As he turned his Seat into the car park, Mackenzie noticed Cristina’s SUV parked some way down a side street leading towards the marina. He stopped, and was about to reverse out again, when Cristina stepped from a dark grey Kia Sportage and waved him over.
He parked and walked across to the Kia. Without a word she opened the rear door for him and slipped back into the front passenger seat. A perspiring and overweight middle-aged man with precious little hair half-turned in the driver’s seat and nodded as Mackenzie climbed in.
‘Detective Gil,’ Cristina said by way of introduction. ‘He’s with GRECO here in Marbella.’
Mackenzie nodded. He remembered Gil from the meeting at Marviña the day before. He stretched forward a hand and received a damp one in return.
‘He’s got a video you need to see.’
Gil reached for his Samsung Galaxy and started a video playing, then held it up for Mackenzie to watch. Mackenzie recognized the entrance to Zhivago’s and realized that the footage must have been taken on a long lens from somewhere across the street, a hidden vantage point beyond the Azure Beach.
Gil said, ‘Surveillance footage. Taken a couple of months back. We were watching a guy called Rafa. Long suspected of laundering drug money. He has this business selling yachts.’ His laugh contained not a trace of humour. ‘You and I couldn’t even make a living on the handful of transactions he does each year. But somehow he manages to turn a handsome profit.’ He jabbed his finger at the screen. ‘That’s him going in. The one in the middle.’
Mackenzie leaned forward for a better look. Three men in designer suits were climbing out of a black Porsche Cayenne. Rafa was the tallest of them, elegant in shiny Italian shoes, dark hair gelled back in crinkled curls from a handsome brow.
‘Fancies himself, does Rafa,’ Gil said. ‘Smart guy. He buys his yachts at trade prices, then sells them to wealthy Russian clients for astronomical profits.’
‘And the Russians don’t mind being ripped off?’
‘No they don’t. In fact, no sooner have they bought the yachts than they sell them again for millions less than they paid for them.’
Mackenzie said, ‘So effectively paying Rafa for goods or services unknown.’
Gil nodded. ‘Exactly. And without the recording of any transaction other than the buying and selling of the yacht. We’d been trying to establish exactly what these payments were for. Almost certainly drugs. But we had no proof. The only real drugs connection came in the shape of the agent who was bringing Rafa and the Russians together. Alejandro Delgado.’ Again he pointed at his screen. ‘He’s the one on Rafa’s right.’ A much shorter man, prosperously round, a cigar burning between big-knuckled fingers. ‘We’ve got nothing at all on Delgado, except that his brother got caught smuggling a shitload of cocaine into the country two years ago. The two brothers ran a yacht-rental agency, and although Delgado himself was never implicated in the drugs bust, it’s inconceivable that he didn’t at least know about it. He and his brother were like that.’ He interlaced fore and middle fingers.
Mackenzie was interested now. ‘How did you catch the brother?’
‘The cocaine came in first by boat to Gibraltar. There the contraband was divided among several smaller vessels which were meant to head up the coast and offload at various Spanish ports. But we had been watching it all the way from North Africa by satellite, courtesy of the US. A fleet of coastguard vessels intercepted the transfer boats as they sailed out of Gibraltar into Spanish waters. Delgado’s brother was on one of them. The ringleader.’ Gil glanced at the video still playing on his phone. ‘We’d been hoping that by keeping both Rafa and Delgado under surveillance we could start making connections, not just between them, but with others we didn’t yet know about.’
‘This is all very interesting, Detective Gil,’ Mackenzie said, ‘but what’s the connection with Cleland? That’s what I’m here for after all.’
‘Patience, Señor Mackenzie, patience.’ Gil found a hanky in one of his pockets and wiped away the beads of perspiration quivering along the line of his brow. His fingers were steaming up the screen of his phone. ‘When Officer Sánchez Pradell made her request for further information on Roberto Vasquéz a little alarm bell went off in my head. Vasquéz dined here at Zhivago’s a few times at gatherings hosted by Rafa. A very unlikely dinner guest, given the somewhat classier company that Rafa and Delgado usually kept. Local businessmen, politicians, the odd Russian oligarch. This is not a cheap restaurant, señor. And Vasquéz is the epitome of cheap. A low-life hoodlum.’ Gil used his handkerchief to clear the condensation from the screen of his phone and only succeeded in smearing it. He scrubbed at the glass in annoyance. ‘So, anyway, I went back and had a look at some of the surveillance footage to refresh my memory, and suddenly another face jumped out at me.’
He scrolled forward to a point where a group of ten or twelve men wearing dark suits and white shirts open at tanned necks was emerging from the restaurant, presumably having just eaten. The mood was cordial. There was laughter and back-slapping. Here was a group of men that embodied the quintessential nature of money and power. Sleek and well-groomed and self-satisfied. With the standout exception of Vasquéz, who was unshaven and uncomfortable in his cheap suit. Someone’s pet Rottweiler.
Gil pointed his finger at different figures on the screen and rattled off a handful of names. ‘But we still haven’t been able to identify everyone in the group.’
Suddenly Mackenzie spotted what it was that had jumped out at Gil, and he felt goosebumps raise themselves on his arms and shoulders. Emerging from the back of the group, in deep conversation with Rafa himself, came the familiar smirk of Jack Cleland. The two men were sharing a joke, and Cleland looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Gil said, ‘I only know the face now because of what’s happened in the last few days. At the time we checked him out and he came up clean. Ian Templeton, an expat Englishman enjoying an early retirement along the coast at La Paloma.’
‘A Scotsman,’ Mackenzie said quietly, and felt a sense of shame that he should share a nationality with this man. A dull pain in his ribs reminded him of their encounter as he shifted uncomfortably in the back seat.
‘Whatever. British. Now, of course, we know exactly who he is.’
‘And these are his associates.’
‘So it would seem.’
‘Is the surveillance ongoing?’
Gil sighed. ‘I’m afraid not. Resources are limited and we weren’t getting anywhere.’
Mackenzie said, ‘We need eyes on all the principals in this group ASAP. Cleland’s deal is imminent. The drugs are on the move. Almost certainly someone in this gang of charmers is involved. And my feeling is it’s going to be goods for cash. Cleland’s not going to want to leave any kind of electronic footprint in his wake.’
‘I’ve already put in the request,’ Gil said.
Mackenzie leaned into the front to stab his finger at the phone and pause the video. ‘And what about trying to put names to some of these? The ones you couldn’t identify at the time.’
‘How?’
Mackenzie nodded towards the restaurant. ‘We go in and ask.’
Gil laughed. ‘No one in there’s going to talk to us.’
‘Why not?’
‘Fear, señor.’
Mackenzie said, ‘We’re the cops. They should be afraid of us.’
Gil leaned confidentially towards the back of the Kia, lowering his voice as if someone might overhear them. ‘What you don’t understand, señor, is that like everything else around here, Zhivago’s is Russian-owned. Our financial people looked into its business background and found that it actually trades as an escort agency. A classic money-laundering scam. It’s almost certainly mafia-owned. So the staff will be a lot more frightened of their employers than they are of us.’