Recompense Read online

  ‘Señorita Warren,’ she began. ‘May I call you Melissa?’

  ‘I prefer Lissa,’ the other replied.

  ‘Entiendo, I understand. Leyisa, I am a testadora from UFAM. The Unidades de la Familia y la Mujer, you understand? My role is to take your statement. Are you able to tell me what you remember about the night of the thirteenth of July?’

  ‘I don’t remember that night at all,’ Lissa replied. ‘Nothing. It’s all a complete blank.’

  ‘Do you remember why you came to Pamplona? Shall we start there?’

  ‘I came for the bull run, not to watch it or to take part, but for the spectacle. I’m a photographer, freelance, but I took this assignment for a magazine in the UK.’ Keeping her eyes on the ceiling, Amaya noticed. Seemingly unable to face the police officer’s eyes. Although occasionally sneaking a look at her notepad.

  ‘I’ve worked for them before on festivals,’ Lissa continued. ‘They wanted something closer to home that people could get to more easily. Not everyone can travel to the Philippines or Brazil.’

  Amaya scribbled on the pad, nodding in response. ‘It sounds a nice life, if not very safe,’ she observed.

  ‘This is the first time I’ve ever had any trouble,’ Lissa replied. ‘Even at Rio Carnival I had no problems. Somehow the camera seems to protect you. People don’t really see you as a person, just an extension of the camera. It’s hard to explain, but it’s almost as if they only pay attention to the camera.’ Lissa twisted the bedsheets in her fingers as she spoke.

  Amaya watched the actions, unsure if it was anxiety over approaching the subject of the attack or nervousness over any lies she might tell. She smiled ruefully to herself – the problem of being a police officer was that you met so many liars, you saw everyone the same way.

  ‘And so you came to Pamplona?’ she prompted.

  Lissa nodded. ‘I got the boat to Santander and then travelled by bus to Bilbao, changed there and then on to Pamplona. I remember that much. I booked a room in a small pensión off the Paseo de Sarasate and went for a walk.’ More twisting of the bedsheets. ‘I remember going to Café Iruña. I’d always wanted to go there.’

  ‘Ah si, Ernesto ‘Emingway,’ Amaya smiled. ‘I read For Whom the Bells Tolls at university. It is set in the valleys and mountains near here.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lissa smiled back. ‘I knew that. I was going to hire a car and have a drive around the area to explore the scenery. Well, I was before all this. Now – well I don’t know what I’m going to do now.’

  ‘Have any memories come back to you?’

  Lissa breathed in and looked at the ceiling. ‘I’ve been trying ever since I was told yesterday that you needed to speak to me,’ she said, ‘but nothing. It’s all pretty much a blank from getting off the bus. I only brought a small case with me; the cameras weigh so much, you see. Actually, where are my cameras? Maybe some of the shots I took will jog my memory?’

  Amaya checked her notebook. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I have no information on them. I will find out for you.’

  ‘Well make sure you do! That’s my livelihood and they’re my only assets. I have nothing else!’ Melissa slapped her hands on the bed, and her mother ran back in the room.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Sandra said. ‘No more questions. Can’t you see she’s been through enough?’

  ‘I understand Señora Warren, but if we are to ’ave any chance of catching these men, I need to question your daughter.’ Amaya noticed Melissa was now curled up on the bed in a childlike posture and wondered if she assumed it every time her mother was around.

  ‘I think it’s been enough for today,’ she said to the younger woman. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’

  She strolled out of the room and met Inspector Ibarra on his return from buying coffees. She shook her head at him and they walked away, taking all three coffees with them.

  Sandra Warren flopped into a chair and fanned her face with a magazine she’d left there earlier.

  ‘It’s okay, baby, they’ve gone,’ she said.

  Lissa unwrapped herself and rolled over to face her mother. ‘I can’t remember anything, Mummy,’ she said. ‘I remember arriving in Pamplona and finding the pensión, but nothing else. It looks like they stole my cameras too. That’s everything I own.’

  ‘Don’t worry about the cameras, darling. They are insured.’

  ‘Mum, they’re not! I couldn’t afford it. Don’t you remember me telling you? Or didn’t I mention it? I can’t remember anything right now.’ Lissa put her head in the pillow, pulling it around her ears, trying to block out the news that was hitting her.

  Sandra Warren smiled at her daughter. ‘It really is all okay, darling,’ she said. ‘You did tell us and Dad suggested we cover the policy for you. So that’s what we did.’

  Lissa peeped over a corner of the pillow. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That’s the first bit of good news I’ve had since waking up yesterday morning.’

  Chapter Five

  9th April 2018

  Gippingford Police HQ

  Ronnie Carlson sat outside the detective superintendent’s office. Tasker had demanded he be there at ten am sharp and that was nearly twenty minutes ago. Carlson kept calm, breathing deeply and slowly to ensure that nothing Tasker did would rile him, when he was finally admitted to the inner sanctum. He caught the eye of Tasker’s PA who mouthed, ‘I’m sorry’ at him. Carlson shook his head and chuckled softly. It wasn’t her fault. Tasker’s animosity knew no boundaries since they’d both applied for the role as head of the Serious and Organised Crime Investigation Team. Carlson had dropped out of the competition for family reasons, leaving it clear for Tasker, and Jim Tasker had never forgiven him for making it a one-horse race. Tasker assumed people thought he only got the job by default. Carlson had given up on such ambitions, no longer sure that he even wanted his current day job. He scratched his eyebrow and resumed the study of his notes and policy file.

  The phone on the PA’s desk rang. When she replaced the handset, she said, ‘You can go in now.’

  Carlson smiled at her; he’d been kept waiting for thirty minutes like a naughty schoolboy. He knocked on the door and walked in without waiting for an answer.

  ‘Ah there you are, Ronnie.’ Tasker half rose from his seat to shake hands across his wide oak desk, before returning his bulk to the chair. It protested with a creak of straining bolts which Tasker did not seem to hear. ‘I just want to see where we are with your murder case. Just an informal review. Make sure you’re doing all the right things. See if I can add anything.’

  ‘Of course, sir. I appreciate you making the time,’ replied Carlson, biting the inside of his cheek and reminding himself to keep breathing slowly.

  ‘Not a question of making the time, though is it?’ said Tasker. ‘Regulations and all that. We’ll do a formal review at twenty-eight days. The ACC has suggested that Jennifer Stokes runs that on my behalf.’

  ‘Inspector Stokes, sir?’

  ‘Detective Inspector,’ Tasker corrected him. ‘Yes, she has all the necessary experience. The ACC thought it would be good for her career.’

  ‘I believe, sir,’ said Carlson, all thoughts of calm breathing lost, ‘that I am entitled to a review with an officer of equivalent rank, if not senior. If we cannot source such a person from our own service, then we can call on another police service.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ Tasker said, brushing aside the suggestion. His bushy red eyebrows grew close together as he frowned, looking as if a woolly bear caterpillar was perched on his forehead. ‘Well, we’ll see where we are at the end of the month, shall we? Now let’s go over what you have done so far.’

  Carlson spoke carefully, trying to keep his tone slow and neutral as he took Tasker through the investigation’s activities to date.

  ‘And you’ve still not managed to identify him?’ Tasker seemed to enjoy stating the obvious. ‘What about Interpol?’

  ‘As you can see here, sir, the DVI pink form was completed at autopsy
and forwarded to Interpol, but his dentistry indicates that he is British.’

  ‘Yet that’s not come up with anything?’

  ‘No, sir. He still has not been reported missing. Scans were done as part of the autopsy to facilitate identification but he has no surgical implants or unusual injuries that we can use. The press office have a facial sketch of him now for release.’

  ‘Biochemistry?’

  ‘Here, sir,’ said Carlson, his anger increasing. A review was supposed to be supportive but, as usual when dealing with Tasker, he felt under threat. ‘We’re still waiting on the isotope analysis.’

  ‘You seem to have spent quite a lot of your budget on him,’ Tasker observed.

  Inside Carlson screamed whilst trying to maintain a serene expression on his face, biting the inside of his cheek was no longer helping as he had tasted the first hint of blood in his mouth. He knew only too well that if he had not spent the money on these tests then Tasker would be criticising him for not having carried them out. ‘I am mindful of the expenditure,’ he replied soothingly. ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on it. But since the injuries were so vicious, I felt we had a particularly depraved killer on the loose. Someone who may or may not strike again. My greatest concern was for public safety, sir.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so,’ said Tasker. ‘Well I don’t think that there’s anything I can add at this stage, Ronnie. You seem to have a handle on it. Keep me in the loop so that I have management oversight. Weekly reports will do. Thank you.’

  Tasker picked up a file on his desk and opened it.

  Ronnie realised that he had been dismissed. He stalked to the door, opened it and stepped through, resisting the childish urge to slam the door hard. No point in letting Tasker know how much he’d rattled him. Tasker would see that as a point scored. Ronnie didn’t scream aloud until he was inside the lift.

  Jane Lacey took the stairs up to where the press office was located while she tried to get her thoughts straight.

  For a moment, when she paused at the double doors to the open plan office, she thought he wasn’t at his desk, and she’d had a wasted journey. But suddenly there he was, appearing between the partitions like a jack-in-the-box. Jane’s eyes were drawn to his dark hair which just reached the top of his polo shirt and curled around the collar. For a moment she envisaged her fingers sliding through the curls, imagining how soft they would feel.

  ‘Pull yourself together, Jane,’ she muttered to herself and, shaking her shoulders, she pushed them back and strode to where he sat. He’d gone. How? She looked around and heard an ‘excuse me’ at her feet.

  ‘What are you doing under there?’ she asked.

  Chris Hagen pulled himself out from under the desk and sat back on his heels in front of her.

  ‘I think you should get off the floor,’ Jane said, grateful that she’d decided against wearing a skirt that morning.

  ‘Hi, iPad charger,’ he replied, as if that explained everything.

  ‘I see,’ said Jane losing herself in the honey brown eyes that were glinting with amusement.

  ‘What can I do for you,’ he said, plonking himself in the office chair and whirling around to face his screen.

  Jane looked at her shoes, crestfallen for a moment.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Come on. I haven’t got all day.’

  ‘We – I need a press release on a missing person. Here it is. Description and an e-fit.’ She passed the two sheets to him, feeling a jolt of electricity as he touched the paper.

  ‘Email would be better. Electronic copies so I don’t have to retype the text and scan in the image,’ he said, still facing the screen.

  ‘Of course,’ said Jane. ‘They’re in your inbox, but I just thought, you know, in case you had any questions.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he replied, finally looking at her instead of the screen. ‘All looks pretty straightforward. This your number?’

  ‘The team’s,’ she said.

  ‘Might be best if I have yours. Like you said, just in case I think of any questions… later,’ he said.

  Jane patted her jacket pocket and found a crumpled business card. She placed it on his desk beside his keyboard.

  ‘Thanks, Detective Constable Jane,’ he said, picking the card up and looking both it and her over. ‘Right, let’s get this done and find your man for you. Do you want to see the release before it goes out?’

  ‘Yes please,’ said Jane. ‘That would be good.’

  ‘Okay, laters.’ And with that, he turned back to his screen.

  Jane walked away, shaking her head. ‘You bloody idiot,’ she said to herself.

  Chapter Six

  5th August 2015

  CHN, Pamplona

  When the doctors did their ward rounds the following day, Lissa spoke with Dr Rosa Arandico.

  ‘Can you tell me what’s happened to me?’ she asked. ‘Will my memory come back?’

  ‘When you were found, I’m told that you were still hallucinating. Still high. Do you remember what drugs you took? I’m not here to judge, just to help build the picture,’ Dr Arandico replied. She flicked her blonde hair over her shoulder and fixed Lissa with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Puzzled at first, Lissa recalled reading something about the Basque people. The Moors had made few inroads into the mountainous countryside, unable to subdue its people as they had in other parts of the peninsula and it was not, therefore unusual, for a Basque to be a blue-eyed blond.

  ‘No,’ Lissa said. ‘I don’t take drugs, I don’t even smoke. I try to keep reasonably healthy, and I don’t have a lot of spare cash. My money mostly goes on camera equipment and travelling.’

  ‘Claro, sure,’ the doctor replied. She bent her head to the notes. ‘When you came into the accident department, you were disorientated, very spaced out, pupils constricted and complaining of thirst. The conclusion was that you had either taken or, more likely had been given, a mind-altering drug. Your injuries were dressed, you were brought here to high dependency, where we placed you in a coma whilst the head injury improved.’ She put the notes down and looked at Lissa again. ‘Once the swelling of your brain went down we started to bring you out of the coma. That was Sunday and then you woke on Monday. Today is Wednesday,’ she smiled at her patient. ‘The MRI scan we took shows that there is likely to be no lasting damage to your brain. So you should begin getting the memories back. But, sometimes with traumatic events, such as you have had, you may never recover the memory. That could be a good thing.’

  Lissa nodded. ‘So I was drugged, beaten, gang-raped and my cameras were stolen. And I could start to remember it all at any time. That’s something to look forward to. Not! Any idea what was used to drug me?’

  Dr Rosa shook her head. ‘Not for certain, but increasingly we are seeing people coming in in a similar condition to you. Disorientated, almost in a zombie state. Rohypnol has fallen out of favour with some gangs because the victim has to drink something. Women are more careful these days. There is a drug called burundanga or scopolamine which comes from deadly nightshade plants. Sometimes you might hear it called Devil’s Breath. The story is that they would blow it into your face, but how could they do that without breathing it in themselves? I don’t know.’ The doctor shrugged. ‘Sometimes it is as simple as handing someone a business card, one that is soaked in the drug. It penetrates the skin. These are the rumours I hear. I am sorry that I cannot be more certain.

  ‘However,’ she continued. ‘If this is the drug which was used on you, you may never get back those memories. The drug blocks memory encoding and robs the subject of free will.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lissa, blinking tears away. She wasn’t sure if the idea of the memories never being accessible was preferable to them returning. ‘Thank you for being so honest with me. When can I go home?’

  Dr Rosa looked at the chart hanging from the foot of the bed. ‘Can you walk yet?’

  Lissa shook her head.

  ‘Then a few more days I think, don’t you?’

  Li
ssa groaned but smiled her thanks.

  11th August 2015

  CHN, Pamplona

  ‘Ready?’

  Lissa looked around the room, checked the bedside cabinet again and under the bed. Her mother had packed her few belongings from El Pensión in Paseo de Sarasate. She was ready to leave. Her memories of the events of the thirteenth July had not returned. The neurologist recommended that she stopped trying so hard. The memories would come back in their own time, if they were going to.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart, the taxi is waiting.’ Sandra Warren drummed her fingers on her handbag.

  So impatient, thought Lissa. Some things never change. Aloud she asked, ‘What time is the flight?’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of time. I’ve ordered a taxi to take us to the airport.’

  Lissa winced at the thought of how much that would cost, but played with the zip on her rucksack and announced, ‘I’d like to go to the castle.’

  Sandra looked at her, a moue forming on her mouth. ‘Is that a good idea?’

  ‘Probably not, but I wondered if it would jog any memories, Mum. Please. I’d like to at least try.’ Lissa heard her tone, wheedling and begging, and she wondered if she’d begged the rapists to stop. If any of them had listened or cared.

  ‘I thought you were told not to try too hard?’ Again the moue; her mother’s face creased in disgust.

  ‘You can stay in the taxi, if you prefer.’

  ‘If you honestly think that I would let you go back there on your own!’ Sandra stood hands on hips, face flushed.