by Chris Lloyd
City of Buried Ghosts
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
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
Chapter Fifty One
Chapter Fifty Two
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Copyright
City of Buried Ghosts
Chris Lloyd
For my mum and dad, Averil and Mervyn Lloyd.
He wanted to close the man’s eyes.
Only they don’t slip shut like they do in the movies. A gentle glide of the hand over the eyelids and the light is out forever, the sightless searching accusation gone. The face calm and at rest. Because the eyes don’t close. Not easily. Not if you don’t want to feel the shape of the eyeballs roll softly under your fingertips. Not if you can’t bear to pinch the edge of the thin fleshy lid between thumb and finger and coax it down and hope it stays.
He gave up but the eyes kept pulling him back. They stared up at him through the torrential downpour, oblivious now and forever to the heavy rain pounding at them. The sudden summer storm that beat at his own bare head, that drowned out any noise that he’d become used to. The angry clattering of the branches on the pine trees, the creatures slinking through the dead needles on the ground, the endless sweep of the sea hidden beyond the headland, brushing in and out along the small, sharp stones of the little beach.
He felt like the rain was hammering him further and further into the shallow trench in the ground. He looked at the hole where he stood. The unbidden and surprising thought that it wasn’t a trench he could use.
He thought of turning the generator off to kill the light, but the fear of the dark that would envelop him was too great. Instead, he reached forward and angled the light away from the man’s face. It shone down the small incline to another clearing below, further from the headland.
He looked at the pool of light cast into the dark wood and turned back to look once more at the eyes of the man lying in the trench.
He’d made his decision.
Chapter One
‘So why exactly are we here?’
Elisenda could hear Àlex grunt at her question.
The mosso, a uniformed caporal, signalled for her to go with him to the middle of the small boat.
‘Not because I don’t want him hearing us,’ he explained, gesturing at the grey-haired and grizzled man steering the craft, ‘but because we’ll never hear ourselves speak over the engine.’
Elisenda followed him to the thinly-cushioned bench towards the front of the boat. The water was slapping against the sides but these wide-bottomed llaüts, once the work horses of the coast, now fine and polished playthings, stayed calm in the choppiest of seas. The one they were in was firmly stuck in the work horse breed, its captain a retired fisherman with a rock-hard gut straining at the buttons of an ancient nylon shirt. A smaller, clinker-built dinghy was tied to the stern and tugged in its wake like a reluctant child. Elisenda flicked an oily rag off the bench but chose not to sit down anyway, decades of grease and grime ingrained in the plastic-covered foam sheet. Instead, she leaned against the short mast supporting the long yard, the other end of which rested on the crutch near where the boat’s owner stood. Even here, the noise of the diesel engine, hidden away in what would once have been one of the fish holds, was loud enough to make them have to raise their voices. Holding on to the yard for balance, Elisenda was surprised to see a sail furled up along it. Most llaüts had long ago given up any pretence of being a sailing boat.
‘What do you do when you need a proper boat?’ Àlex asked grumpily, following them.
The caporal shrugged. His name was Fabra and he’d been stationed at the Mossos d’Esquadra police station in Palafrugell for three years, he’d told them. He had the tan and the physique of someone who lived and worked by the beach, Elisenda thought, even now in February.
‘The Salvament Marítim boats if it’s anything urgent or more remote,’ Fabra told Àlex. ‘The dive team from Sabadell if they’ve got to go underwater.’
‘Sabadell,’ Àlex muttered. The dive team for the whole of Catalonia was based inland.
‘Urgent,’ Elisenda murmured in an echo of Àlex’s tone. She glanced at her sergent and raised an eyebrow.
‘In cases like this,’ Fabra continued, ‘we get one of the local sailors to help out. Senyor Ferran here keeps his boat in Palamós but he’s almost always on hand.’
‘Palamós?’ Elisenda asked.
‘We have a station open there in the summer. I’ve been seconded there for the last two years. That’s how I know the local fishermen. I’m in Palafrugell for the rest of the year.’
‘I miss working,’ the old captain grumbled loudly, his voice deepened by decades of after-lunch cigars, his ears flapping.
Fabra led them further away, towards the front of the boat. So, not because of the sound of the engine, Elisenda thought.
‘Normally we’d get to where we’re going by 4x4 and then walk,’ he explained once they’d settled again, ‘but the storms this month have washed away part of the track, so we’re having to go by boat.’
‘Where is it we’re going?’ Elisenda asked him.
‘An archaeological dig a few coves to the north. The senior archaeologist called to say she’d found an anomaly. Two bodies buried on the site.’
‘An anomaly?’ Elisenda questioned.
Àlex sighed and sat down on the triangular bench in the prow. ‘Bodies at an archaeological site?’
‘I visited the site when she called,’ Fabra explained. ‘She reckons something’s not right with one of the bodies. I couldn’t see any difference, but she said that it needed to be examined.’
‘What state are the bodies in?’ Elisenda asked him. ‘Any clothing? Are we likely to get DNA, fingerprints?
Fabra stared back at her. ‘They’re just bones, Sotsinspectora.’
Senyor Ferran at the rear of the boat called something out. Fabra grimaced in apo
logy at Elisenda and made his way to the captain.
Elisenda turned to stare at the dark grey rocks of the coastline being slowly eaten up as the llaüt cut through the sea, running parallel to the shore.
‘Bones,’ she finally muttered.
Àlex looked up at her, the old anger in his face. ‘Another non-case, Elisenda. That’s how we’re seen now.’
She could only close her eyes to hide her agreement. She held her head back, the winter sun warming her face, the wind flailing her long hair behind her in fine brown tendrils, and wondered how long she’d be allowed to keep her unit together. In case she didn’t need one, Àlex’s hoarse voice was a constant reminder of the events of the autumn. The death of one of her team, Àlex nearly dying, both at the hands of one of their own. And Elisenda’s team was still paying for it. Distrust at her experimental Serious Crime Unit now allied with increased scrutiny and a lack of will from their seniors to trust them with a major case.
‘We’re still wounded,’ Elisenda murmured now, wryly, in echo of the reasons she’d been given for the last four months of stagnation and excuses. She opened her eyes and was shocked at the cerulean beauty of the Mediterranean sky.
‘And we’ll stay that way until they let us repair ourselves,’ Àlex replied, the anger in his voice straining the vocal chords damaged by the rope that had cut into his neck.
Elisenda had to look at the wake from their boat rolling to the shore to gather herself. Àlex’s changed voice could still make her want to weep. The sound of the engine shifted down and she could feel the llaüt pitch towards land. Relieved, she paid attention for the first time to where they were. The captain slowly steered into the mouth of a small, elongated cove, carefully avoiding the rocks that emerged from the water a few metres offshore. Elisenda simply stared at the tiny sandy beach and the three old fishermen’s huts nestling under a low cliff. Electric green pines seared through the proud blue of the sky, the trees’ gnarled brown trunks clinging precariously to the grey rock.
It was a beautiful scene she didn’t want to see.
‘Where is this?’ Àlex asked.
‘El Crit,’ she replied.
The Scream.
* * *
Despite the bright sky and the sunlight, there was still a chill in the air. The breeze that had made the sea so lively seemed to be redoubling its efforts to whip the dark sand up around Elisenda’s ankles. They’d had to row into the shore from the llaüt in the dinghy, Fabra expertly guiding the shallow-draughted boat through the underwater rocks, but they’d then had to jump from the llaüt onto the beach, and all three of them, Elisenda, Àlex and Fabra, had splashed in the tiny laps of water brushing the sparse pebbles. Elisenda could feel the sharp grains of sand stinging her calves, the bottoms of her trousers clinging damply to her legs. Seawater had seeped in through the stitching of her shoes, making her feet slide about inside them. It made gripping the steep steps climbing up to the small headland from the beach that much harder. She turned to see Senyor Ferran down below, checking the diesel tanks on his boat, a lighted cigar in his mouth.
‘We might be walking back,’ she muttered to Àlex. He looked to where she was gesturing and shook his head in annoyance.
Caporal Fabra led them up the uneven steps terraced roughly into the hillside, the path turning back on itself again and again to negotiate the sharp ascent. Only the sound of the breeze whistling softly across the water past the sharp rocks into the cove could be heard. Otherwise it was silent. No cicadas, Elisenda thought to herself. She only knew the beach in the summer and was used to its heat-filled sounds of insects chirruping and bathers splashing.
‘Is that the only way back?’ Àlex asked her, looking out to sea.
‘There’s a dirt track, but Caporal Fabra said it was impassable. And you can only get so far by car anyway. It’s still a bit of a hike from there. Sea or land, it’s much of a muchness.’ She turned to smile at him. ‘That’s why it’s so good in the summer. So don’t tell anyone about it.’
He smiled back at her, a rarity these days. Elisenda sometimes forgot how much it softened his features, took the rough edge off the anger coiling below the surface.
‘Nudist, mind,’ she added.
‘We could have a unit outing here, then. Bring Inspector Puigventós along. Make a day of it.’
Elisenda carried on walking and tried not to laugh. For one moment, she’d caught a fleeting glimpse of the old Àlex.
‘Just along here,’ Fabra twisted to tell her.
The steps levelled out under a canopy of pine trees, the ground carpeted with soft and shifting dried needles that felt comforting underfoot, even through her wet shoes. To the right stood a cluster of holm oaks, the bark flaking off in thin layers like ancient scrolls. To the left, the sea, down below them. A cruise ship way out on the horizon, no doubt heading for Barcelona. Elisenda smelt the sweet scent of the pines mingled with the sunlit salt aroma of the Mediterranean. She took a deep breath and followed Fabra to a cordoned-off area in a small clearing.
A woman looked up from a trench and saw them. She jumped nimbly out and walked towards them, placing a small trowel in a jacket pocket and clapping dust from her hands. She was taller than Elisenda, and had long, unruly hair barely restrained by an elastic band. More grey in it than Elisenda had realised from a distance. The woman wore linen trousers and a light cotton jacket despite the February chill.
‘Doctora Fradera,’ she introduced herself. ‘You must be the police from Girona.’
‘Sotsinspectora Elisenda Domènech and Sergent Àlex Albiol,’ Elisenda introduced them.
‘Only I do hope it hasn’t been a wasted journey.’
Elisenda stifled a sigh.
‘So why exactly are we here?’ she asked.
Chapter Two
‘This is the first body we found,’ Doctora Fradera explained to them.
She’d led them back to the trench and was kneeling alongside a brown and mottled skeleton. A spike was buried in the fragile bones. Both Elisenda and Àlex had recoiled when they saw it. Rusted and brittle, it protruded from the front of the skull, closing a cold and shocking triangle with the empty eye sockets.
‘How old is it?’ Elisenda asked her, recovering from the sight.
The archaeologist gently flicked some of the earth from the cranium. ‘At this stage, my best guess is about five thousand years.’
Elisenda looked down at the older woman in the trench. She could feel Àlex standing next to her getting restless. ‘There is a reason for our being here?’
The archaeologist didn’t seem to have heard her and pointed to the spike. ‘We think this is an execution. We’re not entirely sure. Until we remove the skeleton and get it back to the laboratory, we won’t be able to tell if the spike was inserted ante or post mortem.’
Despite herself, Elisenda’s curiosity was piqued. ‘And if it’s post mortem?’
Doctora Fradera gazed at the skull before answering. ‘Display. Or so we think. What for, we don’t fully know. The thing is, in these cases, we’ve normally found the head severed from the body, which rather bears out the display theory. But that doesn’t appear to be the case here. Initially, I can’t see any sign of the individual having been decapitated, either before or after death. It’s really very odd.’
‘So why exactly have you asked us to come here?’ Elisenda was finding the archaeologist’s extemporisation irritating to have to follow, especially when she was beginning to suspect it was going to turn out to be a wasted journey. Àlex had already taken a pace back from the side of the trench, his face cold.
‘And what is also interesting is that there is evidence of its having been found before and left here,’ Fradera carried on talking, apparently oblivious to the Mossos. ‘Markings around the body would indicate that an earlier dig found it but chose not to remove it. But that’s not so unusual. They may have left it undisturbed for subsequent digs to find. Subsequent dating techniques. It does happen.’ She looked up at Elisenda. ‘Inter
esting, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Elisenda answered honestly. ‘But I don’t see why you brought us all this way to see it.’
Fradera climbed easily out of the pit and walked purposefully away. ‘Oh, it isn’t this one. That’s over here. Sorry if I stink, by the way. It gets awfully hot digging in these trenches.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Àlex muttered.
Elisenda raised her eyes at him and set off after the archaeologist, deep in thought. She suddenly had the feeling that the woman did have something that was worth bringing them all the way out to the coast from Girona. Erratic she may be, but she had an evident intellect, and her care for the skull showed an awareness of her subject, if not of other living beings. Somehow Elisenda couldn’t see her jumping to a wrong conclusion. She caught up with the archaeologist as they began to descend gradually through a thicker clump of pines, heading away from the sea. Àlex was five paces behind. Elisenda caught him gazing intently from side to side, checking the scene, searching for anything, no matter how much he felt it was a waste of time. The old Àlex slowly coming back, she thought, tucking the idea away in a faintly optimistic drawer.
‘Only you here, Doctora Fradera?’ she asked.
The archaeologist threw a glance around at the quiet scene. ‘What? Oh yes, just two of us working on the dig at the moment. My colleague’s gone into Palamós. No money for any other archaeologists, funding’s been cut. You know how it is these days.’
‘I do indeed,’ Elisenda replied, heartfelt.
‘And it’s too early in the year for students to come and help out. Pity. They’re free and glad of the experience. We’ll have to wait until Easter for that. If we’re still going, that is.’ She suddenly swerved. ‘Mind the dog shit, disgusting people leaving it there like that. It’s just over here.’
Elisenda sidestepped and looked back at the first trench, some thirty metres away. ‘Why so far from one to the other?’ she asked.
‘The settlement’s much bigger than we first thought. The trench back there is on the site of an earlier dig, in the 1980s, when the belief was they were dealing with a much smaller site. We’ve sunk a couple of pilot trenches further afield to get some notion of the extent of it.’ She stopped and oddly lowered her voice. ‘If we can show some evidence of a more major find, not even the lot in power now could cut off the funding. The tight-fisted bastards would have to let us carry on.’
