‘No, thanks. We’ve probably outstayed our welcome at this table. Let’s move on, and give somebody else the chance to eat.’ She waved to their waiter, who read the gesture correctly and brought the bill.
Instead of heading back to town, they carried on along the beachside walkway. After a few minutes they reached an entrance. ‘Are these the ruins you told me about?’ asked Aileen.
‘That’s right. That pile of rocks on the other side of the fence was the first Greek colony on the Iberian peninsula; it goes back over two and a half thousand years. They called it Emporion. . means “market”. There were people here before the Greeks; there was the indigenous population, and Etruscans, Phoenicians, maybe even Persians, visited and left traces. The Romans showed up eventually, and built their own town. For a wee while, this was the most important place in Spain. Want to go in?’
‘Of course.’
They spent two hours exploring the carefully excavated streets and buildings, tracing the city from its founding years through to its expansion under the Romans. Finally, Aileen cried, ‘Enough! I’m historied out!’
They made their way home on the Carrilet, a tractor-drawn train that provided the town’s main public transport during the summer. It dropped them at the top of L’Escala’s main street, leaving them with one last, uphill walk to the villa. ‘Swim,’ Bob gasped, as the door closed behind them, jogging upstairs to change into his trunks.
In the bedroom, he heard a splash. Aileen’s voice drifted up from the pool. ‘It’s okay,’ she called out. ‘There are no helicopters up there.’
He smiled, and picked up the binoculars he had discarded earlier to retrace their journey. He found the ruins, or those he could see through the trees, then tracked back along the line of the walkway to the hotel, and beyond.
The sun-worshipper was still on the rocks. ‘You must be fried, lady,’ he murmured. ‘You’ve been there for hours.’
In another micro-second, he would have moved on, had something not held his attention. . or, rather, the absence of something, the absence of anything. ‘Where are her clothes?’ he whispered. ‘Where’s her water bottle? She can’t have lain there all that time without drinking.’
The glasses had a zoom facility. He slid it to the maximum, and focused as sharply as he could, watching the woman for long seconds that turned into minutes. He looked for signs of movement, but she lay still, unnaturally still, terminally still.
He was frowning as he stripped off the bathing trunks he had only just donned, exchanging them for running shorts. Quickly, he pulled his FBI T-shirt back over his head, then rescued his trainers from the back of his wardrobe. Aileen was still in the pool as he stepped out on to the terrace. ‘Changed my mind,’ he told her. ‘I’m going for a jog.’ He headed for the door, picking up his mobile on the way.
He was an experienced all-terrain runner, used to uneven surfaces on his routes around Gullane, and so he took the steps down to the roadway in his stride, keeping his knees very slightly bent to maintain his balance. He picked up pace as the ground levelled out; as he ran past the one-armed statue he glanced across the bay, and saw that the woman was still there, her pose unaltered. He sprinted around the curve in the road, feeling the sweat begin to pour from him as he cruised past walkers, holding his line and forcing two oncoming cyclists to alter theirs.
It took him only two minutes to reach the start of the path that led to the rocks. It was rough, and he had to drop his pace, picking his way carefully to avoid slipping and plunging into the sea. At first, he passed one or two people, escapees from the throng on the beach, but soon, as the ground became so rough and uneven that he had to slow to walking pace, there was no-one.
He passed the woman by. She was hidden from his view by a spur of rock, and it was not until the Hostal Empuries came into sight that he realised he had missed her. He retraced his steps until he discovered where he had gone wrong, until he stood, looking down at her from only a few yards away. Her face was calm, composed, peaceful. She was naked; the black garment he had assumed he saw through the binoculars was, in reality, a thick pubic triangle.
‘Hola,’ he called out. ‘Hello. Bonjour.’
There was no movement.
‘Esta bien?’ he asked, ‘Are you okay?’, guessing the answer and fearing it.
He approached the woman and knelt beside her on her hard rock bed. He reached out and touched her shoulder. Her skin was hot, from the sun, and yet there was an underlying coldness also. He put two fingers against her neck and pressed, searching for a pulse that he knew, within himself, he would not find.
Moving to a sitting position, he reached into his pocket and took out his mobile, then found its stored phone numbers. He scrolled through until he found the entry that read ‘Mossos d’Esquadra’ and pressed the call button.
Forty-three
‘Realistically,’ Neil McIlhenney asked, ‘what do we have?’
‘We’ve got him for everything he’s already been charged with,’ said Stallings, leaning back in her chair with her feet on her desk. ‘He’s admitted to all of it in his signed statement.’
‘Which can be withdrawn at any time.’
‘He can try, sir, but the sugar-cube necklet does him. He took it off the girl’s body and gave it to his ex-wife. I’ll grant you that I’d have been happier if the lab had found gunshot residue on his clothes, but even without that, and without the weapon, the evidence against him is so strong that I want to do him for murder. Think about it. We don’t even need to prove that he shot her: a jury might find that by moving the body he made himself an accessory.’
‘Maybe in England, Becky,’ the superintendent chuckled, ‘but on this side of the border we have a third possible verdict, “not proven”. In this case, your jury might well decide to hide behind that.’
‘What’s the difference between that and “not guilty”?’
‘For the accused, there is none in practical terms. He’s acquitted of the charge, once and for all. For the jury? I’ve never been on one, so I can’t say for sure, but most people reckon that it gives them the chance of saying to the guy in the dock, “We reckon you’re guilty, but we needed more proof.” I can’t give you any better explanation than that, but it’s been around for a long time, and it was a cop-out in capital cases when at least eight out of the fifteen couldn’t bring themselves to send someone to be hanged.’
‘Fifteen?’
McIlhenney nodded. ‘We have a fifteen-person jury, and eight- seven is an acceptable verdict. If you want to press on with a murder charge, do that, but ultimately it’s a Crown Office decision and they’ll have all these things in mind. However, as you say, we have him by the short and curlies on a charge of perverting the course of justice. In theory, he could get life for that; he won’t but if I was in his shoes I’d plead guilty in the hope that my counsel would offer enough in mitigation to talk the judge out of an exemplary sentence.’
‘He’ll go to jail, though?’
Seated beside her, Jack McGurk snorted. ‘Too bloody right he will. This is a murder inquiry, and he’s a police officer: if he gets less than five years, he’ll be lucky.’
‘And if he’s guilty of that murder, he’ll be even luckier. He and his solicitor had time to concoct that story between them.’
‘You’ve met too many bent lawyers in London, Becky,’ said the sergeant. ‘Frankie Bristles may be a police witness’s worst nightmare, but she’s an officer of the Court and one of the highest legal-aid earners in Scotland. I might not like her very much, but I don’t have any doubts about her integrity. If Weekes made up that story, then he did it himself.’
‘If?’ Stallings exclaimed. ‘Jack, are you saying you think he was telling the truth?’