by Chris Lloyd
'I understand your concern Senyor Perafita, but I am leading this investigation and I will leave no stone unturned to find the killer and put a stop to these attacks.' She turned to walk away. 'Whatever secrets that may bring to light.'
At the end of the corridor, she looked back to see Micaló emerge from his office and head towards where the two men were waiting.
'More senior,' she muttered, carrying on to her unit's offices.
Pau had something for her.
'I've been going back over arrest sheets and complaints forms and I've found these.' He showed her three incident reports. 'Foday Saio made official complaints in September about vandalism to his front door. He had paint thrown on it twice and chunks taken out of it with a hammer another time. And that's not all.'
Elisenda glanced through the forms Pau had given to her. She saw that in the last incident, Foday claimed that members of the Masó family had been responsible for the damage.
'The Masó family just won't go away, will they? Find out what you can, any other incidents, what action has been taken by Pijaume's unit. I'll speak to Foday and see what he says.'
'There's something else. I've been checking up on Pere Corominas, the guy that's gone missing, and I've found a blog that he's been posting. There's been nothing new posted for two months now, but it was always sporadic, so that doesn't really mean anything.'
He showed it to Elisenda and she saw that Corominas would write six articles in two weeks and then nothing for three months at a time. 'Anything we should know about?'
'Most definitely.'
Pau found a number of articles on the history and legends of Girona and showed her a rabidly scathing one on modern legends and how they erode what Corominas called the real culture of the city, with particular reference to the Majordoma. He then brought up a series of entries about going back to nature and living wild in the woods.
'How are they related?' she asked Pau.
'This is someone who feels strongly about the city and its history, and someone who is able to live wild for periods of time. He's also someone who fell out of view at the same time as the killings started. Taken together, I think they make him someone who could be of interest to us.'
'In what way is he missing, in other words,' Elisenda muttered. 'Good, find out what you can, and avoid going through Micaló or Pijaume if at all possible. We'll have to dig him up ourselves.'
Pau scrolled through Corominas' blog and clicked on one more article.
'But this is the one you really need to see,' he told her.
Elisenda read what was on screen: "Before my lifetime, Franco garrotted Catalan heroes wanting a free Catalonia. The garrotte. At that time, the Spanish state's execution of choice. Tied to a post by the neck, and a handle turned behind you, tightening while you agonised in death. And all for wanting freedom. Well, now the tide has turned. We are nearer regaining our freedom than at any time in the last three hundred years. For all those who would prevent us from regaining our freedom, from reaffirming our identity, from reclaiming our culture, perhaps the time has come for them to feel the garrotte."
Elisenda read it a second time in her disbelief.
'God knows what planet he's on,' Pau commented.
'One we need to find.'
Chapter Fifty Three
'Brought her along to fetch the coffee, have you?'
Joaquim Masó laughed at his own joke but the two younger men seated either side of him at the café table simply stared at the two Mossos with dead eyes.
The bare, dusty room at the motorway end of Salt was empty. The two old guys staring at each other across a slow trail of dominoes had cleared out the moment Àlex and Montse had walked in. The black and white slabs of their game still lay on the table separating two half-drunk glasses of beer. The café owner had shrunk behind a faded plastic bead curtain into the kitchen behind, leaving the insistent tinny blare of a one-armed bandit to stand guard over his business.
'Very funny,' Àlex told Masó. 'You'd better explain it to your friends.'
'I wouldn't worry about them. They don't miss much.'
Àlex looked from one to the other, the brothers he and Elisenda had seen in Masó's yard, and grinned. 'I'm glad you have faith in them.'
The younger of the brothers reacted slightly, turning to see his older sibling's reaction, his jaw clenching. Àlex was pleased to see he'd got a rise out of him. He now knew the younger brother was the weaker one. The older one was the one to watch.
'What can I do for you, Mossos?' Masó asked. His words were aimed at Àlex, but his eyes didn't move once from leering at Montse's breasts.
'We're here to help you,' Àlex told him. 'Your stolen van. We're here to do everything we can to resolve it.'
Masó grunted.
'We were just wondering why you didn't report it missing,' Montse added.
'You let it speak?' Masó said to Àlex, still staring at Montse's chest.
Montse took a step forward, but Àlex touched her arm lightly. 'You know, it really isn't in your interest to talk to a Mosso like that.'
'You're threatening me?' Masó looked right and left at the two brothers and sneered at Àlex. 'Me?'
'We're simply here to help. Besides, you don't really think dumb and dumber here will be any use, do you?'
The younger brother swore in Spanish and jumped up, reaching past Montse towards Àlex, but instantly found himself pinned on the table in front of Masó, Montse's right hand pulling his arm up behind his back, her left grinding his face into the coarse wood.
Àlex turned to the older brother and smiled affably. 'Your go.'
'When I'm good and ready.'
Not Masó family, Àlex suddenly realised. The few words he'd said told Àlex that. He spoke unnatural, first-generation Catalan with a Barcelona accent, obviously the son of immigrants from elsewhere in Spain. They were the typical bargain-basement toughs he'd known all his life, bullying on street corners, stealing car radios, snatching tourists' bags.
He turned back to Masó.
'Your van. Why didn't you report it missing?'
'I settle things my own way. I don't need your lot involved. For all the good you do, anyway.' He looked bluntly at Àlex. 'I've learnt to take the law into my own hands to get what I want.'
'I would advise against that.'
'Yeah, you probably would. But no one's ever going to take the Mossos seriously.'
Àlex stared back at Masó and signalled to Montse to let her captive go. She released him and he looked first at his brother and then at Montse, rubbing his arm. Sullenly, he sat back down in his chair.
'Impressive,' Masó said. 'Strange seeing women in the police, even if it is only the Mossos. Not like the old Policia Nacional. They'd never have stood for having women tagging along with them. It's unnatural.' He turned to look Montse in the eyes for the first time. 'You never know. You might be the next victim. He's going for freaks.'
Àlex laughed, moving immediately after at a speed that left the two brothers shocked motionless. With his right hand, he scooped Masó up by the neck from his chair and slammed him into the back wall. Masó struggled for breath, his feet scraping the ground as he scrabbled to support himself.
'I would suggest you take us very seriously,' Àlex whispered in his face. 'And I would also suggest you tell your friends to stay seated if you want to breathe again.'
Masó fluttered his fingers to tell the brothers not to move.
'And my third suggestion is that you never talk like that to one of my officers ever again. You are now in my sights, Masó. You will regret that.'
Àlex let him drop to the ground and turned away, following Montse out of the café to their car.
As she drove away, Montse spoke. 'You didn't have to do that for me, Sergent. I can take care of myself. It just plays into the hands of people like that when you stand up for me because I'm a woman.'
'I know you can, Caporal. I wasn't defending you because you're a woman. I was defending you because I
'm a sergent and you're a caporal and you are in my care. I won't have scum talking to a fellow Mosso that way.'
Montse nodded, still unsure of how she felt. She'd heard of Àlex's cold rages but had never witnessed one before.
'They were from Barcelona,' Àlex commented as Montse turned on to Salt's Carrer Major, heading back towards Girona. 'The two brothers.'
Montse nodded. 'Strange. The Masó family have never allowed outsiders into their businesses.'
'It is curious. But I think we can say the vacuum left by Daniel Masó has been filled.'
Montse waited at the traffic lights to leave Salt.
'Probably worse than before,' she added.
Chapter Fifty Four
Josep was arriving as Elisenda was leaving the unit.
'I'm off to see the wonderful and helpful Jutgessa Roca,' she told him. 'To try and get a warrant to search Pere Corominas' flat. Pau will explain.'
'Good luck,' he replied, his head hung low.
Pau showed him Corominas' blog, eliciting the same shocked response as Elisenda's. 'And it looks to be going viral,' Pau added. 'The number of hits has doubled since I found it this morning.'
'He's gone missing,' Josep pointed out. 'Or underground. Must have created a buzz.'
A sergent from the Local Investigation Unit came into the room, followed by Pijaume, asking him to check up on any evidence of the missing drugs being reported found. Josep shot Pau a look and they turned back to the computer. Switching to the website, they saw that activity on it was going into overdrive as news of the confrontation outside the immigrant businesses in Salt seeped out.
'More divided than before,' Pau commented.
Curiously, a victim surviving an attempted attack seemed to have brought out the compassion that murder hadn't. Many people continued to suggest new victims and many posts encouraged the actions of the mob in Salt, but increasingly more voices were raised against them, calling for the protection of potential victims and for the people of the city to reject the attacker and the results of his actions.
'Still not ideal, though, is it?' Josep said, pointing to a thread that was just beginning to gather pace. A stand-up comedian from Barcelona was appearing in Girona on All Saints' Day, in two days' time, and it was polarising opinion. As they watched, more and more posts called for him to be targeted. 'Why a comedian?'
'He's a monologuista,' Pau answered. 'A lot of people see that as foreign.'
'Or they just don't like new. Montse and I were thinking of going to see him before all this lark kicked off.'
Elisenda returned an hour later with a piece of paper and a look of disbelief. 'Jutgessa Roca actually gave me something I requested,' she told Pau and Josep. 'This is a warrant to search Corominas' flat and check his phone records.'
'How did you manage that?' Pau asked.
'I told her it was nothing to do with Daniel Masó. She still wouldn't give me a warrant ordering the bishopric to assist with the investigation, though, so all's well with the world.'
Before they had a chance to leave, Pijaume clicked on the local TV station's website. 'Inspector Puigventós is on,' he explained.
They watched as Puigventós appealed for calm in the events in Salt. 'I want to reassure everyone that the thwarted attack on an immigrant member of our community is not a racially-motivated crime. It is part of a wider series of heinous attacks taking place in our city, and it should be viewed as such.'
Elisenda hung her head. 'Well that should do the trick.' Sow even more panic than there already was about a serial killer to avoid racial tension. Some trade-off. She also recalled Puigventós' comment on using the media.
'What's happening to this city?' Pijaume asked.
'The report of the bat on the Verge de la Bona Mort,' Elisenda reminded him. 'Are there any reports of any other incidents?'
'Not that I'm aware. In relation to what?'
'It's to do with these attacks.'
Pijaume shook his head and told her that there had been no more reports in the last few days.
*
Across town, Antoni Sunyer let Elisenda, Pau and Josep into the flat he shared with Pere Corominas and sat in the small living room while they went through the bookshelves. He'd pointed out which books were Corominas', with more in his bedroom.
'We'll cause as little disruption as possible,' Elisenda promised him.
'I'm glad to see something being done about finding Pere.'
Pau and Josep went into Corominas' bedroom while Elisenda stayed to speak to Sunyer. She asked him about his flatmate's political beliefs.
'Pretty radical. Although he does blow hot and cold about a lot of things. He'll get worked up about some issue and then forget it all a week later. One day we should all live off the land, the next he's buying a new iPad, that sort of thing.'
She thanked him and joined the other two in the bedroom. Dark like many of the flats in the old town, the airless room faced the tiny patio to the rear of the building. The room looked second-hand, with a single bed in the corner by the old wooden-framed window, an ancient wardrobe against one wall, another wall taken up by a length of wood on two trestles, which acted as a desk, and two battered grey metal filing cabinets. A laptop stood open on the desk. Pau was checking the files on it, Josep was going through one of the filing cabinets.
'Research for his degree,' Pau told Elisenda when she asked what he'd found. 'On iconology and culture. And there's a lot of other material that looks like he's compiling local legends.' He checked another folder. 'Yeah, there's what looks like a draft of a book on the city's folk tales.'
'This guy gets more and more interesting. Check as much as you can, then bag it up and send it to UCDI.'
'If he was going underground, why didn't he take his laptop with him?'
'He had another computer? We'll check. Anything in the files, Josep.'
'Same as on the laptop, by the sound of it. It's all legends, myths and stories. Personal stuff apart from that. Bills, credit card, bank statements. Nothing out of the ordinary so far.'
They heard the doorbell go, and Elisenda went back into the living room to see Sunyer open the door. A stylish young woman came in and kissed him on both cheeks but was then shocked to see Elisenda. Sunyer explained who she was and what she was doing there.
'Still no news on Pere?' the woman asked.
'I'm afraid not,' Elisenda told her. 'And you are?'
'Roser Caselles. I'm a friend of Antoni and Pere.'
'She's doing first year history,' Sunyer explained. 'Pere and I both studied history and we met Roser at summer school in July. Is it all right if she stays?'
'Of course. One thing, Antoni. You mentioned Pere bought an iPad. Do you know where it is?'
'It's not here. He never let it out of his sight. He used it more than his laptop.'
Elisenda thanked him and went back into the bedroom to find Pau and Josep discussing a stand-up as they searched. Pau explained to her about the number of people on the website suggesting him as the next victim.
'It's because he's a monologuista,' Pau said. 'It's not our tradition. They've only become fashionable because of American TV programmes like Seinfeld.'
'That doesn't make him a target,' Josep argued.
'It does to some people. It is cultural imperialism in a way.'
Elisenda opened the wardrobe and began searching through Corominas' clothes. 'You're not keen on observational humour, Pau?'
'Not because it's observational. It's because it's not ours. We don't have a tradition of that sort of humour. Not like other cultures.'
'It's not about tradition,' Josep insisted, 'it's progress. The same as music. Tastes develop from one generation to the next. We can't all watch the same tired old comedians telling jokes that our parents did. It has to move on.'
'Are you going to see this guy, Josep?' Elisenda asked.
'Montse and I were thinking of going, Sotsinspectora, but I don't think we will now, with all this going on. We'd thought some of us from
the unit could have gone together.'
'Not me, I'm sorry,' Pau replied. ‘Not my scene. We should stick to what we do.'
Elisenda closed the wardrobe and looked at her two caporals intent on their work. Odd that off-the-wall thinker Pau should resist change and dour Josep should embrace it. No one was ever entirely as you thought they were.
Chapter Fifty Five
On the slow road from Ripoll, Pere Corominas' father hummed the same tune he always did when he drove, Mediterraneo by Joan Manuel Serrat. Next to him, his wife inhaled a large sprig of fragrant lavender on the van's dashboard and let her mind idle, staring at the mountains and valleys out of the window.
Pere Corominas' father was still quietly humming when they finally pulled up outside a yard in Salt. There was no one else in the small road. No elderly men sitting on straight-backed chairs commenting on the world passing them by, no women with shopping trolleys coming back laden from the shops, no men idling jobless in the sun.
A door opened and three men came out.
'Where is it?' the first of them said.
From a hidden compartment in the back of the van, Pere Corominas' father pulled out a neat rectangular parcel and handed it to one of the other two men, who put it into a canvas holdall. More followed until the bag was full.
The first man counted out a pile of twenty-euro notes and handed them over. 'I will need more.'
Pere Corominas' father shrugged. 'We had an agreement with Daniel. This is how much we sold him. We never sold him more.'
'Very nice, but I'm not my nephew. And you work for me now.'
'No, we don't.'
At a signal, the older brother gave Pere Corominas' father an open-handed slap across the left ear, leaving his head filled with a numb rushing noise, like sea water flooding in.
'Yes, you do,' Joaquim Masó told him.
Chapter Fifty Six
Elisenda's stomach complained as she and Àlex watched a pair of Seguretat Ciutadana walk slowly past the Verge de la Bona Mort. They were the second team to check on the statue in the last five minutes and the result of Puigventós' reluctant acquiescence earlier that day to step up patrols around the gateway over which the figure sat. He'd drawn the line at round-the-clock surveillance when Elisenda had asked for it.