The second victim was an American graduate student of religious art, James Paul Palango. His body had been discovered at dawn by a street cleaner who had been sweeping alongside the monastery cloisters of San Juan de los Reyes. He’d turned the corner on the paved area in front of the church when his eye had been caught by something above his head. Palango was hanging suspended from two sets of manacles. In the puffy flesh of his neck, something glinted in the early morning light. When the body was lowered to the ground, it became clear that he’d been strangled with a dog’s choke chain then attached to the manacles with two pairs of handcuffs. The pathologist also reported that Palango’s corpse had been repeatedly sodomized with the broken neck of a wine bottle, which remained inside his torn rectum. Again, there appeared to be no significant forensic traces. Interestingly, in Palango’s pocket there was a guide to Toledo.
Police inquiries revealed that Palango was an evangelical Christian from a wealthy Georgia family. He had been staying at the parador which perched on a high bluff looking across the river to the city. According to the hotel, Palango had eaten an early dinner then gone out in his hired car sometime around nine o’clock. The car was later discovered in a parking garage opposite the Alcazar. Extensive questioning in the neighbourhood revealed that the American had taken coffee in the Plaza de Zocodover at the heart of the old town, but in the general melee of the evening paseo no one had noticed when he had left the café or whether he’d been alone. No one had come forward to say they’d seen him since.
Fiona leaned back in her seat and rubbed her eyes. No wonder Major Berrocal was so keen to enlist her help. The only significant information the police had gleaned from the second murder was that the killer was physically powerful enough to carry a ten-stone man up a ladder, and that he was bold enough to display his victim in a public place. In a handwritten note, Major Berrocal had pointed out that once the nearby café had closed in the early hours of the morning, the area around the church was quiet and although it was overlooked by several houses, the killer had chosen the farthest point of the facade for his exhibition, where he would be least likely to be spotted.
She leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms above her head while she contemplated the information she’d laboriously worked her way through. It was professionally intriguing, no question of that. What she needed to consider was whether she could offer anything constructive to the investigation. She had worked with European police forces on several occasions, and had sometimes felt handicapped by her lack of visceral understanding of how their societies worked. On the other hand, she already felt the faint stirrings of an idea of how this killer operated and where the police might start their search for him.
One thing was certain. While she dithered, he would be planning his next murder. Fiona refilled her glass and made her decision.
FOUR
Fiona was halfway downstairs with the Rough Guide to Spain when she heard the front door opening. “Hello,” she called out.
“I brought Steve home with me,” Kit replied, his voice relaxed into broad Mancunian by alcohol.
Fiona was too tired to welcome the prospect of late-night drinking and chat. But at least it was only Steve. He was part of the family, too well-rooted in their company to mind if she took herself off to bed and left them to it. She rounded the final turn in the stairs and looked down at them. The most important men in her life, they were an oddly contrasting pair. Steve, tall, wirily thin and dark; Kit, with his broad, heavily muscled torso making him look shorter than he was, his shaved head gleaming in the light. It was Steve, with his darting eyes and long fingers, who looked like the intellectual, while Kit looked more like a beat bobby who worked as a nightclub bouncer on the side. Now, they looked up at her, identical sheepish small-boy grins on their flushed faces.
“Good dinner, I see,” Fiona said dryly, running down the rest of the stairs. She stood on tiptoe to kiss Steve’s cheek, then allowed Kit to engulf her in a hug.
He gave her a smacking kiss on the lips. “Missed you,” he said, releasing her and crossing to the kitchen.
“No you didn’t,” Fiona contradicted him. “You’ve had a great boys’ night out, eaten lots of unspeakable bits of dead animals, drunk’ she paused and cocked her head, assessing them both ‘three bottles of red wine…”
“She’s never wrong,” Kit interjected.
“…and put the world to rights,” Fiona concluded. “You were much better off without me.”
Steve folded himself into a kitchen chair and accepted the brandy glass Kit proffered. He had the air of a man embattled who warily senses he might finally have arrived in a place of safety. He raised his glass in a sardonic toast. “Confusion to our enemies. You’re right, but for the wrong reasons,” he said.
Fiona sat down opposite him and pulled her wine glass towards her, intrigued. “I find that hard to believe,” she said, a tease in her voice.
“I was only glad you weren’t there because you’re big-headed enough without listening to me ranting on about how I’d never have had to endure today’s humiliations if I’d been working with you instead of that arse hole Horsforth.” Steve held up a hand to indicate to Kit that an inch of brandy was more than enough.
Kit leaned against the kitchen units, cupping his glass in both his broad hands to warm the spirit. “You’re right about the big-headed bit,” he chuckled, his pride in her obvious in his affectionate grin.
“Takes one to know one,” Fiona said. “I’m sorry you had a shit day, Steve.”
Before Steve could reply, Kit cut in. “It was bound to happen. That operation was doomed from day one. Apart from anything else, you were never going to get away with a sting like that in a trial, even if Blake had swallowed the honey-trap and coughed chapter and verse. British juries just can’t get their heads round entrapment. Your average man in the pub thinks it’s cheating to set people up when you haven’t got your evidence the straight way.”
“Don’t mince your words, Kit, tell us what you really think,” Steve said sarcastically.
“I’d hoped you two would already have had the postmortem,” Fiona protested mildly.
“Oh, we have,” Steve said. “I feel like I’ve been wearing a hair shirt all day.”
“Hey, I’ve not been saying it was your fault,” Kit reminded him. “We all know you got stamped on from above. If anyone should be flagellating himself, it’s your commander. But you can bet your pension that Teflon Telford will be washing his hands like Pontius Pilate with a tin of Swarfega tonight. It’ll be: Well, of course, you have to let your junior officers have their head sometimes, but I thought Steve Preston would have handled matters better than this.” he said, dropping his voice to the basso prof undo of Steve’s boss.
Steve stared into his brandy. Kit wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, but hearing it from someone else didn’t make failure taste any less sour. And tomorrow, he’d have to face his colleagues knowing that he was the one appointed to carry the can. Some of them would have sufficient grasp of the politics to understand he was nothing more than the designated scapegoat, but there were plenty of others who would relish the chance to snigger behind their hands at him. That was the price of his past successes. And in the competitive environment of the higher echelons of the Met, you were only ever as good as your last success.