‘You’re here in Madrid,’ Paco pointed out. ‘Doesn’t that disprove your theory?’
‘I’m here for the sake of my higher education,’ Cindy said, brushing his objection aside. ‘I needed to be here. And even then, even though I’d been working towards this for a long, long time and was real excited about it, I had to force myself to walk up the gangplank of the boat that brought me to Spain.’
She was waving her hands as she made her points, and her breasts were shaking gently. They were nice breasts, Paco thought, round and not too large. In fact, everything about her was nice.
Cindy laughed. ‘Stop lusting after me and keep your mind on the subject,’ she said.
‘What subject?’
‘Why María travelled around so much.’
‘Well, if she didn’t do it for pleasure . . .’
‘And I’m sure she didn’t.’
‘. . . then she must have been on business. But whose?’
‘Not her own,’ Cindy said firmly. ‘She had no training and no money. Maybe it was part of her job as Herrera’s mistress, to keep him company wherever he was.’
‘You’re assuming that Eduardo Herrera makes a lot of trips himself,’ Paco said.
‘And doesn’t he?’
‘No, he’s a very active deputy in the Cortes. His speeches are in the papers nearly every day. There simply isn’t any way he could leave Madrid for weeks at a time.’
Cindy lit another cigarette from the butt of her first. ‘All right, then. If she went alone, maybe she was doing for Herrera what he couldn’t do for himself.’
‘You mean, she was his partner?’
‘Why should he make a peasant girl his partner? If she was anything, she was simply his courier.’
Paco shook his head in admiration. ‘You’re a very smart woman,’ he said.
‘Of course I am,’ Cindy agreed. ‘Some day, I’m going to be a doctor of philosophy.’
The sound of footsteps on the staircase below exploded like thunder in Paco’s head.
‘But the question is . . .’ Cindy continued.
‘Quiet!’ Paco whispered.
‘Why should I . . .?’
He clamped his hand over her mouth. The footsteps got louder, reached the landing outside Cindy’s front door – and stopped.
At least there was only one of them, Paco thought. He might be able to take just one of them, even if the son of a bitch had a gun. Making as little noise as he could, he slipped off the bed, padded to the kitchenette, and picked up a carving knife.
You shouldn’t have come here! his angry brain screamed at him. You should never have put Cindy at such risk.
Outside, a man coughed, said, ‘Joder!’ and then began to ascend the stairs again. Paco realized that Cindy was standing beside him, trembling.
‘Who was it?’ she whispered.
‘Señor Lopez. My neighbour from across the corridor. He’s not as young as he used to be. Nowadays, he needs to stop for a rest at every landing.’
‘So why did he scare you so much?’ Cindy asked. ‘Or were you expecting someone else?’
‘In troubled times like these, you can’t be too careful,’ Paco said.
Cindy frowned. ‘You told me all about María, so why don’t you level with me on this?’ she said.
‘I will,’ Paco promised, walking back into the bedroom and reaching for clothes. ‘But not tonight.’
‘You’re going?’ Cindy said, the disappointment evident in her voice.
‘I have to,’ he replied.
Had to because, if he was going to get killed, it would be in his own apartment or somewhere else which didn’t endanger Cindy.
He stepped into his trousers, and wished he already had the gun.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In the pleasant morning light, the fears of the previous evening seemed foolish, but Paco did not con himself into thinking that the threat had gone away. Still, he had at least survived the night, and now he was sitting in a Galician bar on Calle Fuencarral, drinking strong black coffee with Felipe.
‘If there’s one thing left-wingers hate more than the fascists, it’s each other,’ Felipe was saying. ‘There were gunfights all over the city last night, and most of them were between the socialists and the anarchists.’
Paco nodded absent-mindedly, and wondered why the girl had chosen to be murdered in such chaotic times. Or perhaps he was examining the problem from the wrong angle. Perhaps it was because of the chaos that she’d had to die.
‘With all this trouble, the military’s bound to take over soon,’ Felipe said gloomily. ‘Even if that miserable bastard General Mola doesn’t do something, that little shit Franco will.’
Paco looked around him. There were a number of customers sitting at the cast-iron tables, having a mid-morning snack of coffee and churros. At the bar, two workmen were drinking ‘sun and shade’, an intoxicating mixture of brandy and anis. Outside, a shoeblack was plying his trade, and a lottery-ticket seller was shouting that he had the day’s lucky numbers. How could everything seem so normal when, in fact, Madrid was nothing but a vast lunatic asylum which the inmates seemed about to take over?
‘Did you check up on Luis’s alibi?’ he asked Felipe.
‘On the day of the murder, Luis went to see the bulls,’ the fat constable said, in his best witness box manner.
‘That’s what he told me. Was he alone?’
‘No. He went with a bunch of mates from his boxing days.’
So that was one lie at least the valet had told. ‘Why is this down on record?’ he asked.
‘Because he got in trouble even before the first corrida had started.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘He met one of his old rivals. They were both drunk. They had an argument, then started throwing punches. Somebody called the cops, and by the time they arrived, things had turned really nasty. Luis and the other man were arrested.’
‘And charged?’
‘No, the local cops didn’t want the paperwork. They threw the two of them into the cells to sober up. Then, the next morning, they let them out with a warning.’
If Luis had such a watertight alibi, why hadn’t he produced it? Paco wondered. But he thought he already knew the answer. The valet had been terrified that his master – his precious master – would find out he’d been in trouble with the police, and dismiss him.
‘Being in gaol doesn’t put him in the clear,’ Felipe said. ‘He could have arranged for one of his pals to kill María.’
Paco shook his head. ‘He might have set his mates on me,’ he said, ‘but if he had killed María out of jealousy, he’d have wanted to do it himself.’ He paused to light a cigarette. ‘Did you check on Carlos Méndez as well?’
‘Yes, but only because you asked me to,’ Felipe replied. ‘I couldn’t see the point myself.’
‘He is one of the family,’ Paco reminded his constable. ‘What did you find out about him?’
‘There are strong rumours that he’s a nancy boy. One of the constables I talked to even thinks he remembers Méndez being arrested once, in a general sweep of queers. But since he’s got influence, he was soon released and the paperwork went missing.’
Paco nodded. He could well believe Don Carlos was a homosexual; the man had admitted as much in the cemetery the previous day. ‘What else?’ he asked.
‘His official title is Herrera’s private secretary.’
‘And what does that entail?’
‘From what I can gather, whatever Herrera wants it to. Booking the halls for meetings, answering his less important letters, screening his appointments . . .’
And closing the car door after his boss had stepped majestically out of the vehicle, Paco thought. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ he asked Felipe.
‘No,’ the constable said cautiously. ‘I’ve been thinking about these trips María took.’
‘What about them?’
‘Well, she travelled all over Spain, as we know, but the pla
ce she went to most often was Seville.’
‘So what?’
‘So this morning, I found out that Herrera just happens to own a big business there.’
‘What kind of business?’
‘A silk factory.’
Maybe Cindy had been right, Paco thought. Maybe Herrera had been using María as a courier. But if he had, what had she been carrying? Money? Confidential documents? Would he have entrusted such important matters to a peasant girl?
‘You haven’t uncovered any connection between Herrera and the rest of the places that María visited, have you?’ he asked, without much hope.
‘He’s got party offices in most of them, but then he’s got offices in nearly every big town in Spain, including the ones that María didn’t visit.’
Why was she killed? Paco asked himself for the thousandth time. María had mostly stayed at home when she was in Madrid, and had only been visited by two men. Rule out blackmail and sexual jealousy as motives, and what was he left with? Something which happened on one of her trips. ‘It looks like I’m going to have to go down to Seville myself, and do some checking,’ he said.
Felipe massaged his treble chin. ‘I know I was the one brought Seville up,’ he said, ‘but even so, it seems like a long way to go on what might turn out to be a wild-goose chase.’
‘What other kind of geese do I have to chase?’ Paco asked.
‘Very true,’ Felipe agreed.
*
The two detectives stepped through the doorway and out into the street. The light in the bar had been pleasantly subdued, but outside it struck the pavement with force, then bounced back to blind them. Paco lifted his hand to shield himself from the second half of the attack – the direct sunlight overhead.
‘It’s going to be another hot one,’ Felipe said.
His eyes adjusting to the brightness, Paco checked the street. The lottery-ticket seller was still there, as was the shoe-shine boy. And just a few metres up the road from the bar, a young knife-grinder had stopped his hand-cart and was blowing on his pipes to announce his arrival.
‘We should close down the police stations for the summer,’ Felipe said, passing his hand across his brow. ‘We should close them down and piss off to the coast, where it’s a bit cooler.’
‘And who would catch the criminals if we did that?’ Paco asked, his mind more on the street than on what his partner was telling him.
The knife-grinder was looking in their direction. No, more than that – he was watching them. And there was something else. Though Paco couldn’t quite place his face, he was sure that he had seen the man before.
‘The criminals could come to the coast as well,’ Felipe said. ‘The rest would do them good.’
The knife grinder was still blowing on his pipes, but the whole picture looked unconvincing. It was almost as if he were merely playing a part – as if standing next to a cart was a new experience for him, and the overalls he was wearing felt so unnatural against his skin that they were making him itch.
‘I mean, just think about it for a minute,’ Felipe continued. ‘We could nick a few villains in the morning, before it got too hot, then in the afternoon . . .’
The knife-grinder raised his right arm and pointed it at the two detectives. But he wasn’t just pointing, Paco realized, with sudden horror – he was fingering them!
Paco turned and looked down the street. A black Hispano-Suiza was making its way slowly towards them. He turned again. The knife-grinder had abandoned his cart and was walking rapidly but stiffly away down the road.
Stiffly? Of course! That was where he’d seen the boy before, outside María’s apartment. He’d been the one with the knife – the one Paco had kicked in the groin.
The black Hispano-Suiza had started to pick up speed. ‘. . . and if we could all of us agree to have a siesta at the same time . . .’ Felipe was saying.
‘Down!’ Paco screamed.
Fat Felipe looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. ‘Down?’ he repeated.
There was no time to explain – no time to do anything but act. Paco kicked Felipe’s legs from underneath him and by the time the constable hit the pavement, his boss was already pulling his gun free of its shoulder holster.
There were three young men in the Hispano-Suiza, one driving and two leaning out of their windows with pistols in their hands. Paco ignored the gunmen, and aimed at the driver. The shot rang out like the crack of a mule driver’s whip, the windscreen shattered – but the car kept on coming.
To Paco, it seemed as if every noise had suddenly been magnified. The car’s engine screamed, and the echo of the shot was like thunder as it bounced from one side of the street to the other. Even Felipe’s laboured breathing, as he began to recover from the shock of being thrown to the ground, had the intensity of a lion’s roar.
Paco fired again, still aiming at the driver. The Hispano-Suiza swerved violently. Paco felt a bullet zing past his cheek, and heard a second thud into the wall behind him. The car was almost level with him now. He fired a third shot, and saw one of the gunmen jerk violently backwards.
And then it was all over. The car was past them, speeding down towards the Red de San Luis, zig-zagging to avoid hay carts and shocked pedestrians.
Paco knelt down beside his partner, who was sprawled awkwardly across the pavement. ‘Were you hit?’ he asked anxiously.
Felipe groaned. ‘Well, if I wasn’t, this is a bloody awful attack of indigestion,’ he said through clenched teeth.
It was then that Paco noticed a patch of red on his partner’s chest – a patch which seemed to grow every time Felipe breathed out. ‘We’ll get you to hospital,’ he said ‘You’ll be all right.’
Felipe groaned again. ‘If one of us was going to be hit, it was bound to be me,’ he said. ‘My problem is, I’m such a fucking big target.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
There had been several people in the white-tiled waiting-room, but one by one they had left, and now only two remained – Felipe’s partner, and Felipe’s wife.
Isabel sat serenely in a straight-backed chair, her hands folded neatly on her lap, but Paco paced the floor, lighting one cigarette after another.
‘That won’t help him,’ Isabel said.
Paco turned to look at her. Who would ever have imagined that big, fat Felipe would have married such a thin, ethereal creature? he thought.
‘It won’t help him,’ Isabel repeated, as if she were getting some twisted satisfaction from making the statement.
‘Chest wounds can be tricky things,’ Paco said. ‘I’m worried about him.’
‘The time for worrying is past,’ Isabel told him. ‘It is in God’s hands, now.’
And who would have thought that Felipe, who was about as devout as a stray dog, could actually have made a life together with anyone so pious?
‘He admires you, you know,’ Isabel said.
‘He what?’
‘Admires you. For your honesty and your determination. He was always telling me that he considered it a real privilege to work with you.’
Oh my God, Paco thought. Not that! Not that!
Because the last thing he wanted at that moment was the extra burden of hero worship from a man who was lying on an operating table only because of him.
The waiting-room door swung open, Don Eduardo Herrera swept in, with Carlos Méndez following at his heel. Méndez seemed surprised, almost shocked, to see Paco standing there, but Herrera only gave him a cursory inspection, then, with the air of a man whose time is too valuable to waste, glanced at his watch.
He doesn’t even recognize me! Paco thought. He’s ordered my death – it has to be him – and he doesn’t even recognize me! ‘What are you doing here, you bastard?’ he said angrily. ‘Come to gloat?’
Herrera looked around, as if he found it impossible to imagine that the remark was being addressed to him. Then, seeing no one but Méndez, he turned to face Paco again. ‘I know you from somewhere,’ he said, looking closely at
the inspector for the first time. ‘I have it! You were parked outside my house the other day.’
‘This is Inspector Ruiz,’ Don Carlos said.
If the face hadn’t meant much to Herrera, the name meant a great deal. He scowled with deep displeasure. ‘So you’re the man who refuses to keep his nose out of my affairs,’ he said.
‘And you’re the man who’s ordered his thugs to kill me,’ Paco replied.
Herrera’s face went blank. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.
He was good, Paco admitted, but half the trick to being a successful politician was to learn how to act the innocent. ‘Those Falangists on Hermosilla yesterday?’ he said. ‘The gunmen in the car this morning – the ones who shot my partner? You know nothing about them?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Then I repeat, what the fuck are you doing here?’
‘We’re here to visit some of my brother-in-law’s loyal supporters who have been attacked—’ Don Carlos started to explain.
‘Don’t talk to this man!’ Herrera ordered his brother-in-law. ‘Don’t even give him the time of day.’ He raised a finger and pointed it at Paco. ‘I allow no one to speak to me as he has just done. He’ll be made to pay for his words.’
Paco felt the urge to throw himself on the politician, to beat the man to a bloody pulp. But how could he do that with Isabel Fernández sitting there? How could he force her to witness such indignity when her husband was only a few metres away, fighting for his life?
‘Get out of here!’ he ordered Herrera, through clenched teeth. ‘Get out of here while you still have the chance.’
‘Listen, Inspector Ruiz . . .’ Méndez began.
‘I told you not to speak to that man,’ Herrera said imperiously. ‘We will leave, but not because some jumped-up official has told us to. We’ll leave because I can’t bear to be in the same room as him a second longer.’
He turned on his heel, and left as dramatically as he had entered. Carlos Méndez gave Paco one helpless, hopeless look, then followed his master.
‘He’s nothing but a bag of piss and wind,’ Paco growled.
A Murder of No Consequence Page 16