He vanished back inside, and Mackenzie and the Jefe climbed the steps to follow him. A couple of Guardia Civil stood sentry on the landing at the entrance to the apartment on the first floor. The three men squeezed past and into the apartment. Mackenzie heard Paco grunting and panting in their wake as he fought his way up the stairs.
A faint reminder of last night’s barbecued ribs still clung to curtains and soft furniture. The apartment itself seemed marginally tidier since the forensics officers had been through it. The officer who had called them in picked his way across the living room to lift the phone from its base. He held it between the thumb and forefinger of his latexed left hand and carefully depressed several numbers on the keypad with a pen held in his other. ‘Messages,’ he said. ‘This one timed at 14.47 today.’ He pressed another key to put it on speaker.
They waited through a series of beeps before a voice that was unmistakably Cristina’s said cryptically, Toni, meet me in the car park at Eroski. I’m there now. We’ve got to talk. The quality of the recording was bad, as if she had called from a mobile with a poor signal.
Mackenzie frowned and glanced at his watch. ‘Cristina was with me in Marbella when that call was made. It’s not her.’
The Jefe looked doubtful. ‘It’s her voice.’
‘I agree it sounds like her.’
Paco said, ‘But if she was with you...’
‘She was.’
The Jefe sighed. ‘Then what the hell was Toni doing in the underground car park at the Eroski Centre?’ He hesitated. ‘And Jesus Christ, it sure as hell sounds like Cristina.’
Paco said, ‘Jefe I don’t care if she’s finished making her statement or not, I’m going across the road to get her out of there and take her back to our place. Nuri’s already gone to pick up Lucas from school. Cristina’s going to have to tell the boy before he hears it elsewhere. And she’s going to need our support.’
The Jefe nodded gloomily.
‘And something else.’
A sigh of exasperation escaped his lips. ‘What now?’
‘Someone’s going to have to go into Estepona and tell Ana. I’d do it, but I can’t drive.’
The Jefe raised both palms to rub his eyes. Fatigue and frustration wearing him down. Mackenzie said, ‘I’ll do it. I don’t know what else I’m going to do. I met her yesterday. And maybe it would be better coming from someone who isn’t family.’
The Jefe looked at him gratefully. ‘Would you?’ Mackenzie nodded and the chief put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Good man,’ he said.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Estepona resounded to the sounds of the feria. Although shadows were starting to lengthen, the heat of the day still lingered, and the air was filled with music and voices and the clip-clop of hooves on cobbled streets. The smell of barbecued pork, and grilled fish and hot burning sugar floated on the evening breeze.
Mackenzie found space in the underground parking beneath the promenade. He skipped through the traffic on the Avenida España and shoved his way through the crowds thronging the narrow streets of the old town. Across Calle Real and Calle Caridad into the Calle San Miguel, where red and white and purple geraniums poured from pots that hung from balconies on whitewashed houses.
People clogged the street. Locals and tourists. All slow-flowing towards the Calle Zaragoza where the main procession of floats and carriages was scheduled to pass. Mackenzie found himself carried along on the current. Up ahead he saw the Plaza de Juan Bazán, a calm eddy in the circulation of people, fountains glittering in the last of the sunshine that slanted across the roof of Ana’s house. Was it really only yesterday that he and Cristina had visited her? So much had changed in that short time. So many lives ruined.
A familiar face in the crowd caught his eye, and it took him a moment to realize that it was Ana herself, tiny and swamped by the people around her. Like a piece of flotsam carried on turbulent water she vanished, appeared, then vanished again in all too fleeting glimpses. Swept away from him towards the Calle Portada. He called her name at the top of his voice, before remembering with embarrassment that she could not hear him.
And then his heart stopped. Another face caught in the fading sunlight. Then gone. At first he couldn’t be sure, then there it was again. Cleland! And he was with Ana. He bellowed her name again, this time for Cleland’s benefit. It turned the man’s head sharply around, and for the most transient of moments their eyes met. Fifty metres apart. But the electricity between them passed at the speed of light. And then he was gone again. Ana, too.
Mackenzie started ploughing his way through the bodies ahead of him to a chorus of protests and cursing.
Ana is hopelessly confused. She has lost control of everything. Her whole physical being, it seems, swept along on a sea of turbulent noisome humanity. All she can feel with any certainty is the iron grip of Cleland’s fingers around her arm. Pulling, dragging her through the tempest. She feels elbows in her ribs, a shoulder in her back. Someone’s foul breath in her face. She blenches, then panics, realizing suddenly that she has lost hold of Sandro’s harness. Gone is his warmth against her legs, his gentle navigation through troubled waters. She calls out his name, but feels only a tightening of Cleland’s grip.
They are almost running now. She is breathless and fighting to keep her feet. The ground is sloping beneath them. Fewer people here, she thinks, but Cleland is relentless in forcing them on. Down, down. Another wave of bodies parting to let them past. Something is terribly wrong. She has no idea what, but she can feel Cleland’s anxiety.
Then suddenly she collides with something unyielding and Cleland’s grip on her arm is broken. Her only security in this nightmare. She feels herself falling, as if through space. An age goes by, it seems, before she hits the ground. Hard, unforgiving asphalt that knocks all the breath from her lungs. Pain shoots through her shoulder. When she gasps for air it is the smell of deep, dark fear that she inhales. The stink of sweating horses. Manure. She can feel the clatter of hooves on cobbles all around her, and realizes with terror that she is in danger of being trampled to death.
Then strong hands close around her arms and she feels herself lifted bodily from the ground and propelled forward. Her face brushes the secreting flank of a horse, the smell of it for a moment overwhelming all her other senses.
Perspiration almost blinded Cleland as he steered the helpless Ana through this maelstrom of neighing, rearing horses. Images dazzling him as he turned this way and that, avoiding flanks and hooves. Flat-brimmed Cordobés riding hats, red button-up tunics, ladies riding side-saddle in black and white flamenco skirts, heels scratching at his face. Horsemen screamed at him in a fury, a chorus of angry shouts rising from the crowd as one rider was almost unseated. But like the Red Sea, the passage he had cleaved through the procession closed again behind them. Straw-roofed floats drawn by tractors following on, a brass band belting out its discordant refrain, drums banging, cymbals crashing. A cacophony of horns and klaxons blasting into the hot air of the early evening.
Only as he cleared the crowd lining the route did he dare to look back. There was no sign of Mackenzie. And the procession, in full flood, cut off his path of pursuit. Had the Scots copper made it through the procession, then Cleland might have been forced to abandon Ana to her fate. Which would have meant relinquishing his power over Cristina. But worse, he realized, it would have meant losing Ana herself. And for some reason beyond his understanding he did not want to do that. In any circumstance. In taking the life of Sergio he had somehow made himself responsible for her. Whether he liked it or not. It was the strangest feeling, being beholden to someone else.