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

by Chris Lloyd

  Micaló snatched at the piece of paper.

  Elisenda looked at Puigventós and stood up. 'Now if that's all.'

  Chapter Seventy Two

  That night, Elisenda had dinner alone in the upstairs room at L'Arcada, overlooking the Rambla. Quite literally alone in terms of diners. The first Tuesday after Sant Narcís and no one had any money or desire to dine out until the weekend at least, so she sat in a window seat, attended by two waitresses with nothing else to do. They chatted to her while they served, but she wasn't in the mood for company and they soon left her to her thoughts.

  She thought of Sergi's visit to Vista Alegre that afternoon and wondered if she should have asked Catalina if she'd wanted to come for dinner. If she was honest, she wouldn't really have been in the mood for conversation, so she decided she'd ring her sister later. She immediately thought of Pere Corominas' supposedly missing phone. It hadn't turned up and the Científica who reckoned it was under the body in the hut now doubted she had actually seen it at all. Elisenda sighed and picked at her dinner without tasting it.

  She considered her day. After her meeting with Puigventós and Micaló, the inspector had asked her to stay.

  'I understand your frustration with Sotsinspector Pijaume,' he'd told her.

  'He's doing nothing about these drugs,' Elisenda complained. 'It's hampering my investigation.'

  Puigventós looked uncomfortable. 'He does have extenuating circumstances, Elisenda. In his private life. I'm afraid his wife is ill, but I really can't tell you anything more as he has asked for it all to remain confidential.'

  'Seriously ill?'

  'Seriously ill.'

  Elisenda sighed, her anger deflating with her breath, and sat back heavily in her chair. 'I'm sorry, Xavier, I didn't know.'

  It was while she was in Puigventós' office that news came through that the man Carles Queralt had attacked had died in hospital. That's two more families destroyed by what was happening in the city, Elisenda thought now.

  She finished her meal and went home. The first thing she saw when she got in was the empty space on the bookshelf where she'd taken the book to give to Patricia. She couldn't help staring at it until she suddenly leant down and closed the gap. She looked around her flat and decided she couldn't face an evening in. She might not feel like company, but neither did she feel like solitude. She turned the lights off and went back downstairs to La Terra and a licor de café in a lonely window seat, the dark of the imagined river below soothing her thoughts.

  One of her first jobs the following afternoon when Pau arrived at Vista Alegre with Josep was to thank him. He showed her the latest website postings. Now that it was known that Queralt wasn't responsible for the other attacks, many people were showing some sympathy for his making a stand against the other man's lack of consideration, extending it to anyone who parked badly or drove selfishly.

  'It's sparked off another attack,' Pau told her. 'Someone else was seen parking in a disabled bay and walking off briskly. Evidently able-bodied. Two men attacked him and broke his jaw.'

  Elisenda considered for a moment. 'Except of course, he wasn't the disabled person.'

  'Precisely. He was on his way to fetch his disabled mother. She lives nearby and he was picking her up to take her to hospital for a check-up.'

  'And in the meantime, people are still jumping to the wrong conclusions, only now they're acting on them.' She paused for a moment. 'There's something I wanted to ask you. How come you know Joaquim Masó?'

  Pau looked surprised. 'I don't really. His wife's from the same village as my parents. I've sometimes seen him down there in the summer when we visit my grandparents.'

  The door into their unit's office opened and Pijaume walked in, a pained look on his face. He waited until Elisenda and Pau turned to face him. 'I'm very sorry, Elisenda, but would you have any aspirins in here?'

  'There are some in that drawer over there, Sotsinspector,' Pau answered, pointing to the next desk over from his.

  'Are you all right, Narcís?' Elisenda asked him.

  He didn't hear her the first time, so she had to repeat herself.

  'Just a headache. I'll be fine.' He looked in the drawer and pulled out a packet of painkillers. He squeezed two out of the blister pack and turned to go. Elisenda noticed that his left ear was red and swollen.

  Pau carried on speaking. 'I've been going through various forums.' The computer screen in front of him displayed a list of names, dates and comments. 'I've been checking out local history websites, online journals and newspaper articles written over the last year, and I've compiled a list of people who've written anything that could be of interest to us.'

  'Inciting collective indignation at collective paranoia?'

  'My darling, you are so cynical for one so young and lovely,' he replied in his curious and camp over-the-top Spanish. He would never dream of – or get away with – saying the same things in Catalan. Like most people, Elisenda just took it in her stride, too taken aback to take offence.

  Pau reverted to Catalan, probably unaware he'd even switched languages and personality. 'Not just the more inflammatory ones,' he went on seamlessly, 'but anything that relates to collective identity, local tradition, local fears. I used keywords to search through them all, so it threw up all sorts of things, from the very learned to the really rabid.'

  'Any patterns?'

  'Much as you'd expect. Professor Marsans comes top of the table. You couldn't call his articles incitement by any means, but they are provocative. In a very broad sense of the word. One of Marsans' colleagues turns up a few times, a Professora Aurora Torrent.'

  'I've met her. I can't see her lugging four muggers around in the back of a van. She'd be worried about catching something common.'

  'A few other names. Carles Font, the journalist who was attacked. Doctor Riera's there, but he seems to moan about everything anyway, and Mossèn Viladrau, of course. He was a victim, but we forget some of the things he used to come out with. And there are two other names.'

  Elisenda looked at the names he'd highlighted. Inspector Puigventós had written a couple of articles in the last year about globalisation and local disintegration, and Jutgessa Roca had published an article on immigration and the legal system.

  'Please let it be her,' Elisenda said in Spanish, mimicking Pau's accent.

  Pau grinned. 'Of course, then you get the forums, where a lot more names come up. I've only included people who contributed regularly or anyone who wrote anything really close to the mark, but I think they'd be worth following up.'

  Elisenda clicked her tongue. 'Is there anyone in this city who actually likes anything post-medieval?' She looked at the roll-call of names flickering on the screen. 'Of course, it's highly possible the person we're looking for hasn't contributed to any of these forums. They might just have been influenced by them without actually taking part. See if you can check out the forums and journals for names of subscribers.'

  'It'll be huge. And anyone can read the newspaper articles. We simply couldn't cope with that volume.'

  'Do what you can, then. Prioritise people on the list, and then get Josep or Montse to break it down and organise them into people for questioning. Informal questioning.'

  'There's one other thing you should see.'

  He took out two texts from a folder that he'd already printed on two sheets of paper. A couple of sections were marked with a fluorescent pen. Elisenda scanned them quickly, checking the name at the end of the articles, and then reread them more slowly before putting the pages down.

  'So how did he know that?'

  Chapter Seventy Three

  Elisenda noticed the time displayed on Pau's computer and realised she was running late. 'Got to go,' she told him. 'I'm meeting Professor Marsans.'

  Before going, she took another look at the two pieces of paper she'd just been reading and decided to make a call.

  'Siset,' she said when the phone was answered. 'I will have words with you.' She told him when and where
he was to meet her and hung up.

  Marsans was already waiting in the café when Elisenda got there. She apologised profusely but he was perfectly calm about it.

  'I've only just got here myself,' he assured her, no doubt untruthfully.

  The waitress brought them both a coffee. A table of two holidaying foreign couples opposite Elisenda dithered over the menu, new takes on old dishes, neither meaning much to the four visitors flown in on budget wings. A snapshot in time, she thought, both of them and of the city. Girona's newfound favour as a city break. She wondered what they saw.

  'And so the city changes,' Marsans commented, as though reading her thoughts.

  'Changes. In the legend, the Majordoma repented her ways and devoted the rest of her life to caring for the weak. Mònica Ferrer wasn't given that chance. And the paper has a new restaurant critic. An anonymous one. Far more savage than anything Mònica Ferrer ever came up with.' She rubbed her eyes. 'I'm sorry. I should offer you my condolences.'

  He looked surprised. 'Condolences?'

  'Pere Corominas. You knew him.'

  'Of course. Poor Pere. He showed such promise, but he was a troubled young man. He could have done great things.'

  'You didn't share his distaste for newly-created legends?'

  'Not at all. The creation of modern myth is fascinating for a historian. The chance to see popular history at its inception. Although it is a double-edged sword. The way in which legends are born is intriguing, but it can be merely pandering to those with no sense of the past and to ideological tourists seeking a culture sound bite.'

  'Maybe that's the point our man's making,' Elisenda replied.

  Marsans shrugged uncomfortably. 'Who knows?'

  'Who indeed?’ Elisenda replied. She'd originally arranged to meet Marsans when Corominas was still alive, still a suspect, to find a way into what Corominas might be thinking. Now she felt she was back to square one, picking Marsans' brains to get a renewed angle on the mind of the killer. 'We're more interested in the significance of the victims. In the later attacks, the victims appear to become more generic. A type of victim rather than a specific victim. You deal with symbols. These people are perhaps symbolic. Hate figures.'

  'Hate figures? A disabled man? A gay man? A comedian?'

  'His idea of a hate figure is different from yours or mine. Have you looked at this website lately? There are some who see them as worse than an extortionist or a petty criminal. Or a corrupt priest. He's provoking us. Making us decide where we stand. Where we draw the line. He began with victims that pretty much everyone thought had it coming.'

  'Including you, Elisenda?'

  She shrugged. It was her turn to be uncomfortable. 'But he's moving on. He's not just making us look at our values.'

  'Maybe he is still making us look at our values. Just that the values have got different.' Marsans finished his coffee. 'Or one could turn it on its head perhaps. Something you said earlier. About the fact of one of the legends being modern being the point this person is trying to make. Perhaps it's the legends themselves we should be looking at. The victims are merely the product. Who they are is not that important.'

  'I'm pretty certain of that already. But I think there's more. At least there is now. I think the actual victims ceased to be important to this man quite early on. What began with hate figures has evolved into something else. It's now the fact of using the legends that has become important, rather than the legends in themselves. I was hoping your field of research would help me see exactly what that was.'

  'My field of research?'

  'Iconography.'

  'Symbology, to be more precise.'

  'Is there a difference?'

  Marsans gave her a look like he would a star student who's suddenly disappointed him. 'I look at the use of symbols to create a collective identity. And to preserve that identity.'

  Elisenda stared at the coffee in her cup. Her mind rocketed through everything she and Marsans had been saying, everything that had been happening in the city. The victims and the legends. The sequence and the timing. The event and the aftermath.

  'Identity,' she said, looking up. 'He's telling us we're losing our identity. Simply by embracing change and diversity, he thinks we're dissipating our own identity as a city, as a people. This is no longer about the victims. Or the legends. It's about us. All of us.'

  Marsans looked doubtful. 'Which means?

  'Which means that I know how to stop him.'

  Chapter Seventy Four

  Outside the café, Elisenda watched Marsans head off in the direction of Plaça de l'Oli on his way to the university and checked her watch. She was heading for the other side of the river.

  Her date was waiting for her when she got to the shaded side of Avinguda Ramon Folch, opposite the law courts and forensic service. He was hopping from one foot to the other, trying to be inconspicuous behind a plane tree.

  'Why are you limping?' she demanded.

  Siset looked back at her and shrugged.

  'Like the nose, by the way,' she added. 'Suits you.'

  'You should see the other guy.'

  'Completely unscathed, I imagine.'

  Elisenda told Siset what she wanted him to do and he whined for a minute or two until she asked him if what she was hearing about Joaquim Masó was true. 'I'll pull him in if you like. You can identify him as the other guy.'

  But Siset just gulped and shut up and did as he was told.

  'And I'll have Mossos watching you,' she added, 'so no getting lost.'

  'Why have I got to do it?'

  'Because he's unlikely to notice you. He'd recognise one of my team.'

  He sniffed loudly and she sent him on his way, watching him hop-skip across the road on his painful leg. No Mossos were going to be following him, but she figured he wouldn't know that. She then watched him wait until her quarry came out of the building and made sure that Siset did as he was told and scuttle after him. It was up to him now, all she could do was wait for his call and trust to his spirit of self-preservation. She knew that the person Siset was following would be coming out of the building at about that time. What she didn't know was where he was going. And she had no illusions that Jutgessa Roca would give even Àlex and his fluttering testosterone a warrant to interview this guy.

  Siset's phone call came about quarter of an hour later, telling her where the man he was following had gone.

  'Are you sure? Doesn't sound like his sort of place.'

  'He is, I swear,' Siset pleaded. 'Can I go now?'

  Elisenda ended the call and took a taxi from outside the post office to the bar Siset had named. It took ages to get through the afternoon traffic to the Eixample, but it was too far to walk given that she didn't know how long her man was going to be there. She drummed her fingers impatiently on the seat next to her and silently accompanied the taxi driver in his steady stream of invective against everyone else on the road. He had a nice line in sarcasm, she thought.

  Inside the bar on Carrer Migdia, Elisenda walked slowly between the bright young things beavering away on laptops at the dark wood counter to her left and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves to her right, scanning the room. She still half thought she wouldn't find who she wanted in Studio Store's urban-class chic. It really didn't go with his image.

  But then she saw him, tucked away at a table at the rear of the room. He had his back to her.

  'Gerard,' she said on walking round in front of him. 'Fancy seeing you here. Mind if I join you?'

  She sat down opposite Bellsolà before the lawyer could object.

  'I really didn't expect to find you in here,' she spoke truthfully.

  He looked desperately uncomfortable, turning in his seat to look for the door, but the seclusion of his table now conspired against him. He was completely unsighted. Elisenda ordered a café amb llet and carried on speaking.

  'Oddly enough, there was something I wanted to ask you.'

  She opened her bag and pulled out a sheet of printed paper.
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  'Do you have a warrant, Sotsinspectora Domènech?' Bellsolà asked.

  'Do I need one, Gerard? We're just chatting, surely.'

  'This is most irregular.'

  The lawyer turned in his seat and made to get up, but Elisenda put a firm hand on his to restrain him. 'I will get a warrant if I need one, Senyor Bellsolà. I'm just keeping it informal for your sake. For the time being.'

  He sat down again, surprised at the coldness in her voice.

  Elisenda placed the piece of paper on the table. 'An article you wrote earlier this year. Interesting. Apparently we're forgetting our past.'

  'And?'

  'It came out a week before the first attack. The one on Daniel Masó.'

  The lawyer looked as though he'd been stung. 'No, Sotsinspectora Domènech. You are barking up the wrong tree. That is a perfectly innocent article.'

  Elisenda picked up the top sheet and read aloud: "As the spirit of King Pau I lies dying amid the ashes of our faltering nation, and as the spirit of Rafael Casanova rails at the ineptitude of our failed institutions, the people of Catalonia are witnessing an influx of outside population and a dilution of our heritage that is far more insidious than anything General Franco ever dared dream of, and I say enough. The time has come for Catalans to say enough is enough and to stand defiant in defence of the values we have fought for so long to achieve and to invoke the spirit of our heroic past to fight for a better future."

  She put the page down and looked at Bellsolà. 'Bit too florid for my liking, but you really do get your point across. Although some might find it just a little racist.'

  'That is perfectly innocent. Since when has patriotism become a crime?'

  'Patriotism? This is incitement.'

  'I warn you, Sotsinspectora Domènech, do not enter into the fineries of the law with me.'

  'Or is it a statement of intent?' Elisenda ignored the lawyer's splutter and took a second piece of paper out of her bag. 'But what interests me more is this.'