by Chris Lloyd
Chema GM just sat on the low wall in Sant Daniel and nodded his head. He was suddenly tired. He noticed Cristobal HP lolling head-down over the wall, but couldn't be bothered to slap him across the back of the skull as he would normally have done. He smiled, a backyard predator's smile, his bared teeth dull and cold. He'd won at cards against the other three, taking the evening's meagre takings off them all. He always won at cards.
'Did you see? Did you fucking see?' Juan SP asked again, his words slurring.
'Fucking brilliant,' Manuel GM echoed. He took a drink from the cheap bottle of red wine that someone in the last bar they'd been to had sent over to them – to keep them sweet, they'd decided – and slumped back against the wall.
Juan SP took the bottle from him and yawned heavily, his head slowly sinking.
Chapter Twelve
'Àlex? Can you hear me? It's Elisenda?'
His eyes slowly flickered open, then closed again.
'Àlex?'
With one last effort, he opened his eyes. A small grunt came out of his dry lips.
'Happy Saturday, it's Elisenda.'
Àlex picked up his watch from the bedside table and yawned. 'Morning?' he said into the mouthpiece, sheltering the phone to avoid waking his wife. 'That's what you call this in Girona, is it?'
'We've got a body,' Elisenda told him, her voice loud in the phone pressed tightly against his ear.
He swung out of bed and gratefully put the soles of both feet flat on the cool tiled floor. 'Where?'
'Hanging from the cathedral steps.'
'How can you hang from the cathedral steps?'
'The balustrade at the top. Apparently, he's hanging naked from one of the stone balusters.'
'Naked and swinging from the cathedral steps. Sounds like any other Friday night in Girona.'
'We'll have none of your big-city wit,' Elisenda told him. 'Anyway, I'll be able to tell you for sure in a moment, I'm just coming to the top of Força.'
Elisenda rounded the corner at the top of the cobbled alley and looked up to her right. Way above her, two Seguretat Ciutadana were peering over the edge of the balustrade separating the small square at the top of the cathedral steps from the narrow road that curved sharply out of sight before looping down to the bottom. Below them, two more mossos were setting up a barrier at the foot of the steep stonewall drop. Between the two pairs, the naked figure of a man was slowly being buffeted against the heavy nummulitic limestone slabs on the sheer side of the wall descending from the ornate balustrade. The sun beyond the cathedral had still not fully torn itself away from the land.
'Àlex,' she said into her mobile, 'I think you'd probably better get here.'
*
'José Maria Guijarro Martín,' Àlex recited slowly. He and Elisenda were standing two-thirds of the way up the cathedral steps, looking over the side to where the naked man was hanging. His back rubbing against the wall had left pendulum trails of blood smeared either side of him like angel's wings on the light-coloured stone. 'Or Chema GM as he liked to be known.'
A caporal in the Policia Científica asked them to move on a bit while he videoed the scene. A second one was down below taking still photos, having worked his way down the steps from the top to the road at the bottom, where he was craning his neck back to get a few shots looking upwards. As the video operator filmed the scene, Elisenda and Àlex watched in silence as four uniformed mossos slowly started pulling on the rope to bring the body up to the balustrade.
'How long's it going to be?' Àlex asked the cameraman.
'Dunno,' he replied. 'It's an odd one, so it could be some time.'
'You're telling me,' Àlex said. All three of them looked at the figure. The rope wasn't around Chema GM's neck, but slung across his chest, under his armpits and apparently knotted at the back.
'Not suicide then,' Elisenda commented.
The cameraman grinned and went back to his work but Àlex stopped him.
'Any forensics?' he asked him.
The Científica looked bleakly at Àlex. 'Half the western world has walked up these steps since the low-cost flights started. The killer could have taken a pee on them and we wouldn't be able to tell who's who.'
Àlex grunted and let him get on with it.
Elisenda's phone rang and she walked a short distance away along the step to answer it so she wouldn't be captured on the video camera's microphone. She listened in silence, occasionally looking over at Àlex, and then darkened the mobile screen before rejoining him.
'And where Chema GM goes, three more are sure to follow,' she said.
Àlex turned to her sharply. 'You don't mean it.'
'Not quite. Two of them. Juan SP and Cristobal HP.'
Àlex whistled. 'Someone's had a busy night.'
'Haven't they just? One's down in front of Sant Feliu.'
'The church? That's two minutes from here.'
'Someone's just found the pair of them, apparently. The other one's on the Pont de Pedra.'
Àlex nodded, taking the news in. The Pont de Pedra, the stone bridge crossing the Onyar at the top of the Rambla.
'Seems they were both curled up against a wall,' Elisenda continued. 'People thought they were homeless sleeping rough. First Masó, now this lot. Someone will be benefiting.'
'We all will.'
They started climbing the steps and were almost at the top in the lee of the west façade when the sombre hush of the morning was rent by foul language.
'See Albert's arrived,' Elisenda commented to Àlex.
At the top, Albert Riera, the senior forensic doctor in the city's Institut de Medicina Legal, was kneeling over the body, screaming at the two poor uniforms unlucky enough to be in his line of vision.
'I know the training's bad,' the pathologist was yelling, 'and they evidently employ monkeys, but even you lot should be able to tell the two apart. Look at him.' With his latex-gloved right hand, he was waving a metal ruler about while the left was prodding the dead man's chest. 'You are a fucking waste of space.'
'And you,' Àlex's voice cut through the shocked silence, 'should learn how to talk to people.'
Albert Riera stood up. 'Our friend from Barcelona,' he said, drawing out the vowels of the last word in exaggerated mimicry of Àlex's Barcelona accent. 'We don't need you to tell us how we can speak to each other.'
Àlex made to reply, but Elisenda put her hand on his arm.
'What is it, Albert?' she asked the pathologist.
'You got me out of my bed to come and cut up a stiff.'
Àlex snorted and Elisenda tightened her grip on his arm. 'And?' she said.
'So when I'm called out to see a dead body, I expect to see a dead body. They're not too difficult to make out. No breathing, turning blue, smelling. Even you lot should be able to work that one out without a diagram.'
'Cut the sarcasm,' Àlex growled at him.
Riera pointed at the figure at his feet. 'This man isn't dead. He's drugged.'
Chapter Thirteen
Monday morning and the case of the four muggers was nothing to do with Elisenda's team. The fourth, Manuel PM, had been found, drugged like the other three, some distance from the city centre on Pont de Sarrià, the bridge spanning the Ter on the northern fringes of Girona. Not a series of murders as they'd first thought, so Elisenda's Serious Crime Unit had been stepped down and the investigation taken on by the Regional Investigation Unit, which dealt with the crimes in the city and region that the local investigation units didn't take on.
'Someone did have a busy night,' Àlex had repeated his own words when they'd found out where the last of the gang of four had been discovered.
'Strange,' Elisenda had agreed, 'why whoever drugged them should drop them off where they did. Two bridges and two churches.'
'And why they didn't finish the job.'
She watched him now on Monday morning walk into the Local Investigation Unit office deep in conversation with a sergent from the regional unit. The phone on her desk rang and she pick
ed it up.
'Elisenda,' the voice on the other end spoke, 'it's Xavier. Can you come through a bit earlier?'
She checked her watch. 'Sure.'
'Just to find out what's happening with the Masó investigation. Could you make it now?'
'Right,' Elisenda replied, her heart sinking. With a sigh, she picked up her folders and turned her mobile off. The politicians have got on his back, she realised, walking through to the Inspector's office.
Xavier – Inspector Puigventós to all but a few and head of the Regional Investigation Command – was on the phone when she walked in, so he signalled her to sit down. A few new photos on his wall, she saw. Dogs again. Always dogs. And always Catalan sheepdogs. His wife bred them and he adored both them and his wife. Indeed, his wife appeared in more than a few photos with one or another prize-winner. Smiling, really very beautiful, Elisenda thought, not for the first time, with straight jet-black hair and strong eyes. Elisenda looked away. She never really knew how comfortable she felt with such personal displays on an office wall. Her own room had two plants and three shop-bought framed prints. Outwardly personal but revealing nothing. Much like her, she considered, surprised at the realisation.
The inspector finished his call and hung up.
'Sorry about that, Elisenda,' he said, looking quickly at his watch. 'The other heads of unit will be here in a few minutes. I just wanted to ask how the Masó investigation was going.'
'Early days,' Elisenda replied warily. 'We're pursuing four lines of investigation. Rival gangs, internal rivalry, an attack by a victim and vigilantes. We're keeping an open mind on them all at this stage, although we are interested in Joaquim Masó, the victim's uncle.'
Puigventós considered for a moment. 'The last thing we want is vigilantes. Or for the press to get a whiff that we think it's vigilantes.'
'That's just one of our options,' Elisenda reminded him. 'We've checked Masó's old stamping ground, but there's no clear evidence yet of any sort of vigilante action. As I say, we're keeping an open mind.'
Puigventós grunted. 'Gang war wouldn't be entirely welcome either.'
Tell that to Jutgessa Roca, Elisenda thought.
'Could it be one of the new gangs coming in from the old Eastern bloc? South Americans? North Africans?' he asked, studiedly listing off every group currently being blamed for more or less all the country's ills.
'We've heard nothing, and there have been no reprisals yet, but we are following them up. There ought to be a vacuum, but as far as we can see, no one's filling it. From inside or outside the family.'
The inspector straightened some folders sitting on his desk. 'We want a quick resolution on this one, Elisenda. Clear it up and move on.'
'Wouldn't it be better for us to try and to make sure no one does fill the vacuum?' Not forgetting my under-funded unit only has one sergent, three caporals and me, she thought.
Puigventós sighed. 'Yes, I suppose it would.' He suddenly looked utterly fed up. 'But that doesn't further careers, sell newspapers or get votes, does it?'
He threw the previous day's newspaper across his desk. It was open on a full-page article demanding police action. Elisenda had read it the day before, but even after reading it over her third café amb llet of Sunday morning, she still hadn't been quite sure exactly what the police action the writer had been demanding was. She looked at the unprepossessing face of the author again. A priest. One of the old school she thought had died out with Franco, demanding a return to traditional values, which to him evidently meant the traditional values imposed during a forty-year span in the middle of the twentieth century that had blighted the lives of at least two generations. He was invariably wheeled out when an extreme view needed airing.
'Mossèn Eduard Viladrau,' Elisenda muttered, giving the priest his full title. 'Since when have we started worrying again what he and his ilk think?'
Inspector Puigventós was saved from replying by a knock on the door. Two men filed in, one was Pijaume, clutching a buff folder, the other a corporate clone with a neat and shining leather document case tucked under his arm.
'Inspector, Elisenda,' Pijaume greeted them, straightening his tie and placing the folder on the oval meeting table.
The second man's greeting was the mirror image. 'Xavier,' he said affably to Puigventós. 'Sotsinspectora Domènech,' he added, not looking at Elisenda. She fought back a smile. Sitting down and taking a gold fountain pen out of his jacket pocket in one smooth movement, he calmly unzipped his leather case.
Elisenda and Puigventós joined them at the table, Elisenda seated next to Pijaume, the inspector on the opposite side. Sotsinspector Roger Micaló, the other man, evidently realised that he'd sat down at what was the head of the table without thinking. Elisenda watched him calculate how to get out of it without either losing face or challenging Puigventós.
'Would you prefer to sit here, Xavier?' he simply asked, only the vague, fluttering movement of the fingers on his right hand showing his discomfort.
Puigventós just shook his head. 'Let's get down to business, shall we?' Pijaume smiled lightly at Elisenda. 'Elisenda and I have already discussed the Masó investigation, so unless either of you have anything to add, we can take that as finished.' He looked at the other two sotsinspectors, both of whom shook their heads. 'Fine. Narcís, if you'd like to lead with anything we should know.'
The Monday meeting, Elisenda mused, her mind wandering slightly. Led by Puigventós as head of the Regional Investigation Command, which reported to the Criminal Investigation Division in Sabadell rather than to Vista Alegre, and including, besides her, the head of the Regional Investigation Unit, which reported to Puigventós, and Pijaume, as head of the Local Investigation Unit, which co-ordinated with Puigventós but actually reported to the commander of the station. As if life wasn't convoluted enough, she always felt. Each meeting just fifteen minutes long to ensure that the various groups co-ordinated their investigations so that any crossover that might be of mutual help didn't go unnoticed. It was also meant to stop empire-building, Elisenda thought, instinctively glancing at Micaló. His gaze met hers for a second and he looked away. The head of the Regional Investigation Unit, he was one of that breed of political animal that Elisenda had come across so often in the Mossos, his career mapped out like a strategy of war, any actual policing an afterthought. Still, she thought, he'd be gone soon: he was in too much of a hurry to be hanging around Girona for any longer than was necessary.
She brought her concentration back when Pijaume mentioned drugs. It seemed more had gone missing from the hospital early that morning. 'Same as last week,' Pijaume went on. 'Sedatives. Strong ones.'
'The four men found drugged,' Elisenda asked. 'Do we know what was used?'
'My investigation, Sotsinspectora, I think you'll find,' Micaló interjected. 'Drugged, not murdered. Not a serious crime,' he added, emphasising the last two words.
'And were they?' Puigventós asked him. 'The same drugs?'
Micaló consulted a file ripped from the insides of his document case. 'Yes, they were,' he eventually answered.
'Thank you,' the inspector replied. He looked at Elisenda.
'These four survived,' she commented. 'Might not be so lucky next time. And what we don't know is if it's the thief who used the drugs on the victims or if it was a buyer who did it. Neither way is good, but if it is the first case and someone is stealing them not to sell but to target victims, that's even more disturbing. Whether people think they've got it coming or not.'
Pijaume nodded. 'I agree. I've put two caporals on to it at present, and the Científica are due at the hospital this morning. Until we see evidence of the drugs being sold on the streets, I think our priority is to track events through the actual theft and the four victims.'
'That's good,' Puigventós concluded. 'Everyone all right with that?'
The other three nodded, but Elisenda's mind was racing ahead. The moment she'd finished what she was saying about deserving victims, the image of Masó hangin
g from the derelict building came to mind. She stored it away for the time being, wanting to discuss it with Àlex before throwing it into the general arena.
'Roger,' Puigventós continued, 'anything you might like to add?'
Micaló consulted his files and said there was just one point he wanted to raise. 'There was an extremely vicious assault in the old town on Thursday night. A journalist. Carles Font.'
Elisenda sat up. 'Carles Font? I was talking to him last week.'
'He was very badly beaten up, but he recovered consciousness yesterday morning and made a statement.' Micaló paused and looked around the table. 'He claims that he was attacked by the four men who were later drugged.'
Elisenda looked at him. If he'd been going for drama, she thought, it worked. You might have told us this earlier, was her second, also unvoiced, thought.
'I will, of course, be devoting more than a pair of caporals to the investigation,' Micaló added.
Chapter Fourteen
'This is beginning to feel like my second home,' Elisenda commented to Àlex as he drove them both along the punctuated bustle of the Passeig d'Olot in the direction of Salt. They were heading for where the town petered out by the motorway flyover. On the way, she told him of the meeting she'd just left, about more drugs being stolen and about Carles Font being attacked by the four muggers shortly before they were drugged.
He took his eyes off the traffic for a moment and looked at her. 'More drugs? Does that mean we should expect more attacks like the one on the muggers?'
'And on Masó.'
Àlex glanced at her again. 'Masó? He wasn't drugged.'
'No, he wasn't, was he?'
Before he could reply, they turned into a narrow road flanked by 1960s red-brick and render apartment blocks and pulled up outside a pair of large and peeling corrugated metal gates leading into a scrappy courtyard between two buildings. They got out of the car and looked at a small door set into the gates that was wedged open with a half brick.