Mackenzie felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck, and without looking at her was aware of Cristina’s eyes turning in his direction. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and a sharp pain in his ribs reminded him of his encounter with Cleland.
‘UDYCO report that sources are telling them the rumoured handover of drugs is scheduled within the next two days, and that the merchandise is already in the country. Somewhere in this area. But we have no intelligence as yet on where and when the exchange is going to take place.’ He held out an open palm towards a well-groomed middle-aged man in a dark suit who sat in the front row. ‘Captain Rodríguez?’
As Rodríguez stood up Mackenzie whispered to Cristina, ‘Who’s he?’
‘Head of GRECO — Grupo de Respuesta Especial para el Crimen Organizado. That’s the organized crime special-response group based in Marbella.’
Unlike the Juez de Instrucción Captain Rodríguez was the embodiment of cool. He slipped his shades into the breast pocket of his suit jacket and ran a tanned hand back through jet-black hair. ‘We are confident,’ he said, ‘that we will find out exactly where and when this is all going down. We have had a number of suspected traffickers on our radar for some time. Not little fish by any means. And almost certainly involved. One or other of them is almost certain to lead us to the rendezvous. But I can’t stress enough the importance of total discretion in every department. A leak of any kind could compromise the whole operation. We’re only going to get one chance at this.’
When the meeting broke up, the Jefe waved Mackenzie forward to be introduced to the examining magistrate. Cristina trotted after him. Although the Jefe had hosted the meeting, he had played no active part in it, and Mackenzie realized that instructions coming down from the Jefe were simply being passed on from a higher jurisdiction. This was all happening on his patch, but he had no real authority except in the direction of his own people.
‘Señor Mackenzie, meet Judge Aguado. It was he who requested your services from the NCA in London.’
‘Oh?’ Mackenzie said, ‘Now I know who to blame.’ And shook the proffered hand. It was cold and clammy, and when Mackenzie retrieved his own he wiped it absently on the leg of his trousers.
The Juez de Instrucción did not miss it. He said stiffly, ‘Presumably you are aware how our system works here in Spain?’
‘I am,’ Mackenzie said. ‘Very similar to the French. A Guardia Civil which is part of the army, like the French Gendarmerie. A fragmented civilian police force which doesn’t talk to the military, and a system of judges who know nothing about police work but somehow contrive to direct investigations.’
Judge Aguado’s pallor darkened, and a clenching of his jaw was betrayed by the depressions that appeared in each of his cadaverous cheeks. He said, ‘While the British police divide and subdivide themselves into so many different forces that they lack any coherence.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Mackenzie said, oblivious of the judge’s intention to offend him in return. ‘They are uncoordinated and completely disjointed. Criminals are slipping through the cracks all the time.’
No one knew what to say. And it was only when Mackenzie caught Cristina’s smirk out of the corner of his eye that he suspected he might have said something out of turn.
When they stepped from the basement of the police station out into the underground car park, tyres were screeching on concrete, motors revving, detectives and forensics officers from Estepona and Marbella and Malaga all heading back to their respective offices post meeting.
Mackenzie disapproved of meetings. He thought they were just an excuse for the brass to show off to the troops and make themselves feel important. Any relevant information would already have reached the people who mattered. But he was more concerned about his apparent faux pas with the judge.
‘What did I say?’
He struggled to keep up with Cristina, who, for all her lack of height, was striding at speed across the car park. ‘What didn’t you say?’ she said.
‘What?’ He was at a loss.
She stopped and turned to face him. ‘Would you go into someone’s house and tell them their baby was ugly?’
His brow furrowed in concentration as he ran the question through his mind, wondering at its relevance.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, if you have to think about it...!’ And she marched off again to where she had parked the Nissan.
He followed and climbed into the passenger seat to sit looking at her. Both her hands gripped the wheel and her face was set. He decided not to pursue his evident blunder with the judge, and instead changed the direction of their conversation entirely, towards something minor which had struck him during the meeting.
‘When the Juez de Instrucción said that sources had provided UDYCO with information about Cleland’s drugs deal, what sources was he talking about?’
She looked at him as if he had two heads. ‘Sources,’ she said, as if repeating the word would explain it. ‘You know, informants, soplones, or whatever you call them in English.’
‘Snitches.’ Mackenzie said the word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.
‘So you know what I’m talking about. Criminals who feed information to the police in return for... well, usually immunity.’
‘And sometimes money.’
She shrugged. ‘Most detectives have a snitch. You must have had one.’
Mackenzie shook his head. ‘Never! I don’t believe in them. A crook is still a crook whether he tips off the cops or not. A crime is still a crime. You can’t pick and choose the ones you’re going to prosecute. We’re not arbiters of the law, we’re enforcers of it.’
Cristina was taken aback by his vehemence. She lifted one eyebrow. ‘Sounds like there’s something personal there.’
Mackenzie realized he had said more than he intended, and sat back in his seat, turning to stare through the windscreen and draw breath.
But she wasn’t going to let it go. ‘Is there?’
He was silent for several long moments, debating whether to tell her or not. Finally he said, ‘I arrested and charged an informant working for another officer in my division.’
She gazed curiously into his eyes. ‘And?’
He hesitated. ‘I had been warned not to by my commanding officer.’
‘So why did you?’
‘Because the snitch had been complicit in a murder. An underworld hit. My boss argued that without his information we’d never have got the actual killer.’
‘But you still arrested him because...?’
‘Because if he had provided us with the same information before the killing rather than after it, we could have stopped it from happening. Which made him as responsible for the death of the victim as the guy who pulled the trigger.’
Cristina chewed on that for a moment. Then she said, ‘So what happened?’
‘To the snitch?’
She nodded.
‘He was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years.’ Mackenzie took a deep breath. ‘They found him dead in his cell six weeks later. Throat slit from ear to ear.’
‘Someone got their revenge.’
Mackenzie nodded. ‘And I got the blame. Effectively ended my career with the Met.’
‘They fired you?’