City of Drowned Souls

by Chris Lloyd

  Micaló looked at her in shocked anger and then at the crowd. His face quickly registered recognition that she was right. She turned to the leader of the cercavila. He looked at her full-on, a smile at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘You are electioneering,’ she told him. ‘It will stop. Entertain the crowd, don’t incite them.’

  He bowed his head. ‘I will do as you ask.’

  She turned to Micaló. ‘I can manage this.’

  Realising that he was on the back foot among so many people, the other sotsinspector nodded curtly. ‘I’m sure we’ve made ourselves clear,’ he said to the leader and left, hoping his pride was intact.

  ‘A poltroon,’ the leader whispered to Elisenda.

  ‘You went too far invoking her son. I won’t be able to protect you again.’

  ‘I am in your debt.’

  He bowed down low, doffing his hat extravagantly, and rejoined his companions.

  Elisenda watched them go and turned to see that a man had joined Miravent and Comas and was talking to them. Walking towards the group, she couldn’t place him for a moment, but then recalled his face. Salvador Canet, a local builder, one of the men that David Costa had included in his list of Marc Comas’s possible partners in corruption. She certainly knew him as another figure that appeared to have more to hide than he should, but there was never any evidence or word anywhere that he was up to anything illegal.

  ‘You probably are, though,’ she muttered.

  As she drew near, she heard Canet talking to Miravent. ‘Perhaps your husband has spoken of me, Susanna. May I call you Susanna? We’ve been discussing me joining you one day on one of your famous outings.’

  ‘Have you really?’ Miravent asked him, flashing a look at her husband.

  ‘Yes. I’m very fond of Marc here. We speak the same language. As I’m sure you and I do. We have our faith to bring us together. I’m sure you understand. But where is my compassion? Of course, all this must wait until young Jaume is safely returned to the bosom of his family, and then we can discuss it more at our leisure.’

  Before he could say any more, Comas introduced Elisenda and Montse. ‘They’re in the Mossos, helping us look for our son.’ As he spoke, he nursed his right hand.

  Canet smiled wolfishly at them both, looking them up and down. ‘I am impressed. Well, I mustn’t keep you.’

  He smiled once more at all four of them and walked away, lost in the throng packing Carrer Santa Clara.

  ‘How do you know Salvador Canet?’ Elisenda asked Comas.

  ‘Through work. It’s my job to know all the people involved in construction in Girona.’

  She gestured at his hand. ‘Is it hurting?’

  ‘I fell and knocked it again trying to break my fall. It needed resetting.’

  Elisenda studied his face. ‘Well, once we find Jaume, I promise you that I’ll be taking a close look at the attack on you. I’ll make sure I get to the bottom of whoever it was that mugged you.’

  He smiled faintly and turned away. Elisenda watched the couple walk off, across the bridge, with Montse in tow. She took out her mobile.

  ‘Josep? Take a look at everything we’ve got on Salvador Canet. What his connection with Marc Comas is. Any property he owns.’

  She hung up and looked thoughtfully at the three figures crossing the stone bridge over the river, the rush of water louder than usual, a growl underlying the chattering lies of politicians and people.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Elisenda turned away and walked back the way she’d come along Carrer Santa Clara. Crowds were coming and going along the shopping street and she found herself swept naturally along in a flow of bodies heading away from the stone bridge like a river in noisy torrent. Past the post office, she went into the Institut de Medicina Legal.

  ‘Good of you to do this on a Saturday,’ she told Riera once she’d gone into the cutting room. She stood just inside the door as he appeared to be finishing.

  He glanced over to her as an assistant began to clear up. ‘Beats having to waste my morning listening to those bloody fools outside with their antique guns and silly costumes.’

  ‘Not a fan of history, Albert?’

  ‘I’m quite happy with it as long as it stays in the past.’

  ‘Your argument is faultless.’ She gestured to the body on the table in front of the pathologist. ‘Any news for me? I thought you weren’t going to be starting until now.’

  He walked over to her, taking off his cap and revealing his shock of white hair, which he smoothed back over his head. ‘Couldn’t be arsed to wait. I know you’ll trust my findings. Not my problem if you don’t.’

  He led her out of the room into an anteroom, where he washed his hands at length. Not for the first time, Elisenda watched his delicate, deliberate movements with rapt attention. He had a gentleness of movements that was at odds with his abrasive tongue.

  ‘It’s Saturday and I’m tired,’ he finally announced. ‘I refuse to waste my time with the technical stuff even though I know you’re one of the few with enough brain cells to understand it. You can see all that in my report on Monday. Suffice it to say he drowned. Aspiration of liquid in the lungs. Red wine. Good stuff too. That and vomit.’

  Elisenda had more or less presumed that that had been the cause of death. For the time being, other aspects interested her more. ‘How many people do you think were involved?’

  ‘Extensive bruising to the chest. He appears to have been held down by a hand, sometimes flat, other times in a fist.’

  ‘Two different hands?’

  He shook his head. ‘Impossible to say. He would have been thrashing around a lot, so it could be one hand changing position and stance. I would say, though, that the perpetrator or perpetrators would have had to hold his head still for the pouring of the wine on the material to be effective.’

  ‘Which would indicate more than one person.’

  ‘I would say so, but that’s for you to determine.’

  She took in his words, trying to imagine the scene in Bofarull’s cellar. First with one attacker, then with two. Of course, even if it were two or more, that still wouldn’t rule out Vergés. He could conceivably have met anyone in prison willing to help him. She recalled Josep’s devil’s advocate theory that Vergés got to know someone in the gang of house robbers while he was inside.

  ‘Could it have been accidental? He died while someone tried to get information out of him. Or deliberate? He was tortured to the point of death?’

  Riera stopped what he was doing and looked at her. ‘Ditto, Elisenda. That’s for you to determine. I’ve given you the historical facts, you can do the re-enactment.’

  She turned to leave. ‘Very apposite, Albert.’

  Outside, she made a phone call. As it turned out, the person she was speaking to was a short distance away on Plaça Independència.

  ‘Stay there,’ she told him. ‘I’ll come and find you.’

  David Costa was standing on the opposite edge of the square by the Pont de Sant Agustí footbridge that crossed over to the old town. Almost hemmed in by the people thronging past them, they found a quiet spot halfway across the river and leaned against the railings. Below them, the river tumbled through the city, the water higher than normal. In front of them, the cathedral rose up above the houses and the old apartment block where Elisenda lived. She could see people sitting in the window of La Terra, taking in a vermouth and a view. For a brief moment, she envied them.

  ‘What can I do for you, Elisenda?’ Costa asked. ‘I can’t give you long. This is a busy weekend.’

  Elisenda turned to see the crowds wending back and forth behind them. ‘You’re telling me. Your newspaper published reports of the fake religious callers. How did you find out about that?’

  The journalist was taken aback. ‘You always were direct. We had phone calls from people the Mossos had asked about a religious pamphlet and about people going round door to door. It sounded like something we should be telling our readers ab
out.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’ She could see from his expression that her comment had surprised him. ‘Have you had any follow-up? Anyone reporting on it today?’

  Before replying, he checked the paper’s social media account. ‘I’ve had nothing, and I don’t see anything here.’

  ‘You will tell me if you do.’

  ‘If you tell me of any developments before you tell anyone else.’

  She gazed up at the cathedral, the stone tower proud against the blue sky.

  ‘All right, I will. But I want you to do something.’ She told him about the symbols found at the houses, leaving out the detail of the lines emerging from the top of the triangle. ‘We’re warning people on our social media to look for the symbol. I want your paper to do the same.’

  He looked doubtful. ‘Why are you sharing this with us?’

  ‘We have to stop more attacks. We can’t search every house in the region, so we need owners to check their own homes and tell us if they find a triangle. The more we get the message out, the more of a chance we have of catching this gang.’

  He considered for a moment and then composed a message on his phone. He showed it to her. ‘Something like that?’

  She read it. ‘Perfect.’

  After he’d pressed the button to post the message, he stood up straight. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘One other thing,’ she said, also straightening up. ‘Salvador Canet. You mentioned him the other day. What have you got on him?’

  The question took the journalist by surprise. ‘Is this to do with Marc Comas?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  He waited until a noisy group went past. ‘Canet is a builder. He’s someone I would say would benefit from having a tame councillor like Comas on the planning committee, and there are always rumours about someone who’s built up such a successful business and kept it afloat in the middle of a recession. The trouble is I’ve never found anything on him. Any dealings of his that I’ve ever looked at have turned out to be above board. He looks clean.’

  ‘But you don’t think he is?’

  Costa stared at the river rushing below. ‘The truth, Elisenda? I really don’t know. If he isn’t, he’s damned good at covering it up.’

  ‘That’s why you have people like Marc Comas,’ she muttered. ‘To take the fall.’

  Or Pere Vergés, she thought, keeping that to herself.

  ‘Are you investigating Canet?’ Costa asked her.

  ‘Not yet. Not for corruption, anyway.’ She started to accompany him to the other side of the river through the crowd. ‘That’s going to have to go on hold for another day.’

  * * *

  ‘Nothing,’ Josep told her. ‘There’s nothing I can see that links Salvador Canet’s businesses to Marc Comas or Susanna Miravent.’

  She pulled out a chair at the desk he was sitting at in the outer office and sat down. ‘There’s got to be something. Maybe it’s not business-related. I just heard Canet talking to the two of them, angling to get Miravent to get him into Opus Dei.’

  Josep turned away from the screen to look at her. ‘In which case, it will be business-related. He’ll be wanting all the contacts and opened doors that being in Opus will get him.’

  She nodded. ‘And that still wouldn’t rule out some sort of collusion between him and Comas. They’re both in a position to help each other.’

  ‘Do you want me to go digging?’

  ‘I think that’s going to have wait for a later date. Our concern at the moment is finding Jaume. I want you to look at Canet from the point of view of his possible involvement in kidnapping the boy. If he wants an in with Opus Dei, he could be using Jaume as a bargaining chip.’

  Josep looked surprised. ‘You really think he’d take the boy for that?’

  ‘Between Comas at the council and the contacts through Opus, the benefits for his business would be worth it, I reckon. If Miravent is reluctant to let him join her club, he might resort to that. I think Comas’s mugging is possibly down to him. Did you find a list of Canet’s property?’

  ‘He’s a builder,’ Josep replied, frustration in his voice. He turned back to the computer and called up a file. ‘He has dozens of pieces of land and property registered in his company’s name.’

  A list appeared and he began scrolling down through it.

  ‘OK, I get the picture.’ She stared at the names. ‘Go through it and look for anywhere he could possibly be keeping Jaume. Get Seguretat Ciutadana to check them out.’

  ‘What about warrants?’

  She looked at him askance. ‘Wash your mouth out. We’re looking for a missing boy, we don’t need warrants if we’re simply searching.’

  Josep grinned, his shoulders straightening as he began to tower over Elisenda in his chair. ‘One other thing. The phone call that Francesc Bofarull got, supposedly from the water company. Científica have told me that it came from a call box in La Bisbal. That’s all they’ve got. So it could still be anybody.’

  Elisenda stared at the lists on the computer screen and the folders strewn across Josep’s desk.

  ‘Couldn’t it just.’

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  ‘Girona drivers,’ Manel cursed.

  Àlex looked up as the caporal overtook an olive-green cinquecento on the road to La Bisbal, veering back into lane as a silver BMW approached them from the other direction at speed, flashing its lights angrily. Manel turned the blue light on for a moment and gave a warning beep on the siren. The BMW slowed down immediately, the driver staring fixedly ahead as the two cars passed. ‘Arsehole. Wouldn’t be given a licence in Lleida if he drove like that.’

  Àlex was surprised to find himself for the first time not irritated by Manel’s monologue. Instead, he went back to checking his phone. None of the replies to the Mossos’ or the newspaper’s social media messages about triangles drawn on houses looked promising. He’d just spoken to Josep, who told him that nothing of interest had come in so far. Sighing, he darkened the screen and put the phone back in his pocket. He seriously hoped Elisenda’s idea of releasing the information about the symbols wouldn’t hamper their investigation. They had precious little to go on as it was. The breaks they’d had in working out the different teams, the symbols and the broad geographical pattern of the attacks were a good start, but he still felt as far away as ever from actually catching the perpetrators.

  ‘It’s odd,’ he said, ‘how when you ask the public to tell you if they see a triangle, they post photos of every vaguely geometric shape that isn’t a triangle.’

  Hunched over the wheel, Manel shrugged. ‘That’s Girona for you.’

  In Vulpellac, Manel parked two doors away from Bofarull’s house as the area directly in front was cordoned off with tape. A Seguretat Ciutadana mosso from La Bisbal was standing outside.

  ‘Anything of interest?’ Àlex asked him once he and Manel had got out of the car and shown their ID.

  ‘Not a thing,’ the mosso said, stifling a yawn. The sun was shining directly overhead into the narrow road and he had nowhere to shelter from its warmth. Tears of sweat ran down his forehead from under his peaked cap. The air was humid, a storm threatening for later. ‘Some of the neighbours have walked by about half a dozen times each, but that’s all.’

  Àlex grinned. ‘They’ll be nosing about more as the day goes on.’

  The mosso shrugged. ‘That’s the next guy’s problem. I’m off in an hour.’

  Àlex studied the symbol painted on the meter box again. It had been photographed last night, under the unforgiving light of arc lamps, but it looked horribly innocuous in the bright sunshine. A small, childlike scrawl in black felt-tip on the light grey cover of the inset cabinet.

  ‘Any activity inside?’ he asked the mosso.

  ‘Científica left a short while ago. That’s all.’

  Before questioning the neighbours, Àlex and Manel went inside, keeping to the designated areas, for another look. The kitchen with its dusting of fingerprint powder, w
hite pyramid evidence markers and plastic tape reminded Àlex of the drawing outside, mundane souvenirs of a horror now past. He knew he wasn’t going to get any more of an image of the scene than he’d taken away last night, so he signalled to Manel that they should leave. The neighbours either side had already given statements the previous night, but Àlex and Manel knocked on both doors to see if they could remember anything more.

  ‘We didn’t hear a thing,’ the elderly couple to the right told them.

  That was hardly surprising, Àlex thought. The volume of their TV was deafening in the narrow living room at the back of the house, the sound reverberating between the walls and occasionally rattling a ceramic plate on an antique dresser. They got the same story the other side, and the further away along the street from Bofarull’s house, the less the owners had to say about last night’s events.

  ‘Old stone houses,’ he told Manel as they approached the last in the short row. ‘They built them solid in those days. You wouldn’t hear a thing.’

  Manel shook his head from side to side after yet another loud TV. ‘I still can’t,’ he complained.

  The last neighbour they called on lived at the end of the street. She opened the door and insisted on coming outside rather than letting them in. She wore a cotton housecoat that she held together at the front in her tight, little fist. She had a voice that reminded Àlex of a primary school teacher he once had, a small and birdlike figure with lungs that could overcome a class of fractious seven-year-olds with a single word.

  ‘Scandalous,’ the woman repeated for the third time. ‘The noise you lot made with your cars and your electric lights. I didn’t get a wink of sleep all night.’

  Yet a horrific murder four doors away didn’t worry you, Àlex was tempted to say. Instead he asked her if she saw anything, holding out little hope for a helpful answer.

  ‘Four men,’ she told him. ‘Don’t know who they were or what they thought they were doing, but there were four of them. Outside that Bofarull’s house. Stuck-up little tyke he was, God rest his soul, never spoke to anyone, even though we all knew him when he was a snot-nosed little kid, God rest his soul.’