A Silent Death

Chapter Twenty-Five

It was almost entirely dark by the time they reached the abandoned development on the hill. Mackenzie had followed Cristina in silence across the square to retrieve her SIG Pro from its lock-safe drawer in the downstairs gun room at the police station. They picked up the Nissan, and she had driven like a woman demented. Down to the coast and then east on the A7 to where a road branched off at a brightly lit family restaurant, before cutting its way up into the foothills of the Sierra Bermeja.

Away to the west, beyond the shadows of jagged peaks that cut themselves darkly against the stars, the sky glowed faintly red in strips between layers of cloud.

High up beyond the remains of what had once been some developer’s dream sat a walled and gated complex of villas and apartments assembled around tropical gardens and two swimming pools. In the darkness it shimmered in patches of hard light cast by lamps lining streets and walkways. Warmer light glowed in the windows of holiday apartments and permanent residences. It stood in sharp contrast to the abandoned and semi-derelict construction built into the hillside below.

Cristina parked in the street opposite, and they climbed out of their SUV into the thickly fragrant night air. A warm wind blew gently across the hill, carrying the invasive chirrup of cicadas and the throaty croak of tree frogs. A plastic sign fixed to a wire fence advertised high-speed internet. Don’t pay the months you don’t use. 20MB download speed, wifi router + setup from 50€. Beyond it rows of apartments, some completed, others abandoned, followed the undulating contours of the Andalusian countryside. Red, yellow and white Lego-like cankers on a once agricultural landscape.

Mackenzie sniffed the night air and realized that something more incongruous was also borne on the breeze. Woodsmoke. Who, he wondered, lights fires on a warm night like this?

Behind a concrete retaining wall on the far side of the road, the part of the development exposed to view appeared almost complete. Tiled roofs, white-painted columns and arches. But like a smile without teeth there were no windows, and nature had reclaimed what must once have been intended as gardens. Tall grasses, bamboo, small trees and overgrown shrubs threatened to engulf the building. Its retaining wall was stained by the weather and smothered in graffiti, sidewalks crumbling where weeds had broken through the paving tiles.

Cristina removed a torch from her belt and retrieved one from the glove compartment for Mackenzie. Their beams cut arrows of light through the darkness as they followed a rusted fence along the perimeter of the unmade road that ran below the inhabited urbanization above. As they rounded the curve of the street, white dust rose in the torchlight with every footfall. The construction behind the fence became more skeletal, like something assembled by children with plastic rods and buildings blocks. A shallow-pitched roof stood above the empty structure, supported only by brick walls and concrete columns. A labyrinth of stairways, empty lift shafts, corridors and apartment shells all stood open to the night. Beyond the fence, a ramp disappeared down into the darkness of what must have been intended as an underground car park.

Broken glass crunched underfoot in the still of the night. The smell of woodsmoke was stronger here, more pungent. Ahead, the security fence stretched across the dusty white road preventing further progress. But someone had cut a hole through it with wire cutters, and a well-worn path beyond it led through the undergrowth to an area laid out for covered parking on the ground floor.

Cristina stepped carefully through the hole in the fence and Mackenzie followed as she made her way to the top of the ramp they had seen from the other side. Their torches barely penetrated the darkness below. They stood for a moment, listening. But there was nothing to be heard above the racket of the cicadas. Mackenzie could see the torch trembling in Cristina’s hand. Her face was bloodless in its reflected light. She glanced at him briefly, before setting off down the ramp. He walked a metre or two behind.

The ridged concrete descended steeply, and curved away to their left. As they reached the bend, the car park opened up below them. A vast area delineating the footprint of the building itself and supported on rows of square columns. Its surface remained unfinished and strewn with debris. Black pools of stagnant water reflected the light of their torches. There was no sign of life or habitation, and it was almost with relief that they climbed back up into the night.

In a sky studded by stars, a three-quarters moon rose to cast its colourless light across the abandoned ambitions of the previous decade. Cristina and Mackenzie picked their way through the rubble and into the building. A staircase built around an empty elevator shaft climbed through two floors to the roof. They followed it up to the first level where it opened out into a square concrete hall. A graffitied corridor ran off into the dark heart of the building. Gaping doorways, left and right, led into skeleton apartments. White powdery efflorescence crept from unsealed brick walls, rusted steel reinforcement causing floors and columns to crumble from creeping concrete cancer.

Smoke hung now like mist in the beams of their torches. But the smell of it couldn’t mask the invasive stench of faeces and urine. Although it was still hot outside, it felt cold in here.

A long way ahead, at the far end of the passageway, a pale light flickered in the darkness. A sinister murmuring reached them on fetid air.

Cristina’s free hand rested on her holster. Although she was reluctant to draw her SIG, as a precaution she had unclipped the holster catch.

They drifted cautiously along the corridor, side by side, apprehension burgeoning as the light grew stronger and the murmur louder, until they turned at the end of it into a large open area where brick dividing walls had been crudely demolished leaving only their footings to denote the layout of a dozen or more apartments. Umpteen fires burned among the rubble, huddled groups of ragged people gathered around them for light and warmth.

The murmur of voices quickly faded as Cristina and Mackenzie raked the beams of their torches across the bizarre scene that unfolded before them. Only the crackle of dry wood on a dozen fires broke the echoing silence.

‘What the hell...?’ Mackenzie’s voice was barely a whisper.

Cristina glanced at him, then quickly refocused on the thirty or forty people grouped around the open fires. There were women with shawls and headscarves, hijabs and khimars, and men with beards and dark gaunt eyes. There were children who stared back at them from haunted faces, and babies that gurned for food. ‘Illegal immigrants,’ she said. ‘They arrive by the boatload from North Africa almost every day now. Washing up on the beaches, then hiding out in these abandoned developments. There are literally thousands of these places lying empty along the coast. Impossible to police.’

She fumbled in the breast pocket of her tunic to take out one of the crumpled photographs of Cleland that she carried and hand it to Mackenzie.

‘Better if it’s a man showing them this. I’ll check out the next level.’

She set off back along the way they had come and Mackenzie stood for a moment before making his way apprehensively through the rubble to wave the picture of this white-faced, blond-haired Scotsman in front of frightened Arab faces. Suspicious eyes fixed on his and barely glanced at the photograph. He knew it was a waste of time. If Cleland was to be found here at all, it would not be among these sad homeless people in search of a better life.

Not a word was exchanged as he moved from campfire to campfire holding his breath. He was met with blank faces, or the merest shake of the head, and he couldn’t help but wonder where these people would go from here. Who they had paid to bring them this far. Who was waiting somewhere in the shadows to take them on to the next stop of this hopeless quest. And the next. And the next. If there was one thing worse, he thought, than people who dealt in drugs, it was those who trafficked in people. Pedlars of misery and the cruellest of false dreams. And it was, he knew, only going to get worse. More and more criminal gangs were abandoning the lucrative but dangerous traffic in drugs in favour of people smuggling. People were a cheap, reliable and endless source of revenue, the authorities spent less time and effort in trying to prevent the flow of illegal immigrants, and the consequences of capture were far less punitive.

From somewhere far off in the building he heard a woman scream. He froze, listening intently, only to become aware of every eye in this hellish place turned in his direction. He hesitated for just a second before sprinting back through the rubble, and along the hallway which had brought them here. On the landing he stopped, gasping for air, and strained to hear above the sound of his own breath echoing back at him off cancerous concrete. He heard a clattering of footsteps from the next floor up and took the stairs two at a time. Only to have his heart very nearly stop. Two teenage boys came hurtling down and parted only at the last moment to stream either side of him. Like water around a rock. Then they vanished into the night.

Mackenzie stood breathing hard, trying to recover his composure. No point in going after them. If Cristina was anywhere, she was on the next floor up. And so he continued the climb, playing his torchlight on the stairs ahead of him.

On the next landing a mirror image of the hall downstairs opened off into a corridor mired in darkness. A crude door had been fixed to the hinges of the first apartment on his right. It stood ajar, and light fell into the dark. Grit and detritus crunched beneath his feet as he moved towards it, one careful step at a time. He reached out and pushed it open with the flat of his hand. Candles and an oil lamp burned in here on a table pushed up against the far wall. There were several chairs around it, one tipped on to its back. Several plates of unfinished food had been abandoned, and a cigarette still burned in an ashtray. Three old metal bedsteads stood side by side against the right-hand wall, makeshift mattresses thrown across rusted sprung frames, tortured sweat-stained sheets lying crumpled on each. But there was no one here.

Mackenzie turned quickly back towards the stairway and heard a muffled cry from the top floor. He shone the beam of his torch ahead of him as he climbed into darkness, becoming aware that there were no longer any walls around him. The tower that housed the stairwell, and what would have been the lift shaft, was completely open to the elements on three sides. Moonlight flooded in now, casting oblique shadows across the steps. Out there, where stars shimmered in the night sky, seemed a world away, and the ground below a dangerous drop into the dark.

As he stepped out on to the topmost level he realized that there was nowhere else to go. An unfinished doorway to his left led on to a small square of roof terrace. Turning to his right he stepped on to the top landing, dusty concrete laid on four sides around a square opening intended to house the lift mechanism. Concrete pillars at each corner supported the roof above.

A gathering of three men and a stricken Cristina stood with their backs perilously close to the drop at the far side of the empty shaft. One of the men held her from behind, his hand over her mouth, the barrel of her SIG Pro pushed against her temple. He was dangerously thin, wearing a torn singlet and filthy sneakers. A soiled red bandanna wrapped itself around greasy hair that fell to his shoulders. The other two dangled scarred baseball bats from arms that bulged beneath stained white T-shirts. They faced off to Mackenzie across the gap, and he could see the terror in Cristina’s eyes by the light of the moon that angled in across his shoulder.

He realized that having light behind him gave him an advantage, and he raised the beam of his torch to shine directly at the group opposite. He would barely be visible to them, but could see almost every pore on the unshaven faces of Cristina’s captors.

In what seemed to Mackenzie like a stage whisper one of them said to the man holding Cristina, ‘What do we do?’

‘Has he got a gun?’

‘Can’t see.’

And Mackenzie realized it wasn’t Spanish that they spoke. But Arabic. He relaxed a little and started moving cautiously around the perimeter of the lift shaft towards them.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to do this the hard way. No one has to get hurt here.’ And he registered their surprise. This strange pale Caucasian was speaking to them in Arabic.

Cristina’s fear morphed into confusion as Mackenzie appeared to engage her captors in conversation. A language that she didn’t understand. He seemed unnaturally relaxed as he and the man pressing the gun to her head swapped several short exchanges. Then to her astonishment she felt the hand around her mouth relax its grip, and as her captor let her go he stepped forward to lay the SIG Pro carefully on the concrete floor.

Mackenzie approached along one side of the opening, and all three men moved warily along the facing edge. When Mackenzie stooped to pick Cristina’s gun from the floor, they made a break for the stairs. She heard their footsteps clattering down into darkness and thought she was going to faint with relief. But Mackenzie was there with a hand on her arm to steady her. He smiled and handed back her gun.

‘You should be a little more careful about who you let play with this,’ he said.

It took her a moment to find her voice. ‘What... what just happened?’

Mackenzie shook his head. ‘When I said I was going to learn Arabic, people told me I was an idiot. The only use I would ever have for it, they said, was if I joined the foreign office or became a spy.’ He laughed. ‘But I always figured it would come in handy someday.’

‘What did you say to them?’

‘I told the fella with the gun at your head that your weapon was faulty. That the safety catch had jammed and that if he fired it, not only would it blow your head off, it would take his hand and probably half his face with it.’

Cristina gawped at him in astonishment. ‘And he believed you?’

Mackenzie shrugged. ‘Apparently.’

‘So why didn’t you hold them at gun point once you’d got it back?’

Mackenzie said, ‘I’m not authorized to use your gun. And if I had, you’d only have got into even bigger trouble.’ He started steering her towards the stairs. ‘As Sun Tzu explained in his Art of War, if we do not wish to fight we can prevent the enemy from engaging us if we throw something odd and unaccountable in his way.’

‘A jammed gun?’

‘Well, here’s the thing... one way or another these guys were illegals. Involved in people-trafficking or drugs. Who knows? But they didn’t want a fight any more than we did. They were just scared. So I gave them a way out. Whether or not they believed the story about the gun doesn’t matter. They accepted the chance it offered to escape. So now you can call this in, and it’s someone else’s problem.’ They started down the stairs. ‘It’s just a pity we’ve wasted our time here.’

Cristina stopped halfway down to the next landing. ‘But we haven’t. Before I met the charmers who dragged me up here, I caught a couple of teenagers spray-painting walls. Showed them a photograph of Cleland and told them I’d turn a blind eye if they could give me any information about this guy. It was obvious they recognized him. Not exactly someone you’d expect to stumble across in a place like this. They said they’d seen him here a few times in the last couple of days. In the company of some unsavoury characters. Not the ones who took my gun. Spanish, apparently. So at least we know where he’s been hiding out.’

They stepped on to the first landing, and Mackenzie glanced back along the corridor towards to where poor people fleeing conflict were no doubt collecting their belongings and preparing to move on before the police arrived. He said, ‘If this is the best Cleland can do, he can’t have many friends left. And he must be pretty desperate.’