by Chris Lloyd
‘He told you to say that?’
‘Yes.’ Her head slumped forward again as the door opened and Josep came back in with a bottle of water and a plastic cup.
‘They’re bringing the coffee now,’ he told Elisenda.
They waited until a mosso came in with a hot drink and asked him to stay with Elena, while they went back to their unit’s offices.
‘Now what?’ Josep asked.
‘We give her the bag.’ She turned and saw his look of surprise. ‘Siset knows you, doesn’t he? We’ll have to ask Manel.’
Back in their outer room, she gathered Montse and Manel into her office and explained to them and a mystified Josep that Siset had sent Elena to collect the bag. ‘The thing is, our Siset won’t trust Elena to look after it for too long, so he’ll be waiting somewhere nearby for her to take it to him.’
Josep suddenly saw what she was driving it. ‘Manel. Siset doesn’t know Manel, so he follows her until she gives the bag to Siset.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I am in the room, you know,’ Manel complained.
Elisenda turned to him. ‘When Elena leaves with the bag, you follow her until she meets someone. You’ll be looking for a scrawny little affair with unwashed hair and a broken nose. He’ll be wearing jeans and a filthy T-shirt for a band that split up at least fifteen years ago.’
‘You can’t fail to spot Siset,’ Josep confirmed.
‘When she does,’ Elisenda carried on, ‘you arrest the little sod and bring him back here. Try not to lose your temper with him.’
Elisenda pulled Siset’s bag down from the filing cabinet. The piece of jewellery that had been in there had already been removed and bagged and placed in the evidence room.
‘I’ll give this to Elena,’ she told Manel. ‘You wait on the corner outside until she comes out. You’d better bring her back in with you as well. She needs to sleep it off.’
After giving Elena the satchel and sending her on her unsteady way, Elisenda had been back in her office for less than ten minutes before Manel rang her on her mobile. She could hear the faint exertion in his voice and the sound of whining in the background.
‘You’ve got him,’ she guessed.
‘He was waiting down by the river. Less than a hundred metres away.’
‘Well done. See you here in a moment.’
She could hear an interruption. Some scuffling and a plaintive howl. Manel growled something away from the phone before talking into it again.
‘Do I really have to keep my temper?’
Chapter Thirty-Three
‘Your boss doesn’t like me much, does she?’
Àlex stirred his coffee, even though there was no sugar in it, and tried to find the words to say. He called to the waiter and asked for an orange juice.
Armengol laughed. ‘Buying time while you think how to answer that one. Good, I like it. Loyalty.’ He waited in silence, not filling the gap.
‘She has to get used to change,’ Àlex finally answered. ‘Your post has connotations, not you.’
He looked up to see Armengol nodding slowly. The sotsinspector looked down and concentrated on slowly moving the slice of lemon around in a cup of chamomile tea. They were in La Llosa, the café next door to the Mossos station.
‘We’ve drawn a blank,’ Armengol finally told him. ‘With the sex offenders. The second guy we wanted to see has got nothing to do with it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘For one thing, he’s got a watertight alibi. He was at a convention from Friday to Tuesday. Also, his profile’s wrong.’ Armengol sounded uncomfortable as he said it. ‘He was convicted for having sex with a fifteen-year-old boy twelve years ago. He was nineteen at the time. They’re now married. There are sex offenders and there are sex offenders.’ He looked up. ‘But I think your boss has felt all along that Jaume’s disappearance is nothing to do with these offenders. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have farmed it out to us.’
Àlex could only agree. ‘We have to cover all possibilities.’
‘Oh, I’m not criticising. I would have done exactly the same.’
* * *
‘It’s my property.’
‘No, it’s not, Siset, you stole it.’
Siset looked at Elisenda, aggrieved. Manel was sitting next to her in the interview room, an irritable presence that was cowing Elisenda’s informant.
‘The bag’s mine.’
She showed him the stolen jewellery. ‘But this isn’t.’
Siset sniffed. ‘Never seen it before, Elisenda.’
‘Do you know, you’re right. It’s all our mistake. Tell you what, we’ll drive you back to Font de la Pólvora and drop you off right by where Tío Juan sits. We’ll all get out of the car in front of him and Manel here will shake your hand and I’ll apologise to you for all the inconvenience we’ve caused you and tell you that I hope we can carry on working together so profitably in the future. It’ll be like a little race. See if you can get to your apartment before all the people in the neighbourhood who hear about it can get there. What do you say?’
‘You wouldn’t.’ He looked at her cold stare and hung his head. ‘You would.’
She picked up the jewellery again. ‘But I can make this go away. All you have to do is tell me about the people you got it from.’
She could see the calculations behind his eyes. Slow in so much else, he was quick in surviving the street and could work out his options in fractions of a second. Not that he had many that she could see.
‘They’ll kill me,’ he suddenly whined. ‘They’ll literally kill me.’
‘And if you don’t tell me, I’ll kill you. I’ll figuratively kill you.’
‘Figuratively?’ He blanched.
‘And after that, we’ll be through. You’ll be no use to me, so I’ll have to remove your protection as a trusted member of society. The next time you’re caught with something like this, Siset, and believe me, you will be, you’ll be looking at years. In prison, with all the others you’ve helped send there.’
‘They don’t know about that.’
‘Not yet, no.’ Elisenda put on a thoughtful face. ‘But if I have to remove your protection, who knows what might get out.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
She could see the thoughts race across his face again, like a rat trapped in an experimental maze, treat or punishment waiting at one end or the other. He appeared to reach a decision.
‘I’m not saying anything. I can’t.’
Elisenda studied his face. She knew he needed a bit more softening up. ‘OK. I’ll ask you again in the morning.’
‘Can I go now?’ He started to stand up, but Manel reached across and pushed him back into his seat.
‘You’re not going anywhere, Siset,’ Elisenda told him. ‘One other thing. What do you know about Marc Comas?’
He looked genuinely mystified. ‘Nothing. I’ve never heard of him.’
‘He was mugged on Plaça de Sant Josep on Tuesday. His attacker took a mobile phone and a wallet with credit cards. Has anyone tried to sell any of those items to you?’
‘No, I don’t know a thing about that.’
‘Have you heard anyone saying they’d done it? Or talking about someone else doing it?’
His reply was the same. She’d worked with him enough over the last couple of years to know the telltale signs when he genuinely didn’t know something. One of them was scratching idly at his left armpit with his right hand while he thought. He was doing it now. It was no surprise. She’d had a feeling all along that Comas’s assault was anything but a normal street mugging.
‘Thanks, Siset,’ she told him. ‘You’ve finally said something helpful.’
‘I have? Can I go now?’
She packed up the jewellery and stood up. ‘You’re staying here. Manel will show you to a nice room for the night. Talk to you again in the morning.’
She left Siset to stare at Manel’s expressionless face.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Elisenda took one last look at the photo of Pere Vergés and put it away. It was the most recent one they had on record, taken on the day he was formally charged with fraud. She’d visited his elderly neighbours quickly that afternoon to ask them to take a look at it and tell her if his appearance had changed much.
‘Bit thinner, that’s all,’ the wife had said.
‘Weedy little bugger, ain’t he?’ the husband had added. ‘Not a looker like me.’
‘Language,’ Elisenda had chorused with the wife.
She watched the audience now file into the television studio and start filling up the seats. The stage, crowded with eight lecterns arranged in a crescent, was empty for the moment. The stars of the show would be turning up once everyone was in their place. She looked around. The other four members of her team were standing at various points near the stage or by the audience. Half a dozen more Mossos in plain clothes were at the rear and sides of the studio, scanning the room. Puigventós was standing next to her. He’d agreed with her that Pere Vergés now had to be considered a suspect in Jaume’s disappearance, and consequently a potential danger to the boy’s mother.
In front of her, a floor manager was explaining to the audience how the debate would work and reminding them that it was going to be broadcast live. Elisenda had also reminded her team not to get annoyed with the politics they’d be hearing from the stage.
‘Particularly from the woman we’re here to protect,’ she’d added with a stern warning. She checked now that they were all tuned in, speaking quietly into the mouthpiece attached to her ear. Each one replied in turn.
The lights in the room dimmed and the spots were directed at the stage as the moderator, a news presenter from Barcelona, introduced the candidates one by one on to the stage. The programme was being made by the Catalan television channel for broadcast throughout Catalonia. The four main cities were getting the same treatment. Lleida and Tarragona had been done the previous two evenings, tonight was Girona’s turn and tomorrow night was Barcelona, completing the series before Saturday’s day of reflection, the day when voters considered their vote and parties weren’t allowed to engage in any electioneering.
‘I don’t need protection,’ Miravent had insisted just an hour earlier, when Elisenda and Puigventós had visited her to tell her of events.
‘You do,’ Elisenda had replied, accepting no argument. ‘There is a potential threat.’
‘I have a job to do,’ the politician had objected.
‘So do I,’ Elisenda had countered, and that was that.
The first to speak for three minutes was one of the candidates seeking independence from Spain. Five of the eight on the stage were seeking the same, but all from differing perspectives, ranging from the far left to the moderate right. One of the remaining three also sought an independence referendum but was standing for the Catalan branch of a Spain-wide party whose official line was anti-independence so as not to alienate voters elsewhere. Since the recession, politics in Catalonia had got a whole lot more complicated and the middle ground of voters more perplexed.
Next up was Miravent. Like all the others speaking, she was the head of her party’s list for Girona. A percentage of seats in the Catalan parliament was awarded to each party, proportional to the number of votes they won. If that meant that a party won four seats in Girona out of a possible seventeen, then the first four candidates on the list were elected to those seats. At the last elections, Miravent’s party had won one seat, which she’d taken as head of the list.
‘Catalonia is Spain,’ she began, ‘and Spain is Catalonia.’
‘Fuck off,’ Manel muttered in her ear. She heard three other sharp intakes of breath at the politician’s words, each one masking her own. Telling herself that she had to concentrate on the job in hand of protecting Miravent and searching for Vergés in the audience, she tuned in and out of the woman’s words.
‘Independence is a myth. Our country was never independent. On the eleventh of September 1714, when we all celebrate the loss of our freedom, we were as much a part of Spain as we are now.’
Around her, Elisenda could hear large parts of the audience getting restless. The studio manager struggled to stop a few boos.
‘You’ve got to admit,’ Puigventós whispered, leaning in to her, ‘she does make good television.’
Elisenda looked at him and rolled her eyes. His eyes sparkled in a hidden grin.
‘We are voting now for our regional government,’ Miravent persevered.
‘We are not a region,’ someone in the audience shouted. ‘We are a nation.’
There was a widespread cheer, which the studio manager tried to flap down with his tablet. Some in the audience shushed the hecklers, not necessarily because they agreed with her.
‘You should be out looking for your son,’ someone called.
The room suddenly hushed and Miravent looked intently at the heckler. ‘I am looking for my son, but I am also a democrat. Our democracy, our right to remain a part of a nation, cannot be endangered by those who would undermine that. I best serve my son by serving the people, by ensuring we are not led astray by lies built on a myth that seek to destroy our family.’
‘Nice,’ Elisenda whispered to Puigventós, anger clear in her voice. ‘Imply her opponents are behind it without actually saying it.’
‘Bullshit,’ a heckler in the audience yelled.
‘Don’t interrupt her,’ another shouted. ‘Let her speak, then vote against her.’
That not only got a cheer, it also seemed to placate the crowd, which settled down to let her have her say, interrupted only by the occasional shocked gasp or the sight of almost an entire studio shaking their heads.
‘A regional government,’ she continued. ‘We are dependent on Madrid and that makes us greater. We will always be dependent on Madrid and I welcome that. With or without the pipe dream of independence, we will always be bound to Spain by language, by culture, by history and by common bonds that will never be broken.’
Elisenda turned and scanned the audience. Marc Comas was sitting at the front, to the left, his face impassive. Elisenda wondered not only how well his wife’s politics went down at his place of work, but also just how far he agreed with it. Little, if his stony look was anything to go by. It was a marriage with little mutual support for each other, particularly now that their second son had gone missing.
Miravent summed up her argument before the remaining speakers and the free-for-all of the open debate were due to start.
‘Unity,’ she said, pausing for effect. Elisenda saw Bofarull again living the speech with her. ‘In unity, there is strength, a common purpose, a common language. The widespread teaching of Catalan at the expense of Spanish in our schools holds our children back. The widespread use of Catalan in our businesses holds our economy back. The widespread use of Catalan in our institutions holds our culture back. I am not advocating a relegation of the Catalan language and culture, I am advocating a call for its equality with the Spanish language and culture. I am advocating equality through unity.’
In the relative quiet at the end of her words, when the ensuing commotion had died down, Manel’s voice came loud through her earpiece. ‘Are we sure the kid didn’t just make a break for it to get away from this bollocks?’
‘Manel,’ Elisenda heard Montse’s voice, ‘there are times when I could love you.’
Next to her, she saw the smile on Puigventós’ face and realised that it was mirroring her own. At least there was one form of unity that Miravent was contributing to.
* * *
After the broadcast, Elisenda and her team ferried Miravent and Comas back to their home as a precaution, even though there’d been no other incidents than the vitriol sprayed liberally around the television studio. There had been no sign of Vergés or of anyone trying to approach the politician or her husband. In Palau, the Mossos’ presence in and around their house had been doubled. Elisenda asked the Científica holding fort in the spare bedroom if
there’d been any activity, but they said there’d been nothing. She could see they were getting bored at the seeming lack of any purpose in their being there.
‘If this is Vergés holding Jaume,’ she told Puigventós, ‘why hasn’t he contacted the parents with any demands?’
‘Maybe he has no demands. Maybe this is simply revenge.’
‘Or maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree.’
Puigventós took his glasses off to rub his eyes. ‘Are you going home now?’
She shook her head. ‘I want to head off to the Devesa. We’ve had Seguretat Ciutadana there this evening showing Jaume’s picture to the sideshows and stands that have set up in the park ready for the weekend. I want to see if that’s had any joy.’
Montse dropped her off by the park and then headed back to leave the pool car at Vista Alegre. Elisenda watched the tail lights lose themselves in the fine drizzle that had just started to fall in the city and turned to walk into the shelter under the towering plane trees. Planted close together centuries earlier, their only way to grow was up, so they were tall and slender with sparse foliage lower down, the leaves seeking sunlight towards the tops of the trees. It meant they provided a cathedral-like canopy of shade in the sun and refuge in the winter. But the park had other connotations for Elisenda, the scars healing but still livid, and she shuddered involuntarily.
It was less than a year ago that one of her team had been murdered in the Devesa. The stripped bark of the plane trees disappearing into the night and the thick bushes at their foot in parts of the park she now walked through brought back the memories. She struggled to push them away, but the pattering of the drizzle on the dry leaves seemed to whisper a hidden threat at every path leading off the dusty central avenue. In the gloom, she looked down to see the ground swirl into a deep crimson veneer under the fine mist that made it through the trees.
She stopped and stood still, telling herself to hold it together. He had died at the other end of the park, where the undergrowth was more unfettered, the bushes more overgrown, the shadows more menacing. That was far from where she was now, there was no threat. Only her. Up ahead, she saw a figure approaching. He raised an arm in recognition and carried on walking towards her, his face in darkness under the night trees, his movements spectral in the floating haze. Slowing her breath down to stay calm, she stared intently at the man. The glow of lamps behind him and the meagre moonlight that filtered down from above blurred his outline, his silhouette slowly dancing as he came near. His face was in shadow. It was only as he emerged into a less dense patch of the park that she finally saw that he was in uniform.