City of Drowned Souls

by Chris Lloyd

  Elisenda gazed back at her. ‘Wouldn’t that be enough for a devout person to do something out of character?’

  After her meeting, Elisenda left the building and walked across the car park. She couldn’t help stopping for a brief moment to suck in lungfuls of fresh air. Checking her phone before getting into the car, she saw she’d missed a call from Josep. She rang and asked him what it was about.

  ‘Marc Comas. He went out for lunch, and the unmarked car following him lost him.’

  ‘He went out for lunch? Does he know his son’s missing?’ She cursed silently before continuing. ‘Did it look like he tried to lose them?’

  ‘No, it was the traffic system. The tailing car got snarled up in the one-way and Comas kept getting further away as other cars nosed in. He wasn’t speeding or doing anything unusual.’

  ‘Doesn’t the tail car have lights and sirens?’

  ‘They didn’t want to draw attention.’

  ‘Seriously? Where is he now? Have you tried his mobile?’

  ‘We don’t know. I’ve called his mobile, but it’s switched off.’

  ‘OK, get Seguretat Ciutadana to try and find him.’

  She hung up and swore again. Getting into the car, she thought of Marc Comas and Pere Vergés.

  ‘So what is really going on with you two,’ she muttered to herself as she left behind the prison and headed for the motorway back to Girona.

  Chapter Forty-One

  ‘There’s a telephone call for you, Senyor Comas.’

  Comas was surprised. No one was supposed to know he was here. He looked at his half-finished plate of botifarra amb mongetes, a good old traditional Catalan meal of thick pork sausage with haricot beans fried in garlic and parsley, and closed his eyes. Just one moment, he wanted, just one moment away from his wife and the elections and his missing son and the Mossos d’Esquadra.

  ‘For me?’ he asked the waiter. ‘On your phone?’

  The waiter, a young man, the third generation in his family to serve table at Comas’s favourite restaurant on the northern fringe of Girona, nodded.

  ‘Apparently the gentleman didn’t give his name.’

  Irritated, Comas turned his mobile on quickly but he had no missed calls. He turned it off again just as quickly. ‘You’re sure it’s for me?’

  The waiter nodded again. Sighing heavily, Comas got up and followed the young man. This was his favourite restaurant precisely because no one knew it was and he could be left alone here to enjoy the sort of meal in the sort of place his wife claimed her status no longer allowed. At least that would soon be changing, Comas thought with grim glee.

  The waiter showed him to an office where he could take the call. He waited until the waiter had closed the door behind him and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, trepidation suddenly entering his voice, but all he could hear was tinny music playing that year’s summer hit. ‘Who is this? Is this about my son? Who are you? Where’s my son?’

  His voice steadily grew with his frustration, but no reply came, just the endless vapid summer sound. After a few more minutes, he slammed the phone down in helpless anger. Outside, he told the waiter that no one was on the phone. ‘And you don’t have number recognition?’ he asked him, but the waiter told him they didn’t.

  He returned to his table, but his appetite had gone, and with it, the brief moment of respite and his peace of mind. Giving up on his meal, he paid up and went out into the warm sunlight. In the car park behind the restaurant, he was even more annoyed to see that someone had blocked him in. A top of the range grey BMW was skewed across where his own car was parked facing outward. He checked the BMW but no one was in it and they hadn’t left a note to say where they could be found.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he muttered.

  He opened his own car door and was about to hold the horn down until the BMW driver came to reclaim it, when he heard another car door closing nearby, quickly followed by a second one.

  ‘Good afternoon, Marc,’ a cold voice said before he had a chance to press the central pad on the steering wheel.

  Comas jumped. He recognised the voice immediately.

  ‘Please don’t sound your horn,’ the voice said.

  Comas snatched his hand away as though it had been stung. At the same time, a strong hand pulled at his arm to make sure he didn’t sound the horn out of reflex.

  ‘Thank you,’ the voice said.

  Comas turned to face the speaker. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes behind the heavy sunglasses, but the mouth was set in a firm line. It was Salvador Canet, the man he’d met on Monday, his rather informal business partner who was paying him to turn council decisions in his favour.

  ‘Rather hot today, don’t you find, Marc?’ Canet said. ‘Would you care to sit in the rear seat of your car, out of this sun?’

  He signalled to the thickset man holding Comas’s arm, one of the two at the meeting the other morning, to release him. The third man was seated at the wheel of a white Mercedes parked nearby. Canet ushered Comas into the rear seat of Comas’s own car and pulled the door closed behind them.

  ‘We really shouldn’t be seen together in public,’ Comas said, recovering a little of his composure.

  Canet took his sunglasses off and stared at him. ‘Oh, I think we’ve gone past that now, Marc.’

  He pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket. Comas closed his eyes. It was his, the one that had been stolen on Wednesday.

  ‘I see you recognise it,’ Canet said. ‘Good, that will save us so much time.’ He turned to face Comas more fully. ‘Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I had assumed we had a relationship based on trust. On a matter of mutual interest.’

  ‘We do. I…’

  ‘Shut. Up,’ Canet whispered. Comas flinched more than had the man shouted. ‘Yet I find you’ve been recording our meetings. Not just the one on Monday, but all the times we’ve spoken.’

  ‘Just for my own records.’

  Canet held his hand up to quiet him. ‘The thing is, Marc, what you failed to see is that they work equally well for my records. Details of all the payments you’ve taken, all the council decisions you’ve helped sway, all the discussions we’ve had regarding our mutual business concerns. And all spoken in your own voice. And what’s more unfortunate from your point of view is that now I have this, I really don’t need to pay you for your services anymore. I have all the promises I need to aid me in my business ventures on this one phone. And on the backup copies I’ve made and deposited with my layer.’

  ‘It incriminates you as much as it does me.’

  ‘Not the version as I’ve left it.’ He played part of Monday’s discussion. Canet’s voice didn’t appear at any point. ‘You will, of course, continue to work for me.’

  ‘I’m broke,’ Comas said, fighting back tears of frustration.

  ‘Don’t worry, Marc. It’s not in my interest for you to go under. That’s what we do, we help each other. Which brings us to that other matter you appear reluctant to discuss.’

  Comas gulped. ‘I can’t. You’re not a believer. They’d never let you in.’

  ‘I’m sure your wife could swing things my way, Marc. Opus Dei, Marc, we help each other. I’d be able to make sure your fate was always tied to mine. You’d never go under with my support as a fellow member.’

  Comas struggled to keep his voice straight. ‘Why do you want to be in Opus Dei?’

  ‘The same reason you do, Marc. The same reason you do. To open all the right doors. Now talk to your wife and sort it. I won’t ask you again.’

  Comas looked at the other man and searched for the courage to ask his next question. ‘Have you got my son?’

  Canet laughed. ‘Oh, Marc, I wouldn’t go through your children, you know that. I’d deal directly with you. But don’t worry, I see you’re concerned about your son, so I won’t take your question as an insult.’ He held his hand out. ‘Let’s shake on it.’

  Without waiting for a reply, Canet took hold of Comas
’s right hand and squeezed hard. The fingers held together with splints and bandages cracked and Comas screamed in pain. Canet got out of the car and leaned his head back in to look at Comas.

  ‘I won’t ask again.’

  Shaking with fear and pain, Comas got out of his car and called to Canet. ‘Aren’t you going to let me out,’ he said, gesturing to the BMW.

  Canet looked at the grey car and shrugged. ‘Not our car. You’ll just have to ask someone to move it. I’ll be in touch.’

  Canet and his companion got in the car and the driver slowly pulled away from the parking space and out into the main road. Comas watched them go and let the tears come.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Elisenda had one more visit to pay on her way back from the prison in Figueres. Walking through the double doors of the newspaper building, she recalled the words of her first sergent.

  ‘The media have no place in a police investigation.’

  It was a saying he’d liked to repeat, and it was one that Elisenda had always found short-sighted, a throwback to the distant past when Franco’s police preferred to be unaccountable and secretive. Oddly, despite the Mossos being more amenable to the press, there were still some who were wary of involving them. She wasn’t among their number.

  ‘Thanks for running the piece,’ she told David Costa now when he’d come down to reception. She’d asked him to print an article calling more explicitly for the public’s support in finding Jaume Comas Miravent.

  ‘I hope it works,’ he told her. ‘We seem to be getting a good response so far.’

  ‘That’s good to hear. We need to keep the profile up. In these cases, there’s always the risk of people’s interest waning and moving on to the next story if there isn’t much news to give them.’

  He agreed with her. ‘It’s a strange situation, this. Everyone wants to help when a child is missing, but our readers are generally unsympathetic to Susanna Miravent’s views.’

  ‘They’re not helping,’ Elisenda had to admit. ‘That’s why I’m grateful for your help.’

  David looked at the photo of Miravent on the cover of that morning’s edition. For once, she was portrayed as the mother of a missing child, not an unpopular politician.

  ‘How you can ask people to vote for you to enter an institution that you profess to want to bring down is beyond me,’ he commented. ‘The hypocrisy of it.’

  Elisenda turned to leave. ‘You just have to put that thought on hold for the time being.’

  * * *

  It all hinged on an apple.

  Àlex and Manel had spent the day ringing the houses of people who’d been attacked by the gang. Manel put his phone down and ticked another name on the list.

  ‘They also got a call from the God squad,’ he told Àlex. ‘That’s all of them so far.’

  ‘Same here. I don’t think we need to ring any more, there’s an obvious correlation.’

  Since the first few negative responses, virtually every owner they’d called and been able to speak to had come back with the same reply. Shortly before the attack on their home, they’d all received a visit from some religious group trying to drum up trade for some sect or other. None of them had thought any more of it.

  ‘They’re the ones looking for the right houses,’ Àlex continued, ‘and marking out the ones for the gang to attack.’

  On the table between them, they had a series of pieces of paper spread out on the desk, each one with one of the symbols that they’d found at the houses. A triangle with one, two or three lines coming out of the top, all but one with a horizontal line through the centre of the triangle.

  ‘Even if we do work it out,’ Manel said for the countless time, ‘I still don’t see what we’re going to do with it.’

  Àlex had to agree. He’d sent messages to all the Mossos stations in the Girona police region telling them to be watchful for the symbols, but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

  ‘I’m famished,’ he said, fishing in a bag near his chair. ‘Want an apple?’

  He took one out for himself and tossed a second one over to Manel, who made no attempt to catch it. Instead, he simply watched it bounce off his chest and roll across the desk in front of him, knocking over a container with pens in.

  ‘Like the reflexes,’ Àlex mocked him.

  Manel didn’t reply. He just stared at the apple, a frown across his forehead.

  ‘Apples,’ he finally said. ‘The orchards we passed. Where was that?’

  ‘Sant Pere Pescador.’

  Manel called up a file on the computer screen and stared at it. ‘Apples. The orchards. There’s so much work, they use teams to pick the apples at harvest time. All working under a gang leader, working in shifts. Some of the teams work better than the others, so they get more apples picked.’

  Àlex leaned forward and tilted Manel’s screen so they could both see it. ‘There are different gangs robbing the houses. No, one gang, but different teams, each one working a different way.’

  ‘Three teams,’ Manel said. ‘The three sticks at the top of the triangle. They’re nothing to do with the house itself. They just say which team is to do the job.’

  The two of them studied the list of attacks in chronological order on the screen and matched the brutality of the attacks with the number of sticks. They only had the symbols for a small number of the homes, the ones they’d visited, but there was a link. The more violent attacks were where two or three sticks had appeared.

  ‘That explains the different levels of coercion used in the attacks,’ Àlex commented. ‘Teams two and three are more vicious, so they were probably used for the potentially more profitable homes or the ones where there was possibly more of a chance of the owners being able to defend themselves.’ He looked at Manel. ‘You bloody beauty.’

  To hide his embarrassment, Manel fixed his gaze on the pieces of paper with the symbol on. ‘I don’t get the line through the middle.’

  Àlex looked at his own sheet of names and numbers and the ones he’d ticked off and saw the pattern. ‘We didn’t find that on the architects’ house, and that was the only one that hadn’t happened when we saw the sign. They’re just marking the triangle to show the job’s been done.’

  Manel grunted. ‘Bureaucratic burglars. Only in Girona.’ He suddenly looked crestfallen. ‘I still don’t see how knowing this helps us stop them.’

  Silently, they both turned back to the computer screen and studied it for a few moments.

  ‘Can you see the pattern?’ Àlex asked.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Me too. It’s obvious when you know.’

  A voice behind them made the pair of them jump.

  ‘What’s obvious?’ Elisenda wanted to know.

  ‘The robberies,’ Àlex told her, beckoning her over to the desk. ‘The sequence. We’ve worked it out. They’re leapfrogging the attacks, doing one in one county, then two in another, then on to a third county and two attacks back in the first county. It’s two steps forward, one step back. It looks random, but there is a pattern.’

  Elisenda sat down and studied the screen while Àlex and Manel explained to her their theory about the symbols and that there were three different teams carrying out the attacks based on the judgement of the fake religious callers.

  ‘So the next attack would be…’ Elisenda said, studying the list of past attacks. ‘Two in the Baix Empordà.’

  ‘And then back to the Gironès for a third one there,’ Manel added.

  ‘That makes sense,’ Elisenda said. ‘My sister’s beach house is in the Baix Empordà, and the gang is obviously looking for places to attack as she’s had a visit from this fake religious lot.’

  ‘Were there any symbols around?’ Àlex asked her.

  ‘Not on her house. I didn’t have time to check the neighbouring houses or anyone else in La Fosca.’

  ‘So we get the local Mossos stations there to check up on houses,’ Manel suggested.

  Elisenda and Àlex just loo
ked at him. Elisenda leaned forward and opened another screen in a tab. ‘Baix Empordà,’ she recited. ‘Seven hundred square kilometres, a hundred and thirty-odd thousand people, thirty-six towns. And we’ve got two stations and four sub-stations there. It would take us months to get round all that.’

  ‘And the next attack could be any day now,’ Àlex added.

  ‘Even so,’ Manel argued, ‘we know they’re looking near where your sister lives. We could get the local stations to check up on that.’

  Elisenda considered that. ‘It really is a long shot, but it’s worth a try.’

  ‘I’ve already mailed the stations throughout the region telling them to keep an eye out for symbols,’ Àlex told her.

  ‘Update them all to tell them to watch for religious callers as well,’ Elisenda told him. ‘But it would be worth you going to talk to La Bisbal and Palamós to get them to check up on the La Fosca area. It’s the only real lead we’ve got to go on, even if it is vague.’

  ‘One thing I don’t see,’ Àlex commented, ‘is why the religious caller lot don’t just give the gangs the address of the houses they select. They’ve got to tell them the area where the house is for them to find the symbol. Why not just give the address?’

  Manel smirked. ‘City boy. Most of them are isolated houses, they don’t have proper addresses, maybe just a house name or a kilometre marking. Or the road itself doesn’t even have a name, just a number. There’s no address they can give.’

  ‘Probably just a satnav coordinate and a rough description,’ Elisenda agreed. ‘That and the symbol would be enough.’