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Monday, November 13, 2006
It was an ambush. The policeman was waiting for me to return to Diana's house to chase after me, corner me and catch me. I was always his target. For some reason, that pig was obsessed with me.
Sara opened her eyes wishing it had all been a nightmare. Actually, she knew it was not like that, because the stench down there was making her feel faint. Down there. The space was so limited that Sara could touch the stonewall with both hands if she opened her arms in the shape of a cross. Over her head, several meters above, a dark circle spat drops of water. Yes, she was actually trapped in a dry pit. And soaked to the bone.
A red spot blurred the right margin of her field of vision. Her eye stung. Intuitively, she reached for the area and impregnated herself with blood. The substance came from her forehead, where a cut did not cease to flow blood. Shit. Perhaps because of the effect of the discovery, her temple began to throb intensely. The blood flowed without stopping, and immediately dyed her hand red. She had to close the wound or she would faint soon.
“Help!” She shouted from the hole, and the distress call reverberated on the walls for a few seconds. Any murmur that came out to the surface was camouflaged by the sound of the storm.
“Someone help me!”
Sara had the unfortunate occurrence that if a policeman wanted to keep someone locked up and kept secret, he would not hide her in a place where they could hear her screams.
A professional had kidnapped her, and there was nothing she could do to escape. What had become of Diana? Was she also locked up? Tortured? Dead...? The idea was invasive and unbearable, and the young neurosurgeon shivered as she weighed her thoughts. She dropped onto the damp ground and leaned her back against the stone. She let the rain clean the wound and devote all her energy to control the spasms of terror that had begun to dominate her body.
Police officer Thomas Carroll was committing a folly. After being informed in the office of Judge Callejo about the unexpected misdeeds of his companion, everything had rushed to a frenetic pace. The most urgent action was to find and arrest Alfred Horner, and, as there was no other course, all the headlights had focused on him to carry out the task.
During the flight back to Oxford, he began to assume the fact that he had spent days sharing the details of the investigation with the killer himself. Carroll was a non-drinker, but it was more than appropriate to order a vodka with ice in one of the bars at the terminal before embarking. The situation overflowed from all sides.
Beside him was his new and improvised partner, Dr. Jaime Vergara. It struck him that he didn’t open his mouth for the entire flight. He wriggled around in the chair, staring blankly at him while punishing himself by biting his nails. Carroll had not yet decided whether he liked him or not. He looked like a good guy, but he was not a cop, and it was obvious that the situation affected him personally. That had been the reason why he had insisted on traveling with him and helping him hunt Horner. But would he be any help or a hindrance? Soon he would see.
Snowflake had risked gifting himself a solitary night to resolve the case. He didn’t plan to telephone the police station to inform the captain. Of course, he hadn’t worked for twenty-four hours a day with Alfred, gaining his trust and learning from him, so that at the last moment the captain would send a special patrol and he would be relegated to the background. He found himself in the story of his life. He was aware that he was disobeying the code, but it was clear that when he had to call his boss, it would be to report that he had captured Mike Lennard's killer, not before. It would be all a sensation that would lead to his first medal, or a file to expel him from the police force. And his only accomplice was a very young doctor who seemed to be about to suffer an anxiety attack. Great.
It was ten o'clock when the taxi dropped them off on a residential street in Kidlington. It was pouring rain in Oxford. A fitting environment for Thomas' mood. They passed a red Mini. This car was already here a few hours ago, he warned, as they crossed the front garden. Carroll was in the front with the barrel of his gun ready to fire, and Jaime, a couple of meters behind him. The poor boy didn’t blink. The bell rang, but there was no answer. The policeman ordered Vergara to step aside and then shot the lock. He couldn’t afford to act with intelligence, time was pressing. The bolt exploded and Horner's house was accessible.
The living room, which accessed directly from the front door, was a disaster. Carroll stood in the middle of the room and turned on himself to create a panoramic view that summarized the state of that disorder. The shelves had fallen from the wall, there were remnants of a vase on the parquet, and a very expensive TV model had been shattered. Under what conditions does Fred live, for God's sake? The leather sofa was intact, though stained with a few dried drops. The drops were probably whiskey, according to the four empty bottles of Four Roses that decorated the table. Beneath the table, scattered on the floor, there were more than a dozen sheets of paper written by hand. He picked them all up in a bunch and looked at the first one with a frown. It was a handwritten letter dedicated to a certain Diana from... Sara? That damn son of a bitch, these are hints about the case that he’s been hiding from me!
Now Thomas knew that he was playing at a disadvantage at all times. Not that Alfred was an exceptional detective, but that he had all the keys from the beginning. He was the key.
"Agent, you have to see this! Quick!”
It was Dr. Vergara's trembling voice. Where was he? The call came from the attached room, which turned out to be the bedroom. Thomas found Jaime lying on the bed and pressing his fingers against the arteries of an unconscious woman's neck. A Dantesque vision. She was young, about twenty, and naked and unconscious on the bed. She had been chained to the headboard, and her legs, slightly open, made it possible to see at first glance a small stream of coagulated blood coming out of the pubic area.
“Shit.”
"Her pulse is very weak, but she's alive," the doctor announced, urging Carroll to call the emergency room.
Amazed by the unexpected diligence of his companion, the policeman obeyed.
"She was raped," Jaime went on, once making sure an ambulance was on the way. He moved with determination and his voice was firm. “If the attendants don’t delay, she will survive.”
“All right.”
"What is that under your arm?" Jaime pointed his chin at the sheet of paper.
Carroll quickly handed them over to him as if he were freed from a crying child.
"Here, this will interest you," he spat.
The policeman left the bedroom (he left the girl in good hands and the doctor with several pages of reading material) and returned to the living room. He needed to find something to tell him the current whereabouts of his former companion. He chose to rummage through the rubble that had once been beautiful furniture, and it took less than a minute to distinguish a familiar object. On the floor, next to the skirting board and under a wooden plank, was a pen. “No, it wasn’t just a pen,” said Carroll when he removed the cap. The floor was slightly tilted and it had probably arrived there from the couch area. And it was not just any pen. It was the one Horner had written so brightly on the napkin the other morning in the cafe, and... fuck... it had traces of dried blood on the tip. I had the pen in front of my nose and I didn’t realize... I'm such an idiot!
Gently, he tucked the object into a plastic bag and continued to search. His gaze focused on the cracked television, in the back, hidden among the cables, he spotted an Indian-looking box, ideal for a woman to keep a pair of earrings, for example. What Carroll found inside made him intensely tingly. A used bullet rested on a layer of foam, as if the box were a miniature coffin. It was then that he assumed the devastating truth.
They were right: Alfred murdered Mike Lennard.
The bullet and the pen were two important enough elements for Thomas to rebuild the crime scene without thinking too much: on November 7th, Alfred Horner met with his aggressor, Charley Rubial, somewhere in Oxford. Or at least that's what he thought, because it was actually his twin brother, Mike Lennard. He discovered his address at 219 Cowley Road, and went there to take revenge. Struggling, they ended up in the bathroom. It was a bitter struggle, of life or death, albeit unbalanced, for Horner was much more burly than the weakling of Lennard. At first he tried to strangle him with a rope, and that is why Lennard's corpse had a furrow on his neck. Surely he only had a pen to defend himself, so he used it to pull away with desperation. Hence Fred would appear with those wounds on his forearm, of course. In the end, Horner, much more experienced, managed to step back, creating a space of one meter from Lennard. Just enough to draw his gun and shoot him in the forehead. Once he finished with him, he took the pen and used it to write a message of vengeance on his chest. In perfect Castilian, of course! Horner is of Spanish origin. Then he picked up the bullet to remove the evidence, put the pen in the inside pocket of his jacket, and returned to his apartment. Once inside he had to get drunk to forget everything he had done, and in his passing state of madness, he directed his anger against the furniture.
Carroll's legs were shaking. The scene of the crime was clear, the question that was assaulting him was obvious: had Alfred been aware of his horrible crime during the whole investigation? He realized that either of the two possible responses was traumatic. An emotion overcame him and he felt nauseous. He ran to the bathroom and threw up until there was no more bile in his stomach. Cold sweat ran down his body. Suddenly, again, the voice of Jaime Vergara, who was beginning to sound inopportune and annoying:
"Agent, these letters are all written by my friend Sara.”
The doctor was standing beneath the frame of the bathroom door, his face taciturn. Carroll looked up at him, he was kneeling on the floor with a doughy mouth and an irritated throat.
"We have to find Horner right away, or I'm afraid Sara will be next."
Find Horner, very simple...
Thomas had the hardest part. Find your old colleague and kill him. But where to start? Alfred had no friends, and the only person he'd gotten close to in the last month, besides the unfortunate girl still waiting for the ambulance, was himself. And if he didn’t know where he was, who would know?
Think Tom, think... where to start?
He chose to rewind the investigation of the case from today until the night of the crime, reviewing every moment with Alfred, every dialogue. For example, when advised to take a few days off. When they discovered that someone had left a threatening message on the car, or when they interviewed that Muslim in the Ahmets. A spark. Wait a minute! The other day they had been chasing a Volkswagen all over town. A black car with which Alfred seemed obsessed. Carroll remembered the only person who surely knew the whereabouts of Horner, because he had been following all his movements: his name was Henry Millward and he was driving a black Volkswagen.
However, Millward's whereabouts was as unknown as Alfred's. The spark of his mind went out as quickly as it had come, and then, at that point of reflection and with the bitter taste of vomit still in his mouth, Thomas was engrossed in a framed photograph hanging from the wall. In it Alfred proudly posed by the river with a boat tied to the shore. The boat was gleaming, and Carroll assumed the photo was taken the day of his purchase. He knew that ship dock. On that deck he had enjoyed a few beers with Alfred soon after meeting. He really appreciated it more than his own home. Thomas' pupils contracted suddenly. If Horner was not in his house, that boat was the second most likely place he could be.
Marcos Tena flinched when, traveling on the intercity bus, Alyssa Grifero's mobile phone rang. The suspect had managed to convince him to take the first plane to London, and from there, a couple of buses to the Kidlington neighborhood, near Oxford. At first he had accepted her offer, and even had come to think that together they were going to stop the real murderer, and that he was going to become a hero and other bullshit. However, the reality was that since leaving Madrid, he had not stopped palpating his cell phone off on the inside of his pants. He imagined the bastard Barreneche calling him incessantly and listening to the voice mail again and again, until his balls swelled and he proceeded to open a dismissal file.
Grifero pulled her cell phone out of her jacket without even asking for permission, and both looked in unison at the identity of the caller. HENRY MILLWARD.
“That’s him! He’s my contact,” she said in a subdued voice, but with a glint in her eyes that was euphoric.
Marcos Tena was a policeman with promising qualities, but had he more experience; he would not have let Alyssa answer without activating the speaker on the phone. He nodded and glanced toward the bus window. He was having a hard time breathing.
Quickly, Alyssa picked up the phone and held it to her ear with both hands cuffed. She barely let out a monosyllable from time to time, and while his interlocutor spoke through the handset, Tena and Grifero's gaze remained on the other side. The policeman was unable to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling that a very clever girl was manipulating him.
When the conversation was over and Alyssa hung up, Tena seemed to see a certain pallor on her face.
“Everything good?” He said.
“We have him!” She looked doubtful. “Henry says he's seen him get into his car with an unconscious woman.”
“A woman? Holy God.”
“Yes. He says he has followed him to a clearing out between the Perch restaurant and the A34 motorway. He assures... uh... saw him get out of the car with her and throw her into an abandoned well. It is not far away.”
Tena put his hands on his forehead. It was too much pressure. Was a woman unconscious in a well? He didn’t even know if he could trust that Henry Millward. Alyssa had assured him that he was a legal friend she had known for many years, and that he had become one of the few people she could trust. But, leaving Millward aside, was Alyssa herself reliable? Until a few hours ago she was a murderer he was looking to capture her and bring her to trial.
"Tell me at least the name of who we're looking for, dammit."
"I still can’t, I swear. Trust me a few more minutes, that's all I ask.”
The bus stopped at the next stop, opening its sliding doors. Alyssa looked at the doors, then at Tena. Again, she was forcing him to decide.
They got off the bus, and she started looking for a taxi right away. It was totally dark, but it was just starting to rain.
"Alyssa, wait a minute," he said, and took her arm. “Are we sure that the target is still there, in that well?”
From the way Alyssa looked down, Marcos knew she was weighing the answer well.
"At least two minutes ago she was," she said firmly.
Marcos squeezed her arm a little more, as if demanding attention.
“Okay I believe you.”
She nodded in satisfaction, and for a moment, Tena thought they had formed a kind of alliance. They got into the first taxi that passed the street and Alyssa pronounced the name of their new destination: The Perch.
Alyssa's knees had wobbled when she got the call from Henry. A few words were enough, and a glance that was a little taken to make Don Perfecto think that it was a good idea to answer the call. She still couldn’t believe the good fortune she had had in running into such a magnanimous agent as Marcos Tena. It must have been some sort of signal.
She was frozen when she pressed the green button and waited for Henry's greeting. Outside, the blizzard was so intense that the cold reached the interior of the bus.
“Aly, it's Dorian. I know exactly where your man is.”
“Okay.”
"I infer from your neutral answer that you can’t speak. It’s ok. I have good news and bad news.”
“Ok.”
As Henry's Anglo-Saxon accent reached her ear through the earpiece, Alyssa stared at the policeman praying that he wasn’t aware of anything.
"The good news is he's on the canal, in a garnet-colored boat right in front of the football fields. Where are you now?”
“Kidlington.”
"Okay, it's not far from your current location. Besides, I saw him lock up a girl on the boat next to his. I don’t know what you're looking for.”
“Yes.”
"Does that mean you want the bad news now?"
“Yes.”
"Well... Before you go to the canal, your man has gone around the fields behind the Perch restaurant, just before the A34 motorway. There is an abandoned well there. You won’t believe it, but he has thrown another girl to the bottom of the well.”
“I get it.”
Alyssa's neurons had set to work faster than they had ever done before. She had not yet finished listening to Henry, and the fugitive was already drawing up the plan of attack.
"We have to do something," the spy went on. “Do you want me to take care of the girl from the well so you can take care of him?” He offered himself.
“No.”
"Aly, are you sure?"
“Of course.”
"You’re planning something, aren’t you?"
“Yes. Thank you very much... Henry.”
She hung up to face Marco Tena's eyes. She conceded a second to formulate a credible lie. She announced, with as neutral a gesture as possible, that the target was next to a lost well in the back of The Perch. She completely omitted all the part of the canal boats, where she actually expected her prey. The inexperienced police hesitated at first, but as soon as the bus stopped at the next stop, she took advantage of it to exert more pressure. She jumped down from the bus to the street, and, of course, he followed her like a lapdog.
Well, Don Perfecto had believed her after all.