Hidden Page 3
Palma, Christine thought, that was the capital of Majorca and at the other end of the island. They certainly were taking the matter more seriously.
‘And you must be Senor Vinnie Palmer?’ the detective finished.
‘Yes, but has Christine told you about the attack on her? I can certainly testify as to the distressed state she was in, minutes after it.’
Fernandez seemed to ignore what Vinnie had said as he continued. ‘And you went to find her assailant, the man from the bar?’
‘Yes, but I couldn’t see him.’
Fernandez then reached into his pocket and produced two photographs, he showed the first one to Christine as he spoke. ‘Is this the person you call barrel man?’
Christine immediately recognised the man, and said that it was. She also noted that it was a mugshot. Fernandez showed the photo to Vinnie and asked, ‘Is this the man you went to confront?’
‘I’ve no idea, I’ve told you, I couldn’t find him, only the barman, and he’ll confirm that. And I’m not sure what you mean by confront…’ Vinnie said, then went on to explain his plan to record a confession from the man.
‘We have spoken to the barman, and he said that you were very angry,’ Fernandez said.
‘I was upset for Christine, but I wasn’t outwardly angry. I hid my real reason for visiting, on purpose.’
Christine then watched as Fernandez put the first photo back into his jacket before he showed a second picture to Vinnie. She could see Vinnie recoil and instinctively leaned over and took a peek. She recoiled too. It showed a man in a hospital bed all bloodied and bruised with all sorts of tubes coming out of him.
‘This is Alexandru Lolo, a Romanian national. It was taken a few hours ago in Palma General Hospital. He is fighting for his life,’ Fernandez said.
‘What’s that got to do with us?’ Vinnie asked.
‘Because, Senor, you know him as barrel man, and thirty minutes after you went looking for him he was found like this. Senor Palmer, you are under arrest for making the offence of attempting to murder Alexandru Lolo.’
The uniformed officer then produced a pair of handcuffs and said, ‘Ponga las manos detras de la espalda.’
‘Hands behind back, now,’ Fernandez translated.
Chapter Five
‘Pick up Jimmy, for God’s sake,’ Christine spat into her phone.
‘Sorry, just pulled over, is everything ok?’ Jimmy asked.
Christine quickly told him what had just happened, and that she knew they were taking Vinnie to the local police station in Pollensa.
‘That’s a good sign,’ Jimmy said.
When Christine asked him why, he explained that, if the authorities were happy they had their man — which, he added, they obviously couldn’t be— then they would have shipped Vinnie straight to the main station in Palma.
‘What solace can we take from that, exactly?’ she asked him.
‘If he’s the last bloke to see the victim, that they know of, and he went to have it out with that victim because of his attack on you, then he’s a fair suspect. But no more than that, as yet.’
Christine thought about this for a moment; it was a fair point. But how could poor Vinnie prove his innocence? He had no alibi.
‘Look, sit tight for now, I’ve got some friends in the policia nactional in Palma, I’ll make some calls and be with you in 40 minutes or so.’
Christine thanked him, she hadn’t expected Jimmy to drop everything and come all the way back, but was glad he was going to. She ended the call and then tried to remember all that had been said, leading up to Vinnie’s arrest. It was then she remembered Fernandez’ comment about Vinnie being angry, or irate, or whatever phrase he had used. That couldn’t be right. He’d been in control when he’d left her and Jimmy, upset obviously, but not overtly aggressive or anything. She looked at her watch. It would be a long 40 minutes, she couldn’t just sit there. She picked up her bag and room keys and headed out.
Ten minutes later she approached the Roma Bar. It looked to be closed. She glanced at her watch, it was now 9.40 am. If it was not open, then surely someone should be present, preparing to open up? In fact, when she’d first noticed the bar on the way to the beach the previous morning, it was around this time and was open then.
She tried the front door in case it was just closed to, but it was locked, and there was no sign of life. The bar was at the end of the promenade with only one neighbour, a coffee bar, which was open. Christine asked the waiter, who was resetting a table, but he said he didn’t know the people next door. She wasn’t sure she believed him. She pressed for the barman’s address, but the waiter just gave her a shrug and disappeared inside with a tray of dirty dishes.
Christine slowly made her way back to her hotel and wondered, just for a moment, if Vinnie had caught up with barrel man or Alexandru-whatever-his-surname-was, last night. She also remembered his furtiveness on the way back to the hotel, and immediately felt guilty at such a thought. In any event, surely Vinnie’s clothes would have been bloodied when he re-joined them at the bar? And they were not. He also willingly fished the clothes out of the linen bag in their room, to hand to Fernandez before he was taken away. Not the actions of a guilty man.
Then she felt a second twinge of guilt; for only disregarding her initial question once she had rationalised it. She knew Vinnie well enough to know better. He was a detective inspector after all, for God’s sake. She then shook off her discomfort; she was an investigative journalist after all. Time to forgive herself.
Twenty slow minutes later, Jimmy was knocking on her door. She let him in and thanked him again. ‘No problems, I’ve known Vinnie a long time, and if he had found barrel man and had given him a little slap, well, fair enough. But by the state you say barrel man was in in the photo, he’s been royally worked over. Not our Vinnie, that. Plus, Vinnie would have been covered in claret when he came back to the bar, and he wasn’t.’
Christine felt better on hearing Jimmy say what she had thought. She quickly told him about the bar being closed.
‘No surprise there,’ Jimmy answered, before he went on to explain the phone calls he had made. ‘It was like I thought, he’s a fair bet as an initial suspect, but that’s all they’ve got at the moment. Hell, situations reversed, Vinnie would have locked himself up. I’ve been told that he’s just a T-I-E as we’d call it back in the UK, which is why they are holding him in a local nick.’
‘What’s a T-I-E?’
‘Trace, implicate or eliminate,’ Jimmy answered, and then went on to explain that any number of people could be subject to a T-I-E enquiry, and in the process you’d come across one who didn’t sit right.
‘What you mean, that they had no alibi or that they did have an obvious motive?’
‘More than that. Don’t forget, Vinnie had both. But sometimes it’s just a gut feeling. The tasty suspects rarely act like innocent men wrongly being questioned. They either underplay or overplay it.’
Christine then told Jimmy of the many TV news appeals for help she’d been involved in, when someone had gone missing. Where it later transpired that the relative or whoever it was that was fronting the appeal turned out to be the abductor, or worse, murderer. How the fake tears etc. compared to a genuine cry for help, from a genuinely distraught family member. On reflection, it always seemed obvious. They even used to have bets in the newsroom as to authenticity.
‘Come on, let’s go to the nick and see what we can find out,’ Jimmy said, and Christine reached for her bag.
Chapter Six
The ajuntament de Pollenca, or local government building in Pollensa town, was a five-minute drive from the port resort. Jimmy said that, according to his sources in Palma, Vinnie was being held in the local police station next door. Christine wondered if she shouldn’t give Vinnie’s boss, Detective Superintendent Harry Delany, a call. She knew Harry well enough from two previous cases she had worked on, which had been interwoven with investigations that Vinnie and Harry were involved in
. She voiced her thoughts but Jimmy told her not to, not yet. ‘Nothing to tell, yet,’ he said.
Ten minutes later they pulled up outside a beautiful sandstone building. The walls outside were made of small round ornate stones, which gave what she guessed was a fairly new building, an old-world charm, a rural Spanish feel.
As if reading her mind, Jimmy said, ‘Looks more like a holiday apartment than a nick.’
Christine nodded as she unclasped her seat belt, and Jimmy turned to face her.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘I was just thinking… it might be better if I went in alone.’
‘How come?’
‘If I play my usual role, I can say I’ve been informed of the arrest of a British national by my contacts in Palma and I have checked to see if he is wanted back in the UK. I can then ascertain, or try to, the strength of what they have.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
‘I’ll text you as I approach the desk, in case I have to wait, and you give me a call exactly three minutes later.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘I’ll tell them I’m waiting for a call from the UK to confirm intelligence checks. Hopefully, I can establish the strength of what they have on the back of that, and then when you ring me I’ll pretend you are the UK telling me that he is clean, and is who he says he is.’
‘Ok. But Vinnie was right, you undercover types can’t let go.’
Jimmy laughed and got out of the car, then headed to the front door of the police station.
Ten minutes later Christine’s phone alerted her to a text from Jimmy. It was blank. Three minutes after that, she made the call and Jimmy answered saying that he ‘understood’ and would await the call back in ten minutes’. Christine took the hint and waited ten minutes before calling back. This time Jimmy answered as per their script, thanking her and ending the call. Two minutes after that, he was back outside and headed towards the car.
He climbed in and drove off before he spoke. ‘They’ve got rock all, I’m sure of it.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘They went on the knocker after they found barrel man and it was the waiter at our bloody bar who put Vinnie into bat.’
‘How?
Jimmy explained that the waiter had overheard her, Jimmy and Vinnie’s conversations after seeing Christine return, and then watched Vinnie head off on a mission before returning, after which they all left very quickly. ‘The waiter didn’t know who I was, thankfully, or my cover in the police station might have been blown,’ he said, and then added, ‘but he knew you and Vinnie from previous visits and the cops soon ID-ed you from the beach incident you’d both witnessed.’
‘Bloody waiters.’
‘Only being public-spirited, I guess.’
‘I guess, but what about Vinnie?’
Jimmy went on to say that the phone call had worked well, and they were just waiting for some news from the lab to ‘confirm or deny’ Vinnie’s status as a suspect. Whatever that meant.
Jimmy drove back to Christine’s hotel and no more was said as she mused upon what exactly it all meant. Back at the apartment she made them both a sandwich, before they headed out to try the Roma Bar again.
It was still shut and the neighbours were still no help — different waiter, same result — so they wandered back to the hotel.
They had only been in there for a few minutes when there was a knock on the door. Christine opened it to see Vinnie standing before her.
‘Sorry, in all the rush this morning I forgot to take my key with me,’ he said.
Christine threw her arms around him and gave him a huge hug.
‘Wow, I should get arrested more often!’
‘So you made bail,’ Jimmy shouted from the lounge, as Vinnie and Christine made their way inside.
‘Not funny,’ Vinnie replied.
Christine told Vinnie to sit down and then grabbed a couple of bottles of San Miguel from the fridge, giving Vinnie and Jimmy one each. She went back to get herself a beer when Vinnie started his tale.
It was pretty much as Jimmy had suggested; Vinnie was just an ‘MO suspect,’ as he put it. He went on to explain that whilst he was being booked in at the police station, Fernandez took a call from Palma. Apparently, they had found what could only have been the assailant’s blood on Mr Lolo’s clothes.
‘And as you are uninjured…?’ Jimmy said.
‘Partially, it certainly helped. But they took a DNA swab from me in order to check.’
‘But that would take days, even if it was fast-tracked,’ Jimmy added.
‘True, that’s why Fernandez also requested a sample of blood from me. He said he had no legal grounds to do so, but if I was a different blood group to the assailant’s, then I was in the clear. They’d know that within a couple of hours. So obviously, I gave a sample. They had it tested locally and hey presto. I’m A something or other and the assailant is not.’
‘That’s pretty good of Fernandez,’ Christine said.
‘I’ll say,’ Jimmy said. ‘He could have kept you locked up until the DNA came back. Or at the very least released you without your passport.’
‘You have got your passport, haven’t you?’ Christine asked.
‘Fear not, I have. Fernandez is a good detective. He said he believed me, and didn’t want to waste time on me whilst the real culprit was out there. Especially after a UK agent working for the Spanish police had taken the trouble to drive all the way from Palma, just to verify my credentials.’
‘Glad to be of assistance old boy,’ Jimmy said, in a mock Etonian accent.
They laughed, and Vinnie thanked Jimmy. Christine could feel all the pressure lift. ‘Come on, let’s go and celebrate,’ she said.
‘Vinnie’s buying,’ Jimmy said.
‘At a different bar, though,’ Christine added.
‘Why’s that? I like it there!’ said Vinnie.
‘I’ll explain en route,’ Christine said decidedly. And then there was another knock at the door.
Chapter Seven
Christine reached the door first, as Vinnie turned to see where Jimmy was. Fortunately, he was just passing the bedroom doorway, which was open. Vinnie stood back to let Jimmy pass — having found his apparently misplaced car keys. That was when Vinnie heard Christine’s voice.
‘Detective Fernandez, twice in one day! I hope you have not come for the same reason as your last visit?’
Vinnie quickly launched Jimmy through the open doorway and saw him collide with the double bed as he pulled the door to.
‘Do not worry, I come in peace, but I do need to have a word. Is Senor Palmer in?’
Vinnie joined Christine at the front door, and it was obvious that the detective wished to talk inside. He invited him in and showed him through to the lounge.
‘I thought you would like to know that Senor Lolo has regained consciousness.’
‘I’m pleased to hear that, now you can ask him who really did attack him,’ Vinnie said.
‘We already did. And he is refusing to co-operate. In fact, he is refusing to make a formal complaint.’
‘Why would he do that?’ Christine asked.
‘I have my suspicions. But it further suggests he knows his attacker. And that it is someone he is frightened of.’
‘May I ask, what are your suspicions?’ said Vinnie.
‘Senor Lolo is… known to us.’
‘I guessed that, from the mugshot you showed us,’ Vinnie said.
‘Ah yes, probably an unfortunate choice of photograph. But what I’m going to tell you is in confidence, for your own safety. I ask for your word as a fellow detective that this will go no further,’ Fernandez spoke to both of them, but Vinnie could see his message was aimed at Christine.
They both gave their word, and Fernandez continued. ‘Lolo is suspected to be part of a person-trafficking syndicate, as was the man from the beach who was stabbed. In fact, we think that the young woman who stabbed him, did so in order to escape.’
‘Unfortunately not.’
‘What has beach man got to say about it all?’
‘He too refused to make a complaint, and now his whereabouts are also not known, I’m afraid.’
‘So you think the attack on Lolo was connected to all that?’ Vinnie asked.
‘It would appear so, but no one is talking. We have been watching the Roma Bar on and off, and will do so again. So please, stay away.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll not be going back there,’ Christine said.
‘Nor me,’ Vinnie added. ‘Though I would dearly love a chat with the barman.’
‘I always felt you were a convenient chivo expiatorio,’ Fernandez said.
‘Scapegoat,’ Christine translated.
‘Thank you, senora. In fact, it may be wise to cut your holiday short,’ Fernandez said.
‘Wise, or just safer?’ Christine asked.
‘Both. I think Lolo was attacked firstly, for allowing you into the bar whilst the man from the beach was there, and secondly, for his attempt to warn you off in a way that only raised more questions. It may be that you two are in danger because of what you saw on the beach. But I can’t insist. I leave you to discuss, and thank you again, Senor Palmer, for your understanding.’ Fernandez then stood up and left the apartment without another word.
Vinnie waited until he heard the front door click shut before speaking. ‘Well, what do you reckon to that?’
‘Think we have stumbled into something very interesting.’
‘Interesting indeed,’ Jimmy said, as he re-joined them.
‘I’ve got to say I’m loath to walk away from this,’ Vinnie said.
‘My journalistic juices are bubbling over, too,’ Christine added.
‘I think you are both mad,’ Jimmy told them.
Vinnie went to the fridge and retrieved the last three bottles of San Miguel, and then they all sat around the lounge table to discuss what they should do. Natural instincts aside, Jimmy thought their presence could only aggravate the situation, and potentially hinder Fernandez. Vinnie added that Jimmy needed to ‘get out of Dodge’ before they were seen together. He was grateful for what his mate had done, but didn’t want to compromise his position, or piss off Fernandez, who was clearly staying in Pollensa.