The Cassandra Sanction

Chapter Thirteen

The image was poorly defined, but there was no question that they were looking at Catalina Fuentes. At normal speed, the nervousness in her step was obvious even to a stranger like Ben. Raul was fixed intently on the screen, breathing heavily through his nose.

July twelfth. The last known images of her. Four days before her purported suicide. The day after getting the antidepressants from the doctor.

Catalina looked tense and edgy.

They watched as she walked up to the counter. She was wearing jeans and a light top. Her hair was tied back under a plain black baseball cap and a large pair of sunglasses covered her eyes. She was carrying a shoulder bag, which she unslung and rested on the counter. The figure of Braunschweiger appeared in the corner, just within view of the camera’s range. They seemed to be talking.

‘Is there no sound?’ Ben asked.

Braunschweiger shook his head. ‘Insurance company does not ask for this, so why should I pay for expensive system?’

Onscreen, Catalina was opening up her bag and taking out the items to show him. He was examining each one in turn.

‘What did she say to you?’

‘That these were things from her grandmother. Old woman has died and she does not want them.’

Raul shook his head in disbelief. ‘Why would she say that? Our grandmothers have both been dead for years.’

‘What else did she say?’ Ben asked Braunschweiger.

‘Nothing. That she needs the money fast. My offer is twenty thousand, for all.’ Braunschweiger made a grasping motion that was probably unconscious.

‘Cash?’

Braunschweiger turned away from the screen with a worried frown, as if it had just occurred to him that if he admitted to carrying such large sums of cash on the premises, these two guys would surely beat him up and rob him.

Raul looked ready to punch him in the face. ‘I hate crooks like you who take advantage of people. That’s a fraction of what this stuff was worth. You’re lucky we don’t burn this place to the ground.’

Ben looked at Raul and could see the fury in his eyes. He put a hand on his arm to steady him. He asked Braunschweiger, ‘And she didn’t give any clue why she needed the cash in such a rush?’

‘Nein, she spoke hardly a word. She did not try to argue price. I offer the money, she nods okay, and that is it. I fetch the cash from safe, count it before her and she takes and puts it in the bag, as you see.’ The events were happening on the screen as Braunschweiger narrated them. A few moments later, the transaction was over and Catalina Fuentes left the pawnshop looking just as nervy and tense as she had before. She seemed to pause at the entrance, as if peeking through the door to check the coast was clear. Then she was gone.

Raul kept staring at the empty shop as if waiting for her to return. His face was etched with sadness.

‘You want that I should burn to disc?’ Braunschweiger offered. Maybe he thought that if he was generous, these two wouldn’t beat him up and rob him after all.

‘Do it,’ Ben said.

Braunschweiger delved in a box and came out with a sealed pack of DVD-ROMs. He tore open the packaging and slotted one into the computer, hit a few keys and clicked here and there, and a minute later the file was burned onto it. Ben pocketed the disc, then stepped over to the counter and picked the gold Cartier from the tray. ‘We’ll take this, too.’

‘Ten thousand,’ Braunschweiger said. Generosity had its limits.

Ben shook his head.

‘Seven, then.’

Ben took out his Zippo, clanged it open and thumbed the striker. Braunschweiger stared at the flickering flame, got the message and swallowed. ‘No charge,’ he said. ‘What the hell, I make enough on the necklace.’

‘You’re a credit to your profession,’ Ben said, flicking the lighter shut. He gave the watch to Raul. Raul clutched it tightly in his fist, looking at Braunschweiger as if he would like to make him eat it.

They left the pawnshop and returned to the car. The rainclouds had drawn back like a curtain, and the sunshine was peeping timidly through the gap but it didn’t feel any warmer.

Raul was so worked up that his hands were shaking. Ben didn’t start the engine. He cracked the window open just an inch, so the rain couldn’t get through, and lit a Gauloise. With all the pieces of the puzzle up in the air like confetti spiralling in a wind, it was time to do some serious thinking.

Raul kept staring at his sister’s gold watch. ‘I’m more sure than ever. Who would cash in their precious valuables to raise twenty thousand euros when they’re planning to kill themselves four days later?’

‘Tell me,’ Ben said. ‘Was your sister the kind of person who spent everything she earned on fancy stuff and high living?’

Raul looked at him. ‘Don’t keep talking about her in the past tense. And no, that has never been her way.’

‘Then there’s still plenty in the bank?’

‘She left behind over six hundred thousand euros in her account.’

‘Where’s the money now?’

‘My parents refused to accept it, even though legally it passes to them. Said they wanted to donate it all to their church.’

‘And nobody’s called in any big debts that you know about?’ Ben asked.

‘No debts. If she’d been worried about money, I’d have known about it. She’d have told me.’ Raul narrowed his eyes at Ben, as if he could see where he was going with this line of thinking. ‘You’re wondering why she didn’t just withdraw the money from her account, if she needed it.’

Ben nodded. ‘There’s always a reason why people do the things they do. A cash withdrawal would have left a paper trail. This looks like a deliberate attempt to cover her tracks. She was nervous, edgy. Something was frightening her.’

Raul pursed his lips and wrinkled his brow. He was silent for a while, thinking so hard that Ben could almost hear his brain grinding. ‘I know what happened. The bastard was extorting money out of her. Blackmail, for something.’

Ben had already considered that idea. ‘For what?’

‘I don’t know. But it would explain why she needed money without leaving a trace.’ Raul worked it over for a few moments longer, then shook his head. ‘No. Why would someone blackmail her for twenty thousand euros when she was worth so much more? And why would she have to disappear afterwards? The blackmailer suddenly turns kidnapper? That doesn’t make sense either. If they’d simply kidnapped her in the first place, they could have asked whatever ransom they wanted.’

‘Or,’ Ben said.

Raul looked at him again, pale with worry. ‘Or what?’

‘There’s another possibility, Raul. One you need to be ready for.’

‘I’m ready.’

Ben took a long draw on the cigarette, and flicked ash out of the crack in the window. ‘Suppose you’re right and there’s some weirdo extorting money from her for some reason we don’t know yet. She doesn’t want anyone to know, and selling her jewellery is the only way she can think of to raise the money quickly and quietly, without leaving a trail. She can’t go to a respectable jeweller, either, not if she wants to avoid any kind of paperwork, records, receipts, official evaluations. That’s why she ends up having to go to a piece of shit like Braunschweiger, even though she knows she’ll get a fraction of what the items are worth. She’s willing to take the loss. So, she gets the twenty thousand cash, passes it straight over to the blackmailer, in the hope that it’ll all go away, but then it turns out the twenty thousand was just the start. Maybe he starts pressuring her for twenty more, or fifty, or a hundred. She refuses.’

Raul stared at him. ‘And?’

‘There’s a confrontation. Maybe he threatens her. She’s defiant. It gets violent. Maybe he never intended to hurt her, but he kills her in the struggle. He makes it look like suicide.’

‘I keep telling you, she’s alive,’ Raul said. ‘She’s in danger, but she’s alive.’

Ben took another draw on the cigarette and blew smoke. ‘That’s what you believe, or what you want to believe?’

‘It’s neither. It’s what I know.’

Ben shrugged. ‘Fine. Then let’s take that as our bottom line. She’s alive, and she’s scared and in danger.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then consider this alternative scenario,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe she didn’t need the money to pay off someone else. Maybe she needed it for herself. We could be getting this all wrong. Imagine the situation from another angle.’

Raul blinked. ‘What other angle?’

‘Stalkers are cowards. They’re also delusional enough to believe that they might actually have a chance of scoring with the person they’re obsessed about. If some creep was hanging around, it’s more than likely he’d have been making a nuisance of himself for a while. Typically, these types of people will try to insinuate themselves into the victim’s life in all kinds of ways before all the rejections, warnings, and finally court exclusion orders, cause them to build up enough rage and resentment to resort to anything as drastic as abduction. If he found out her private email address, he might have bombarded her with messages. Or written her letters. The police found nothing like that. Now, that could mean they weren’t looking thoroughly enough, or it could actually mean they were right. There’s no evidence that she was being stalked. None at all, just like we have no body. The only thing driving that idea is your fear that some nutjob is holding your sister captive in a cellar somewhere.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Go where the evidence points,’ Ben said. ‘Take the stalker out of the equation. What if there is no kidnapper? What if she was just running from something, or someone, who had her so scared that she faked her own suicide?’

‘Like what? Like who?’

‘I don’t know. But that would explain why she couldn’t withdraw cash from the bank. Like you said, money’s not on a suicidal person’s priority list. You can’t take it with you. And twenty thousand euros isn’t exactly a fortune, especially not by Catalina’s standards. But for someone on the run, someone scared and desperate, someone who’s mentally switched to survival mode and thinking only in the short term, it’s plenty to be getting on with.’

All kinds of thoughts and emotions were playing behind Raul’s eyes, which were jacked wide open and staring into the middle distance.

‘If she’s alive, she didn’t just drop off the face of the planet,’ Ben said. ‘Where would she go? Where would you go?’

Raul shook his head.

‘I know where I’d go,’ Ben said. ‘To ground, somewhere wild and remote where nobody could find me. Where I could stay hidden for as long as necessary to figure out my options and decide on my next move. I could live in a dugout burrow in the woods if I had to. I’d be able to make a habitable shelter in a cave, hunt my own food, live on nothing, disappear so completely that not even a professional could ever track me down. Because that’s who I am, and that’s what I was trained to do. But I’m not Catalina. You know her better than anyone. So think.’

Raul was silent for a long minute. Then a dawning light appeared in his eyes and the tension seemed to drop from his face.

‘There’s one place she could have gone,’ he said.