by Mark Pryor
“Not me,” she said. “Go on.”
“Yeah, go on,” Tom chipped in. “You’ve barely met her, so even I’ll be impressed.”
Hugo rolled his eyes. “I live my life for those moments, Tom.”
“I know you do. Now spill it.”
“If you’re sure,” Hugo said.
“I’m sure,” Silva said. “Now stop wasting time, we’re almost at your street.”
“Fine,” Hugo began. “But you asked for it. I’d say that you’re a former military medic, you’re dealing with PTSD, you recently went on a road trip, and you’re a fan of the Beatles.”
“Impressive,” Silva said. “And correct on all counts, so now you have to explain.”
“Oh, he won’t for a while,” Tom said. “He’ll make you wait for it, tease you a little.”
“Yeah, maybe next time I see you,” Hugo said. “I believe that’s our road up ahead.”
Silva hit the brakes and steered the car to the side of the narrow street. She left the engine running and turned to fix Hugo with a glare. “There’s a jail cell back there with your name on it,” she said.
Hugo put his hands up in surrender. “Since you’re being so persuasive, fine. When you walked into Garcia’s office, I noticed that you had a slight limp. But you also had a very erect bearing, very military. Together, those things mean nothing but bear with me because I noticed the decorations on your shirt. They seemed odd because police don’t use those and I wondered why someone would wear military decorations on a police uniform. They are military, am I right?”
“Correct,” she said.
“Oh, and talking of uniforms, you aren’t wearing the usual police utility belt, with a gun and all that good stuff.”
“So?” asked Tom. “I noticed that too. Before you, probably.”
“Well done, Tom. Now what does it mean?” Hugo asked him.
“No clue.”
“Then if you don’t mind, I’ll carry on.”
“Have at it.”
“Thanks. Now then, put together I’d say the lack of gun belt means you’re off street duty on a semipermanent basis. Normally, someone off street duty would just be fired, although I don’t know the intricacies of Barcelona’s police policies nor employment law, so I could be off base on that. However, add to that the military decorations, the bearing, and the limp, I’d say you were injured in Afghanistan, physically and emotionally. Which puts you close to the front line and, since Spain doesn’t have women as front-line troops, most likely as a medic. The decorations are part of your therapy, I think, and also a way of letting other people know and recognize your service.”
“Wow,” Silva said. “I am impressed. All of it, it’s exactly right.”
“Wait, what about the road trip and the Beatles?” Tom asked.
“Both so easy and obvious that I’m embarrassed to tell you,” Hugo said.
“Well, I didn’t get them, so they’re not that fucking obvious,” Tom replied.
“The front of your car has more splattered bugs than I’d expect to see if you’d just been tootling around the city. Likewise the windshield, where the wipers don’t reach.”
“Seriously?” Tom demanded. “Bugs?”
“And you have a Beatles key ring,” Hugo said to Silva. “It’s old and worn, which tells me you’ve had it a while, probably because it means something to you. Also, the display on your car stereo, I can see what you’ve been listening to.”
“Great, so you can read,” Tom said.
“Not just can, but did. Anyway,” Hugo said cheerily, “that’s the Sherlock game. It’s funny how Tom asks me to do it, then gets mad when I get it right.”
“One day, my friend. One day you’ll crash and burn.”
“But not today,” Silva said with a smile. “Very impressive. And as a reward, I’ll pick you up here at three thirty?”
“Sure thing. Thanks for the ride,” Hugo said. He and Tom climbed out of the car and shut the doors. Tom took a step, about to walk toward their apartment.
“Hang on a second,” Hugo said. They stood and watched as Silva pulled away from the curb and rounded the corner.
“What’s up?” Tom asked.
“Just because she needs her siesta doesn’t mean we have to have one.”
Tom’s eyes lit up. “What did you have in mind?”
“A little reconnaissance, a harmless little scouting mission in the neighborhood.”
“For real?”
“The young guy in those files, his name is Rubén Castañeda. I saw him in Paris, outside the café where I was supposed to be meeting Amy.”
“Are you serious? Why didn’t you tell Garcia?”
“I will, but I didn’t want to ruin his siesta. Plus, the address in the file is not even a mile from here, well within the parameters of the tourist zone.”
Tom grinned. “You’re a bad man, Hugo. A sneaky, charming, bad man. And I’m right behind you.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was a short walk but so pleasant that Hugo almost forgot what they were doing. The sun cut each little street in half, shade coming from the high stone or brick walls that housed shops, apartments, and small hotels. A gentle breeze wound its way through the old quarter, brushing their faces and rustling the dresses of two young women holding hands and walking in the opposite direction.
“I could get used to this place,” Tom said.
It wasn’t like Paris, Hugo decided. The narrow streets left no room for the cafés and outdoor tables that made the City of Light so special. No broad boulevards to amble along and watch the people go by. No, this was more of an exploration, like some parts of Paris could be, winding streets free of cars and where scampering children would inevitably run headlong into your legs as you turned a corner.
And around those corners, Hugo was discovering, the streets and buildings would suddenly stretch apart, making room for colorful playgrounds where parents would lounge and smoke in the wooden chairs meant for them. That’s where the cafés and restaurants were, the rickety tables being cleared by the owners as the lunch-goers counted their change and headed to wherever their siesta took place.
Hugo spied a small bakery. “You hungry?”
“Fuck, yes.”
“Sandwich work?”
“Same again.”
They ducked through the low door and, with help from the young man behind the counter, collected crunchy rolls filled with local ham and cheese, glued together with a house-made chutney that the clerk has insisted they try.
“I see what you mean about getting used to the place.” Hugo checked his watch. “And we have a couple of hours to find this guy’s house and peek in a bedroom window.”
“Peeping Tom joke?” Tom asked.
Hugo smiled. “We’ll see.”
“You know, I think that Silva chick likes you.”
“Oh yeah? Or maybe she just doesn’t like you, and so is nicer to me in comparison.”
“No, she actually smiled at you. Straight face the entire time with me, but smiling at you. Since when were you the funny one?”
“Never,” Hugo conceded. “I hope I didn’t offend her with my parlor trick.”
“She insisted you do it, so if she’s offended it’s on her.”
“Still, we want her on our side as much as possible.” Hugo stopped at a cross street and looked left and right. “Just up here, I think.”
They turned right onto a pedestrian street, slightly wider than the one they’d come from, wide enough for a line of trees to run up the center of it. It looked to Hugo like this was the back of both buildings—no real entrances, just shuttered windows and paint peeling from the plaster walls. Then he spotted an archway up ahead.
“That must be it,” he said.
“Sure is quiet around here.”
“Yeah, but that’s okay, we’re just tourists wandering around, remember.”
“Nosy tourists.”
“Precisely. Oooh, look, fellow tourist, an archway between the
se lovely old buildings. Let’s explore.”
“Do, let’s.”
Hugo started forward and Tom followed as they passed under the arch into a dead-end space, one door each side of them and another directly opposite. The space was small enough and the walls around them high enough that it was entirely shaded from the sun, whatever dash of heat and light it might receive at midday was long gone, and the cold had settled back in. Hugo felt a chill run up his spine.
“Three doors to choose from,” Tom said. “I feel like I’m in a game show.”
“It’s this one,” Hugo said, pointing straight ahead. “And the door’s already open.”
They exchanged glances. “What do you wanna do?” Tom asked.
“Well, I want to go in but—” He silenced himself at a noise from inside the building.
“What are we dealing with here?” Tom whispered. “Is that a house, an apartment? Does he have a wife, roommates, dogs?”
“Most of these are apartments.” Hugo shifted to try and see through the crack in the door, but couldn’t. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Tom.”
“Bad feeling as in we should run away, or . . . ?”
“The second. Let’s just take a look.”
“I don’t know, man. I mean, I’m the first to ignore the rules, you know that, but we’re out of our comfort zone and already on thin ice here. Raul’s brother has a hard-on for me, and the Ice Queen would love to slap the handcuffs on me. And not in a good way.”
“Yeah, I know but . . . Look, if we run into someone’s granny in there, I’m just in need of a bathroom, okay?”
“I guess. If we get busted, I’m blaming you.”
“I’ll tell them I made you do it, how’s that?”
“Good enough.” Tom gestured toward the door. “After you.”
Hugo moved forward silently, ears pricked for sound and his eyes trained on the door. He reached out and felt the old, dry wood under his fingers and hoped it wouldn’t creak when he pushed. It didn’t, and he and Tom stepped into the small foyer of Rubén Castañeda’s apartment.
The living area was immediately in front of them, the ceiling low and the space dark. The floor was a dark-red tile, and the only light came from a floor lamp. They stood still to let their eyes adjust, and to listen. Hugo noticed that the curtains of the window were closed. After a few seconds, they moved cautiously into the living room, immediately separating so that there was six feet between them, two smaller targets instead of one, large one.
They inched forward, but Hugo quickly put out a hand to stop Tom.
“You hear that?” Hugo whispered.
Tom pointed to the small kitchen, a grin on his face.
A cat lay on the stove, watching them, its tailing flicking back and forth with interest. A salt shaker lay on its side, the furry tale swishing across it to make the sound they’d heard.
They moved on, hearing no other sounds in the apartment. Past the kitchen, they went to the right, down a short hallway toward what Hugo assumed was the bathroom and, to the right of it, the closed door of the bedroom. Before they got there, another little room, more of an alcove, appeared on their left, a shelf-lined space that Castañeda used as a storeroom or pantry. Hugo squinted. It was dark back here, but it looked to him like the head-high window was broken. He didn’t stop to check it out, not until the bathroom had been cleared. He got there first, and, with a nod from Tom, he pushed the door open. It stopped halfway, jammed against something.
Hugo stopped pushing and leaned inside to see what the obstruction was.
Inside was like a scene from a horror movie. A man lay on the floor, naked and in a pool of blood, with what seemed to be a short spear sticking straight out of his chest. The blood covering the floor looked slick, not yet congealed, telling Hugo this crime scene was fresh. He dragged his eyes from the gore and focused on the man’s face, trying to see if it was Castañeda. The bathroom was cramped, and it was hard to tell looking at him upside down, but the dead man looked tall and thin enough. His shiny, bald head distorted the identification, but the face resembled Castañeda’s. Something was off with the scene, though, as if there was too much blood. This looked like essentially a single wound, and yet the bathroom was covered in blood, the whole of the floor, the walls, the sink. Someone, presumably his killer, had laid down towels and they, too, were saturated. All from a stab wound? Hugo wondered.
Hugo realized he was holding his breath, so he stepped back and exhaled. Tom started forward, to look for himself, but Hugo stopped him with a hand on his chest. “I know you’ve seen stuff like this before, but it’s pretty bad.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Tom moved to the bathroom door and leaned in. He grimaced and didn’t linger. “You weren’t kidding, what a fucking mess. Is it him?”
“I don’t know, could be except this dude is bald, the guy I saw was running his hands through his hair.”
“Wig?”
“We’ll have a look for one.”
“Or make sure the police do,” Tom said, giving Hugo that look, raised eyebrows and a hard stare suggesting that lingering at a murder scene was too reckless even for him.
Hugo knew he had to choose quickly, either stay here and poke about or do as he’d promised Bartoli Garcia—back off and let the Barcelona cops do their thing. Tom shifted from foot to foot, waiting for the decision. Hugo shook his head, gesturing back the way they’d come. “You’re right, let’s get out of here and call the cops.”
“Anonymously, I hope,” Tom said. “’Cos remember, we were never here.”
“Naturally. Let’s go find a pay phone.”
“There’s one right outside, near the playground.”
Hugo started back the way they’d come, then realized something. He stopped and looked for a light switch but, in the dim of the hallway, couldn’t find one.
Behind him, Tom swore. “What’s the holdup, let’s go.”
“Footprints. This hall is the only way out of the bathroom, and with all that blood, there will be footprints.” Hugo paused to let Tom catch up to what he was thinking.
“Oh, fuck, and we’ve trampled all over them.”
“I’m betting we have. Stay close to the walls and tiptoe.”
They moved away from the bathroom, hugging the wall and hoping their feet stayed clear of any prints. They were almost in the main living room when they stopped in unison, frozen by a noise from the bedroom. Hugo silently cursed himself for forgetting to check it. They glanced at each other, but before they could decide whether to keep going or backtrack, a figure appeared in the short passageway, lit from the chest down by a lamp in the bedroom. His shirt was drenched with blood, the front of his pants, too, and Hugo automatically looked to see if he carried a weapon, noticing instead the rolled-up sleeves, the freshly washed hands and arms.
The man stood in the shadows, the doorway a rectangle of black surrounding him, and Hugo couldn’t see his face. They stood like that, the three of them, for a moment that seemed to Hugo like an eternity, but that had to be one full second, maybe two. Beside him, Tom shifted and slid forward. With a gun in his hand.
“Keep ’em where I can see ’em,” he said. “You speak English?”
“Yes.” The man’s voice cracked, like he’d not spoken in months. “Of course I speak English. Hugo, it’s me.”
The man stepped out of the dark room, his arms raised in surrender and his eyes fixed firmly on Hugo’s face. Even before the light touched his features, Hugo recognized him, his voice, the way he moved.
“Oh my God,” Hugo said. “What are you doing here?”
Tom paused and looked at Hugo. “Don’t tell me you know this guy.”
“Oh, I know him,” Hugo said. “That’s Bart Denum.”
Tom kept the gun leveled at Denum. “You kill this guy?”
“Jesus, no,” Denum said.
“Sure is a lot of blood on you for an innocent man. See me and Hugo? We’re innocent men with no blood on us at all.”
&n
bsp; “Tom,” Hugo said, “lower the gun. Bart didn’t do this.”
“I will, but you better be right about that.” Tom tucked his gun away. “How the hell did you know to come here?”
“I was on my way to the airport, going to Paris, when Hugo left the message about Amy coming to Barcelona. I contacted some friends at the TSA. It didn’t take long to figure out who she was traveling with, so I flew here instead, came straight here.”
Hugo and Tom turned in unison at the sound of footsteps behind them. Seconds later, boots clumped over the tile floor, and Grace Silva and two armed officers came into the room. They stopped at the sight of Bart Denum drenched in blood, and both officers pulled their sidearms, covering the three Americans.
“There’s a body in the bathroom,” Hugo said. “Make sure your men don’t touch anything with their bare hands.”
“A body?” Silva’s eyes went to Denum.
“He didn’t do it,” Hugo said.
“You sure about that?” she said. “You saw who did?”
“No.”
Silva gave an order in Spanish, and the officers moved forward, past Hugo and Tom. They stopped beside Denum and pulled on latex gloves before patting him down. That done, one of them pulled out a pair of handcuffs. Denum recoiled, and both cops grabbed him, spinning him before pushing him face-first into the wall and holding him there.
“Hugo, what the fuck, are they arresting me?”
“You’re being detained, not arrested,” Silva said. “Not yet, anyway.”
Hugo wanted to protest, but in her position he’d have done the same thing, every good cop would. “Bart, just cooperate, we’ll sort this out soon enough.”
“I didn’t kill him, I found him like that, I swear.”
“I know, I don’t doubt that. But go with them for now, OK?”
The policemen didn’t wait for them to finish their conversation, whisking Denum down the hallway and out of the apartment.
“You two, with me,” Silva ordered. She spun on her heel and pulled out her phone, dialing and speaking rapidly in Spanish. To Chief Inspector Garcia, Hugo assumed. They followed her out like a pair of chastened schoolboys, looking at their feet and saying nothing. Outside the apartment, the two policemen waited, each with a hand on Denum’s arm. Silva hung up and turned to Hugo and Tom.
