City of Good Death: A Gripping Crime Thriller (A Detective Elisenda Domènech Investigation 1)

by Chris Lloyd

  Opposite the university offices, the trees outside the Campus bar-restaurant were heavily in bloom, shading the handful of students seated at the tables with bottles of beer and glasses of water. A breeze blew in from the south, scented with orange.

  'Days like this shouldn't be so beautiful,' Elisenda commented, angling her face to the sun. Àlex didn't reply.

  As they walked past, Elisenda glanced at the stone steps descending sharply to the left of the bar.

  The four thugs from the court were standing in a row three steps down from the top, staring with mortuary slab eyes at the two of them pass by.

  She didn't tell Àlex they were there.

  Chapter Eight

  'Bona nit,' Elisenda answered to the middle-aged couple that walked past her, going the other way along Carretera de Barcelona. Thursday night cars flashed past on the busy main road, leaving the echo of a whumph in her ears for moments after they'd gone by. Ever since the city had got its university, Thursday night had been transformed from just another weeknight into Friday's dress rehearsal like it was the eve of a holiday. There's life in the old girl yet, Elisenda thought, remembering the milder Girona of her teenage years. She was heading back into the centre, past the rows of new apartment blocks in and around Parc del Migdia, which had been the old military barracks in the days of her childhood, and past the extensive roadworks for the new high-speed train line carving up the dividing line between the Eixample area and the now almost unrecognisable suburb of Sant Narcís. Apart from the traffic, little of Carretera de Barcelona was as it was when she was growing up in an old apartment near where the road began its journey, between the railway station and Plaça Poeta Marquina. As a girl, she'd always thought of Poeta Marquina, with its hundreds of deafening starlings nesting in the plane trees above the glass-sided Café Nuria, as the boundary where the city proper started. Now Girona sprawled out along the main road, throwing up buildings and modern squares and sculptures before it as it rumbled across its own past.

  It was in one such new building in Parc del Migdia, on the outer fringes of her old new city, where she'd just had dinner. All she could recall now as she approached the station was her younger sister, Catalina, sitting on the terrace of her apartment overlooking the artificial lake, gazing at her watch for the umpteenth time.

  'I'm really sorry,' Catalina had said. Also for the umpteenth time. 'He promised he'd do his best to be here.'

  'Don't worry,' Elisenda had told her each time, clasping her hand on the white plastic table. 'I'm really not worried.' And she wasn't. It was nice to be able to talk to her sister without Sergi, Catalina's husband, dominating the evening.

  'He'll be out entrepreneuring,' Catalina joked. 'He's good at entrepreneuring.'

  'It pays for all this,' both women chanted, Sergi's favourite comment for every acquisition, and chuckled. Elisenda laughed along with Catalina, but her sister's face gave her away. She had the same very slight overbite that Elisenda found attractive in her sister but a flaw in herself. The same fine brown hair worn long and the same slender features. But Catalina had inherited their mother's easygoing nature, while Elisenda had been given their father's rebellious tenacity. Or stubbornness, as their mother called it.

  'I'll do the dishes,' Elisenda offered. 'You're in no fit state to. Not in your condition.' Another of Sergi's more recent sayings.

  Catalina looked down at her stomach and fluffed up the big, man’s shirt she was wearing to hide her bulge. 'Seventeen weeks and look at me,' she moaned. She instantly closed her eyes and cursed herself. 'Eli, I'm sorry.'

  Elisenda didn't look up from the plates. 'It's OK, Catalina.'

  Catalina watched her sister clear the table, looking for the right thing to say. 'What do you mean, do the dishes? We've got a dishwasher.'

  'That's why I offered.'

  By the time Elisenda had left for the long walk home, Sergi still hadn't arrived and Catalina hadn't tried ringing him on his mobile. 'I'll be fine,' Catalina had said. 'You get off.'

  Walking past her parents' old flat on Carretera de Barcelona, Elisenda looked up at the nineteenth-century stone building. All the lights were off and the shutters half drawn. Her parents had left the home she'd grown up in and moved a few years ago to the family home in Monells where her grandparents had lived and where she'd spent her childhood summers. Leaving the apartment block behind her, she looked up one last time at her old bedroom window. She felt a sudden need to see her parents.

  Quarter of an hour later, standing on the narrow pavement outside her apartment block in the old town, she looked up at the darkened windows and realised she wasn't ready for her flat. Not yet.

  'That just means one thing,' she muttered to herself, walking in through the door of La Terra, the revered bar that occupied the ground floor of the old building where she had the top-floor apartment. Now given over to the next generation, La Terra was still her usual last port of call before home, especially after that evening's dinner with Catalina, her sister's pregnancy and the long walk home and the memories they'd provoked. Sitting alone in the cushioned alcove in the picture window, she took in a deep breath of her licor de café and stared in silence at the lights of the buildings reflected in the shallow waters of the Onyar trickling slowly through the city. A zephyr blew the window inward slightly, changing the spectral reflections of the room behind her. A vague glimpse of a young girl's face looked back at her. Elisenda glanced around but couldn't see who the reflection was of. Leaning forward, she pushed the window away from her and the reflection changed but the moment of quiet was gone.

  *

  In a small apartment just a few streets from La Terra, Pere Corominas, a researcher at the history archives, packed away his laptop and looked calmly at his phone. He had no messages.

  It was Thursday night and the park beckoned as always.

  But he had one more thing to do before he left.

  He typed in the message I will make sure everyone knows about you and pressed Send.

  Chapter Nine

  The following day began with another effigy.

  Another four effigies.

  And Andrés Soriano.

  'Hijo de puta,' he swore, cursing at the flow of water from his pipe slowing to a trickle, barely dampening the cobblestones at his feet. He hadn't checked the water tank in his cleaning cart before setting off from the depot that morning.

  He also had an almighty hangover. Celebrating with the rest of the neighbourhood where he lived well into the small hours. Toast after toast like they'd won the gordo, the top prize in the state lottery. Just as good, Andrés Soriano thought, smiling gingerly through the searing cheap red wine headache.

  But then he remembered that he'd have to hike all the way across the city to fill the tank up, and then all the way back to finish his work. It would be lunchtime by the time he was through. And in this heat. September, he remembered, and the summer showed no sign of giving up its hold on the city.

  'Hijo de puta,' he growled again, raising his eyes to the heavens that he knew had it in for him. Which is when he saw the effigies swinging over his head, hanging like before from the Verge de la Bona Mort. Instantly recoiling, he quickly recovered and squinted up at them. Different this time. Not a face, but four little rag dolls. Complete bodies.

  'What the fuck are you all about?' he muttered.

  He looked in disgust at the hosepipe hanging limp in his hand. He couldn't even dislodge the figures with the jet of water like he'd done last time. Unless they were still there by the time he got back with a full tank of water. But there'd be more people around at that time. Can't go spraying the Catalans' precious statues, he thought bitterly.

  A fifth figure appeared on his hung-over horizon, exacerbating his headache mood. That snooty lawyer. The one with the office down on Carrer de la Força, next to the city history archives, who'd complained to the council about the state of the streets in the old town. Or to be more precise, the streets in the old town cleaned by Andrés Soriano.

&n
bsp; Walking through the Portal de Sobreportes underneath the niche where the Verge de la Bona Mort stood, Gerard Bellsolà looked up also, following Andrés Soriano's gaze. They exchanged a look, the lawyer pointing up at the effigies and walking on past the street cleaner without a word.

  Andrés Soriano watched him go.

  'Hijo de puta,' he murmured.

  The lawyer had seen the effigies, too. That meant he'd have to report it back at the depot. Get someone to go up a ladder and get them down. Or worse still, do it himself. If he didn't, that shit of a lawyer would be sure to kick up a stink, and Andrés Soriano knew who'd be the one to end up on the carpet again.

  Slowly, wincing at the pain in his head, he began coiling up the bright yellow hosepipe and storing it in the little cart before heading off across town for the second time that morning. Looking up, he gave one final curse to the four dolls hanging stiffly in the cloying morning heat and accelerated away.

  Chapter Ten

  Elisenda walked to Vista Alegre after the penance of her morning run. There was no breeze in the streets and an enervating humidity rose up from the river and coiled down from the haze-shrouded mountains.

  'Roasting today, Narcís,' she commented to a figure seated at a desk in the open office she had to get through to reach her own unit.

  'It is hot,' he replied stiffly.

  The only man in Girona that Elisenda reckoned could make plain clothes look like a tightly-buttoned uniform, Narcís Pijaume was the head of the Local Investigation Unit, which dealt with lesser crimes within the confines of the city. It was a role Elisenda always thought was ideally suited to him.

  'Air conditioning not on?' she asked, knowing the answer. It had been turned off at the start of the second fortnight in September, and off it would stay until the following spring. Cost-cutting and a devotion to the seasons where they really weren't wanted. Pijaume simply grunted.

  Elisenda left him and went through to the outer office of the Serious Crime Unit to stand at the window for a moment. The family window, she and Àlex always joked, as it was the one bit of light that came into the rather dingy room. They reckoned the regional government must spend a fortune on light bulbs and electricity bills to lighten the unit's daily darkness, which Elisenda found oddly and poetically satisfying.

  Finding it too quiet, she stuck her head back into Pijaume's larger office in time to see Josep brush in through the door, staring at his mobile screen. He looked up and was as surprised as Elisenda was to see Pijaume on his own. 'Something we said?' she asked Pijaume, but he just shrugged.

  'I've just sent my last two mossos out,' he explained. 'Drugs.'

  'Things that bad?'

  'Hospital Josep Trueta,' he went on. 'Drugs reported missing from the hospital pharmacy.'

  'What sort of drugs?'

  With a sigh, Pijaume picked up a file from his desk. 'Loprazolam,' he read, 'temazepam and pentobarbital.'

  Elisenda whistled. 'Heavy duty. Just what we need. Someone selling those round the city.'

  Pijaume grunted. 'Sedatives. At least we won't have to run much to arrest them.' He grinned in his curious lopsided rictus, where just the right side of his mouth and cheek lifted, half closing his right eye like an indecisive wink.

  It was Elisenda's turn to shrug as she looked at Josep. Pijaume's occasional lapses into humour always left her feeling strangely uneasy. She went back into their unit's room to fetch her bag and came back out to find Josep waiting.

  'Fancy coming to do battle with Jutgessa Roca with me?' she asked him. 'It'll be good for your soul.'

  *

  'Idiot bloody Jutgessa imbecile Roca,' she complained to Josep on the walk back to the station from the court buildings on Avinguda Ramon Folch. Josep kept quiet, concentrating on negotiating their way past the other pedestrians on Carrer Santa Clara and keeping his head down in more ways than one.

  Elisenda had argued with Jutgessa Roca, now appointed the jutgessa d'instrucció, the examining judge who would be leading the case and handing out the orders for compiling the evidence, in favour of the Mossos pursuing a number of lines in their investigation. The judge hadn't. She'd decided that the gang-related killing angle was the one she liked. The one she wanted Elisenda's team to focus on.

  'Meaning,' Elisenda had reasoned with her, 'that by ignoring the possibility of Masó's being killed by one of his victims, a group of vigilantes or a member of his own family, we could be letting other equally valid avenues go cold. It's far too early at this stage to narrow it down. We really need to keep an open mind.'

  'Gang-related, Sotsinspectora Domènech,' the judge had replied. 'That is how you will conduct the investigation. I have every intention of putting an end to organised criminality in our city.'

  'I'm quite willing to pursue the gang angle alongside other lines, judge.'

  'If you've quite finished, Sotsinspectora, you will not.'

  Jutgessa Roca closed the file on the desk in front of her and signalled that the meeting was over, so Elisenda and Josep came away from the meeting forced to report to the judge some days later with their evidence to support, or otherwise, a gang-related attack at the cost of all else.

  'I really don't see your problem, Sotsinspectora Domènech,' the judge had told her without looking up as the two Mossos were leaving. 'Whether it's gang-related, vigilantes or whatever, whoever did this has done the city a favour. I'm sure not everyone is as eager to find the perpetrators as you are.'

  Elisenda had turned to look at the top of the judge's head bowed over her desk. 'Can I quote you on that, Jutgessa Roca? He's still a victim, even if you think he's a deserving one. And I'm still a police officer.' She'd turned to go. 'And you're still a judge.'

  'New police force, same old legal system,' Elisenda said now as they crossed the Pont de Pedra, the stone bridge crossing the Onyar from the new side of the city to the old. It was becoming her favourite phrase. Josep thought it best not to mention that the legal system was, in fact, changing too. It was just certain judges that weren't. 'I'm only glad I don't have the slightest intention of doing what she says,' Elisenda added.

  She turned to look at Josep, walking in studious silence.

  'What is it you're trying not to say, Josep?'

  'May I say something, Sotsinspectora?' he finally asked. 'When I said you were hard on your informant, you told me to look him up on NIP. Doesn't that make him a deserving victim? Just to a lesser extent.'

  'Good point,' she conceded with a sigh. 'This Masó case makes you question everything.'

  'Yes, Sotsinspectora.'

  'Just don't make any more good points for a while.'

  They turned into Plaça Catalunya and skirted the tiny Plaça Vern. Office workers were finishing their morning coffees in the sun before heading back to their air-conditioned work. A woman dressed in linen and silk was changing the pictures in the window of an estate agent's office. At the ice cream bar, a large group of German tourists was placing a lengthy and complicated order with a frazzled waiter.

  And at another of the café terraces, the four thugs from the previous afternoon's trial were seated, spread over two tables, staring at Elisenda. Staking out his territory, Chema GM had his feet up on the second table. Juan SP spat thickly into a large planter pot, the brightly-coloured begonias still in the sullen heat. The tables around them were empty, the clients unfortunate enough to be too near to them eyeing them warily. Elisenda approached them.

  'Bit far from your comfort zone,' she said to them. They rarely strayed from the old town.

  'Not a crime, is it?' Juan SP answered back. A third gang member, Manuel PM, sniggered.

  Ignoring them both, Elisenda looked straight at Chema GM. 'Not yet it isn't.'

  'Is that a threat?' Chema GM asked her.

  'Not yet it isn't,' she repeated. 'Don't stray too far, boys.'

  She and Josep carried on. Elisenda took her mobile out of her handbag and dialled.

  'Àlex,' she said, explaining the situation, 'have a word with Seg
uretat Ciutadana. Get them to keep an eye on them.'

  'They're already on to it,' he told her. 'I've seen them three times today. They were at the bar over the road from Vista Alegre earlier. I get the feeling it's me they're following.'

  'Right, get Seguretat Ciutadana to make their presence known. Harass them. Send them back to the old town.'

  'I can take care of it.'

  'I know you can. But we don't want that bunch giving us any headaches.'

  'I think it's too late for that.

  Chapter Eleven

  The bone cracked.

  The sound of it washed along the cobbles of the old town, shining as black as a night sea, and tumbled back down from the steep stone walls of the ancient buildings.

  There were no screams.

  Cristobal HP saw to that, clamping the crook of his arm tightly around the man's nose and mouth.

  Chema GM lashed out again, this time to the other leg, but it didn't break. The man had flopped with the pain of the first blow and his leg had absorbed the impact of the second, bending but not snapping. Angrily, Chema GM pulled Cristobal HP's arm away and pushed the heel of his hand into the man's face, enjoying the feeling of the cartilage in his victim's nose twist and crumble. He took a deep breath. His first Friday night of freedom in the labyrinth of alleys in the old town and it felt good. Cristobal HP let the man slump to the cobbles, shaking the blood from his sleeve but not daring to complain about it to Chema GM. Not when he was like this.

  'Come on, man. Get his wallet,' Juan SP urged Chema GM.

  'No,' the leader hissed, pulling Manuel PM back. 'This one's not for money. This one's for pleasure.' He looked down at the man on the ground and spat on the familiar, bloodied face before turning away. 'Come on.'

  Over two hours after the beating, Juan SP was still asking the same question. 'Did you see? Did you fucking see? Fucking brilliant.'