Killing the Shadows

TWENTY-THREE

Fiona was running late. Literally. Dodging students, she swerved into her secretary’s office. “Bloody Northern Line,” she gasped, trying to wrestle her coat off and open her office door at the same time. She crossed the threshold, shedding jacket and briefcase and reaching for the folder of notes for the departmental meeting that had been due to start five minutes earlier, her secretary following her.

“There’s a Spanish policeman been trying to get you,” she said. She consulted a message sheet in her hand. “A Major Salvador Berrocal. He’s been ringing every ten minutes for the last half-hour.”

“Shit, shit shit!” Fiona muttered savagely.

“He said would you call him back as soon as possible,” her secretary added helpfully as Fiona dithered between desk and doorway. “It sounded urgent.”

“I’ve got to go to this meeting,” she said. “Barnard’s been trying to dump half his seminars and I don’t want to be landed with them.” She ran a hand through her hair. “OK. Call Berrocal and tell him I’m unavoidably detained but I’ll get back to him as soon as I can. Sorry, Lizzie, I’ve got to run.”

She raced down the corridor and skidded to a halt outside the meeting room, attracting curious looks from those who had only ever seen Fiona in cool and elegant mode. She paused for a moment, smoothing her hair and taking a deep breath to regain her composure, then swept in with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, tube,” she muttered, taking her place halfway down one side of the conference table. Professor Barnard neither faltered in his convoluted sentence nor graced her with a glance.

It felt like the longest meeting in history, and Fiona had to force herself not to fidget restlessly as they ploughed through seemingly endless departmental minutiae. She managed to contain her impatience, refusing to allow Barnard’s domineering presence to fluster her into accepting more than one additional seminar group. But even as she argued her case, half her mind was on Berrocal’s urgent message. He must have a suspect in custody. Or so she hoped.

At the end of the meeting, Fiona scooped up her papers and swept out, earning raised eyebrows and an exchange of meaningful looks between those of her colleagues who preferred to dismiss her as being too arrogant by half. Back in her office, she asked Lizzie to hold her calls and started to dial Berrocal’s number before she was even seated.

“Major Berrocal?” she asked when the phone was answered on the second ring.

“Si. Dr. Cameron?” His tone gave no clue to the nature of his news.

“I’m sorry not to have called back before this, but I couldn’t get away,” she gabbled. “You have a development?”

He sighed. “Not the sort I had hoped for. I am afraid we have another murder.”

Fiona’s heart sank. This was the news she had been dreading so much she had refused to consider it a serious possibility. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said inadequately.

“I am calling to ask if it is possible for you to come back to Toledo and consult further with us. Perhaps the information generated by this latest murder might help you pinpoint where we should be looking for our suspect now.”

Fiona closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, hoping he could hear the genuine regret in her voice. “It’s impossible at present. I have too many commitments here that I can’t avoid.”

There was a ponderous silence. Then Berrocal said, “I was afraid you would say that.”

“There’s no reason why I can’t examine the evidence if you can fax the details to me,” she said, her sense of duty kicking in ahead of her common sense.

“That would be possible?”

“I’ve got a very heavy schedule, but I’m sure I could make time to analyse the material,” she assured him, already wondering how she would fit it in.

“Thank you,” he said, his relief palpable even over the phone.

“Perhaps you could give me the bare bones now?” Fiona asked, pulling a blank pad towards her and tucking the phone between ear and shoulder.

“The body was found inside the courtyard of the Alcazar.” Berrocal’s voice was clipped and clinical now. “An Englishwoman, Jenny Sheriff. Twenty-two years old, from Guild-ford.” He split the unfamiliar place name into two words. “She was working as a receptionist at the Hotel Alfonso the Sixth on a year-long exchange to improve her Spanish. Her shift ended at ten last night and she told a colleague that she was meeting a man for coffee in the square. She said he was fascinating, he knew all there was to know about Toledo.”

“Did she mention his name?” Fiona asked.

“No. We have a barman who says he served her and a man with coffee and brandy just after ten. He remembers because he had noticed her several times before, drinking there with friends. But he didn’t notice the man she was with because he was sitting with his back to the bar. The barman doesn’t remember them leaving, because a group of tourists came in for drinks shortly after that.”

“When was she found?”

“This morning, the custodian who opens up for the rest of the staff at the Alcazar found the staff entrance unlocked. When he walked into the courtyard, he saw her lying there. She had been stabbed several times in the stomach. Our preliminary report indicates that the murder weapon was probably a military bayonet. The death matches those of many of the Republicans killed by Franco’s forces when they relieved the siege of the Alcazar in the Civil War. This ties in with the theme you identified of tourist scenes associated with violent death. And there is a further connection. Like Martina Albrecht, her vagina had been mutilated after death by repeated insertions of a broken bottle. And finally, there was also a city tourist map from the hotel in her pocket. So, I think there is little doubt that we are dealing with the same man. Delgado or whoever.” His voice was edgy with frustration.

“No signs of forced entry?” she asked.

“No. It looks as if he must have had keys. We are working on that angle. He may have a friend who has access to the keys, or he may have somehow acquired his own set. We’ll be checking all the key holders home addresses. It’s possible that wherever he’s hiding out might be near one of them. He could have made an illegal entry and got his hands on their keys that way.”

Fiona sighed. “I’m really sorry about this, Major. When you told me you had a suspect, I hoped that would be an end to it.”

“Me too. But Delgado seems to have disappeared into the landscape. Every police officer in the city has his name and his picture, but we don’t have a single sighting of him to follow up.”

“It must be very frustrating for you.” She frowned as she spoke, trying to snag something at the edge of her consciousness.

“It is. But we will keep on trying. I will fax the material over to you as soon as it becomes available.”

After she put the phone down, Fiona stared at the wall, waiting for her subconscious to throw up whatever was lurking there. Nothing came. Then the phone rang again, pulling her back to the immediate demands of the work she was supposed to be doing.

In spite of her best efforts to concentrate, only part of her mind was focused on her seminar group that morning. Berrocal’s problem niggled in the corner of her brain. Frustrated by her inability to drag to the surface whatever nugget was lurking just out of reach, she spent her lunch break in the nearby swimming baths, ploughing up and down mindlessly, trying to reach the semi-trance state that exercise could produce. But still it eluded her grasp.

Walking back to the department, she summoned up the image of the Alcazar in her mind’s eye. Perhaps that would help her unlock the puzzle. The imposing building stood on the highest point of the old town, the perfect position for a fortress, a situation that had been exploited by every occupying power since the Romans. It dominated the city, bigger than anything else in the line of sight, its four-square geometry a reproach to the higgledy-piggledy appearance of the rest of the buildings that rambled down the slopes towards the Tagus.

But it had never been a lucky building. It had burned down several times and been seriously damaged in the Civil War, when Franco’s men had bombarded it for months. From a distance, it was a forbidding sight, its walls apparently lacking the ornate decoration of its skyline rivals, the cathedral and San Juan de los Reyes. The only breaks in its severity were the four circular turrets that adorned the corners, each with a Disneyland flourish of roof.

Inside the high walls, it was a different matter. Each of the exterior facades was decorated in a different architectural style. Fiona had never toured the Alcazar, but she had seen photographs, and she’d found it almost absurd that so elaborately stylized a building should have ended up as Army offices with a museum tacked on to them.

Even so, it had still managed to acquire a new layer to its bloody history. Now it was a crime scene. The resting place for the latest victim of a ruthless killer she was supposed to help catch. An objective she was apparently some distance from achieving.

In spite of her mental nagging, still her mind refused to release its inspiration, and by mid afternoon Fiona had given up. She decided to work late, dealing with the correspondence that had piled up to dangerous levels in her in-tray. Kit was out for the evening, doing an event at a bookshop then going for a drink with Steve, so there was no urgency about getting home. When she finally left her office, she ran into a couple of part-time lecturers from the anthropology school who persuaded her to come for a drink at the staff club.

She was on her second glass of wine when the conversation veered off at a tangent. Two of her colleagues were pouring scorn on the notions of a third about funerary customs in West Africa. Some electrical current sparked in Fiona’s brain and suddenly she knew what she needed to tell Berrocal. With a mumbled apology, she jumped to her feet and hurried back to her office.

Of course, when she got through to the Spanish police, Berrocal was out of the office. She didn’t want to leave her hunch as a message with a minion, because she was aware how bizarre it would sound. Equally, she didn’t want to wait until morning. She switched on the computer and went straight to her e — mail program.

From: Fiona Cameron [fcameron@psych.ulon.ac.uk]

To: Salvador Berrocal [Sberroc@cnp.mad.es]

Subject: Re: Toledo murders

Dear Major Berrocal,

A thought has occurred to me about where your suspect may be hiding out, although it is probably grasping at straws. As we know, he is obsessed with the history of Toledo, which is now linked in his mind with the business of death. Where do death and history intersect? In graveyards. I wondered if there was the kind of cemetery in or near Toledo where there are large tombs or funerary vaults. If so, he could be camping out there. He obviously has some sort of shelter, since he is managing to remain well enough groomed not to attract adverse attention to his appearance. I think he could possibly have broken into a mausoleum or family vault which he is now using as a base of operations. If you have no other leads, it might be worth examining this possibility. I will be at home later this evening, where I intend to go through the material you promised me. Good hunting!

Best wishes, Fiona Cameron.