by Chris Lloyd
And now groups of miquelets chatted with Napoleonic troops while children skittered in and out of them and laughed. Soon they’d be going home or taking a stroll through the old town or through the park before a drink and a bite to eat. And she was following a lone figure while Pere Vergés was being driven to the mortuary and Susanna Miravent was taking her son with her while she cast her vote in front of the cameras. The thoughts nagged at her.
The figure stopped at his tent and she caught him up.
‘Are you following me?’ he asked her, but the spark was gone from his eyes.
‘Yes. I want to know how you know Susanna Miravent.’
He sat down on the log stool and took his hat off. This time there was no flourish.
‘I told you. I don’t know Susanna Miravent. We have a common history but I don’t know her. It’s Pere Vergés that I knew.’
‘Vergés?’
‘Yes. I was going to kill him.’
* * *
The man in the house tucked away at the end of a winding drive off the Sant Adri road glanced out of the window at the front of the house, but it was all quiet out there. The rain that had fallen over by Susqueda earlier in the day had clipped the house in passing and the ground outside was wet. He could see coils of steam rising as the sun dried it out.
Moving easily through the downstairs rooms, he looked out of the rear window. A car was parked there, but there was no one sitting in it. He knew there was another car out on the main road, past the entrance to the house. He tried sitting down on the faded sofa in the living room, but he couldn’t settle, so he wandered through the rooms again and examined the photographs on the wall in the dining room. It was the story of a mother and father turning grey and becoming grandparents to children that grew up to go to university, the colours less faded as the tale came into the present day. He smiled at the pride in their eyes at graduations and christenings and first communions.
The dining table was still cluttered after Sunday lunch, the plates and glasses in convivial disarray. The family here for a family meal, young and old, the traditionally confused and the social media savvy.
The doorbell rang.
Taking a deep breath, he looked out of the living room window. A car was parked at the front of the house. Beyond it, a second car was driving slowly along the drive, half-hidden by the trees.
The man went to the door and paused a brief moment before opening it. In front of him were two men in their thirties, dressed in short-sleeved shirts and trousers. Neither of them would have stood out in a crowd, both wore ingratiating smiles. In his hand, one of them was holding a small pile of pamphlets.
Holding onto the door he’d just opened and watching the unmarked car slowly come to a halt behind the two men, Àlex smiled back at them.
‘I’ve been expecting you,’ he told them.
* * *
‘You were going to kill Pere Vergés?’
‘Yes, but it’s too late now. He’s dead.’
Elisenda was stunned. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Susanna Miravent. She’s posted it on social media. Apparently, her god has given her back her son and he’s punished the man responsible. So all is right with the world.’
Elisenda looked up at the trees reaching above her and swore. Bringing her gaze back, she looked at the man sitting opposite her. ‘Why were you going to kill Pere Vergés?’
He laughed gently and replaced his tricorne on his head. Some scintilla of the normal gleam returned to his eyes. ‘I am a storyteller. Let me hide behind that one more time. But first, don’t you want to know why I have a shared history with Susanna Miravent?’
‘I want to know everything.’
Seamlessly, he adopted his persona, the iconoclastic teller of tales, always on the brink of chaos.
‘Two children. One rich, one poor. Well, not poor perhaps, but certainly not as rich as the first one.’
‘You’ve already told this story.’
‘I know I have, but you didn’t get it the first time.’ He gazed frankly at her and she nodded that he should continue. ‘Two children. I have painted the picture for you already. So one day, the first child goes missing and is then believed to have died. And all the finest people in the land got all the finest searchers in the land to upturn every stone and to pin every known miscreant to the wall, and all the modern-day storytellers, or the media as we call them, gave us hour-by-hour tales of everything that was happening. And the child’s mother, an infamous comedy villain who the modern-day storytellers had allowed to infest our every waking hour, appeared every day asking us all for our support as the help she was already getting from all the institutions in the land apparently wasn’t enough.’
‘Jaume Comas Miravent,’ Elisenda interrupted.
He gave a small shake of his head. ‘Albert Comas Miravent. This story took place once upon a time four years ago.’
‘His brother?’
‘I told you there were two children. But Jaume isn’t one of them. Our two children are Albert Comas Miravent and another child called Jordi Sobrerroca Punyent.’
‘I don’t know who that is.’
The sparkle in his eyes flashed the colour of steel for a moment and was quenched.
‘No one does. Not then. Not now. But he also died on the same day as Albert Comas Miravent. And he died just a short distance away from where Albert died. The problem is no one got all the finest searchers in the land to find who was responsible for it and none of the modern-day storytellers had any room for his story as they were too taken up with the story of the rich child. So he died unnoticed and his death went unresolved and now the searchers don’t even know his name.’
Elisenda gasped. ‘The hit-and-run. The same day Albert went missing, a mother and child were killed on the road.’
‘My son,’ he told her. ‘And my wife. They died on the same day a wealthy politician’s child went missing and no one gave a moment’s care to their deaths.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
He took several deep breaths before answering. ‘You of all people should know what it feels like.’
She had to search for her own calm before she could continue. ‘Why Pere Vergés?’
‘He was driving the car that killed my wife and my son.’
She gasped for a second time. ‘How can you know?’
‘I investigated. The Mossos d’Esquadra weren’t doing it and the media weren’t doing it, so I had to. I was a maths teacher, I was used to logic and supposition, probabilities and outcomes, and I looked for the last four years and I discovered who it was who had killed my family. And it was Pere Vergés. And I discovered that he had been released from prison for a crime that he didn’t commit, and I was going to punish him for a crime that he did.’
‘While he was after revenge of his own for the injustice against him.’
The man was lost in thought for a moment. ‘Are you so sure of that? I don’t see why he would be. He’d stand to lose so much more if he started digging up what really happened that day. His actions were far worse than any fraud. His own punishment would have been worse than anything he’d already experienced.’
Elisenda digested his words. They added to the questions she was already asking herself.
‘Would you really have killed him?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ll never know.’
The quiet under the trees amid the hubbub of the people in the park was shattered by Elisenda’s mobile. She was about to cancel the call but then she saw who the caller was.
‘I have to answer this, I’m sorry.’
It was Albert Riera.
‘Elisenda? There’s something here you need to see.’
She hung up and sighed and walked away from the leader of the cercavila.
Chapter Sixty-One
‘Is your husband in?’ Elisenda asked Susanna Miravent. ‘I think he should be present.’
Miravent stared up at Elisenda and Montse from her sofa. Jaume was sitting next to her, a se
cond hot chocolate on the coffee table in front of him. ‘I really don’t see that that’s necessary. I’m present, that should be sufficient.’
‘Please, Senyora Miravent.’
Elisenda waited while the politician ill-naturedly called for Encarna and told her to fetch her husband.
On the way from seeing the pathologist, Elisenda had stopped at Vista Alegre to pick up Montse to go with her to see the family in Palau. While she was there, Àlex had told her about the pamphleteers.
‘They’re in the other cells now,’ he added. ‘We’re about to question them.’
Elisenda had to focus on what he was saying. It really was a breakthrough. ‘That’s excellent news. Well done.’
‘This could be the key to getting into the whole of the gang. These two are going to have to know at least each of the team leaders. We haven’t got the other two teams, but we’ve got one of them and the two people who organise the attacks. That’s got to mean we’ve pulled the teeth of the operation.’
She considered his words. ‘Yes, I think you’re right. Without the two organisers, the other teams are in disarray at least.’
‘And I think we’ll be able to get to them through the ones we’ve already got. Even if we can’t, with the people we’ve arrested, we’ve brought the operation down. They can all be as Venezuelan as they want, we’ve got them.’
She also spoke to Josep while she waited for Montse to check out a pool car.
‘The hit-and-run accident on the same day Albert Comas Miravent went missing. Find out everything we have on it, and check Pere Vergés’s movements that day if we still have any record of them.’
Josep looked surprised at the request. ‘I don’t know how much I’ll be able to find.’
‘Do what you can.’
In the house in Palau, Marc Comas walked into the living room, surprised to have been summoned.
‘I just have a few more questions for Jaume,’ Elisenda explained. ‘I think you should both be here.’
She was sitting at the end of one of the sofas where it met the other one at a right-angle. Jaume was sitting on the second one, in the corner nearest to her. She spoke directly to him.
‘You’ve been through a terrible experience, Jaume, and I understand you’re very upset, but there are some things that I have to ask you. Take your time with your answers.’
He looked directly back at her. He still looked the child on the cusp of adulthood he had earlier, but some of the self-assuredness with which people had described him appeared to be returning. His gaze had the same lazy confidence that his mother’s had. Elisenda reached forward and took hold of both his hands. Surprised by the gesture, he made no attempt to withdraw them.
‘When Pere Vergés held you in the house, did he hurt you in any way, Jaume?’
‘No, I told you. He was always nice to me.’
‘But he tied you up, didn’t he? We found the metal ties in the water in the cellar.’
The boy gulped. ‘Yes, he did.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You see, you were unlikely to be able to get out of the cellar without the ladder there. Did he leave it in place while you were on your own?’
Jaume looked uncertain. ‘No, he always lifted it out.’
She nodded and rubbed his hands, pushing his sweatshirt sleeves up. ‘You see, the thing is, Jaume, you don’t have any marks on your wrists where the metal ties would have dug in.’
They both looked down at the unblemished skin on his wrists.
‘What is this all about, Sotsinspectora?’ Miravent complained but Elisenda ignored her.
‘I’ve just been to see Doctor Riera,’ Elisenda continued talking to the boy. ‘The doctor who examined you. He had something he wanted to show me. You see, Jaume, Pere Vergés did have wounds on one of his wrists where the metal ties would have been. That’s because he was the one who was tied up, isn’t it, Jaume?’
The boy opened and closed his mouth but no sound came out. Miravent moved forward nearer to her son.
‘What is this?’ she demanded.
‘I’ve been talking to someone else, Jaume,’ Elisenda persisted, her voice gentle. ‘Someone who knows what happened on the day that Albert died.’
For a moment, she thought he was going to be able to brazen it out, but his face suddenly crumpled and he began to cry. She held on to his hands, squeezing them to calm him.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he said between sobs. ‘Not really. I was just making fun of Albert because he wouldn’t go swimming, and he jumped in the water before I knew it.’
Miravent gasped and shrank back. ‘You did what? But you knew he wasn’t a good swimmer.’
Her son rounded on her. ‘He was always your favourite because he was the bright one. You were always telling him how clever he was. Never me. But I was stronger. It was the one way I could beat him.’
‘What did you do, Jaume?’ she whispered.
‘I made him go in the water. I made fun of him until he did it. It was my fault. I didn’t think he would.’
Elisenda couldn’t help feeling sorry for the boy at the maternal support that was so easily taken back when it suited his mother and the coldness of faith that he must have experienced his entire life.
‘But what did you think we’d do?’ his mother asked him.
‘You’d have said it was my fault. You always made me look after him, but he was older than me. I shouldn’t have had to look out for him. I’d have got the blame. I always got the blame.’
‘What happened next, Jaume?’ Elisenda encouraged him.
The boy calmed down a little. ‘He got out of his depth and he just disappeared. I didn’t see where he went but he was just gone. I couldn’t do anything about it. It was too late.’
‘Did you bother to go into the water after him?’ Miravent demanded.
‘Please, Senyora Miravent,’ Elisenda silenced her. She continued to look at Jaume. ‘And then you saw someone, didn’t you?’
Jaume looked up at her and nodded. ‘Senyor Vergés. He was on the other bank, watching. He didn’t say anything, he just watched what happened. He saw what I’d done.’ His sobbing renewed at the last utterance.
‘What was he doing, Jaume?’
‘He was cleaning his car. He was getting water from the riverbank and cleaning the front of his car. And then he drove off. He just looked at me and he didn’t say anything, he just drove off. And I thought he’d tell on me, and when he went to prison, I was so happy because I thought no one would believe him if he said anything.’
‘And then he came out of prison,’ Elisenda prompted.
‘He came out of prison and I thought he’d tell on me now and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t let him tell my parents what I’d done. So I telephoned him and asked him to come and pick me up in the city centre. I had it all planned.’ Strangely, there was a slight note of pride in his last words. ‘I asked him to drive us out to the house by Susqueda because I had something to show him.’
‘And he willingly went,’ Elisenda surmised. She stifled a sigh. Vergés would have gone with the boy because he thought that Jaume was going to blackmail him about having seen him in the area where the mother and child were killed that day. And Jaume thought Vergés was going to spill the beans about what happened to his brother.
‘I asked him to go down into the cellar,’ the boy continued. ‘And when he was down there, I pulled up the ladder. He started shouting at me to let him up, but I couldn’t. He started getting angry and I was afraid what he’d do.’
‘Is that why you tied him to the rings in the wall?’
He nodded. ‘I had some sleeping pills my father kept in his drawer, and I put them in a bottle of water and threw it down to him. When he was asleep, I went down and tied one of his hands to the rings.’
‘Sleeping pills,’ Miravent shouted. ‘Marc, how could you?’
Elisenda ignored her and carried on talking to Jaume. ‘What happened
on the day it rained?’
‘I could see the water rising, but I didn’t know what to do. I thought if I went down, he’d be angry and leave me down there while he got out. He was shouting at me, begging me to let him out, and I didn’t know what to do. And then the water was up to his middle and I had to go down and cut him loose. But the water kept coming in and I made it up the ladder, but when he tried, it slipped into the water again. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran. I was going to go for help and then you were all there and I panicked. I didn’t know who you were.’
He ran out of words to say and the room was suddenly silent, the four adults shocked.
‘What did you think you were going to do?’ his mother asked him.
‘I don’t know. I just knew I couldn’t let him tell you what I’d done. I didn’t know what I was going to do.’
‘Jaume,’ Elisenda told him. It was one of the hardest things she could ever remember having to say. ‘You weren’t to blame for Albert’s death. It was an accident. Brothers and sisters are always goading each other, it doesn’t mean they’re to blame for anything. The day he died, Pere Vergés killed two people in another accident. But this time, he was to blame. You hadn’t done anything wrong, he had.’ She watched his face crumble into tears again. ‘He would never have told on you, Jaume, he had more to hide than you did.’
‘So where does that leave us?’ Miravent demanded.
Elisenda ignored her and continued to hold on to Jaume’s hands as he cried.
Chapter Sixty-Two
The evening was drawing in as Elisenda walked through the Devesa. The tents where the cercavila troupe had been sleeping were packed and gone. The stands selling toys and crafts were still going strong for another hour or so, a huge and shining copper still bubbling aromatically away at one of them. The last of the re-enactors were getting on a coach, their muskets and uniforms stowed in the hold until their next weekend battle. Lights were strung between the trees and glowing from the bars and restaurants on the edge of town. Another Sunday evening.