Red Queen by Gómez-Jurado

Author:Gómez-Jurado
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan

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“Whenever a car appears on any of the screens, we stop the recording and check the license plate number,” Antonia explains.

“That’s a great idea,” says Tomás. “Instead of taking ten hours to see the recording, it’ll only take us one.”

In fact, it takes them far longer, because every vehicle coming in has to be checked against the logbook, and this is time consuming. There are dozens of them, especially between eight and eleven at night.

They’re searching for an anomaly. Something unusual. They find nothing. Apart from a couple of taxis and several Ubers, everyone coming in is either a resident or a friend of residents who have authorized them to enter. They would have to check each of these one by one, but that would take days and lots of personnel.

That’s what makes murders so hard to investigate.

Three hours later, and the time line is coming to an end. The three of them are exhausted. On the top row of monitors, people are still entering, returning home after work, or having dinner with their families. On the bottom row, there’s very little movement.

Suddenly, Antonia sits bolt upright. She points at the middle screen on the bottom row.

“There. That taxi.”

It’s a Škoda Octavia, the commonest taxi in Madrid. It arrives with the number zero on its roof sign, indicating a long-distance passenger.

As the taxi draws nearer, they can see Gabriel lets it pass without asking any questions.

The time code shows: 03.52.

“What’s so special about it?”

“We’ve seen that cab before,” says Antonia. “9344 FSY. It arrived at ten thirty that night. To drop someone off.”

She is right. They check quickly and find the footage of when the cab first arrived, with the roof sign showing tariff No. 2. They see Tomás bending down to ask the cabdriver something, and then allowing the car through. The images are from above, so they can’t see the driver’s details on the side.

“Do you remember that taxi, Tomás?”

The guard looks at them in bewilderment.

“No . . . I don’t recall anything. I probably leaned in to ask him where he was going. He would give me an address and a name, and that would be it. That’s what we always do with cabs. Especially at peak times.”

It’s true. The CCTV footage shows the cab is just one of a dozen cars waiting to enter La Finca, while a harassed Gabriel and Tomás do their best. Rich people aren’t known for their patience.

What the images don’t show is either the driver or the passenger.

“There’s another key question,” Jon says to Antonia. “Who was driving the cab? Does Ezekiel have an accomplice, or was it a driver who happened to be passing?”

Neither Tomás nor Gabriel can recall anything about the driver. Simply another anonymous cab, passing unnoticed through the barrier, like so many of them every day. They may have found out how Ezekiel entered La Finca. Or it may be a simple coincidence.

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