A Silent Death

Chapter Thirty-Four

Mackenzie’s foot was pressed hard to the metal, engine screaming, and still it was all he could do to keep his underpowered Seat in touch with the blue and orange flashing lights of Cristina’s SUV.

It had been a roller-coaster drive from Marbella on the AP7, vehicles pulling over at the sound of the siren to let Cristina past on the off-ramp from the motorway, and at the Estepona roundabout. Now they flew under the overpass at the Condesa Golf Hotel, and the lights of a whole body of police vehicles and ambulances became visible in the parking area outside the Eroski Centre. Advertising hoardings stood atop a double-storey yellow building with red shutters on the second level. Dia Maxi. Supermercado. Helicopteros Sanitarios. Marlows Fish and Chips. Behind it, brick-coloured apartment blocks stepped up the hillside, and palm fronds rattled in the heat of the late afternoon breeze.

Cristina nearly overturned her vehicle as she wrenched the wheel hard right at the roundabout and turned down into the car park. She was out of the SUV and running for the ramp to the underground car park before Mackenzie had even brought his car to a stop.

A dozen or more police officers and Guardia Civil stood around in huddled groups. They moved silently aside as Cristina sprinted down the ramp. Inquisitive shoppers from the supermarket crowded hastily erected crime-scene tape. Restaurant staff from Mini India, and medics from the Helicopteros medical centre stood along the first-floor walkway, staring down with naked curiosity. Medical assistance had been instantly to hand, but there was nothing to be done.

Mackenzie ran down the ramp after Cristina. Into the fetid gloom of the subterranean parking lot. Half the roof lights were broken. The rows of red and white pillars supporting the roof itself were chipped and scored. A single vehicle sat on flat tyres in dusty abandon at the far end of it. Beyond the wreck, a colourfully graffitied wall was nearly obscured by darkness. The underground entrance to the supermarket itself was shuttered, and looked as if it might have been that way for some time.

Almost in the centre of the parking slots, lamps had been erected to cast a surreal light on a scene of carnage. A car, which Mackenzie immediately recognized as Antonio’s, sat skewed at an angle, the driver’s door lying wide open. Antonio himself lay in a twisted heap beside it. The force of the bullets ripping him apart had propelled him backwards against it. His blood smeared down the rear passenger door where he had slid to the floor. A large pool of it spreading around him, turning brown now, sticky and oleaginous in the airless heat. The same pathologist who had attended the finca killings at the start of the day was ending it crouched over the deceased husband of the police officer he had met on the hill just hours before.

Cristina’s howl of anguish reverberated around the scarred and naked walls of this desperate place. Mackenzie felt it chill him to the bone, and tears sprang unexpectedly to his eyes. He wanted to grab her and hold her and tell her it would be okay. But it wouldn’t. It never would.

It was the Jefe, perspiring and pale, who stopped her from getting any closer to the body. She fought against the arms he put around her, screaming and sobbing, flailing in hopeless desperation until his strength prevailed over hers and she subsided weeping against his shoulder.

Mackenzie saw his distress as he closed his eyes tightly, before opening them again to look over her head in despair towards the Scotsman whose life this woman had saved less than an hour before. There was an almost imperceptible shake of his head as he spread the fingers of his big hand across the back of her head and held her close to his chest.

Rarely had Mackenzie felt so powerless to influence or change the course of events. Here was human tragedy in the raw. Nothing to be done, no comfort in empty words — even were he able to find any. All he could do was stand and stare. Unable to offer solace, and certainly not reason.

He let his eyes drift across the scene illuminated by the pathologist’s lamps. There were fresh skid marks on the concrete three metres from Antonio’s car, spent shell casings scattered across the floor. A lot of them. He looked back to see more rubber left by spinning tyres at the turn on to the ramp. He could almost hear the echo of those tyres, even above the painful sobs that reverberated around the car park.

A policewoman from Marviña and a female Guardia Civil prised Cristina gently loose from the Jefe’s arms, and led — half-carried — her towards the exit. Mackenzie could still hear her pain manifesting itself in the tears that tore themselves from her lungs long after they had taken her back up the ramp.

The Jefe wiped his own grief from wet cheeks as Mackenzie approached. Behind them a white van slowly descended the ramp, and half a dozen forensics officers in protective plastic suits spilled out to start a detailed examination of the scene. Mackenzie said, ‘Do you have any thoughts?’

‘Plenty of thoughts, señor. Not so many ideas. And, anyway, it will be out of our hands when homicide arrive from Malaga.’ He paused. ‘Did you meet Antonio?’

Mackenzie nodded. ‘A couple of times. In fact, I saw him just a few hours ago up at Balle Olivar.’

The Jefe nodded. ‘Yes, so did I.’

‘He and his brother-in-law seemed to be having some kind of altercation.’

The Jefe looked up. ‘Paco?’

‘Yes.’

The chief sighed and cast his eyes across the crime scene. ‘Well, this wasn’t the result of some domestic dispute. Whoever killed Toni put nine bullets in him. Could have been more than one shooter. Ballistics will tell us that. But no one heard any shots, so they could have been using silencers. Which would make it a professional hit.’

He saw Mackenzie’s gaze wander towards the CCTV camera at the entrance to the supermarket.

‘Defunct,’ he said. ‘That entrance has been closed for over a year. No one uses this car park any more. Too many muggings and break-ins. I’ve got officers questioning shoppers who were in the supermarket in or around the time of the shooting, or in the car park outside, but no one seems to have seen the killer’s car leaving. Although, from those tyre marks I’d say they must have left in quite a hurry.’ He gazed thoughtfully at Mackenzie. ‘So what do you think?’

Mackenzie shook a despairing head. ‘I have no idea what to think.’

‘Cleland?’

Mackenzie shrugged. Somehow he didn’t think so. But he had no logical way to express that.

‘It would make sense,’ the Jefe said. ‘This is how he gets back at Cristina. Why kill her when he can murder her husband instead and make her suffer like him?’

Mackenzie’s eyes wandered again back to the body of the young man lying in his own blood. The curl of dark hair on his forehead, the crook of the bloodied finger that wore his wedding ring. Blood-stained blue socks that he had pulled on just that morning without the least expectation that he would never again pull on a fresh pair. A life broken and ended in a few fatal seconds.

He thought of Lucas who had just lost his dad. He thought of Cristina, who had saved his life while others were taking the life of her husband. Three lives shattered. One lost. Two that would never be the same again.

He allowed his head to drop, and saw a single tear make a crater in the dust of the floor at his feet.