Last Resort (24 page)

‘It’s the woman,’ I told him, ‘the one who was seen with Hector and Jacob on Monday night. She’s at the heart of it.’

‘How?’

I explained my thinking, that Battaglia had been killed by mistake, and that it was the discovery of the error that had triggered the torture murder in Madrid. Valencia’s an administrator, not an investigator, so it took me a little while to convince him, but eventually I did.

‘Who is she, this lady?’ he asked.

‘That’s what you need to find out,’ I replied. ‘She’s Russian and her given name is Valentina, but that’s all I know for sure. Her old email address suggests that her family name begins with the letters B, A, R. That’s all I have to go on.’

‘I’ll pass it on to Reyes.’

That didn’t fill me with confidence; a middle-ranking officer might not command sufficient top-level attention.

‘You might want to make that search yourself, Julien,’ I suggested, ‘you or your deputy; someone with command authority.’

‘I do not like to undermine my subordinates.’

‘I appreciate that, and your own database might give you the answer, but you may well need a wider search than that. This woman is not a Spanish national.’

‘Where do you suggest?’

‘If it was me, I’d be talking to Europol and possibly Interpol too, although I know they pool their intelligence.’

‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘I will try them. I will keep you informed, out of courtesy. Thank you for all your help, Bob, and for what you discovered in Madrid. We will handle it from here.’

Will you indeed?
I thought as I put the phone down on the tray table.
And what exactly will you do with it?

Twenty-Four

W
e hadn’t even reached Barcelona when Valencia called me back, on Xavi’s recharged phone. Within a couple of seconds I realised that he was rattled.

‘I have a message for you,’ he said. ‘It comes from my boss, the Justice Minister in the government of Catalunya; it came to her from the Interior Minister in Madrid. The woman you told me of . . . I’m not going to mention her name over the phone . . . you are to forget you ever heard of her.’

I couldn’t help it; for all his intensity, all I could do was smile. ‘As messages go,’ I chuckled, ‘that’s right up there with the stupidest I’ve ever had. But since it comes from two politicians,’ I added, ‘that’s not as surprising as it might be. How can I forget that which I know already?’

‘You know what they mean,’ he retorted sharply.

‘Did your boss say why her
bragas
are in a twist?’

‘She didn’t want to be questioned about it, but you are right about the underwear. From the way she acted it must have been damp to say the least,’ he chuckled.

‘As soon as you and I had finished speaking,’ he continued, ‘I called my opposite number, the Director General of Europol, in Brussels. I told him what you have told me and asked if he could identify the woman from the information you had given me. He said he would call me back, but he didn’t. Instead, only fifteen minutes ago, I had this tirade from Marte Negredo. She didn’t call me, she actually came to my office from the Justice Ministry.’

‘What did she say, exactly?’ I asked.

‘I told you; she said that we should forget the woman Valentina, we should stop looking for her and we should not mention her name again.’

‘Wow,’ I exclaimed, ‘now there’s a coincidence. Hector Sureda said exactly the same thing to his parents last February.’

‘Coincidence or not,’ he sighed, ‘we have to obey. I have been told directly that this woman is not part of this investigation. I have to concentrate on finding the person who killed our very important Italian visitor, and nothing else. In that respect, the minister has come down on the side of the judge; she has declared that Hector Sureda is the only suspect in the murder.’

‘You may have to obey, Julien,’ I countered, ‘but I don’t. I’m a private citizen trying to find a man who’s gone missing, as a favour to a friend. I was ready to leave that search to your people, but not any longer. I’m not going to let Hector be arrested for something he didn’t do, or shot while resisting.’

‘That’s not going to happen!’

‘Too fucking right it’s not, because I’m going to find him before your people do.’

‘The Mossos is not a death squad, Bob,’ he protested.

‘I know that, but Madrid’s involved, and all national governments have previous in that respect. I hear your minister’s message, and I choose to ignore it. I won’t compromise you, though. I won’t call you again until I have something positive to tell you.’

‘I’m sorry, Bob,’ he said, sincerely, ‘but as one cop to another, you know how it is.’

‘That’s where we part company, Julien,’ I replied, as gently as I could. ‘I’m a cop; you’re a civil servant.’

‘What?’ Xavi asked as I gave him his phone back.

I gave him a rundown of the conversation and of Valencia’s orders.

‘What’s the fucking mystery?’ he exclaimed. ‘Why’s she off limits?’

‘If I knew that it wouldn’t be a fucking mystery, now, would it?’

He sighed. ‘Bob, I know I started this thing off with my daft theory about Hector being kidnapped, but I had no idea it would turn out like this. You’ve done more than enough for me as it is. Just walk away now and let everything run its course.’

‘That course, if it’s left unaltered, is going to leave your friend with a bullet in his head. I can’t let that happen. I’ve met his parents; I like and respect them. I’m not doing this for you any longer, big man. I’m in it for them.’

‘We have nowhere else to go,’ he pointed out. ‘We’re at a dead end.’

‘Bad choice of words, but no, we’re not. They’re in hiding, we have to find them.’

‘And how do we do that?’

I smiled. ‘I’ll tell you a story. When I was a kid, till I was about nine or ten years old, I had a cat. His name was Figaro, and he was my only friend. He was a right wee rascal, always getting into bother; whenever he did, he always went to the same place, under the sideboard. That was where he felt safe and secure. Then one day, he started making funny noises. He headed for the sideboard but he didn’t make it. He died, half in, half out of his place of safety.’

I gazed at him but I wasn’t really seeing him, no, I was looking back in time.

‘People are the same. Your place of safety, after Grace died, used to be the
Saltire
; now it’s here, in Spain. Mine was my job, and I can see now that’s why I’m having such trouble walking away from it. But I will, though; I’ll make Sarah and my kids my refuge, as they should have been all along.’

Xavi nodded. ‘Good idea,’ he said quietly.

‘What we have to do now,’ I continued, ‘is to find Hector’s citadel, the place where he feels safe from all the bad stuff.’

‘A week ago,’ he remarked, ‘I’d have said that was inside his computer. But now I’m not so sure.’

‘I have an inkling,’ I told him. ‘To find out whether I’m right or not, we have to get off this train, not in Girona, but in Barcelona. That’s where Pilar is right now, at the hospital. We need to talk to his mother, because if there’s one person in the world right now who can tell us where he is, it’s her . . . even if she doesn’t realise it.’

‘I could phone,’ he suggested.

‘You could,’ I agreed, ‘but you should go there anyway, to support her.’

He frowned. ‘You’re right, of course. If all this shit hadn’t happened I’d have been there with her during the operation.’

We surprised the conductor by leaving the AVE at Estacio Sants. The taxi rank was busy when we got there, but there are a hell of a lot of cabs in Barcelona, so we didn’t have to wait for long.

Simon’s life-or-death operation was being performed in a university hospital in Vall D’Hebron on the outskirts of the city. It’s very large, and we’d have been struggling to find the surgical section, but our driver had been there often and knew exactly where to drop us.

Xavi led the way inside, and straight to reception; the woman in charge was cautious at first, to the point of frostiness, but he dipped into the well of charm that he keeps for special occasions, until she thawed and directed us to level two. ‘Your friend will be there, somewhere,’ she promised.

She was, in a quiet place reserved for patients’ families. It was a large room, with a large window looking down on the city; it was comfortably furnished and there was a coffee machine and snacks in the far corner, not unlike an airport VIP lounge, minus alcohol.

She didn’t notice us at first, for she was talking to the only other person there, a woman . . . another anxious wife, I guessed from the tension that lined her face. Her own relaxed smile was in stark contrast, and it told us all we needed to know.

‘Pilar.’

She turned towards us at the sound of Xavi’s voice, excused herself to the other lady, and came across to join us. ‘
Hey, sorpresa
,’ she exclaimed: in Catalan, but I had no trouble with that translation.

She switched to English. ‘Thank you both for coming; everything is okay. They have replaced the aortic valve, and carried out a quadruple artery bypass. The chief surgeon came to see me half an hour ago. He says he expects Simon to make a very good recovery, considering the condition that his heart was in. We will not dance the tango for a while, but a gentle
sardana
should be possible before too long.’

‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘When will you see him?’

‘Tomorrow morning. They will keep him sedated overnight then let him waken gradually. Tonight I stay in a hotel; I would go home, but I am exhausted.’

She paused, her eyes on us, going from one to the other, studying our faces. ‘Is that all the good news I will have today?’ she asked, quietly.

‘You’ll have no bad news,’ I replied. ‘Hector is still missing, but we still have reason to suppose he’s with his girlfriend, with Valentina. What we don’t know is where they might be.’

‘Maybe at her place,’ she suggested. ‘It was near Sitges, as I remember.’

‘No, they won’t be there, that’s for sure. They’ll have gone somewhere else, a place where they would feel secure, that nobody else would know about.’

She sucked in a deep breath. ‘In that case. “nobody else” would include me. Apart from Begur, there were only two places Hector went: his apartment in Barcelona and Jacob’s, in Madrid.’ She frowned a little. ‘He’s not with them? Jacob?’

‘No,’ Xavi said, a little too sharply, then added to still any curiosity, ‘He’s still in Madrid.’

‘Can I make a guess?’ I murmured.

She looked up at me. ‘Of course.’

‘The photograph we saw in Begur, in Hector’s attic, of him and Valentina in winter, in the snow. I noticed that he uses the same scenery as the screen wallpaper on his computer in the Girona office. Do you know where they were, where those were taken?’

Pilar’s eyes widened a little. ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘It was a ski lodge in Andorra. They went there last winter for
Cap d’ Any
 . . . New Year. When they came back, they both said that it was beautiful. Valentina even said that if they ever married she would like it to be there, in that hotel. I have never thought of Andorra as an attractive place, but they did.’

‘Can you remember the name?’

‘It was called the Hotel Roc Blau. It is not large. Hector said that it has ten rooms and also some chalets; they had one of those. They told me the chalets are built right into the side of the mountain, and that the place is as high as the road goes.’

‘Did they go back there afterwards?’

‘They broke up six weeks after it.’ She paused before adding, ‘But for that, they would have gone. They called it their special place. They made me promise never to tell anyone what it was called . . . not even Jacob.’

‘Is Jacob a skier?’

Pilar laughed. ‘In no way, any more than Hector is. Those two, they are not sportsmen, either of them.’

‘Do you know how they discovered the hotel?’ I asked.

‘Valentina knew of it. Now her, she does ski. She is very good, Hector said, champion class. He told me that the Hotel Roc Blau does not advertise, and it has no website, because it has no need. All the top skiers know of it, and only they go there. Most of them don’t even tell their families about it, according to Valentina. That’s why I had to keep it secret.’

‘Let’s hope it still is,’ Xavi murmured.

‘Will you go there to look for him?’

The big guy glanced at me, repeating Pilar’s question with a raised eyebrow.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It sounds like the best bet.’

‘Will you find them both there, do you think? I hope you do, for I would like them to be together. She has a lot of mystery about her, that woman, but she made my son happy. He hasn’t been the same since he stopped seeing her.’

‘A lot of mystery,’ I repeated. ‘In what way?’

‘She never talked about herself, or about her family. I asked her about them, but she always managed to reply without ever telling me anything. My business is getting information from people, but I never managed to do it with her. I have never known a woman who will not mention her mother, at some time or other . . . or rather, I hadn’t known one until I met Valentina. I began to think that she was raised in an orphanage.’

‘Maybe she was.’

‘Who knows?’ She smiled. ‘I have one guilty secret; I did try to find out her family name. She was in Begur one time and she left her bag lying about. I looked inside: her passport was there and I took a look. Yes, there was a second name, but it was no use to me. It was in Cyrillic script, and I can’t read that.’

‘Did she have a profession?’ I asked.

‘She told me that she was an accountant. When I asked her for whom she did her accounting, it got mysterious again. “For an entrepreneur,” she said, “who likes to keep his affairs very close to his chest.” It was her very polite way of telling me to mind my own business.’

Xavi looked at me, over Pilar’s head.

‘Damn nuisance,’ he said, ‘our cars being in Girona.’ He thought for a few moments. ‘We could hire one,’ he suggested.

I checked my watch; it was ten minutes before seven. ‘By the time we get that sorted, we could be back up there. Besides, if we really are going as high as the road goes up in the mountains, I’d rather do it in your Range Rover than anything else. How long’s the drive?’

‘Two and a half hours minimum,’ Xavi replied, ‘probably more. This is Friday, remember, and there’s plenty of snow up there. The road will be busy with skiers.’

‘Okay,’ I declared. ‘We go back to Girona, pick up the cars, grab a few hours’ sleep at your place, then leave at sparrow-fart, about six o’clock, looking to get there for nine.’

We settled on that as a plan.

‘When you find Hector,’ Pilar asked, ‘what will you do? The police will want to talk to him about Battaglia.’

‘So will I,’ Xavi said, ominously. He hadn’t forgotten that his younger colleague had been consorting with the enemy. ‘But that can wait. We will keep him right with the Mossos. Bob doesn’t believe they’ll have enough evidence to hold him, but if he needs a good lawyer I’ll find him one. You trust me to look after him, my dear; you look after Simon.’

We left her there in the family room. Outside, taxis were coming and going all the time; we hailed the first one that was free. I’d have settled for the train, but Xavi asked the driver if he’d take us to Girona. With the promise of a decent tip, he agreed.

‘The killer will have a twenty-four-hour head start on us, Bob,’ my friend pointed out, as soon as we were on the Ronda de Dalt, and heading north. ‘He could have found them already.’

‘You’re assuming that he’s heading in the same direction as us,’ I pointed out. ‘Jacob, poor bastard, took at least three hits before he talked . . . that’s assuming he did, and that the gunman didn’t simply get fed up and shoot him. He could have sent him south, east or west. But suppose it is the worst case, and he did give up Andorra, he doesn’t know about Roc Blau.’