LITMIR.BIZ

       TEN

       Alameda, Seville

       19th April – 5.15 p.m.

      The wooden gate creaked open, ripping the police notice forbidding entry in half and revealing a small courtyard. Tom stepped in warily, the walls of the two-storey building rising on all sides to frame a small slab of sky overhead, grey and sullen.

      The ground was littered with broken tiles and shattered terracotta bricks. The dog turd on the large pile of sand to his left had been stepped in, the crumbling imprint of a ridged sole still visible. A pile of wind-blown rubbish had drifted into the far corner where Tom thought he could make out the fluorescent glow of a discarded condom. He shook his head angrily. Rafael had deserved better than this. Much better.

      ‘This way.’

      Marco Gillez shouldered past him and strode into the middle of the courtyard. Tom paused to secure the gate behind them before following, fluttering his T-shirt against his body to cool himself. It was warm for this time of year, even for Spain.

      Gillez was wearing an outfit that looked as if it had been lifted from a bad fifties musical – blue flannel trousers worn with a pastel green jacket and cream shoes that were in need of a polish. He had a long, pale face and small muddy brown eyes that were separated by a large nose that narrowed to an almost impossibly sharp edge along its ridge, casting a shadow across one half of his face like the arm of a sundial. His ginger hair and goatee had been dyed black, the resulting colour a dark mahogany that changed hue depending on the light.

      ‘There –’

      He pointed with a dramatic flourish at an open doorway; his fingernails were gnawed right back, the cuticles sore and bleeding. Tom looked up and saw two holes on either side of the door frame, dark rivulets of dried blood running from beneath them to the ground. White chalk marks had been drawn around the outline of the bloodstains, forming a large, looping line like an untightened noose.

      ‘Cause of death: asfixia,’ Gillez continued as he consulted a file produced from a small brown leather satchel, his voice coloured by a heavy Spanish accent. ‘The weight of the body suspended on the two nails made it impossible to breathe. It only took a few minutes.’ He ran his hand over his goatee as he spoke, smoothing it against his skin as if he was stroking a cat.

      ‘That’s why the Romans used to nail people’s feet too,’ Tom added in a dispassionate tone. ‘So they could push themselves up and catch their breath. It prolonged the ordeal.’

      ‘So it could have been worse?’ A flicker of interest in Gillez’s voice. ‘He was lucky?’

      ‘He was crucified, Marco,’ Tom snapped. ‘Nailed to a doorway in a yard full of dog shit and used rubbers. You call that lucky?’

      He turned away and stared angrily at the open doorway. The small part of him that had voiced a faint voice of hope that Rafael could not be dead, that this must all be some terrible mistake, was suddenly tellingly muted. This was where Rafael’s life had ebbed away, retreating a little further out of reach with every agonised breath. He almost wished he’d taken Dominique’s advice and stayed away.

      There was a long silence. Gillez, his jaw clicking as he exercised it slowly from side to side, appeared to be waiting for Tom to say something.

      ‘Would you like to see the photos?’ he asked eventually, thrusting the file hopefully towards Tom.

      ‘No.’ Tom turned away in distaste, a brief mental image forming of Gillez as a child, pulling the legs off a crab and watching it struggle at the bottom of his bucket. ‘Just tell me what it says.’

      Gillez gave a disappointed shrug and turned the page.

      ‘Rafael Quintavalle. White male. Age fifty-six. Found dead on the Domingo de Resurrección – Easter Sunday. Homicidio. The coroner estimated he’d been here two to three days. He was identified by his step-daughter.’

      ‘Eva?’ Tom asked in surprise. ‘She’s here?’

      ‘You know her?’

      ‘Used to.’ Tom nodded with a sigh.

      ‘She’s a wild one,’ Gillez said with a whistle. ‘It says here the FBI arrested her for diamond smuggling.’

      ‘That was a long time ago. What else does it say about Rafael?’

      ‘He was last seen at the Macarena procession on Jueves Santo – Holy Thursday. At least two people claim they saw him going for confesión in the Basilica de la Macarena just before the procession set out.’

      ‘Confession?’ Tom gave an incredulous frown. ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘That’s what it says.’ Again Gillez thrust the file towards him.

      ‘What does it say about his apartment? Did the police find anything there?’

      ‘It had already been searched by the time they arrived. They were too late.’

      ‘I was too late,’ Tom murmured to himself.

      ‘You knew him well?’ Gillez, fanning himself with one of the photographs, sounded intrigued.

      ‘Rafael and I did a couple of jobs once,’ Tom confirmed. ‘In the early days. I don’t know why, but we clicked. We’ve been friends ever since.’

      He paused, thinking back to when he’d left the CIA, or rather when they’d decided that he’d become a dangerous liability that needed silencing. Rafael had been there for him when he’d gone on the run, had helped set him up in the business, introduced him to the right people, Archie amongst them. He thought back to their friendship and the good times they’d shared. All that was gone now.

      ‘Rafael was old school, a real character. He taught me a lot about the way the game was played. He taught me a lot about myself. I trusted him. He trusted me. In our business, that doesn’t happen very often.’

      ‘They say he was a good forger.’

      ‘One

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