“Not a problem.” He looked at Tony. “What do you think? Any chance your sister is still, you know, out with the guy?”
Tony shook his head gravely, a wordless answer that seemed to satisfy Wilkerson more than anything Rebecca had said.
“Let’s go talk to CC.”
* * *
The Mossos station in El Raval was a tall concrete box that loomed over a narrow street a few blocks from the harbor, the most run-down section of the district. A small, trim man waited for them in the lobby. He wore a white guayabera and linen pants that didn’t match the holstered pistol on his hip. He shook hands with all of them, including Tony. He looked Rebecca over carefully. Cop eyes were the same everywhere, not exactly unfriendly, but quiet and wary.
“Sorry to do this to you on a Sunday, CC.”
“Yes, I missed church.” Camps laughed. The Spanish apparently didn’t take religion any more seriously than anyone else in Europe. “Please, this way.”
The bookshelf in his office included a dozen stuffed donkeys.
“Why all the donkeys?” Tony said.
Rebecca was secretly glad he’d asked.
“For Catalonians the donkey has a special meaning,” Camps said. “In Madrid they say the national animal is the bull. We prefer the donkey. The bull sticks out its horns and gets killed. The donkey is smart and stubborn and does only what it likes. Tony, I think it’s better if you wait outside, is that okay?”
Tony looked to Brian and then Rebecca. She didn’t like the way this guy had made a parenting decision. But he was probably right, and she didn’t want to get sideways with him. She nodded.
* * *
As soon as Tony closed the door, Camps’s smile vanished.
“Your daughter is missing how long?” A distinct emphasis on the last two words.
“Since last night. It’s not just that she’s not here, it’s that she’s not texting, nothing.”
“She’s nineteen, yes? Any”—Camps hesitated, seemingly looking for the English word—“disabilities?”
“No.”
“A healthy nineteen-year-old woman meets a young man in Paris, he comes to Barcelona to see her, she spends a night with him? You’ll excuse me if I say it sounds almost romantic. Not how I expected to spend my Sunday.”
“We know our daughter. She wouldn’t disappear this way.”
“Okay, look, let’s consider this with logic.” Again Camps stressed the last two words. “Two possibilities, yes. First, something bad happened at random to your daughter. I understand, the Gothic Quarter at night, it looks bad. Seedy men. The cannabis clubs. You should understand, tourists don’t get hurt in Barcelona. Maybe you get pickpocketed, lose your phone. Maybe you’re foolish, you want coca, you go into an alley, men with knives take your wallet. But in all of Catalan last year, we didn’t even have one murder a week. The whole province. No one here has guns except the police. The Spanish don’t hurt tourists, and the Africans, they know we’re watching, they know if they touch a foreigner we’ll send them home. They don’t want to go home. Look past the dirt, the graffito, you’ll see women and kids out at 2200, 2300. It’s safe here.”
Yeah, you’re so good that you let a terrorist drive a truck down La Rambla in 2017. But then Manhattan had experienced a similar attack not long afterward. Those were unstoppable. And arguing the point would hardly help her with Camps.
“Robert, am I telling the truth?” Camps said.
Wilkerson sighed, not wanting to be in the middle of this mess. “Lots of petty crime in the Quarter, CC. But I’d agree, violence is rare.”
“I’m not saying my daughter was a random victim—”
“The other choice, that she was targeted. By a gang that steals pretty American girls from bars? To sell? You’re a professional, Mrs. Unsworth, so I speak openly to you. This is a fantasy of the cinema. If this happens anywhere in Europe, one time, the whole world knows.”
“This man came from Paris for her.”
“Yes. And maybe she feels like she wants to turn off her phone. She’s at university, yes? Doesn’t live at home?”
“Yes.”
“Does she text you every day?”
Rebecca shook her head.
“Maybe for one night on this trip she wanted to be by herself without her mother watching her. You leave here when?”
“Tuesday,” she said.
“So she knows she has time.”
“Awfully sure of yourself,” Brian said.
“Because all the time, tourists come in, tell us someone has disappeared, tell us we have to look for them. A day later, we follow up, they say, oh, he was just lost, drunk. Maybe in the hospital.”