The Poisoned Rock: A Sullivan and Broderick Murder Investigation (The Rock Murder Mysteries Book 2)

by Robert Daws

  ‘The Rock’s only two kilometres square! How many places are there for a mad Pole to hide, for God’s sake?’ she had screamed at Aldarino.

  Added to this was the inevitable pressure from above, delivered with increasing regularity by phone from the commissioner of police – inconveniently at an international conference in New York – and locally from the minister of justice.

  Calbot and Aldarino were doing their best to keep her up to date, but the tide of information had turned into a flood since the discovery of Cornwallis’s body on the other side of town.

  The news from Broderick, that the suspect was now believed to be in Spain, had come as some relief. At least the manhunt could be called off on the Rock. However, it now meant co-ordinating operations with the Spanish police and that could prove a slow and frustrating exercise.

  As soon as they arrived back at New Mole House, he and Sullivan were summoned by Massetti for an update.

  ‘This thing is huge,’ Massetti barked the moment they came through her door. ‘Even Obama’s sent Novacs best wishes for a speedy recovery. The pope will be onto it next.’

  ‘I’m not sure that Ms Novacs is a Catholic,’ Sullivan ventured.

  ‘Since when did the Vatican give a shit about that? If it’s good PR for Washington, it’s good PR for Rome. The only place it’s bad PR is here in Gib. Any suggestions?’

  ‘Some observations,’ Broderick began cautiously. ‘If our man has crossed into Spain, there’s a chance he’s still after Novacs. We should therefore notify both her and Isolde and make sure the Spanish police offer immediate security backup. They will, of course, also have to be told about Cornwallis.’

  ‘You’d better leave that to me,’ Massetti replied, her attention suddenly diverted by a tap on the door. Calbot entered the office.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, ma’am, but you need to know this …’

  Massetti nodded for him to continue.

  ‘We found a banker’s card receipt in a pocket of the man’s rucksack. We traced it to a Lech Jasinski, a Polish national living in Luboń, most recently as a patient in its top psychiatric hospital. He’s an ex-Polish army special forces operative, retired ten years ago with a severe schizophrenic disorder. Father died a few months back – apparently Jasinski went missing from the hospital not long after.’

  ‘Dear God,’ Massetti sighed. ‘Well, that’s who he is and where he’s come from. Now all we have to do is find out where he’s gone.’

  ‘We’ve also had Cornwallis’s mobile phone records checked,’ said Calbot. ‘His last calls were made just after lunch on the afternoon he died. Just checking his messages, by the look of things. However, he sent two texts to Novacs and Isolde from the San Roque area in the small hours of the previous night.’

  ‘Okay. Thank you, Calbot.’ The young police officer left the room. Massetti turned to the two detectives. ‘Any more thoughts?’

  ‘Obviously we have no jurisdiction over the border,’ Sullivan now took over. ‘But it doesn’t mean we have to wait for the Guardia Civil and Cuerpo to give us the nod, ma’am. What if he isn’t after Novacs? What if Jasinski’s just biding his time or maybe even on the run for good? An anonymous letter to Cornwallis was found in his apartment. An invitation to meet its author in San Roque that same night. What if the letter was from Jasinski? What if San Roque is where he’s been staying and where he’s gone now?’

  ‘You think it’s worth checking out?’

  ‘Better to be doing something than waiting for a whole lot of nada from the Guardia, ma’am.’

  ‘Okay,’ Massetti decided. ‘Get photos of both Cornwallis and Jasinski and get across to San Roque and ask questions. Be discreet, though. I didn’t order you to do it, understood? You both went on your own accord. If the Spanish police find you, tell them you’re on holiday. And I didn’t tell you to tell them that either, okay?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Sullivan and Broderick replied in unison as they headed for the door.

  32

  The old man poured the fine Rioja into two sparkling glasses, his steady hand and his eye for a generous measure belying his age and frailty. For two days, Don Martínez had played host to his friend from England. His beautiful ancient townhouse in the centre of San Roque was proving an oasis of sanity to the elderly archivist on the first leg of a long overdue touring holiday of Europe. The secret file that Graeme Maugham had delivered to his Spanish friend two days earlier had been so gratefully received that he had known at once that his decision to smuggle it out of the UK had been the right one.

  For three hours, Don Martínez had studied the documents before him, reading and rereading entire sections. When he had finally finished, a single tear had fallen down his cheek.

  ‘Thank you, my friend,’ he had said to Maugham. ‘I promise I will deliver this to where it will do only good. The ghosts of many good men and women will then be able to rest in peace for ever. May God bless you.’

  The following night, Don Martínez had slipped out of his home with the file in his hands. An hour later, he returned without it. Maugham had asked no questions and Don Martínez had given no explanations. To both men’s great relief, nothing more was said on the subject.

  Now, as they raised their glasses in a toast to absent loved ones, both men felt strangely complete. An aura of tranquillity surrounded them, an atmosphere enhanced by their steady drinking through the late afternoon and evening. As they sat in the flower-bedecked courtyard at the centre of the house and gazed up towards the darkening sky, all seemed well and secure within the thick, cooling walls that protected them. All, no doubt, would have continued in such harmony, both men drinking and musing till the need for sleep moved them to their beds, except for the sharp knocking on the back door.

  It came as something of a shock. It must be Aina, Martínez thought. His housekeeper had gone home a good hour before, but must have returned to pick up something or attend to a forgotten chore. Unlike her to forget her keys, Martínez thought with a little irritation.

  Struggling to his feet, the old man shrugged his shoulders at his guest and moved towards the long hallway that would take him to the kitchen and back door of the house. This, in turn, opened onto an ornamental courtyard, off which another door led to a passageway that ran between his and the neighbouring house.

  Slipping back the large bolt and opening the door to the passageway, his eyes met something both intriguing and unsettling. A surprise visitor who could not be turned away.

  33

  The Villa Santa Monica lay hidden in the hills above Marbella. Its position, in a small valley protected on three sides by steep inclines and a sheer drop at its front, offered its occupants a sense of isolated safety in an idyll of natural beauty. A full kilometre from the main road, the villa’s winding driveway was guarded by two separate security checkpoints, the second of which allowed entry through a two-metre-high perimeter fence. A magnificent example of modernist architecture – glass, water, light and landscape blended together in effortless harmony – the villa offered the finest luxuries that money could buy. Two swimming pools, gardens, tennis courts, a helicopter pad – and a separate six-bedroom annexe for staff and security operatives discreetly and elegantly located alongside the main building. All was unique, beautiful and safe. Julia Novacs had fallen in love with the Villa Santa Monica at first sight. Antonio Banderas had been such a sweetheart to offer it to her for her stay on the Costa.

  The helicopter carrying Isolde, the star and her entourage had dropped off its precious cargo just before 8.30 pm and departed towards Málaga. Novacs was swiftly taken to her suite at the far end of the villa, while Isolde prepared to head back to Gibraltar by car, the helicopter being too expensive to justify single passenger occupancy back to the Rock.

  Novacs had calmed down a little and Isolde considered his further presence to be pointless. Taking Wendall Phillips to one side, he had told him that there was still a movie to be shot and that the level of his responsibility for it had doubled the mom
ent he had sacked his incompetent line producer the day before. A replacement would be flying out from the UK in two days, but until then, he would have to deal with every aspect of keeping the film on schedule and on budget. With all these things on his mind, Isolde decided to stop off down the coast at La Alcaidesa to check out a beach location that urgently needed to be confirmed by the director and location manager.

  As Isolde left the villa, he had became immersed in a heated phone conversation with one of the film’s main backers – a locally based Russian steel magnate. On hearing the news of the assault on Novacs, the man had developed the jitters. As Isolde drove away from the Villa Santa Monica, he clicked his mobile onto hands-free mode and desperately tried to pour balm on worried Russian nerves.

  34

  In Novacs’ suite, a doctor was waiting to check on her and offer sedatives to help her sleep. Forty minutes after arrival, the star had bathed, meditated and taken her prescribed medication. She now slept fitfully beneath the silk sheets of her enormous bed.

  Wendall Phillips closed the door to the suite as softly as he could and moved silently across the small plant-filled atrium into the main body of the villa. There was an urgency in his pace driven by his need to speak to the villa’s head of security, Dag Liskard, as quickly as possible. He had spent the last fifteen minutes in a growing spiral of alarm. An alarm he had not allowed the distressed and vulnerable Novacs to detect.

  While his employer had been taking her bath, Wendall had noticed that something was different about the suite. Although they had been in residence there for only a week, Wendall knew every detail of the rooms. Novacs’ obsession with neatness and order was one that her PA shared in spades. If a book or cushion was so much as a millimetre out of its usual position, both would know at once and set about correcting the aberration. This was why, although everything appeared to be in perfect order, Wendall Phillips knew that it wasn’t. The chair by the French windows was slightly crooked. The remote control for the television was on the wrong shelf and the bottom drawer of the dressing table slightly open. In the dressing room itself, the skirt of one of Novacs’ many dresses was caught in the sliding door of the wardrobe. Wendall knew that the housekeeper would never have left the suite in that condition. Someone else had been in there during their absence. Someone had been taking a good look around.

  Moving across the villa’s huge central living-room, with its automated ceiling retracted and open to the star-filled sky, Wendall felt the warm night air on his face. He would have liked nothing more than to pour himself a night cap from the well-stocked bar at one end of the room and sit and stare at the Milky Way for an hour or two. But that would have to wait for another night.

  Making his way down the passage that led to the kitchen at the rear of the villa, Wendall entered the state-of-the-art culinary centre. Sitting at a huge central table, with an array of walkie-talkies and mobiles and a mug of steaming coffee in front of him, was Liskard. The lean, hard-faced Dutchman took one look at Wendall and knew at once all was not well.

  ‘What’s up? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘I need to check the villa’s surveillance tapes for the last forty-eight hours,’ Wendall ordered. ‘I think we’ve had a visitor.’

  35

  Three minutes later, both men were huddled around the multi-screened monitoring console in the small security room beside the main entrance to the villa. Each screen kept a separate area of the residence and its grounds under surveillance, each one skipping from one location to another at ten-second intervals. When the villa was occupied by Novacs and her people, the screens were monitored by security guards around the clock. When she was not there, a more relaxed regime was put in place. Wendall and Liskard quickly reviewed the facts and possibilities.

  The star had left for the night-shoot the previous afternoon at 3 pm. The housekeeper had immediately attended to Novacs’ suite after her departure, finishing her work just past 4 pm. In the unlikely event that an intruder had managed to breach the villa’s security net and enter the star’s rooms, it must have been some time after that.

  After twenty minutes forwarding through the CCTV recordings, something caught Liskard’s eye. The time on the monitor’s digital clock was 20.57 the previous evening. Movement in the foliage within the main garden made both men stare even more intently at the screen. Suddenly, in the top right-hand side of the picture, a figure moved quickly from the bushes and ran towards the far end of the villa. Switching to the internal cameras positioned in that part of the building, they saw a man wearing a baseball cap and carrying a rucksack enter the villa through a window that had been carelessly left open. Once inside, he took his bearings for a moment, before moving down the hallway towards the door to Novacs’ suite. Turning once to look directly at the security camera above him, the man opened the door and entered the rooms.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Liskard exclaimed. ‘Who the fuck is that?’

  Wendall did not answer. He was already on the phone trying to reach Isolde. Although he had never seen the man on the screen before, he knew it had to be the same person who had assaulted Novacs in Gibraltar just a few hours before. How he had got into the villa the previous day was something to be explained at a later point. All that mattered now was that every effort was made to ensure he didn’t get close to Novacs again. Isolde’s mobile returned an engaged signal.

  Shit, Wendall thought with growing alarm. He would now have no choice but to carry out the agreed protocol. Isolde had made it clear that on no account were the Spanish police to become involved further. Everything had to be kept in-house. The Guardia had doubled their patrol at the main entrance and that is where they would remain. Phillips would now wake the rest of the guards asleep in the annexe. With the active bodyguard protection doubled on-site, he would oversee a full search of the villa and grounds.

  At this precise moment, another possibility occurred to him. ‘What if the bastard’s already here?’

  36

  At just after 10.30 pm, Sullivan and Broderick drove across the border with Spain and took a left along the Avenue Principe de Austurias. Five minutes later they were on the CA-34 passing the gigantic CEPSA oil refinery on their left and heading north towards San Roque. Behind the wheel of his Mercedes, Broderick broke into fluent Spanish.

  ‘Muy noble y muy leal ciudad de San Roque, donde reside la de Gibraltar.’

  Sullivan looked askance at him. ‘Well, well. Very impressive. The San Roque and Gibraltar bit I got. As for the rest …?’

  ‘It’s the town’s motto: “Very noble and very loyal city of San Roque, where Gibraltar lives on”,’ Broderick explained.

  ‘“Gibraltar lives on”? I don’t understand.’

  Broderick gave her his patient look. ‘San Roque was established by the former Spanish citizens of Gibraltar, after the majority fled following the takeover by the Anglo-Dutch in 1704. The Spanish king Philip V was so chuffed that they had stayed loyal to him that he established the new town of San Roque in 1706. The town has retained the motto and some of its people maintain strong feelings about the Rock.’

  ‘Eat your heart out, Simon Schama,’ Sullivan teased.

  ‘I like my history, Sullivan. Comes in handy at times.’

  ‘Very impressive, guv. Are we nearly there yet?’

  A minute later the Mercedes entered the lower reaches of San Roque. Sullivan noticed that they appeared to be on a small ring road circling the town. Off this road many smaller streets and passages climbed upwards to the centre. Broderick parked the car at the bottom of one of them and both detectives got out.

  ‘What’s wrong with driving up there, guv?’ Sullivan asked.

  ‘The one-way system here is hell. People drive in there and aren’t seen again for weeks. Thought we’d do better wearing out some shoe leather.’

  With that, Broderick took off on foot up the narrow street with its many-coloured townhouses rising on both sides of the steep incline. Sullivan followed close behind, wonder
ing how the middle-aged, full-bellied, gym-allergic Broderick could move so quickly when the need demanded.

  At the top of the street, they took a left and followed a lane with a less challenging incline. After a few hundred metres they entered a square. Sullivan looked up to see the name Plaza de la Iglesia on the wall of a large white townhouse.

  ‘“Plaza of the English”,’ she announced. ‘So not everyone here dislikes us.’

  Ignoring this, Broderick headed towards the Bar El Varel situated to the right of the plaza. Sullivan followed, taking in the impressive sights of the Governor’s Palace to her left and the Church of Santa María La Coronada, with its bell tower and high terracotta roof dominating the area before her.

  Although it was fast approaching 11 pm, the town was still gently busy as people wandered to and fro between homes, bars and restaurants. A lorry full of empty orange boxes had rattled past Sullivan and Broderick as they had climbed towards the plaza, and the sight of a nun riding an old motorcycle had brought a smile to their faces. Now, as they moved towards the Bar El Varel, a small rental car with two tourists inside entered the plaza. Its presence animated several of the locals sitting outside the bar. Rising from the bright red ‘Coca Cola’-emblazoned plastic chairs on which they were seated, they waved their arms and called out for the driver to stop. Despite their furious efforts, the car continued on and up a one-way street in the wrong direction.

  One of the locals shrugged his shoulders as the two detectives arrived outside the bar. ‘Alemán,’ he muttered, looking in the direction of the rogue car. ‘Alemán.’

  Broderick looked at Sullivan. ‘Germans,’ he said. ‘You can spot German tourists by the clothes they wear.’