A Silent Death

Chapter Thirty-Two

Zhivago’s was located in a leafy north-west corner of Marbella known as Little Russia. Wealthy Russian expats hung out here in exclusive clubs and bars among a proliferation of palm trees. They built themselves beautiful bodies in luxury gymnasia, treated their wives to prohibitively expensive sessions in stylish beauty parlours, ate in any one of a number of restaurants offering international haute-cuisine. There was even a school of Russian ballet where daughters could be deposited while parents sipped French wines in upmarket Russian cocktail bars. All within a few hundred metres of some of the most expensive marina real estate in Europe. There they could park their luxury yachts for the purchase of a mere 400,000-euro lease, and dine easy in the knowledge that there would be no parking ticket waiting for them on their return. It was rumoured that Putin himself owned a hacienda in the hills less than five kilometres away.

Mackenzie squinted towards his iPhone resting in the passenger seat, trying to decipher Google maps and listening to computerized instructions from an anodyne female voice. He turned off the motorway and followed an access road down to a roundabout before turning on to a winding access road that took him into the heart of suburban Marbella.

You have reached your destination, his phone told him, and he saw the single-storey white-painted building angled around lush gardens behind a hedge designed for ultimate privacy. Advertising hoardings sat on the shallow pitch of the Roman-tiled roof advertising a galería of wines and a bodega for fine food. The restaurant’s name, Zhivago’s, was inscribed in discreet letters below an imperious image of Bacchus gazing skywards.

The food and wine complex sat directly across the road from a private Russian club called Azure Beach. The club stood at the entrance of what appeared to be a gated labyrinth of suburban streets filled with luxury apartments and elegant villas that shimmered mirage-like in the heat of the afternoon sun. Somewhere beyond the palms and willows and bougainvillea that draped themselves over fences and walls, the same streets sloped gently away towards the port below, where the Mediterranean lay coruscating across the bay.

As he turned his Seat into the car park, Mackenzie noticed Cristina’s SUV parked some way down a side street leading towards the marina. He stopped, and was about to reverse out again, when Cristina stepped from a dark grey Kia Sportage and waved him over.

He parked and walked across to the Kia. Without a word she opened the rear door for him and slipped back into the front passenger seat. A perspiring and overweight middle-aged man with precious little hair half-turned in the driver’s seat and nodded as Mackenzie climbed in.

‘Detective Gil,’ Cristina said by way of introduction. ‘He’s with GRECO here in Marbella.’

Mackenzie nodded. He remembered Gil from the meeting at Marviña the day before. He stretched forward a hand and received a damp one in return.

‘He’s got a video you need to see.’

Gil reached for his Samsung Galaxy and started a video playing, then held it up for Mackenzie to watch. Mackenzie recognized the entrance to Zhivago’s and realized that the footage must have been taken on a long lens from somewhere across the street, a hidden vantage point beyond the Azure Beach.

Gil said, ‘Surveillance footage. Taken a couple of months back. We were watching a guy called Rafa. Long suspected of laundering drug money. He has this business selling yachts.’ His laugh contained not a trace of humour. ‘You and I couldn’t even make a living on the handful of transactions he does each year. But somehow he manages to turn a handsome profit.’ He jabbed his finger at the screen. ‘That’s him going in. The one in the middle.’

Mackenzie leaned forward for a better look. Three men in designer suits were climbing out of a black Porsche Cayenne. Rafa was the tallest of them, elegant in shiny Italian shoes, dark hair gelled back in crinkled curls from a handsome brow.

‘Fancies himself, does Rafa,’ Gil said. ‘Smart guy. He buys his yachts at trade prices, then sells them to wealthy Russian clients for astronomical profits.’

‘And the Russians don’t mind being ripped off?’

‘No they don’t. In fact, no sooner have they bought the yachts than they sell them again for millions less than they paid for them.’

Mackenzie said, ‘So effectively paying Rafa for goods or services unknown.’

Gil nodded. ‘Exactly. And without the recording of any transaction other than the buying and selling of the yacht. We’d been trying to establish exactly what these payments were for. Almost certainly drugs. But we had no proof. The only real drugs connection came in the shape of the agent who was bringing Rafa and the Russians together. Alejandro Delgado.’ Again he pointed at his screen. ‘He’s the one on Rafa’s right.’ A much shorter man, prosperously round, a cigar burning between big-knuckled fingers. ‘We’ve got nothing at all on Delgado, except that his brother got caught smuggling a shitload of cocaine into the country two years ago. The two brothers ran a yacht-rental agency, and although Delgado himself was never implicated in the drugs bust, it’s inconceivable that he didn’t at least know about it. He and his brother were like that.’ He interlaced fore and middle fingers.

Mackenzie was interested now. ‘How did you catch the brother?’

‘The cocaine came in first by boat to Gibraltar. There the contraband was divided among several smaller vessels which were meant to head up the coast and offload at various Spanish ports. But we had been watching it all the way from North Africa by satellite, courtesy of the US. A fleet of coastguard vessels intercepted the transfer boats as they sailed out of Gibraltar into Spanish waters. Delgado’s brother was on one of them. The ringleader.’ Gil glanced at the video still playing on his phone. ‘We’d been hoping that by keeping both Rafa and Delgado under surveillance we could start making connections, not just between them, but with others we didn’t yet know about.’

‘This is all very interesting, Detective Gil,’ Mackenzie said, ‘but what’s the connection with Cleland? That’s what I’m here for after all.’

‘Patience, Señor Mackenzie, patience.’ Gil found a hanky in one of his pockets and wiped away the beads of perspiration quivering along the line of his brow. His fingers were steaming up the screen of his phone. ‘When Officer Sánchez Pradell made her request for further information on Roberto Vasquéz a little alarm bell went off in my head. Vasquéz dined here at Zhivago’s a few times at gatherings hosted by Rafa. A very unlikely dinner guest, given the somewhat classier company that Rafa and Delgado usually kept. Local businessmen, politicians, the odd Russian oligarch. This is not a cheap restaurant, señor. And Vasquéz is the epitome of cheap. A low-life hoodlum.’ Gil used his handkerchief to clear the condensation from the screen of his phone and only succeeded in smearing it. He scrubbed at the glass in annoyance. ‘So, anyway, I went back and had a look at some of the surveillance footage to refresh my memory, and suddenly another face jumped out at me.’

He scrolled forward to a point where a group of ten or twelve men wearing dark suits and white shirts open at tanned necks was emerging from the restaurant, presumably having just eaten. The mood was cordial. There was laughter and back-slapping. Here was a group of men that embodied the quintessential nature of money and power. Sleek and well-groomed and self-satisfied. With the standout exception of Vasquéz, who was unshaven and uncomfortable in his cheap suit. Someone’s pet Rottweiler.

Gil pointed his finger at different figures on the screen and rattled off a handful of names. ‘But we still haven’t been able to identify everyone in the group.’

Suddenly Mackenzie spotted what it was that had jumped out at Gil, and he felt goosebumps raise themselves on his arms and shoulders. Emerging from the back of the group, in deep conversation with Rafa himself, came the familiar smirk of Jack Cleland. The two men were sharing a joke, and Cleland looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Gil said, ‘I only know the face now because of what’s happened in the last few days. At the time we checked him out and he came up clean. Ian Templeton, an expat Englishman enjoying an early retirement along the coast at La Paloma.’

‘A Scotsman,’ Mackenzie said quietly, and felt a sense of shame that he should share a nationality with this man. A dull pain in his ribs reminded him of their encounter as he shifted uncomfortably in the back seat.

‘Whatever. British. Now, of course, we know exactly who he is.’

‘And these are his associates.’

‘So it would seem.’

‘Is the surveillance ongoing?’

Gil sighed. ‘I’m afraid not. Resources are limited and we weren’t getting anywhere.’

Mackenzie said, ‘We need eyes on all the principals in this group ASAP. Cleland’s deal is imminent. The drugs are on the move. Almost certainly someone in this gang of charmers is involved. And my feeling is it’s going to be goods for cash. Cleland’s not going to want to leave any kind of electronic footprint in his wake.’

‘I’ve already put in the request,’ Gil said.

Mackenzie leaned into the front to stab his finger at the phone and pause the video. ‘And what about trying to put names to some of these? The ones you couldn’t identify at the time.’

‘How?’

Mackenzie nodded towards the restaurant. ‘We go in and ask.’

Gil laughed. ‘No one in there’s going to talk to us.’

‘Why not?’

‘Fear, señor.’

Mackenzie said, ‘We’re the cops. They should be afraid of us.’

Gil leaned confidentially towards the back of the Kia, lowering his voice as if someone might overhear them. ‘What you don’t understand, señor, is that like everything else around here, Zhivago’s is Russian-owned. Our financial people looked into its business background and found that it actually trades as an escort agency. A classic money-laundering scam. It’s almost certainly mafia-owned. So the staff will be a lot more frightened of their employers than they are of us.’

But Mackenzie was not to be deterred. He opened the back door and stepped out. ‘Well why don’t we go and see?’ He held open the passenger door for Cristina. ‘And it might help to have a uniform along.’

A shiny wooden walkway bordered by two hedges led through open glass doors to a bar that simmered in semi-darkness. It was flanked on either side by dining areas extending under canvas into the gardens, qualifying them as outdoors, and therefore legal smoking areas. Behind the bar, rows of high-value wines nestled side by side on tiered racks lit by hidden spots. No prices on display. If you could afford to drink these, you didn’t need to know how much they cost. The place was deserted except for a solitary barman polishing glasses behind a shiny dimpled zinc counter. It was still too early for the Spanish to eat.

Gil showed him his ID. ‘I want every member of staff out here now. Kitchen included.’

The barman was a pale thin man in his early thirties, prematurely balding. He cast them a surly look. ‘What...?’

Gil slapped his palm on the counter. ‘Now! No questions asked.’ Mackenzie admired Gil’s authority but thought that he was probably showing off for Mackenzie’s benefit.

Within three minutes seven kitchen workers, including the chef, a maître d’, two servers and a sommelier had joined the barman. They regarded the three police officers in sullen silence from behind the bar. Gil placed his phone on the counter and started the video at the point where Rafa, Delgado and Cleland were leaving the restaurant along with Vasquéz, as part of the bigger group.

‘These people are all regulars here. There must be a record of bookings, credit-card payments... I want names.’

Dead eyes turned in silence towards the video. Not a flicker in any of them. Of recognition or anything else. Mackenzie could hear the tick-tock of a clock somewhere behind the bar.

‘Well?’ Gil’s raised voice forced eyes to lift themselves again and look at him blankly. All he got for his trouble was a surly shaking of heads.

But the younger of the servers, a female in her late teens with the pallid pan-faced features of a Russian country girl, couldn’t keep her eyes from straying towards one of the tented eating areas. Cristina followed her glance but could see nothing until she took a step to her right, and realized for the first time that the restaurant was not as empty as it had seemed. A solitary diner sat in the smoking zone, obscured by an enormous lacquered cabinet with a large-screen TV playing info videos about Italian wines. A thick-set man with his hair shorn to a bristling black stubble, he was eating alone at a table for two. His muscular torso stretched a white T-shirt with camouflage patches to bursting point. Oversized gold-rimmed sunglasses sat on a squat nose, a chunky gold watch on a thick left wrist. He had a cigar in one hand, his mobile phone in the other, and was trying very hard not to be noticed. Cristina recognized him immediately as one of the group in the video. In her mind’s eye she saw Gil’s finger stabbing at his phone screen and immediately pulled back a name. Alvarez.

As soon as Alvarez realized she had seen him he was on his feet. So quickly that his table crashed to the floor, dark glass smashing to spill syrupy green olive oil on red terracotta tiles.

‘Hey!’ she shouted after him.

But already he was pushing aside a canvas flap and barging through the hedge beyond it, ripping his T-shirt and drawing blood from taut biceps. Cristina saw now that he was wearing long khaki shorts and Roman sandals, his skin the colour of mahogany. He sprinted off across the lawn. Without thinking, she started after him. Running out across the boards between the hedges, capsizing one of two menu stands that stood on either side of the entrance, and feeling the sudden heat of the afternoon sun hitting her like a club. She screwed her eyes against its sudden glare and saw Alvarez running at speed down the long avenue that led towards the port, arms pumping like pistons. Here was a man who did not, at any cost, want to talk to the police.

Cristina had covered less than 50 metres in pursuit before the taller fitter figure of Mackenzie overtook her, flying past in the afternoon heat, long legs devouring the ground and quickly reeling in the gap between himself and the fugitive.

Sunlight strobed between the shadows of trees lining the avenue. Another 20 metres and Mackenzie could hear the distress of the man he was chasing. Desperate lungs gulping in air and pumping it out again, oxygen spent. His muscle mass gave him strength, but neither speed nor stamina. Mackenzie was catching him.

Alvarez glanced over his shoulder and the fronds of an overhanging willow swept the sunglasses from his face, revealing the fear in his eyes, and the realization that he was never going to outrun his pursuer. He veered right into a narrow street lined with cars, and then left into a service lane running between villas.

Mackenzie felt the discarded sunglasses crunch beneath his foot as he followed Alvarez into the narrower street. But by the time he turned into the service lane there was no sign of him. It was fully shaded here under thick foliage in fragrant purple blossom, almost dark after the blaze of sunlight in the street behind him. He stopped, thinking that the other man must somehow have turned off, and was quite unprepared for the shape that emerged from the shadows, swinging a fist like a Belfast ham full into his face. Even as he fell backwards and his head struck the paving stones he felt blood flooding his mouth. Light filled his head. As he blinked to clear it he looked up and saw Alvarez standing over him, legs apart, a pistol held two-handed at arm’s length and pointing directly at his chest.

All thirty-eight years of Mackenzie’s life spooled backwards through his mind so fast that they were gone in a moment. How short life really was, how insubstantial and fleeting all those burdensome memories, scattered in an instant like the ashes of his aunt in the flower garden at the cemetery. Breath escaped from his lips in a long sigh and he screwed his eyes tight shut in preparation for the bullet that would kill him. He wondered if it would hurt. Did pain outlast life, straddle the divide? And what next? Darkness and silence? Like Cristina’s aunt?

But a shout pre-empted the bullet. So piercing and prolonged that it forced him to open his eyes again. Alvarez was still there, the gun still pointing at Mackenzie’s chest. But the man’s eyes had lifted and were focused beyond them both, back along the lane. Mackenzie craned his neck and saw Cristina silhouetted against the sunlight in the street behind her, pistol drawn. She held hers too in a double-handed stance, its muzzle directed straight at Mackenzie’s would-be killer. She could shoot him before he could raise his weapon to fire at her. If he shot Mackenzie she would kill him. It was a classic stand-off. And Mackenzie found himself an almost neutral observer. Having already accepted death, he had somehow banished fear.

He looked back up at Alvarez. The man was caught in an agony of indecision that seemed to last a lifetime, before finally he took a calculated risk and simply turned and ran, sprinting off into the gloom, almost certainly fearing the bullet in his back that never came.

Cristina arrived to kneel beside the prone figure of Mackenzie, breathless and glistening with sweat. Fear and darkness dilating her pupils so that they almost obliterated the irises. She holstered her gun. ‘Señor, are you alright?’

Mackenzie wiped blood from his face with shaking fingers. ‘Apart from a busted nose and a split lip, I think I might live.’

She helped him to sit upright and produced paper hankies from somewhere for him to hold to his nose. He spat out blood and his words were muffled by his hand and the hankies. ‘You know they say that if you save a life you are for ever responsible for it?’

‘Do they?’ She seemed unimpressed.

‘Apparently.’

‘Well, Señor, I think you are big enough and ugly enough to look after yourself.’

He shook his head. ‘Except today. When you did it for me.’ He felt a huge wave of gratitude towards her. ‘Gracias señora. For my life.’

She helped him to his feet as a perspiring Detective Gil finally appeared, fighting for breath, at the far end of the lane. When he saw them he leaned forward to support himself on bent knees. ‘He got away then?’ he gasped.

Mackenzie said, ‘No, we gave him a business card and he promised to call.’

By the time they got back to Zhivago’s, both the restaurant and the wine store were closed. There was no sign of the staff. Everyone had gone. Mackenzie had stopped the blood leaking from his nose, and from somewhere Cristina managed to produce wet wipes to clean the dried smears of it from his face. They stood in a disconsolate knot under the blazing sun in the car park, certain that eyes were trained upon them from behind smoked glass windows in the Russian club across the road.

Gil said, ‘If the financial branch can make the money laundering stick, then maybe we would have leverage against the owners of this place to reveal the identity of their customers.’

‘No time,’ Mackenzie said. People always quoted the maxim, follow the money. And they were right. But it always took too long.

Gil nodded. He knew it, too. He shrugged. ‘Well... I’ll get back to the office and see what I can do.’ He fished a business card from a back pocket and held it out for Mackenzie. ‘You can get me at this number.’ Mackenzie took it, and a look passed between them. Gil found a reluctant smile. ‘You can pass it on to Alvarez when he calls.’

As the Kia slipped out of the car park, leaving Cristina and Mackenzie leaning against the bonnet of his car, Mackenzie’s phone rang. He lifted it from his breast pocket.

‘Yes?’

‘Señor, is Cristina with you?’ He recognized the Jefe’s voice at once, and something in its gravitas put him on immediate alert.

‘Yes, she is.’

‘Shit!’

‘What’s wrong?’ He glanced up to see Cristina looking at him apprehensively.

‘What is it? she demanded. Mackenzie held up a finger to silence her.

The Jefe said, ‘I was hoping to make this easier for her, but I don’t see how. It’s Antonio. Her husband. He’s...’ Mackenzie heard him gasp his frustration. ‘There’s been an incident.’