But Mackenzie was not to be deterred. He opened the back door and stepped out. ‘Well why don’t we go and see?’ He held open the passenger door for Cristina. ‘And it might help to have a uniform along.’
A shiny wooden walkway bordered by two hedges led through open glass doors to a bar that simmered in semi-darkness. It was flanked on either side by dining areas extending under canvas into the gardens, qualifying them as outdoors, and therefore legal smoking areas. Behind the bar, rows of high-value wines nestled side by side on tiered racks lit by hidden spots. No prices on display. If you could afford to drink these, you didn’t need to know how much they cost. The place was deserted except for a solitary barman polishing glasses behind a shiny dimpled zinc counter. It was still too early for the Spanish to eat.
Gil showed him his ID. ‘I want every member of staff out here now. Kitchen included.’
The barman was a pale thin man in his early thirties, prematurely balding. He cast them a surly look. ‘What...?’
Gil slapped his palm on the counter. ‘Now! No questions asked.’ Mackenzie admired Gil’s authority but thought that he was probably showing off for Mackenzie’s benefit.
Within three minutes seven kitchen workers, including the chef, a maître d’, two servers and a sommelier had joined the barman. They regarded the three police officers in sullen silence from behind the bar. Gil placed his phone on the counter and started the video at the point where Rafa, Delgado and Cleland were leaving the restaurant along with Vasquéz, as part of the bigger group.
‘These people are all regulars here. There must be a record of bookings, credit-card payments... I want names.’
Dead eyes turned in silence towards the video. Not a flicker in any of them. Of recognition or anything else. Mackenzie could hear the tick-tock of a clock somewhere behind the bar.
‘Well?’ Gil’s raised voice forced eyes to lift themselves again and look at him blankly. All he got for his trouble was a surly shaking of heads.
But the younger of the servers, a female in her late teens with the pallid pan-faced features of a Russian country girl, couldn’t keep her eyes from straying towards one of the tented eating areas. Cristina followed her glance but could see nothing until she took a step to her right, and realized for the first time that the restaurant was not as empty as it had seemed. A solitary diner sat in the smoking zone, obscured by an enormous lacquered cabinet with a large-screen TV playing info videos about Italian wines. A thick-set man with his hair shorn to a bristling black stubble, he was eating alone at a table for two. His muscular torso stretched a white T-shirt with camouflage patches to bursting point. Oversized gold-rimmed sunglasses sat on a squat nose, a chunky gold watch on a thick left wrist. He had a cigar in one hand, his mobile phone in the other, and was trying very hard not to be noticed. Cristina recognized him immediately as one of the group in the video. In her mind’s eye she saw Gil’s finger stabbing at his phone screen and immediately pulled back a name. Alvarez.
As soon as Alvarez realized she had seen him he was on his feet. So quickly that his table crashed to the floor, dark glass smashing to spill syrupy green olive oil on red terracotta tiles.
‘Hey!’ she shouted after him.
But already he was pushing aside a canvas flap and barging through the hedge beyond it, ripping his T-shirt and drawing blood from taut biceps. Cristina saw now that he was wearing long khaki shorts and Roman sandals, his skin the colour of mahogany. He sprinted off across the lawn. Without thinking, she started after him. Running out across the boards between the hedges, capsizing one of two menu stands that stood on either side of the entrance, and feeling the sudden heat of the afternoon sun hitting her like a club. She screwed her eyes against its sudden glare and saw Alvarez running at speed down the long avenue that led towards the port, arms pumping like pistons. Here was a man who did not, at any cost, want to talk to the police.
Cristina had covered less than 50 metres in pursuit before the taller fitter figure of Mackenzie overtook her, flying past in the afternoon heat, long legs devouring the ground and quickly reeling in the gap between himself and the fugitive.
Sunlight strobed between the shadows of trees lining the avenue. Another 20 metres and Mackenzie could hear the distress of the man he was chasing. Desperate lungs gulping in air and pumping it out again, oxygen spent. His muscle mass gave him strength, but neither speed nor stamina. Mackenzie was catching him.
Alvarez glanced over his shoulder and the fronds of an overhanging willow swept the sunglasses from his face, revealing the fear in his eyes, and the realization that he was never going to outrun his pursuer. He veered right into a narrow street lined with cars, and then left into a service lane running between villas.
Mackenzie felt the discarded sunglasses crunch beneath his foot as he followed Alvarez into the narrower street. But by the time he turned into the service lane there was no sign of him. It was fully shaded here under thick foliage in fragrant purple blossom, almost dark after the blaze of sunlight in the street behind him. He stopped, thinking that the other man must somehow have turned off, and was quite unprepared for the shape that emerged from the shadows, swinging a fist like a Belfast ham full into his face. Even as he fell backwards and his head struck the paving stones he felt blood flooding his mouth. Light filled his head. As he blinked to clear it he looked up and saw Alvarez standing over him, legs apart, a pistol held two-handed at arm’s length and pointing directly at his chest.
All thirty-eight years of Mackenzie’s life spooled backwards through his mind so fast that they were gone in a moment. How short life really was, how insubstantial and fleeting all those burdensome memories, scattered in an instant like the ashes of his aunt in the flower garden at the cemetery. Breath escaped from his lips in a long sigh and he screwed his eyes tight shut in preparation for the bullet that would kill him. He wondered if it would hurt. Did pain outlast life, straddle the divide? And what next? Darkness and silence? Like Cristina’s aunt?
But a shout pre-empted the bullet. So piercing and prolonged that it forced him to open his eyes again. Alvarez was still there, the gun still pointing at Mackenzie’s chest. But the man’s eyes had lifted and were focused beyond them both, back along the lane. Mackenzie craned his neck and saw Cristina silhouetted against the sunlight in the street behind her, pistol drawn. She held hers too in a double-handed stance, its muzzle directed straight at Mackenzie’s would-be killer. She could shoot him before he could raise his weapon to fire at her. If he shot Mackenzie she would kill him. It was a classic stand-off. And Mackenzie found himself an almost neutral observer. Having already accepted death, he had somehow banished fear.
He looked back up at Alvarez. The man was caught in an agony of indecision that seemed to last a lifetime, before finally he took a calculated risk and simply turned and ran, sprinting off into the gloom, almost certainly fearing the bullet in his back that never came.
Cristina arrived to kneel beside the prone figure of Mackenzie, breathless and glistening with sweat. Fear and darkness dilating her pupils so that they almost obliterated the irises. She holstered her gun. ‘Señor, are you alright?’
Mackenzie wiped blood from his face with shaking fingers. ‘Apart from a busted nose and a split lip, I think I might live.’