Dark Fever

He drew up outside a large police station and looked at his watch. ‘Just on time; we’ll have to hurry or they might think we aren’t coming after all.’

The Spanish police were gravely kind and polite, but it was still as disturbing an experience, in a way, as the original attack. She had to look through a window at a line of men first. None of them looked familiar; they were mostly the same height, same build, and all wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt.

‘I didn’t see his face,’ she pointed out. ‘His helmet hid it.’

The policemen looked disappointed but unsurprised; they must have known the chances of her identifying the mugger were not good.

‘Isn’t anything about any of them familiar?’ Gil asked her.

She looked helplessly at him. ‘You saw him too—what do you think?’

He shrugged in wry regret. ‘I didn’t see him at close quarters; I just saw a shape, an outline, black leather and a motorbike helmet—nothing I could identify.’

The policeman with them said something in Spanish to Gil, who turned to her and quietly asked, ‘Could you bear to walk along the line? They just want to know if this is the same man who attacked you. You might find something familiar, pick up a physical clue, a smell. They won’t be able to use it in court, but it would still be useful to the police.’

She swallowed, then nodded. ‘OK.’

She walked slowly, looking at each face, each man’s shape, trying not to tremble visibly although her insides were quaking like jelly and she felt sick. When she reached the end of the line she knew she had not recognised anyone, but she tried again, this time not looking at their faces, just staring downwards as if trying to recognise their feet.

At one point she paused, drawing a sharp breath, her nostrils quivering as they picked up the scent of sweat, of garlic, of something less identifiable but definite— the scent of fear.

She looked up into black eyes and knew it was him. At that instant she remembered the moment when he had drawn the knife and she saw his black-gloved hand, the cuff of his black leather jacket... and the slight gap between them.

The scar. She looked down at his hand, reached for it.

He tried to pull away from her. The policeman beside her spoke sharply to him in Spanish, and the boy reluctantly let her lift his hand, push back the cuff of his jacket.

The red scar was there. She let his hand fall, and then, as she had been instructed, she tapped him on the shoulder. His eyes hated her, threatened her; she sensed the tension of his stiffening muscles as if he was going to hit her. He spat out Spanish under his breath, words she didn’t understand but whose meaning she guessed without difficulty.

He would like to kill her. He wished he had used that knife on her in the street last night.

The policeman at the end of the line came quickly forward to escort her safely out of the white-washed room.

‘It’s definitely him,’ she said shakily, and explained about the knife-cut on the boy’s wrist.

‘You never mentioned it before,’ Gil said, frowning.

‘I only remembered it when I saw him again.’ She was shaking now.

Gil moved closer, put an arm around her, his eyes focusing on her white face.

‘Are you OK? Come and sit down.’

She would have liked to leave then, go back to her apartment and lie down on her bed alone, but she had to go through the further ordeal of answering questions about the incident. Gil translated for her, his chair right next to hers. The language gap made the long session even more difficult to handle; she was glad of the glass of water that Gil requested, and got, for her, but she was even more grateful when the policeman finally asked her to sign her statement and let her leave.

‘Was my identification any real help?’ she asked him through Gil, and the other man shrugged, his face wry.

‘As you did not see his face, I am afraid it was little help to us, and although you say you saw the cut on his wrist during the incident you never mentioned it in your first statement; but at least you have confirmed our belief that it was the same person who attacked you and the others.’

‘So I did pick out the boy you had arrested for the other attack?’

The policeman nodded, his face unreadable.

‘What will happen to him now?’ she rather nervously asked, hoping he would not be released on bail while she was in Spain.

Again the policeman shrugged. ‘We will hold him while we are making further enquiries. The man they mugged last night has recovered consciousness, but the hospital will not let us talk to him because he is still in a state of shock. Once he is well enough to see us we’ll know whether or not we have a good case against the two men we picked up.’

‘Well, good luck,’ she said, shaking hands, and the policeman gave her a warm smile.