by Chris Lloyd
Elisenda stopped and looked squarely at him. 'You will do anything to get out of paying for coffee.'
'Anyway,' Pau went on, pleased but embarrassed, 'he was placed in this corner because it's the biggest one of any of the arches, so therefore the most secluded and the easiest place to hide someone.' He walked back in the direction of L'Arcada, with Elisenda following. 'Look up there,' he said, pointing at a small figure carved into the corner of the vaulted ceiling.
Elisenda had to squint to make out in the gloom what Pau was getting at. It was a curious stone carving of a man's head with a long beard and bat's wings. 'The Vampir de la Rambla,' she said.
'You remember the legend?'
'If you want someone to fall in love with you, you bring them here and get them to give you something,' Elisenda said, recalling the legend every child in Girona is taught at school.
'Right. In effect, it's traditionally where lovers declare themselves.'
Elisenda looked back at the part of the arches where the priest had been found. 'So you're saying that Viladrau was "declared" here.'
'Precisely. As not being celibate, as having a worldly love, in other words. And as being a father, also in the worldly sense.'
'I'm not sure,' Elisenda said slowly. 'And the gift?'
'Either the son. If we think it's supposed to symbolise a gift to Viladrau. Or the DVD if we think it's a gift from the perpetrator to the city.'
Elisenda looked back up at the dark sculpture set into the wall, considering. 'It's pretty tenuous.'
'There's more.'
He led her back to Plaça del Vi and the Town Hall, where he took her to the corner of Carrer Ciutadans and pointed up at the face that Josep had seen.
'En Banyeta,' Elisenda said, unsure what he was getting at.
'Masó,' he said simply.
Her head snapped back up to the head carved into the stone. 'A usurer.'
'A loan shark in today's world.'
'The nose,' Elisenda said. 'You rub his nose, the slate's wiped clean.'
'Masó's nose was cut off. All debts gone.'
'He's part of it. I knew he was.'
'And his body was found on Pla i Cargol,' Pau reminded her. 'Just up there on the right.'
Elisenda looked at the caporal. 'I think I owe you coffee.'
'That's not all. The perpetrator is using local legends to out people. Or to punish them.'
'Legends? Or sculptures?'
'Legends. Don't forget the four muggers.'
'How do they tie in?'
Pau stood back and looked straight at her. 'The Bou d'Or.'
Chapter Twenty Nine
'What exactly is the Bou d'Or?' Àlex asked Pau.
The whole of the unit was in Elisenda's office, seated on a hotchpotch of chairs brought in from the outer room. Pau had just finished explaining his legends theory to the others.
'The Bou d'Or,' Pau explained, 'is a local legend about four gamblers out one night in Girona. The Bou d'Or itself was the name of a bridge and a quarry to the north of Montjuïc. The story goes that there was an ancient ruined house on the site that had a hidden treasure inside a stone coffer embedded in the walls, but there were so many tales told about the house that no one dared open the coffer.'
'I thought the legend was that the treasure was a huge golden ox, which is where the name comes from,' Montse, the other Gironina, said.
'Actually there are quite a lot of versions of the legend,' Elisenda interrupted, 'but one of them ties in neatly with the way the four muggers were found. You ask five people in Girona, you get six different versions of the legend.'
Àlex turned to Josep, the other non-native of Girona, and raised his eyes. 'Now why doesn't that surprise me?'
'Because we are a complex and individual breed,' Elisenda told him.
'The story,' Pau carried on, 'is that the four gamblers were moaning about their losses when they met a sinister stranger. He told them that he could take them to a place where there were untold treasures and they could take as much of it as they wanted.'
'That's Girona for you,' Àlex muttered.
'Watch it,' Elisenda warned him.
Pau waited until the room was silent and continued. 'So the stranger led the four men outside the city walls through thunder and lightning to the house with the stone coffer and when they got there, he took them to a well at the back of the ruins. Inside the well was a spiral staircase, and the stranger told them they had to climb down it to get to the treasure. The four men started going down the staircase, but the steps just kept on going deeper and deeper, and all the time, the stranger kept shouting at them to keep going, until finally one of the gamblers called out "Lord help me, when will these steps end?"
'The moment he said the Lord's name, there was a loud bang and the four men were suddenly shot out of the well and sent flying through the air, each one to a different place. One landed on the Pont de Sarrià, one on the Pont de Sant Francesc, the third ended up clinging to a bell in Sant Feliu church and the fourth, the one who'd spoken, finished up at the cathedral, holding on to the angel. The legend says that the man who implored God had saved the four of them from being led down to Hell and that the sinister stranger was the devil.'
Pau's story was met with silence as the others took it in.
Josep was the first to speak. 'Pont de Sant Francesc?'
'That was the original bridge where the Pont de Pedra stands now,' Pau explained.
Àlex looked at Elisenda. 'It does fit.'
She ticked them off on her fingers. 'Manuel PM on the Pont de Sarrià, Cristobal HP on the Pont de Pedra, the Pont de Sant Francesc as was, Juan SP by Sant Feliu and Chema GM, the leader, by the cathedral. Not exactly the same as the legend, but as near as dammit.'
'Especially given the practicalities of dropping the four muggers off at the various sites,' Pau pointed out. 'He was never going to be able to get the last two to the bell in Sant Feliu or to the angel on the cathedral roof, but the point was simply to leave them in the right places for it all to fit the legend.'
'This is where the white van becomes even more important,' Elisenda added. 'Our man must have used it to ferry the four victims around to the various sites.'
'Our man,' Àlex commented. 'Where does this put Joaquim Masó?'
Elisenda sighed. 'Where indeed? Do we think he'd be the sort to carry out this type of serial attack? It seems a pretty extravagant way of covering up killing Daniel to take over his business.'
'I think it rules him out,' Àlex said. 'This comes back to what you've been saying all along, Elisenda, about something more going on.'
'I agree,' Montse added.
Elisenda considered for a moment. 'We put him on the back burner,' she decided. 'I think we need to be focusing on the character of the victims and the links between them and the legends. Someone with a grudge specifically with them.'
'Or with what they stand for,' Pau commented.
Elisenda looked at him and nodded.
'Do we have any news on the drugs?' Àlex asked.
'I'm trying to get as much as I can out of Sotsinspector Pijaume, but they don't seem to have any leads on it. Montse's checked out the hospital but no one knows anything, and none of the drugs stolen has been found anywhere other than in the four muggers and Viladrau.'
'Not Daniel Masó?' Àlex asked.
'No. That's the problem. I'm convinced that Daniel Masó was an opportunistic killing by the same perpetrator – and we're now more or less certain that it is linked thanks to Pau – and it was his killing that gave the perpetrator the idea for finding other victims to punish, so he then stole the drugs to use in the subsequent attacks. The problem is getting anyone outside this room to see that.' She looked at the others in turn. 'Anyone have any other questions? Do we all agree with Pau's theory?'
Everyone in the room nodded silently.
It was Àlex who broke the quiet. 'How do you know all this stuff?' he asked Pau. 'I could name about two legends from Barcelona.'
'I'm the son of immigrants. When I was at school, I had to be more Catalan than the Catalans. So I had to know more about Girona and Catalonia than anyone else. That's how I felt, anyway.'
'Okay,' said Elisenda, 'and all that brings us back to the same two questions as always. Do we dare go to Puigventós with this?'
'And do we dare not?' Àlex added.
Chapter Thirty
Catalina came out of the changing room and stood before Elisenda. 'How do I look, Eli?' she asked.
'Huge.'
Catalina looked down at the summer-coloured maternity dress billowing over her legs and sighed deeply. 'Could they make these dresses any more frumpy?' She shrugged and went back into the changing room. 'I'll buy it then, shall I?'
'I would.'
Elisenda sat on one of the armchairs on the ground floor of Zara, in the Eixample district, and watched the steady shuffle of shoppers around her as she waited for her younger sister to get dressed. She was still trying to switch off at the end of her working day, her thoughts tumbling with the links between the murders and the legends. She'd used the word "serial" without thinking, but it was now preying on her. As was Pau's comment about what the victims stood for. They'd also checked out the website again before leaving work. Row upon row of narrow comment and hate-filled suggestion filled her eyes.
Thinking about it now, she sank further into the shop's armchair. A young Philippine maid pushing an expensive pram around the store caught her eye, her gaze never rising above the level of the baby, and more usually focused steadfastly on the floor. She was with a woman that Elisenda's mother would have described as being "of a certain age and a certain standing". Evidently the grandmother of the baby, she had one of those forty cigarettes a day voices and trim figures that showed she was of the generation that had thought smoking was a good way of keeping their weight down. Ultimately, it probably was, Elisenda thought gruesomely. She was ordering the maid about, dismissively telling her to go and look for some piece of clothing or other in a smaller size. For a brief moment, Elisenda had a sudden and unbidden insight into what led others in the city to vote for the attacker's next victim. She shook her head, refusing to allow herself to think that way. The images of Viladrau and the two young women were still preying on her mind but she was determined not to see the victims as anything other than victims, despite the revulsion she felt at the priest.
When Catalina emerged from the changing room with her shopping, Elisenda was surprised to see her greet the older woman.
'You didn't recognise her?' Catalina asked Elisenda outside when she commented on it. 'That's Laura Puigmal's mother.'
'You are kidding.'
'No. The baby is Laura's older sister's kid. Another lawyer. Married in turn to another lawyer.'
'That's social mobility for you.'
They walked slowly on through the shaded streets of the Eixample to a junction and waited for the pedestrian lights to go green. The lights changed and the two walls of pedestrians closed on each other in the middle of the road, the cars throttling impatiently either side of them. A young man, his shirt unbuttoned that bit too far, his kempt hair that bit too solid, was walking a Rottweiler through the crowds from the other pavement when he hit the dog across the rump with the braided leather end of the lead. There was no reason, the dog was calm, he evidently just felt it looked good. Most people tutted, no one said anything.
'I wish someone would do that to him,' Catalina hissed to Elisenda as the young man passed them. She suddenly turned to her sister and put her hand to her mouth. 'That's the point, isn't it? This person you're after.'
When they got to the other pavement, Elisenda turned to look at her. 'This person I'm after?'
'The one on this website. It's the one you're after, isn't it? I was going to tell you about it. I wasn't sure you'd seen it.'
'Don't worry, I've seen it.'
'It's what they want, isn't it? Us wanting someone else to take revenge. Hit that man because he hit his dog.'
They walked on in silence for a moment before Elisenda replied. 'That's precisely it. And that's why everyone's supporting him, not the Mossos. He appeals to the most vindictive, impotent side of us. Of all of us.' Me included, Elisenda hated to have to admit, recalling Viladrau, the muggers and Masó and her ambivalent feelings towards what had happened to them.
'Where does it end?' her sister asked after a few moments' thought.
'Where? When he goes too far. The moment he chooses the wrong victim, people will turn against him.'
'You have to hope for that, then.'
'No, we don't. That's when it'll get worse for us. The public won't suddenly start supporting us. They'll demand to know why we haven't done enough to catch him. Forgetting they've all been fanning the flames from the start.'
'I'm sorry I said what I did. About the dog. I didn't think.'
'Don't worry.' Elisenda smiled and hooked her arm through Catalina's.
Carrying on along Carrer Maragall, they crossed Gran Via in silence and came out in front of the modern extension to the Hospital Santa Caterina. Throughout the sisters' lifetime, the ancient building had been a hospital, but it had recently been turned into local offices for the Generalitat, the Catalan government. The Mossos d'Esquadra even had a small station in the old heart of the new creation.
'Eli—,' Catalina began to say as they walked past the ramp leading up to the tourist office and the bookshop, but she was interrupted by a man standing in front of them.
'Good evening, Elisenda,' the man said.
Elisenda turned away from her sister to see Inspector Puigventós.
'Xavier,' she said. 'Good evening.'
'Out for a stroll?'
'While the weather's still hot. You haven't met my sister, have you?'
'I'm afraid not,' Puigventós replied gallantly, kissing Catalina on both cheeks.
'Are you going into the Generalitat?' Elisenda asked him.
He turned and looked scornfully at the new extension. 'Not if I can help it. Loathsome monster. Such a beautiful old building and they attach this abomination to it.'
'You really think so? I have to admit I don't dislike it.'
'We shouldn't be imposing the modern world on the past. I just hope we don't ever get transferred into the station in there. I'd have to come to work blindfolded.'
The sisters laughed and took their leave, pressing on across Plaça Catalunya towards the Rambla, just like pretty much everyone else in the city seemed to be doing, unwilling to let the summer go.
'Seems a pleasant guy,' Catalina commented.
'Yes, I suppose he is, really. What was it you were going to say? Before we saw him?'
'Nothing.'
They found a table on the Rambla and ordered a red wine for Elisenda and a Bitter Kas for Catalina. Half the world they knew strolled past, some greeting one or the other or both, some looking away when they spotted Elisenda, all clinging on to the wardrobe and spirit of the dying days of summer.
'Where are you taking me for dinner?' Catalina asked.
'Somewhere with plenty of room between the tables.'
Chapter Thirty One
Elisenda examined Catalina closely. 'Are you sure you're not our mother?'
Her sister lifted up the edge of her plate to scoop up a spoonful of ice cream and chocolate sauce and put it in her mouth, followed by the last piece of crepe. They were at one of the tables in the front room at the Creperie Bretonne rather than the antique train and bus seats bolted to the concrete floor in the back. The waiter had unknowingly gone along with Elisenda's tease about plenty of room between the tables. Especially once Catalina had declared the tight confines of the creperie was where she wanted to go for dinner.
'It's a craving,' she'd argued, which pretty much closed the deal as far as Elisenda could see.
'I should have cravings again,' Elisenda decided. 'That was good.'
'You see. Pregnant women. We can say what we want. The only nine months that's ever going to happen.'
Which is when Catalina had asked Elisenda for the umpteenth time since becoming pregnant when she was going to settle down and start a family again.
Which is when Elisenda asked her if she was their mother.
'We just care for you,' Catalina replied, licking her spoon and looking straight at Elisenda, a sad smile playing around the edge of her mouth.
'Please don't, I can care for myself.'
Catalina ran her finger around the lip of her plate to soak up the last of the chocolate. 'I always feel guilty talking about my baby. I want you to be happy again.'
'I am happy, Catalina. And don't feel guilty. I want you to talk to me. This is your baby. Your time.'
'I want you to have a baby again. We're both on our own.'
Elisenda watched her sister diligently lick her fingers. 'No, Catalina. I lost Lina. I'm not going to have a replacement child. I'm moving on, it's time the rest of you did too. Now can we change the subject?' She suddenly felt exhausted.
'We just want you to be happy.'
'Please, Catalina, stop.' She finished her wine and took a long breath. 'Anyway, our mother went on demos against Franco and protested long and hard for our generation of women's rights so that I could grow up to be sad and lonely with a job. This is the least I can do to repay her.'
'Oh, Eli, I know I worry too much. You're the least sad and lonely person I know.'
'Aren't I just?'
'Except in your own head.'
Catalina got up and squeezed out from behind the table to go to the toilet, leaving her last statement hanging in the air.
The silence left by Catalina was filled by a man and a woman at the next table.
'As far as I'm concerned,' the man was saying, 'Viladrau and everyone like him should be strung up from the lampposts.'