Page 37 of His Worst Crime

“I was just getting my pickup to go down to the Delta. He was there. I invited him down, just a spur of the moment thing…”

“He was here, hanging around the stables?”

“No,” Ramon lied. “My car was parked in the car park beside the MNAC.”

“Something else I need to show you,” Carme said, in a voice like sharpened steel. She stalked toward the entrance, and showed him the stables outer gate, where the lock had been busted. Ramon hadn’t noticed it as he came in. “My office was broken into as well, and the tool room. He took a tablet, but there was nothing else of value there. My computer’s only worth anything as a museum piece.”

“Have the police been round?”

She nodded. “It was the guy from the security firm who noticed the break-in, caught him in the act, and called the police. Apart from the tablet, he’d taken some tools, bolt-cutters and stuff. He was loaded down with them when the police arrived, so they got him fair and square.” She paused. “That’s actually how I came across your horse. I was doing the rounds of the stables afterward and saw the swelling.

“Tools? So he must have known what he was after.” David had also been snooping around the stables after leaving the job. He didn’t want to think about it. There was clearly no connection.

“Funny thing,” Carme went on, the burglar was English. What’s your professional opinion of that?”

Ramon’s heart sank into the pit of his stomach. A coincidence, that’s what it was. Anyway, Davey was with him down at the Delta when it happened. He had the perfect alibi…. Ramon didn’t even want to think about what the consequences of that were.

“OK,” Carme said, her voice steely and controlled. “Tomorrow, Monday at the latest, you get your horse out of my stables. He should never have been here anyway. He should have been floated out to the police stables as soon as he could walk.”

“I’m sorry, Carme, I wasn’t trying to go behind your back or lie to you. The situation just happened without us thinking about it.”

“You’re right,” she replied. “I can one hundred percent believe that neither you nor he was doing much thinking.” As she walked away, she tossed over her shoulder: “It’s late, I’m going home. And first thing Monday morning I’m getting security cameras fitted here.”

twenty-one

It was late, almost midnight, when Ramon finally got home. After Carme had left, he’d checked one final time on Estel, and then gone home himself. Carme was right, security was way too lax at La Foixarda. He was exhausted. Though he was hungry, it was too late to eat. He popped open a beer and sat in front of the TV, letting the unending white noise of what passed for entertainment slowly soften the edges of his brain.

The fight with Carme had hurt. She was right, he had no defense. But she was his oldest friend. How many tits-up flings had she nursed him through? Each time he’d thought this could be the one, and every time the guy had turned out to be an a-hole. David wasn’t, he was sure of it. Or was he? Whatever. He could have used Carme’s shoulder right now. Though he knew he didn’t deserve it. She was right. Maybe the stables weren’t technically “hers”—they were municipal, after all—but she was the boss; they were her responsibility. And both he and David had been treating them like public property.

And the burglar, an English intruder. It was tempting to think it must be related, rather than an uncomfortable coincidence. Had David talked about the stables to a friend who had decided they’d make a good target for a break-in? That was preferable to thinking his Davey might be involved. Even as they’d been down at the Delta together, riding and… making love. That brief period, barely twenty-four hours, when they’d been so happy, now felt like an isolated bubble of paradise adrift on a dark river of angst and suspicion. Who was the real David?

And then his glance fell on them, the emotional lifeline that had helped him through the arduous week after David had disappeared the first time. On the chair just inside the door of his bedroom, visible from the lounge, a pair of dark gray track pants and a white tee-shirt lay neatly folded. The only things still containing some subtle essence of David, the last evidence of him. When he’d got home that night after their first contact above the tack room, he’d taken them off and folded them, intending to wash them before returning them. But he’d been captivated by the last traces of David that remained.

Now he got up and went and knelt before that chair, as he had done every night of the last week. Bare hints of—not Davey’s—David’s scent lingered, just enough to bring the guy alive in his mind once again. He leaned forward and buried his nose in the fabric. Yes, he could still smell him, but it was fading—the clothes the English boy had lent him hadn’t been fresh but ones he’d clearly worn at least once. He was thankful for that. Otherwise in place of David’s smell, there would only have been the commercial detergent stink from some laundromat down in the Poble Sec neighborhood.

Well, David was gone now. Why had he been up there at the stables at midnight? Ramon got up and, walking into his study, switched on his computer. As a policeman he had a right, no, a duty, to know. Having suspicions and not reporting them could cost him his job. And if David was gone for good…. If it all came out, it would look damn messy: picking up a suspect in the dead of night, taking him down to his private farm for horseback riding and sex…. He opened up the Europol website and logged in. He soon found the part of the site he was looking for. All he need do was upload the files from his online drive and events would take care of themselves, moving onto the automatic conveyor belt of the justice system. He could wash his hands, go back to his horses and career, his solitary life. Swearing, he closed down the computer again and went to bed.

The next day was Sunday. Ramon opened his eyes before it was barely light. Over breakfast he logged onto work, the Catalan Police Force’s Mounted Unit website, and booked float transport for Estel back to the police stables. The earliest it could arrive was midday, due to a big festival happening, involving most of the mounted unit. So, he’d go up to the stables, walk Estel, and then wait for the transport float to come. At least then he’d be out of Carme’s hair.

Last night she’d been angry, but with time they might make peace. He hoped. He drank his coffee at the kitchen counter, watching the news on the small TV that sat atop the microwave. His apartment had a dining room, but he rarely used it. Only when he’d had the occasional date he was trying to impress had he ever made the effort to set the table in there and cook a proper dinner. The thought of going through that rigmarole again for anyone now turned his stomach. After washing his few breakfast dishes, he showered and dressed in a clean tee-shirt and jeans, grabbing a light sweatshirt in case it got cool later. It was a beautiful spring day and, apart from walking Estel, he wasn’t planning on doing any grubby jobs today. It felt like years since he’d dressed in clothes that weren’t a uniform or ragged riding wear. New clothes, a new start. If he could avoid thinking of Davey—David—and get Estel floated back to the stables quickly, he’d have time in the afternoon to do some sort of weekend activity, before he had to walk him again.

When he reached his pickup, it looked like something the cat had dragged in, parked between all those spotless city vehicles. The many unpaved roads down around the Delta had left its lower body decorated in a spider’s web of mud splashes, while the cab and hood carried a patina of dust. He should put it through a car wash today—how’s that for a Sunday activity? Not quite the paella on the beach front he’d been imagining. Still, it would keep his mind off other things.

When he parked up at the stables, there were no other cars in the car park. He keyed in the gate code Carme had given him years ago and went through into the area of the boxes. He took his time, going past the different boxes, checking on and saying hello to the different horses. He stayed for a while with sweet little Boira, Davey’s favorite, giving her a few treats and scratching her neck, before heading on to Estel’s box. His horse was there, impatient and cantankerous as ever at being boxed up. He really needed a few weeks out in the paddock. Once his leg was properly healed, he’d see about that. Grabbing a halter, he buckled it on Estel and led him out to the yard.

Before the police float was due to arrive, Ramon had a few hours to spare after walking Estel. So, he walked over to the National Art Museum of Catalonia nearby, a huge Noucentista palace that dominated Montjuïc Mountain, built for the 1929 World’s Fair that had completely transformed Barcelona. Wandering around the exhibition halls that showed the country’s art down through the centuries, he’d tried to understand what he was looking at, from eleventh-century Romanesque church frescoes up until poster art that displayed propaganda during the Spanish Civil War. Despite the fact that art normally made him feel stupid, as he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking at, the experience calmed him. It stopped him thinking about horses, or the English boy who had now disappeared from his life for good. Or what it had felt like to hold him in his arms as they’d fallen asleep together. That unique exhilaration of the moment on the beach when they’d turned their horses and galloped full pelt for home, riding knee to knee, the salt wind stinging their faces. Or worked together, rubbing the horses down, hosing them off and scraping them down, getting them in the float together—Ferro was an old hand, young Desdemona had shied a couple of times and needed David’s gentle coaxing—and giving them their feed. Sitting down together at the end of the day for some hot estofado, tired but happy, not many words needed, just pleasure in each other’s company. Especially seeing the way David went to check on the horses before they set off, even after they’d just fought. It was exactly what he’d been about to do, but David had beaten him to it.

And the way it had all just changed, like a switch from on to off, at the mention of David’s past. The silence, the non-communication, the final glimpse of him in his rear-view mirror, hair looking orange and clown-like under the gas station’s lights. Yeah, so the art stopped him thinking about any of that, not much anyway. It went past like a blur. Each time he caught himself staring at a painting for five minutes without having seen it, he’d move to the next one and try and focus, look at the art, and not think about David.

How was he? Where was he? Would he be hitchhiking? Had he come back to Barcelona or gone off elsewhere? At the thought of him returning to Barcelona, Ramon’s heart leaped and he had to tell himself it wasn’t happening. They were done. Get over it. He eventually left the museum before he hit one of the paintings in frustration. Then he still had an hour until the police float arrived, and he didn’t want to risk bumping into Carme at the stables, so he just walked. He pushed himself at a hard pace up the mountain, stretching his legs and working his thigh muscles as hard as he could till they were killing him. He must have looked an idiot, striding up the mountain like a long-distance endurance walker, not even dressed for it, but he just needed to work off steam. Reaching the castle at the top, he barely had time for a quick circuit at a half-jog, before he had to head back down again to be at the stables on time. He wished he could have shown David that view. Or had he seen it already? He must have come up here at some stage while he was living at the stables. It was a favorite place to bring the horses.

He arrived back at the stables puffing and sweaty, just as the police float pulled into the parking lot. He flashed his badge at the driver, and rushed into the stables to get Estel ready. And ran bang into Carme just inside the gate.

“The float’s here.”

“Yeah, I saw it pull in. I didn’t think you would organize it so quickly.”

“Of course. You said—“