Питер Мэй - A Silent Death

‘You fucker!’ Cleland screamed, and his voice resounded deafeningly in the enclosed space of the cabin. Mackenzie lunged again, catching him off guard. He fell backwards with Mackenzie on top. Mackenzie could smell coffee on his breath, and garlic from yesterday. And something else. Something rank.

Mackenzie hissed in his face, ‘You’re claimed, Cleland. I’m taking you all the way down.’

For a moment Cleland went limp, and he looked into Mackenzie’s face, surprise writ large on his. ‘Scottish!? You’re fucking Scottish!? You came all the way down here just to get me?’

‘That’s right, Cleland. And take you back, too.’

‘Like fuck!’ He bucked hard beneath Mackenzie, and with an enormous effort rolled him off to the side. He was a big man, physically stronger than Mackenzie, and his fist felt as if it were clad in chainmail as it smashed into Mackenzie’s face. Blood bubbled into Mackenzie’s mouth, and he felt the bitter iron taste of it. He lashed out with his own clenched fist and felt pain jar through his arm all the way to the shoulder as it made contact with Cleland’s head.

Cleland cursed, and staggered to his feet. Mackenzie could do nothing to stop him. Nor could he prevent the other man from sinking a foot hard into his solar plexus. He doubled up, gasping with pain, and felt the searing heat of the midday sun as it spilled momentarily into the back of the boat through the open canvas flap. Cleland was through it and gone.

With an enormous effort of will, Mackenzie dragged himself to his knees, supporting himself on the corner of the built-in settee. His eyes settled on a flare gun clipped to the fascia beside the wheel in the cockpit. He scrambled to his feet and staggered across the cabin to wrench it free, then ran to the stern of the boat and out into blinding sunlight.

He blinked fiercely to focus on the fleeing figure of Cleland as he sprinted along the pantalán towards the gate. The fugitive had to stop and fumble for a key to open it. Then with a backward glance he was out and pounding along the access road towards the port. Mackenzie limped after him, holding his side with one hand, clutching the signal pistol with the other. He caught the gate before it closed and stumbled into the road. He had a clear shot at Cleland’s back as he ran towards steps that rose in two flights towards the road behind the port. He levelled the pistol. There was a good chance that the flare would bring him down. It might do him damage, though it probably wouldn’t kill him.

But there were holidaymakers on the road. A young couple with a baby in a pram, a family with a dog, a boy on a bike, Cleland brushing them aside as he sprinted past. Mackenzie clenched his teeth and bellowed through them in pure frustration. There was no way he could release the flare. God only knew how accurate the pistol might be, or what kind of injuries it could inflict on innocents.

Instead, he raised the gun above his head and fired it angrily into the air, sending an arc of pink smoke soaring into the sky above the puerto to explode in a bright flash of red that cast its reflection like blood across all the still waters of the marina.

He caught a movement in the corner of his eye and turned to see Sally standing at the far end of the pantalán , mop in hand, gawping at him in astonishment.

The excitement occasioned by a flare exploding high above Puerto de la Condesa and seen for miles along the coast had long since subsided.

Mackenzie sat on the concrete box that supplied power and water to Cleland’s Princess 52 from the pantalán , and winced as a medic in dark green and yellow uniform applied antiseptic to his damaged face. The medic had previously removed Mackenzie’s T-shirt and felt carefully around the bruising on his ribs. He didn’t believe there was anything broken, but suggested an x-ray and support-strapped it in the meantime.

A forensics team from Estepona had arrived, sweltering beneath plastic jumpsuits as they worked their way systematically from one end of Cleland’s boat to the other, taking fingerprints, scrapings from a bloodstain found on the carpet, hair, nail clippings from one of the toilets, a razor, a toothbrush.

The Jefe stepped off the boat on to the quay and glared at Mackenzie. ‘You couldn’t have called for back-up? We’d have caught him red-handed.’

Mackenzie winced as the medic applied fresh antiseptic. ‘I was about to,’ he said. ‘Then this girl unlocked the gate and I thought I’d just take a look.’

‘What girl?’

Mackenzie flicked his head towards the far end of the pantalán where Sally was giving a statement to a couple of Policía Local. ‘She cleans boats.’

‘Not Cleland’s, apparently,’ the Jefe said. ‘It’s filthy. A treasure trove of forensic evidence. Unfortunately, there’s just one thing missing. Cleland himself.’ He paused. ‘What possessed you to fire off a flare?’

Mackenzie shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I was going to try to shoot him with it. But there were too many people around. I just fired it in frustration.’

‘You’d have been in big trouble if you’d hit him.’

Mackenzie nodded his acknowledgement. ‘I know.’

The Jefe sighed and hooked his thumbs into his belt. ‘I don’t know that he’s been here much. None of the beds have been slept in. There’s some dirty laundry tossed on to one of them. Looks like maybe he just came for a change of clothes, something to eat and a coffee. There’s a half-drunk cup in the kitchen and the remains of a sandwich on the counter top. Seems you disturbed him before he could finish it. There might also have been some cash on board. He’s very probably running out.’ He glanced along the quay to where a phalanx of police vehicles, blue lights flashing, clustered around the open gate to the pantalán . An ambulance stood on the other side of the access road, engine idling. A large crowd of onlookers, managed by a couple of uniformed Guardia, waned and waxed in turns, holidaymakers and locals exercising their curiosity. ‘You know what really hacks me off?’

Mackenzie squinted up at him in the sunlight. The chief was silhouetted against the sky, and Mackenzie couldn’t see the expression on his face. ‘No,’ he said.

‘That none of our people thought to check if the bastard had a boat here.’ He turned a disapproving gaze on the Scotsman. ‘It was a good thought, señor. Just a poor execution.’

Mackenzie could not disagree. His eye was caught by the movement of a diminutive figure pushing through the crowd. It was Cristina. Mackenzie’s heart sank. He could only imagine what she would say. She strode along the pantalán adjusting her hair in the band that gathered it at the back of her head. She nodded to the Jefe and glared at Mackenzie. ‘Can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can I?’

Mackenzie attempted a smile. ‘Apparently not.’

The Jefe said to her, ‘Get him out of my hair. Take him for something to eat. Tell him we don’t operate like cowboys here. There’s a meeting at the station called for five this afternoon. We’ll go over everything we know then. Just make sure he’s back in time.’

‘I am here, you know,’ Mackenzie said. ‘I can hear you.’

The Jefe glowered at him. ‘Not sure I feel like talking to you right now.’

As they walked back along the access road to the port, Cristina said, without looking at him, ‘That was a smart piece of work.’

He kept his eyes on the tables and chairs outside the cafes and restaurants that flanked the harbour ahead of them. ‘Thank you.’

‘The first part. Not the second.’