Sangre De Toro (Old Draft - Now Published!)

Chapter 41 - Disclosure

CW: Possibly upsetting (but not gory/violent) pic at the end

Henry was a cunning bastard, Dominguez thought as he and Mansouri crossed the station car park towards the other man's car. Maybe he hadn't left. Maybe he only wanted them to think so. The sounds of people in the distance, happy diners and drinkers, only made the night more eerie.

For the last hour, Dominguez had been sat in the canteen, sending emails and writing reports, doubting the words made any sense, his mind not on work but unable to face anything else.

'You're in no state to look for Rita, you should go home. I'll drive you,' Mansouri said, but Dominguez didn't want to go home.

He wanted to find Rita.

His phone vibrated. Stupidly, he wondered if it was her. The memory of his last phone call to her played over and over again in his head. She was crazy but she was his best friend and he knew he'd do anything to have her craziness back.

It wasn't.

'Hello, is that Jesus Dominguez? I'm calling from the animal hospital. Do you have a moment to talk?' A middle aged woman's voice. He grunted a response.

'Señor Dominguez, I understand that under the circumstances it's hard for you, but it's my opinion that the kindest thing to do at this point is to put Maribel to sleep. So I wanted to have your consent before we go ahead with this.'

'You don't have my consent. She's my uncle's favourite cow. You're going to do everything you can to save her,' Dominguez snarled, an instinctive reflex reaction before he'd even thought about the words. At the intake of breath on the other end, he yelled, 'Everything you can. If I agreed to this, my uncle's ghost would haunt me until the end of time.'

'We'll try,' the woman said. 'But I hope you'll consider it. Otherwise, we'll have to amputate her leg. And that's expensive...'

'Fine. I don't care. Do it. Save her. It's what Silvio would have wanted. Don't give that murdering fuck Castella one last kill,' Dominguez snapped. He hung up. It wasn't fine. He'd hardly begun to process his uncle's murder. All he could think about was that phone call, that moment when Henry took Rita.

He looked, disorientated, around the small car park. A heavily built blonde woman with a ponytail was staggering across the tarmac, unsteady in heels. She was tottering away from the direction of the police station.

'Excuse me?' Mansouri said after a second, looking as lost as the woman did. 'Can I help you?'

Helping anyone except Rita was the last thing Dominguez felt like doing.

'Do you speak English?' she said. Her voice was brittle. 'I can't think in Spanish right now. I need to speak to someone that speaks English.'

'Go to the front desk and someone will see you there,' Mansouri said tersely. 'We don't have time right now.'

'They're all busy, I tried, and I tried phoning 112 and couldn't get through,' the woman said, much more businesslike than Dominguez felt. He looked at the dark blue flight attendant's uniform the woman was wearing, and his stomach turned inside him.

She took a deep breath. 'Right. So about half hour to an hour ago I saw Henry Dixon get on a plane leaving for the UK.'

*

In every high profile case, and many low profile ones, there were people who claimed to have knowledge about the crime. Sometimes they made false confessions. Dominguez reminded himself of this as he stared at the woman across the table in the interrogation room, the sound recorder on with its flashing light. He sipped at a glass of water. If only it was something stronger.