A Silent Death

by Peter May

  His hands raise themselves to her cheeks, long fingers gently brushing away her tears. She lifts her hands to cup his face and feels his tears, too. His pain, and hers, in the hot copious unrestrained flow of them. Two people wilfully kept apart by parents who thought that they knew best.

  Gently he takes her hands in his again, and resumes signing. ‘My father died five years ago, Ana, but it wasn’t until my mother passed away in March that I finally plucked up the courage to try and track you down. It was easier than I thought, though I could never have guessed that all this time we were quite so close. In all my wildest dreams I never actually thought I would find you. But now that I have . . .’ his fingers go still, resting against her palm ‘. . . I never want to let you go again.’ Another pause. ‘If you’ll have me?’

  She extricates her hands from his and raises them to his face again, running her fingers and palms over all its planes and surfaces, fingertips pushing up into his hair. She stops and says, ‘You’re losing your hair, Sergio.’

  He takes back her hands. ‘And I’m developing a bit of a belly. I’m happy you can’t see how badly I have aged.’

  ‘While you can see my every fault. Every grey hair, every line, every wobble of my flesh.’

  Which made him laugh. ‘Ana, you are as beautiful today as the day I met you. Beauty is who we are, not what we look like, and to me you will be beautiful till the day you die.’ Then more hesitation. ‘You never answered. Do you . . . do you think you could ever take me back?’

  Ana shakes her head solemnly. ‘No Sergio. I don’t think I could.’ She waits to let the impact of her words sink in. ‘I know I could. But above all, I want you back, more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.’

  In an instant, his lips are on hers. His hands on her face. She slips her arms around him and pulls him closer, realizing for the first time that he has dropped to his knees in front of her. She places a hand behind his head and draws it to her breast, holding him there, feeling his sobs transmit themselves from his body to hers. And all the years since they last touched are washed away like dust in rain.

  They remain like this for a long time, bodies generating heat, flushing faces, until finally he draws away and takes her hands again.

  ‘Ana, I have to go. Having finally found you, I could not wait until this evening to see you. I made an excuse to get away from work, but I’ll have to go back.’ He rests his head for a moment on their conjoined hands. ‘The irony is that I work just a few streets away at the Banco de Sabadell. When I finish work this evening I will come straight back. I promise.’

  But she doesn’t want to let him go. Not just yet. After all the years of hopelessness, on her own in the dark, Sergio has finally brought hope and light back into her life. ‘Don’t be too long,’ she whispers, and when he is gone she weeps unashamedly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  At the end of the hall in the Marviña police station, a door opened into a large meeting room that was also accessible from the street. Mahogany desks and leather seats stood arranged in a semicircle beneath a drop-down banner at the far end of the room. They faced rows of hard plastic seats set out for an audience. The local council held public meetings here, and one wall was lined with paintings of the men and women who had at one time or another filled the honoured post of mayor. Light flooded into the room from two large windows on the outside wall, and it was already packed by the time Cristina and Mackenzie arrived. They took seats at the back.

  The Jefe was leaning, half-sitting, on one of the desks, his arms folded across his chest. Another man was addressing the assembly. He was tall, thin and bald. Sweat patches darkened the armpits of his white shirt. His suit jacket lay draped over a chair behind him.

  Mackenzie leaned towards Cristina and lowered his voice. ‘Who is everyone?’

  ‘The man speaking is the Juez de Instrucción from Estepona. The examining magistrate. I guess, nominally, he’s in charge of the case. But really it’s homicide in Malaga who’re handling it.’ She nodded towards a group of plain-clothes officers lounging on seats near the front and breathed her derision. ‘These guys think they’re starring in a Hollywood movie. All designer suits and sunglasses.’ She turned her gaze towards the other side of the room. ‘That’s UDYCO over there, also from Malaga. They specialize in drugs and organized crime.’ Then she leaned forward to look along the back row towards a group of young men in jeans and T-shirts. ‘Instituto Forense de Malaga. Forensics. But these ones are from Marbella.’ She cocked an eyebrow at Mackenzie. ‘Notice how many women there are among them.’ She sat back. There were none. ‘The rest are Policía Local from here in Marviña. But we’re just the foot soldiers.’

  The examining magistrate was perspiring freely. ‘We have established that the boat in the marina at Puerto de la Condesa did indeed belong to the criminal Cleland, under his alias of Ian Templeton. But he doesn’t appear to have been sleeping there. We’re assuming he risked a visit to the boat perhaps to get money, or weapons, or drugs. It’s anyone’s guess. But at any rate, he was interrupted by the British investigator Mackenzie who failed to apprehend him.’

  Mackenzie felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck, and without looking at her was aware of Cristina’s eyes turning in his direction. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and a sharp pain in his ribs reminded him of his encounter with Cleland.

  ‘UDYCO report that sources are telling them the rumoured handover of drugs is scheduled within the next two days, and that the merchandise is already in the country. Somewhere in this area. But we have no intelligence as yet on where and when the exchange is going to take place.’ He held out an open palm towards a well-groomed middle-aged man in a dark suit who sat in the front row. ‘Captain Rodríguez?’

  As Rodríguez stood up Mackenzie whispered to Cristina, ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Head of GRECO – Grupo de Respuesta Especial para el Crimen Organizado. That’s the organized crime special-response group based in Marbella.’

  Unlike the Juez de Instrucción Captain Rodríguez was the embodiment of cool. He slipped his shades into the breast pocket of his suit jacket and ran a tanned hand back through jet-black hair. ‘We are confident,’ he said, ‘that we will find out exactly where and when this is all going down. We have had a number of suspected traffickers on our radar for some time. Not little fish by any means. And almost certainly involved. One or other of them is almost certain to lead us to the rendezvous. But I can’t stress enough the importance of total discretion in every department. A leak of any kind could compromise the whole operation. We’re only going to get one chance at this.’

  When the meeting broke up, the Jefe waved Mackenzie forward to be introduced to the examining magistrate. Cristina trotted after him. Although the Jefe had hosted the meeting, he had played no active part in it, and Mackenzie realized that instructions coming down from the Jefe were simply being passed on from a higher jurisdiction. This was all happening on his patch, but he had no real authority except in the direction of his own people.

  ‘Señor Mackenzie, meet Judge Aguado. It was he who requested your services from the NCA in London.’

  ‘Oh?’ Mackenzie said, ‘Now I know who to blame.’ And shook the proffered hand. It was cold and clammy, and when Mackenzie retrieved his own he wiped it absently on the leg of his trousers.

  The Juez de Instrucción did not miss it. He said stiffly, ‘Presumably you are aware how our system works here in Spain?’

  ‘I am,’ Mackenzie said. ‘Very similar to the French. A Guardia Civil which is part of the army, like the French Gendarmerie. A fragmented civilian police force which doesn’t talk to the military, and a system of judges who know nothing about police work but somehow contrive to direct investigations.’

  Judge Aguado’s pallor darkened, and a clenching of his jaw was betrayed by the depressions that appeared in each of his cadaverous cheeks. He said, ‘While the British police divide and subdivide themselves into so many different forces that they lack an
y coherence.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Mackenzie said, oblivious of the judge’s intention to offend him in return. ‘They are uncoordinated and completely disjointed. Criminals are slipping through the cracks all the time.’

  No one knew what to say. And it was only when Mackenzie caught Cristina’s smirk out of the corner of his eye that he suspected he might have said something out of turn.

  *

  When they stepped from the basement of the police station out into the underground car park, tyres were screeching on concrete, motors revving, detectives and forensics officers from Estepona and Marbella and Malaga all heading back to their respective offices post meeting.

  Mackenzie disapproved of meetings. He thought they were just an excuse for the brass to show off to the troops and make themselves feel important. Any relevant information would already have reached the people who mattered. But he was more concerned about his apparent faux pas with the judge.

  ‘What did I say?’

  He struggled to keep up with Cristina, who, for all her lack of height, was striding at speed across the car park. ‘What didn’t you say?’ she said.

  ‘What?’ He was at a loss.

  She stopped and turned to face him. ‘Would you go into someone’s house and tell them their baby was ugly?’

  His brow furrowed in concentration as he ran the question through his mind, wondering at its relevance.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, if you have to think about it . . . !’ And she marched off again to where she had parked the Nissan.

  He followed and climbed into the passenger seat to sit looking at her. Both her hands gripped the wheel and her face was set. He decided not to pursue his evident blunder with the judge, and instead changed the direction of their conversation entirely, towards something minor which had struck him during the meeting.

  ‘When the Juez de Instrucción said that sources had provided UDYCO with information about Cleland’s drugs deal, what sources was he talking about?’

  She looked at him as if he had two heads. ‘Sources,’ she said, as if repeating the word would explain it. ‘You know, informants, soplones, or whatever you call them in English.’

  ‘Snitches.’ Mackenzie said the word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

  ‘So you know what I’m talking about. Criminals who feed information to the police in return for . . . well, usually immunity.’

  ‘And sometimes money.’

  She shrugged. ‘Most detectives have a snitch. You must have had one.’

  Mackenzie shook his head. ‘Never! I don’t believe in them. A crook is still a crook whether he tips off the cops or not. A crime is still a crime. You can’t pick and choose the ones you’re going to prosecute. We’re not arbiters of the law, we’re enforcers of it.’

  Cristina was taken aback by his vehemence. She lifted one eyebrow. ‘Sounds like there’s something personal there.’

  Mackenzie realized he had said more than he intended, and sat back in his seat, turning to stare through the windscreen and draw breath.

  But she wasn’t going to let it go. ‘Is there?’

  He was silent for several long moments, debating whether to tell her or not. Finally he said, ‘I arrested and charged an informant working for another officer in my division.’

  She gazed curiously into his eyes. ‘And?’

  He hesitated. ‘I had been warned not to by my commanding officer.’

  ‘So why did you?’

  ‘Because the snitch had been complicit in a murder. An underworld hit. My boss argued that without his information we’d never have got the actual killer.’

  ‘But you still arrested him because . . . ?’

  ‘Because if he had provided us with the same information before the killing rather than after it, we could have stopped it from happening. Which made him as responsible for the death of the victim as the guy who pulled the trigger.’

  Cristina chewed on that for a moment. Then she said, ‘So what happened?’

  ‘To the snitch?’

  She nodded.

  ‘He was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years.’ Mackenzie took a deep breath. ‘They found him dead in his cell six weeks later. Throat slit from ear to ear.’

  ‘Someone got their revenge.’

  Mackenzie nodded. ‘And I got the blame. Effectively ended my career with the Met.’

  ‘They fired you?’

  ‘No. But they made it impossible for me to do my job. It was only a matter of time, they reckoned, before I would quit.’

  ‘And that’s what you did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She remained sitting for a long time, both hands still gripping the wheel. Without looking at him she said, ‘You really don’t understand the concept of discretion, do you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You have an opinion, you give voice to it regardless of who it might offend. You decide a course of action, and you follow it regardless of the consequences.’

  He was defensive. ‘When you know you’re right, what else are you supposed to do?’

  ‘And you’re always right?’

  ‘Yes.’ He thought about it. ‘Well, nearly.’

  A tiny explosion of laughter escaped her lips. ‘Of course you are.’ She looked at him and shook her head. ‘I’ll take you back to your hotel.’

  He nodded and seemed disappointed. She turned the key in the ignition and started the motor. But sat letting it idle.

  ‘Had you thought about what you are going to do for dinner?’

  ‘Actually, I’m torn between sandwiches in my room or sandwiches in my room.’

  ‘Spoiled for choice, then.’

  ‘It’s just a question of which sandwich I’ll go for. Ham. Or ham.’

  ‘I hear the ham’s pretty good.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a recommendation.’

  She sighed and turned the key in the ignition again to cut the motor, and swung the driver’s door open. ‘I suppose you can eat with us again.’

  ‘With an offer like that,’ he said, ‘how could I refuse?’

  She laughed. ‘Come on. It’s just two minutes across the square.’ And she jumped down into the car park.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Ana has barely been able to contain herself. Never has she known time to move so slowly. Quite deliberately she has kept her fingers away from the face of her watch. There is nothing quite so frustrating as counting hours that refuse to pass.

  She has tried reading, but her concentration is shot, and she has allowed her memories to transport her back through time. She is eternally thankful for her mind’s eye, because it allows her to see Sergio as he was all those years ago, when they were both young and she could still see and hear him. She smiles, picturing his impudent grin, his youthful good looks.

  She has never understood what it was he saw in her. At best she had been a plain girl. Her parents had struggled financially to bring up two daughters, and Ana had never worn the designer clothes of her contemporaries, or listened to music on the latest Sony Walkman, or had her hair styled in the fashionable salons of Estepona. But for some reason that Ana still cannot fathom Sergio had fallen for her, and all these years later he has come back into her life like a beacon of hope. If there is a God, perhaps He has been saving her for just this moment.

  The buzzer vibrates against her chest, and she feels a charge of electrical excitement fork through her body. He’s back.

  Her usually assured touch deserts her for a moment, and she fumbles to find the rocker that will release the catch on the door downstairs.

  Now she sits still, trying to calm herself. Eyes closed, waiting for the tread of his feet on the stairs. Then the movement of air in the room that signals the opening of the door. She cannot hear the low growl that emanates from Sandro’s throat in the corner of the room as the old lab struggles on arthritic legs to get to his feet.

  And now nothing. No footsteps crossing the floor to gr
eet her, no change of temperature as he nears her. She breathes deeply, aware instantly that something is wrong. This is not the scent of the man who held and kissed her just a few short hours ago. But it is a male scent, made noisome by sweat. And it fills the air around her.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she asks sharply, the steel in her voice belying the apprehension fluttering in her breast and the fear that has started to crawl in her belly.

  *

  Cleland stood stock-still in the open doorway, assessing the small middle-aged woman in black sitting beyond the computer screens. He canted his head to one side, mentally stripping away the awful blouse and jog pants, the pudding-bowl haircut, and somehow saw something sensuous in the fullness of her lips, an almost Asian slant in her almond eyes. In another world, he thought, she could perhaps have been beautiful. And maybe once she was. Or perhaps it was just a trick of the light.

  The last rays of sunlight lay in lengthening stripes across the whitewashed walls of the square opposite the house, and reflected in a soft pink light falling through the gaps in the shutters. Otherwise the room simmered in late evening gloom, the heat of the day thickening the air so that it was almost tangible.

  His eyes flickered towards the guide dog standing watching him cautiously from the far side of the room. No danger, he thought, from that old boy. He returned his gaze to the little lady in the chair by the window. Blind, the girl in the square had said. The eyes that stared at him from across the room lacked any animation and he knew that the child had not been wrong. He sighed.

  ‘Hello, Ana,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’ve probably heard about me.’

  Nothing. Not a flicker. He frowned.

  ‘Ana?’

  ‘Who’s there?’ she said again, a quiver of barely controlled hysteria in her voice now.

  A single clap of his hands resounded in the silence of the room. But it brought not the least response, and he whistled softly to himself. She was deaf, too. Blind and deaf.