The Beggar's Opera (30 page)

Ramirez asked her to send a patrol car to the morgue with the file. About twenty minutes later, he held a dusty folder in his hands. Apiro watched closely as Ramirez opened and flipped through it, searching for the name of the assailant.

And there it was, on the police investigation report, a reference to the fact that the boy’s attacker was a young offender with a date of birth of April 16, 1976, and then, a few pages later, his name.

“My God,” Ramirez said, astonished. “It was Rodriguez Sanchez.”

SIXTY - FOUR

Detective Sanchez stood on the street, his police car parked at the side of the road.

“What a surprise to find you here,” said Celia Jones as casually as she could. When she saw he was alone, she considered running back up the stairs. But she wasn’t sure how dangerous he might be, and she didn’t want anyone in the clinic to get hurt.

“I wanted to make sure I got copies of those records,” he said. “We want to wrap things up today with our investigation.”

But he’d said it wasn’t urgent. “That’s a long trip for you to make; it must have taken you hours,” she said, feigning ignorance. “It really wasn’t necessary.” She looked around. Hoped she might see another police car she could wave down. But there was no traffic, not even a bicycle.

Teresa Diaz looked out the window and waved at them. Jones had no choice but to wave back.

“I am afraid it was, Señora.” Sanchez stepped towards her and she felt the hard round edge of a gun barrel press into her side. “Please get into the passenger seat of the car quietly. I am sorry it has to be this way.”

She did as she was told. He started the car and drove slowly
through town until they left the outskirts of Viñales. He held the steering wheel with his left hand and the gun in his right, its muzzle pointed at her. They passed a few cars but there was nothing she could do. She was trapped.

They drove several miles outside of town before the car left the main road. Sanchez steered it through a gap in the trees and down an overgrown road, the ruts dotted with small shrubs. The car bumped along. There were no houses for miles.

Sanchez finally parked in front of what looked like an abandoned school. The main building was overgrown with weeds and moss. A second, smaller brick building behind it appeared to have once been a residence of some type.

He told her to get out. She opened the door and stepped into the shade. She wondered how long she had left before he killed her. She began to shiver. She felt as if she was watching a scene unfold from a distance, was almost surprised at her feeling of detachment. She recognized the early stages of shock.

“I truly am sorry, Señora Jones,” said Sanchez. “I did not want things to come to this. I told you not to come here.”

“It wasn’t Nasim who stole the drugs, was it?” she said. “It was you. I thought it might be.”

“How did you know?”

“I wasn’t completely sure until this moment. But the thefts from the drugs listed on these forms took place over a period of years, which ruled out Nasim Rubinder. And it’s your signature on those forms.”

He inclined his head, without releasing his grip on the gun.

“Very good. You make connections almost as quickly as Ramirez. But that is the problem, unfortunately. Before I joined Ramirez’s office, I worked in Customs. I was the officer who approved the contents of all drug shipments at the International Airport. If Ramirez goes into those records, he will discover
that each time I checked a delivery of Rohypnol, some went missing.”

“And the one last week?”

“I was at the airport doing something else. The officers in Customs were busy. I offered to take over their duties so that they could have a coffee break. They were delighted.”

“Did you bring me here to kill me?”

Jones wondered just who said there was no such thing as a stupid question.

Sanchez stepped forward. He pointed the gun at her forehead and took the forms from her hands. He folded them and put them in his jacket pocket. “Thank you, Señora, for helping me to find a paper trail that could have convicted me. I will make sure these are destroyed. I’ve already gotten rid of the ones at the Customs Office.”

“My disappearance will be a little hard to explain, won’t it?”

“Oh, I do not think so, Señora. You took a bus tour. You left the group and wandered away from town. No one saw where you went. You did not return to the group when you were supposed to. Perhaps you took a walk to explore the mountains. It is very steep at parts of the road. There have been accidents. They will assume you were struck by a car or a bus. There will be a search; I may even insist on one. But trust me, I will make sure no one finds your body.”

No one knew she was here, and even the tour guide wouldn’t think to look for her this far from town. It was too far to get to by foot and she hadn’t rented a bike. Besides, it was only around three and no one would miss her at the bus for at least another hour. She would die here, then, most likely within minutes.

She took a deep breath, savouring the mountain air, thinking the unimaginable. At any second, Sanchez would tire of talking to her. He would pull the trigger, and Celia Jones would cease to exist.

SIXTY - FIVE

Rodriguez Sanchez
, Inspector Ramirez thought in disbelief. Images from the investigation flashed through his mind.

Sanchez had access to the Canadian’s hotel room; they had searched it together. It was Sanchez who suggested the search and Ramirez had agreed, despite the weak grounds.

The reference to the anonymous complaint on Christmas Day about a scarred man approaching boys in the Parque Ciudad had originated with Sanchez. Ramirez had never checked with the dispatcher to validate the complaint. He had trusted Rodriguez, his protégé. His friend.

Sanchez found virtually all the evidence located in the Canadian’s hotel room. Sanchez must have slipped the photographs and CD under the mattress while Ramirez searched the bathroom. Ramirez had left him alone outside the locked hotel room while he talked to Hector Apiro in the lobby. It was Sanchez who planted his own semen on the sheets, knowing it would match the semen in the boy’s body. He probably exchanged his underwear with a pair from Ellis’s dresser.

Sanchez framed Ellis.

He must have killed the boy and used his police car to
transport the body. He claimed he was out of gas on Christmas Day after Ramirez told him the boy’s body had been found, probably to give himself enough time to clean up the car. It was Sanchez all along.

Sanchez showed up at the address on Campanario a good ten minutes
after
Jones and Vasquez had arrived. He wasn’t following them, despite Ramirez’s orders to keep the Canadian lawyer under surveillance. Because he knew there was no need to. Because he knew Señor Ellis was innocent.

Sanchez knew about the address on Campanario because he had been there before, was on his way there again for some unknown reason. He must have been surprised to find Celia Jones and Maria Vasquez there already but played along.

Ramirez concentrated. Why would Sanchez go to Campanario?

Probably to dispose of Miguel Artez, to remove any remaining link to his own crimes. The arrival of the lawyer and the
jinetera
had thrown off those plans, but Sanchez had recovered. He always was quick-witted.

If Miguel Artez was telling the truth, Artez had no way of knowing who Sanchez was, had never seen him, could not possibly have known that the man who arrested him had lured him to Campanario, pretending to be Nasim so he could kill him. Sanchez had probably killed Rubinder too. Which meant Rodriguez Sanchez was the link to the drugs.

“Hector, you must have Sanchez’s blood type on record.”

All the police officers, even the detectives, gave the department blood samples and fingerprints to use for elimination purposes and in case of an emergency, when blood transfusions might be needed urgently.

“Let me check.” Apiro went to a filing cabinet in the corner, rifled through some files, and pulled out the one he wanted. He flipped through it. “Yes. Sanchez is Type A. And a secretor.”

“We need to find him right away,” said Ramirez. “I think he killed Nasim Rubinder. And covered up his involvement by making sure he went back to Rubinder’s hotel room on official business last night, so that his fingerprints and hair could be explained away.”

He called his office and asked if Sanchez was there. But the detective he spoke to said no, Detective Sanchez had left an hour before, for Viñales.

“Viñales?” Ramirez wondered out loud, still holding the phone. “Why would Sanchez drive all the way to Viñales?” Then he turned to Apiro. “I think I know the answer. My office says I have a message from Celia Jones. She went to Viñales today as well.”

SIXTY - SIX

Mike Ellis had just returned from his run and was planning what to do on his last day in Cuba when the phone rang. Inspector Ramirez was on the other end.

“I am sorry to bother you, Señor Ellis, but this is an urgent situation. Do you know why Señora Jones has gone to Viñales today?”

“She planned to visit a veterinary clinic there. Didn’t she call you?”

“She only left a brief message. I was at Nasim Rubinder’s autopsy. When did you speak to her?”

“This morning. Around nine, I think. She said the tour bus was leaving around a half-hour later. She was supposed to call you right after she got off the phone with me.”

“She must have spoken to Sanchez.”

Ramirez quickly explained to Ellis what he had learned. “Sanchez has left for Viñales. She must have found evidence to tie him to these crimes. Please, Detective Ellis, think carefully. Can you remember what she said about this clinic that relates to our investigation? Can you be more specific?”

A pause while Ellis thought. “She was trying to track down
the source of Rohypnol into Cuba. She mentioned the clinic. Apparently some drugs went missing from a delivery there last week. And before then, too.”

Sanchez had told Ramirez there had been no deliveries of Rohypnol into Cuba for years.
Another lie
.

SIXTY - SEVEN

Think, Celia, think.
He had brought her to this school and it was not easy to find, so overgrown and desolate, so he must have known about this place before. It had to mean something to him. Sanchez must have been shaped into what he had become, in these buildings, in these woods.

Celia Jones tried to remember the training she had received with the RCMP so many years earlier. The first step was to make the hostage human. She could do that best by drawing her kidnapper out. Finding common ground
.
When the hostage-taker gets to know someone, it is harder to kill them.

She took a chance. She walked over to the steps of the school and sat down. Hoped he wouldn’t shoot her for moving without his permission. Looked in his eyes as directly as she could, tried to pretend there was no gun. Kept her voice friendly, relaxed. She remembered her instructor’s voice.
Always keep calm
.

“Do you want to talk about what happened in these buildings? Get it off your chest? There’s no rush. No one is going to find me, you said so yourself. They won’t even know I’m missing for another hour or more.”

Prolong the situation. Stall.

“I can’t go anywhere. And you have the gun. Take your time. I have the feeling that terrible things happened to you here. I’d really like to know what they are.”

Sanchez considered this for what seemed like hours but was only a few minutes. Finally, he shrugged. He looked at the school and she could see him remembering.

“It started there.” He pointed to the smaller building with the gun.

“This was a school, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “I was sent here when I was eight years old. My parents had no choice in the matter.” Jones heard the tension in his voice. “The government had decided that children should be sent to rural residential boarding schools and indoctrinated into socialism properly. But it was really a child labour force for the agricultural sector. The Marxist-Leninist model. Children as working members of the proletariat.”

He spat on the ground. “You must have heard the joke. A Marxist came up with a plan that would provide Cubans with all the food we needed, but it was rejected because it only worked in practice, not theory.” He laughed bitterly. “We worked in those tobacco fields down there every day.” He motioned towards the valley, hidden behind the trees.

“What was it like, Rodriguez?”
Focus the hostage-taker’s attention on small details. Keep him talking. Always use the hostage-taker’s first name.

“What do you think it was like? We worked all day until we were exhausted. We were lonely, and the food was terrible. It was a government school run by Catholics. An American priest, O’Brien, was the principal. The other priests were mostly Spanish but there were some from other countries as well, even a few from Canada. They came and went over the years.”

She had to keep him talking, draw him out. “And so what
happened to you here? Please. I’d like to know.”
Use open-ended questions. Build a relationship.

He took several deep breaths before he spoke again. “One night, Father O’Brien invited a few of the children to have dinner in that building. It was the rectory. We found tables inside set with white plates on clean linens with beautifully polished silverware. All cooked by older students of course. We were all so hungry, so thin. I had my first sugar cake, a taste of ice cream. It was like a dream.”

“I can imagine,” she said sympathetically.
Show empathy.
“You can imagine nothing,” he shouted, and waved the gun at her.

Keep the hostage-taker calm.
Shit, what was she supposed to do now? He was anything but calm. She grasped at straws.

“There were schools like this in Canada once,” Jones said. “Indian residential schools. There are thousands of claims against them now by former students for physical and sexual abuse.” She guessed at what happened, willing to risk being wrong and making him angry. “Children were sexually abused here too, weren’t they?”