The street was deserted, the house in darkness when she reached the front gate. She eased it open cautiously, trying to remember if it had squeaked on her first visit, and then she was in the deep shadows of the overgrown garden, making her way carefully along a meandering path. The dark outline of the house rose above her, its pinnacles and gargoyles bristling against the night sky.
The path took her round to a small rear lawn. There were the windows of the salon, and above them those of the main bedroom, all in total darkness. Beyond the garden wall a motorbike spluttered, a horn blared, but within the shroud of the garden nothing stirred.
Kathy retraced her steps to the front of the house, visualising its layout. And there, in the far corner of the front elevation, almost obscured by a thick canopy of foliage, rose the turret, capped by a conical spire like that of a fairytale castle. As she worked her way closer, past an arbour and a waterless fountain, she saw that this side of the house was clad in a dense fabric of ivy. Gnarled and thick, it draped the wall like assault netting. A cat burglar couldn’t have asked for better. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Kathy breathed, let down your hair. She grasped two handfuls and tested her weight. The plant held it easily. She raised one arm higher and began to climb.
Halfway up she was able to stand on a ledge formed by a stone moulding to catch her breath before moving on to reach the main parapet, above which the turret rose skyward. She found that by standing on the lip of the parapet she could reach one of the turret’s windows, a leaded framework of small diamond panes. She selected one and used her small screwdriver to bend back the lead until she could prise the glass free. She reached inside for the handle, opened the window and hauled herself inside.
It felt a little like being at the top of a lighthouse, with windows overlooking the city in all directions. Heavy drapes were bunched at intervals, and she slid these closed so that she could use her torch without attracting attention. A bench ran all the way around beneath the windowsills, interrupted only at the entrance from the head of the spiral stairs. Beneath the bench were cupboard doors, their dark green panelling picked out in scarlet. There was one office chair, incongruous in tubular steel among the medieval fitments. Even more incongruous was the video player.
Kathy imagined Dr Lizancos sitting up here, a wizened Captain Nemo at the controls of his Gothic Nautilus.
She tried the cupboard doors; all were locked. Regretfully, she jammed the head of the larger screwdriver in the edge of one and levered it open, splintering the frame. Inside was a pile of old files. They looked like medical records, but were all in Spanish, which she couldn’t decipher. The names of the patients, if that’s what they were, seemed to come from all over Europe-German, English, Scandinavian. Dates were spread over the eighties and nineties.
The second and third cupboards yielded scores more files. Kathy was becoming concerned at the damage, and more importantly the noise her forced openings were making.
The videotapes were in the fourth cupboard. They were numbered. She picked the one which looked the newest and slid it into the player, pressing buttons. The screen came alive with lurid colour and she sat down.
At first she thought it was a pornographic film. The fat sausage of a man’s penis lay slack between his open hairless thighs, in large close-up. Some fingers appeared from the side of the screen to lift it up. More fingers prodded the testicles. The fingers were covered with creamy coloured latex.
The fingers disappeared and there was a long pause, the penis lying limp, as if the camera were waiting for it to stand up and perform some sort of trick. Then the fingers reappeared, this time holding a gleaming scalpel. Both Kathy and the camera recoiled slightly.
‘Oh my God…’ she breathed, as the blade touched the flesh and soundlessly began to slice.
It was the most shocking thing she’d ever seen, but she couldn’t drag her eyes away, watching the blade cut and cut until the whole organ came away.
She gave a violent jump as hands gripped her shoulders and the lights came on.
The hands moved down to her biceps, caressing almost, then squeezed so hard she gasped with pain. With no apparent effort they lifted her bodily out of the chair and swung her round to face Dr Lizancos. The old man was breathing heavily from the exertion of climbing the stairs. He gazed malevolently at Kathy from under his thick lids, then his eyes darted around the room. She saw his suspicion flare into anger as he spotted the broken cupboard doors. He stabbed at the video to switch it off. His mouth was a pale line, tight with fury. He barked something in Spanish or Catalan to the man who held Kathy, and she recognised a name, Sigfried, the bodybuilder at the gym. He grunted and increased the pressure of his grip. Kathy gasped, aware of her eyes watering, the feeling dying in her arms.
‘How did you get in here, lady?’ Sigfried murmured in her ear.
She nodded towards the curtain. ‘The window, over there.’
Lizancos scurried over to draw back the curtain and examine the missing windowpane, then started examining the contents of Kathy’s backpack, hauling out the housebreaking tools wrapped in a towel.
‘How did you come to the house?’ Sigfried asked.
‘Taxi.’
Lizancos dropped the tools and came over to empty her pockets. He examined the contents of her wallet, her passport, then held up the Hertz key ring. He glared at her accusingly and the steel fingers squeezed so hard that she thought they must surely snap something.
She gasped. ‘Ah… In the street outside… a block to the left. Red Seat.’ The grip eased.
The lizard doctor slithered out of the room, and she heard his feet on the stairs. Sigfried said nothing as they waited, effortlessly maintaining his paralysing grip.
A little later Lizancos returned with a roll of surgical tape and a pair of scissors. He said something and she was pushed backwards into the chair, her arms stretched behind her. Lizancos cut a length of tape and strapped one wrist to the tubular frame, then repeated the process with the other wrist and both ankles. Then Lizancos gave Sigfried instructions and the bodybuilder nodded and left, turning his torso sideways to get the broad shoulders through the narrow doorway at the head of the stairs. Lizancos knelt in front of the broken cupboards to check the damage and their contents, tutting and muttering under his breath.
Sigfried was gone for ten minutes, and when he returned he was holding the copy of The Complete Works of Luis Domenech i Montaner that Kathy had left in the car. He spoke softly to Lizancos and handed him the book, and the old man raised his eyebrow and glanced at Kathy, with a hint of something like respect, she thought. Trying to seize the moment, she said, ‘Look, I’m sorry for the intrusion, but you should be grateful I was so discreet. I need to know what Charles Verge looks like now, and where we can find him. Tell me that and you won’t hear from us again. It’s that simple.’
It was hard to tell if the doctor had understood her words, and she began to speak again, but he ignored her and said something to Sigfried, then turned and left.
There had been a look of resolution on the leathery old face, and Kathy had the feeling that she was running out of time. Sigfried was regarding her impassively, leaning casually against the bench, huge arms folded. She thought she should try to provoke him. Trying to sound unconcerned she said, ‘You don’t look the type to be into genital mutilation, Sigfried. Are you sure you know what Dr Frankenstein is getting you into?’
He gave a ghost of a smile and raised his index finger to his lips, indicating to her to shut up. A few minutes later Lizancos wheezed up the stairs again, carrying an old leather doctor’s bag. He opened it on the bench in front of Kathy, while Sigfried positioned himself at her back. From the bag Lizancos began to extract a variety of things: disposable gloves, swabs, cotton wool, a stethoscope, and-Kathy stopped breathing-a metal box of what looked like surgical instruments. He fished around some more and produced a syringe in a sterile packet, and a small brown bottle. For some reason Kathy thought of the brown stain on the English tourist’s shirt,
and thought how fortunate he had been in his assault.
‘You know I’m a police officer, don’t you?’ she tried. ‘Captain Alvarez will be very angry if anything happens to me.’
They ignored her, Lizancos unpeeling the syringe and filling it from the brown bottle. He came to her side, bending to wipe her arm with cotton wool, and as he did so he hissed in her ear, ‘I don’t think so.’ Then he jabbed the needle in.
Kathy began to protest. ‘That is the most stupid…’ But no more words came.
28
A gust of cool air on her left cheek. She didn’t want to get out of bed and tried to turn over, but found she couldn’t. Something was holding her down. There was a roar of noise, then silence. She opened her eyes, saw pale light and immediately felt a wave of nausea swell inside her. She closed her eyes quickly and it gradually subsided.
Someone was speaking, a man, insistent. Something touched her shoulder and she tried opening her eyes again. This time she made out a circle. She realised she was sitting, not lying, and simultaneously registered a steering wheel in front of her face. Struggling to free herself, whatever was holding her released abruptly, and she found herself rolling to her left. The nausea lurched in her stomach again, and she saw a polished black boot looming in front of her face. It began to move, but not fast enough. She vomited over it and a man cursed. Her vision blurred and she fell forward onto the ground.
After a while, she opened her eyes and saw that she was lying on bare earth by the side of a highway. Occasional cars and trucks were passing, engines roaring, headlights ablaze under a sky the pale grey of dawn or dusk. She sat up slowly and took in the flashing blue light on the car parked behind her Seat. One cop was crouching over his shoes, wiping them with a piece of newspaper, while the other looked inside her car. She noticed with a groan that the front of the Seat was caved in against a concrete post.
The cop straightened out of the car and replaced his cap. He said something to the other man and held up her passport in one hand; in the other was an empty bottle. Brandy, Kathy guessed. They both looked down at her with disgust on their faces.
It was late morning before Captain Alvarez and Lieutenant Mozas made an appearance at the district police station where she had been taken. By that stage she had been given a breath test, a blood test, a medical examination, water, coffee and a bread roll. The young doctor had offered to pump out her stomach, but she had declined, although she still felt dazed and horribly sick. This wasn’t surprising, he had suggested, with a blood alcohol reading of that magnitude. A woman officer had taken her to a washroom, where Kathy had tried clumsily to clean up her clothes. She had examined the arm where Lizancos had injected her and found only a faint red mark. Apart from that and the hangover, she seemed to be untouched.
Alvarez looked stiff and proper in a black double-breasted suit, hair brushed hard against his skull, as if he’d come straight from mass. Mozas, in jeans and sweater, might have been taking the family on a Sunday outing. Neither man seemed pleased to be there. Alvarez sat opposite her across the table, Mozas, disconcertingly out of her cone of vision, somewhere to her right.
‘Why are you here, Sergeant Kolla?’ Alvarez asked. He had the same look of distaste on his face as the highway patrol officers, and Kathy wondered if there was some particular taboo in Spain against drunk women. She thought they must have had enough British tourists pass through to get used to the idea by now. Probably the whole building despised her.
‘I…’ Her throat felt dry and clogged, and her first attempt to speak ended in a coughing fit that brought back the nausea. They waited with exaggerated patience while she took a sip of water and tried again. ‘I had a free weekend,’ she said hoarsely, ‘so I thought I’d come back to Barcelona, as a tourist.’
‘Are the drinks in London so expensive?’ Alvarez sneered.
‘It was a very cheap flight.’
‘Who did you come with?’
‘I came alone.’
‘Where is your luggage?’
‘In the car?’
The policeman lifted her backpack onto the table and emptied it in front of her. Towel, wash bag, sunglasses, change of shirt and underwear, and The Complete Works of Luis Domenech i Montaner. There was no sign of her tools.
‘What is your hotel?’
‘I never got around to finding one.’
‘Where did you go last night?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t remember.’
‘Yesterday afternoon?’
Kathy shrugged. ‘Sorry, my mind’s a blank. I don’t even know where you found me.’
Alvarez’s eyes and lips narrowed with irritation. ‘Did Scotland Yard send you?’
‘Absolutely not. They have no idea.’
Alvarez snorted, half turned in his chair and lit a cigarette. Mozas took this as his cue to edge his seat closer to Kathy’s right side and say quietly, ‘This is no good, Kathy, this “I don’t remember” business.’
‘But it’s the truth, Jeez. I honestly cannot remember taking a single drink last night.’
‘You think someone gave you something?’ he offered sympathetically. ‘It happens. An attractive young woman on her own, a man slips something in her coffee and she wakes up twelve hours later remembering nothing…’
‘Well, I suppose it’s possible.’
‘But you weren’t raped.’ His tone hardened abruptly. ‘What would be the point, if your phantom did nothing?’
‘He’s your phantom, Jeez. I can’t remember a thing.’
‘Did you come here to meet someone, perhaps? Someone you met the last time you were here?’
‘No. I just thought I’d take a stroll down La Rambla.’
‘So you went to La Rambla?’
‘I can’t remember.’
Alvarez snapped something and both men got to their feet. Kathy was taken out to a cell. Her belt and shoelaces were removed and the door was locked. She examined the plastic cover on the mattress of the single bunk, then stretched out on it and tried to sleep.
She woke to the clang of the steel door. A uniformed man gave her a tray with a sandwich and cup of water, and left again. She found she was hungry.
When they took her back to the interview room she saw from the clock on the wall that it was now two-fifteen. Three hours had passed since the two detectives had spoken to her, and now here they were again. Kathy wondered what they’d been doing. They seemed to have accumulated some files of paperwork.
The younger man, with the better command of English, sat opposite her this time, with Alvarez, glowering, to the side.
‘Do you feel a little better, Kathy?’ Mozas inquired sympathetically.
‘A bit, yes, thanks.’
‘Good. And perhaps your memory has come back?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Well, let’s try to help it. Yesterday you got off the plane at El Prat and went to the Hertz desk. Do you remember that?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘It was five past one when you signed for the car. You got behind the wheel of a red Seat Cordo, and you drove out of the airport. Where did you go?’
Kathy shrugged.
‘Into Barcelona?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I don’t think so, Kathy!’ The detective gave a grin of triumph, and Kathy felt a little chill, wondering what they could know.
Mozas consulted his notes. ‘You went to Sitges.’
‘Did I?’
‘Oh yes. And please don’t say you can’t remember.’
Kathy said nothing. She saw that Mozas was dying to tell her how he knew.
‘How do you know that, Jeez?’
‘You drove down on the A-16 autopista to Sitges. Your vehicle was filmed going through the Castelldefels toll booth at one twenty-two p.m.’
‘Oh.’
‘Did you go to Sitges the last time you were here, Kathy?’ Mozas asked. ‘You must remember that!’ He grinned again, and Kathy recognised a trap.
‘Well
, yes, I did,’ she said carefully. ‘I drove down the coast one afternoon. It was very pleasant.’
‘Any particular points of attraction? Places of interest?’
‘I did a bit of sightseeing…’
‘And you went to a fitness club, yes?’
‘I believe I did, yes.’
Alvarez suddenly unleashed a stream of angry prose at Mozas, who stiffened, his playful manner evaporating. ‘The captain says that you are full of shit, Kathy. He wants you to tell us the truth now, or he will hand this over to our bosses to take to the highest levels in Scotland Yard. We know you broke into the Apollo-Sitges Fitness Club yesterday evening…’
‘No.’
‘The alarm was recorded at eight twenty-three p.m., and your car was photographed again on the autopista at eight fifty-four p.m., returning to Barcelona.’
They’ve had help, Kathy thought. Lizancos has told them exactly where to look. What else has he told them?
‘Why would I want to break into a fitness club? Are you accusing me of a robbery?’
‘No, Kathy. In a way it’s much more serious than that. The building is owned by Dr Javier Lizancos, as you well know. You’ve met Dr Lizancos, of course. You went to his home on the eighteenth of September, the day before you went to Sitges to visit his premises there.’ Kathy noticed that Captain Alvarez had picked up The Complete Works of Luis Domenech i Montaner and was pointedly turning the pages, studying the illustrations. Mozas leaned towards Kathy across the table and lowered his voice. ‘Is there someone you are in contact with here in Spain, Kathy? Another arm of the police services, perhaps? The Guardia Civil? It would be so much simpler if you would tell us. It would avoid misunderstandings.’
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