Seven
The first thing she noticed was the bright sunlight streaming in through slatted blinds. The second was the thrumming pain and stiffness in her right leg.
Rachel had arrived at Murcia airport at eight the previous evening and driven a rental car for an hour to the Costa Blanca resort of Torrevieja, a magnet for British tourists. Now, hobbling out of bed, she pushed back the blinds and stepped out onto the balcony, squinting into a cloudless sky. A pristine aquamarine hotel pool twinkled below her, and she longed to go for a morning swim but knew it would only make her leg worse. She would allow herself a poolside lounging session later, but first there was work to be done.
The Asturias Bar was on the promenade, a paved, pedestrianised thoroughfare fringed with towering palms. On one edge was the beach, dotted with colourful umbrellas, and on the other a strip of bars, ice cream parlours, restaurants and ‘Irish’ pubs. Inside the bar there was restaurant service, and a large awning at the front gave shade to more tables and chairs. A couple of hardened Brits were sitting outside, already downing pints of lager when Rachel arrived at 10 a.m. She showed her warrant card and was taken to the manager in the back office, a small, wiry man with a comedy moustache, called Jorge.
He nodded vigorously when Rachel showed him the photo of Gavin Harper.
‘Yes, I remember. He work here.’
‘When?’
Jorge shrugged. ‘Long time ago. Maybe ten years?’
‘Have you seen him recently? More recently than that?’
This was met with blank incomprehension, but Jorge summoned one of the waiters, a young Latvian called Andris, who spoke near-perfect English and stood in as a translator. Yes, Jorge remembered Gavin but hadn’t seen him since he worked there. No, Gavin hadn’t been into the bar recently, and he hadn’t seen him anywhere in Torrevieja in recent months.
‘Ask him if he can think of anyone else who knows Gavin Harper, anyone he was friends with.’
Andris relayed this, and told Rachel that yes, there was a guy called Cristian Aguado who used to be friendly with Gavin Harper and who still worked at a nightclub called Discoteca 33. He might know something, Andris said, but from Jorge’s Hispanic shrug, Rachel was not so sure. She stayed and drank a coffee and ate some churros, and then worked her way methodically along the promenade, showing Gavin’s photo to everyone she could find. After three hours, her leg was throbbing, her right foot puffy, and she had no leads at all. She decided to limp back to the hotel, put on her bikini and rest by the pool until it was dark and resort nightlife swung into motion.
Discoteca 33 was in a semi-residential street that led down to the Cala Cornuda beach. Now that it was nearly November, peak holiday season was over, and at 8.30 it was still early for the party crowd, so there were only a handful of other people in the club. Rachel perched herself on a bar stool, feeling conspicuous. Within twenty seconds, a portly man with greased-back hair sidled up to her.
‘Buy you a drink, lovely lady?’
Lovely lady? Hard to believe men still said that. She grimaced, wishing she hadn’t put on a sheer pale pink shirt, but had instead stuck to something more workmanlike. Rachel turned down the offer and bought herself a glass of sangria, using the interaction with the bartender to ask if he knew who Cristian Aguado was.
‘Sure.’ He pointed to his own tanned chest, which was exposed by a shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist and looked as though it had been oiled. ‘I am Cristian. How can I help?’
My first piece of luck, thought Rachel. Few cold cases were solved without a certain amount of it. She added in a generous tip and explained that she was looking for Gavin Harper.
Cristian frowned. ‘Of course, I know him. But he is not here.’
‘Not here in Torrevieja, you mean?’
He nodded. Rachel scrutinised his face for the tells of deception, but saw none. ‘When did you last see him?’
He thought for a moment, polishing a wine glass on a cloth. ‘Maybe two, three summers ago. On holiday, with la niñita. His little girl.’
‘And if he was here in Torrevieja at the moment, where would he be? Where does he stay?’
‘But he’s not here,’ Cristian repeated stubbornly. ‘If he was here, I would know this. I know everyone in this town.’ He flapped his towel around the bar area to indicate that this was his kingdom, then rearranged his shirt front to display the optimum amount of pectoral muscle. ‘Peoples tell me everything.’
‘What if he was hiding – if he didn’t want anyone to know he was here?’ Rachel persisted.
Cristian gave a Hispanic shrug and went back to polishing glasses. ‘When he’s here, he stays in Apartamentos Playa Soleada. But he is not here; this is the truth.’
Rachel googled the apartments while she was finishing her sangria. They were just round the corner, which would explain why Gavin was a regular at Discoteca 33. She walked past on her way back to the hotel; showed her warrant card and the photo of Gavin to the building manager. He was also adamant that Gavin wasn’t staying there, and even offered up all the last month’s CCTV tapes from the lobby by way of confirmation.
‘Maybe,’ Rachel told him. ‘I’ll get back to you.’
Back at the hotel, she sat with her right leg raised on pillows, a makeshift ice pack on her knee, and Skyped Brickall. On a plate in front of him was his evening dietary staple – pizza laden with hot sauce – and his mood was buoyant.
‘Turns out the trial’s actually quite good craic.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course it doesn’t hurt that the junior barrister on the prosecution side is a stunning brunette.’
Rachel grinned. ‘Asked her out yet?’
He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Let’s just say I’m working on it… How’s your jammy little skive on the Costa?’
Rachel sighed. ‘I’m pretty sure Harper’s not here in Torrevieja. I’ve got a load of CCTV tape to go through tomorrow.’ She added: ‘It could prove useful, I suppose.’
Brickall inhaled from a can of lager. ‘What’s your gut telling you, Prince?’
‘That we’re wide of the mark. I’ve been looking at the photo of Gavin and Andy together at some beach bar every time I made enquiries, and something was bugging me. I’ve remembered what it was. The same building they’re in front of appeared in most of the photos of them in Michelle’s albums. Hold on a second…’
She reached for her phone and sent the image to Brickall so that they could look at it together. The bar in the background had a tin roof, a coconut-palm pergola, and the exterior walls were painted bright turquoise, daubed with blocks of bright red and green. Over the entrance hung a driftwood sign with lettering burned into it by hand. Rachel zoomed in as far as she could and could just about make out the name: Tiago’s.
‘Hang about,’ said Brickall suddenly. ‘It’s obvious, you plank. The red and green rectangles are the Portuguese flag. They’re in Portugal.’
Before Rachel had a chance to reply, he consulted his phone and held it up triumphantly to his laptop screen. ‘Here you go: Tiago’s Bar in Albufeira. It’s the Algarve.’
Rachel shook her head slowly. ‘Shit. Andy did say they’d travelled all over the Med. So d’you reckon he could be in Portugal?’
‘Only one way to find out.’
The next morning, Rachel phoned Nigel Patten’s assistant, Janette, and enlisted her help in getting to the Algarve.
It was not straightforward. If she flew, she would have to change planes in Lisbon, but there were no available seats that day anyway. Or the next day. If she drove all the way, she wouldn’t be able to return her Spanish-registered car in Portugal. A train would take eleven hours, which she couldn’t face. The resourceful Janette suggested she drive to Seville, leave the car, and take one of the very frequent buses from there to Faro.
‘I definitely think that’s your best option. You’ll be able to get to Albufeira by early evening, no problem. It’s a longish taxi ride from Faro, or there’s a train that only takes twenty minutes.’
‘Thank you.’ Rachel didn’t point out that this route would still mean at least five hours behind the wheel. Her gammy leg was hardly Janette’s problem. She downed a couple of painkillers and hit the road, reaching a hot, dusty, traffic-clogged Seville in the middle of the afternoon. A woman at the car rental office saw her limping pathetically with her luggage and offered the services of one of their pickup drivers to drop her at the bus station.
Brickall texted her as she was climbing onto the coach for the two-hour trip to Faro.
You on your way to the Algarve?
I’m now on leg two of the journey. It’s a remake of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Her own leg was very painful after nearly six hours in the car, but she kept thinking of Howard’s warning about opioid abuse and avoided taking more painkillers. Instead she gratefully accepted a plastic tumbler of wine from one of her fellow travellers, and slept most of the way over the border.
At 9 p.m., Tiago’s Bar was about half full. No doubt revellers were thinner on the ground in October than during the summer season, but it had been a hot day and people were lingering at the beach for one last cold beer, and to watch the informal volleyball match that was taking place.
Rachel sat at one of the plastic tables and ordered a glass of vinho verde and – because she hadn’t eaten all day and was ravenous – a paper plate of chips. There was only one waitress serving, and Rachel beckoned her over and showed her the photo of Gavin Harper sitting outside this very bar.
‘Do you know him?’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry, I no English.’ But there was something there in her eyes: a flicker of recognition. After she had wolfed the chips, Rachel took her glass of wine and wandered a few yards away to a rocky outcrop, where she sat down. And waited.
At about eleven, the sound system was switched on, complete with flashing strobe lights, and gradually more people started to arrive, spilling out onto the sand in a rowdy gaggle. Cigarette tips lit the night sky like fireflies, and there was a heady whiff of marijuana. Suddenly, Rachel spotted a familiar figure strolling along the fairy-light-bedecked path that led from street to beach. She had been looking at him for the past two days, so there was no doubt in her mind.
Gavin Harper.
She waited until he was a few feet from the front of the bar, then walked over. ‘Excuse me.’
He froze.
‘Gavin Harper? I need to talk to you.’
He thrust his chin down, spun on his heel and started sprinting back towards the road. Rachel dropped her beer bottle and took off after him, but her sandals gave her no purchase on the uneven sand and she stumbled. Once she was on the path, she steadied herself, but the torn ligament made it impossible to pick up any pace, and Gavin had vanished into the maze of darkened streets.
‘Fuck!’
Wincing with pain, Rachel bent double to catch her breath, then limped back to the sanctuary of her hotel.