by Chris Lloyd
'So tell me about this guy,' she said.
'Name's Antoni Sunyer,' Montse told her. 'He's worked here as a research assistant for just over a year now, since graduating. Originally from Olot, but studied history at university in Girona, which is where he met Pere Corominas. He and Corominas have shared a flat in the old town since they were students together. Corominas also studied history and works as a researcher with the municipal historical archives. He's from way up near Ripoll.'
'Parents still alive?'
'Both of them. I've spoken to them on the phone. I get the feeling it's a bit of a free and easy relationship. They don't seem that concerned he's missing. Looks like parents and son were a bit alternative. They dropped out and left Barcelona over twenty years ago to live off the land.'
Inside the building, they were shown by a smartly-dressed receptionist to a suite of small offices where Sunyer worked. Seated at a desk covered in folders and pen pots and pieces of paper riddled with brightly-coloured fluorescent markings and below a wall papered with clutter, a young man with a wispy black beard and moustache that didn't quite meet in the middle turned to face them.
'Antoni Sunyer?' Montse asked him. 'Caporal Salas and Sotsinspectora Domènech.' They both held up their badges for a brief moment.
'You'd better sit down,' Sunyer said, his voice nervous. He fetched a couple of straight-backed chairs from another desk and pulled them nearer his own.
'Thank you, Antoni,' Elisenda said, gazing at him. He smiled shyly. He was very slight and, despite the beard – or perhaps because of it – looked younger than he probably was.
Sunyer turned to Montse. 'Are you Montse?' he asked her. 'Who I spoke to on the phone?'
'That's right. We're grateful you could see us at such short notice.'
The young man shrugged. 'I'm pleased something's being done to find Pere. I'd pretty much given up on the Mossos looking for him.'
Montse looked at Elisenda, who spoke. 'We're not part of the team looking for Pere. We're pursuing another investigation and we think that his disappearance might be related.'
'Another investigation?'
'Would you mind telling us exactly when you last saw Pere?' Elisenda carried on. She didn't want him connecting their reason for questioning him with the recent troubles in the city.
'I've already told the Mossos.'
'I'm sorry, Antoni, but we need to know,' Montse added. 'For our own investigation.'
Sunyer sighed and told them what he had told the sergent at Vista Alegre and the two officers from the Local Investigation Unit when they'd come to see him. He told them about how Pere had not turned up for work on the Friday or been home since. How all his clothes were still in the flat, as was his laptop, and how he had seemed agitated for a couple of days before he went missing.
'Agitated?' Elisenda asked. 'In what way?'
'Snappy,' Sunyer replied, choosing his words carefully. 'On edge like something was worrying him. It's been so long now, I can't really remember how he was and everything's distorted in my memory, but he was unhappy about something. I do know that.'
'You don't know what was causing it?' Montse asked him but he shook his head. 'Girlfriend problems?'
Sunyer shook his head again. 'He's gay. And he's much too free a spirit for steady partners. Pere's more into cruising than courting.'
'The Devesa?' Elisenda asked. The park on the northwest edge of the city.
Sunyer nodded. 'He'd never had any problems there. But as I say, he did seem worried about something the last few days I saw him.'
'Have you spoken to his parents?' Elisenda asked.
Sunyer grunted. 'I've tried. They live in this weird world where modernity degrades us. Pere was always repeating it. They both worked in banks in Barcelona and just decided one day to give it all up and go and raise goats and chickens up near Ripoll.'
'And children,' Elisenda added.
'Pere was born up there,' he said, nodding. 'He grew up in some weird shit. Running naked through the woods and survival in the wild. He couldn't wait to get away. Mind, he's not as different from them as he likes to think.'
'In what way?'
'Traditional. He needs the city and his laptop and his mobile, but he believes in tradition. Popular tradition. Just like his parents.'
'Have they been down here since he went missing?'
'No. They're really not that worried. Tried telling me he's a free spirit and he's gone in search of himself.'
'But you don't think so?'
Sunyer shook his head vigorously. 'He enjoyed his job too much. He lived the way he wanted. He didn't need to go and find himself.'
'And he was unhappy about something,' Elisenda concluded.
'Definitely.'
Elisenda thanked him and she and Montse left him to his paper and coloured pens and clutter.
Outside, a blast of heat hit them all the harder after the near-glacial air conditioning of the building. Elisenda turned to Montse. 'What do you think?'
'I'm not so sure,' Montse replied after a moment's thought.
Elisenda agreed with her. 'I'm not convinced he's a victim.' They set off slowly in the heat for Plaça Independència and the bridge over the river to the shade of the Rambla. 'Not one of our victims anyway.'
Chapter Thirty Seven
Sunday. Elisenda left Monells behind her and struck out along the dusty, baked track towards the neighbouring village of Sant Miquel de Cruïlles. Through the heat haze, she could see the eleventh-century monastery rising gently above her on a low bluff in the distance. She checked her watch. She just had enough time for a solitary walk before her sister and her husband turned up later for lunch. Her parents were pottering around the house, which was as good an excuse as any Elisenda needed to get out.
'I forget how good these are,' Elisenda's mother had commented when Elisenda had arrived at their house, taking a second bite into a xuixo, the rich confectioner's custard squeezing out of the thick, torpedo-shaped doughnut. She licked the tip of a slender finger and dabbed at the sugar left on the plate.
'You had one yesterday,' Elisenda's father objected.
'Not from La Vienesa.' She turned to Elisenda. 'I trust you brought more.'
'Sunday with the family,' Elisenda said with a sigh, leaning back against the ancient garden chair and stretching her feet out in front of her in the shade of her parents' garden. She still couldn't quite get used to coming here and not finding her grandparents. Too many childhood memories of summers and Sundays crowding in. Her parents bringing cakes from La Vienesa just as she had done today. Her grandmother rarely setting foot outside the kitchen, the garden a functional affair tended by her grandfather, not this verdant luxury of palms and olive trees and the recent addition of a small swimming pool. The rest of the building the same, the three-hundred-year-old village house skilfully restored and modernised inside and out without any damage to its soul.
On the marble table in front of her, amid the scattered plates and coffee cups, her tablet stared back at her, ruining her mood. She'd checked it over coffee after she'd been to La Vienesa, on Plaça del Vi, to buy xuixos for when she got to Monells. Feeling good at seeing her parents for the day. At getting away from the microscope of Girona.
It hadn't lasted.
It had been over a week now since Mònica Ferrer had been found. A long week. And it had been crowned by yet further escalation on the website that was getting people talking. And acting.
‘We're getting all these minor incidents,' a sergent in Pijaume's unit had told her. 'People taking the law into their own hands. Egged on by the comments on the forum. And by what they see happening.'
And now the website was taking it that bit further. In the tranquil shade of her parents' garden, she recalled the latest development.
A top ten of voters' favourites had been added to the website. Two top tens, in fact. One for individuals, one for groups. Each one being voted on like a genuinely malevolent talent show. The individuals were the usual choices:
politicians, local celebrities, the footballer who'd scored an own goal the previous week. The groups included South Americans, North Africans, Spaniards, cheap tourists, the unemployed, long-term patients, anyone it was felt didn't contribute. It was almost a relief that the city council got voted in. And the Mossos.
After the incident with the smashed windows, she'd asked Pau about progress on tracing the website.
'I've had this from Gispert in Sabadell,' he told her. He showed her a printout of a map showing what looked like air routes stretching across the world. 'It shows the trail of IP addresses used to hide the central server.'
'Are they close to finding it?'
'Nowhere near, he reckons.'
She poured herself a cup of coffee and swore under her breath. Her parents, silent throughout, exchanged a look.
'Saw old man Bellsolà this week,' her father told her, breaking the silence. 'He says he's retiring next year.'
'Can he take his son with him?' Elisenda said, looking up.
'Reckons the son's going to be taking over his practice.'
'As well as his own? It'll be huge.' Elisenda shuddered at the thought of yet more cases being handled by Gerard Bellsolà's firm of lawyers. As if her job wasn't hard enough. Bellsolà senior was fabled as a slippery character, and his lawyer father before him had been quite an element by all accounts, but the present incumbent of the family amorality that Elisenda had to put up with was the crowning glory of three generations of natural legal selection. And he had a son, Elisenda remembered. She'd seen him once, dressed like a ten-year-old version of his father, his hair plastered in pungent cologne in a fashion that had died out at least a couple of decades earlier. So that was Girona's future taken care of, Elisenda mused grimly. So much for the lessons of the past.
'No bad thing,' her father commented through her fug. 'Someone to take over.'
'Any more coffee?' Neus asked, just that bit too quickly. She could see what was coming, Elisenda too preoccupied to recognise the signs.
'I don't want to work forever,' Enric persisted. 'I need someone to take over when I do decide to retire.'
Elisenda turned to face her father, the message getting through. 'Don't,' she warned.
'No, Enric,' Neus agreed. 'Don't.'
'You were a good lawyer,' he told Elisenda.
'I was never a lawyer. I studied law, I never practised it. There are other ways of upholding the law. I chose mine.'
'You could have been a good lawyer. And there's more future in law than in the police.'
'No, there's my future in the police. I ceased to believe in the legal profession at university. I began to despair of it in the Mossos. I'm happy with what I do. Ten years ago, a woman like me couldn't have got anywhere in the police. No woman would have even contemplated it. And now we can, and we can make a career of it. That's my future, papa, please don't try to change me.'
'And what will happen when you want another promotion? What if they send you to the other end of Catalonia? Who'll take over my practice then?'
'Pere. You've always said how good he is.'
'Not family,' Enric commented.
'Not important.'
'Maybe not to you.'
'Enric,' Neus barked, shocked.
Elisenda stood up. 'Stop this now, papa, or I'm going.'
Neus held her daughter's hand. 'And I tell you now, Enric, I will go with her if you don't stop this selfishness.'
Enric looked up at his wife, surprised, and then at his daughter. 'I'm sorry. I just want what's best for you.'
'What's best for me changed five years ago, papa.'
Neus gave Elisenda's hand the slightest of squeezes and let go.
*
Without realising, Elisenda had walked through the village of Cruïlles and was passing a flowing gold and green field of rapeseed on the dusty track back to Monells. She wiped the sweat from her face and listened for a moment to the cicadas' lazy chirruping across the dry fields. She heard another sound. A child singing. She stopped and stared intently along the path and over the fields but could see no one. She couldn't tell which direction the singing was coming from. It was a traditional song, one she'd learnt at school. And taught in turn. The singing stopped as abruptly as it had started and she waited a few moments before carrying on along her way. Without her fully noticing, she quickened her pace in time with the noise of the insects, a bead of sweat running down her spine, sticking her T-shirt to her back. A startled dust-coloured cicada half-hopped half-flew in front of her before jumping out of her path into a clump of sun-wizened grasses.
The image of Mònica Ferrer in the market stall came into her head, moving in and out of focus in pace with her stride. The story that Ferrer's husband had given them had been corroborated by a woman in Barcelona, the wife of one of his business associates. An affair that had been going on for over six years. And not his only one, they'd discovered. One small tragedy on top of a greater one. She couldn't help feeling more sympathy for Mònica than she'd ever felt for her in life. She'd also caught herself wondering what it was that made Mònica suitable for punishment but not her husband, before shaking the thought out of her head.
'Damn,' she swore, breaking into a full run, perspiration quickly pouring down her head and legs and arms, her feet in her rope-soled canvas espardenyes sliding over the loose, sharp stones on the track. Finding her stride on the pitted surface, she quickly settled into a steady pace, her head barely moving, her elbows tucked into her sides, conserving energy. Two cyclists stared at her as they went past in the other direction.
She also pictured Riera on the morning of the critic's post mortem.
'He's learning,' the forensic doctor had told her bluntly. 'She died of asphyxia, in the market stall. Probably sedated and taken to the murder site, where the food was placed in her mouth. If this is the same man, he's learned the right dose.'
Elisenda remembered Mònica Ferrer's body suspended in the stall. 'So that's what his aim was? For her to die like that. Not from the drugs.'
'I would say so. And I would imagine that's what he intended for Viladrau too. He's refining his technique. He's learned to keep his victims alive to take their punishment.'
'She would have been aware of what was happening to her?'
Riera looked closely at Elisenda. 'Very much so.'
Back in Monells, Elisenda slowed down to a breathless walk and skirted her parents' house to the small, porticoed main square where she bought a bottle of water from Ca l'Arcadi and sat outside in the shade for a few minutes to cool down. Over at the far end of the square, the band was just setting up for the Sunday-morning sardanes. Elisenda checked her watch. If she'd had time, she would have hung around and joined in one of the circles. It seemed ages since she'd danced in the square. Or anywhere else for that matter. With a sigh, she got to her feet and walked up the slight cobbled incline to her parents' house.
Rounding the corner, she saw Sergi, Catalina's husband, pulling the heavy Corten steel driveway gate shut behind his new car, a bright white BMW with vents and stripes and more lights than he would ever know how to use. Top of the range, Elisenda thought to herself. Of course. She put a spurt on and squeezed through just as her brother-in-law finished closing the stylishly and deliberately rusted gate.
'Hi, Elisenda,' he greeted her.
She kissed him on both cheeks and helped him carry a wicker basket of shiny fresh aubergines into the house. 'From your parents' garden?' she asked.
'Yeah, they can never eat them all.' His parents' garden was, in fact, several hectares of land up in the volcanic Garrotxa region near Olot, a good hour or so northwest of Girona. Making money ran in Sergi's family.
She went on through the house with Sergi following her and out into the back garden, where Catalina was being held tightly by their mother in the shade of a luscious oily magnolia.
'Hey, Catalina,' Elisenda greeted her, first hugging her carefully, then standing back. 'Let's look at you.'
'How do I look, Eli?' C
atalina asked her.
'Like you swallowed a really big olive.'
Chapter Thirty Eight
'That requires at least three homicides over a period of time that can be judged as intentional or premeditated,' Puigventós declared.
The Monday meeting with Puigventós, Micaló and Pijaume, and Elisenda was surprised to find herself backed up against a wall. She'd raised a spectre of her own. The word "serial", which had been circling above her thoughts since Viladrau was murdered, and more so since the Ferrer killing.
'We have four victims,' she argued. 'Daniel Masó, Chema GM, Viladrau and Ferrer.'
Puigventós disagreed. 'Intentional or premeditated. There is no evidence to suggest that the mugger was intended to die.'
'We have the evidence of prior and subsequent actions. The other three victims confirm that his death was both premeditated and intentional.'
'Two, Elisenda, two. Masó is not a part of this investigation. Both Jutgessa Roca and I believe that his killing is gang-related. The manner of his death was completely different from the other three killings.'
Elisenda looked to Pijaume for support, but he was focusing his gaze steadfastly on the table in front of him. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Micaló leaning in, ready to attack.
'Why on earth would you want to see serial killers on the streets of Girona, anyway?' Puigventós insisted.
'Girona doesn't have serial killers,' Micaló scoffed.
'I don't. I want to find a way to stop any further killings. To do that, we have to face up to the truth about what's happening so we can anticipate and catch this killer.'
'Why do I get the feeling you're trying to snatch all the high-profile investigations for your team, Sotsinspectora Domènech?' Micaló asked. 'Something to do with a lack of any real success since you formed it, perhaps?'
Puigventós put out a finger to shush the other sotsinspector. 'I see the connection between the muggers, the priest and the critic,' he told her, 'although not all of those are intentional. But I just don't see the Masó link. That to me is gang-related. I want the investigation kept separate.'
