Maria Sanchez looked at the bodies of the two North African suspects. She had to admire the accuracy of both Sergeant Villa and Constable Ortiz in a crowded station. One passenger had a leg wound from a flying splinter of concrete, but apart from that the passengers and the people seeing them off escaped unharmed. With these two now gone, only three remained from the people based in A Coruna.
Where had the assassin gone? When she saw the man running, she thought it might be him for a second or two. Then she realised he would not do such an obvious thing. He’d fooled the lot of them.
They’d all come down to Urzaiz which probably meant the assassin left from Guixar. She might even have seen him that morning waiting at the station. Perhaps he was the man with the orange travel bag? No, that wasn’t possible. He wasn’t the type to draw attention to himself. If the assassin had been there, he would have kept out of sight.
Villa and Ortiz returned from their interview with an internal review team who always spoke to policemen who’d discharged a firearm when on duty. Their experience of firing live rounds had shaken them both.
“Where did our assassin friend go, Inspector Sanchez?” asked Ortiz. “He wasn’t in his seat.”
“It was a decoy, Constable, he probably left from Guixar, heading in the other direction, heading towards Oporto.”
“The trail has gone cold for us, then?” said Villa. “We won’t be allowed to continue with the investigation in Portugal, if that’s where he has gone.”
“We might, because we are trying to apprehend a suspect who committed a crime in our jurisdiction. I don’t believe we’d be able to arrest him, that would be the job of the Portuguese police, but we could tag along and liaise with them. I will speak to the Chief Inspector and find out what we can do, but first, we have to discover if he’s gone to Portugal. He’s so sneaky, he could have gone to France for all the proof we have right now.”
Julian Worker Fiction Writing 