by Chris Lloyd
He told her a couple of names, the same ones that Elisenda had given her. ‘Thank you. I know that he’s now friends with Carles Pascual.’
‘That’s right. Apparently they became friends over the holiday. You see, the two boys that Jaume used to hang around with like to think of themselves as being a cut above the rest. So did Jaume. All three are from similarly affluent families, from the same part of town. I have to say I was delighted at the start of term to see that Jaume had switched allegiances. Carles is a really nice kid, more grounded, and he brought out a much nicer side to Jaume. Had he not disappeared, I would have said that Jaume changing his friends was a good thing, but of course now this has happened.’
‘Do you think these other two boys could have something to do with Jaume’s disappearance? Revenge for changing friends, perhaps? Do you think they were bullying him?’
‘I think you should speak to them to form your own conclusions.’ His stare was more candid than his words. ‘As for bullying, Jaume’s big for his age and quite well developed. He plays basketball for the school and for a local team. I would say that he’d be too much of a match for the other two.’
‘Could he have been bullying them?’
Benach put his head to tone side. ‘In the past, I would have said that it was a possibility, but he’s been a lot calmer since the summer. That’s thanks to Carles. I wouldn’t have thought so based on his attitude this term.’
‘You said there were a couple of issues.’
‘I wasn’t teaching here when Jaume’s brother went missing, but I have met the parents on several occasions, and other members of staff remember Albert. After his brother went missing, or died, Jaume’s parents doted on him. The father, especially, has always been very protective. That, unfortunately, has had a detrimental effect on him. He could be very self-centred, which has led in the past to his being rather confrontational with other children and some of the staff. But then, with the elections coming up and his mother’s involvement with that, he was no longer the centre of his parents’ world and I got the impression it put his nose out of joint. He can be a rather jealous boy. I think that may also have contributed to his falling out with his friends. This is why I was delighted that he’d become friendly with a kid like Carles Pascual. Jaume’s had his problems, but he’s a good kid at heart. Carles brought that out in him.’
Montse remembered something that Father Besses had said. ‘His work hasn’t been as good this year. Is that right?’
‘Not quite. The first week, he was better if anything, but then this last week something seems to have happened that sent his work plummeting. Normally, at this stage, I wouldn’t have thought that a problem unless it didn’t settle down. Teething problems at the start of the year. But now, given his disappearance, it might be relevant.’
‘Do you know what caused it?’
‘No, but by the drop in the standard, I would say it was either because of the fallout with his friends, or there was potentially something seriously troubling him.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Marc Comas had already been discharged from A&E and was back home by the time Elisenda caught up with him. He was sitting enveloped in one of the deep sofas at the house in Palau with a glass of whisky on a small table next to him. The small and ring fingers on his right hand were heavily swathed in a cast that extended back as far as his wrist, the whole of his hand wrapped in a blue sheath, and he was holding his hand up against his chest. He leaned sideways to take a drink and winced in pain, arching his back where the first blow had struck him.
The first Mosso on the scene had recognised him immediately and had accompanied him to the hospital, ensuring that he was hurried through the system and not troubled by any journalists.
‘There were already a few journalists there by the time we left,’ the uniformed Mosso had told Elisenda when she got to the house. He handed her a copy of the statement that he’d taken from Comas and she read it quickly.
‘Thanks, Francesc,’ she said. ‘News travels quickly.’
‘It does in Girona.’
He left to go back to the station. Two other Mossos were already at the house, standing guard against the growing throng of journalists outside. She watched Francesc Paredes go. He was still at the rank of mosso, one below caporal, but he was bright and eager and she’d earmarked him as a potential member of her unit. If the higher echelons ever decided to increase her budget, that is.
She sat on the sofa opposite Marc Comas, leaning forward on her haunches. The hospital had given him some heavy-duty painkillers and his voice was low, his words slurred. Elisenda could see his eyes coming in and out of focus. Susanna was sitting next to him, her right hand resting lightly on his lower arm against his chest, her wedding ring dull against the blue of his shirt sleeve. It was the first show of affection Elisenda had seen between the two. For once, Bofarull wasn’t in the room, dominating the answers. Elisenda had seen him at the kitchen table with Joan Bellsolà: the campaign manager and the family lawyer going over some papers. It was a different world from Elisenda’s. Encarna, the housekeeper, brought in a tray of coffee and set it down on the table, leaving again without saying a word. Elisenda tried to make eye contact to thank her, but the young woman kept her head down all the time she was in the room.
Recalling the statement that Mosso Paredes had taken, Elisenda asked Comas to confirm that he hadn’t seen his attacker.
In reply, the councillor gestured to his back, wincing again with the movement. ‘He came from behind me. I didn’t see a thing.’
‘And when you were lying on the ground, did you see what your attacker was wearing?’
‘Jeans. Dirty jeans. And trainers. With stripes on them. That’s all I saw.’
‘And the attacker took your phone and your wallet? Nothing else?’
‘That’s enough, wouldn’t you say?’ Miravent entered the conversation. She spoke to her husband. ‘I’ve cancelled all your credit cards, by the way, darling. You don’t have to worry about that.’
He smiled weakly back at her and closed his eyes, either from the pain or the pills he’d been given to numb it.
I’m sorry, Marc,’ Elisenda told him, ‘but I do have to ask these questions. We have to ascertain whether this is just a random mugging or if it’s related to Jaume’s disappearance.’
Comas opened his eyes, anger in them. ‘It’s a mugging. They took my wallet. What else would it be?’
‘Why would kidnappers attack my husband if they’ve taken my son,’ Miravent asked, ‘and steal his wallet? Surely they’d want to make sure we had access to money to be able to pay a ransom.’
‘That is presuming their demands are going to be financial.’ Despite her words, Elisenda was surprised that no contact had been made by any kidnappers yet. It had been nearly forty-eight hours since the boy had gone missing. Were there going to be any demands, financial or political, she would have expected them by now. Every hour that passed opened up other possibilities to explain Jaume’s disappearance.
‘And you really haven’t had any contact from anyone in relation to Jaume?’ Elisenda insisted. ‘I know that the family of kidnap victims are often told not to contact the police, but it really wouldn’t be in anyone’s interest if you dealt with anyone without our knowledge.’
‘I can assure you, we’ve heard nothing,’ Miravent told her.
‘We’ve been considering this mainly from the angle of your political profile,’ Elisenda told Miravent before turning her attention to Comas. ‘But I need to know if there’s anything in your professional life, Marc, that might lead to someone doing this to target you. Your role as a councillor, perhaps. Is there anyone you can think of who might want to hurt you in this way?’
Comas opened his eyes one more time. ‘No one.’
‘I also have to ask this. You’re members of Opus Dei, I gather.’
Miravent raised her eyebrows. ‘Members? We prefer to use the word “faithful”. If that’s what you’re referring to,
yes we are.’
‘But you don’t send Jaume to the Opus Dei school in Girona. Or Albert.’
‘You don’t have to go to church to pray, Elisenda. Or join a party to have political beliefs. We choose to send our sons to a different school for other reasons.’
‘The cost,’ Comas suddenly piped up, his eyes shut, his words increasingly less intelligible. ‘The more exorbitant the better.’ He laughed once. It had a bitter sound to it. Elisenda said nothing but filed the moment away.
‘Could your son’s kidnapping have anything to do with your faith? Anyone who is opposed to Opus Dei? Or anyone who might feel that they’ve been discriminated against by not being members?’
‘This is too ridiculous. If you really want to know,’ Miravent told her, any politician’s pretence at empathy gone, ‘it is precisely our faith that keeps us going in all this. That has kept us going through all these years and that has made us stronger.’
‘You said you felt no grief.’ Elisenda could feel the words catch slightly in her throat. She knew she was being dragged away from the point but couldn’t help herself.
Miravent pulled herself up straight on the sofa. ‘Grief? Why would we feel grief?’
‘Because your child died,’ Elisenda all but shouted, her own anger and sorrow rising in equal measure. ‘And your other child is missing.’
‘Our child was chosen. Albert was chosen to sit by God’s side. And he was chosen at an early age. That is not a cause for grief, that is a cause of pride. God chose our son. He chose us.’
‘And Jaume? What if anything happens to Jaume?’
‘Then so be it. That is also good. It is also good because it’s God’s will. Our family has been chosen, favoured.’
‘What sort of parents are you?’ Elisenda whispered.
‘Parents with faith. It’s something I cannot imagine you will ever understand.’
Elisenda looked at the other woman across the chasm that lay between them. ‘No. No, you’re right. It is something I hope I will never understand.’
* * *
Comas waited until his wife had shown Elisenda out of the room and opened his eyes, looking around him. Getting up quickly, he hurried into the small home office next to the living room and used his left hand to pull his wallet out from where he’d hidden it in his underpants. Looking at them as he took them out, he passed his credit cards one by one into the shredder and removed any other piece of paper that could connect the wallet to him. When he’d finished, he hid the wallet in one of the desk drawers. He’d throw it out with the non-recyclables when the coast was clear.
Feeling his headache getting worse, he rummaged through the drawers for the sleeping pills he always kept there, prescribed by his doctor but unknown to Susanna. He was needing them more and more lately. He couldn’t find them and panicked, worrying that she’d found them. He cursed when it was obvious they’d gone and he thought of his wife.
‘Faithful,’ he mimicked in a low voice, tears welling in his eyes as he thought of his two sons. ‘Bullshit.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘I need to get out.’
Josep looked taken aback at her words. ‘I’ve been looking through Pijaume’s investigation,’ he told her.
Elisenda sighed and sat down heavily at her desk. ‘I suppose you’d better tell me, but then we’re getting out of here.’
She told him a little of her conversation with Susanna Miravent. ‘Gruesome,’ she concluded, not wanting to talk any more about it just yet. She waved Josep to sit down. He was looming over her.
‘Sotsinspector Pijaume’s investigation into Albert’s disappearance,’ Josep said. ‘It drew a blank but it was very thorough. Pages and pages of interviews, suppositions, conclusions. All good. I don’t see how it could have been conducted any differently.’
She looked at him. He looked as defeated as she felt.
‘He was a good detective,’ she concluded. ‘Unfortunately.’
They sat in silence for a moment, lost in thought.
It was Josep who spoke first. ‘The original investigation’s conclusion was that the boy had drowned in the river and the body been swept into the river system and either lost somewhere in there or taken out to sea. An accident. No human hand involved.’
She turned to look at the map of the Girona region on the wall to her right. There was a network of small blue lines in the mountains leading almost at right-angles into progressively bigger and bigger lines, flowing eventually to the sea.
She exhaled slowly. ‘I forget how extensive the river system is. Maybe he was right.’
‘But you still want to check,’ Josep guessed. ‘Because it’s Pijaume.’
‘So do you.’
He nodded. ‘They had suspects. No one in particular. They questioned known sex offenders, but those were the only leads they really had. Nothing came of any of them.’
‘What about the car that Jaume says he saw?’
‘The parents heard it too, but nothing. No one ever came forward to say they’d been in the area. The cars of the suspects they did have were seen in Girona on that day, so they couldn’t have been involved. Added to that, there’d been another incident on the same day about an hour earlier. It was seven kilometres away, a fatal hit-and-run, and Seguretat Ciutadana had set up road controls, which meant that cars going in and out of the area were controlled. Anyone snatching Albert would have had to go through the controls, which makes it unlikely that he was abducted. It also means they were very aware of sightings of cars in the area, and that still turned up nothing. From the notes, I get the impression that Pijaume’s team began to doubt the boy’s and the parents’ seeing or hearing a car.’
‘What about the hit-and-run driver? Could they have been involved?’
‘Never caught. They never found who did it.’
‘See if Seguretat Ciutadana still have records of the cars that went through the control. It’s long shot, but there might be something that makes more sense now.’
Josep made a note of that. ‘I haven’t spoken to Sotsinspector Armengol yet. He was going to be looking at sex offenders.’
Looking through the glass partition, Elisenda saw that Armengol was in the outer office, talking to a member of his unit about something. He caught her eye and signalled that he wanted a word, so she beckoned him in. He leaned in through the door, his left hand holding on to the frame, his body only half in the room.
‘Your sex offenders,’ he told Elisenda. ‘We’ve taken it down to five that we want to have a word with. They’re the only ones whose profiles that we can see might lead to them taking a fourteen-year-old boy.’
‘We have two who were questioned at the time of the older brother’s disappearance,’ Josep told him.
‘Have you got the names?’ Armengol swung into the room and leaned over the caporal.
Josep asked Elisenda if he could bring up the files on her computer screen and twisted it around to show Armengol. The sotsinspector pushed his glasses up his nose to see it more clearly.
‘Yup,’ he told them. ‘Both on our list.’
Elisenda turned the screen back to face her and looked at the names. She didn’t recognise either. ‘Can you give these two priority, Sotsinspector Armengol?’
‘Esteve, please,’ he asked her, not for the first time. ‘Yes, we’ll look at those two first and I’ll let you know if they look like they’re worth pursuing further. What conclusions did the previous investigation reach regarding them?’
‘Ruled out,’ Josep replied. ‘I think they were questioned as a matter of course. It was only as no other avenues appeared to be opening up that the investigation came back to them.’
‘Belt and braces,’ Armengol commented. He turned to go. ‘I’ll get on to it.’
After he’d gone, Josep turned back to face Elisenda. ‘With respect, Elisenda, you’re still not sure about him, are you?’
She watched Armengol in the outer office, talking to a couple of officers in his unit. ‘I�
�ve just got to get used to him.’
‘He seems all right.’ Josep’s voice was tentative. ‘Maybe we need to give him more of a chance.’
‘Maybe.’ Elisenda looked at her caporal. ‘And maybe we all need to give Manel a bit more of a chance.’
Josep puffed his cheeks out. With his unruly hair and slumped posture, he looked like a recalcitrant teenager. ‘Maybe Manel should try not to make that so hard.’
‘Make what so hard.’ The voice was Àlex’s. He walked into the room and flopped down on a chair. ‘Christ, it’s humid outside today. We need a good thunderstorm to clear the air.’
‘Ah, but that doesn’t always help,’ Elisenda told him. ‘Any joy.’
Àlex shook his head. ‘Siset’s nowhere to be found. I’ve tried all his usual places and he wasn’t in any of them.’
‘And no one’s seen him, I take it.’
‘He’s invisible.’ Àlex laughed. ‘I spoke to Elena again. I told her that you were looking after his bag for him and that there was a reward waiting for him for information about the house robberies. He may be just dumb enough and greedy enough to fall for it.’
Elisenda considered her informant. His canny sense of self-preservation battling it out with his low-grade hustling. ‘Worth a try. What’s your next move?’
‘Manel and I are going to be going through the attacks to see if we can find a pattern we’ve missed. We can’t just let them carry on what they’re doing until we get lucky.’
‘Sounds good.’ Elisenda picked up her bag and stood up. ‘Let me know if anything comes up. Josep and I are getting out of here.’
As she walked past, Josep turned to Àlex and mouthed ‘We are?’, jumping up to follow her. Àlex grinned back at him and shrugged his shoulders.
Quarter of an hour later, Josep found himself driving a pool car along the Pedret road. They were heading north, out of the city. To their left, the Ter flowed heavy, already full from the rainfall higher up its course and now enriched with the waters of the Onyar.