by Peter May
A
SILENT
DEATH
Also by Peter May
fiction
The Lewis Trilogy
The Blackhouse
The Lewis Man
The Chessmen
The China Thrillers
The Firemaker
The Fourth Sacrifice The Killing Room Snakehead
The Runner
Chinese Whispers The Ghost Marriage: A China Novella The Enzo Files
Extraordinary People The Critic
Blacklight Blue Freeze Frame
Blowback
Cast Iron
Stand-alone Novels
The Man With No Face The Noble Path
Entry Island
Runaway
Coffin Road
I’ll Keep You Safe non-fiction
Hebrides (with David Wilson)
A
SILENT
DEATH
Copyright First published in Great Britain in 2020 by
an imprint of
Quercus Editions Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © 2020 Peter May
The moral right of Peter May to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
HB ISBN 978 1 78429 498 4
TPB ISBN 978 1 78429 499 1
EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78429 500 4
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design © 202 Head Design
www.riverrunbooks.co.uk
For Jon Riley
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things.
Steve Jobs
CONTENTS A Silent Death
Also By
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PROLOGUE
He has not the least idea as he turns off the lights, that what he is about to do will lead to the spilling of blood on this warm May evening. And, ultimately, to death. Innocence is so often the precursor to calamity.
It is the moon that first catches his eye. A gibbous moon, lifting from the black of the Mediterranean to cast its reflection on a surface like smoked glass. He could not have said whether it was waning or waxing. The weather in the last week has been uncharacteristically overcast, and it seems like an age since he last stood on his terrace gazing up at a firmament fighting to make itself evident beyond the light pollution of this congested Andalusian coastline. But those clouds have dropped their tears on arid soil and moved on, green shoots of renewal rising almost immediately in their wake.
The heat has resumed. With the promise of a return to the daily ritual of endless sun. Why else would they call it the Costa del Sol? It is a prospect that stretches off towards summer, and the distant autumn, unpunctuated for the most part by rainfall. A fierce angry heat reaching its crescendo as the tourists arrive en masse to spoil the beaches, turning white skin red, then brown, whilst locals move among the shadows cast by tall buildings in narrow streets, sleeping in the heat of the day, eating in the cool of the evening.
It is fresh now in this midnight hour, the faintest of sea breezes rattling palm leaves in the garden beyond the pool, the chirr of cicadas pervading the night air. And it isn’t until he flicks a switch to extinguish underwater lighting that he notices a glow beyond the wall, where he expects the neighbouring villa to simmer in darkness. Light spills across the terrace from sliding glass doors casting the long shadows of pool loungers across terracotta tiles.
He tenses as a silhouette moves in the open-plan living space beyond the glass and momentarily passes through the light. His heart rate increases. A pulsing in his head as his blood pressure soars, and he imagines his doctor’s disapproval. Has he not been taking the diuretics prescribed? A man of his age must be careful.
His mouth is dry. He recalls the handful of occasions he has sat with Ian on the terrace opposite sipping Harris gin, large chunks of ice jostling for space in his glass with the grapefruit. A nice young man. Scottish. But an educated accent, a pleasant lilt. And not so young, perhaps. But then, when you have reached your seventh decade everyone else seems young. He has never really thought about what age Ian might be. Forty? It is so hard to tell these days. But there is little grey in his hair. His body is lean and fit and evenly tanned. How he wishes he were Ian’s age again. Even though he knows he never looked quite that good when he was.
He recalls the cheery wave of his neighbour only that morning, calling across the wall that separates their gardens. He and Angela would be gone for a few days. A spring holiday. Barcelona. And a night or two in Sitges.
Really? A holiday? When you live in a place like this who needs holidays? And he thinks back briefly to the years he spent working in the City. The daily commute through the dark of cold English mornings, to sit in a steamy office, eyes fixed on scrolling screens, watching the rise and fall of financial charts like the swell of an ocean after the storm. It’s the one thing he and Ian have in common. Their single topic of conversation before they run out of it and lift drinks to lips to fill the silence with the rattle of ice against glass.
Now there is someone in Ian’s house, and there shouldn’t be
. He thinks about walking down through the garden in order to get a better look. But what if the intruder sees him? If only he knew Ian’s mobile number he would call and ask him what to do. But they have never swapped numbers. Why would they?
For a frozen moment he stands on his terrace and wonders why the alarm has not gone off. Then once again a shadow passes through the light. Quite brazenly. And he turns quickly and heads inside to find his phone.
*
There are three officers on duty in the squad room when the call is picked up by the duty officer at the desk. He thinks that Cristina has been watching him through the glass before averting her eyes when he looks up. He has always thought that women find him attractive. Even though he is long past his sell-by, and a succession of relationships have invariably broken down when the women have got to know him.
In truth, Cristina had been looking at her own reflection, and might have been surprised had she jumped focus to see him watching her with appraisal. For she has just been thinking how old and frayed she looks. Now in her thirtieth year, middle age is only a decade away, and already there are shadows beneath her eyes, crow’s feet at their outer extremities. With her hair pulled back severely in its habitual pony tail, black roots are showing and she regrets ever having opted to dye it blond. Too much maintenance. And soon, she supposes, those roots will start to grey. At least she still has her figure, even after childbirth. She remains slight, petite. Her male colleagues tower over her – even the smallest of them. She looks away just as the duty officer speaks.
‘Suspected break-in. Out at La Paloma.’
Diego’s eyes flicker up from his card game. From the cant of his head and the appeal in the faintest arching of his eyebrows, she knows that he wants her to go with Matías in his stead. Just thirty minutes until the end of his shift, a wife at home with a new and fractious baby awaiting his return, exhausted from giving birth only days before, and desperate for sleep.
Cristina sighs. She knows very well that her job here in this men’s club simply pays lip service to the requirement for quotas. And to the need for a policewoman to conduct the body searches of female suspects. She will never, by choice of her superiors, be entrusted with much more than traffic duty. Although she has graduated with distinction from the police academy at Àvila. Even though she is consistently the best shot at target practice in Estepona. But if Diego goes out with Matías he likely won’t be home for hours. Even if it’s a false alarm the paperwork will take forever.
‘Okay,’ she says, unaware in this counter-serendipitous moment that her act of generosity will ruin her life.
*
The streets of Marviña are deserted as the white Nissan four-by-four with its rack of blue and white and orange lights on the roof pulls out from the underground car park beneath the offices of the Policía Local. Matías is at the wheel, guiding them towards the roundabout at the top of the hill, through the pools of darkness that lie between the feeble lights of street lamps. From here, moonlight washes across the acres of vineyards, newly in leaf, that fall away across undulating fields towards the distant shimmer of the sea. Ugly urbanizations cluster darkly on once virgin hillsides, some abandoned, completed but uninhabited, victims of the financial crash that brought an end to the building boom that once swept this coastline. Above them the Sierra Bermeja mountains cut sharp shadows against a starry night sky. Below, the lights of Santa Ana de las Vides twinkle around the curve of the bay.
Matías drives at speed around the perilous bends of the road that descends to the sea, past the gathering of brick-red apartments that sit above the father-and-son fruit and veg store on the hairpin, and the jumble of white houses that nestle among the folds of the hill away to their left. It takes less than fifteen minutes heading west on the A7 to reach the roundabout from which the road climbs steeply into La Paloma, where wealthy northern Europeans, and more recently Russians, have built multi-million-euro villas with spectacular sea views.
The villa at the address on the call sheet is registered as belonging to the British expat Ian Templeton. It sits proud above a sheer rock face that drops 17 metres to the road below, and has an unbroken view across the Mediterranean to where the mountains of North Africa are darkly visible on clear winter mornings. To the south, the Rock of Gibraltar dominates the skyline, rising into the moonlight, its silvered face tracing a towering outline against the stars.
A light burns in the neighbouring property. The villa belonging to the caller who reported the break-in. But Matías and Cristina are pre-empted from making him their first port of call by the fact that the gates of Templeton’s villa stand half-open. Tall black-painted wrought-iron gates. A Mercedes A-Class saloon car sits pulled up half on to the pavement outside. If asked, Cristina could not have said what it was about the gates that struck a discordant note. But when they pull up to take a look, Matías jumps out of the SUV and finds that they have been forced.
He slashes a finger from left to right across his throat and she reaches over to turn the key in the ignition and kill the motor. The silence that follows is quickly invaded by the creak of cicadas. She slips out of the vehicle to join him at the gate. A glance through the window of the parked Mercedes reveals a wheel brace lying on the passenger seat. Neither stops to consider the obvious: that few burglars drive Mercedes A-Class sedans.
Matías unclips his holster to draw his standard-issue 9mm SIG-Sauer SIG Pro pistol. Cristina’s mouth is dry as she follows suit. The gun feels familiar in her hand, but somehow heavier than during target practice. Fear lends it weight. She has never fired it in anger. Has never expected to.
Matías steps through the gate on to a driveway of crazy paving that wends its way through tall palms and a profusion of flowering shrubs. Cristina moves carefully in his wake, the barrel of her pistol pointed toward the night sky, her elbow drawn in at her side. She breathes in a heady fragrance that lingers in the warm air, and identifies it as jasmine. Off to their left a double garage is attached to the house, and a path leads around it towards the front garden where hectares of paved terrace overlook a shimmering infinity pool. Ahead, steps lead up to a porticoed porch, and a large studded front door lies ajar. The faint glow of yellow light suffuses the stillness beyond. Matías waves Cristina around the far side of the house, off to their right, while he heads in the other direction towards the pool. He hopes to catch a glimpse of the intruders through the glass doors that open on to the terrace. Better to establish what or who they are dealing with before entering the property.
Cristina reaches the far side of the terrace. Slabs of light fall across the paving stones towards the pool. She moves cautiously around its perimeter to steal a look inside. A sprawling split-level room is illuminated by lighting concealed around the ceiling. There are large, soft armchairs and a settee, an enormous, luxuriant white rug spread across a marble floor. An eclectic display of modern artwork breaks the monotony of shadowed white walls. But the room is empty, with the hallway beyond it mired in gloom.
Her eye catches a movement on the far side of the terrace and she sees Matías lurching forward as he stumbles on something unseen in the darkness. There is a resounding clatter, and then the sound of his SIG-Sauer skidding away across the paving stones. Cristina’s heart fills her throat and pushes up into her mouth.
*
Inside, the man who calls himself Ian Templeton is emerging from a bedroom converted to a home office when the clatter from the terrace outside brings him to a dead stop. He has several folders in his hand. He stands completely still, heart pounding, as if someone inside were trying to punch their way out. Turning back into the office he crosses to the desk and extinguishes the desk lamp. He lays his folders on its polished surface and quickly opens a drawer to remove a Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol. A window on one side gives on to the garden and he moves towards it, pressing himself against the wall before daring to turn and peer out into the darkness.
By the light that spills across the terrace from the living room he sees a
figure moving among the shadows, heading towards a copse of dark palms. A strange, loping run. He spins away again from the window. His face stretched taut with tension, and he presses himself once more into the wall. He has always known this might happen. That one day they could find him. That someday they would come for him. And he has always known that he would not go down without a fight. That he would rather die than let them take him.
But still, he is very nearly overcome by regret. Just a few short years ago he had lived his life without fear. When death means nothing, fear has no traction. But now . . . Now he has everything to live for, everything to lose. Undreamed-of happiness. How could he ever have known that such a thing was possible?
He wonders if he should alert her. She went to the bedroom. But he decides it will be safer for her if she does not know. She will hear the shots, of course. But by then it will all be over. And they have no reason to hurt her. She is the one innocent in all this.
He can feel sweat moistening his palm as it grips his gun more tightly. And he slips quietly into the hall, past the master bedroom, to switch off the lights in the living room. The house and garden are plunged into darkness, and beyond the shimmer of moonlight on the surface of the pool he sees silver coruscations on the black lacquered surface of the Med. He starts cautiously back along the hall towards the open front door where a narrow shaft of light from the street falls across the tiles.
*
Outside, Cristina is retracing her footsteps to the back of the villa where they entered from the street. She expects to encounter Matías circling around to meet her. No reason for stealth any more. Whoever is inside knows they are there. But there is no sign of him. She runs her tongue lightly across dry lips and climbs the steps one by one to the portico. The door still lies ajar, and she sees her shadow from the streetlights stretching into the hallway beyond, announcing her presence to whoever might be waiting there. Where in God’s name is Matías?
She hesitates by the door, paralysed by her own fear, becoming acutely aware of a presence just beyond her line of sight. Nothing in her training or years of service has prepared her for this. She glances towards the garage, willing Matías to appear, but still there is no sign of him. Then she hears the sound of soft footfalls on marble from within, and knows that she must take the initiative.
