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

Churchill Avenue, a stocky middle-aged man in a dark suit and open-necked white shirt loitered by an old-fashioned red-painted British telephone box. It seemed strangely incongruous here at the southern tip of Spain, just fifteen kilometres from the continent of Africa. The man glanced down at a faxed ID sheet in his left hand, then up again at Mackenzie. He stepped forward, his right hand extended. ‘Mr Mackenzie. Pleased to meet you, sir. DS Greene. I have a car over here.’

Greene’s silver-grey Honda Civic was pulled in at the back of a taxi rank where drivers stood around smoking and chatting among themselves, waiting for early morning business. Across the road, a huge expanse of floodlit tarmac stretched away to the new terminal at Gibraltar Airport.

Greene slipped a flashing light on to the roof of the Honda and started his siren as he pulled off into the stream of traffic heading for town. But even lights and siren did not give him precedence over the barriers that fell to stop traffic in both directions where the road crossed the runway. Greene tapped his wheel with impatient fingers as they waited for an early easyJet flight to take-off.

‘Fifth most dangerous airport in the world,’ he said. ‘And not just because the road goes right across the runway. We have terrible cross-winds here. Not too bad this morning.’ He leaned forward to peer up at the Rock through his windscreen. ‘It’ll be windy up there, though. You can count on it.’ He glanced across at Mackenzie. ‘We’ve got armed uniformed officers on the way up by car. You and I are going to take the cable car. Much faster. I had to get the operator out of his bed. It’s not normally open for another couple of hours, and wind conditions this morning would usually mean a cancellation of service.’ He smiled grimly. ‘But needs must, eh?’

Lights turned green, the barriers lifted, and Greene leaned on the horn to augment his siren in forcing the traffic ahead out of his way. Mackenzie had the sense that he was enjoying this.

They accelerated through several roundabouts between tall buildings and passed broken-down sections of the old city wall. Dark space opened out on their right, and Mackenzie saw containers lined up along a dock, yachts in a marina, and the lights of Algeciras twinkling distantly eight kilometres away across the bay. The light of dawn cast itself in pale pink across the peaks of the mountains beyond.

Gibraltar old town lay somewhere off to their left, and as they passed the Trafalgar Cemetery Greene said, ‘Are you armed?’

‘No I’m not. You?’

‘Yes sir. I’m a trained firearms officer. And I checked out a sidearm before leaving base.’

Opposite an art deco fire station, he pulled in at the kerbside, and they jumped out of the car. Mackenzie glanced up to see huge pylons set into the hillside at precarious angles, support for the cables that would haul their car to the summit more than 400 metres above. He followed Greene into the docking station.

*

Cristina watched the tail lights of her taxi vanish over the brow of the hill to make its way back down to the town below. No need to wait for her. She knew she wasn’t coming back. The wind tugged at her hair and yanked at her clothes. It was fresh, almost cold in the first light of dawn.

Above her, the glass platforms of the Skywalk stood on two levels, constructed around an old stone watchtower where the British had once installed a Bofors gun. A lift, not functioning at this hour, climbed to the topmost level. Red and white tape was stretched across the stairs that led up to both, and a red triangular sign announced that the Skywalk was closed for maintenance.

Beyond it, the Rock fell sheer to an arc of coastline almost 340 metres below, the Mediterranean washing white along its contour. On the bay side, it dropped away steeply on a tree-covered slope to the lights of the town and the harbour reflecting in the bay. To her right, the Rock swept upwards on a knife edge to its second-highest peak. On her left it rose towards the cable car station and the highest point of this British overseas territory.

The stars were fading now in a sky that went from blood red along the distant eastern horizon, through the palest of turquoise to the darkest blue of the vanishing firmament.

Cristina breathed deeply. There was something invigorating in drawing on this fresh clean air in the final minutes of her life. Something, perhaps, almost poetic about dying in this most beautiful of places as the sun sent its light scattering across the sea, which had been such an ever-present through all of her days.

But still her heart weighed like a burden in her chest as she stepped over the red and white tape to climb the stairs to the platform above. And all she could think of was the son she was about to orphan.

She reached the lower platform which extended out across the drop. Tourists flocked here during the season to step gingerly over the glass and look at the terrifying drop that fell away beneath their feet.

There was no one there.

She climbed the steps to the observation platform above. It, too, was deserted. The wind battered her here, and she held on to the glass barrier wondering if somehow she had got it wrong. Was it not at the Skywalk she was supposed to meet Cleland? Or had she missed him? The Spanish coastline stretched away to the north, before sweeping eastwards. She could see the lights of Estepona, and more distantly the conurbation of Marbella. And somewhere in the dark fold of the hills lay Marviña. Her home. The land of her father and mother. Of her aunt. Another kind of fear gripped her. And she wondered if Ana was already dead.

Then she saw a light flashing from the southern peak, another 60 metres up. Once, twice, three