City of Buried Ghosts (An Inspector Domènech Crime Thriller Book 2)

by Chris Lloyd

  ‘No, we were just told one day when we turned up at the dig that it had been cancelled. Lack of money, I heard.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Start of June. I was quite relieved to be honest. There was a horrible atmosphere on site. There was one guy in particular who annoyed everyone because he was so full of himself. In the end, I got a job on the Indiketa site at Ullastret, which was much more interesting.’

  Elisenda showed him the photograph she’d borrowed from Canudas and asked him to point out the man he meant. He pointed to Mascort straight away.

  On the way back to Girona, they stopped at a motorway services for a quick lunch.

  ‘He wasn’t liked, was he?’ Josep said once they sat down.

  ‘It is odd. A body gets found, so someone we haven’t found a link to yet gets murdered in much the same way, another man seems to have done a moonlight flit, and none of the people we have spoken to are at all worried about saying they’d have happily killed the first victim given half the chance.’

  ‘And there are the accusations of missing artefacts,’ Josep said, before tearing a bite out of the chunky cured ham baguette he was eating.

  Elisenda finished chewing her mouthful of fuet cured sausage baguette and pulled a paper serviette out of the stainless steel holder.

  ‘And there’s the fact of the St. Christopher,’ she finally said. ‘If Mascort never took it off and it wasn’t in the trench at El Crit, where is it?’

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘What did you get from Clara Ferré?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Àlex told Elisenda. ‘She’s at a symposium in Paris until today. Due back this evening. Montse and I’ll catch up with her tomorrow morning.’

  Clara Ferré was the archaeologist on the 1981 dig who now worked at the City History Museum in Girona.

  ‘It’s Saturday,’ Elisenda told him. ‘Don’t expect overtime. Any other news, or have you been skiving off all day while I’ve been working in Barcelona?’

  ‘How was the shopping?’

  ‘All right, don’t push it.’ No, keep it going, Elisenda thought, we’ll soon have you back. She noticed that his voice was just that little bit stronger. It usually sounded more strained by this time in the afternoon.

  ‘Couple of interesting things have come up,’ he told her, putting his smile away for another day. ‘How did it go in Barcelona?’

  She told him about Ricard Soler appearing to have left his flat in a hurry and of all that she’d learned from Jordi Canudas and from the two students Àlex had asked her to speak to.

  ‘I’ve got Josep to check with Científica if there was a St. Christopher in the trench,’ she added, ‘but I don’t remember one being found. If that’s the case, we need to take another look at the dig to see if it turns up.’

  ‘Otherwise, someone took it.’

  She nodded. ‘It might be nothing or it might be relevant. We need to know. We also have to look into these accusations of Mascort stealing artefacts to see if there’s any basis for that and if it might have played a part in his murder.’

  Àlex looked pleased with himself. ‘I’m so glad you mentioned that. I’ve been checking up on Ferran Arbós. We knew he was a curator, but it turns out that he left his last job, at the archaeology museum, under a bit of a cloud.’

  ‘Stealing the goods?’

  He shook his head. ‘Authorising the purchase of artefacts without checking the provenance. Turns out they were genuine, but were stolen from a dig in the Pyrenees, another Iberian site.’

  ‘Isn’t that just negligence?’

  ‘I checked up on a few other acquisitions in museums where he worked as a curator. Two other reported instances of a similar event happening.’

  ‘How many others not reported,’ Elisenda finished for him.

  ‘Every museum or institution where he’s worked, there have inevitably been numerous acquisitions based on his expertise or recommendation. I’ve also come across over a dozen cases of other museums acquiring artefacts based on his say-so. Now most of them are bound to be legitimate, but it would be easy for him to use his position to include other items that aren’t so legit.’

  ‘So Mascort stole them, Arbós acquired them or recommended that others acquire them. They share the profit between them. That’s what you’re saying?’

  ‘I think it’s worth investigating. Look at his house. You don’t buy somewhere like that on a curator’s salary. And he doesn’t sell that many sculptures.’

  Elisenda nodded. ‘Keep digging.’

  ‘There’s something else. I think we can rule out any idea of Mascort’s son being involved in Arbós’s death. He’s in New York, has been since last September, apart from visiting his mother over Christmas. He works for an IT company over there.’

  ‘You know he’s there?’

  ‘I skyped him less than an hour ago. He’s there all right. And his name doesn’t appear on any flights to or from New York since Christmas.’

  ‘That’s pretty good as alibis go,’ Elisenda had to agree. ‘Okay, don’t worry about him. Concentrate on the link between Mascort and Arbós, see if any other names jump out at you. I’m particularly interested in Ricard Soler. I’ll be speaking to Jutge Rigau for a search order to be put out for him and then I can get Seguretat Ciutadana on to it.’

  She went into her office and sat down, unsure what pleased her more, the fact that they appeared to be making progress in the investigation or the fact of her unit looking to be on the path to recovery. She’d been on the point of suggesting to Àlex that she’d interview Clara Ferré the following day, but decided it was better instead to let him and Montse do it. The more she allowed everyone in the unit to work with each other and for each other, the better it would be for them all. She looked at the drawer containing the file with the candidates for the selection panel and opened it. Taking out the folder, she lifted the cover so she could see one side of the details of the candidate at the top of the pile. She closed her eyes for a second and then put the cover back, replacing the folder in her drawer.

  ‘Monday,’ she promised.

  * * *

  ‘This is easier than driving out of Girona in the summer,’ Elisenda shouted above the noise in the empty car on the road to the coast. She had Sopa de Cabra’s Nou album as loud on the car CD player as she could take it.

  There were none of the summer Friday evening queues to get out of the humidity of the city to the more refreshing heat of the coast. Instead, she’d packed a warmer quilt for the weekend. Despite the best sleep she’d had in months, the night she’d spent at the beach house in La Fosca had been on the edge of chilly and she’d ended up throwing three or four towels on top of the bed clothes to keep warm. Since Catalina only really used the place in the summer, all she had were thin sheets and no blankets. In summer, even a sheet could become too hot.

  ‘That’s not the case in February,’ Elisenda muttered to herself when she’d bought some food and coffee at the small supermarket on Carrer dels Ciutadans and packed an extra bag before leaving.

  The moment she turned off the main road and began to zigzag her way into the incongruous winter landscape of the summer haven of La Fosca, the music in the car suddenly sounded out of place, a provocation to the ancient peoples who had once lived here in another settlement that had seen out its time and vanished. Almost in a panic, she turned it off quickly, letting the dark silence of the empty streets flood in.

  ‘Too much imagination, girl,’ she said out loud, suddenly remembering the legend of El Crit and the woman screaming in her dream. She immediately pushed it into a corner of her mind, glad of the quiet.

  She’d left the electricity turned on in La Fosca when she’d returned to Girona on Thursday morning, so all she had to do now was press the remote button on the key fob and the garage door quickly began to rise in front of her, the fluorescent light inside flickering on.

  ‘Trust Sergi to have a turbo-charged garage door,’ she muttered, grateful nonetheless for her br
other-in-law’s love of toys.

  The stairs from the garage took her straight into the kitchen and she walked through the house, turning all the lights on, and dumped her bag in the bedroom. Opening the front door, she went outside and stood for a few moments in the garden, breathing in the salt air and staring out at the thin light above the horizon that danced and shifted out of vision the more she tried to catch sight of it.

  Back inside, she got the fire in the living room going and cooked a first course of fresh spinach sautéed with pine nuts and raisins, which she ate on the sofa in front of the glow from the grate. The dining table was too large and lonely. Staring at the flames as she ate, she listened to the hissing of the wood as it burned, small sparks spitting off every now and then. The smell of the smoke from the holm oak wood was sweet. There were other deeper sounds underneath, the unknown noises of someone else’s house. Afterwards, she quickly fried a piece of sea bass and drizzled olive oil over it, eating it this time standing up by the window, looking out to sea.

  Her fork was midway to her mouth when a change in the tone of the light outside stopped her. A fresh cast of the shadows from the house in the meagre moonlight. A door banged shut.

  She put her plate down on the table and went to the front door. The noise had come from outside, not inside the house.

  Going out into the garden, she saw light thrown from a window in the house that stood next door but one to where she was. Walking on the balls of her feet through the garden, not wanting to be seen on the footpath that ran between the villas and the beach below, she crossed the next-door garden and peered over the wall. The front door was half-open and light from the hallway was spilling out.

  Pulling herself over the wall, she quietly approached the front door and gently pushed it inwards, stepping over the threshold. The sound of someone moving was coming from somewhere to the left of her. She tiptoed on the tiled floor across the small hall, careful not to make a sound, to where the light was on behind another door. As she approached, it was yanked open and a man walked out carrying a knife.

  Elisenda’s reactions were quicker and she grabbed at his wrist, bending it until he dropped the weapon and pulling his arm up behind his back, forcing him to bend forward. He let out a yelp of pain as the metal blade clattered to the ceramic floor.

  ‘Police,’ she warned him.

  ‘I live here,’ he answered her, breathless.

  She released him and made him back off to fetch his ID. He handed it to her and she read the name on it.

  ‘Miquel Canals,’ he answered when she asked him to confirm. He also recited the ID number. The address was one in Barcelona.

  ‘Do you have ID?’ he asked her, calming down after the shock.

  ‘What were you doing carrying a knife?’ Elisenda demanded.

  ‘I was cooking. I’d left my mobile in the living room when it rang, so I went straight from the kitchen to answer it without putting the knife down. I was just on my way back there.’ He pointed to the room opposite.

  Elisenda looked down to the knife on the floor and saw thin slivers of food that had fallen from it, smearing the tiles. Taking a deep breath, she handed the ID card back.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t expect anyone else to be staying here.’

  Canals put the laminated plastic card back in his wallet and into his back pocket.

  ‘I have to confess, neither did I,’ he replied. ‘You still haven’t shown me any ID.’

  ‘It’s back in my house. I’ll fetch it if you want to see it.’

  He held up his hand and smiled for the first time. ‘Don’t worry. Only a cop reacts that quickly. I believe you.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘And only a cop asks so many questions. I’m staying here for a while. The house belongs to some friends, they’re letting me stay here as I needed some time to myself.’ He gave the names of the friends, which Elisenda recognised from summer visits to her sister.

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘You don’t get to ask that question just yet. I don’t know your name.’

  Elisenda reached out her hand to shake his. ‘Elisenda Domènech. I’m staying at my sister’s house. Next but one to this one.’

  ‘I’ve opened a bottle of wine. Would you like a glass, Elisenda Domènech?’

  She studied him before answering. There was a touch of the Àlex about him when Àlex was Àlex. An undercurrent of leashed power, a strong face and a frank, confident charm. In his mid-thirties, she reckoned. A smile that he knew opened doors.

  ‘Maybe some other time,’ she told him and returned to her sister’s house.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The following morning, Elisenda was surprised to find she’d slept until nine o’clock. It was the first time that had happened in as long as she could remember. She collected a kayak from the garage and went out on to the beach. As she’d crossed the path down to the left of the row of villas, she’d seen Miquel Canals standing outside in his front garden. He’d called a greeting and she’d waved back to him.

  Making her way along the beach, she turned to look behind her. None of the houses could be seen from this angle, the steep wall of the low cliff hiding them from view. A thin vein of feldspar ran through the parent rock in light contrast to the ancient dark of the stone embracing it. Turning away, she went down to the water and floated the kayak, gingerly seating herself in it and casting off.

  A couple of pleasure boats were already out on a winter’s Saturday under a cloudless deep blue sky. Used to the roll of the vessel, she settled into a faster pace than the last time she’d tried it and rowed straight out to sea, heading for the horizon. A shape swam under the kayak, knocking the breath out of her for a fleeting moment. A basking shark. A form on which to found endless nightmares but one that was ultimately harmless. She laughed nervously, but paused nevertheless to let it pass on by. The sound of a plane distracted her. A small private one heading east, away from the coast. A shape and a sound that didn’t inspire fear but one that had killed her daughter one summer as her father flew her away across the sea. She watched it disappear over the horizon and turned back for the shore, quickly gathering pace, her arms and shoulders burning with lactic acid.

  Nearer land, she turned north and rowed more leisurely along the tiny coves that dotted the shoreline. She rowed below the Agulla de Castell headland, site of another more established Indiketa dig, the point of land jutting out into the sea denuded of pines to aid the archaeologists in its excavation. She looked up at it and wondered if increased funding for the El Crit site would also lead to the felling of trees there. A desire to understand our past temporarily destroying the beauty of the present.

  Beyond the headland, she indulged herself and paddled into the sheltered little cove next to it for nothing more than the pleasure of gazing down into the pure turquoise water at the sea urchins on the smooth stones below the surface and rowing under the natural arch of wizened rock. Momentarily out of the sunlight, the air beneath was chill and she gave an involuntary shiver.

  The man from the other day was on El Crit beach, picking through the sand for litter near the fishermen’s huts. She greeted him as she passed and he looked up at her but made no reply.

  ‘Have a nice day,’ she muttered to herself, pausing by the three stone huts next to the foot of the steps leading up to the headland. She saw that towards the rear of the one nearest the steep path, a simple whitewashed storage shed with large twin doors at the front, a thick and rusting metal bracket was jutting out of the wall at a right-angle. She imagined it was used by the fishermen to hang nets or pots.

  Stopping for a moment at the stop of the flight of steps, amid the pines and holm oaks, she heard the man’s boat splutter into life and gently putt-putt away on to the next cove. Standing still to listen to the sound fade away, she heard another, smaller sound. A rustling from up ahead of her, where the dig lay.

  Making as little noise as possible, she crept forward, but her foot caught
an old pine cone and it skittered away into the undergrowth. The noise ahead stopped for an instant, to be replaced by a scrabbling, panicked sound. Elisenda immediately ran to the dig, but no one was there. Looking around her through the dense trees, she could hear the sound of steps running away from her, but could see nothing. Choosing the path that ran past the new trench, she followed a trail but the noise she could hear was already diminishing, the whispering of the pine needles confusing the direction the sound was coming from.

  Walking back, she wondered if it could have been an animal she’d spooked.

  ‘Only you don’t believe that for one moment,’ she murmured.

  She stood over the new trench where Mascort’s body had been found and tried to discern whether it had been disturbed. There were no major movements of earth, but it was impossible to tell. She turned at the sound of more steps coming through the trees. Not stealthy or panicked this time, but with the confidence of someone with nothing to hide.

  ‘Doctor Bosch,’ she exclaimed when the archaeologist suddenly emerged. Looking equally surprised, he walked towards where she was standing. ‘I didn’t expect you to be working on a Saturday.’

  ‘Please, call me Llàtzer,’ he told her. He looked around at the site and shrugged. ‘I want to get on with the dig. With so much interest after the body was found, I’m concerned people are going to try and steal artefacts.’

  ‘I think I disturbed someone just now,’ Elisenda confirmed his fears.

  ‘It happens so much. I thought we’d be safe here because it’s so inaccessible, but with it being in the news, we become a target. Did you see them?’

  She shook her head. ‘Would you mind taking a look at the trench to see if it looks like it’s been tampered with?’

  He scanned it with a doubtful expression. ‘I don’t know this trench as well as the other one but it doesn’t appear to have been disturbed since you took the body away.’

  ‘Could you look to see if there’s a medallion in there? A St. Christopher.’