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

the blood matted thickly in the hair around a wound on the back of it. The depression in the skull was so deep Mackenzie could only assume that this was the blow that killed him. There was very little blood on the floor. A smear of it, suggesting that the body had been dragged in here. But in any case, Mackenzie knew that if the blow had killed him, then the heart would have stopped pumping blood almost immediately. His skin was already marbling and tinted green.

He stood up, shaking. Who was he? What was he doing here? And where in God’s name was Cleland taking Ana? And why?

He moved back out on to the landing, taking care now not to touch anything. Ana’s whole house was a crime scene. He crossed the living room to the open window and breathed in fresh air, then fished out his phone to call the Jefe.

In less than twenty minutes the house was crawling with cops and forensics officers from the Estepona HQ of the Policía National. Mackenzie was immediately sidelined and told he would be required to give a full statement later.

It took the Jefe under thirty minutes to get there from Marviña. He was accompanied by the homicide officers from Malaga who had earlier arrived at the Eroski Centre to open the investigation into Antonio’s shooting. He greeted Mackenzie in the street, where the chief of the Policía National stood barking instructions into his mobile phone. When he hung up he approached the Jefe and the two police chiefs shook hands. ‘They found the blind woman’s dog wandering about down town, and we’ve had several sightings of a couple answering to the description of Cleland and Señora Hernandez entering the church.’ He shook his head gravely. ‘But nothing since. They’re gone, Miguel.’

The Jefe said, ‘What about the dead guy?’

The Estepona chief drew a clear plastic evidence bag from his pocket. It contained a laminated DNI card. Documento Nacional de Identidad. Mackenzie could see a photograph of the dead man on the front of it. He looked younger than the man he had seen upstairs. ‘ID card in his wallet. Sergio García Lorca. Aged forty-three. Certified deaf.’

Certified dead, Mackenzie thought. He said, ‘What was his relationship with Señora Hernandez? Or Cleland?’

The chief shrugged. ‘No idea.’ He did not like answering questions from Mackenzie. He nodded curtly and went back into the house.

The Jefe flicked Mackenzie an apologetic glance. He said, ‘Shell casings at the Eroski Centre confirm two shooters.’

‘Or one shooter, two guns.’

‘Perhaps. But unlikely. The body’s been brought here to Estepona for autopsy. They’ll release it to the relatives tonight and he’ll be buried tomorrow.’

Mackenzie raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘That fast?’

‘Bodies don’t last long in this heat.’ The Jefe nodded towards the house. ‘You should have figured that out for yourself by now.’

But all that Mackenzie could think was that last night Antonio had been preparing a dinner of barbecued ribs for his family. Tomorrow his family would be putting him in the ground. Life was such a fragile and insubstantial thing, and you never knew when the candle lit by birth would be doused by death.

The Jefe said, ‘Cristina’s taking it hard.’

‘I wouldn’t expect her to take it any other way.’

Then the Jefe hesitated. ‘Do you think there’s any truth in what Paco said? About Cristina wanting to leave him.’

Mackenzie remembered the fractious exchanges on each occasion he had been at the apartment, but it was not something he was going to share with the Jefe. ‘I don’t know.’

‘That phone call still bothers me, señor. You say she was with you. But was she with you all the time? Could she not have made that call without you knowing? It would only have taken a few moments.’

Mackenzie tried to recall if there had been a few such moments. But he shook his head. ‘Jefe, even if she had made the call, it wasn’t Cristina at the Eroski Centre.’

‘No.’ He hesitated a long time. ‘But someone there doing her bidding?’

Mackenzie looked at him. ‘Do you really believe that?’

The Jefe pursed his lips and shook his head in resignation. ‘No.’ He examined the backs of his hands. ‘Will you go to the funeral?’

Mackenzie recalled the singularly impersonal ceremony for his aunt at the Glasgow crematorium. His uncle’s later tears. His own lack of grief. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that would be appropriate.’

The other man nodded. ‘I hate funerals.’ Then made a determined effort to shake off his mantle of depression. He drew a deep breath. ‘Why don’t you come up to the house tonight, like we talked about. I could do with some company.’ He smiled sadly. ‘And someone who is going to appreciate sharing a good single malt.’

Mackenzie thought that in the circumstances whisky sounded like a fine idea.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Streetlights snaked off up the hill from the simmering darkness of the empty hotel complex. Tiles flaked from rain-streaked walls. Unpruned palms and overgrown shrubs climbed the building, obscuring windows and doorways. Weeds poked a metre high from cracked tarmac in covered parking lots out front. And beyond the bridge that straddled the dual carriageway below, headlights raked the night, southbound towards the distant silhouette of Gibraltar.

What little light remained in the sky glowed pink verging on purple. It lay in narrow bands along the distant horizon, where a bank of cloud obscured North Africa beyond a Mediterranean Sea that mirrored infinity. The moon had not yet risen.

Cleland drew his black SUV into the cover of an overgrown gateway hidden beneath the main entrance to the hotel. When he had first arrived in this part of Spain the Condesa Golf Hotel had been a thriving business, its Thalasso Spa a popular attraction for holidaymakers and wealthy locals. Water drawn from the Mediterranean purified for the various treatments offered. Its restaurants serving Michelin-quality food.

But something, Cleland knew not what, had gone wrong. A change in financial fortunes. The hotel had closed and lain empty for years,