A Silent Death by Peter May (top books to read .txt) 📗

Cleland’s silence lasted so long she really did believe that this time he had gone.

‘Hello . . . ?’

Nothing.

‘Señor?’

Finally a vibration at her breast.

– What was worse? Losing your sight or your hearing?

No reaction to her story. Nothing. Just a change of subject as if, in spite of his asking, her story was not the one he wanted to hear. She realized she would have to respond.

‘I was always prepared for the fact that one day I would lose my hearing completely. But nothing prepares you for blindness.’ She pauses and runs the rule of recollection back over the years. ‘Though perhaps, strange as it seems, the thing I miss most is music. I loved my music as a kid. Everyone else has a soundtrack to their lives. Mine is silence.’ And she can almost hear the silence in the room that follows. Finally, her buzzer vibrates once more against her chest.

– One day, Ana, if we both survive this, I’ll see that you never want for anything again. That’s a promise.

She has not the least idea how to respond.

– I have to go out for a while.

And she finds herself suffused with relief. Space to think. Time to try and find a way out of this.

– Just don’t even think of trying to alert anyone. People can die too easily. Especially little children.

*

Cleland sat looking at the sightless woman perched on the chair opposite. Two screens between them. Conduits of communication. Her way of reaching the world beyond silence and darkness. His way of reaching into hers.

He recalled slapping her yesterday. Twice. And felt immediate regret. Like striking a helpless animal. No way for her to hit back. Which made him no better than those bullies who had so relentlessly tormented him through all his miserable childhood. He wanted to reach out and take her hand and tell her he was sorry. Such an alien impulse that he was completely unable to act upon it, and sat just staring at her face. And thought about Sergio.

He had not meant to hit Sergio so hard. If he had known then just how much he meant to Ana . . . It was just one more thing taken from her. God had robbed her of her sight and her hearing. Cleland had stolen her freedom. And her love.

And Angela. He had taken her life. He screwed his eyes tight shut and felt hot tears squeezing out between the lids to track their way down a tanned face starting to show the ravages of stress. If it hadn’t been for that stupid bloody policewoman . . .

He reached over to grab the untouched plate of churros in front of Ana, and the mug of cooling coffee, and hurled both at the wall with a force only matched by the strength of the roar of pure frustration that rose from his throat and resonated in the still morning air.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Outside the police station the sun beat down mercilessly on the pavements of Marviña, the early morning freshness long since burned off. Here in the interview room, where there were no windows, LED strips on the ceiling reflected a bright unforgiving light back off every hard surface. It was sticky hot, and Carlos Castillejos dripped sweat from the end of his long nose on to the plasticized pages of the book of mug shots they kept in the evidence room of the Policía Local. A gallery of rogues scowling at the lens, faces that in some cases reflected defeat, in others defiance. All taken at the moment of arrest and maximum vulnerability.

Carlos displayed no interest in identifying any of the faces that slid by in front of him. He knew what it could cost to get on the wrong side of any of these people. But his wife leaned in against him, scrutinizing each one. She knew the Fernández family well, she had told Cristina. She had been at school with the wife, and as teenagers they had gone to dances together down in Marviña, staying over at the house of her cousin, often sharing a bed, as well as tales of romantic encounters. She was riven with grief.

Suddenly she stabbed a finger at a swarthy face that stared at her with simmering resentment from the pages of the book. ‘Him!’ she said. ‘That’s him. He was the leader.’

Carlos threw her a warning look. ‘Mariana,’ he said quietly, but with an underlying menace. She was oblivious.

‘Are you sure?’ Cristina asked.

‘That face will be etched in my memory till the day I die,’ she said.

‘Which might be quite soon if you don’t shut up,’ Carlos growled. All pretence of cooperation with the police had vanished in an instant.

‘He was the one who said we should get the signpost fixed.’ Mariana was clearly back at the finca looking into this man’s ugly face as he sneered at her. ‘He thought it was funny. After what they had done to the Fernández family, he thought it was a joke!’ She couldn’t keep the disgust from her voice. ‘Who is he?’

Cristina said, ‘You don’t need to know.’ She turned the book towards herself and looked at the details on the reverse of the page. Roberto Vasquéz. A petty criminal with a string of convictions for possession. Suspicions of dealing unproven. She unclipped the ring binder and removed the page, then returned the book for the Castillejos to continue looking.

Within half an hour they had exhausted the station’s photographic record of petty criminals. There were no further identifications. Cristina herself had looked at each face with every turn of the page and thought how, after a while, they all started to look the same. Different faces, but the same dead eyes.

She left Carlos and Mariana in the interview room to vent their domestic disharmony while she took the mug shot of Vasquéz to the front office, where she composed a request for further information from UDYCO in Malaga,