by Chris Lloyd
'If you do believe this is the case,' Puigventós continued, 'which I personally do not for one moment think is so, then I feel it would call for greater help and co-ordination between units. Or even from outside. I am coming under increased pressure to consider other alternatives in tackling these murders, Elisenda. Sotsinspector Micaló has his friends.'
He looked closely at her. She resisted closing her eyes and sighing.
'My unit doesn't need any help from outside,' she breathed.
'I agree. So the Masó investigation remains with Sotsinspector Micaló's team and I will sanction all that you need for Sant Narcís's Day.' He shuffled some papers on his desk, telling her the discussion was closed. 'Within reason.'
Chapter Forty Three
The hooded figures ran from the white fire.
Sparks from the flame spattered their backs, guttering from life on their bowed heads, raining on the hard cobbles in front of them. A further flame erupted, balling up into the sky and lighting the ancient university building before folding up into itself, casting the stern walls into a brief cavernous dark. A new burst broke the respite of the night and threw raging shadows over the buildings and faces, each one looking on at the man in the middle.
Two giant wheels. Connected by a crossbar. Flames briefly licking at the wooden spokes and steel rim, fire spitting out from them. The noise deafening. Metal scarring stone, sparks crackling clothes, hoarse voices raised.
And the man in the middle.
One of the hooded figures looked up, his face shining in the night flare, the white skull glinting. A young girl looked up at him and put her hand to her mouth. Taking it away again, she quickly looked at her brother, younger than her. His eyes were wide open. She laughed.
The boy in the hood pulled his skull mask down to take a drink of water from a plastic bottle and slapped one of the other figures on the back before running back towards the flames.
Elisenda watched it all.
The correfoc. The fire run. At the end of Sant Narcís's Day. Fireworks and flames dancing through the streets to frighten the families and taunt the teenagers. The man in the middle of the wheels controlling them, turning it this way and that to push the crowds back. His helpers, dressed as demons, cavorting through the throng, pulling people in, keeping them out.
Elisenda looked around at the laughing people, the university square filled with grandparents and toddlers, parents and youths.
It was the worst Sant Narcís holiday she could remember.
She began down the steps leading away from the square, the noise barely receding behind her, latecomers rushing up in front of her.
She rang Pijaume at Vista Alegre, there to co-ordinate all the Mossos who'd lost their time off for the festivities, all the ones drafted in, all the ones Elisenda had seen in the city throughout the day. All the ones who were there because of her.
Pijaume told her again that nothing had happened. Not even a false alarm.
She hung up. So much of her wanted that to carry on. For nothing to happen. And another part of her was shocked to realise that she was afraid nothing would happen. Because of all the problems that would cause her.
She sighed and called Àlex.
'Where are you?' she asked him.
'At the old fogeys' dance. Nothing.'
It really had been the worst Sant Narcís she could remember.
The briefing of the evening before, a little more than twenty-four hours ago, and then again that morning. The faces of the Mossos in front of her increasingly hostile, increasingly sceptical.
Through the day, she'd roamed the city, watching the festivities from outside the glass, listening to the scantly concealed triumphalism of the other units when she spoke to them at the craft markets, the museums and the puppet shows.
'It's worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack,' one uniformed caporal told her at the foot of Carrer de la Força as they watched a walking tour go by, the earnest guide describing the city's past persecutions of its Jewish community to the new people of the city. 'We don't know who or what we're looking for.'
'Just being here is helping prevent anything from happening,' Elisenda encouraged him, trying to convince herself.
She met Josep and Montse at the archaeology museum, Josep watching the visitors shuffling in and out, making the most of the open doors day, Montse leaving to check out the cathedral and Sant Narcís's tomb again.
'I almost wish something would happen, Sotsinspectora,' Josep whispered to her as they watched two elderly couples slowly organise themselves in through the museum doors. 'I know I don't mean that, but we're coming in for a lot of stick from the other Mossos.'
Elisenda knew what he meant.
She'd just come across Micaló on Plaça Independència.
'I'm surprised to see you here,' she'd told him.
Micaló looked about him before answering in a low voice. 'I wouldn't miss this for the world, Domènech. Watching your career crumble in front of your eyes. You're a dead woman walking.'
He'd hurried off before she'd had a chance to reply. She wasn't sure she could even have been bothered.
'We'll see,' she murmured, more to herself than to his retreating back.
She left Josep and headed for the Rambla, criss-crossing the bridge between the old and new towns, watching and listening. Pau joined her in the Jardins de la Francesa, checking the exterior of the cathedral, dodging the mood of the festive strollers, before he carried on along the city walls and she went back down to the cathedral steps. At the bottom, she looked up at the Verge de la Bona Mort statue over the mediaeval gateway.
'Always gives me the creeps,' a voice rasped behind her. 'Blessing the condemned.'
She turned to see Joaquim Masó staring up at the statue with her.
'You just have to live a blameless life, then.'
Masó adjusted a thick gold bracelet on his heavy wrist. It looked new. 'No complaints about my life right now. Out enjoying my city.'
'Your city?'
'Before all the darkies take it over. Already too many in Salt.'
'I could arrest you for that. Odd your family didn't include you in the alibi when Daniel was killed.'
'They didn't think they had to. Not then. I wasn't part of the business.'
'And now?'
He grinned wolfishly at her and walked silently away towards Carrer de la Força. Elisenda watched him go.
'So you're the future,' she muttered.
When night fell, she made her way with what seemed like everyone else in Girona to the funfair in the Devesa park, the raucous lights and sounds of the rides and stands and sideshows funnelling up through the tall plane trees and bouncing back down again. She checked her phone constantly and nodded at all the pairs of Mossos she saw patrolling the edges and the heart of the fair until it was time to follow the correfoc through the streets of the old town.
Now the fireworks were over and she was walking down the steps from the university square, heading for the barraques, the open-air rock concerts on the square at the northern entrance to the city, played out before a horseshoe of beer stands and annual wildness.
Àlex called and told her where he'd meet her.
'I used to love the barraques when I was a teenager,' she shouted in his ear above the din when they met up.
Àlex looked at the groups around him, drinking beer from plastic cups and listening to the band on stage. 'It's good. This is my first Sant Narcís.'
'I'm sorry it's like this.'
He gently nudged her shoulder with his. 'Don't be. We're doing the right thing.'
'I saw Joaquim Masó earlier today. He's going up in the world. Check up on him, find out more about this van thing. Personally, I think he'd be too streetwise to use his own van, but we need to follow it up.'
'Unless it was a hurried job. Retaliation for Daniel. Or marking out his territory.'
Elisenda had to shout louder as a new song started up on stage. 'Or distraction. His or ours.'
&n
bsp; It was past three in the morning when Elisenda finally gave up and headed for home. Night patrols would be out, but she had a feeling nothing would happen now. Àlex had already left to hook up with a Seguretat Ciutadana car roaming the streets of the new town. They parted, both knowing the fallout the next day would bring.
Crossing the river, she walked up Carrer de la Força to the cathedral, not yet ready for home. An incipient headache did its best to push its way through her temples. In front of the cathedral, at the top of the steps, she counted more Mossos than revellers. Just two couples sitting on the stone wall opposite the front doors laughing in low tones and a group of teenagers talking quietly.
Elisenda said goodnight to one of the pairs of Mossos and headed back down the road sloping past the cathedral steps to the square in front of the Audiència Provincial law courts and out under the Portal de Sobreportes.
The other side of the arch, she heard a child's voice. A girl. Singing the same song she'd heard in Monells the other day. She looked around but could see no one. The few flats there were all shut up, no lights on, the window shutters down.
She thought the singing was coming from ahead. From Carrer Rei Martí, the narrow lane that fell steeply to Sant Pere de Galligants, where she'd spoken to Josep in front of the archaeology museum so many hours earlier. Her flat was down to the left, but she carried straight on, through the high stone walls of the dark street. The child's voice seemed constantly to move away from her and she quickened her pace to try to catch it, quickly becoming engulfed in the black shadows of the ancient buildings that closed in on either side of her on her descent through the medieval darkness.
The singing stopped for a moment and she froze, listening.
It started up again, faintly, borne on the wind. She couldn't tell if it was from in front of her or from behind. From above or below. Other sounds rustled and scratched around her, confusing her. Turning, she went back the way she'd come, back to the little crossroads by Portal de Sobreportes, led by the singing until it suddenly stopped again. Finally, this time.
Leaning against the cold stone walls, she tried to hear it one more time, but it was no longer there. She felt a tear run down her cheek for the first time in years and she bowed forward, what little she'd eaten all day thrusting bitterly back up through her throat and mouth and nose.
Chapter Forty Four
'Look at me, papa.'
His daughter needn't have called out to him. Foday Saio hadn't taken his eyes off her for one moment. He watched her run down the grass bank at the edge of the little park outside the city walls.
'Did you see, papa?' Her voice was breathless with fun when she ran back to him.
'I saw you, Patricia.'
He put his arms around her and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
She ran off again to play with a boy and a girl, the boy older than Patricia's four years, the girl about the same age. Joining in the peals of laughter in perfect Catalan. He wondered at his daughter. Her Catalan so much better than his or her mother's. Theirs was fluent, but they still sounded foreign. Foday more so than Isata as she was able to work and so mixed with people more. She had two jobs. One at the Hospital Doctor Trueta, where she worked evenings as a cleaner, the other early in the morning, cleaning a factory near their home in Salt. She was always tired. Foday was always restless.
'That's not how you say it, papa,' Patricia would correct her father when he spoke Catalan. He always thought it strange that his four-year-old daughter should be teaching him so much, not the other way around, as it should be. But she'd been born here. Had started nursery, then school, here. Catalan more natural to her than her parents' Mende. More use to her in her life here. Her parents' old life in Sierra Leone over for good.
Out of the corner of his eye, Foday saw the other two children's parents staring at him. They half-smiled at him when he looked over and quickly turned away, embarrassed. He knew it wasn't his colour they were staring at. It was his arms. He slowly slipped them both between his knees and hung them down in front of him, hidden by his thighs where he sat.
'Look at me, papa,' Patricia called again. He looked up at her and smiled. He didn't wave.
At the end of each arm was a stump. The hands amputated, the wounds still ragged. Not cleanly removed, but hacked, chopped off by the men who had come to his village one day when he was barely ten and killed his parents and his older brother. The civil war was long over but he knew they'd never go back. He felt safe now. At least he had felt safe. Lately, he always felt like someone was watching him. He felt it now but could see no one.
The other children's parents were joined by an older couple. The grandparents. Patricia was just beginning to question the idea of grandparents. It was something she couldn't understand. She found it funny. The four adults smiled at Foday as they slowly walked past, the children running in and out of the grown-ups. He smiled back.
'How far away's the funfair?' he heard the boy ask.
'Not far,' the grandfather replied.
Foday stayed seated. He couldn't afford to take Patricia to the funfair, so they now had the little park to themselves, except for some teenagers who were draped over a bench on the other side of the gardens, engrossed in their own hormones. It was the day after Sant Narcís's Day, but all the schools were closed for the week and many people had finished work after lunch.
He sensed rather than saw a movement behind him, but when he looked over his shoulder in the direction of the gateway through the city walls, there was nothing there. He looked the other way, towards the trees, but saw no one.
He turned back. Standing on the ground behind him was a green bottle with no label. The sort you take to the old-fashioned bodegas and get filled up with cheap wine from a barrel and then topped with a plastic stopper.
He looked at the bottle and turned towards it.
Chapter Forty Five
'This is not the usual sort of perpetrator. It's cold, it's calculating and it's a reaction to whatever wrongs this person imagines they see. This is someone we wouldn't imagine doing these things, someone doing things that are completely out of character. And that's why we have to try and predict what they're going to do next, because we're not going to catch them any other way.'
Elisenda had spent the last ten minutes in silence, soaking up Inspector Puigventós' channelled frustration and the pressure that he was under, and she had no intention of surrendering the floor back to him until she'd said what she wanted to say.
The afternoon of the day after Sant Narcís's Day and nothing had happened. No attacks, no rituals, no humiliations. With the exception, perhaps, of Elisenda's as she walked the long corridors from her office to Puigventós' room. Past the scornful looks of the Mossos who'd lost time off. Past the smug, open door into Micaló's office. Past the sympathetic looks of her own unit.
Pijaume had stopped her in the corridor. 'I'm sorry, Elisenda,' he'd told her.
'Thank you, Narcís.'
'If you're not going to catch them any other way, Sotsinspectora Domènech,' Puigventós came back at her, the anger still present in his voice, 'perhaps you should consider relinquishing the investigation to a more experienced officer. Someone who will make an arrest.'
'This is not about making arrests, Inspector.' The tension of the last two days was simmering behind her eyes. 'This is about putting an end to the attacks. We can't just trawl in known criminals or people close to the victims. You might as well throw twenty names in the air and arrest the first one that hits the floor. There's much more to this.'
'You're saying it's not a criminal?'
'It could be. It could be you or me.'
Puigventós was not satisfied with that. 'Weeks, Elisenda. These attacks have been going on for weeks, and you don't have one arrest to show for it.'
'I know they've been going on for weeks. I am the one that's been telling you they've been going on for weeks. But I've been obstructed from the word go by the reluctance of everyone around me to see that the Mas
ó attack is part of this. The attack on the four muggers was originally assigned to another team, Jutgessa Roca has been obstructive every step of the way and Gerard Bellsolà always seems to know where I'm going to be next.'
She sat back heavily, as too did Puigventós, his own tiredness evident.
'I believe in your unit, Elisenda,' he finally said with a deep sigh. 'And I have faith in you, in your abilities. But we need an arrest. The chain of command needs an arrest. I am coming under pressure, and the way the investigation has been handled over these last two days has not sat well.'
'I simply repeat what I said before. I am not going to make an arrest for the gallery, and the only way we're going to end these attacks is by looking at what exactly this person is trying to say and anticipating an attack by them.'
'I don't know, Elisenda. I can only protect you for so long.'
Elisenda nodded her head slowly. 'I didn't realise I needed protecting.'
'There's been a complaint. By Gerard Bellsolà, for harassment.'
'Harassment? Trying to question someone who's so reluctant to speak to me, she or the church calls in a lawyer?'
Someone knocked on the door and opened it before Puigventós had a chance to tell them to go away.
It was Montse.
'I'm sorry to disturb you, Inspector Puigventós.' She turned to Elisenda. 'Sotsinspectora, there's been an incident.'
Chapter Forty Six
'Why teenagers?'
Elisenda and Àlex watched as a Científica team went centimetre by centimetre over the fine dust of the little Foramuralles park in the shade of the city walls, barely ten minutes' walk from Vista Alegre. Seguretat Ciutadana had already strung up tape around the trees and benches to keep out a growing throng of spectators.
Pau was standing a short distance away from Elisenda and Àlex, near a bench next to which eight teenagers were laid out on the ground in thermal blankets. All eight were awake and looking around, dazed, evidently not knowing what was going on. Albert Riera and his assistant were slowly examining each one.