More silence.
“For the moment, we know he isn’t in hospital, which is reassuring. He hasn’t been in an accident, thank God. There haven’t been any accusations either, so he hasn’t got into any trouble. He’s simply disappeared. Without a trace. Just like that time, do you remember, when he was twenty and went off on that gap year. We didn’t hear from him for months. We didn’t worry then and we aren’t going to worry now, Moira, because there will be a reasonable explanation for all this. I, for one, am not in the least bit alarmed. He’s a grown man, he can make his own decisions, he doesn’t need to ask our permission. If he wants to climb aboard a tuna-fishing ship, that’s his choice. If he wants to become a hermit and live off insects, then so be it. It’s his life.”
Moira started snoring. The overdose had done its work. In all probability, thought Marlow, she wouldn’t remember anything the next day. Shame, because it had been an excellent speech for a man of so few words.
Calmer and fully convinced by the strength of his own argument that there was no cause for alarm, he got into bed as well, pulled the tartan blanket up to his chin, and fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER 9
Contrary to Berta’s initial fears, Soleá and Asunción actually got along well. When she saw them for the first time, next to each other—one young and wild, the other mature and serene—she had pictured an impossible tandem bicycle with broken brakes and flat tires. “Staff Writer” was written on both of their contracts after “Job Title,” but each one had her particular way of understanding the role. While Soleá spent all day out wandering the streets in search of stories to tell, Asunción enjoyed working in the office and the careful task of calmly writing reviews, features, and profiles.
From the very first day, they had divided the work according to their interests: Soleá went to the opening nights, presentations, and festivals; she elbowed her way into interviews, her photos came out blurry, and her articles were lighthearted. Asunción read, took notes, compared, wove strands together. Between them, in the end, they always managed to season their articles to perfection.
They met with Berta once a week to organize the contents of the next issue. Each one presented her list of suggestions and Berta analyzed them with the neutrality of King Solomon. She was always astounded by what her two writers came up with.
“Do you really want to write about the African tribal music festival, Soleá?”
“It’s free, Berta, half of Spain will be there.”
“In the Monegros Desert?” Berta blinked, coughed, and nearly always gave in.
“And you, Asunción, want to write an article about the aesthetic perversions of Surrealism?”
“There were heaps of them.”
“That I don’t doubt.”
Then they shared the work by sections: film for you, books for you, museums for you, events for you, music for you, art for you, and so on. The order of ingredients in the cocktail varied each week so that everything got covered.
Berta was the one who gave the green light to what they wrote and controlled the budgets, organized their trips, hired photographers, and always managed to find four or five advertisers who would cover most of the costs of each issue. Normally these were film companies, cell phone networks, discount warehouses, restaurants, and hotels. It was company policy that Librarte couldn’t accept advertising campaigns from publishing houses other than Craftsman & Co., and this seriously limited Berta’s possibilities for finding clients.
María took care of the administration of the small business with the same attention to detail that she applied to her accounts at home. “It’s easy,” she would say. “All you have to do is get the balances to tally.” She collected the receipts that Berta signed in countless files and folders. She kept every ticket, every receipt, and every note in shoe boxes, which she covered with crepe paper and cellophane. A different color every year. She also bought train or bus tickets for the writers (Librarte’s finances had never, to that day, been buoyant enough to allow a plane journey), printer ink, toner cartridges, and items of stationery.
She was astonishingly thrifty in the office, as she was at home: They recycled the paper, they got the last drop of ink out of each pen, they turned the lights off as soon as the sun came out, they shut the computers down every night, they didn’t switch the heating on until well into November, and they never turned the air-conditioning on, because María claimed that on top of being expensive, it was unhealthy and unnecessary. This was most probably because she had grown up in a village near Toledo and experienced such heat as a child that she had become immune to the ravages of the thermometer.
Therein lay the root of most arguments in the office, because although María was happy with a fan and cold water to combat the heat, Asunción suffocated with hot flashes and sweated buckets.
Berta had to mediate: She gave María the month and a half of annual leave that she begged for on account of the school holidays and, in return, allowed Asunción to turn on the air-conditioning for the last half of July and all of August, and learned to disguise the resulting spikes that showed up on the electricity bill.
As for Gaby, she alone constituted Librarte’s technical team. No computer program could refuse to do what she wanted. She was capable of finding the documents that mysteriously disappeared from Soleá’s desktop and resuscitating Berta’s Mac when she burst in panicking about what she called “the sudden death of that piece of junk.”
She imported and exported photos and archives, was a whiz with Photoshop, used InDesign, Quark, and Adobe as if they were physical tools, knew how to turn proofs into PDFs, and could get into the others’ laptops from the comfort of her own home.
She had studied graphic design in Paris when that sounded like outer space to people on the Iberian Peninsula, and she had found the love of her life in the boy who sat next to her in class, an Argentinean whom everyone addressed using his surname, Livingstone, because they had forgotten his first name.
Franklin Livingstone had grown up in Santa Fe, in the province of Córdoba, on a farm with green, fertile land, lulled to sleep by gaucho songs, eating steak and drinking bitter maté. Hence his unpolished character, his leathery skin, and his rough hands. His mother, who hailed from a well-off Buenos Aires family, had imagined a glorious future for him: on the thirtieth floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, a successful businessman, prestigious lawyer, famous architect, or ruthless banker. But none of these dreams of hers had come true. At college in Boston, more bored than he had ever imagined possible, he discovered that his cowboy’s hands were made to caress more interesting things than the current accounts of his future clients. Women and paintbrushes, in that order, began to take up most of his time.
To his mother’s horror, he left business school and enrolled in art school. When he finished, he got a grant to travel to Paris, the city of light and art, and became one of the pioneers of digital design, which his mother naturally thought was a load of mumbo jumbo.
There he met Gaby, bright as a button, full of hopes and dreams, with everything ahead of her. He started to work the old magic on her, like they used to do in Córdoba back in his grandparents’ day, with presents and sweet nothings.
He painted a portrait of her in oils in which he emphasized her lynx’s eyes staring out from the other side of the canvas. What greater proof of love was there than those months of work, holding in his mind’s eye the image of the color of her skin, the softness of her curls, the curve of her chest? She was always catching him looking at her from his desk, sometimes using a pencil to measure the distance between her eyes, or the length of her neck.
When the portrait was finished, he invited her to see the hovel where he lived, a student room in a building in the fifteenth arrondissement. It was there that their love story began, with an artist’s attentiveness. Or rather, two artists: he the brush, she the paint.
Sometimes Livingstone would come to the office midmorning. He would bring the girls cakes, flowers, ice cream, or alfajo
res. He would say to Gaby, “See you at home, princess,” and it still made her legs tremble.
They had been married for more than five years. They wanted to have children. It wasn’t happening.
“Right when you least expect it, Gaby, you’ll see,” Berta consoled her.
But every month, Gaby emerged from the office bathroom with a sour look on her face.
“You’ll see,” Berta would assure her once more, “right when you least expect it.”
CHAPTER 10
Inspector Manchego started to lose his balance on his second whiskey. When he was out of earshot, Josi assured the others that Manchego was simply out of practice.
“He’s always been more into sangria than spirits,” he told the others as soon as the inspector left the game. “In the garage at his parents’ house we used to get a big tub, fill it with half red wine and half Fanta, add a good splash of vodka—not that you could taste it in so much liquid—plenty of ice and plenty of sugar. We’d open the door and they’d be queuing up outside. We were the life and soul of the party.”
“Did you used to drink out of a botijo, a bota, or a porrón?”
“Porrón, Macita, what a question! Manchego used to drink straight from the jug. Back then, he had some stamina . . .”
• • •
The street was dark and empty. The streetlights and the pavement were moving a bit, as if the ground had been paved with waves. Manchego had lost forty euros, Christ on a bike, what bad luck, his four kings had been beaten by the four aces that Carretero pulled out of his sleeve at the last minute.
He was walking home so he could get some air, with his gun tucked into his belt, just in case. He had bought one of those made-to-order harnesses that combine braces with a gun holster, and although he knew he shouldn’t drink when he was armed, he justified it to himself, saying that they weren’t allowed to use the siren without good reason, but all his colleagues used it to get out of traffic jams. It was a trade-off. He was very conscientious when it came to the siren.
He heard footsteps behind him. He tensed up.
A guy with headphones overtook him on his right.
He kept walking.
He heard footsteps again. He stopped. The footsteps stopped too.
Manchego grabbed onto the trunk of a flimsy tree. It was his anchor.
Up ahead, between the cars, someone was moving. A shadow.
“Who’s there?” Manchego shouted.
Silence.
He lifted his hand to his belt. He checked that the gun was in place.
“Who’s there?” he repeated. “Don’t do anything stupid. I’m a police officer. I’m armed.”
A strong, rough-looking man stepped out into the light. He was moving from side to side, in time with the street. He must have been on the same boat as Manchego. He stopped a few centimeters away from Manchego.
“Got a light?” he asked.
“Don’t do anything stupid, mate,” replied the inspector. “I’ve just warned you that I’m armed.”
“I’m only asking for a match, Officer.”
“Inspector, if you don’t mind.”
“Inspector.”
Manchego took a lighter out of his pocket. He removed a pack of cigarettes from another. He offered the man one. They smoked together. They talked.
“If I had to investigate a disappearance,” said the man after listening carefully to the case of Atticus Craftsman, “I’d start by interrogating the people who knew him. Then I’d search his house.”
“The problem is that without a warrant I can’t bust the door open. It takes days for the papers to come through.”
“He could be dead inside the flat,” the other man warned.
“He could be.”
“And there’s no other way of getting in?”
“Not legally.”
“But . . .”
“Well,” pondered Manchego, “if someone, let’s say a burglar, happened to break in to steal something and just at that moment a plainclothes police officer happened to be passing by . . .”
“Improbable.”
“Highly.”
“I’m a locksmith.”
“What a coincidence!”
The street swayed. It had been nasty whiskey.
They said goodbye and promised to meet again at the same tree one of these days. The man’s name was Lucas. He picked up a scrap of paper from the ground and wrote his phone number on it.
“Call me when you like,” he told Manchego. “The guy’s probably dead inside the flat, anyway,” he reminded him.
CHAPTER 11
Soleá never answered her landline. It was hopeless. She unplugged it when she was at home; otherwise she would have to let it ring endlessly. She hated the idea of having an answering machine. She considered it an invasion of her private life and argued that answering the phone was the same as opening the door and inviting someone in.
“Just imagine,” she said, “for example, that you’re eating a bowl of cereal in front of the television and the bloody phone rings. Do you have to make room on the sofa for the person who comes barging into your house, plonking themselves between the spoon and your mouth, between your ears and the end of the film?”
“And what if it’s important?”
“They can wait.”
“And if it’s urgent?”
“Look, Berta,” assured Soleá, “90 percent of the time it’s urgent or important only for the person who’s calling.”
“But I’m your boss, Soleá. I need to be able to contact you.”
“Then get me a cell phone. But a company one, Berta, because my salary won’t stretch to any more bills.”
Already resigned to the bad-tempered response she was going to get, Berta dialed Soleá’s cell phone number and waited for her to wake up. It was exactly nine in the morning. On a Sunday. Thank goodness she wasn’t standing next to Soleá, because that girl was perfectly capable of shoving the phone down her throat.
At the fourth or fifth ring, she heard a sleepy voice on the other end of the line. Soleá was whispering.
“Berta, I’m going to kill you.”
“Where are you?”
“At the squat on Calle Zurita.”
“What?”
“It’s nothing to worry about, love, my night just got a bit complicated. I went to the opening night of that play I told you about, at the Triángulo, and it was raining when I came out, and the first thing I saw was this place. I came in and there was a guy from back home who played guitar really well. A sort of recital. It got late and in the end I fell asleep on a pile of sleeping bags.”
“Doesn’t it smell of pee?”
“Oh, Berta! Shut up!”
Without giving Soleá time to come up with an excuse, Berta told her about the urgent meeting. At the office at eleven. Soleá didn’t argue. Berta had never given her such an unequivocal order before.
• • •
Berta was lucky to catch María still at home. She had been up since seven because the kids were light sleepers and the sound of the elevator always woke them up. They were about to leave for a day out in the countryside. They had the picnic ready: tortilla de patatas, breaded steaks, and Russian salad. María had spent Saturday afternoon cooking, ironing, washing dishes, mending trousers, bathing children, heating soup, and tidying. She planned on spending Sunday relaxing, lying on a rug all day, in the shade, while the kids played on the swings. She had even packed a DVD so she could park them in front of a screen—thank God for laptops—while she had her siesta.
Bernabé usually played soccer on Sundays and then went to a bar for lunch with the team. He would come home when it got dark, sit in front of the television until María and the kids got back, and invariably ask to have dinner early, because on Mondays he worked the early shift at the café. His was a hard life.
“And what do you expect me to do with the kids, Berta? Just put them in a cupboard?”
“Haven’t you got a neighbor you can leave the
m with for a bit, sweetie?”
“No, my love, I haven’t. I’ve got a gossiping witch, a drunk, and a madwoman. That’s what I’ve got.”
“But you do pay peanuts for rent, María.”
“I suppose I do.”
In the end she convinced Bernabé to take them to soccer with him.
“Tie them to the goalpost, Bernabé, do me a favor.”
Berta’s tone of voice made it clear that something very serious had happened at work. María imagined the worst and started shaking. Her life would go to pieces if she lost her job.
• • •
Asunción answered right away. She told Berta that she had been awake for a while, reading. The boys were out and about as usual. She wasn’t expecting them back until lunchtime.
“I’m actually glad you rang,” she confessed. “Sundays make me feel sort of gloomy. I’ll go to ten o’clock Mass near the office so I can be there at eleven on the dot. Shall I bring croissants?”
• • •
Gaby was the most difficult. In a whisper, she explained that she was ovulating—“Spot on, Berta, your timing’s impeccable”—and that she had to lie down for at least half an hour after intercourse. As intercourse hadn’t taken place yet, she would try to wake Franklin up gently, wearing no underwear, to see if they could resolve the issue in fifteen or twenty minutes.
“But the earliest I can be there,” she said, “is quarter past eleven. That’s the minimum for a nice romantic quickie. You understand, don’t you, Berta?”
CHAPTER 12
Asunción stopped weighing herself the day she hit 154 pounds. Her determination to spend her time thinking about more interesting things than the fluctuations of her impressive body mass was not exactly a coolly calculated decision. It was in fact the result of having smashed to pieces the solar-powered plastic scales that her sons had given her on Mother’s Day.
“You’ve got to start looking after yourself again, Mamá,” they had pleaded with her. “Go out, buy new clothes, get your hair dyed . . . It’s been six months now since Papá left. You have to get over it, move on.”
The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman Page 4