Jesper threw his leg over the saddle and Ella climbed on behind him. They disappeared downhill with a low growl and a flash of tail lights. I threaded back to the Cuesta de Gomérez, the treelined walkway that led towards the city centre, as the street lamps sparked up.
Granada Cathedral was a giant brown baroque wedding cake. If it didn’t have a hunchback in its bell tower, it should have done. The three grand arches at the front were floodlit – I could see their glow as I approached them from the side, down an alley that was in the middle of a facelift. It was lined with sheets of wriggly tin suspended at head height on metal poles, beneath which were either locked, graffiti-covered roller shutters, or open souvenir shops that weren’t yet doing a roaring trade.
A crumpled figure sat hunched at the corner, in the shadow of the hoarding. Taking refuge behind a grubby black ninja
niqab
, she could have been anywhere between eighteen and eighty. As I approached her, all I could hear was the echo of my footsteps and her low moaning, punctuated by the occasional rattle of a few coins in the bottom of a paper cup.
I thrust my hand into my jeans pocket for a couple of euros. She struggled to her feet as I moved forward to add them to her collection and muttered something I couldn’t quite make out. I leaned in closer and cocked my ear. I still couldn’t understand what she was saying, but by then I didn’t need to.
She peeled her equally grubby cloak far enough back to let me see what she was carrying in her right hand. I got the message. From now on her fully cocked and silenced Llama Mini-Max .45 sub-compact was going to do most of the talking. These things were small enough to put in a clutch bag, but they had a ten-round, double-stack magazine, which was more than enough to turn this into a very bad day out.
Now we were breathing each other’s oxygen, I also couldn’t help noticing that she had three days’ stubble beneath her
niqab
, and a very steady aim. I thought about asking whether a five-euro note would settle it, but the glint in the eyes told me not to.
The cup disappeared, and the Llama said I should follow its owner as he reversed into the darkened passageway that I could now see over his shoulder. I followed its instructions.
I was on full alert, hopefully better late than never. I could hear a bunch of kids playing football in the square I’d been aiming for. I could hear the click-clack of stiletto heels about ten metres behind Niqab. And the heavy-breathing presence at my back.
I glanced down at the matt black lump of metal pointed at my centre mass. The Mini-Max wasn’t a hundred per cent reliable: it had a tendency to catapult its ejected cases into the user’s forehead, and a reputation for jamming. But I wasn’t about to depend on that. I wondered whether I could interfere with the topslide.
The click-clack came nearer. That wasn’t necessarily good news. If my mate in the
niqab
got trigger-happy, he wouldn’t only take me out, but anyone else within reach. I couldn’t just hear the breathing behind me: I could feel it on my neck. In a perfect world, I’d throw myself right or left and let them slot each other.
The click-clack came to a halt.
‘Señor?’
Niqab stopped dead but didn’t turn towards the newcomer.
I recognized the voice. I was pretty sure I’d recognize the fingernails too.
‘
Señor … Are you … OK?
’
I opened my mouth to respond but Niqab’s head shook and his eyes left me in no doubt that an answer wasn’t called for.
I felt a blinding pain as Heavy Breather hit me just behind my right ear. Pinpricks of light danced across my retinas and my knees turned to liquid.
10
‘Señor …
Señor
?’
Her tone was urgent.
The ground was rock hard beneath my shoulder-blades but her fingertips were cool on my brow.
I could hear the blood pounding through my head. I hoped it wasn’t in a hurry to escape onto the paving stones. I reached up and slid my hand to the spot where Heavy Breather had connected. There was a lump the size of a golf ball, but the skin wasn’t broken. He must have been carrying a cosh – leather, probably, filled with lead shot.
I opened my eyes.
The waitress from the tapas bar was kneeling over me, her very worried face inches from mine. ‘Are you all right? Should I call the police, maybe?’ She straightened and fished around in her handbag for her mobile.
I took a couple of deep breaths and was about to tell her not to bother when she held out a half-litre bottle of mineral water instead.
I raised myself on my elbows. She flipped back the lid and put it to my lips. It tasted magic. After three or four gulps I managed to crank myself into a sitting position.
Her eyes were wide. ‘Who were those people?’
‘Never seen them in my life. Where did they go?’
‘Back towards the cathedral, I think. Did they rob you?’
I tapped my pockets and shook my head, then wished I hadn’t.
She helped me to my feet. ‘You should see a doctor, maybe.’
I thanked her and told her I’d be fine.
I left her at the corner and unscrambled my brain cells as I headed back to the hotel. It was good to discover that they were still capable of firing up, but not at all good to hear what they were saying to me. Niqab and Heavy Breather hadn’t just been there to nick my holiday money, which could only mean one thing right now. They hadn’t just pinged me. They’d pinged Ella and Jesper as well.
11
The receptionist at the Villa Oniria conjured up my Seat at the double and I went direct to the
autovía
. I kept half an eye on the rear-view, but I already had a bad feeling about this, and figured that speed was more important than camouflage right now.
The evening traffic was fairly light, so it didn’t take long to get to the Suspiro del Moro turnoff. If Jesper and Ella had come straight back, I reckoned I’d be forty-five minutes to an hour behind them. Less if they’d zigzagged. I hoped they’d zigzagged.
The campsite forecourt wasn’t awash with light, but I wouldn’t have cared if it had been. The fact was we’d been compromised, and our number-one priority was to get out of there, and worry about reinstating our cover later. I exited the Seat and pressed the padlock button on the fob.
There were three other hire cars parked up, but Jesper’s GS was nowhere in sight. I allowed myself a sliver of hope that they were tucking into paella somewhere along the way, and I’d got there first.
Shaky appeared at my elbow as I steamed past the reception area. He didn’t point at the
Prohibido
notice this time, just looked worried. He didn’t need to ask where I was going, which was another bad sign. I reckoned the privacy of his regular guests had already been invaded big-time.
The lamp above the veranda was on, but the interior of the bungalow was dark and the curtains drawn. The GS glinted on its stand beneath the side window. I’d have given good money for a 9mm Browning in my waistband as I approached, keeping to the cover of the trees. Even a Mini-Max would have been better than nothing.
I glanced to my right and saw that Shaky was having similar thoughts. He slid a hand inside his jacket and brought out a knife.
I shook my head and indicated that he should let me take care of it. Unless this boy suddenly turned into Zorro, he was going to do himself more harm than good with that thing. I’d seen plenty of lads who didn’t know any better finish a night out on the receiving end of their own blade.
He didn’t go all macho on me, just passed it across with barely disguised relief. I motioned to him to stay at ground level, hugging the stone plinth, and held his weapon in my right hand as I mounted the steps.
The tin roof extended over the decking in front of me. The door was partly glazed, with a window to the right, a plastic table and chairs to the left. There was no cover to speak of – a round would have blasted through the lightly timbered walls of this place with energy to spare – but I ducked towards the table anyway. At least I’d be out of plain sight.
Shaky crouched motionless behind me, precisely where I’d left him. I moved as close as possible to the entrance, opened my mouth and listened. I could now see the flicker of a TV screen and hear staccato voices and canned laughter. There was also some kind of scrabbling and a low groan.
It didn’t sound like a fight.
And fuck it – I wasn’t here for the sightseeing.
I gripped Shaky’s blade, threw open the door and dived left, keeping low.
12
The place looked like it had been hit by a tornado. The TV set, fixed to the wall on a metal arm, looked like the only piece of kit to have been left unscathed.
Jesper lay beneath it, surrounded by broken and splintered furniture. Blood leaked from a gash in the side of his forehead, which pretty much matched the one I’d picked up at Glencoe. His wrists had been plasticuffed together behind his back. His ankles were plasticuffed too. He’d brought his knees up to his chest, and was trying to roll onto them and lever himself up.
The shattered remains of a glass vase and half-open daffodils were strewn among the wreckage in the centre of the room. A photograph of Ella, which I was pretty sure had once sat in a frame at the house she shared with Sam, lay in a pool of water alongside them. I stepped over it and helped him to his feet.
I sliced through the plasticuffs as I quizzed him. He wouldn’t have expected me to play Florence Nightingale and, besides, we both knew I didn’t have the time.
‘How many?’
Jesper showed me three fingers, then raised them to the wound beneath his hairline. They came away smeared with crimson.
‘Do they have her?’
He managed to do words this time. ‘Don’t think so … She ran …’
‘When?’
‘Fifteen minutes … Twenty, maybe …’
‘Where?’ Jesper wouldn’t have spent the last three weeks flower-arranging and watching
Spain’s Got Talent
. He’d have recced the immediate area and planned escape routes and actions for Ella in case everything went to rat shit.
His chest was still heaving, but he was starting to grip himself. ‘The restaurant … plenty of people … through the trees … the other side of the pool … Then across the roundabout to Otura …’
‘Nick …’ He stopped me as I reached the door.
I turned back in time to catch his bike keys.
‘Take it. Quicker.’
I fished out the Seat fob and chucked it to him. ‘It’s out front. We’ll RV at the golf club.’
Shaky stepped aside to let me pass. A look of pain seized his face as he checked out the damage. I unclipped the GS’s side boxes and left them by the steps. I didn’t know what kind of terrain I might end up cutting through, and that lessened the chances of getting tangled in the foliage. I’d do without the skid-lid, for the time being at least. I needed eyes and ears on max strength.
I saddled up, kicked the bike off its stand and fired the engine. The rear wheel skidded round behind me as I pulled a tight U-turn, spraying dust and gravel shrapnel across the side of the bungalow.
The restaurant had a viewing tower from which you could share Boabdil’s last glimpse of his surrendered kingdom, but I didn’t expect that to be top of Ella’s list of priorities. I parked the GS, ran up the red stone steps and veered right to the eatery. It was busier than I’d expected. There was a buzz of conversation and the clink of cutlery. I spotted four or five possibles: girls with short dark hair and their backs to me. I wandered through the place as you do when you’re meeting up with friends, but she wasn’t one of them.
I politely declined the restaurant manager’s offer of a table and looped back to the car park. I flicked the GS out of neutral again, followed the curve of the building, mounted the pavement and found a gap in the wall of cypresses that opened into the olive grove. I really liked this machine. It pretty much did what you told it to, and responded with a soft purr at low revs rather than a boy racer’s shriek.
Away from the ambient light of the campsite and restaurant complex my vision took a hammering, but the sky was clear, and though the moon wasn’t full, I reckoned it was plenty good enough to see where I was going, and not so bright that I’d become the world’s easiest target. Short of giving it a sharp tap with a hammer, I couldn’t kill the low-beam headlamp, but I’d try to avoid squeezing the brake unless I really had to.
The olives were twelve or fifteen feet high and thickly leaved. They’d been planted with geometric precision on a grid designed to facilitate machine harvesting. I rode five or six trees in, then hung a left and throttled back, so I was moving slowly enough to be able to check along the aisle between each row, a bit like you do when you’ve lost your mum in the supermarket. I didn’t expect Ella to stand out in the open and wave and yell, ‘
Over here!
’ but I thought she might hear the bike and head towards it, hoping it wasn’t hostile.
The west side of the grove bordered a huge expanse of flat, open ground. I stopped inside the treeline and scanned it for any sign of activity or disturbance. There was none. I pulled another U, headed back to the centre and hung a left. My plan was to crisscross the plantation at thirty-metre intervals until I reached the far side or found Ella.
Either way, I’d then head across the main to Otura.
13
I’d covered a lot of acres by the time I got to the northern boundary. I didn’t bump into any Leathermen or Llama-toting transvestites on the way, but I didn’t find Ella either.
This side was marked by a berm, about a metre high and a couple of hundred long. I slowed the GS to a halt and switched off. For the next five minutes, I sat there in the darkness and listened to the soft tick of the cooling engine and the gentle breeze through the trees.
Then I pulled the GS onto its stand again and scrambled up the berm. It dropped away to a dried-out irrigation ditch, which the locals had used as a garbage dump. A wire-link fence stood on the far side of it, then the shadows of a more densely planted stretch of evergreen woodland. I couldn’t see any way through.