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, quietly decaying on the edge of the port without any indication that it would ever reopen.
He grabbed a black bag from the back seat, then helped Ana down from the vehicle. She had shown no inclination to resist since leaving the church, following all his instructions with a quiet acquiescence. Holding her by the arm, he led her carefully past the entrance to the spa. Something opaque had been painted over glass doors to prevent anyone from seeing in, but vandals had used it as a base to scrawl their names, and the names of their lovers, and all their pointless profanities. An unbroken sticker pasted across the doors read Protegido Por Seguridad. It was impossible to see in beyond the reflections of willows and bamboo that pushed up from the dry river bed opposite.
They hurried around a proliferation of uncut hedging that hung down over the pavement, to follow a curving walkway almost completely engulfed by advancing regiments of trees and bushes. Paint-peeling walls and glass balconies rose above them through three floors, and they had to fight their way past overhanging branches and trailing root systems to find the short flight of steps that led up to the main entrance.
Cleland tore away red tape stretched across a gateway to the turning circle in front of revolving doors which had once swept guests into an impressive reception. Approaching from this angle avoided the security cameras. He had no idea if they still functioned, but he wasn’t going to take the risk. A side door was secured with a padlock and chain. He released Ana and set his bag down on the cracked pavings to take out a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters. They sliced through the chain like a hot knife through butter, and within seconds he was leading Ana into the fusty interior of the hotel.
He shone a torch into darkness and saw footprints in dust which had accumulated like frost on marble tiles. Old footprints. He stopped for a moment to shine his torch on the plans he had been given. Downstairs, through the spa, then out by the rear entrance to the rooms and up the fire stairs that wrapped around the lift shaft. The bedroom he was looking for was on the second floor. No. 233. It would be unlocked, they had said. He would find a bed with clean linen, a working toilet, bottled water, candles, matches. A safe room. A place to lie low for thirty-six hours until the exchange.