A Murder of No Consequence

by James Garcia Woods

  ‘Out in the boondocks, where I was brought up, everybody was a nurse. And a mechanic. And a veterinarian. The houses were so far apart that we didn’t have much choice.’

  It was strange the way people’s perceptions worked, Paco thought. To him, the United States had always meant tall buildings and huge factories, yet he’d never had any reason to suppose that there weren’t areas in it as remote as any to be found in rural Spain.

  Cindy had opened the door. ‘Well, are you going to let me have a look at it?’ she asked in her blunt Yanqui way.

  ‘Why not,’ said Paco.

  He had only been in her apartment once before, yet it seemed very familiar to him, as if he had been visiting it for years.

  ‘Take off your jacket and sit yourself down on that chair,’ Cindy said crisply.

  He did as he’d been told. She knelt over him and started unbuttoning his shirt. He wondered whether he should tell her that he was capable of doing that himself, but it was really very pleasant, so he didn’t.

  She pulled the shirt free of the waistband of his trousers. Both of them looked down. A black wedge ran from just above Paco’s navel to his ribs.

  ‘That must have been some kind of blow,’ Cindy said.

  ‘The Guardia Civil have had a lot of practice,’ Paco told her. ‘Under the dictatorship, even belonging to a union was enough to get you beaten up.’

  Cindy touched his stomach, and he winced.

  ‘Still hurts, hey?’ she said.

  ‘A little,’ Paco admitted.

  ‘I’m going to check a few of your ribs,’ Cindy said. ‘Just to make sure they haven’t been damaged.’

  He felt her cool fingers pressing and probing. It was painful, yet at the same time he enjoyed it. Somehow, as she examined him, their heads seemed to move closer and closer together. Then they were kissing. It took Paco by surprise, even though, in a way, he’d been almost certain it was going to happen.

  *

  They stood in Cindy’s bedroom, facing each other. For a few seconds, neither of them moved, then Cindy lifted her arms and began to unbutton her blouse.

  ‘Would you like me to turn the light off?’ Paco asked.

  Cindy laughed. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘I just thought . . .’

  ‘What I’d really like is to have you watch me undress.’

  Though his hands had explored every inch of her increasingly unwilling body, Paco had never seen his wife naked. And now this girl was telling him that she actually wanted him to watch her undress. He felt as awkward as a virgin, as unsure of himself as a fumbling youth. He’d known whores act like this, but Cindy wasn’t a whore. Where they were artful and calculating, she was merely natural and straightforward. He wondered whether all Americans were like her, and decided that it didn’t matter, because she was the one he wanted – and he wanted her just the way she was.

  Cindy discarded her blouse, and then her skirt. Now that she was half-undressed, she seemed a little less sure of herself. ‘I think I’ve put on weight since I’ve been in Spain,’ she said.

  He ran his eyes up and down her body. Her legs were long and slim; her stomach had a slight, erotic bulge; her waist was narrow; and her breasts, still constrained by a brassiere he didn’t think they needed, were like plump, firm peaches. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he told her. ‘You’re perfect.’

  She unfastened the brassiere, and he saw that he had been right about the breasts. She slipped out of her knickers, and he gasped as it revealed a patch of fluffy golden hair. Now she was naked, and, despite having no memory of undressing himself, he was too. Though he knew it would hurt him, he picked her up as if she were a baby, and carried her over to the bed.

  ‘Don’t!’ she whispered into his ear.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t treat me like some precious object you’re afraid you might damage. Make love to me like you really mean it.’

  He laid her down, and then his mouth was over one of her wonderful breasts – sucking and biting, biting and sucking.

  ‘Touch me . . . touch me down there,’ she groaned.

  He had never done that to a woman before, but he knew that the stickiness he encountered said she was ready for him. He entered her, and she groaned again. He could have exploded right at that moment, but he held back, wanting to make certain that she was satisfied first. And as his buttocks rose and fell, a single thought – or perhaps merely an impression – flashed across his mind. And the thought was this: no one had ever had sex as good as this before, and no one ever would again.

  *

  They lay side by side, still naked. Paco was still experiencing some discomfort from his injury, but the rest of his body felt better than it had done for a long time.

  ‘Tell me about the girl,’ Cindy said lightly, as if the idea had come out of nowhere.

  ‘The girl,’ Paco repeated, seeing in his mind’s eye the lifeless body of María Sebastián stretched out under the elm tree. ‘How do you know about her?’

  Cindy laughed. ‘Don’t you remember? You told me about her when you were here the other night. You know – the one you met while you were in Morocco.’

  Oh, that girl?

  Paco felt his stomach churn. ‘You don’t want to hear about her,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I do, I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t. We Yanks are like that, you know.’

  ‘It was such a long time ago,’ Paco said unconvincingly.

  A smile played on Cindy’s lips. ‘But you remember it as if it were yesterday, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I do.’

  ‘So tell me about her, for heaven’s sake!’

  Paco took a deep breath. ‘Her name was Reyes. Her father was a missionary doctor. We met in Melilla, though she didn’t live there – the family had a house next to one of the outlying garrisons, more than twenty kilometres from the city.’

  The smile was still firmly on Cindy’s lips. ‘You met, and you fell in love.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  He could close his eyes and see Reyes – smell her, almost feel her. Yet to paint a picture of her in words was an almost impossible task.

  ‘I could tell you she was beautiful, but, in fact, she was no more than pretty,’ he said. ‘I could claim she was the most intelligent woman I ever met, but that wouldn’t be true, either. She was warm and she was kind. And she made me laugh. I don’t think I ever laughed so much as when I was with her.’

  Cindy nodded her head, as if she understood. ‘A classic case,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She was your first love, wasn’t she?’

  No evasions, no half-truths – Paco looked Cindy straight in the eye. ‘I was already married by then,’ he said. ‘But yes, she was my first love.’

  And my last, he added mentally.

  Cindy became suddenly more serious, as if she sensed which way the tale was heading. ‘Go on,’ she said, encouragingly, though not without reservations.

  ‘The army had been fighting the tribesmen for years – just skirmishes mainly – but in 1921 there were some real pitched battles. The generals’ strategy was to pacify all the tribes at the same time, and then join the two halves of Spanish Morocco together. But it didn’t work out that way. We started losing ground, then we were in a full-blown retreat. We gave up 5,000 square kilometres of territory – which God alone knows how much Spanish blood had been spilt to conquer – in only a few days.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Reyes?’ Cindy asked.

  ‘I’m coming to that. We retreated as far as Melilla, the tribes hot on our heels. We hadn’t been the only ones on the run, and the place was bursting at the seams with soldiers. They were conscripts, most of them – badly trained, badly equipped and totally exhausted. You should have seen them. Trying to hide their fear by getting drunk. Queuing outside the whore houses because it might be their last chance ever to have a woman.’

 
; ‘Did you join them?’ Cindy asked.

  ‘No. I had much more important things to do. I wanted to find my Reyes.’

  ‘She was in Melilla?’

  ‘That’s what I assumed. After all, why shouldn’t she have been? All the other Spaniards in the area had fled to the town.’

  Cindy bit her lip, as if she now definitely regretted having started the conversation, but was too far into it to stop. ‘Reyes wasn’t there,’ she said.

  ‘I met a friend of hers who told me that her father had refused to move. He’d done a great deal for the Moors, he said, and they would show their gratitude by harming neither him nor his family.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I went to see my company commander. I didn’t mention my relationship with Reyes . . .’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘. . . but I did say that I knew of a Spanish doctor who was stuck out in the middle of enemy territory. I suggested we send out a rescue column.’

  ‘And what did he say to that?’

  ‘He showed me a map. Reyes’ father’s house was in the shadow of one of the outlying garrisons. The soldiers would protect the doctor, he assured me.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘Yes, I believed him. I should have stolen a car, or a lorry, or anything, and driven out myself. Instead, I put my faith in the authorities.’

  There was a hint of tears in Cindy’s deep-blue eyes. ‘She died?’

  ‘She died.’

  ‘Did you see the body?’

  Paco laughed bitterly. ‘It’s only in romantic novels that the heroes are allowed one last tender moment with their dead loves. No, I didn’t see her, but I did read the report. By the time the relief column from Tetuan got through, everyone in the garrison – and everyone in the house – was dead. They didn’t even bring the corpses back to Melilla. After days of lying out in the sun, the only thing that could be done with them was to heap them in a pile and burn them.’

  Cindy reached over and stroked Paco’s arm. ‘If you had stolen a truck and tried to reach her, you’d never have made it,’ she said. ‘And even if, against all the odds, you had succeeded, she was probably already dead.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So you’ve no call to go blaming yourself for her death.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Paco said. ‘Not all the time, anyway. But there’s never a moment that I don’t wish I’d at least tried to save her.’

  ‘The other day, when you came in for a glass of sangría, you told me that you didn’t trust people. Is that why – because of what happened way back then?’

  ‘You misunderstood me,’ Paco told her. ‘People, I trust. It’s organizations – the army, the political parties, the trades unions – that I don’t have any faith in.’

  ‘And why, exactly, is that?’

  Paco sighed. ‘The government will stay in power, or it will fall. If it falls, it will be replaced by another government, or the army, or the socialist and anarchist unions. And whoever is in control, there will always be someone to assure me that everything is all right, because if it isn’t, what has he got to lose? Responsibility will be spread so thinly that he will only take a minute share of the blame.’

  ‘Like your commander in Melilla?’

  ‘Exactly. He promised me Reyes would be safe, but how was he to know the strength of the Moors, the resolution of the garrison or the length of time it would take the relief column to get through? So he can shrug aside the blame. But if I give my word – make my commitment as a man and a Spaniard – then whatever shame or honour comes from it is mine alone.’

  Cindy shook her head. ‘You were born at the wrong time or in the wrong place,’ she said. ‘You don’t have the makings of a hard-boiled cop. You should have been a medieval knight like Don Quixote, chasing after windmills.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Paco said. ‘We are none of us born out of our time. We must merely learn to face our time on our own terms.’

  ‘Quixote,’ Cindy murmured, almost sleepily.

  Well, maybe he was, Paco thought, but it was too late to change now.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was early morning and the sun was still low enough to make walking just about tolerable as Paco made his way up Calle Hermosilla. It did not have the same sweep as grand streets like Velazquez, he thought. It was not nearly as wide, and the buildings were not half as majestic. But it was still a highly respectable – and expensive – neighbourhood in which to have an address.

  He had reached the block in which, according to the address at the top of María Sebastián’s letters, the murdered girl had lived. He looked up at the building. It was four storeys high, and instead of plaster mouldings – as there were on Herrera’s apartment block – costs had been cut by hiring an artist to paint an elaborate design.

  There were other ways in which it fell short of the Herreras’ home, too, he noticed as he came to a stop in front of the building’s double glass doors. The man sitting behind the desk in the lobby wore the blue suit of a porter rather than the scarlet uniform of a doorman – a clear indication that, as well as screening those entering the building, he would also be required to carry out minor repairs. And the lobby itself, while well furnished with leather easy chairs and pot plants, had none of the grandeur which had been evident in Herreras’.

  Still, whatever its shortcomings, it was well beyond the budget of a humble police inspector. So how had a girl who’d spent her first year in Madrid working in a sweat shop been able to afford it?

  Paco pushed the doors open and stepped inside. The porter, a balding man with sharp, calculating eyes, looked up from his newspaper. ‘Can I help you, señor?’ he asked.

  ‘Police,’ Paco said. ‘I wish to examine one of the apartments in this building.’

  He’d spoken brusquely, hoping to bluff his way into the place, but it was plain from the expression on the other man’s face that the bluff wasn’t working. ‘I shall need some identification before I can allow you to see anything,’ the porter said.

  Paco reached into his jacket pocket, then feigned surprise. ‘I seem to have left my warrant card at home.’

  The porter gave a sigh. ‘Without papers, a man is nothing. It’s regrettable, but that’s the way things are.’

  Paco gave it one last try. ‘I don’t have time to go back downtown and pick my card up,’ he said.

  The porter scratched his bald head, thoughtfully. ‘In that case, we’d better ring your police station. I am sure that someone there will vouch for you.’

  ‘Listen,’ Paco said, ‘I am a policeman, but the case that I’m involved with at the moment is of what you might call an unofficial nature.’

  The porter nodded understandingly. Everybody in Madrid had a racket – from the butcher’s boy who trimmed a little off the meat and sold it himself, to the army general who received a generous gift from the military contractor. And if everyone else was on the take, his look seemed to say, wasn’t it only fair that porters should get their share, too?

  ‘This work you’re doing, unofficially, is for a private client?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A client who is paying you handsomely?’

  ‘Adequately.’

  The porter smiled. ‘In that case, it would only seem fair that in return for my assistance, I should, how shall I put it . . .?’

  ‘Be rewarded?’ Paco suggested.

  The porter’s smile broadened. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘That seems fair,’ Paco said. He thought of all the bribes he’d been offered over the years, and the contempt he’d always had for the men who’d offered them. And now here he was about to do the same thing. ‘This is different,’ he told himself silently. ‘I’m doing it in the interest of justice.’

  But even though he believed it really was different, he still had the taste of slime in his mouth.

  ‘Which of the apartments did you wish to see?’ the porter asked.

  ‘Señorita María Sebastián’s.�
��

  ‘How long would you need to be in it?’

  ‘About fifteen minutes.’

  ‘And would you be taking anything away from it?’

  ‘I’m not a thief,’ Paco said, with a dangerous edge creeping into his voice.

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ the porter said soothingly. ‘But even if you touch nothing, there is still a risk for me – a risk I could not possibly run for less than six duros.’

  ‘If I pay you more than two, you’ll be making almost as much as I will,’ Paco said. ‘And I’ll be doing most of the work.’

  ‘Say that Señorita Sebastián returns while we are still in her apartment?’

  There was no chance of that, but if Paco told the porter the reason why, he’d never get into the place. ‘If she does come back, you can always tell her I’m a building inspector,’ he said. ‘She has no reason to doubt your word.’

  The porter shook his head. ‘If she does not believe me, I could lose my job. Four duros is little enough compensation for that.’

  ‘I’ve just been to a village where four duros would be considered a good month’s wages,’ Paco said. ‘I’m offering you three for a few minutes’ work.’

  ‘Three, then,’ the porter agreed.

  Which was still a fair amount of money for a man who had just been suspended without pay, Paco thought as he followed the porter up the service stairs.

  *

  ‘How many rooms are there in this apartment?’ Paco asked, as he and the porter stepped over the threshold.

  ‘Let me see. There’s the living-room and the dining-room, the main bathroom, a kitchen, two family bedrooms and the maid’s room and bathroom.’

  They entered the living-room, which had a large picture window overlooking the street. Paco remembered María Sebastián’s simple home in Villaverde. She must have felt lost in luxury like this. ‘She worked in a shirt shop, didn’t she?’ he asked.

  ‘Worked?’ the porter repeated.

  ‘Works, then,’ Paco amended hastily. ‘She works in a shirt shop.’

  The porter shrugged. ‘If she does, she has very strange hours of employment.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’