City of Drowned Souls

by Chris Lloyd

  The music was turned up loud, the speakers in every room blasting out Sopa de Cabra’s L’Estació de França. She’d brought her own iPod to insert in the dock. She didn’t mind facing danger, but she refused to put up with Sergi’s taste in music. The song’s lyrics about the human fauna found at one of Barcelona’s oldest stations and the energy of the two guitars were pumping her up for what she hoped lay ahead. It was also a beacon in the night, the house on the low cliffs a haven of light and noise to attract moths to their fate.

  She wasn’t alone in the house.

  She knew that, but she still felt nervous. She was on her own downstairs, but the upstairs rooms and the garage at the foot of the narrow flight of stairs down from the kitchen were occupied. Àlex and Puigventós were at the top of the landing, Manel in the garage. All four were accompanied by small deployments of ARRO teams, the anti-riot force, armed and armoured in readiness. Outside, vans hidden behind other houses and in the dense pines along the road concealed back-up teams from Armengol and Micaló’s teams. Nevertheless, Elisenda had to admit to herself that she was scared.

  When Àlex had rung her from La Fosca a little over two hours ago with a proposal, she’d only taken a moment to agree to it. Once he’d described the symbol on the elderly couple’s house, their refusal to leave and the layout, she’d known he was right. All she had to do was convince her sister. That, in turn, had been easy.

  ‘How will Sergi see it?’ she’d asked Catalina.

  ‘I won’t tell him until tomorrow,’ her sister had replied.

  Leaving the living room, Elisenda walked into the kitchen. Standing by the sink, she looked out of the window into the night. The layout of the land meant that the kitchen was on the ground floor in terms of the front entrance and on the first floor at the rear, above the garage. Staring out, she could see more than she could at the front of the house. The pine-lined road snaked off towards the rest of the development, the sparse street lamps lighting little of the area but showing enough for her to see out. There was no movement. She took a deep breath and carried on what she was doing as naturally as she could. Anyone watching the house for the last hour would only have seen a woman alone inside.

  Àlex’s idea had been simple. The elderly couple’s home was just two streets away from Catalina’s beach house. If they were right about satnav coordinates and the symbols, that should be enough to fool the gang. He’d taken a pot of paint to the meter box and covered over the symbol. Then he’d hurried to Catalina’s house. The cabinet there was on the side of the house, by the steps leading up from the road to the footpath at the top of the cliff. It was ideal. He’d scrawled the same triangle with two lines on it. Fortunately, the other three houses in the row were empty. In the meantime, Elisenda had gone back to Vista Alegre to organise the setup with Puigventós, who had in turn arranged the ARRO support. Armengol had immediately offered his help, followed a little reluctantly by Micaló.

  The one problem was the phone signal, which meant that they couldn’t rely on a call from Elisenda, who would be acting as the tethered goat, getting to teams waiting outside. Instead, the back-up had to be inside, so the challenge had been to get all the support in place as quickly and surreptitiously as possible before any attack was likely to happen. Part of her nervousness was due to the possibility that the operation was already compromised and all of her waiting was in vain. The lack of a phone signal also meant that for help from the outside teams, they had to rely on their radio network, which they shared with the other emergency services in Catalonia. It was proving to be only marginally more reliable right now, the signal coming in and out of range constantly. She hoped that with the numbers of Mossos inside the house, that wouldn’t matter.

  Walking back into the living room, a sound startled her, until she realised it was someone moving about upstairs, the noise amplified by the ceramic tile floors. The music on the player shuffled through the playlist, one she always used when she wanted to raise her energy.

  ‘Music to act as decoy for a violent gang by,’ she muttered out loud, chuckling nervously. ‘Might have to tweak the marketing, but it could work.’

  The doorbell rang and she froze.

  Glancing over, she thought she saw a shadow move at the window. She had to resist looking back to make sure. Where she was standing by the fireplace, the front door was just out of sight. Suddenly leaden, she had to will herself to walk towards it. The three steps leading up to the hallway were the steepest she’d ever climbed. She slowed down, controlling her breathing, making the adrenaline work for her.

  As she approached, it rang again.

  That was the push she needed. The insistence of the caller had fired up her anger, their eagerness to make someone else a victim the best motivation she needed in that final moment when her hand hovered over the door handle. Even so, she was surprised by the violence of the shove against the door once she released the catch. It caught her a blow to her right shoulder and cheek and forced her to stagger backwards. It swung open as she stumbled and she knew that she daren’t fall to the ground. Two figures came in quickly, both wearing balaclavas. The first one pushed her, but she managed to keep to her feet. Sensing the steps behind her, she had to turn her back on them to make sure she didn’t trip. She jumped down all three and turned quickly to face them, but the first attacker was on her immediately and punched her in the jaw. She ducked enough to lessen the blow but the pain still burst across the side of her face. Behind her assailant, she could see that there was still one figure outside the house. She knew they all had to be inside for the Mossos to catch the lot of them. Hurriedly backing away, she kept one eye on the figure directly in front of her and the other on the door and the person still outside. The first one threw another punch at her, but she danced back to avoid it. She was getting near the door to the kitchen. She wanted to stay in the living room so that the team upstairs could get to her more quickly, so she sidestepped another punch and went to her right, towards the sofas.

  She was just losing sight of the front door when she saw the third figure come in. The one immediately behind her assailant was about to join in the attack on her, so she shouted out, her voice louder than the guitar riff thumping out through the sound system. Taken by surprise, the first attacker stopped, so Elisenda lunged forward and caught him a blow straight to the stomach. Winded, he doubled up, blocking the second attacker’s path to Elisenda, but not hers to him. She quickly rammed the heel of her right hand under his nose, the sound of his yelp of pain instantly satisfying.

  Her blow had barely landed when she heard the sound of shouting and the thundering of footfall down the stairs. The ARRO team quickly overcame the two figures in front of her. Manel came through the kitchen door at the same time and picked the two bodies up by the neck, his huge hands engulfing them. Elisenda looked up to see Àlex hurdle the sofas and race to the door to catch up with the third figure, already retreating across the hall. He was almost on him when the would-be burglar suddenly slumped and fell. Behind him, Armengol was coming through the door, ready to deliver another punch.

  The uproar settled and Puigventós turned the music off, the silence that ensued more forceful than the tumult of a moment ago. Elisenda looked around. All three attackers had been subdued. Manel had pulled the balaclavas off the first two. She was surprised to see how ordinary they looked. They would have passed unseen and unassuming in any other circumstance. Missing the beat of the music, she exhaled slowly, on a high after the success of the setup.

  Armengol came further into the room, followed by two more of his team. Between them, they were holding a fourth figure.

  ‘This one was at the top of the stone steps,’ he explained. ‘We saw them and thought we’d better take up position nearer. The radio link wasn’t working at all, so we had to take the risk.’

  Catching her breath, Elisenda laughed and mouthed a breathless thank you at him.

  Through the open door behind Armengol, Micaló walked in, followed by one of his team.
He surveyed the scene and gravitated to where Puigventós was standing, near the fireplace.

  ‘We did it,’ he pronounced.

  Armengol looked across at him. ‘I’m sure we’d all like to congratulate you, Sotsinspector Micaló. That course of yours really did its stuff.’

  Elisenda caught Armengol’s eye and gave him the broadest grin she could ever remember giving. ‘That’s all you had to do,’ she told him.

  The water had reached his knees.

  He was half-standing in the flow, his right hand still manacled to the wall, and he felt the level rise as high as his thighs.

  He screamed to the person above.

  The river roared. The slabs beneath his feet buckled in its anger and rough stones in the wall crumbled under the force. More water surged through. He pulled on the iron ring, not caring about the pain searing his wrists, but it wouldn’t move, the wall where it was embedded standing firm against the flood.

  He screamed again.

  The door opened and he looked up.

  ‘You have to do something.’

  Without a word, his captor lowered the ladder into place and began to climb down. In the cellar, he almost cried in gratitude. The figure thrust something into his hand. Opening his fist, he looked at it. It was a pair of pliers.

  Fumbling against the cold of the water and his own panic, he forced the edge of the pliers between the metal band and the raw skin of his wrist. The pain shot up his arm. Finding a purchase, he squeezed as hard as he could, but couldn’t get enough of a grip. Crying in rage and pain, he twisted the tool into his flesh and tried again. This time it bit. He felt the thin metal cut in two, releasing him.

  Looking up, he saw his captor struggling to get back to the ladder. He stood up and was horrified to find the water up to his waist and rising. The bucket he’d been using for a toilet tumbled past him, its contents swirling with the water, bringing up bile in his throat. The roiling brown flood clung to him as he waded past the plinth of crumbled steps towards the other figure.

  He made it past the plinth to the foot of the ladder, the water up to his chest, when another surge as more stones crumbled sent a wave rolling towards him. He kept his feet, but turned to see the ladder swept away and sent tumbling in the relentless flood. His captor frantically lunged after it, but it barrelled out of his grasp.

  Crying, he forced his body through the water, wading after it.

  Between them, he and the other figure caught hold of the ladder and managed to fix it in place. Each one trying to gain a foothold on the bottom rung, they turned at the sound of another roar of tumbling stones sending a wave cresting towards them.

  They looked at each other, panic reflected in each other’s eyes.

  Sunday

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Salvador Canet sat in the small office at the rear of the warehouse. With his left hand, he was turning a gold lighter over and over on the desk. It made a sharp click every time he upended it. His right hand held a bling-encrusted mobile to his ear. He told whoever was at the other end to meet him at his office in Girona and hung up.

  Opposite him, Àlex reached across the desk and made to take the lighter out of his hand. Canet held on, staring Àlex in the eyes. Àlex grinned and tightened his grip. Canet had spent too long away from actually working on building sites and his clasp wasn’t as strong as it once was, so he released it as the pain grew stronger. Deliberately, Àlex placed the lighter gently down on the dusty metal table, not once removing his gaze from Canet’s face.

  ‘Now isn’t that better,’ he told him. ‘Because it was irritating the shit out of me.’

  It was Canet’s turn to grin, a wolfish leer that had intimidated many a business partner. ‘So sorry, sergent. I forgot, you no doubt can’t afford an object like this.’

  Àlex looked down at the gaudy lighter and back at Canet. He laughed. ‘You’ve got me there. There’s no way I’d own such an item as that.’

  He could see in the other man’s eyes that the barb had hit home. Social climbers, no matter how menacing their background, were always prey to self-doubt.

  Canet leaned back and yawned. ‘Will this take long? I have to go to church.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  Outside the office, a team of Seguretat Ciutadana and four Científica officers were combing through the warehouse. Manel was with them, searching through the small rooms that led off the main storage area. It was one of two properties belonging to Canet that Josep had found in his search that could fit the bill for keeping Jaume hostage. This was a huge and empty complex of one large room and various side rooms and outbuildings. Currently unoccupied, it stood in an industrial estate on the road north from Girona. So far, they’d found nothing.

  Àlex and Elisenda had gone to Canet’s home in Montjuïc early that morning, dragging him away from his lavish breakfast. Without a word, his wife, younger than Canet and dressed in a short silk kimono, had got up and closed herself in their bedroom, not appearing the rest of the time they were there.

  ‘We have a warrant to search two of your properties,’ Elisenda had told him, showing him the paper.

  On the way to Canet’s house, she’d told Àlex that from now on she was always going to apply for warrants at the weekend. The duty judge, a woman Elisenda’s age with almond eyes and a Sunday-morning air, had issued the orders without a moment’s hesitation.

  ‘I shall reserve all crime-fighting for when Jutgessa Roca is safely tucked up in bed,’ she’d told him.

  Her voice was slightly muffled, her jaw stiffening up and bruising after the glancing punch she’d received the night before.

  ‘Matches the other cheek,’ Àlex had told her. ‘Suits you.’

  Àlex had then met Manel and the uniformed and Científica teams at this warehouse, while Elisenda had hooked up with Josep and more Mossos at the other property, an empty suite of offices set among a park of beech trees away from the road to the west of the city.

  Canet had decided to go to the one that Àlex was searching, having told someone else on the phone to get to the second one. Àlex had wondered at first if it was significant, but it was becoming evident that the boy wasn’t being kept at the site. Manel came in ten minutes later to confirm it and Àlex stood the teams down.

  ‘So sorry not to be of more help,’ Canet told him. He picked up the lighter and turned it over once on the table, the sound reverberating on the metal.

  Àlex stared back at him as he made to go. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure you will be one day.’

  For her part, Elisenda was getting the same result. The person Canet had told to get to the site was a large and taciturn bruiser of a man who sat at the dusty reception console and smouldered as teams of Mossos went systematically through the empty offices. His face impassive, his eyes constantly roamed the corridors emanating from the lobby to keep close watch on what the police were doing. A uniformed sergent came in through the glass front doors, opaque with disuse, and approached Elisenda.

  ‘There’s an outbuilding,’ he told her, ‘and none of the keys we’ve been given fits.’

  Elisenda looked at Canet’s employee and raised her eyebrows in question.

  ‘They should all be there,’ he said, the first words he’d uttered in the last hour.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind coming with me,’ she invited him, getting up.

  Reluctant at first, he evidently quickly realised that he couldn’t allow the Mossos access to the building without his presence, so he stood up and followed Elisenda and the sergent out of the doors. The sergent led them to a modern single-storey block fifty metres from the main offices. There were no windows, just a couple of grilles set high into the walls.

  ‘We think it must be a generator,’ the Mosso told her.

  Elisenda turned to the other man. ‘Do you have a key?’

  He simply looked at the small building and shrugged.

  ‘Break the lock,’ Elisenda ordered the sergent.

  The burly man lunged forward
and stood in front of the door. ‘Senyor Canet won’t like it.’

  Elisenda smiled disarmingly up at the man’s craggy face. Her jaw was hurting and she needed a painkiller to stem an incipient headache nagging away behind her forehead. ‘I don’t give a shit what Senyor Canet will or will not like. If you haven’t got a key for this door, we’re breaking it down. I haven’t got time to waste.’

  He took the keys from the sergent and looked through them, trying all the ones that would fit the type of lock on the door. None of them worked.

  ‘Break the door down,’ Elisenda repeated to the sergent.

  The other man looked for a moment like he was going to refuse to move.

  ‘I will arrest you if I have to,’ Elisenda told him, her voice strained. ‘Get out of the way.’

  Two other Mossos came up at the sergent’s orders with a ram and knocked the door off the lock with their second blow, pushing it inwards with a sharp judder. A stale smell of diesel and dust greeted them. The sergent went inside with his torch sweeping around the one room, which was dominated in the middle by a huge generator, a back-up power supply to the main offices. It was caked in dust. Elisenda looked down at the floor. From the undisturbed weft of grime, it was obvious that no one had been in here for ages. Nevertheless, the sergent and the other two Mossos searched the room, their torches picking out giant brown moths asleep on the walls and a lattice of grey and grisly cobwebs in the corners and at the angles of the ceiling.

  ‘Nothing,’ the sergent confirmed.

  ‘That lock’ll need repairing,’ Canet’s man told Elisenda.

  ‘Won’t it just.’

  She and the man returned to the reception area and sat down. He tried making a phone call, no doubt to Canet, but there was no reply. In the end, as officer after officer came in and shook their heads, she had to admit that they weren’t going to find anything there. She stood her team down and thanked the man for his cooperation. Without a word, he stood up and waited for her to leave, his face restored to its impassive stare.