The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman

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The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman Page 11

by Mamen Sánchez


  “I understand, Victoria. An engagement is an engagement. Don’t worry. I’ll call you when I get back.”

  CHAPTER 28

  The journey in Arcángel’s truck came to an end shortly before three o’clock. Granada had appeared in two parts: the first was modern and pretty uninteresting, the second, perched on a hill, was embroidered with narrow streets, white houses, and stunning views of the Alhambra.

  To reach El Albaicín, they had to negotiate life-threatening hairpin bends and sheer precipices. They arrived at Soleá’s family home, got out of the truck, and dragged their suitcases to a wooden door in the center of a stone wall, up which bougainvillea plants clambered.

  Atticus had been unable to convince Soleá to stay with him in a charming little hotel that he saw on the way past. She got truly offended, saying she couldn’t imagine anything worse than rejecting her mother’s and Granny Remedios’s hospitality, what an insult, only an Englishman would come up with an idea like that, and Atticus didn’t dare contradict her. However, when the two of them were standing at her front door and there was no turning back, Soleá confessed that their visit was going to be a huge surprise for her family.

  “What, you didn’t tell them we were coming?”

  “No, it’s better not to tell them anything. More natural.”

  Atticus thought about his mother, Moira, and the state she would be in if a guest decided to turn up at her house unannounced. It would throw her entirely, it would drive her up the wall, she would spend months harping on about such a lack of decorum. She would be disoriented, like when you put a twig in the path of an ant and it doesn’t know whether to go around it, climb over it, or turn around and give up. Bewildered, with nothing firm left to cling to.

  But Manuela Heredia, Soleá’s mother, turned out to be so unlike Moira Craftsman that Atticus found it very difficult to classify them both as part of the same species: mothers. After hugging and covering her daughter with kisses as if she had been away at war and they had given her up for dead, Manuela set to work on Atticus. Her plump arms wrapped around his neck, her mouth grazed the corners of his lips. It was the closest Atticus had come to rape in his whole life. His own mother would never have smothered him like that, not even when he was a baby.

  “Oh, what a joy, what a joy!” Manuela shouted so the whole neighborhood would know that Soleá was home.

  Granny Remedios came to the door, intrigued by all the commotion. She was dressed in black, with some teeth missing and others shining with pure gold, and she repeated and intensified the effusive welcome, adding a few pinches and caresses. She was wearing a white apron speckled with oil and she smelled of flour, onions, and woodsmoke.

  “What did you say your name was? Tico, was it?” She christened him as soon as she released him from her welcoming hug.

  They went through to the courtyard garden and got tangled in the vines and branches of lemon trees, tripped over the potted geraniums, and met a gray cat and a yellow canary, before climbing up tiled steps to a door flanked by two huge old terra-cotta jars, like a pair of riot police armed to the teeth.

  Inside, in the bustling half-light, there were more people: three cousins, two uncles, a drunk, Soleá’s sisters, her brother Tomás, Arcángel’s mother who had come to borrow some salt and ended up staying for lunch, three or four noisy and quarrelsome children, and another old woman identical to Remedios who was called Dolores. The table was already laid with ceramic plates and laden with a big pot of food, roast goat, tomatoes with olive oil, potatoes with olive oil; these people even put olive oil on the olives—fat, green wild olives—and they drank wine with fizzy pop: “Why would you want water? Water’s for toads, or there’s Coca-Cola, if you prefer, because you’re a gringo, if you’ll pardon the expression. But you are really gringo. I hope the salt cod doesn’t disagree with your gringo stomach, míster.”

  And the television was on, turned up loud in one corner of the room, like a painting no one looks at but that exists and its simply existing is enough. What’s a house without a TV? And a sofa. And a narrow staircase leading to a room with an iron bedstead with a wire base, covered with a crocheted blanket—“My mother made that”—and photos stuck to the walls, a pine window frame, dolls in frilly dresses lined up on the bench, the grandmother’s wardrobe, a collection of fans. “You’ll sleep up here, míster, get out of here, niño, go on, or you’ll get a clip around the ear, this is Míster Crasman’s room.”

  “Rest awhile, Míster Crasman, because tonight there’s jarana.”

  “What’s jarana?”

  • • •

  Soleá had stayed downstairs, sitting at the table, where she was laughing more than Atticus had seen any girl laugh in a long time, telling her sisters the latest news from Madrid. Her Madrid was merely an extension of El Albaicín, with the same names and the same faces, because many young people had left Granada and now lived on the outskirts of Madrid.

  “But if your mother and your grandmother didn’t know we were coming,” Atticus had protested at the door, “they probably haven’t made food for us, and they won’t have got a room ready for me. We should find a little hotel instead . . .”

  “Look, Míster Crasman,” Soleá had replied with her hands on her hips, “I don’t know how you do things in England, but here in Granada we don’t put too much thought into laying the table. We bring out the stew, the pot of noodles, the meat or whatever there is, and if there are ten people, then ten, if there are fifteen, then fifteen, and we eat. And there’s always enough to go around.”

  • • •

  Atticus made himself a cup of tea with water from the tap, drank it in one gulp, lay on the bed, and thought that he would be home very soon. As soon as he managed to persuade Granny Remedios that what she kept hidden in a drawer was a treasure, a find worthy of being declared World Heritage.

  He would have to choose his words extremely carefully, he said to himself, and then he fell asleep and dreamed that a tribe of cannibals were lowering him into a pot of boiling water.

  • • •

  A while later, Soleá tiptoed upstairs and pressed her ear against the door behind which Atticus was snoring like a bear. When she felt confident that he was sleeping deeply enough for her to call Berta without him hearing, she dialed the number for Librarte.

  “Berta?” she said quietly, pressing the cell phone to her ear. “It’s Soleá. Just to let you know that so far, everything’s going according to plan. We’re at my mom’s house.”

  “Well done, darling!” whispered her boss in response. “Go on, tell me everything.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Following the raid at number 5, Calle del Alamillo, Inspector Manchego began to harbor the uncomfortable suspicion that his accomplice, the locksmith, had pulled the wool right over his eyes. After his quick search that night, another one was arranged in which several officers from the theft department participated, and they confirmed that the flat contained no fingerprints apart from Craftsman’s, Señora Susana’s, and those belonging to Manchego himself. Not a trace of Lucas.

  What’s more, the inspector had spent a few days trying to get hold of his accomplice on his cell phone, and the only answer he got was from a robot assuring him that the number he had dialed was not in service.

  The pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place of their own accord. Everything fitted.

  First: The supposed locksmith didn’t have a clue how to open a door silently, which indicated that, in all probability, he wasn’t a bloody locksmith.

  Second: The circumstances in which they had met, casually, in the street, one drunken night, and that scrap of paper with his name and phone number but no other details to link him to an address or a real identity made Manchego think he wasn’t even called Lucas, nor would he have any way to find him once he destroyed the SIM card, which he had probably already done.

  Third: The guy was clever. He had got Manchego properly tied up, because now he couldn’t investigate the case without dropping himsel
f in it for searching without a warrant and using a standard-issue weapon off duty, as well as making himself look absolutely ridiculous.

  When he reached this conclusion, Manchego decided to launch a second line of inquiry, one that would be secret, personal, and probably related to the Craftsman case but would never appear in the file. The issue, which the inspector dubbed Dossier X, would consist of unraveling Lucas’s true identity and discovering what connected him with number 5, Calle del Alamillo. For the moment he wouldn’t say anything to Marlow Craftsman about this line of investigation because it was entirely possible that Lucas was involved in something unconnected with the Craftsman case—for example, that the flat, which had been empty for months, was being used as a base to store or deal drugs.

  Since he couldn’t think of any other way to get new information that would put him on the scent, he decided to arrange a second meeting with Berta Quiñones, the editor of Librarte, because she was apparently the only element that linked Mr. Craftsman and the Calle del Alamillo flat.

  In their first meeting, she had struck him as smarter than she let on. She knew when to keep quiet and spoke with carefully measured words. Such that, at one point during their conversation, the inspector had even suspected that she might have been hiding something.

  “So, you have no idea where Míster Crasman might be?” he had asked her, his eyes firmly fixed on hers.

  Those eyes, as dark as the bottom of a well, like the eyes of a nocturnal bird, and clearly shortsighted, had seemed strangely familiar. They had stuck in his prodigious photographic memory—about which he liked to brag to his friends, “I never forget a face”—and had been saved on the hard disk of his shrewd detective’s brain, where his subconscious had decided to store every face he saw on the off chance he needed it to solve a future case.

  • • •

  On this occasion, Berta was alone when she greeted him at her small office on Calle Mayor at eight in the evening.

  “I told the girls to go home,” she explained as she served him tea in a porcelain cup. “They’re already worked up enough, what with Mr. Craftsman’s disappearance and all the questioning. I hope you’ll forgive me, Inspector, for saying that your methods are a bit heavy-handed. You’ve got us all worried, thinking that we’re on your list of suspects.”

  “For the moment there is no such list, Ms. Quiñones.”

  “Please, call me Berta.”

  “Berta.”

  “I assume you’ve come to tell me about the break-in at Señora Susana’s flat?”

  “You already know?”

  “Of course, Inspector.”

  “Call me Manchego.”

  “Manchego.”

  They took a sip of the Earl Grey that Atticus Craftsman had left behind in the office kitchen. It was hot, and strong. It proved very comforting for a cold November night.

  “Forgive me for saying so, Manchego, but it seems a very odd coincidence that you happened to be passing by at the exact time of the break-in.”

  “I see.”

  “The thing is, I don’t much believe in coincidences, you know?” Berta went on. “I’ve always been one of those people who think things happen for a reason. A few years ago I read a book that said just that. For example, it’s no coincidence that you’ve been put on this case, or that we’ve met, or that we’re here drinking tea right now.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “According to the book, no. Our meeting,” Berta explained, “is part of a universal plan. It’s necessary for both of us that this should be happening. Do you understand? Perhaps I’ve got an important role to play in your destiny, or you in mine.”

  Manchego placed his cup back on the saucer and looked up. His eyes met Berta’s for a moment. Once again they seemed familiar. Like a long-forgotten dream. Like a lost memory.

  “The thing is,” said the inspector, “you remind me of someone.”

  “What nonsense!” Berta replied, blushing. “What’s happened is you’ve been influenced by my words. It’s like Merton’s self-fulfilling prophecy. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Um, no.”

  For the next few minutes, Berta gave a detailed breakdown of Robert K. Merton’s work, and Manchego listened carefully without interrupting, simply so that he could take a couple of sips of tea. He didn’t make much of an effort to understand the theory that Berta was so passionately describing, but he did take in a few words and ideas that seemed intriguing.

  “It’s an interesting theory,” the inspector said finally. “And you’re a very knowledgeable woman, Berta.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” she replied, flattered. “I’m just a country girl. I come from a small town in the Cameros hills.”

  “Me too!” said Manchego in surprise, opening his eyes as wide as dinner plates.

  “Ortigosa,” she said.

  “Nieva!” he replied.

  All of a sudden, the case had taken a 180-degree turn. Berta and Manchego stood and each saw their surprise reflected in the other. They were about to hug and jump for joy, but they held back. In the end they simply laughed like two teenagers as they looked each other up and down, trying to see through the image they had in front of them—she, a plumpish mature woman; he, a big stocky man prone to a belly—to a corresponding image from their shared youth. The only thing they could rescue from that time was the same glimmer in the eyes and the same curve of a smile.

  “I was sure I knew you from somewhere,” the inspector almost shouted, addressing Berta with the informal tú for the first time without realizing it. “You’re the girl from the balcony. Across from the telegraph office. With glasses and braids. I went around looking for you for months.”

  “Looking for me?”

  “Yes. That’s why your name seemed familiar: Berta Quiñones, I’d almost forgotten it. The theft from the post office in your village was my first case. I’d just graduated from the police academy and they put me on the case because I was from the area. It turned out that you were the most likely witness to the robbery. You were always watching the house.”

  “A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then,” said Berta.

  “I never found you,” the inspector went on. “But in the end the case solved itself. With the help of the man who ran the post office, who was, of course, the father of the girl who ran away with her boyfriend and the money—I don’t know if you heard about that.”

  “I did hear something, yes,” Berta replied. “But it was five years after I’d left home. I was living in Madrid. Studying philology. In the end I wouldn’t have been much help.”

  The tea was getting cold. Manchego lifted the cup to his lips once more, out of habit and to clear his throat, but now the brew was bitter and disappointing. He screwed up his nose and forced himself to swallow. He coughed.

  “Berta . . .” And she was surprised when she heard him say, “What would you say if I invited you to dinner?”

  CHAPTER 30

  The San Miguel market seemed to Berta like the ideal place for a casual dinner. It was the perfect distance away, a short walk from the office, so they wouldn’t have to get into the police car that was waiting on the corner with another officer behind the wheel. It would have been awkward to get into the backseat, where you sit when you’ve been arrested, and explain to Manchego’s colleague that instead of taking them to the station he should drop them at a cozy little restaurant for a table for two, candlelight, and giggling conversation.

  What better place than the old market, where you ate standing up, picking at morsels like sparrows, moving from table to table. Some Serrano ham here, some croquetas de cocido there, some mussels au gratin here, half a bottle of red wine there.

  Berta and Manchego sat down on tall stools in front of a bar covered with tapas, their feet on the brass footrest as if they were ready to dine and dash at any moment.

  Neither of them ate out much. They both liked the odd drink with friends or a game of cards after work, and then it was home, alone, to
their pajamas and slippers, TV or a book, a toasted sandwich, cold sheets, a pee, the Lord’s Prayer, and a touch of insomnia in the middle of the night.

  “I solved a mystery once as well,” boasted Berta between laughs. “It was terrifying. Shall I tell you about it?”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I must have been ten or twelve. I was at home alone. It was completely dark out and I was in bed, waiting for my parents to come home so I could stop worrying and go to sleep, when all of a sudden I heard someone at the door. I went to the window but couldn’t see anyone, so I went back to bed. But a few seconds later there was another knock. This time I got out of bed and threw myself down on the floor. I crawled to the attic window and stayed very still, waiting for someone to knock again. Then, petrified, I saw the knocker lift on its own and hit the door without anyone touching it.”

  “How strange.”

  “Of course I thought it was a ghost. What else could it be? It couldn’t be the wind because the knocker was made of iron. My heart was in my mouth. I was young, and I was all alone . . . So I grabbed an old porcelain jug, the kind people used to use for washing, with its dish and everything, and when the knocker lifted, I threw it out the window to see if I could hit the head of the ghost or the invisible man or whatever joker was trying to scare me.”

  “You were a very brave girl.”

  “Not at all. I was a real coward, I wouldn’t even dare run in front of the fire bull at the village fiestas. I used to go up to the club’s balcony to watch it from safety and the other kids called me a chicken.”

  “Let me guess,” interrupted the inspector, instinctively grabbing her by the arm. “Say no more. May I solve the case using deduction and logic?”

  “Like Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Or like Agent Grissom, from CSI.”

  “Go on, then.”

  “Let’s see.” Manchego cleared his throat. “First off, yours was the first house in the village, right?”

 

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