The Mallorca Assignment

Chapter One

THE PIERCING wail of a small calibre motorcycle being revved up four floors below, in Calle Jerez, suddenly broke the man’s reverie and he woke with a jolt.

‘Hijo de un mille putas – son of a thousand whores!’ he cursed to himself, thumping the pillow in exasperation.

Slowly, though, as the fog of his drunken stupor faded, he fought to regain his bearings and began to survey the drab room, until something caught his blurry eye.

As he laid stock still in the dimness, he was drawn to a dancing Jacob’s ladder of shimmering radiance and, for a long moment, its surreal beauty mesmerised him.

Only when he realised it was a mere a trick of the light – burnished sunbeams lancing through the window’s ancient, shuttered slats and playing a vivid rainbow of colour on far wall – did his fascination with the vision fade and he returned to the task of reviving his senses.

With a long yawn and bone-crackling stretch, the man wrung the last vestiges of sleep from his body and began caressing the heavy stubble on his chin, framing a plan for the day ahead.

Distractedly, his spare hand snaked down his torso and scratched his groin. The reflex automatically triggered his juices, but he knew the girl was gone. All that lingered of her were a few strands of burnt sienna hair on the crumpled pillow next to his.

Pity, though, he lamented. He could have used her now as wantonly as the night before, when they’d locked together in bouts of torrid, steamy passion, broken only by the needs to draw breath, share a Lucky Strike and fortify themselves with shots of fiery Minorcan gin.

Now he couldn’t remember what she was called, not that the name of a puta mattered. But, as whores went she was a sassy one, blessed with a firm arse and proud tits, and certainly worth the 80 euros he’d handed her at the seedy bar near Palma’s train station where she’d hooked him.

The thought of her – and how she’d teased every pore of his skin with her wickedly sensual tongue and pleasured him until he ached – brought a glint to his eye and reignited the throbbing in the pit of his loins.

‘Come on! Come on! Harder!’ she’d demanded. And he obliged, drilling himself deep into her moistness and erupting like a rampant stallion each time, until he was forced to beg for mercy.

‘Basta! That’s enough!’ he’d pleaded, glistening with sweat, as she kissed and fondled him in readiness to straddle him a fourth time.

The girl had thrown back her pretty head and laughed mockingly, taunting him, ‘What’s the matter, lover boy? Can’t get it up any longer? Had your money’s worth so soon?’

‘Si,’ he admitted lamely, so they finished off the rough gin, smoked their way through a half-pack of the Luckies and chatted aimlessly until the cloak of sleep enveloped him.

NOW, with sudden candour, the man was awake and curious to source the noises echoing up from below, where the permanent dwellers of the Calle Jerez were going about their daily business.

With the thrust of a hand he forced open the stubborn shutters, only to flinch as an explosion of dazzling light flooded the room. Even by mid-morning, there was a sting to the Mallorcan summer sun and he had to avert his eyes from the labyrinth of alleyways of Palma’s Old Town to escape its glare.

Soon, though, he recovered and from his vantage point he peered along the miserable canyon of terraced buildings and watched the humdrum street life with token interest.

On a balcony opposite, a woman hung out washing, like bunting pitched for a saint’s day fiesta, while four floors below a kid was still revving the motorcycle in a struggle to keep its wailing, spluttering engine alive. Elsewhere two aged women, like coal-dusted pigeons in their black widow's weeds, sat on a step swapping gossip as a bent old man ambled by, saluting them with a wave of his walking cane.

Eventually, the man’s thoughts returned to the girl, only this time they were notions of unease, spurred by an instinct for self-preservation. So, sassy puta or not, he checked. There was loose change and a crumple of five and 10-euro notes on the bedside table, so he turned over the top corner of the grubby mattress, where his head had rested.

The items were there, just as he had left them: the Taurus PT92 semi-automatic, its silencer taped to the barrel’s neck, and nine of the 10 Parabellum cartridges in its magazine, alongside the envelope containing 48 crisp, 100-euro bills.

Last night there had been 50 in the cache, but he had withdrawn two – to pay for the seedy room, a few plates of tapas, the green bottle of gin and the woman.

The realisation brought the ghost of a smile to his swarthy face and he remembered the wisdom of Cardones.

His mentor had tutored him sternly to avoid extravagant hotels, like those gracing Palma’s glittering waterfront, where a solitary guest – worse still an hombre who spoke Spanish in the lazy slur of a Canary Islander and had the appearance of a despised Gypsy – would be an obvious suspect when the police came to check. Because surely they would; it was routine after any hit. So be discreet. Stick to a backstreet hostal, where the management’s amnesia was included in the room price.

And don’t risk your stash, Cardones warned. If, after such work, when the adrenaline still pumps through your veins and there is need to find solace in a bottle and the charms of a puta, conceal the weapon and money within the bed, under the mattress on the side where you will sleep.

Leave some cash – a few small notes – which she can steal in the night. And don’t get too drunk, because putas are cunning, Cardones would caution. When you drift off to sleep, they will scour the room for any treasures they can snatch, then leave soundlessly.

Gracias, Cardones, mi amigo, mi padre. You taught me well; me, like you a humble gypsy boy, born, at best, to be a pedlar of cheap trinkets and a petty thief, for whom a prison cell would be as familiar as my mother’s house.

Gracias, Cardones, for tutoring me in the arts of the assassin.

SATISFIED all was well, the man set his mind on pressing issues. He tapped a Lucky from the pack, lit it and drew deeply on the acrid tobacco, leant back his head and exhaled the blue-white smoke into the high ceiling. Then he padded to the washbasin, removed the cigarette from his lips, cleared his throat and spat a wad of phlegm into the plughole.

The hot tap was tight and when he forced it to open, it elicited only a muted cough. The cold was less resistant. It spluttered a dash of brackish fluid as the old pipes groaned, then a short hiss and finally a discharge of clean water.

For a moment the man allowed it to play over his fingers, until he lifted a double fistful to his face and, as it ran off the stubble, its coolness felt invigorating.

Then he peered up at the reflection in the scratched mirror, hanging above the washbowl. It looked strangely unfamiliar, the eyes lifeless, the skin pitted as a sponge cake and the flesh around the jaw line beginning to sag. The dangers constantly bedevilling his thoughts, the alcohol that bought the reprieve of temporary oblivion and the putas who drained his vitality had all taken a visible toll.

He needed to rest up briefly and the pilgrims’ retreat of the Sacred Heart monastery at Lluc, far away in the Tramuntana Mountains, would provide an ideal sanctuary to revive a fatigued body and numbed spirit.

However, first he’d wash, shave and dress. Later, he would walk the kilometre to the leaf-shaded Paseo Borne and Palma’s main post office, unlock his private mailbox and retrieve the second envelope. It, too, would contain 5,000 euros. Payment in full. Half before, half after. As agreed and always honoured by Cardones.

Pleased with the idea of further riches, he took the canister of shaving foam and sprayed out a walnut-sized chunk onto his palm. After rubbing it vigorously into his beard, he washed the residue off his hand and reached for the razor.

Every man has a different mode of shaving and this one began with a casual upward sweep from beneath the left side of his throat towards his chin. He repeated the action to ensure the shave was close and the blade dug keenly a second time into what remained of the bristle.

It was then that his face was blown off.

ON the other side of the partition wall, a young man clad in white T-shirt, tattered jeans and Firefly trainers, regarded a smouldering hole exactly backing the spot where the next-door room's vanity mirror had once hung.

Using a wide-bit hand drill, he had found the layers of old plasterboard easy to pry away. The two holes he made were less than three centimetres in diameter, but one wide enough to peer through, the other – a fraction below it – sufficient to house the fat snout of a pump-action Remington shotgun and deliver the contents of a 12-gauge shell.

Almost leisurely the youth unlimbered the heavy weapon, dismantled its stock and packed all the components in a black Nike sportsbag. Zipped up, he slung it over his shoulder and departed, his Ray-Bans perched on top of his head and twirling the room key on an index finger.

Amid the bustle of late morning in Calle Jerez, no one bothered overmuch at the sound of a single, dull thud coming from the open window of a top-floor room in the Hostal La Reina. Maybe someone was moving furniture.

Nor did anyone pay particular attention to the teenager in sunglasses, skipping away with a smile, Snoop Dogg rapping down the earpiece of his iPod, and heading off on a scooter, probably to meet his sweetheart in one of the cafes surrounding Plaza Major in the heart of Palma’s shopping quarter.

Chapter Two

ON NORMAL days the barrier separating the yacht basin of Puerto Portals from the arcades of glitzy boutiques and absurdly expensive restaurants is unmanned. It is operated by an electronic key-card, issued by the harbourmaster strictly on the basis of one per each svelte vessel, whose owner could afford the exorbitant moorage fee.

However, on this morning an earnest young officer, in the pale blue military shirt, navy drill trousers and chequered cap of the Policia Local, stood sentinel at the barrier. For once in his brief career he both felt and looked important, and inwardly relished the attentions of curious passers-by, wondering what drama had ruffled the marina’s customary aura of opulent tranquillity.

Of Spain’s three agencies of civil law enforcement, the Policia Local earns scant veneration, even though its personnel are first-attenders at incidents. As servants of local councils, many regarded them – wrongly and uncharitably – as parish constables, school-crossing wardens, parking-ticket scribblers and gatemen, functions at which some profit, off-duty and illicitly, by swapping their public uniforms for those of private security firms.

However, in the event of a crime judged above petty, standing orders demand it becomes the responsibility of either the Guardia Civil or the National Police.

Officially, the Guardia’s primary role is to police Spain’s vast, rural hinterland, patrol the country’s thousands of kilometres of snaking coastline and combat the menace of the Basque separatists’ terror wing, ETA.

The force’s structure remains paramilitary, though its influence has markedly waned since the death, in 1975, of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator who deployed the Guardia as his mailed fist during the nearly 40 years of his iron rule.

Nevertheless, every region of the country – including the Balearic and Canary Islands, plus the contentious North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla – still hosts a detachment of Guardia, though all suburban crime now falls under the jurisdiction of the National Police.

Which was why, on this humid, late August morning, the pavements steaming from the previous night’s unexpected rain, a junior constable of the Policia Local was but a humble player in an unfolding drama he knew little more about than the pigeons nodding round his feet.

Parked to his left was a Mitsubishi Shogun, emblazoned with the Guardia’s livery of mace and battle-axe, and two scuffed Nissan Almeras, also bearing the same insignia.

Like the gateman, their occupants were relegated to bit-part roles in the scenario and their tacit duty was, as a zealous garrison commander had intimated earlier, ‘to keep an eye on the opposition’, as the Guardia often described their National Police counterparts when out of earshot.

Since investigating judge Ignacio Frau had decreed four hours earlier, the enquiry was deemed to fall within the remit of the National Police. And acknowledgment of this, if needed, was the presence of a pair of maroon Seat Ibizas, which, to the enlightened, bore the telltale registrations of the force’s detective division.

Further along the quay was an anonymous white van of the type used to transport light, dry goods. Only its bristling radio antenna offered any hint of its real purpose. Even then, there was no evidence to suggest it was command centre on wheels, complete with high-tech transmission facilities.

However, none of the intricate logistics attached to the launch of a major homicide investigation troubled the lone Policia Local, eking the most from his stewardship of the marina barrier, as a puckish breeze suddenly caused the pigeons to flutter with alarm.

As he paced back and forth, he noticed the driver of one of the Guardia’s Nissans had forgotten to switch off the car's flashing, blue strobe light. Another half hour and the battery would be flatter than a tortilla and there’d be hell to play from some angry maintenance sergeant when the embarrassed patrolman called in the problem. The notion brought a playful smirk to the sentinel’s face.

Fifty metres inside the marina’s perimeter a second blue-shirt idly examined his polished toecaps and chattered amiably with two, khaki-clad Guardias.

Occasionally they peered inquisitively at the intense activity taking place aboard a palatial, wide-beamed motor yacht, berthed in the centre of a pontoon of similar vessels, slopping quietly against their moorings in the gentle swell.

The boat was a white, Fairline Squadron 58 series, 17½-metres long, powered by twin, Volvo-Penta D12-800 diesel engines and crowned by a radar sweeper, GPS satellite navigation dish and VHF aerials. As extravagant at it was, it still seemed unremarkable in a harbour built as a parking lot for the nautical playthings of their multi-millionaire owners.

The Red Duster, identifying the boat as British-registered, hung limply from the flagstaff and a makeshift sign, saying ‘Deck Shoes Only’, was tacked with fuse wire to the gangplank handrail. On the stern, inscribed in illuminated red italic script, outlined in shadow black and gold, was the name Shady Lady II. The port of origin, Jersey, in the Channel Islands, was painted in lesser, black capital letters beneath.

One Guardia, arms folded across his barrel chest, quickly snapped to attention at hearing his name called from within the yacht. Regardless of his inappropriate footwear, he leapt onto the varnished deck and inside the bowels of the craft’s saloon. Less than a minute later he emerged, carrying a large, opaque plastic sack. It was sealed with tape and tagged at the neck with a tie-on label, stamped ‘evidencia’. Judging by his lack of effort in toting it, the bag held only lightweight contents, which he transported at a brisk pace to the anonymous, white van.

THROUGH the glazed doors of the yacht's elegant mess deck two men – one jacketless, but in shirt and tie, the other in jeans and white polo shirt – could be seen, looming over a seated figure. All three were locked in heated conversation and twice the sound of a harsh slap being delivered resonated. The seated man occasionally raised his arms defensively and his wails could be overheard on the quayside in a language other than Spanish.

Shortly, two more men emerged down the gangplank, both wearing disposable white coveralls, the standard issue for scene of the crime officers, and each was carrying two opaque sacks, tied and tagged as evidence. The SOCOs nodded to the blue-shirt and remaining Guardia and set off towards the barrier. Just as they approached it a red Seat Toledo sped down the hill, before abruptly halting immediately in front of the Policia Local guard. The young officer automatically stepped forth to admonish the driver and only some perverse instinct dispelled him of the idea. So, when he saw the chauffeur hurriedly clamber out and reach to open a rear passenger’s door, he knew his judgement had been right.

‘Mierda - Shit!’ muttered one of the SOCOs. ‘It’s that cocky bitch, La Condesa.’

‘Polla caliente – the cockteaser!’ spat the second. ‘It’s just our damned luck to be stuck with her.’

The blue-shirted sentinel at the barrier registered mild bewilderment, yet somehow had the good sense to remain silent.

As the woman climbed out, she displayed a fleeting glimpse of thigh and spilling cleavage. She was petite and dazzling, superbly outfitted in black Loewe suit, cut double-breasted and adorned on one lapel with a bloodstone, salamander brooch. Her jet hair was coiffured in a severe bob, with a deep fringe shading lustrous, nut-brown eyes.

The bagmen scurried uncomfortably for cover at the rear of the van, leaving the Policia Local to make his nervous introduction to a she-wolf he recognised from the many photos he’d seen of her in the newspapers.

‘At your service, senorita’, he said, snapping to attention, but unsure whether it was in order to offer a salute.

‘Where is it?’ demanded the woman brusquely.

‘It’s that yacht over there, where my colleagues are standing,’ stuttered the officer, indicating with a nod in the direction of the Shady Lady II.

‘Gracias,’ she replied icily, adding, ‘And I am not senorita – to you I am Inspectora!’

Chapter Three

THOUGH FEW officers of El Cuerpo de Policia Nacional, as the National Police is officially titled, considered it any good fortune, numbered among their ranks was Maria Mercedes Ana Ibanez Romero.

No-one denied the ruthlessly ambitious woman had the sharpest intellect in the murder squad she headed. But her haughtiness and contempt for subordinates also earned her derision and, thus, the nickname, La Condesa – The Countess – which was whispered without the slightest nuance of affection.

So, ignoring the Policia gate-keeper, with typical arrogance, Ibanez – like all Spaniards, she carried two family appellations, but since the Romero was her mother’s maiden name, it was only used for formal purposes – swept passed and boarded the Shady Lady II. Marching into the salon, she was met by the baleful countenance of Detective Sergeant Lucas Ripoll as his partner, Senior Detective Kiko Seron, paused to swallow a mouthful of tepid coffee and hurriedly replace the demitasse cup on the glass-topped mess table.

‘I see you’ve made yourselves at home already, boys,’ remarked Ibanez. It was less an observation, more waspish reproof.

‘We’ve been here for…’ Seron began stuttering, before Ripoll cut him short.

‘Kiko,’ he interrupted. ‘I’m sure La Inspectora has more important matters to discuss than what time we arrived.’

Ripoll turned to face La Condesa and started his report, stating, ‘The body was found lying on the master cabin bed at about 8.30 by an engineer who’d come to fix a problem with the sonar. He’s employed by a local company and we’ve taken a statement, but there’s only so much he can tell us that we can’t see for ourselves.’

Consulting his notebook, the sergeant continued, ‘Single gunshot wound to the left of the temple – medium calibre by the look of it and very accurate. The medical examiner reckons time of death to be between midnight and three a.m. The SOCOs have just finished and the forensic photographer’s been.’

Ripoll flipped through a few more leaves in his pad, before adding, ‘Nothing on board appears to have been disturbed. The victim was still wearing his Rolex and there is nearly 1,000 euros in cash in his wallet, so robbery is an unlikely motive. I’ve ordered a team of uniforms to canvass the area to see if anyone heard or saw anything and I’ve sent a man to requisition the CCTV tapes from the marina’s security office.’

‘Who’s this?’ La Condesa demanded, indicating the man sat hunched up, head bowed on the sofa to her right.

Ibanez judged him to be in his early thirties, small, but with sinewy arms, as taut as ships’ hawsers. His blond hair was fashionably cut and flopped boyishly over his face. Despite a reddening welt on a cheek and swollen lip, the face itself was as smooth as a female’s and it bore an angelic quality. He was casually, but tastefully dressed, in grey Diesel jeans and the collar of his T-shirt was badly misshapen, as if some heavy hand had wrenched at it.

‘Says his name in Istvan Morey and he’s the yacht’s deckhand and cook,’ explained Ripoll. ‘A cleaner on one of the other boats saw him turn up in a taxi about an hour ago and pointed him out to an officer. He tried to make a run for it, but we grabbed him and hauled him in here.’

‘So I notice,’ remarked Ibanez acidly.

On the table were the man’s belongings; a few small denomination euro bills, various coins, his wallet, a passport and three, hand-made cigarettes.

La Condesa picked up one of the roll-ups and sniffed at it suspiciously.

Marijuana, she judged correctly and without comment, then queried, ‘Is there just the one crewman?’

‘No, there’s another – sort of ship’s captain-cum-engineer,’ Ripoll replied. ‘He’s a German called Manfred Kurtz and Morey says he shacks up with a local woman, who has an apartment in Palma, off the Ramblas. I've detailed a car to go and find him. If he’s there, we'll pick him up soon.’

‘Bien! Good. What else?’

‘The yacht’s owned by this rich guiri’ – Ripoll used the vernacular and derogatory term ‘guiri’ instead of extranjero, the polite word for a foreigner – ‘Warrell. Stephen Warrell, an Ingles – and Englishman. And I should say was owned, not is. It’s Warrell who’s downstairs dead.’

Seron broke in, ‘This Morey is Hungarian and says he came here about six months ago from Budapest. He claims Warrell gave the two crewmen last night off and said they needn’t come back until morning. Morey says he was just returning when we apprehended him.’

Ibanez’s eye measured the Hungarian’s pitiful state, before she demanded to know, ‘Did Mr. Warrell order him and Kurtz to take the night off, or was the boss just playing Senor Nice Guy and giving them a break?’

‘I’m not sure,’ replied Ripoll, hesitantly.

‘Then ask him!’ barked La Condesa. ‘It could be important, particularly if the Ingles wanted them out of the way for a reason.’

In halting English, their one lingua franca, Ripoll looked down on the cowering figure and demanded gruffly, ‘Did Senor Warrell order you and Kurtz off the yacht last night, because he didn’t want you on board for some reason?’

The Hungarian regarded the policeman through fearful eyes. The rose-red welt was starting to bloom vividly on his left cheek and swell, reducing the eye above it to an ugly, partial slit.

‘I no understand,’ Morey stammered. ‘The boss, he say go ashore, enjoy party some place. He okay alone. So not come back ‘till morning, he say to me and Kurtz. Go enjoy self. That’s all he say. Sometime he do this, maybe when he want girl on boat.’

Ripoll drew a deep breath and began to interpret into Spanish what the cook had said.

‘Don’t bother,’ Ibanez said tersely. ‘I get along all right in English, even if it’s as bad has his.’

‘Naturally.’

The inspector ignored the sergeant’s veiled sarcasm and pondered for a moment.

Then, looking piercingly at Seron, she pronounced, ‘If Morey is the killer, it seems unlikely he’d turn up for work as normal this morning, just as if nothing had happened. But where does he say he was last night?’

Outranked on all flanks, Seron shot Ripoll a plaintive glance. You answer her, it said.

Noting his partner’s discomfort, the sergeant spoke, ‘He claims he had a steak at the Rodeo Grill, near Oliveras Market, and he’s got the receipt to prove it. Then he says he had a few drinks at a bar in Gomila Park and met someone; they left about four and spent the night together.’

‘Who did he sleep with and where? Did anyone see him?’ demanded Ibanez with urgency.

Ripoll swallowed hard and sought inspiration from the swathe of burgundy carpet.

Momentarily he said, ‘Bit difficult, that, Inspectora. He won’t tell us. Says he doesn’t want to compromise his friend.’

There was heavy emphasis on the word ‘friend’.

‘He’s a maricon. Right? A queer, a homosexual,’ Ibanez deduced.

‘Si,’ confirmed Ripoll.

‘Comprendo – I understand,’ La Condesa nodded. ‘Then find someone who saw him at the bar last night and if they remember seeing him leave with anyone and when? For the time being, cuff him and hand him over to the uniforms. Get them to put him in Son Pax Prison on a holding charge – drug possession will do. No more rough stuff, though. You’ve already scared the poor maricon witless and I want him in one piece when I next talk to him.’

Ripoll nodded a tacit instruction for Seron to summon the Guardia lounging on the quayside and get him to take the Hungarian away.

‘Now, show me downstairs and introduce me to the late Senor Warrell,’ commanded the woman.

Chapter Four

IBANEZ, WHO was known to the rare few she allowed close enough to merit familiarity as Mercedes – after her maternal grandmother – meticulously studied the last of the thick file of colour prints from the forensic photographer. This was a long shot of the cabin, taken with a wide-angle lens, showing Stephen Warrell face up on the bed, his head slightly tilted to the right. A small hole was situated to the left of his forehead and his eyes stared blankly at the wall. A pool of matted, black blood had formed on the pillow under the skull, where the bullet had exited.

The bedclothes were draped diagonally across the naked torso and barely disturbed. Warrell had died violently, yet oddly at peace. A contradiction in terms, she decided.

‘So,’ Ibanez mused. ‘If the killer’s motive wasn’t robbery, what was it? Because this displays all the hallmarks of a professional hit – no mess, no forced entry and one clean shot to the forehead. If that is the case, clearly Senor Warrell must have upset someone very powerful. The question is: what sort of man can arrange to have someone disposed of like this and, more importantly, why?’

Ripoll pursed his lips. ‘Or a woman’, he thought contrarily, since it was widely known most rich guiris had a weakness for mixing sexual pleasure with their nautical amusement when they were alone on their gin-palace super yachts. And Puerto Portals was a renowned fleshpot for prostitutes and girls eager to snare a wealthy foreigner.

Ripoll stood stock still by the open, grime-stained window of the inspector’s third floor office in Palma’s Edificio de Jefatura Superior de Policia de Baleares, an unobtrusive, featureless building that served as regional headquarters for the National Police.

He was craving a cigarette and, hand in his trouser pocket, he toyed with a packet of Fortuna Lites. However, he knew that no one in their right mind would risk lighting up within a half-kilometre of Ibanez. And even he, a veteran of a dozen years on the force, was so moved by her intimidation, he’d visit the men’s room and brush his teeth vigorously before any rendezvous between them. Nevertheless, this precaution failed to desensitize his clothes sufficiently from the rank odour of tobacco and La Condesa had once again shown her displeasure by telling him to stand near her open window. Even Comisario Jose Luis Melendes, the commander of detectives, would stub out his cigar whenever Ibanez entered his office.

What man isn’t awestruck by this exquisite gamin of an ogress was an issue which regularly taxed Lucas Ripoll’s imagination. Because, despite her irritating aura of superiority and disdain for underlings, there was an intense sexuality about her and he wondered how she would react if ever lured to within range of intimacy.

Seducing her into such circumstances would be an entirely different matter, he mused, made especially challenging since she drank nothing stronger than agua con gas, fizzy water laced with