A Silent Death by Peter May (book recommendations website txt) 📕

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The sun had risen fully over the shoulder of the mountain as they lurched down a potholed track to the Hacienda Familia Castillejos, dust rising behind them like smoke in the still morning air.

Hacienda was a grand name for what was really just another finca. The home of Familia Castillejos was built from local stone, a simple single-story house with a vine-shaded terrace at the front. The road, such as it was, ran on a short way beyond the house to a broken-down collection of barns. Hens scattered in the yard as Cristina brought their SUV to an unceremonious halt. The front door lay open, and they could see beyond it that there were lights still burning in the kitchen.

Cristina was first inside, Mackenzie just behind her. It took Paco a good half-minute to catch them up.

In contrast to the kitchen at Finca Los Fernández, this room was neat and clean and well-ordered, lit by several lamps and an overhead light. The smell of a recently cooked breakfast still hung in the air. A weather-worn middle-aged couple sat at the table, breakfast only half eaten in front of them, fat congealing around eggs and ham, coffee long since gone cold in chipped and discoloured mugs.

The woman wore a dark blouse beneath a shawl that hung down to a creased three-quarter-length skirt. Mackenzie could see woollen stockings beneath it, and tattered trainers that might once have been white. The man’s skinny frame was clad in grubby blue overalls, silvered black hair like fuse wire contained beneath a sweat-stained cap. Their faces were turned towards the door with the dread of expectancy. The woman’s face was stained and still shining from tears. She took in Cristina’s uniform. ‘It’s true, then?’ she said.

‘Is what true?’ Mackenzie asked quickly.

The woman flickered dead eyes in his direction. ‘They killed the Fernández family.’

Cristina said, ‘How do you know?’

The man scratched a silver-bristled chin, the sound of it rasping in the stillness of the room. His face was the colour and texture of leather, his eyes so deep set they were like black holes in his face. ‘Diego.’

‘Who’s Diego?’

‘The goatherd. He came here after the Guardia arrived at La Peña. He usually calls in after he has had coffee with the Fernández people.’

Señora Castillejos shook her head. ‘It was all a terrible mistake. We had no idea they had gone to La Peña first. Those poor folk would have had no idea what they were looking for. The drugs were here all the time.’

Mackenzie walked into the room, drew a chair up to the table and sat down. ‘Tell us what happened,’ he said.

Castillejos shook his head. ‘We had no choice, señor. They threatened to kill us if we did not keep their packages for them.’

‘What were they like, these packages?’

‘Big plastic sacks, señor, like they use for animal feed. About thirty of them. A couple of tons, I’d say. And I should know, they made me unload and stack them in the barn when they first brought them.’

‘Do you know what was in them?’

He shrugged. ‘Drugs.’

Mackenzie looked at Cristina. ‘If it’s cocaine, a couple of tons would have a street value running to hundreds of millions. And if this is Cleland’s stash then it’s the deal of a lifetime. Money like that . . . he’ll be gone. History. We’ll never find him.’ He turned back to the Castillejos. ‘What happened this morning?’

She sat wringing her hands on the table in front of her. ‘They didn’t say they had already been to the Finca los Fernández by mistake. Just ordered Carlos to load the bales into their big covered pickup while they stood around watching and smoking and laughing. Four of them. I’ll never forget their faces.’

Her husband cast grave eyes in her direction. ‘It might be better, Mariana, if you did.’

But she shook her head. ‘When I think of what they did to those poor people . . .’ She turned tearful eyes towards Cristina. ‘Before they left one of them said we should get our road sign fixed. It would be too easy, he said, to take a wrong turning. Only now do I know what he meant.’

Cristina looked at Mackenzie. She could see Cleland slipping through their fingers. ‘If they have come for the drugs this morning, it must mean they are planning the handover today or tomorrow.’

‘Or just moving it somewhere safer.’ Paco’s voice made them all turn towards where he stood silhouetted in the doorway. ‘With all the police activity to find Señor Cleland they are probably very nervous right now.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

When Ana wakes she is fully dressed, and lying on top of the bed rather than in it. She knows it is morning from the heat of the sun falling across her bed through the shutters, and is surprised that she has slept at all.

It was late when Cleland returned the night before, and she had persuaded him to let her walk Sandro to the end of the street and back. At first he had resisted, telling her it would be unwise to step out in the dark, before she pointed out that her whole life was spent in the dark.

He had accompanied her, a hand hooked through her arm, and they had walked slowly the length of the Calle San Miguel, right down to Calle Caridad and back, stopping only to let Sandro lift his leg against flowerpots and doorsteps.

The untrained eye might have thought them to be just some couple out for a late evening stroll with their dog. They would have realized, of course, that Ana was blind, but the intimacy of Cleland’s arm through hers, and their comfortable silence, would have aroused nothing but sympathy.

In fact, their silence had been anything but comfortable. Behind it, Ana’s mind had been in turmoil, desperately seeking some way to escape. But he held her entirely in his power, and she sensed that he was enjoying it.

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