“Thank goodness, no.”
“You didn’t strike him, I hope.”
“I definitely thought about it.” She navigated a busy traffic circle. “And what about you, Señor Allon? Tell me something about yourself.”
“Just type my name into the little white box. It will tell you everything you need to know.”
“Trust me, I did. You’ve lived a remarkable life. But how did you get mixed up with Edward Knight?”
“Friend of a friend,” replied Gabriel vaguely.
“What do you think of him?”
“I’m more interested in your opinion.”
“He seemed unusually calm and collected, given the circumstances. I suppose that’s what they mean by a stiff upper lip.”
The highway narrowed to two lanes and carried them past vineyards and olive groves to the town of Sant Miquel. The modular white apartment buildings were rose-colored in the dying twilight. Inspector Aragón pointed out a café where a few locals were drinking Estrella Galicia at a table in the street.
“The CCTV camera that photographed Alice’s car on Friday morning is over the doorway of that bar.”
“Did she pass by here again on Friday afternoon?”
“At three fifteen,” replied the detective.
Beyond the town loomed a bony ridge of hills. Inspector Aragón expertly handled the hairpin turns without once lifting her foot from the throttle. Finally she applied the brakes and rolled to a stop along a stretch of road no wider than the hedgerow-lined lanes of Cornwall. On the left side of the road was a retaining wall of sun-bleached stone. On the right, the passenger side, was a deep ravine.
She opened the boot of the Citroën and from inside removed a torch and two emergency roadside triangles bearing the emblem of the Policía Nacional. She placed one triangle behind the car and the other in front, then offered the torch to Gabriel.
“After you,” she said.
He peered into the ravine. The bottom, if there was one, was in shadow. “You don’t happen to have a length of rope, do you?”
“Policía detectives don’t carry rope, Señor Allon.”
He removed his sport jacket and tossed it into the back of the car. Then, after first switching on the torch, he stepped hesitantly from the verge and began his descent. The ground beneath him was rocky and unstable. He crept forward, fencerlike, with the torch in his outstretched right hand and his left extended behind him for balance. He was aware of Inspector Eva Aragón behind him, moving with the silent surefootedness of a deer.
“Didn’t I read somewhere that you were a mountain climber?” she asked.
“You have me mistaken for someone else. I only paint mountains.”
“Perhaps I should lead the way after all. At the rate you’re going, we’ll miss dinner.”
“I thought you Spaniards ate at midnight.”
“My point exactly.”
Gabriel maintained his present rate of descent, and gradually the steep hillside gave way to flatter ground.
“That’s far enough,” said Inspector Aragón. “This is where the car came to rest.”
At the edge of a coppice of juniper and Aleppo pine, noted Gabriel. He played the beam of the torch over the rocky soil, then lifted his gaze toward the pair of winking red triangles on the road above.
“There’s no way she could have survived a crash like that. Not in an open-top car.”
“Unlikely,” agreed the Spanish policewoman. “Someone must have rolled it into the ravine.”
“The thieves?”
