City of Good Death: A Gripping Crime Thriller (A Detective Elisenda Domènech Investigation 1)

by Chris Lloyd

  She began with his lists of people who had written articles and contributed to forums, but they threw up nothing she didn't already know. His handwritten notes were more off the wall. Otherwise improbable suppositions that he then worked back through to see if they held water, links anyone else might find unrelated, what the relationship between the clues left before the attacks might have with the attacks themselves. Most of them were connections that Elisenda had seen, but there were others that she hadn't thought of. One in particular that she found interesting. But the one question that kept coming back to her was why Pau and why the Devesa.

  Her phone rang. The same caller ID as the one she'd got last night in the Devesa. She'd rejected the call then, but the caller had left a message: 'Eli, it's Catalina. What's going on?'

  With a sigh, she answered the call now. 'Catalina, where are you?'

  'I'm in Platja d'Aro. I've found your messages on my mobile. I had it switched off. What is it you wanted?'

  'Where have you been, Catalina? What are you doing in Platja d'Aro?'

  'I wanted to wake up and see the sea.'

  Elisenda closed her eyes. 'You wanted to see the sea. You have a house in La Fosca. Why didn't you go there? We could have found you there.'

  'I just wanted to get away. On my own. So I checked into a hotel on the beach.'

  'You could have told me, Catalina.'

  'I didn't want to tell anyone. I wanted to be on my own and not have to explain anything and sit and watch the sea. I just want to be on my own for a bit. I'm tired and I'm sick of having this huge bulge going everywhere I go. I feel it's defining me.'

  'I'm sorry, Catalina, I didn't see.'

  'Eli, for someone with as intuitive a mind as yours, you don't always see what's right in front of you. Why was it you wanted to speak to me?'

  Elisenda told her sister about the tile and about Pau.

  'Eli, I'm so sorry.'

  'I have to go, Catalina.'

  Elisenda hung up and stared at her phone. What was it Pau had said when he called her? Something that had come to him? It seemed an odd way to phrase it. She called Montse in and told her to check Pau's mobile records. 'See if he sent or received any texts or calls from any numbers we can't account for.'

  Montse was back half an hour later. 'I've applied for his phone records, but that'll take a couple of days, so I went to see a friend of mine in the Científica. We were at Sabadell together. They've got Pau's mobile, so she let me look through his calls made and received last night. He received a text message with just a photo. It was of the statue of the woman.'

  Elisenda sat up suddenly. 'He was targeted.'

  'I checked the number it came from, Elisenda. It was Pere Corominas' phone.'

  Elisenda simply stared at her, too shocked to speak.

  'Straight after he got it,' Montse went on, 'he rang a number that was none of ours. So I've just rung it. Antoni Sunyer answered. Pere Corominas' flatmate.'

  'What did he have to say.'

  'He said that Pau had rung him. He'd asked him if the statue of the woman had any significance. Sunyer told him that some gay men send the image to each other by mobile to say they're going to be in the Devesa. He told me something else. He said that someone from Sotsinspector Micaló's unit had interviewed him about it and that he'd told them about how the statue was used to send messages.'

  'Micaló.' Elisenda tapped her fingertips on the desk and jumped up.

  She walked out of the room and along the corridors into the Regional Investigation Unit offices. She pushed Micaló's door open and closed it behind her.

  'Sotsinspectora Domènech,' Micaló said. 'It's usual to knock.'

  Elisenda reached across his desk and pulled him towards her by the expensive lapels of his expensive suit. Her face was almost touching his.

  'You knew. You knew the significance of the statue of the woman.'

  Micaló remained calm. He tried to remove Elisenda's hands but her grip was too strong. 'You were too interested in your own interpretation.'

  'You knew. You could have said something.'

  'If you don't let me go …'

  'What? You've threatened me in the past, Micaló.'

  'I will have your career, you stupid fucking woman.'

  'And I will make sure that everyone in the station knows that you withheld information that could have saved a fellow Mosso's life.'

  'I suggest you let me go.'

  'Certainly.'

  She thrust him backwards with such force that he tilted over the back of his chair and was dumped on the floor under the wall bearing the framed certificates of his courses and commendations.

  Back in her office, Àlex was waiting for her. He had news from the pathologist. Elisenda wasn't ready to hear it yet, so she sat down heavily behind her desk and told him of Micaló. She knew she was talking too much, holding the moment off.

  'Pau received a blow to the head,' Àlex finally told her. 'But he died of strangulation. There were wounds to his hands and throat that show he'd struggled. He was conscious when he died.'

  Elisenda knew that Científica had found a piece of wood inserted through the rope on the other side of the tree and used as the lever to strangle Pau. No forensics on anything.

  'Garrotted,' she said. Corominas' stated preferred form of retribution. Only now Corominas was a victim too.

  They stared at each other, no room for words.

  Àlex spoke first. 'There was something you said yesterday, Elisenda. That you didn't yet know who this person was. But that you knew how to catch them.'

  Elisenda looked directly at him.

  'That's right, I do.'

  Chapter Seventy Seven

  Àlex's mobile rang as he was getting up from his chair to leave the room. Laura Puigmal. He listened in silence, glancing at Elisenda, then hung up.

  'What is it?'

  'It seems that two of the muggers who beat up Senyor Casademont were attacked last night. They're in intensive care. Someone attacked them, then left a message telling the ambulance where to find them. Anonymously.'

  'I can't really get upset about that right now.'

  Àlex nodded his head and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Elisenda watched him thoughtfully as he went back into the outer office to give support to Montse and Josep. She knew she needed someone like him as her sergent, someone who was able to bridge the gap between her and the unit and to pull the tricks she now had to be careful with, but there were times he frightened her.

  She looked back to Pau's notes, also realising that she'd needed someone like Pau, who saw what others missed and who was able to plot and dissect them in his ordered mind. She read a paragraph towards the end of his handwritten notes and finally felt a tear come to each eye.

  He'd written just three days ago that he felt the attacker was entering the end game, that his next victim would be his last. After that, he might disappear forever and they'd never find him. Another legend for Girona.

  She dried her eyes and knew she had to get out. Montse had gone back to her friend in Científica to see if they'd turned up anything more at the scene. Josep was at a desk collating the information, instinctively taking on the job that Pau used to do. The seat Pau normally sat in was empty. Roaming the room, Àlex was straining at the leash, wanting to find and punish someone. Elisenda knew she had to get out.

  She also knew exactly what it was she had to do.

  *

  Outside, it was coat and sunglasses weather.

  Normally, she loved this season. The short parenthesis between the withering heat and sudden thunderstorms of summer and the torrential rain and fingering damp of autumn. When the city was warmed with blue skies and bright sun and cooled by a chill wind blowing in from the mountains. She thought of autumn Saturday mornings on the Rambla, bundled up on a café terrace with a small glass of beer, and mourned Pau and felt guilt in almost equal measures.

  She held her face up to the sun for a brief moment and set
off, heading away from the direction of the river, climbing through the steep streets towards the city walls and the university.

  Professor Marsans was out.

  'I really couldn't tell you where he is,' Aurora Torrent told her. 'Doubtless telling everyone how busy he is preparing for his trip to Columbia.'

  'Will everyone who's studied history here have attended Professor Marsans' classes?'

  'Of course. And mine, and those of most of the faculty staff. But not all of them become his chosen elite. Octavi takes more of a sniper than a scattergun approach to the furtherance of his career.'

  'Do any of Professor Marsans' former students share his specialisation?'

  Torrent turned away from her screen again and studied her. 'My dear, there's one thing you don't understand about Octavi. He makes sure his coterie of acolytes is in a position to help him whenever he needs it, but he would quite simply not countenance any of them challenging his own position. Now, if you don't mind, I am very busy covering for what I loosely term my colleagues.'

  'Thank you for your time, Professora Torrent,' Elisenda said, leaving the academic jabbing sharply at her computer.

  The slope leading down from the arts faculty led her to Plaça Sant Domènec, where she'd watched the demons jump in and out of the fire as she searched for the attacker's next victim. Her path took her past the top of the steps descending to the city centre. Past where the four muggers had stood and stared at her and Àlex as they walked by one morning an age ago. She knew that ever after, every part of the city would remind her of this year and, ultimately, of Pau's death.

  'I'm sorry for your loss,' she heard a voice say behind her. She turned and was taken aback to see Joaquim Masó.

  'Not a sentiment I'd associate with you,' she told him.

  He stared back at her, his face impassive. 'He was always a nice kid.'

  She held his gaze, past the cold eyes, unsure of what she saw. 'He was a nice man, too. I will find who did it.'

  'I mean it.'

  'So do I.'

  She turned and walked away, not trusting herself to say any more, and carried on across the square and down Carrer Bellmirall to the small square in front of the main cathedral door. Locking Masó away in a corner of her mind, she stopped for a moment and took in the view, first down over the old town, then the new city beyond, and finally to the mountains in the distance. She could still be left breathless by the beauty of her own city. She just hoped she'd be able to enjoy it again one day. Walking down the steps, she was unable to resist glancing over her left shoulder to where the mugger had been left hanging. She knew it was impossible, but she fancied she saw his blood angel wings still in the ancient stone. At the bottom of the steps, she turned right and walked through the gateway under the statue of the Verge de la Bona Mort looking calmly down from her niche. Elisenda wondered how much had been excused in her name over the centuries.

  Down by the river, she called Àlex but there were no developments. He'd call her if there were any. He asked how she was getting on.

  'Coming together,' she told him.

  Across the Onyar, she cut past the La Planeta theatre and went into the modern building housing the law courts and the Institut de Medicina Legal. She sometimes felt her life was walking endless corridors.

  'Are you here to see me?' Albert Riera asked her. He was in a charcoal-grey suit today, not the forensic whites Elisenda was used to seeing him wear. She thought of her sister and how she claimed she was defined by one outward display, not her essence. We all were, Elisenda realised, almost failing to recognise the dapper silver-haired man before her as the forensic doctor.

  'I wanted to set the record straight,' she told him. 'I over-reacted the other day, and I wanted to apologise.'

  Riera led her over to a window where the sun shone in. 'You and I both work at sorting out the vile things humans do to each other. We see what no one should see.' He paused as a young man in a sparkling lab coat walked past. 'Please don't think any more of it, Elisenda. I know I can sometimes be a little blunt and I apologise for that. We're the product of what we are forced to do.' He turned to walk away. 'And if you ever tell anyone what I just said, I will deny it strongly.'

  Elisenda smiled and watched him continue along the corridor in the opposite direction. 'Never ever swear at me again, then,' she told his back view.

  'We both know that won't happen.'

  Outside again, she checked her watch. She had two more visits to make before she could get back to Vista Alegre. A ten-minute walk later, she was in the lobby of the newspaper offices, waiting for the receptionist to ring through to David Costa.

  'He's in a meeting,' the receptionist told her.

  Elisenda showed the young woman her badge and took the phone from her.

  'I think you'll find you're not in a meeting,' she said into the mouthpiece before handing the phone back to the receptionist.

  'I'll wait here,' Elisenda told her.

  Chapter Seventy Eight

  The newspapers finally got hold of the story of the tiles.

  It was in the next morning's edition.

  A tile had been found at the Jewish museum, in the upstairs interior courtyard, lying in the centre of the huge marble Star of David picked out on the floor. One of the last visitors of the previous day had found it and handed it in to the reception desk, thinking another visitor had dropped it. Fortunately, one of the members of staff who was leaving as they were wondering what to do with it was Meir Perlman, the visiting researcher. He saw the image of the Verge de la Bona Mort on the tile and recalled the figure of the bat he'd found on the statue a month or so earlier.

  'We should give it to the Mossos d'Esquadra,' he told the people at reception.

  They'd been sceptical at first, but he told them of the bat, so one of them dropped the tile off at the Mossos station in the old Hospital de Santa Caterina on their way home. The Mossos there knew enough to pass it on to Elisenda's team. No one knew who had told the newspapers about it. It could have been anyone from the museum.

  Elisenda sat at the kitchen table in her flat and read through the article, her face impassive. She'd been down to the news kiosk on Plaça Independència to buy a newspaper before breakfast rather than spend any longer turning over and over in a restless bedroom. Finishing her breakfast, she went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and get ready for work.

  When she went back into the kitchen, a young girl was at the table, staring at the breakfast dishes in front of her. Elisenda walked slowly into the room and stood by the window, looking at the girl. She was about six years old.

  'You have to say something to me, Lina.'

  She turned away, supporting herself on the window frame, staring at the river below. By the time she turned back, her daughter had gone.

  *

  'It's everywhere,' Josep told them all in the unit's office, putting the paper down on his desk.

  He showed Elisenda and Àlex the website that Pau had been monitoring, which had seen a downturn in activity until first a Mosso had been found murdered and then the story of the tile had broken. The conjecture in the paper was outstripped only by the level of theories batted back and forth on the website forum. The one thing everyone knew was that it had to do with the attacks.

  'At least they're not voting for each other to be next,' Elisenda commented.

  She was right. All talk was about what the tile meant, and as the morning wore on, more and more of the forum was given over to trying to find a catchy name for the killer.

  'But that doesn't mean to say they've improved any,' was Elisenda's coda to her previous comment.

  Judging by the bags under their eyes and slow movements, Elisenda saw that everyone in the unit had had a fitful night's sleep, coming into work earlier than necessary. She and Àlex had gone through everything they had on Pau's attack, and Montse and Josep had fallen on his effects, released to them later in the morning, each one focusing on a particular aspect.

  Midway through the morn
ing, Àlex left the station to go to the forensic medicine institute, where Pau's post mortem was scheduled for eleven.

  'I think one of us should be with him,' he told Elisenda.

  'I agree. You go. Call me when you know anything.'

  Throughout the rest of the morning, Elisenda gauged the interest on the website and looked at her watch.

  Shortly before lunchtime, Professor Marsans called her mobile.

  'I'm so terribly sorry,' he told her. 'I've just heard. Such a loss. He was a remarkably intelligent young man.'

  'Yes, he was. I'll miss him.'

  'We really must meet up and talk.'

  'Yes, we must.'

  An hour later, she looked at her watch one more time and told Josep and Montse she had to go out for a while. She looked at them both, their heads down, each intent on looking for the one thing they'd missed.

  Elisenda hoped it would be pointless.

  It was another beautiful autumn day to match the previous one. She retraced much of the route she'd taken the day before, turning right after crossing Plaça Sant Domènec and climbing Carrer Alemanys as far as the Jardins dels Alemanys instead of left to head for the cathedral. She stopped for a moment in the gardens at the foot of the city walls, the remains of the barracks where German mercenaries had been billeted in the seventeenth century in one of the many fights against the French, and took in the scented calm.

  Taking a deep breath, she crossed the gardens and carried on through the Portal de la Reina, the old gateway leading out to the world beyond the city walls. She immediately came across huge boulders of ancient rubble, the remains of the Torre Gironella, destroyed by the French in the 1809 siege. Luscious grass filled the uneven ground between the slighted walls, some of it claiming back the manmade.