Black Sun Rising

by Mathew Carr

  “And what’s her interest in this?”

  “She believes there’s been deception, sir. As do I.”

  “Well there’s a journalist here who’s also interested in the Bar la Luna bombing. Name of Bernat Mata. He thinks there’s some connection between the bombing and our local vampire—a madman the papers call the Raval Monster.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Lawton said.

  “Mata says the man who blew up the Bar la Luna is one of the Monster’s victims. He’s got some crackpot theory the political police are involved. He’s asked me to look into it. But I’ve had quite enough of Barcelona conspiracies, thank you. You never get to the bottom of them and no one even wants to. Oh they pretend they do! The city fathers invited me here to stop terrorist bombings—or at least to put on a public show that they wanted to stop them. They gave me a good salary and a lovely office but nothing else. Not enough police officers. No detectives. Even the police I did have I couldn’t be trusted to keep a secret. Now most of them have gone, and the city wants me gone, too. The politicians and the other police hate me even more than they hate each other. Even Bravo Portillo would stab me in the back if he could—the smarmy two-faced bastard. You can’t get anything done in this city, Lawton. It’s not like London. I see you speak Spanish though.”

  “Well enough.”

  “Well you might want to speak to Mata. He’s a decent enough chap. A separatist, but he might know something that can help you. His offices are just across the road on Escudellers. Just ask for La Veu de Catalunya.”

  Lawton thanked him once again and returned to his hotel. He was relieved to find that Señor Martínez was not at his desk so that he would not have to explain his appearance and smell, and he got the key from the cleaner. The pain in his head had mostly gone now, but he was hurting almost everywhere else. There was a graze on his forehead and his lower lip was cut, and his back felt tender to the touch. He did not think he had broken anything, but this seemed little compensation for the humiliation and disgrace that he had brought on himself, and the thought of what Maitland would say when he found out only added to his mortification.

  There was only one way to make amends, and that was to act like a detective once again. He splashed some water on his face and changed into another shirt and his second suit. He thought he still smelled of alcohol as he walked around the corner into the Calle Escudellers, until he reached the offices of La Veu de Catalunya. Through the glass window he could see a handful of journalists hunched over their typewriters, who stopped working when he came into the room.

  “I’m looking for Bernat Mata,” he said.

  “He’s not here,” one of the journalists replied.

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  “I do,” the journalist said. “He’s out looking at a corpse.”

  13

  In his childhood Mata and his family had gone regularly to Bare Mountain for barbecues and picnics on Sundays and feast days. At that time, in the 1870s, the mountain had been entirely undeveloped and largely uninhabited, and he and his friends had run wild among the trees and rocks, while the adults cooked chicken, butifarra, and smoked pork in little fires.

  The previous summer he had seen Gaudí’s unfinished new park on the mountain for the first time during the Floral Games. It was obvious even then that the architect had achieved something remarkable even by his standards. From the barren hump that he remembered from his childhood, Gaudí had transformed Bare Mountain into an ornate semi-tropical paradise, with mosaic walls crisscrossing the mountainside, viaducts, and tree-lined terraces, chipped stone pillars that matched the trunks of the palm trees above them, and shaded walkways and paths curving up toward the Calvary Monument. The Floral Games had taken place on the central esplanade, and Mata remembered how his eyes had welled up as the sound of Catalan mingled with the crows and screeching parakeets. There were those who believed that Bare Mountain was the original site of the Garden of Eden, but that summer he preferred to see it as a Catalan Parnassus, to which the poets of the future Independent nation would return each year to celebrate their native tongue in exquisite verse.

  That dream had not materialized, and the poets and the organizers of the games had balked at the idea of trekking all the way up to Bare Mountain each year and had opted to bring the competition back down to the city. Now he stepped down from the carriage and looked up at the two red gatehouses with their tiled eggs and curved Moorish towers. He trudged up the marble steps, past the crenelated walls, the fountain, and the mosaic dragon with the shield of Catalonia on its collar. By the time he reached the dusty esplanade he was sweating and breathing hard, and he continued to follow the shaded pathway up the hill toward the three crosses that protruded above the rows of palm trees like a hermitage. Finally he came around the side of the mountain to find Bravo Portillo standing at the foot of the Calvary Monument with a small group of onlookers. Mata saw Gaudí and Count Güell standing near the inspector. He knew Gaudí lived in one of the gatehouses and he had heard that his sponsor also had a house on the mountain now.

  Gaudí looked as small and frail as ever in his gray suit and hat, and his beard seemed whiter than the last time he had seen him. He acknowledged Mata with a nod and Mata tipped his cap and looked up at the two Mossos d’Esquadra who were carrying a body down from the monument on a stretcher. Güell grimaced with revulsion as they laid the stretcher down on the ground, and made the sign of the cross. The architect looked distraught, and Mata could not blame him. Even as he stared bleakly down at the naked corpse he knew that he would never see Gaudí’s park in the same way. Until then he had associated the mountain with leisure, childhood, and poetry. Now, less than a month after the murder of Pau Tosets, he found himself obliged to contemplate yet another insane and incomprehensible act of cruelty.

  The victim appeared to be a boy of about fourteen, but one of his legs was bowed and slightly twisted and an oversized tongue protruded from his misshapen face. Like the other two bodies Mata had seen in the last three weeks, there were bites and gashes in his arms and throat, but this time there were a number of bluish patches and contusions that looked like internal bruises on his chest and a rash on his neck and arms.

  “This will be the cretin who disappeared from the Raval a week ago,” Bravo Portillo said. “Looks like our maniac has been at work again.”

  Mata suppressed his irritation. He had had about enough of Bravo Portillo’s obstinate complacency, but he was also conscious of the reporters the inspector could call upon if he openly challenged him.

  “But why bring the body all the way up here from the Raval?” he asked. “Whoever did this could have killed him there.”

  “Madmen don’t have reasons, Mata.”

  “Satan does,” said Gaudí sadly. “And this is his work. He mocks our city with this act of sacrilege.”

  “If it was Satan, then his instrument was certainly human.” Count Güell’s sunken watery eyes turned toward Bravo Portillo. “And I’m rather surprised—and disappointed—at the inability of the police to find him, Inspector.”

  “We will find him, Your Grace,” Bravo Portillo replied. “My men are searching for him. We have extra people all over the Raval. We’ve alerted the watchmen.”

  “Why not just put the whole neighborhood under curfew?” Güell suggested. “It would stop this madman.”

  “We don’t have authorization to do that, Your Grace. That would require the army.”

  “It would,” Güell agreed. “And perhaps if we’d had the army on the streets when the terrorists were blowing us up these last few years we might have been able to stop them, too.”

  Gaudí was still staring at the body, and seemed to be mumbling a prayer as Bravo Portillo asked the two of them whether they had heard or seen anything unusual the previous night. Güell had spent the previous two nights at his palace in the Raval, but Gaudí said that he had heard a motorcar somewhere on the mountain at about two o’clock the previous night. The noise surpri
sed him, he said, not only because of the lateness of the hour, but because motor cars rarely came to Bare Mountain even by day. He had not seen the vehicle, but he thought it had parked not far from the entrance, because the driver had turned its engine off, and then he had heard it start again about an hour later.

  “Just long enough to carry the body up here and then get back down again,” Bravo Portillo said.

  “A lot of work for one lunatic,” Mata suggested.

  Bravo Portillo clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Look at him. Nothing but skin and bone. My wife could carry him.”

  Mata was tempted to tell him about Hermenigildo Cortéz’s outing in the foreigner’s motor car, but he remained silent as Bravo Portillo told the two policemen to take the body down to the mortuary wagon. Gaudí looked out across the city toward the unfinished walls of his Sagrada Familia cathedral that jutted up out of the empty plain. He looked so devastated that Mata felt an urge to console him. Just then he saw a big olive-skinned man in a derby hat trudging up the footpath toward them. As he came closer, Mata saw his unshaven face, grazed forehead, and bloodshot eyes. His features resembled a Toltec mask or the pictures of Red Indians from his childhood, and Mata caught a faint smell of alcohol on his clothing as he came closer.

  “Mr. Lawton.” Bravo Portillo made no attempt to conceal his distaste. “I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon.”

  Lawton tipped his hat and glanced down at the corpse. “I’ve come to speak to Bernat Mata,” he said. “Is he here?”

  “He is,” Mata replied. “And ready to return to the city.”

  Lawton stepped forward to take a closer look at the murdered boy, but Bravo Portillo’s officers covered him and carried him away. Bravo Portillo stared coldly at Lawton and walked away with his men, as Lawton and Mata walked a short distance behind them.

  “The Inspector doesn’t seem to like you,” Mata observed.

  “We didn’t get off to a good start.” Lawton reached out his hand. “Harry Lawton, private investigator. I’m investigating the foreigner who was killed at the Luna Bar.”

  “I know who you are,” Mata said. “Dr. Quintana thinks very highly of you.”

  “Glad someone does. Mr. Arrow said I should speak to you. He said you have a theory about the bombing.”

  “I do. And I understand from Dr. Quintana that you also have a theory about the victim—the Englishman.”

  “It’s not a theory, sir. The victim’s name is Randolph Foulkes. His widow sent me here to identify the body, and I’ve done that.”

  “Aha. So that’s why Bravo Portillo doesn’t want you here. He doesn’t like Mr. Arrow. The Spanish don’t like to be taught policing by foreigners. It offends their honor and national dignity—and it also shows how useless they are.”

  Lawton did not explain that Bravo Portillo had other reasons for his disapproval. “You don’t feel the same?” he asked.

  “I’m Catalan, Mr. Lawton, not Spanish. There is a difference, even if the rest of the world doesn’t know it yet.”

  “I have heard that,” Lawton replied. “Inspector Arrow says you believe there is some connection between the Luna Bar bombing and this… Monster?”

  “There might be. But no one seems to want to look into it.”

  “Perhaps we can help each other.”

  “How so?”

  “I believe Dr. Foulkes was the victim of a deception. I’m trying to trace his companion—a female companion.”

  “Ah yes. The missing lady.”

  “You’re well-informed. May I ask what’s your interest in this case?”

  Mata told Lawton about the murder of Hermenigildo Cortéz, about Esperanza Claramunt, and the kidnapping and murder of the anarchist Pau Tosets. He told him his belief that the Social Brigade had been responsible for Tosets’s disappearance and summarized the results of Quintana’s autopsies. He was still talking when they reached the entrance, and Mata offered to take him back into the city in his taxi. Lawton was beginning to wonder what all this had to do with him, when Mata mentioned the foreign gentleman with the motorcar, and the motorcar that appeared to have brought the murdered cretin to Bare Mountain.

  “Weygrand,” Lawton said.

  “Who?”

  They had reached the esplanade now, and Lawton told him about Dr. Weygrand and his assistant, and his belief that the two of them had used hypnosis to bring Foulkes to Barcelona and defraud him of £500.

  “Well, that’s a novelty,” Mata said. “I didn’t know such things were possible.”

  “After what I saw last night I think it’s very possible,” replied Lawton. “I believe Foulkes was still in a trance when he died. And now I’m thinking something else. What if his death wasn’t just bad luck? What if Weygrand got this Hermenigildo to bomb the Luna Bar in order to kill Foulkes? It’s clever—he seems to be in the wrong place when a bomb goes off. No need for a police investigation. Case closed.”

  “Why would he kill Foulkes if he’d already gotten his money?”

  Lawton shrugged. “Maybe he was worried hypnosis wouldn’t be enough to keep him quiet forever. And then he had the bomber killed so that he couldn’t talk about it either.”

  “Hombre, if you want to shut someone up a bullet will do perfectly well. I saw the body. It looked like a wild beast had attacked him. Same with Tosets and the boy up there. All of them killed in the same way—with their blood drained. Would this Weygrand be capable of something like that?”

  “I don’t know. What’s Bravo Portillo saying?”

  “The Luna Bar bombing is outside of his jurisdiction. It’s gone to the Social Brigade as a political crime. He thought the first two murders were committed by a madman who hates anarchists. God knows how he’ll explain the cretin. Look, where are you staying?”

  “The Hotel de Catalonia.”

  Mata scrawled something on a notepad and tore out the page. “This is my home address,” he said. “If you need anything, come to me or my newspaper. If I find anything of interest I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks.” Lawton put the paper in his pocket. “And please don’t mention Foulkes’s name in connection with the Luna Bar in your paper. I need permission from his widow.”

  “As you wish.”

  They were approaching the Plaza Catalunya now, where a large crowd had gathered to listen to a man who was mounted on a podium holding his fists up at the sky. The speaker looked as though he were walking on a sea of hats and parasols, and his histrionic gestures reminded Lawton so much of Weygrand’s performance that he half-expected him to hold up a pack of cards or a knife. Mata said it was a public meeting of the Young Barbarians, the youth wing of the Radical Republicans, whose leader Alejandro Lerroux was in exile in Buenos Aires for writing a seditious article. As the carriage pulled around the square the speaker yelled, “Burn the churches! Drive out the vampires who are sending your sons to die! Burn them all!”

  “The authorities allow people to say such things?” Lawton asked incredulously, as the crowd roared back its approval.

  Mata nodded wearily. “Lerroux likes to feed the masses raw meat. That’s what he was famous for. I saw him speak various times. He was like a magician. He could make you believe anything—and make you believe he was anything, until you actually started to think about what he was saying. But the masses loved him, especially when he shouted at priests and nuns.”

  “Why do they hate the Church so much?”

  Mata looked at him in surprise. “This is Spain, Mr. Lawton. Half the population believes in Jesus and the other half regards the Church as parasites. And no city is more hostile to the Church than Barcelona. Lerroux feeds that hatred. This is our age—the age of conjurers, illusionists, and fakirs, who brandish magic mirrors and perform political rope tricks to keep the masses distracted and entertained.”

  “I think Dr. Weygrand may be that kind of fraud,” Lawton said.

  “So is Lerroux. Even in his absence his disciples follow the same tradition. A useful tradition.�
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  “Useful how?”

  Mata looked out the window as the crowd roared once again. “The Radicals might hate the Church, but they hate the anarchists more. Most of all they hate my party—the Catalan Regionalist League. We want an independent Catalan state. The Radicals want a Spanish republic—or at least they say they do, and they want the army to deliver it. And the army and the government see the Radicals as a stick to beat us with—so they fund them—covertly, of course.”

  “The army funds a party that hates the Church and wants to bring down the monarchy?” Lawton asked.

  Mata smiled. “The Radicals have offices and houses of the people all over the Raval. You don’t pay for that with membership subs. You look confused. Well Barcelona is a confusing city. There are many different games being played here. Anyway Mr. Lawton, I must go back to the office and write another sad story. What will you do now?”

  “I think I’ll visit the Edén Concert,” Lawton replied. “And find out where the Great Weygrand is staying.”

  * * *

  Many years ago, in her village near Tarragona, Angela’s grandmother had threatened her with the Sackman when she and her siblings misbehaved. The Sackman wore a hood, her abuela said, and he went out on the country roads at night in search of naughty children to fill the bag that he carried on his back. No one had ever seen his face or heard him speak, but the Sackman could find naughty children wherever they were. Even in their parents’ house he would come in through the window and toss them into his sack like kittens or little puppies, and take them away to a place where they were never seen again. For most of her life, the Sackman had been the most terrifying thing she could think of. Now she half-expected to find him looking down at her as she opened her eyes and peered into the darkness, and wondered whether she was dreaming or awake.

  She thought she was awake, but the room was so dark that she could not make out a single object. She could not even see her own body, and it was only when she tried to move her arms and legs that she felt the straps holding her tight to the chair. When she tried to lean forward she found that her chest was also strapped, and her head was held so tightly in some kind of container that she could only look straight ahead. In that moment she felt a terror that was not like anything she had ever felt before. It was something she could not even name, because she had no idea why she was in this room or who had brought her there. The only thing she remembered were the footsteps in the street behind her, the hand over her mouth and the hospital smell that was still on her clothes.