Soul Fire (28 page)

Plus, there’s still no sign of Lewis, the only one of us with enough Spanish to talk to the doctors. I’ve texted him twice but he hasn’t answered. I try not to think about the
tension between him and Zoe, because that has nothing to do with this.
Does
it?

Tim
, she said.

Or was it
him
?

I try to picture the shape her lips made when she tried to speak. But all I can remember is that red slash mark across her face, and the limpness of her body.

Is the killer with me right now?

Sahara’s face is colourless, as though she could faint again at any minute. ‘How much longer?’

There’s no one to ask. The hospital is clean and new and almost empty. No one else seems to have been seriously injured. I guess the locals know how to stay safe.

I stand up. God knows what the police made of us: me and Ade in our multi-layered
Correfoc
clothes, Sahara dressed like a bank robber, Cara like a sweaty clubber.

‘Was she
burned
?’ Cara asks.

‘I told you, it was difficult to be sure.’ I close my eyes. ‘But part of her face was red raw. And I could
smell
burning. I thought it was the fireworks, but perhaps
that’s how
skin
smells when . . .’ I feel too nauseous to continue.

‘But she was so well wrapped up.’ Cara looks down at the bare skin of her own shin: there are a few tiny spots the colour of ripe cherries. She rubs it. ‘Ouch.’

Sahara leans over. ‘That’s what happens when you play with fire.’

‘I’m fine,’ Cara says. ‘And before you have a go at me, look at goody-goody Alice?’ She pulls at my jacket and when I look down at my sleeve, I see there are two,
three . . . no, at least
ten
little scorches in the fabric.

I remember the first shower of sparks to hit me. ‘It was an old jacket.’ I could tell her I only went into the fire to protect her, but what’s the use?

‘But what about your hair?’

I bring my hand up to my head. Cara steps forward, and touches my scalp behind my left ear.

‘Ow!’

‘It’s burned all the way through to the scalp,’ she says.

I touch the same place and there’s a sore spot the size of a five pence coin. ‘I hadn’t even realised.’

Cara looks more shocked by that than by anything else that’s happened. She tenderly pulls strands of hair from elsewhere to cover the spot. ‘It won’t show, Alice.’

‘Of course, we don’t know if she was trampled as well as burned,’ Sahara says.

Cara and I gawp at her.

Even Ade, who hasn’t spoken since we got here, shakes his head. ‘Sahara. The more you speculate, the worse it seems.’

She stands up. ‘Well, what are we supposed to do while we wait? There’s not even any guarantee they’ll let us—’

I see him first. ‘Lewis!’

He’s running through the hospital doors, towards us. He stares at each of us, as though he’s taking a register. ‘Zoe? It’s Zoe, isn’t it?’

I nod.

‘What’s happened to her?’ Lewis demands.

‘We don’t know yet,’ Sahara says. ‘You have to try to talk to them. Your Spanish is better than ours.’

He shakes his head. ‘If I’m the best we’ve got, we really are in trouble, but I’ll try. Where are the doctors?’

‘I’ll show you.’ I walk with him towards reception.

‘Where’ve you been, Lewis?’ I hiss, once we’re out of earshot of the others.

‘Looking for you lot.’

Couldn’t you see what happened, from up there on the phone box?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ali. If I’d seen her burning, I’d have helped, wouldn’t I?’

‘Burning?’

‘Or whatever has happened to her.’ He turns his back on me and says something to the woman behind the desk, who looks relieved that at last there’s someone who might be talking
sense. I catch the odd familiar word, and realise she probably can speak English after all, but didn’t trust the rest of us.

But that’s not the thing that’s confusing me right now.
Burning
. How would he know?

‘They’ll send someone out to see us as soon as they can,’ Lewis says.

I look at the floor, instead of at him. Of course it’s natural to assume that she’s been burned under the circumstances . . . and yet he sounded so certain.

‘You just said you’d have helped if you’d seen her burning. Did you get to talk to her somehow? Did she tell you she was burned? Are you sure you didn’t see
something?’

His eyes narrow. ‘I don’t think this is the time for twenty bloody questions, Alice. I assumed she’d been burned, because that’s what’s most likely to have happened
to her in that madness. Plus, it’s what people in the crowd told me when I was trying to find you all. They mentioned an English girl being burned and . . .’ he hesitates.
‘Actually, if you must know, I was terrified it might be you.’

‘Oh. Well, I’m fine.’

Lewis sighs. ‘I couldn’t have lived with myself. I mean . . . I don’t know why, but I feel responsible for you.’

‘You don’t have to. I’m seventeen.’

He laughs strangely. ‘Right. Seventeen. Silly me for not realising that makes you indestructible. Anyway, I’m relieved, OK? Not glad about Zoe, but happy you’re all
right.’

‘My anorak’s not in the best shape,’ I say, pointing at my sleeve.

‘I’ll buy you a new one. So, what do we know about Zoe?’

I shrug. ‘No one is telling us much. I saw her on the ground but I don’t know how she got there.’

‘Did you speak to her?’

‘No,’ I lie. ‘She was unconscious.’

‘Shit.’

We go back to the others.

‘I’ve spoken to a nurse. They’ll come and explain soon,’ Lewis tells them.

Weird how his presence calms everyone, as though our parents have turned up in the middle of a nightmare, and tucked us back into bed with a glass of hot milk, and told us everything’s
going to be all right.

Except it’s not all right, is it? Zoe’s unconscious, and we don’t know what she knows, and I don’t know what to believe, or who to trust. Which means I can trust no
one.

Almost an hour passes before a doctor appears. He looks younger than me.

‘Sorry I could not come earlier, but we were busy with other cases.’ His accent is Spanish-American. Maybe he learned English from TV shows. It makes the whole thing feel even more
unreal, like being in an episode of
House.

‘How is she?’ Sahara and I speak at once.

‘None of you are related to her, right?’ says the doctor.

‘We’re friends – the closest she has here,’ Sahara says, slightly stroppily.

‘As her friends, if there is anything more you can do to contact her family, it would be helpful. It is a matter of urgency.’

‘It’s that serious?’ Lewis asks.

The doctor slumps down into the chair opposite us, with a sigh like an old man’s. ‘She is stabilised. There is a limit to what I can say, also because the
Mossos
– the
police – will want to talk to you. Such an event is very rare here. And, almost without exception, any major injuries at a
Correfoc
involve a tourist.’

‘She
lived
here,’ I say, feeling the need to defend her. ‘She was the one warning
us
that we had to dress up properly before going anywhere near the
flames.’

‘The flames were not her problem. Aside from a few superficial burns, she was not injured by the fireworks.’

‘Has she said how it happened?’ Lewis asks.

The doctor hesitates. ‘No. It seems probable that she tripped and then was . . . trampled by the crowd. Perhaps they did not see her immediately. This would be the most likely cause of the
head injuries which are causing us the most concern.’

Lewis frowns. ‘She hasn’t woken up yet?’

‘We are sedating her to keep her unconscious – in a controlled way – while we assess the options and any potential damage.’

Damage. He means
brain
damage.

‘No!’ I exclaim before I can stop myself.

She can’t be. Not Zoe. She kept everything in her head – so many secrets and fears. If her brain is damaged, then the real Zoe will be lost and with her, my best hope of finding out
who killed Meggie.

Which, now I come to think of it, must have been exactly what the killer intended.

A soldier would call it collateral damage.

Unfortunate, but inevitable against back drop of a wider campaign.

Zoe is tougher than I thought. But then the human body does fight to survive, long after one would assume it would be defeated. Under the circumstances, one has to hope that
the mind is less resilient.

There was no time for reflection or certainty, no private moment. Dragons and devils. What a cliché! But she was never the target, whatever she might have believed.

Surely, now, Alice, you realise what you are up against. You are an inspiration, but that does not make you untouchable.

The police give nothing away. They take our details and tell us they’ll come to the hostel first thing tomorrow to question us. They talk very slowly, and I can tell they
think we’re idiots.

I don’t think it’s even crossed their minds that one of us could be a killer.

As we head back towards the beach, there’s still a party on the shore. People are laughing and jumping around in the warm waves, not drunk, but exhilarated by the fire run.

No one speaks. Maybe everyone is planning what they’ll tell the police. Their ‘version of events’. How many of us are planning to lie?

Cara didn’t attack Zoe, I am sure of that. But it’s not in her interests to tell the truth if she was with Ade during the
Correfoc
.

Sahara seems to be in shock. But she could be pretending. If she was the one who killed my sister, then perhaps she realised Zoe was about to tell me everything she knew. That might have been
enough to push her into a third attack.

And then there’s Ade: what if he knows Sahara’s secrets, or has secrets of his own to protect?

Which only leaves Lewis. My friend. No. My
ally
. Yet I wonder if I can even trust him. The way he turned up at the airport seems a little weird. And is it natural that he was almost as
obsessed by Burning Truths as I was?

I try not to let what’s happened drive me mad. But here, in the dark, the doubts keep coming, like a shower of firecrackers burning in my head.

We’re back by the hostel.

‘I am so exhausted,’ Sahara says. ‘It’s the stress.’

Ade nods. Even Cara’s yawning.

‘I don’t know how you can even think about sleeping,’ I say, not caring how snappy I sound. ‘Not with all that’s happened.’

‘I’m the same,’ Lewis says. ‘If you don’t think you’ll sleep, you can come back to the hotel. There’s a mini bar. TV. We might feel better, being
together.’

It seems a weird thing to suggest. But then I look at his face. The way he’s staring at me, I realise he’s trying to tell me something.

Ade shakes his head. ‘I’m not in the mood for drinking anymore. It doesn’t feel right.’

Sahara grips his hand. ‘Exactly.’

‘Maybe I have had too much already,’ Cara says.

I
want
to go. But should I leave Cara on her own with Sahara and Ade? Except the police are coming in just a few hours – even a truly desperate killer wouldn’t risk another
attack now.

‘It might help, you know, Alice,’ Lewis says, ‘to talk about what happened.’

Not just to talk, but to plan our next move. This could be our last chance to get answers in Barcelona. ‘All right. I’ll come back later, if I do get tired. Or definitely in time for
when the police come in the morning.’

Sahara and Ade kiss me goodnight, and Cara hugs me tightly. For once she doesn’t make any joke about me going off on my own with Lewis.

The two of us walk towards his hotel, but after a few steps, I stop.

‘You’ve got a plan, haven’t you?’ I say.

‘I think we should go to Zoe’s flat and get whatever it was she was going to show you.’

‘You don’t think she fell, do you, Lewis?’

‘Do
you
, Ali?’

‘I can’t bear to think that I was only metres away when she was attacked.’

Lewis nods. ‘So you
do
think she was attacked.’

‘What other explanation is there?’

‘That’s why we need to go to the flat. Not just because it could help you find information, but because it could help her too. You saw what the police were like. They want to keep
this quiet. Pissed tourist falls over. End of story. We’re the only ones who care enough to find out what really happened.’

He seems so certain, even though the idea of going through her things makes me feel sick. Of all people, Zoe valued her privacy.

Valued?
Why am I thinking about her in the past tense? She’s still alive. And maybe there is some clue in the flat that might tell us more about why she’s fighting for her
life in hospital right now.

‘OK. Let’s do it.’

Our walk takes us back down the bottom of Via Laietana. It’s only a couple of hours since the procession, but everything is normal again. The thousands of spent
firecrackers have been cleared up, the barriers and ambulances moved away. The only evidence that any of it happened is the occasional waft of gunpowder, and the odd group of revellers marching
down the street, still dressed in their red cloaks and satanic horns.

I can’t bear to see where it happened. It makes it worse, somehow, that the signs of what happened to Zoe have been cleaned up so fast. Like erasing a shameful secret from history.

Lewis says nothing, but he takes my hand and holds it firmly. I realise I’m cold again, and his hand warms me up. We head down cobbled streets, through mazes of alleyways.

He checks the map on his phone: Zoe had given us her address for emergencies and this definitely counts as one. ‘Not far now.’

I follow behind him on the pavement, because it’s not wide enough for both of us.

‘Am I going too fast?’ Lewis waits for me. He points down an alleyway where two middle-aged women in very short skirts are leaning against the wall, smoking. ‘This is
definitely the livelier bit of town.’

‘Prostitutes?’ I ask.

‘Well, it’s a funny time of night to admire the view.’