Killing the Shadows (2000) Read online

  He raised his eyebrows in a world-weary expression. “They call it the Tren Real,” he sighed. “The Royal Train. It takes tourists on a ride through the old city and round the circunvalacion.”

  Fiona grinned. “Hard to imagine the royal family riding on that.”

  Berrocal’s face was pained. “It has no dignity,” he agreed. “It’s not my favourite example of Spanish tourism.”

  They trudged back up to the car in silence. Fiona was oblivious to her surroundings, too busy with her thoughts for appreciation of landscape or the city vista that sprang out before them as they reached the level of the road.

  “Now we’ll go to the church,” Berrocal announced.

  Fiona concealed her impatience. She wanted to start work properly, not waste any more time looking at crime scenes. At this rate, she’d have been as well going back to the hotel with Kit. It would have been about as useful.

  A couple of hundred feet above the panoramic route Fiona was travelling back to the city, Kit was opening a heavy pair of wooden shutters with ornate iron fittings. Light flooded into the room and he whistled softly at the view. The Parador Conde de Orgaz, named after the city’s most famous El Greco, sat on top of Emperor’s Hill with a breathtaking panorama of Toledo laid out before it. The almost unreal vision still bore a remarkable resemblance to the background of dozens of other El Grecos, in spite of the intervening four and a half centuries. The parador was perfectly sited on the bluff opposite the city, and their room commanded a view of the whole medieval city. Kit decided to fall prey to temptation.

  Twenty minutes later, a taxi deposited him by the Plaza de Zocodover, a lively square which his tour guide claimed was the heart of social life in the city. Lined with cafes and cake shops, its tall shuttered buildings had an air of slightly decayed elegance. It appeared to be a typical provincial southern European city, Kit thought. Women sturdily crossing with their heavy bags of shopping, elderly men sitting smoking and chatting, teenagers in branded leisure wear lounging in doorways and on corners, furtively eyeing the opposite gender in between posing for their benefit. But it hadn’t always been like this.

  Toledo, he knew from his reading, had been captured first by the Romans, then by the Visigoths, next by the Moors and finally by the Christians. Although it had become the capital of Castile and the base for the medieval military campaigns against the Moors, it had also established a reputation as a haven of cultural tolerance.

  But all that had changed with the dynastic marriage of Fernando of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1479. Isabella’s personal confessor was Cardinal Tomas de Torquemada, the man appointed by the Pope as the first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition.

  Kit had told Fiona only that he was interested in seeing the El Grecos in Toledo. But that was merely a fragment of the truth. What had drawn him to this city was the prospect of walking the very streets Torquemada had walked, many of them virtually unchanged since the fifteenth century and earlier. He wanted to let his imagination carry him back in time to an era when the streets of Toledo were tainted with fear and hatred, when brother denounced brother, when ordained priests invented torture methods so robust they were still in use, when the state perverted a religious crusade into a means to enrich itself.

  Toledo was a city that, by conquest and oppression both, was soaked in the blood of its people. The tantalizing prospect of discovering how much of that atmosphere had persisted was what attracted Kit’s imagination.

  It wasn’t hard to erase the modern images and see the streets as they must formerly have been. The buildings were the same, tall tenements with narrow twisting passages between them, their facades alternating between patched eroded brick and pale stucco that had generally seen better days. Studded with windows shuttered against the September heat, the only thing that broke up the frontages were lines of washing strung across the alleys.

  As the siesta approached, the streets emptied, and Kit found himself mostly alone as he quartered the warren of streets between the cathedral and the monastery church of San Juan de los Reyes, following his map into the old Jewish quarter, the Juderia.

  He climbed a flight of steps that took him up between high blank walls and opened out in a small garden with benches that provided a spectacular vista. But contemporary panoramas were not what he was seeking. Kit let his mind wander from the present and stared down over the pale terra cotta roofs, blanking out TV aerials and satellite dishes, drifting back into the past.

  The Inquisition was supposed to be about establishing a pure-blooded Christian faith in Spain. But what it was really about was anti-semitism and greed, he thought. But then, most oppressive right-wing movements had similar roots. Back then, the Spanish Jews were seen as too powerful and too wealthy. From being comfortable, safe and prosperous, their lives had been plunged overnight into a living hell.

  A kind of hysteria must have swept through the cities of Castile and Aragon, as anyone with a grudge saw a way of evening the score against their enemies. Carte blanche for the inadequate, the spiteful and the self-righteous, Kit mused.

  And once denounced, it was almost impossible to escape unscathed. If there were such a thing as reincarnation, Kit thought, Torquemada had probably come back as Senator Joe McCarthy. “Are you now, or have you ever been a heretic?”

  It must have poisoned the whole community. No one could have felt safe, except perhaps the Grand Inquisitor and his team of helpers. After all, they had a special dispensation from the Pope. If anyone died under torture or if some other mistake were made, they had the power to absolve one another so their hands and their souls could remain stainless.

  And now, another killer was stalking the streets of Toledo, revisiting old nightmares and casting a dark shadow over this tourist playground. His tally of victims might be insignificant set beside the legalized murder of the Inquisitors, but for those touched by these deaths, the pain and bewilderment would be equally intense. That was what Fiona was staring into, and he didn’t envy her one bit. She had her own ghosts, and in spite of what she told herself, he believed the work she embraced did nothing to lay them to rest. But he wouldn’t push her; she’d have to reach that conclusion of her own free will, and she was a long way from there. He didn’t envy her the journey either. The country of the imagination was a far easier place to inhabit.

  In spite of the warmth of the sun, Kit shivered involuntarily. It was true that a place retained its spirit. In spite of the beauty that surrounded him, it was all too easy to summon up the troubled spirits of past terrors.

  It was, he thought, natural territory for a serial killer.

  EIGHT

  Drew Shand sat back and rotated his shoulders, grimacing as they cracked and popped. He’d tried every possible adjustment on the expensive orthopaedic chair, but he always stiffened up like this by the end of the working day, exactly the same as he had when he’d sat on a cheap kitchen chair hunched over his second-hand laptop. The electrically adjustable seat had been one of the first treats he’d bought with the famously substantial advance for his first novel. But still he got backache.

  He’d thought that his debut was a pretty good read when he’d finished the first draft, but he’d struggled and failed to hide his astonishment when his agent rang him with the news that it had been sold for a mid-six-figure sum. Each of which was to the left of the decimal point. Hot on the heels of that deal, Copycat had been sold to TV, its adaptation winning a clutch of awards for its charismatic star, and sending Drew’s paperback tie-in straight to the top of the bestseller lists on its coat-tails.

  More than the acclaim, more even than the rave reviews and the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger award for best first novel of the year, Drew appreciated his release from the soul-destroying job of teaching English to the overindulged brats of the Edinburgh middle classes. The demands of keeping a roof over his head had forced him to write Copycat late into the night and in snatched hours at weekends over a period of eighteen months. It had been a hard grind, ea
rning him derision from his pals, who kept telling him to get a life. But now, he was the one with the absolutely brilliant life, while they were still stuck in the nine-to-five. Drew didn’t work to anybody else’s schedule. He wrote when it suited him. OK, that turned out to be most days, but he was still in charge. Drew was the one who made the decisions, not some slave-driving boss acting the hard arse because his own sad wee job was on the line.

  And he loved his life. He usually woke some time between ten and eleven. He’d make himself a cappuccino with his shiny new chrome Italian machine, browse the morning papers then energize his brain under the needle jets of his power shower. By noon, he’d be sitting in front of his state-of-the-art computer with a pair of bacon-and-egg rolls. He’d work his way through brunch while he reread what he’d written the day before, then he’d check out his e–mail. Round about half past one, he’d be ready to go to work.

  It was only his third novel. Drew still got a helluva charge out of hammering the words down on screen, pausing momentarily to figure out the direction of the next few paragraphs before his fingers thundered across the keys with the heavy touch of a man who’d learned piano as a reluctant child. Not for him the slow composition of a sentence or the check with the word count at the end of every paragraph. Drew didn’t set himself anything as mechanical as a daily word target. He just wrote and wrote till he ran out of steam. That mostly happened about five o’clock. Funnily enough, he usually found he’d written about four thousand words, give or take a couple of hundred. At first he’d reckoned it was just coincidence, then he’d decided that four thousand words was just about the limit that his brain could produce in one day without it degenerating into gibberish.

  Well, it was as good an excuse as any for knocking it on the head for the day. He switched off the computer, shrugged off his dressing gown and put on his sweats. The gym was a couple of streets away from his four-roomed Georgian flat on the edge of the New Town, and he enjoyed the walk through the darkening streets, the cold air turning to smoke as it left his nostrils. Poof the Magic Dragon, he thought ironically as he turned off Broughton Street and walked up the steps to the gym.

  Drew loved the gym too. He had a circuit that lasted precisely an hour. Fifteen minutes on the Nordic track, half an hour on the Nautilus machines working all the different muscle groups, ten minutes with free weights, then five minutes on the bike. The perfect mix of aerobic and strength exercises, just enough weight and reps to keep him hard without turning him into Stallone.

  But it wasn’t just the pleasure of feeling his thirty-one-year-old body respond to the routine that turned Drew on to the gym. It was also the opportunity it gave him to check out the other men who were there. It didn’t matter if they were straight or gay. He didn’t go to the gym to cruise, although he had got lucky a couple of times. Mostly, though, he just liked the chance to watch their bodies as they pushed themselves to their limits, to admire a neat bum, a taut pair of thighs, a well-defined set of shoulders. It wound his spring nice and tight for whatever the rest of the evening might hold for him.

  After his work-out, Drew relaxed in the gym’s sauna. Again, it wasn’t the sort where sex was on offer, but it didn’t hurt to eye up the talent, casting the odd sideways glance at a well-hung companion. Sometimes, the glance would be returned and they’d wait till they had the sweaty pine box to themselves before arranging to meet for a drink afterwards in one of the nearby gay bars.

  That was another thing he didn’t have to worry about these days. When he’d still been teaching, he’d been incredibly wary about responding to any kind of come-on anywhere that wasn’t a bona fide gay establishment. Even then, he always scanned the bars as carefully as he could before he settled in for the evening. It might be OK for cabinet ministers to be out and proud, but for a teacher in Edinburgh, being a known gay out and about on the scene would still be the quickest route to the dole queue. Now, he could make eye contact anywhere he chose with anybody he chose. The biggest risk he faced was getting a punch in the face, but that hadn’t happened yet. Drew prided himself on having an instinct for who was safe to come on to; he reckoned it was part of the sensibility that made him such a fucking great writer.

  He smiled inwardly as he dressed. The guy he’d noticed on the rowing machine was new to the gym or at least, new to this time of day but he’d seen him before in the Barbary Coast bar round the corner. The Barbary was one of the newest gay bars in town and it boasted Drew’s absolutely favourite place in the whole of Edinburgh. When you walked right through to the back of the bar, there was a small door set in the wall guarded by a couple of beefy leather men. If they knew your face, they simply stepped aside. If they didn’t, they asked what you were looking for. If you knew you were looking for the Dark Room, they let you pass. If you didn’t, they politely suggested you might want to stay in the main bar. Drew was on first-name terms with them both.

  Drew had seen the guy on the rowing machine eyeing him in one of the floor-length mirrors that lined the gym. He reckoned that if he wandered into the Barbary within the next hour, he might just find him leaning on the bar. And if he knew about the upstairs room, well, that would do Drew very nicely for the evening.

  God, he loved the Dark Room. There was a sense that anything could happen, and in his experience, it usually did. Several times. The people who had complained about the lovingly detailed graphic violence in Copycat would have a cardiac arrest if they knew a quarter of what men did to each other under cover of darkness in an upstairs room a short walk from the genteel Heart of Midlothian. He wouldn’t mind betting it would shake a few real serial killers to the core as well.

  Back at the flat, he took his time dressing. Tight black jeans that gave sharp definition to cock and balls, topped with a white T–shirt with the cover of his book screen-printed across it. He placed a single gold ring in one ear and threaded a studded leather belt through the hoops of his trousers. He slipped his feet into a pair of thick-soled biker boots and tightened the Velcro fastenings. He reached for his battered leather jacket and slipped his arms into the sleeves, admiring himself in the long cheval mirror. Not bad at all, he congratulated himself. Great fucking haircut, he thought, jittering his fingers through the short dark crop that he thought made him look dangerous and sexy. That new guy in the salon was worth every penny.

  Drew slid open the drawer in his bedside table and took out a small silver snuffbox, a tiny silver spoon, a silver straw and an expired credit card. He flipped open the lid of the box and scooped out a generous helping of the white powder. Using the credit card, he chopped the cocaine into a pair of thick lines. He inserted the straw into his left nostril, closed his right nostril with a finger and expertly snorted one of the lines. He threw his head back and sniffed a couple of times, revelling in the numbness that spread across his soft palate. He repeated the process with his right nostril, then stood for a moment, enjoying the initial buzz as the coke hit his bloodstream. It was good stuff; he’d feel it for a while yet. And if he needed a top-up, he knew he could always score some more in the pub. It might not be up to the quality of his personal stash, but it would do the business nicely.

  Finally, he snapped the steel bracelet of his chunky Tag Heuer round his wrist, taking care not to trap any of his fine dark hairs in the catch. He was ready for the time of his life.

  He couldn’t have known it would be the last time.

  NINE

  Fiona pushed open the shutters and gazed across the gorge at Toledo basking in the silvery glow of a rising moon. Over on her left, she could identify the spotlit grandeur of San Juan de los Reyes, where James Palango’s body had been left dangling from the shackles. From this distance, it looked far too innocuous for such a display. Certainly when they’d visited it that afternoon, it had appeared an unlikely setting for so degrading a crime. A few tourists had ambled past, reading their guide books, taking photographs and paying no attention to her and Berrocal. Fiona had to remind herself that this was the church built by the two
monarchs who presided over the launch of the Inquisition. In all probability, San Juan de los Reyes had seen far worse than this latest corpse.

  The visit to the church had added nothing to her knowledge, but it had given Berrocal the chance to run through the details of the crime scene and smoke another three of his execrable cigarettes. Afterwards, they had walked through the town to the police headquarters where Berrocal had made his base. “It’s easier than driving,” he had pointed out. “So, what do you need to do now?” he asked as they set off.

  “I need to familiarize myself with all the details of the cases. That way I can draw up a full list of the key correspondences between them. There’s no point in trying to do a geographical profile with only two cases. There’s not enough information, particularly since these two sites have been chosen for their historical significance. But what I hope to do is to be able to suggest where you should look in your criminal records for the crimes he has probably committed in the past,” Fiona explained.

  “That’s easily arranged. All the relevant material is in our incident room. I’ve set aside a desk for you there.” He took out his mobile phone and dialled. He spoke curtly into it, a brief exchange where he said little. He ended the call with a tight smile. “The files will be waiting for you.”

  “Thanks. What I’ll probably do is read through it all, make some notes then go back to my hotel. I like to mull things over for a little while before I write my preliminary report, but I’ll have it ready for you first thing in the morning.”

  There was nothing high-tech about the incident room Salvador Berrocal had at his disposal. A dingy windowless room at the end of an airless corridor, the walls were grimy and streaked with stains that Fiona didn’t want to think too closely about. It smelled of cigarette smoke, stale coffee and male sweat. Four desks had been crammed into the space, only one of which held a computer terminal. A couple of large-scale maps of the city and the surrounding suburbs were tacked to the walls, and an easel held a familiar sight the crime board, complete with photographs of the victims and various scrawled notations. Two of the desks were staffed by harassed-looking detectives who gabbled into phones and barely looked up when Berrocal ushered her in.