City of Drowned Souls

by Chris Lloyd

  ‘Sotsinspectora,’ the man said when he stopped in front of her.

  ‘Francesc,’ she replied, her voice hoarse. She exhaled quietly, not to draw attention to her panic.

  Mosso Paredes brandished a small pile of papers in a plastic folder. Photos of Jaume Comas Miravent.

  ‘We’ve been handing these out,’ he told her. ‘Asking questions, but there aren’t many people here yet.’

  ‘Any luck?’

  He shook his head. His eyes were in darkness, concealed in the shadow cast beneath the peak of his cap. ‘We’ll be back again tomorrow when more of them have turned up.’

  Another Seguretat Ciutadana joined them. A mossa that Elisenda recognised. She too was holding a plastic wallet of photos. She also shook her head when Paredes asked her if she’d spoken to anyone who had any news.

  ‘Do you want us to join you, Sotsinspectora?’ the mossa said, peering at her in the gloom and the drizzle.

  ‘It’s OK, thanks. I’ll just take a look for myself. You get on home if you’ve finished.’

  Paredes shrugged. ‘Back to Vista Alegre. Two more hours till we go off shift.’

  Elisenda watched them head towards a patrol car parked where the path emerged on to the road by the traffic lights and saw them drive off. Turning, she walked on into the darkness, aiming for the lights and noise that were coming from an anarchic jumble of tents. As she approached, she saw that they were modern but made to look old. The re-enactors who’d be staging mock fights through the park and the city, telling the story of the 1808 and 1809 sieges of Girona, a strategic point on Napoleon’s supply route into Spain, would be arriving the next day, but some of the sideshows and curiosities had come early, setting up camp under the trees for the weekend.

  She entered a passage of low, flickering lights and cooking smells, the seemingly haphazard camp opening into a narrow avenue of tinkers and traders. Over the days of the siege celebrations, they’d be vying good-naturedly with each other for the attentions of the people of the city passing by. Touting for their favour, just as the politicians in the studio had been clamouring for the souls of the voters, drowning them in promises and clever words.

  She walked deeper into the heart of the camp. At the end, where the light faded into the surrounding black of the trees, another figure rose, standing up from a seat on a piece of wood. He was part of a small group of men and women sitting in a loose circle by three tents on the edge of the encampment, all of them in period costume. In the light cast up from the lamps on the ground, Elisenda saw he was dressed as a dandy, but a dandy who’d fallen on hard times. His red and gold frock coat with silver epaulettes was slightly too small, as though it had once belonged to someone else. He wore a greying white shirt with ruffles running exuberantly down the front and flowing out of the sleeves of his coat. His green breeches were held up with what looked like a curtain sash and fastened over bright red silk hose and scuffed brown heeled shoes with large silver buckles. Unsteadily, he placed a tricorne hat over the long and curly black wig on his head, adjusting the flamboyant red and green feathers flowing back over his shoulders from the brim. The lantern cast shadows up his face, accentuating a full mouth and pencil moustache, like an old-fashioned movie idol. His eyes glinted like sparks from an untamed fire.

  He saw her. Smiling, he took his hat off with a flourish and bowed low, never once taking his eyes off her. In the same flowing movement, he stood up and replaced his hat, the feather catching on an epaulette and curling over his shoulder. He nodded his head in salute and smiled at her, a laugh at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘You seem a troubled soul,’ he told her, his voice as velvet as the night.

  She showed him her Mossos ID. ‘I’m looking for a missing child.’

  She took out the photo of Jaume and held it up for him to see in the light from the lamps.

  ‘Ah, another missing child,’ he replied, studying the picture.

  ‘Another missing child?’

  ‘Another Comas Miravent child gone missing. Very unfortunate. I’m afraid I haven’t seen him.’

  ‘How long have you been in Girona?’

  ‘We arrived today.’ He gestured to the others around him. ‘Our merry band.’

  ‘Re-enactors?’

  ‘Of a sort. We are storytellers. A cercavila. We will be roaming the fine and ancient streets of Girona the next few days, stopping here and there to bring you timeless tales and wanton entertainment. You should really try and catch us. You might be interested.’

  Elisenda’s phone rang, shattering the past in one shrill sound.

  The man laughed and she turned away to answer.

  It was her mother. Telling her again to go and see her sister and her new niece. She told her something else.

  Elisenda began to walk away from the man, her pace quickening.

  ‘She’s what?’

  Hanging up quickly, she ran back to the city.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  For a brief moment waiting at the traffic lights in La Bisbal, Elisenda wished she’d brought a Mossos pool car instead of her own. Hers didn’t have lights and sirens and the ability to make slow drivers get out of the way. Not that there were many this late in the evening.

  At the end of the dual carriageway to the coast, she had to slow down for the annoyingly poor road surface when she got to La Fosca, the jumble of holiday villas and apartments near Palamós. Her rear wheel clipped a verge as she wound too quickly through the snaking development and she had to struggle to keep the car straight. She was dismayed to see that the house she was looking for was a beacon of light by the sea, one of only very few she’d passed in the whole of the development and the only one that looked lived-in at the end of a lonely road. Parking on the landward side to the rear of the house, in front of the garage that occupied the ground floor, she looked up to the kitchen window on the first floor. The lights were on but she couldn’t see any movement.

  Sprinting round the side of the house and up the stone steps, she climbed to the path that led along a low cliff to the front of the house, one of a row of four. None of the other houses looked occupied. She ran to the front door and rang the bell, banging her fist on the wood when there was no reply. She pulled her mobile out of her bag and checked it for a signal. Nothing. She’d tried to ring before leaving Girona, but the signal here was always so erratic and she hadn’t been able to get through. Impatiently, she rang again and banged harder on the door.

  When there was still no answer, she searched through her bag for the lock picks she always carried in a leather pouch. It felt like it took her an age to fumble through them and find the right ones to open the door. The security bolt wasn’t in place and it finally swung inwards. She wasn’t sure that was a good sign.

  The first thing she registered inside was a baby crying.

  She took out her service pistol and went in. The lights were on. Quickly and silently, she descended the three steps from the hall into the spacious, white living room. It was empty but for the overpowering statues and giant antique oil jars and trio of large cream leather sofas.

  The crying was coming from upstairs.

  She glanced into the kitchen and saw no one there. Taking the stairs, she followed the sound of the baby, first looking in through the open doors of two smaller bedrooms until she came to her sister’s room.

  Beneath the sound of crying, another noise bubbled underneath. It sounded like running water. Elisenda recalled the robbers’ victim who’d been waterboarded until he’d told them his bank codes and she quickened her pace, running into the room on the balls of her feet. Her niece was in the room, lying on her back in a Moses basket, her crying more insistent. There was no one else.

  She heard her sister in the en-suite bathroom, a low moaning noise framed by the running water. She glanced at the baby to make sure there was nothing wrong and hurried to the doorway. Steam billowed out into the bedroom, and she had to wave a clear path through it to see better. Glancing rapidly either side, she
went in.

  Her sister screamed.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Elisenda, you scared the shit out of me.’

  Catalina had the sliding door open and was standing in the shower, the water now off, and reaching for a dressing gown.

  ‘I’ve been battering your fucking door down, Catalina.’

  ‘I’m in the shower.’

  ‘You were moaning. You sounded in pain.’

  ‘Cheek. I was singing.’

  Elisenda turned away and put her gun down, shaking her head in fury.

  ‘Haven’t you seen what’s been going on, Catalina? These house robberies? What on earth are you doing out here on your own?’

  Catalina looked surprised. ‘It’s La Fosca. It’s all right here.’ She got out of the shower and followed Elisenda into the bedroom. Seeing her daughter crying, she picked her out of the basket and soothed her.

  ‘It’s empty, Catalina. The summer’s over, no one’s here but you. You’re the perfect target.’

  ‘Well, you’re here now.’

  ‘We’re not staying,’ Elisenda told her. ‘Any of us.’

  ‘Oh, stop fussing, Eli, we’re perfectly safe here.’

  Shaking her head in annoyance, Elisenda looked out at the path running along the front of the row of houses. It was deserted, the only sign of life the lights of a ship out to sea. As she turned back, something on the bed next to her sister’s overnight bag caught her eye. She picked it up. It was a pamphlet by some religious group calling itself New World Missionaries. She stared at it. It was familiar. She’d seen one like it recently, but couldn’t place where. Then she got it. There’d been one like it at the architects’ house that had been targeted by the robbers.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Catalina. How did you get this?’

  Catalina glanced at it. ‘Someone came to the door. I said I was busy so they left the pamphlet.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘This evening. Just as I got here.’

  Elisenda stared in disbelief at her sister. ‘We’ve got to go, Catalina. This is serious.’

  ‘Honestly, Eli, it’s just a pamphlet.’

  Elisenda checked her mobile again for a signal. Not one bar was showing.

  ‘Please, Catalina, you have to listen to me. You’re not safe here. This gang is targeting houses like yours and I don’t like the sound of these people who came to the door. Look around you, the place is empty, everyone but you is at home. Why would these people bother coming here in September when hardly anyone’s around?’

  Catalina sighed heavily. ‘All right, I’ll go home. Hold your niece while I get dressed.’

  She thrust the baby into Elisenda’s hands. Elisenda stared at Enriqueta, who stared back at her. The baby gurgled and bobbed up and down in her outstretched arms and laughed, a short bubbling noise from deep in her throat.

  ‘Hello, kid,’ Elisenda told her, studying her.

  Enriqueta reached forward and held on to Elisenda’s nose in her tiny fingers. Elisenda carried her downstairs to check the house while Catalina got her things together.

  ‘Who calls their kid Enriqueta these days anyway?’ she demanded. She knew that the name was her brother-in-law’s maternal grandmother’s.

  Going into the kitchen, she turned the light off and went to the window to look back along the road leading to the house. Enriqueta began to moan, upset by the dark, so Elisenda rocked her up and down to soothe her. Gazing out into the black night, she saw nothing, but her sense of unease grew by the minute.

  Catalina turned the kitchen light on, startling her. ‘I remember that song,’ she said.

  ‘What song?’

  ‘The one you were singing to Enriqueta. Our mum used to sing it to us.’

  Elisenda looked at her sister, nonplussed, and handed the baby back to her. ‘I was singing?’

  They went down the stairs to the garage and Elisenda helped her sister put the baby and the bag in the car. Elisenda’s was parked outside.

  ‘Just drive straight home, please, Catalina. I’ll take one last look and then I’ll be on my way.’

  She watched her sister reverse her car out of the garage. Enriqueta in the back seat gurgled and flexed her fingers in a goodbye wave as they drove off. After they’d gone, Elisenda pulled her torch out and quickly checked the lamppost and trees near the house, one eye on the road behind her all the time. Àlex had told her what to look for, so she searched in the less immediately visible places but couldn’t find any symbols marked anywhere. She finally got in her car and drove through the development, her thoughts on the religious pamphlet and its significance. She tried to reconcile it with the lack of any symbols to mark the house out as a target. Detouring to see if there were any other houses with the lights on and suspicious cars roaming the streets, she found none and turned to drive back to Girona.

  Parking in her underground space on the new side of the river, she crossed the footbridge and saw the lights on in La Terra. Her favourite seat in the window overlooking the Onyar flowing past was empty, the soft luminosity beckoning her. The drizzle that had fallen in the city earlier in the evening had given over, but there was the smell of a storm in the air.

  Succumbing to temptation, she went into the cushioned haven of La Terra and hungrily inhaled the aroma of coffee and whisky and late-night conversation. Sitting alone on the brightly-coloured tile settle, she sipped a licor de café and gazed past the shadows reflected in the window and out into the night. The lights in the restaurants and homes on the other side of the river were mirrored in broken shards on the unusually fast-flowing water. She heard the river sing. Looking around, she realised that no one else had heard it. Two women opposite looked at her and smiled. Opening the window a little, she smelt the scent of the impending rain and listened to another sound. Somewhere under the gentle flood of tears from the mountains, a lullaby was being quietly sung, and she was the only one to hear it.

  He awoke with a start.

  It wasn’t the sound of the river, constantly menacing below the surface. It was a change in the quality of light. He opened his eyes to see his captor a little over an arm’s length away from him, his face distorted by the beam of a torch lying on the floor. He scrambled back in panic, the sudden movement forcing the metal band to cut into his wrist, drawing fresh blood.

  ‘What do you want?’

  He waited for the pain travelling the length of his arm to subside and repeated the question. The other figure stared at him for a moment and glanced at the fastening around the prisoner’s wrist, ensuring it was still tight.

  ‘I’ve brought you food.’

  He slid over an old piece of wood, part of a plank that had rotted with the damp and split in two. Another tin foil package was on it, with a bottle of water.

  ‘I’m not drinking the water.’

  ‘It’s not drugged. I just had to do that because you were trying to escape.’

  The captive instinctively looked at the ancient iron ring set into the wall and the metal clasp binding him to it. For the first time, he could see it was a thin metal tie, the sort you’d buy in a DIY store.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘I’ve also brought you a bucket.’

  The captor placed a plastic pail on the ground and pushed it forward with a stick so that it was within the captive’s reach.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  The captive looked at it aghast and back at his captor, the hatred finally burning in his eyes. ‘No, I won’t. I’m not an animal.’

  The captor shrugged and backed away, heading for the ladder, which had been lowered from the doorway above.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  The captor stopped before climbing up out of the cellar and looked at the figure shrunken against the damp stone wall.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Friday

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Puyals was late.

  Normally, Elisenda wouldn’t have mind
ed, the minutes joyfully eating into the time she had to spend raking over the coals of her persistent grief. She would have held her face up to the sun searching down through the leaves of the trees planted at intervals on the pavements and savoured the fresh crispness of the air after the previous night’s storm. Looked up at the line of perfect blue sky framing the buildings enveloping her in warmth.

  Normally, she would have waited a judicious ten minutes, counting the seconds down and hoping the counsellor wouldn’t show up so she could hurry off to Vista Alegre to get on with her work. She had a ready-made excuse to Puigventós for skipping counselling in that she’d waited and the counsellor hadn’t turned up.

  But Doctora Puyals had treated Pere Vergés when he was in prison and so Elisenda looked instead at her watch with a different anxiousness.

  She waited outside the street door amidst parents taking children to school and cars queuing at the lights and she rang the intercom buzzer again. No one had left or entered the building since she’d been waiting, so she hadn’t been able to squeeze in through the door on their coat tails. She also realised she didn’t have a mobile number for her counsellor. Deciding on one last try before ringing Vista Alegre to get uniforms to check up on the counsellor, she did the postman’s trick of pressing all the buttons on the panel and hoping someone would buzz her in without asking what she wanted. It worked. As she went in, a voice behind her called, asking her to hold the door. She turned around to see a flustered Doctora Puyals hurrying along the pavement.