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

men clung to the bars set along the windows, pressing themselves against the walls, listening to the whine and clatter of the cables, willing the car up to the summit.

When finally it slipped into the shelter of its concrete dock, and the door slid open, they tumbled out with shaking legs on to the deck, and a new kind of fear displaced the old.

‘Which way?’ Mackenzie said.

Greene pointed south. ‘You can just see the Skywalk set into the dip between the peaks.’ Mackenzie followed his finger and saw low sunlight glinting off the glass walls of the distant observation platform. Then, some way above it, a light flashing on the dark side of the Rock.

‘What’s that?’

‘No idea. We need to get down on to the road.’

They scrambled down steps and through bushes to jump finally on to the single-track road that dipped along the crest of the summit. In the shadow of the rock again, Mackenzie saw the silhouette of a figure leaping from the wall above them. Greene spun around, drawing his weapon from a shoulder holster to level it at their attacker.

‘Stop!’ Mackenzie shouted, and Greene saw just in time that it was an ape. An adult male. Probably looking for food. Mackenzie’s bellow in the wind sent it scampering, and a jumpy DS Greene raised his gun, two-handed, to point at the sky before quickly reholstering.

The two men set off at a run down the road, sending long shadows off to the west in the strangely cold yellow light. They passed a white Mercedes pulled into the side of the road where apes clustered around a semi-covered area set into the rock beneath a crumbling stone arch. A concrete base was littered with orange peel.

‘The remnants of last night’s meal,’ Greene said. ‘They’ll be up to feed them again soon.’

The usually friendly Barbary macaques hung from wooden beams or balanced precariously on railings, gazing at them with dark, apprehensive, simian eyes. Perhaps they, too, sensed the fear that blew across the summit on this cold dawn.

It took several more breathless minutes to reach the platform, only to discover that there was no one there. Mackenzie stepped out on to the glass deck and felt his insides fall away as he looked down. He retreated quickly to the safety of the stairs, and shaded his eyes against the sky to look up towards the southern peak that loomed over them. ‘That’s where the light came from. How do we get up there?’

‘Steps going up from the foot of the platform,’ Greene said, and he clambered back down to the stairs. Mackenzie went after him two at a time.

*

Cleland canted his head to one side and looked curiously at the slight figure of Cristina as she stepped out on to the tiny stone platform, breathless from the steepness of the climb. Her anorak seemed to inflate in the wind, and although her hair was tied back, strands of it had come free to dance around her head. He almost wondered how he had managed to harbour such hatred for someone so insignificant.

Cristina glanced around, almost as if looking for some means of escape. The ruins of an old guardhouse stood off to her right. On her left, a low wall ran from a small round watchtower to the rocks and spiky maquis plants bordering the remaining steps to peak. The Rock remained dark on the west side, while sunlight sprayed early colour across the east face and sent diamonds coruscating away across the Mediterranean towards Africa. The wind was fierce and she had to plant her feet to avoid being toppled by it. It lent her a look of defiance that only served to enrage Cleland.

Somehow Ana sensed her presence and called out her name, taking a step towards her. But Cleland held her arm firmly, a pistol in his free hand pressed against her temple.

‘Don’t hurt her, please,’ Cristina begged him.

Cleland’s smile was rueful. ‘It’s not my intention. It was. But not any more. She’s a remarkable lady, your aunt. When this is all over I’m going to take her with me. I will do whatever it takes to restore her sight and her hearing.’

Cristina regarded him with puzzled astonishment. ‘You can’t.’

‘I can do anything I like.’

‘Her condition is genetic. There is no cure. There can be no cure.’

‘It’s amazing what money can buy. And I have money to burn, Cristina. And no one else to spend it on since you killed my Angela.’

‘I didn’t!’

But he wasn’t listening. ‘And my child.’

Cristina frowned.

‘You didn’t know she was pregnant, did you? No one did. The test had only confirmed it two days earlier. You killed them both.’

Cristina shook her head vigorously. ‘No! You did.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m not going to argue with you. I am assuming you have a weapon. I’d advise you to take it out very carefully and lay it on the ground.’

‘I’m not armed.’

There was scorn in Cleland’s laughter. ‘Of course you aren’t.’ But the smile wiped itself from his face in an instant, to be replaced by a look so ugly that Cristina felt almost violated by it. ‘Put it on the ground or I’ll kill her.’ The bellow of his voice resounded around this tiny space, and he pressed the barrel of his gun into Ana’s temple.

Cristina shook her head helplessly. ‘I swear. I don’t have a gun. Look . . .’ And carefully she unzipped her anorak to hold it open. She wore only a T-shirt beneath it, and felt cold air filling it and chilling her skin.

It seemed to take Cleland several moments to absorb the fact that this woman had come, unarmed, to plead for the life of her aunt. In the full knowledge that Cleland would kill her. He almost admired her for it.

He swung the gun away from Ana’s head and pointed it at arm’s length towards Cristina. She closed her eyes. ‘I have a young son,’ she said.

‘As I too might have had.’

And she knew that there would be no