by David Hewson
They were coming into her street now. In the closed optician’s shop she could see a giant pair of neon spectacles flashing on and off in the night: red, green, blue and yellow. She thought of the system behind it: triggers, relays, power cables, the ions of the gas dancing around inside the tubes, everything jumping to attention every time the switch turned itself on and off. Just like us, she thought. Trigger, response, trigger, response.
Torrillo pulled the car into the kerb and turned off the engine.
‘You OK?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s been a long day. That’s all. Talking to Cristina Lucena wasn’t a particularly cheering experience.’
‘Welcome to police work. If you want to hear nursery rhymes, work in a kindergarten.’
Maria smiled. ‘Some of the nursery rhymes are pretty scary too, Bear. Think about it. Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood . . . cannibalism, some pretty deep sexual allusions.’
‘Yeah.’ He grinned and she realized how much she’d come to like this big, shambling man. He was an odd mix of childlike amiability and absolute dedication. Good to have around for any number of reasons. ‘I always loved those stories when I was a kid. The gruesomer, the better.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Simple. ’Cos when your dad’s scared the living daylights out of you with one of those little horror stories, it makes everything else – the normal world – so real. So safe. So comforting. Didn’t you feel that? When you were a kid?’
Maria shook her head. ‘I never felt that. You live with this . . . stuff. It scares me. The world, the real world . . .’
‘Scares all of us sometimes. But you can’t spend your whole life scared. It’ll get you in the end, but you don’t live for that. You live for what happens before that. Otherwise, what’s the point?’
‘Life is about being safe.’
‘Never walk out your front door and you’ll be safe as hell till the day you die. Unless there’s an earthquake. Or your kidneys start to go rotten. Or the house burns down.’
A picture came into her head. She couldn’t have been more than four years old and on the TV was some nature show about the jungle. The screen was full of all the things she hated: insects and snakes and poisonous plants, a forest of vile creatures that wanted to bite and spike and kill you just because you walked in there, no other reason, just because that was how they are. And there, four years old, she had the answer. Something she’d seen on another TV show: The Boy in the Bubble. You wrapped yourself tight in this big, thick plastic suit that sealed you off, hermetically and finally, from everything out there that was nasty. The suit, with the air-hose going to the outside world, and plenty of filters on it to keep the dirt out, kept you snug and tight and safe. You could live inside it forever.
The Boy in the Bubble. The Woman in the Cocoon.
Pretty soon you’d be swimming in your own piss and shit, Maria. And there’d be no one there to clear it out. You know that really, don’t you? You’re not that dumb.
The foul little interior voice laughed away at the back of her head and she waited for the sound to go away. She wanted to be home, in Salamanca, safe, and untroubled and alone.
‘Tell you what,’ said Bear, and she wished, just for one moment, he wasn’t so persistent. ‘On the corner there, you see that bar. Let me buy you a beer. We can talk. It’s still early now.’
‘Early? It’s nearly midnight.’ She didn’t want to ask, but she had to. ‘Don’t you have a family to go to?’
‘Just my old mamma. She’s in a home. Doesn’t notice me, but I find the time to go every day anyway. There’s always time for people. You just have to find it. Too late for her now, mind.’
She didn’t know what to say. They both sat in the squad car, feeling awkward.
‘For the city, believe me, it’s early,’ he said. ‘They’ve got one of the really big parades tonight. Might even come down your street. You won’t be able to move for bodies, but we got time. We can talk.’
‘About what?’
‘About anything you like. I talk, you listen. Vice versa, if you like. It helps. That’s why cops drink, you know. To talk it out, let it all go. You got to do it, otherwise you’d go crazy. Anyone who tells you we hang around bars with the sole intention of getting shit-faced is a lying, two-faced scoundrel asking for a punch in the mouth.’
Maria tried to smile. ‘That’s kind, Bear. But I think I’d fall asleep on you before I’d even heard a word. No offence meant. It’s not you. It’s me. I’m tired out and if I’m going to be back there first thing in the morning I need some sleep.’
‘Sleep? Sign of a civilian. Medical science has proved conclusively that the most any of us need is two hours, maybe three hours a night. No more. Everything else is a selfish luxury, and you know it.’
‘In that case I intend to indulge myself in a little selfish luxury. But you go ahead and have your beer. I won’t tell.’
She opened the car door, said goodnight, then walked across the road. Torrillo watched her fumble in her bag for her keys, put them in the door, then open it and go inside. A few moments later a light went on in an upstairs window and he saw her staring out briefly, a wan, motionless silhouette.
‘That,’ said Torrillo to himself, ‘is one sad and lonely woman. God knows who’s going to shake her out of it.’
He looked at his watch: eleven thirty. Then licked his lips. He knew the bar on the corner of old. It served good beer, all the usual Cruz Campo stuff, but some foreign ones too. Torrillo closed his eyes and thought of a long, tall glass, iced so well it was opaque, with a big golden stump of cold Miller Genuine Draft in it, fresh from the bottle.
‘One, and one alone,’ he said and reached for the door handle. ‘Unless the mood takes me.’
He got out of the car, then waited in the road as a crowd passed by: young kids in jeans, a priest, some choirboys carrying candles. There was the smell of incense and cheap cigarettes in the air, the first, far-off hints of that high, electric buzz that came from the really big ceremonies. He sniffed again. Dope too maybe. That seemed to be getting everywhere. He wondered if they’d ever manage to stop it.
Torrillo let the group pass, then fell in behind until he found the door to the bar. He stepped briskly inside, smiling with anticipation. Something tugged at his mind. He tried to put a finger on it. When the glass arrived on the counter, looking as welcome as he expected, it finally clicked. In the party on the pavement, in among the white and the denim blue, there was a solitary red robe. A penitent’s robe.
Torrillo shook his head and tried to clear it.
‘Stupid,’ he said to himself. ‘She’s getting me thinking that way now.’
Then he downed the beer in two quick gulps, threw a couple of hundred-peseta coins on the bar and walked back out into the street. It must have been the drink, thought Torrillo. It must have been too cold. Suddenly he was shivering and he could feel the sweat sticking his huge white cotton shirt to his chest.
Maria rolled over in bed and willed herself to sleep in the incessant heat. She was naked under a single sheet. The window was partly open and a light, almost cool breeze fell lazily through the gap. When she closed her eyes, shapes and images started to roll around in the dark. They made her feel giddy. Her head whirled. There was a dull, persistent ache behind each temple. It was as if the fatigue itself was keeping her awake.
She pulled herself upright, put on the light, fumbled underneath the sheets and found a thin, crumpled dressing gown. Then she got out of bed, went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water. It was close to midnight. At this rate she might be lucky to get five hours’ sleep before she got up. Maybe Bear was right. Maybe she didn’t need to sleep so much. After a while you adapted and it didn’t matter.
She went into the living room and sat down on the sofa. Was it only twenty-four hours since she had been in precisely the same position, thinking about Pablo, looking at herself and wondering: Is this me, the same me? The longer she
stayed in the city, the more distance there seemed to be between her old self, the university self, calm, cold, unreflective, and this new person, fragile and open to damage, to being touched by the events around her. There was a bleak simplicity about her life: if you cared for no one, not even yourself, it was impossible to be hurt. If you erected enough walls, enough barriers, between yourself and the world, nothing could peek through the cracks. Great idea. Pity this was the city. There were no walls high enough, there was nowhere that someone could not pry. Seville . . .
She was almost asleep, her eyes open, bolt upright on the sofa. Dreaming of nothing in particular, a dull thud dimly hurting her brain. When she heard the sound it took her a moment to detect, another moment to recognize. Then, with a distinct physical lurch, she was back in her body again, inside herself. The phone was ringing.
She walked over, picked it up and said, ‘Digame.’
A voice she almost recognized, a man’s, young, but not juvenile, spoke the moment she answered. ‘You still don’t know yet, do you? I can’t believe it. You still don’t know.’
She tried to think, to get the conversation straight. The call from last night was slowly coming back to her.
‘Don’t know what? Who are you?’
The voice on the other end of the line laughed.
‘You have to ask?’ he said and she suddenly felt cold.
‘What do you want?’
‘What have you got? Huh?’ A short, breathy pause. ‘Maria.’
It sounded wrong when he used her name.
‘I’m putting the phone down,’ she said, and she pulled it away from her ear. Then held it there, still listening, for what he would say next, trapped by him.
‘Look in your bag,’ he said, the voice now a tinny, thin sound coming out of the earpiece. ‘Look at what you’ve lost. Then try to think where you lost it. Then . . .’
She slammed the phone down and crossed her arms. She went over to the apartment door and looked on the chair. Her jacket and bag were on the floor beside it: another bad shot, Maria, she thought.
She stuck her hand inside the bag. Tissues, keys, a packet of sweets, a purse, some loose coins, the collected fluff of ages, a couple of tampons. It was impossible to count things, impossible to tick them off.
She picked up the bag, turned it upside down, emptied the entire contents on the floor, then kneeled down beside the mess. One by one, she picked the items out, put them to the side, tried to kick-start her throbbing brain into some kind of action. When she’d sorted everything out, every last paper clip, every last widowed biro top, she sat back on her haunches, mouth open, gasping.
The green mask and the red velvet walls.
It was a struggle to think straight, but when she tried hard enough it happened. And then suddenly the world came into sharp, painful focus. She had lost her address book. It fell out, with the rest of the contents of the bag, when she got scared at the brotherhood’s office. It got picked up by the man in the red robe. The man who went on to kill Miguel Castañeda.
The phone was back on the hook five yards away on the table. She dashed over to it, grabbed the receiver and started to dial 911. Then she listened. Nothing. The line was dead, silent. She stabbed the buttons again. Again silence. Then, from somewhere down the line, a voice.
‘You hung up, Maria. I didn’t. You can’t dial out if somebody else is on the line.’
She grasped for words. ‘Who are you?’
‘Irrelevant,’ he said, instantly.
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘My business. Mainly.’
‘You’re killing people. Do you understand that? What it means?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I understand.’
She stabbed at the phone buttons again.
‘It’s no good. You can’t drop the line. Not while I’m on it. Don’t you know that?’
‘You need help,’ she said. ‘You’re sick. You’ll go to hospital. Not to jail.’
He laughed again and she was shocked by how ordinary, how normal he sounded.
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘I can help you. I’m not the police.’
‘You can’t help me, Maria,’ he said.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re already dead,’ he said in a flat, monotone voice.
She could see what happened then, picture it from the spiky little electronic sounds coming down the phone. He put the handset down somewhere, maybe on a table, maybe on the shelf in a booth. She heard him place it there, heard the distinct clack of plastic meeting plastic. Then a door opened. There was sound: pop music, people talking, people drinking. He was phoning from a bar. From a phone that was separate from the drinking area itself. Maybe outside the toilets.
She could hear him walk away. Then there was just the bar sound again. The drunken voices, the cheap music. Semana Santa.
Maria drew herself together and screamed, screamed as loud as she could into the ivory-coloured receiver.
But even as she did she wondered why. No one could possibly hear her.
The street seemed to explode with people. One moment Torrillo was standing on the pavement, looking right and left, frantically scanning the swarming crowd. The next he was in a seething flood of bodies and voices. The procession had come around the corner from the big broad shopping avenue in a human tidal wave, then found itself channelled into Maria’s winding lane, crushed together by its own momentum, like insects being crammed down a funnel. Far off, on the shoulders of people he couldn’t see, he could make out the white doll-like face of a Virgin, jewels glittering on her veil, bobbing up and down in the chequered darkness. The bearers were maybe thirty yards away, but it was difficult to make out. Everything had changed. Everything now swayed in front of him, up and down, from side to side. The air was full of frantic, wild excitement and the electricity of hysteria.
He pushed people out of his path, swearing. They glared back at him. Someone raised his fists, then dropped them in an instant when he saw Torrillo, huge and bull-like, trying to force his way through the crowd, searching frantically around him.
There were no red penitents that he could see. Lots of people dressed in ordinary casual clothes. A bunch in black, faces hidden under cowls. The group of choirboys he had seen earlier, still holding candles. Now their faces looked eerie in the street lights, pale and drained and blank. He felt he was being engulfed by a blind, mindless animal, swamped as it bore down on him, drowning everything in his way.
There was a street lamp, cast iron, painted black. He threw himself towards it, let the metal deflect, if only briefly, the flow of bodies past him, then reached into his pocket. The crush was so bad that it took him three good tries before he could get his radio out and look for the little red power light. It came on, a tiny beacon in the night, then Torrillo wondered what he was supposed to say. Something scared him? He had a bad feeling?
He stabbed the talk button, tried to make out what the radio operator was saying, screamed three times into the mike, then gave up. He looked at the emergency squawk button, thought better of it, then stuffed the radio back in his pocket. It wasn’t going to help.
He looked across the road, up to the first-floor window. Face illuminated by the dusky yellow of the street lamps, Maria stood at the window, a terrified silhouette. Torrillo took in the picture in an instant. She had the phone in her hand. Her face was contorted, a mask of fear and agony. She was screaming silently, pointlessly, into the darkness.
He took a deep breath, stepped out from the temporary protection of the street lamp, then plunged, fighting, roaring into the flood of bodies streaming down the street. It was like jumping into a river moving at the speed of an express train. He turned his face away from the flow, set his right shoulder against the crowd and pushed with everything he had. The crush parted not one inch. He found himself carried along with them, felt his feet stumbling underneath him, then remembered some of the accidents of the past. People fall
ing, getting crushed underfoot. It happened like this, Torrillo thought. Just like this.
People were starting to yell at him, first in anger, then in fear as they began to feel the nervous tension in the mass of bodies, the sudden realization that there was too much humanity here in this tight, constricted space, that they were all living on the edge of something that could, in an instant, turn deadly.
‘Police!’ Torrillo yelled. For a moment, he held up his right arm and then he felt himself lifted, carried along by the weight of bodies, feet clear of the ground. He rammed his arm back down into the mass, turned to roll with the momentum, found himself running to stay upright. He looked at the faces around him. They were scared. They wanted to get away to flee, but there was always something blocking the path.
It was hard to tell where he was. Torrillo guessed he might be in the middle of the street by now. He might have covered five or six paces since he plunged into the swarm. He looked to his right and the glowing fluorescent lights of the optician’s shop swam past in a blurry fuzz of colour. He had to get out of the centre, get to the other side, stop being pushed along with the flow.
To his right someone went down on the ground. A whole mass of heads behind him disappeared as they tripped over the fallen body. Torrillo reached into his pocket, felt for the radio, tried to recall the feel of the buttons, to remember which one was the emergency squawk. He felt what he thought was the right one, pressed it, hoped to God it would work.
From somewhere off to his left he heard the sound of breaking glass. Someone was smashing the shop windows, trying to escape the crush. The crowd was now nearing a uniform pace, a fast half-march, half-run. You kept to it, kept to it exactly, and you stayed upright. You fell behind or tried to race in front and you went down, taking an entire line of people behind with you. The whole thing was precise, like a deadly metronome, and he couldn’t think of any way to break out enough to reach the other side, to, first, steady himself against the flow, then wait long enough for it to subside, so that he could retrace his tracks back to the apartment, back to . . . what?