked from one to the other. They all watched in silence as he took out an envelope and slid a piece of paper out of it. The form for the desk job in Sabadell. Holding the lighter underneath the form, he watched the flames take hold on the paper and engulf it before he dropped it into the ashtray.

  In the swollen silence, The Birdy Song suddenly played mechanically on a one-armed bandit, the only sound apart from the crackling of the paper smouldering on the bar.

  Looking at each of them in turn, he unleashed the full power of an old Àlex grin.

  ‘I’m back.’

  Chapter Fifty Two

  Elisenda climbed the stairs to her apartment, carrying two bags of her clothes and some leftover food. She’d gone one last time to the beach house and packed away all signs of her stay there, washing the bedclothes and folding them away, cleaning out the grate and covering the army of ornaments once again. She’d looked around and turned the electricity off at the mains before closing the door. With the investigation at El Crit over, there was no longer a need to stay at La Fosca. There was no longer an excuse to stay at La Fosca. It was time to go home. Outside, on the path, she’d said goodbye to the sea. Glancing over at the house where Miquel Canals had been staying, she’d seen that it was empty. He said he’d be returning to Barcelona to carry on mending.

  Opening the front door to her own home, she sensed a shadow flit across the hallway into the living room. The air was stuffy and silent. Without turning any lights on, she put the bags down and went into the kitchen, opening the windows that looked out onto the colours in the buildings across the river. Her home seemed so small after her sister’s house.