11 Ibiza Town
Ibiza Town
She took him to a traditional Catalonian restaurant near the walls of Ibiza Town’s ancient center and over tapas and a bottle
of Majorcan red offered a forceful rebuttal to his theory of the case—that Alice Winter, wife of the billionaire real estate
investor Edward Knight, had been kidnapped. The theory’s most glaring flaw, she said, was the lack of any demand for money
on the part of Alice’s supposed abductors. After all, the inspector added, such demands were the central element of any kidnap-for-ransom
scheme.
“You’ve handled a lot of kidnap cases, have you?”
“Only one.”
“Did it involve a demand for ransom?”
She shook her head.
“So you’re something of an expert—is that what you’re saying?”
The inspector regarded him across the table, the light of a candle playing in her peculiar blue-gray eyes. The floor of the
restaurant was rough stone, the ceiling vaulted. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the multilingual din of the well-lubricated
evening crowd.
“And what about you, Senor Allon? Have you handled kidnapping cases before?”
He offered a noncommittal shrug in reply.
“But you consider yourself to be an expert nonetheless?”
“A battle-scarred veteran,” he suggested.
“You have a rather large one on the left side of your chest.” She paused, then added, “I noticed it while I was searching
you.”
“It’s the entry wound. The exit wound is a damn sight worse.”
“That incident in Washington?”
He made no reply.
“Did it change you?” she asked.
“Almost dying? A great deal.”
“How so?”
“Misguided Spanish policewomen don’t annoy me nearly as much as they used to.”
Inspector Aragón spooned paella onto Gabriel’s plate. “How do you explain the lack of a ransom demand?”
“Kidnap-for-ransom cases are a test of will between the loved ones of the victim and the kidnappers themselves. Each side
is always looking for an advantage, leverage that can be brought to bear. At the moment, Alice’s abductors are holding all
the cards.”
“It’s been eight days since her disappearance. How long do your kidnappers intend to wait?”
“Long enough to convince Edward Knight that his wife might be dead. That way, when the time comes to ask for money, he’ll
pay anything to get her back.”
She added some of the paella to her plate. “It’s not so easy, you know, caring for a hostage.”
“That’s correct. The hostage has to be given food and water and taken to the toilet, all while blindfolded. Eventually the
kidnappers begin to get worn down, anxious. That’s the time to strike a deal.”
“A woman like Alice Winter would be worth a great deal of money. But you have absolutely no evidence to support your theory
that she has been kidnapped. Therefore I would advise you not to raise it with your client.”
“Don’t worry, I have no intention of mentioning any of this to Edward Knight.”
“What are you going to tell him?”
“That I’m confident you will soon find his wife. With my help, of course.”
“What makes you think I need your help?”
“Let’s not spoil an otherwise pleasant evening.”
“And if I accept your offer? What would be our first move?”
“We’re going to reconstruct Alice Winter’s movements during the seven days she spent on the island. The restaurants where
she dined, the nightclubs where she danced, the boutiques where she shopped. And then we’re going to review every minute of
surveillance video we can lay our hands on.”
“This might come as a surprise to you, Senor Allon, but I’ve already done that.”
“And what did you discover?”
“Absolutely nothing of value.”
“That’s because you were looking for thieves instead of kidnappers.”
“And how do kidnappers look?”
“That depends on the kidnapper. I have a feeling that Alice’s were of the highly professional variety. And they would have
been watching her from the minute she and her friends arrived on Ibiza.”
Inspector Aragón refilled his glass with the Majorcan wine. “Unless, of course, there were no kidnappers.”
Eva Aragón met Gabriel at nine the following morning at Calma, the popular harborside restaurant where Alice Winter had taken her last meal on Ibiza.
The manager, a put-upon Spaniard called Rodrigo, escorted them to a cramped office next to the kitchen and with a heavy sigh sat down behind a computer.
“The same date and time?” he asked.
The inspector nodded.
“The video hasn’t changed, you know.”
“Just get on with it, Rodrigo.”
He tapped a few keys, and a shot of the restaurant’s open-air dining room appeared on the screen. The inspector pointed toward
the woman sitting alone at a sunlit table at the edge of the pier.
“There’s our girl.”
“Surprise, surprise,” said the restaurant manager beneath his breath.
“May I see her arrival?” asked Gabriel.
Rodrigo displayed the feed from the camera at the restaurant’s entrance and rewound the video at three times the normal speed.
A moment later Alice shuffled backward across the screen. Then Rodrigo clicked the play icon, and she approached the entrance at an unhurried pace, a bag over one shoulder.
“Did she have a reservation?”
“No.”
“Table for one?”
Rodrigo nodded.
A middle-aged couple entered the restaurant next, followed by a pair of dark-haired men in their thirties. Gabriel snapped
a photograph of the two men with his mobile phone, then said, “May I see the dining room again, please?”
Rodrigo switched the feed and adjusted the time stamp. Alice Winter sat alone at her waterside table, phone in hand, arm extended.
The photo would appear on Instagram at 2:17 p.m. My last day on Ibiza . . . It would be her last post as well. She left the restaurant twelve minutes later. No one followed her.
They headed next to La Casita, scene of Alice’s quarrel with her friend Phoebe Chadwick, then to La Plaza, where Winter and
party had been three in number rather than their usual four. At neither establishment did Gabriel notice anything unusual
in the surveillance video. The same was true of every other restaurant where the women had dined during their stay on the
island, including La Gaia, the Michelin-starred eatery in Gabriel’s hotel.
After a break for lunch—it was a quick slice of pizza rather than the traditional Spanish midday feast—Gabriel and Inspector
Aragón set off for Ibiza’s world-renowned nightclubs. The largest were multilevel venues that could accommodate thousands
of revelers. Even so, Gabriel had no trouble spotting Alice amid the flashing lights and pulsating bodies; she was the sort
of woman who stood out in a crowd. Not surprisingly she was the subject of no small amount of male attention. Gabriel studied
the faces of the men who lingered too long in her presence, and those who appeared to watch her from afar. At a club called
Amnesia she threw a drink into the face of a handsome young man who tried to pull her onto the dance floor. At Pancha, reputedly
Ibiza’s most glamorous nightclub, a surveillance camera spotted her entering a private room.
“Who else was in there?” asked Gabriel.
“According to Sophie Maxwell and Ella Burns, they were some of Alice’s friends from London. The kind of friends with a lot
of money.”
“I don’t suppose you know their names.”
“They’re in the case file.”
Alice remained in the private room for twenty minutes. She left Pancha at 3:22 a.m., accompanied by her three friends from Cambridge. Gabriel didn’t bother to photograph the spaced-out kids who followed them
out the door.
“Seen enough?” asked the inspector.
“Actually I haven’t seen a thing.”
“How about some coffee? I know just the place.”
It was the little café on the Vara de Rey where Alice had stopped on the day of her disappearance. There was no video to review—it
wasn’t that sort of place—and the waitress on duty hadn’t been working on the morning of Alice’s visit. The café solo, however, was perfect. Gabriel drank his first cup and immediately ordered a second.
“Is there nowhere else she went while she was on the island?”
“She left the villa for a few hours the morning after she had the argument with her friend Phoebe. Said she was going to do
a bit of sightseeing.”
“Does Alice Winter strike you as the sort of woman who enjoys seeing the sights?”
“Not really.”
Gabriel drew his phone and checked Alice’s Instagram account. She had posted twice that day. One was a photograph of three
friends enjoying dinner at La Plaza restaurant. Ten hours earlier, at 12:17 p.m., she had posted a photo of a towering rock formation off the Ibizan coast.
“Es Vedrà,” explained Inspector Aragón. “Home of sirens and sea nymphs, if you believe the legends.”
“Do you know where Alice was standing when she took it?”
“Sure, Senor Allon. I think I might.”