‘Last night. The landlord’s big thug came and made us stay in the living room whilst he checked our rooms. We told him that we had nothing, but I guess you did. How much were you squirrelling away from us, then?’ Spider asked.
It didn’t matter now. ‘€5,000.’
‘What the fuck! You were holding out on us all this time,’ said Spider.
‘Oh M…’ Inga put a hand on her arm.
Last night… there was still time. If they took the money it was possible they would just throw the bag containing the towel and the clothes away. She pushed past Spider and Inga and stormed out of the apartment, taking the stairs two at a time. When she reached the street, she turned left and there, just yards away from the house, was the large plastic rubbish cart that served the street. She pressed down on the lever with her foot and the cover lifted open.
She almost retched at the hot fetid smell that hit her from the mass of fermenting food, waste and filth that filled the bin. She had seen the poor and dispossessed scouring the city bins for scraps of metal or anything of value. She had always judged them the most blighted and tenacious of the city’s underclass but she had never understood how they could bring themselves to climb in and immerse themselves in such a putrid environment. Now she did understand. It was survival.
Meredith pressed with both hands and then pushed herself forward and into the bin. The lid slammed shut as she tumbled over and inside.
At first, she thought she would die. There seemed to be no air, but she tried gulping and realised that there was, though it was heavy, hot and wet. It was the smell of baking excrement, grease and every bodily fluid and waste product you didn’t want to imagine. Meredith breathed this air and began to sort through the piles of rubbish. She thought she had the bag, but it was a stinking wet nappy that she triumphantly brought to the surface. This time she did vomit but she kept plunging her hands into the morass and checking every rag that she brought up out of the filth.
‘M!’ There was a banging on the outside of the bin and then the lid swung open.
It was Inga. ‘Christ, M. Are you okay?’ She put a hand over her mouth as the stench hit her.
Meredith sobbed. ‘It’s all I had in the world.’
‘Oh M, it’s only money.’ Inga held out a hand. Meredith looked at it, wondering what to do – part of her just wanted to lie down and die in the filth. Inga smiled and Meredith saw the pity etched on her face. Meredith took hold of Inga’s hand and let her help her up and out of the bin. A couple of passing tourists paused and without asking took pictures of her as she climbed out. Meredith couldn’t help but think that they would make good posts.
She followed Inga back into the flat and took a shower. Then Inga lent her some of her purloined clothes to wear. Meredith’s own were fouled and stained beyond saving.
Meredith thanked her and then left. She had found a card in her bedroom. It was the card given to her by the landlord, Carlos Llul.
22
The address was in the Gothic Quarter and only fifteen minutes’ walk from her place in the Raval.
Meredith spent the time trying to calm herself down and rationalise. It wasn’t easy. The towel, Fernández had admitted, was the only piece of forensic evidence that could tie her to Ferran’s flat on the day of the murder. Without that, they had nothing. The sighting of a young woman entering the building by some geriatric pensioner amounted to nothing. With the towel, she was home free. Without it, there was the chance of a knock on the door. But if the towel was in the city dump then what were the chances that it would ever be found? Slim, but what if it was found? What if Carlos still had the bag, wondered why there was a towel in there and linked her to the murder of Amy? If he watched the TV news or read the papers, he would know about it.
She couldn’t bear not knowing and not being in control of the situation. Just waiting for the knock on the door was not a course of action. Whilst there was a chance she could find it and dispose of it properly she had to act on it.
The address on the card led her to one of the dark, twisted alleys of the Gothic Quarter but one that was off the main tourist routes. It was a narrow passageway with room for maybe four people standing abreast. It screamed muggings and violence and this explained why, even on a hot Barcelona summer’s afternoon, it was deserted. The narrowness did afford it protection from the sun and she welcomed the coolness of the air. Even after showering for twenty minutes she still felt soiled, and sweating on the way over here hadn’t improved her sense that she was covered in a filth that she could never wash from her body.
She came to a door that had two small brass nameplates on the wall next to it. The one at eye-level was shiny and new and bore the name of Frank’s Video Services. Below this was a dirty green copper plaque that stated ‘Carlos Llul Abogado’. He was a lawyer as well as a landlord.
Meredith cursed. She had never had a good experience with a lawyer and now she thought back to their first meeting he bore all the usual signs: shrewdness and an eye for easy cruelty to achieve his ends.
She rang the bell for his office and from deep within the building she heard an ancient buzzer sound.
‘Who is it?’ asked a voice thick with tar and afternoon somnolence.
‘You stole my money and I want it back.’
There was a cough or the crackle of the microphone and then the door unlocked.
Meredith pushed it open and entered the building. There was an old iron lift directly ahead but its surfaces were covered in dust. It looked as old as Methuselah and she didn’t trust it. Instead, she took the stairs up two flights. She instantly regretted this as the lights weren’t working and there were no windows, so no natural light other than what crept in from the yellowing skylight three floors above.
She came to the second floor and a door marked as 2-1. She rang the bell and the door was opened by Diego. He wore his hair slicked back, brilliantined and shiny and now she was close to him she saw his face was pocked with small craters. His hands were huge. Perfect, thought Meredith, for crushing a carotid artery.
He didn’t say a word as he led her through an antechamber and knocked three times on a solid oak door.
‘Enter!’
The man opened the door and led her into a small office. It was dark inside. The window shutters were closed to keep out any sun that made it down between the tall walls of the alley. Behind a desk full of yellow papers and a smouldering ashtray, sat Carlos Llul.
‘What a pleasant surprise. Diego, please let us have some privacy.’
Diego grunted something that Meredith didn’t catch and left the room, closing the door behind him.
The room was even darker with the door closed. Llul beckoned for Meredith to sit down in the chair opposite him across the desk, but she remained standing. ‘I’ve come for my money. I know you were owed rent and they should have paid you but you stole way more than was owed. There was €5,000 in that bag and the rent owed by Spider for the whole apartment was what… €800.’
Carlos brought the tips of his fingers together and studied her for a moment. ‘What bag?’
She opened her mouth but he held up a hand, stopping her. ‘Relax, you mean that bag,’ and he pointed to her bag, which she could now see was in the corner of the room behind him next to a filing cabinet.
Was the towel still in there? She couldn’t ask. She knew that a man as shrewd as Carlos would instantly realise there was value in it if she showed any interest at all. ‘You took all my money.’
He waved towards the chair. ‘Please, we are not animals, take a seat.’
Reluctantly, Meredith sat down and faced him across the table. It was the first real chance she had had to look at him close up and she realised he was older than she had first thought. He was sun-baked but the troughs and folds of his dark skin ran deep and the brilliantined hair was thin and scraped back across a scalp covered in liver spots. He could easily be in his late seventies.
‘You want your money. I understand this totally, but
why should I give it to you?’
‘I will go to the police if you don’t give me that bag back.’
This caused him to laugh, a deep, lung-racking laugh, that she thought may kill him so violently did he shake as he struggled to contain his mirth. ‘The police!’ He held his wrists together as though waiting to be cuffed.
She looked at the bag.
He followed her gaze. ‘I don’t mean to mock you, but your cash, which you kept under the floorboards of a house with these types of people, this money is not from any legitimate source, come now, is it? This is money for the strongest to take and to keep. You have wasted your trip, I’m afraid. I will keep the bag of money. I thought you had a better offer to make.’
She looked around the room in desperation but there was nothing that presented itself as a useful weapon: only the usual office implements – a hole punch and a stapler on the desk. She should have stopped at Ganiveteria Roca and bought the biggest knife they would sell her.
Meredith raised her right hand to her forehead and let out a small sob. Her left hand fell upon the stapler, almost without her realising. ‘It’s all I have in the world,’ she said in a quiet voice.
Carlos stood up and shuffled round the table. He placed an avuncular arm on her shoulder and leaned in close. ‘Darling, darling, that’s not true at all. You have a lot more to give.’
Slowly, he let his hand fall and a bony finger brushed her breast. She looked up at him. He was leering at her and his other hand was at his crotch.
‘Can I have the bag back?’
He made a low noise in the back of his throat as he spoke. ‘Less my rent and some interest, we can come to an arrangement.’
He unzipped the fly of his pants and pulled out his penis. His genitals reminded her of the rovellón mushrooms she often saw in the market during winter, lined with fine wrinkles, a dark orange colour with a central nub accompanied by a repellent odour.
Meredith smiled her sweetest smile, pressed down hard and stapled his dick to his balls.
Carlos didn’t scream but made a noise like a balloon slowly deflating and dropped to his knees. She ran round the desk and grabbed hold of the bag.
She looked down at Carlos. His hands were on the stapler but she could see that the stapler was pressed down, the saggy skin crushed in its maw, making it impossible to open. He pawed at it and he was trying to say something, his voice raspy and full of pain.
Meredith picked up the hole punch.
‘Diego!’ Carlos wheezed out.
Meredith stood at the side of the door. The door swung open and Diego stepped through and came to Llul’s side. The lawyer raised a finger to point at Meredith, who was now behind Diego, but it was too late for him to avoid the hole punch slamming into the back of his head. He fell on top of his boss.
Meredith ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her, and didn’t look back as she left the office and ran as fast as she could down the stairs, out into the alley and away into the labyrinth of the old town.
23
Meredith flopped down on the crisp, Egyptian cotton bed sheets and slept. Luckily, the staff was used to sweating, red-faced guests on the verge of collapse coming into the lobby so she was sure none of them would have seen anything suspicious about her entrance.
She hadn’t been sure she wouldn’t collapse before she got to her room and there had been the nagging doubt that Olivia would have checked her out a day early, a situation, which if it had arisen, would have led to her complete mental and physical collapse. Luckily, that wasn’t the case and she had never been so relieved as when the red light on her hotel room door clicked to green.
She had stuffed the bag in the bottom of her wardrobe whilst she considered how to dispose of its contents.
But for now, all she wanted was to sink into the bed and rest. She was tired beyond what she thought possible.
When she awoke, many hours later, it was with a raging thirst and she ran to the minibar to grab a bottle of water. As she drained the bottle in one long swig, she noticed her mobile phone was buzzing.
She checked and saw she had four missed calls. Two from Olivia, and one from a number she recognised as Inspector Fernández’s, and one from Edu.
There were texts, too. Edu looking to hook up later that evening and four from Olivia asking her to call, each with more urgency, the last a simple “CALL ME!!!”.
Meredith jumped in the shower and soaked off the dirt and sweat from the day. Even after fifteen minutes of blasting herself with hot water and then covering herself with the Soho House oils and lotions she still felt a molecular layer of filth was covering her skin. As she massaged her aching limbs, she had flashbacks of the bin and then the dark, hell-like office and Carlos’s gap-toothed grin as he approached her.
It’s all fine now, she told herself. You’ve got this, Meredith. The towel is the weak link, and without that Fernández has nothing. You can concentrate on moving forward, becoming a better version of yourself. That was all she could hope to do. Every day in every way, she would be better.
Amy’s death and the events of the last week, and the last day in particular, were both setbacks along the way to becoming who she wanted to be. She told herself this and felt a little bit happier. It’s all about self-visualisation and not being trapped by the past, or negative thoughts about who she was destined to be because of her genes and her socioeconomic background. She could transcend all of that.
She ignored Edu for now. She would call him later, but first, she needed to speak to Olivia. If there was a chance she could win her round, then she needed to go for it. She had a plan if she couldn’t but ideally, she could work with The Squad.
Meredith put on some fresh clothes and then checked on the bag. She put the euros, towel and her sports clothes in the safe and locked it shut. Tomorrow, she would take the train far out from the city, to Montseny Natural Park, and burn the damned thing.
She called Olivia’s room and she answered immediately. ‘Where have you been? I need to speak to you urgently!’
Meredith arranged to meet her in reception in five minutes. When she got there Olivia was already waiting. She looked flustered and there were specks of blood on her thumbs where she had been picking at the skin.
She grabbed Meredith by the arm and led her out into the street. Even though it was 10pm the air was still loaded with heat and almost immediately Meredith began to sweat, filthy city-flecked perspiration running down her newly-oiled arms as Olivia veritably pulled her along.
‘What’s up?’ Meredith asked.
Olivia kept walking fast through the crowds of tourists engorging the narrow streets.
‘Her, that’s what’s up.’
‘Who?’
Olivia barged into a couple of fat German girls and in response to their look of surprise gave them the finger. ‘That Spanish cop, Fernández. She came to see me again today. Did she speak to you again?’
Meredith didn’t mention the missed call from Fernández. ‘No, I spent the day with some friends and then had a sleep.’
‘Come on, we need to find a quiet bar, if that’s fucking possible in this city.’
They moved down Carrer de l’Argenteria with the flow and ebb of the thousands of tourists. It took ten minutes to walk the 500 yards to the Plaça de Sant Jaume and by the time they reached there both of them were slick with sweat.
When they reached the Gothic cathedral, Meredith took control and led them to La Alcoba Azul. They entered and Jordi nodded discreetly, and she raised her eyebrows slightly in response, indicating to him that she didn’t want to exchange anything more by way of greeting. They found a dark, quiet corner at the very back of the bar where there were no other patrons and sat down.
Olivia’s face was flushed and red and there were dark circles under her eyes.
‘Is everything okay, Olivia?’
Olivia looked around the bar and took a deep breath. ‘No, everything is not fucking all right. Fernández thinks I killed Amy, I’m s
ure of it.’
Meredith felt a release of tension and almost smiled. She had been suspecting much worse than this. She thought that maybe she would be told to leave right away. But if they were now focussing on Olivia, didn’t that make Olivia’s previous comments about Meredith leaving The Squad redundant? This was in fact, great news. ‘That’s ridiculous, why would she think that?’
‘Because I was the last person scheduled to meet her. I turned up at Amy’s place at 2pm but no one answered so I thought she was out. I didn’t know’ – her voice cracked a little – ‘that she was lying in pieces around the back of the building. But I’ve got no one who can verify my alibi and with the description given by this fucking old woman matching me, they are gunning for me, I can tell. Fernández came to see me today and that nice bumbling old woman act? All that was gone. She asked me directly, did I kill Amy?’ Olivia slumped back in her chair. She looked exhausted and on the verge of tears.
‘Jesus, she came out and asked you? That is so ridiculous. It’s out of order. What did you say to her?’
Olivia’s eyes flashed angrily. ‘What did I say? I told her no, of course. That’s the truth. But it’s the way she looked at me when I said that. I could tell she didn’t believe me. Did you find that when you talked to her?’ Olivia looked at Meredith imploringly.
It was the first time Olivia had ever asked Meredith for something and she desperately wanted an answer that would help her. It was true Fernández did have a way of making you feel like you had done something although in Meredith’s case of course, she had. Meredith almost sniggered. If only Olivia knew what her day had been like, what she had been through, then it would give her some perspective on her own self-pity. ‘I didn’t get that with her, I must admit, but maybe it’s because I speak the language… I don’t know.’
‘Do you think that’s what it is, the language barrier? Jesus, maybe I better think about “lawyering up”.’
Meredith tried to look concerned. ‘I don’t think you need to. You haven’t been arrested and you didn’t do it, so it could make you look guilty. Fernández is just trying to spook us because she doesn’t really have any evidence that Amy’s death was anything other than a tragic accident.’
How to Kill Your Friends Page 18