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

her screen burned itself on to her retinas, along with the words of its message. She was frozen in disbelief. Mackenzie dead? How? When? Before the full weight of this cryptic message bore down on her. Cleland had Ana. And now he wanted her.

He was telling her not to expect any help from Mackenzie, but in any case she knew that there was no one who could rescue her from this dilemma. How could she not go? How could she simply ignore this message and leave Ana to her fate? How could she live with herself if she did?

But if she went there could only be one outcome. Cleland would kill her, without any guarantee that he would spare Ana. It was perfectly possible that her aunt was already dead. And if Cristina were to die, then Lucas would have lost both his parents. How could she deprive him of his mother after the murder of his father? Who would care for him then? Nuri and Paco?

She had never felt so alone in her life. Tell no one – we will know, they said. Which could only mean they had someone on the inside. Which meant that she couldn’t go to the Jefe or to any of her other colleagues in the police. There was no one to advise her, no one to help. And an impossible decision to make: die and abandon her child, or let Cleland murder her aunt, and live for ever with the guilt.

She dropped her face into outspread palms and felt tears of despair fill her eyes. Her thoughts tumbled one over the other in a stream of confused consciousness. How was it possible that Mackenzie was dead? Maybe they were lying. Because he was the only one left in the world, it seemed, that she could trust.

She wiped the tears quickly from her eyes and fumbled with her phone to find Mackenzie’s mobile number and tapped it to autodial. It rang four times before redirecting her to leave a message. Her voice was hoarse as she whispered into the phone, ‘Señor, they want to exchange me for Ana. The Gibraltar Skywalk at first light. If you get this, know that I have no choice but to do what they want.’

When she hung up she realized that in crystallizing her thoughts in the words of her message she had made her decision. With a heart that was breaking, she slipped from the bed she had shared all these years with the father of her son, and went to rouse the boy from his sleep.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

It was a little after 6 am when Mackenzie pulled up outside the apartment at the top of Calle Utopía. At the hotel he had changed his jeans, and dug a used shirt out of the laundry. It had taken him some minutes to clean the blood from his face and hands. There was little that clung more stubbornly to the skin than dried blood. It got into every crease, insinuating its way into every pore. His right hand was already bruised and swollen from having driven it with force twice into Paco’s face. The painkillers given him by the medic at Helicopteros had kicked in and his chest hurt less. But every muscle in his body was seizing up.

He climbed stiffly out of the car. It was still dark.

He pressed the buzzer on the door to the stairwell and waited. No response. He pressed again and held his finger on it for a full ten seconds. Still nothing. A pervasive sense of foreboding took hold.

He stepped back on the pavement and looked up. There were no lights in the windows of Cristina’s apartment. But there was a light shining in one of the windows of the adjoining apartment. He went back to the door and pressed another buzzer. An irate voice barked through the speaker at him almost immediately.

‘Have you any idea what time it is?’ A woman’s voice.

‘My apologies, señora, this is an emergency. I’m trying to contact Officer Sánchez.’

‘She’s not here.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I saw her leave with the boy about ten minutes ago. That’s how.’

‘I don’t suppose you know where she’s gone?’

‘How would I know that?’

Mackenzie reached for his phone to try and call her, before realizing that the shirt pocket was empty. His phone in pieces in the car. He pressed the buzzer again.

‘What!’

‘Would you call her mobile number for me?’

‘For Heaven’s sake, señor.’

‘Please, señora. Do you have it?’

‘Yes, I have it.’ Another sigh, then a long pause that seemed to stretch out forever. Then: ‘No reply. It went to the answering service.’

‘Shit!’ Mackenzie’s powers of processing went into overdrive. She had the boy with her. If she was going to keep some ill-advised rendezvous with Cleland, as he suspected, she wouldn’t take Lucas with her. He pressed the buzzer again.

‘If you don’t go away I’m going to call the police!’

Mackenzie raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘I’m going. I promise. I just need Nuri’s address. Cristina’s sister.’

The neighbour growled back. ‘I know who her sister is.’

*

Nuri and Paco’s apartment was on the east side of town, on the hill below the main street. It was on the fourth floor of an apartment block above a tapas bar, tables and chairs stacked on wooden decking in front of it. It took Mackenzie less than five minutes to get there. He pulled into a parking slot beside the deck and stepped out into cooling air. Finally the oppressive temperatures of the night were in retreat. But with the dawn, and the rising of the sun, the heat would build all over again, and another breathless day lay in prospect.

Across the street, beyond a white wall, a patchwork of fields and vineyards fell away into the night before rising towards the foothills of the distant Sierra Bermeja. The lights of an occasional truck tracked a path through the dark on the motorway that crossed the plain below, its viaducts spanning dried river beds