The Book of Murder

by Guillermo Martinez

  “Once he’d left, though, I found myself wondering whether this wasn’t another possible explanation. A rational explanation. I considered each death again in this new light. Luciana could have put some substance in her boyfriend’s coffee: she studied biology, she’d have known what to use that would go undetected in a postmortem and she was there with him every day. And the following year, Luciana could have planted poisonous fungi in the little wood, during the same kind of lightning visit to Villa Gesell that she accused me of. Wasn’t she the one who knew all there was to know about fungi? And finally, Luciana could have written the anonymous letters. She probably knew about her brother’s relationship with that woman. But I had to dismiss this possibility before it went very far: Luciana could never have achieved the insane synchronicity between the dates of the deaths and the progress of my novel.

  “Even so, considering another hypothesis, one that came, unexpectedly, from an outside source, made me regain hope that there was room for a rational explanation, even if I couldn’t come up with one. As you see, there was still something stubborn in me. I couldn’t accept, intellectually, that what had already occurred twice might occur again. So I set out to challenge him. I proceeded like a sceptic who deliberately walks under a ladder. I decided to write one more death, to test him. The scientific test of repetition. At least that was how I justified it to myself at the time, but I know there was something else. I don’t mind admitting it now: I didn’t want to stop writing the novel, even though I knew another person might die as a result. Even knowing this, I couldn’t resist. So I started devising the next death. As I said earlier, I visited several care homes and considered several ingenious variants. What I really wanted was a murder that was the opposite of his style. That was anti-thetical to all that he was. Strangely, it was you who gave me the idea, when we spoke about Luciana’s grandmother and you said that it wouldn’t count against me if she died a natural death. As soon as you’d said it, I knew that’s what it had to be. It was simple, perfect—a natural death. And to a certain extent it left me with a clean conscience. I wouldn’t be imagining and writing a murder, but a merciful release for someone who’d been bedridden for years. This afternoon I made up my mind at last to write the first draft. One death. One person.

  That’s all I wanted. Do you believe this at least?” Kloster looked me straight in the eye, as if expecting an immediate answer.

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe,” I said. “What matters is what Luciana believes. She called me this evening, after the fire. That’s why I’m here. She’s desperate, on the brink of madness, I think. I promised I’d go to see her. But I’d like you to come with me.”

  “Me?” Kloster made a face, as if the very idea were distasteful. “I don’t see how it would help. I think it might even make things worse.”

  “I want her to hear from you what you’ve just told me. Even only this small part of it: that since her parents’ death, you no longer bear her any ill will. I think that, coming from you, would change everything for her.”

  “And then we’d give each other a big Christian hug of reconciliation? That’s rather naive of you, young man. Don’t you see it no longer depends on me? Ten years ago, when I was in despair, my atheism faltered and I prayed. I prayed every night to a dark, unknown god. My prayer was heard and is slowly being answered. It came from me, but I can’t now take it back. Because the punishment, the full punishment, has already been written. It is written.”

  “How do you know how much of it has been written? How do you know that a gesture of forgiveness now wouldn’t change everything? If what you’ve told me is taking place as you say, there is one fundamental thing you could do: stop writing. Give it up right now.”

  “I could even burn it, but there’s no guarantee it would stop anything. It’s outside me. And I think he’s getting ahead of me now: this time he didn’t wait for the scene to be fully written and finished.”

  “So are you saying you refuse to come with me?”

  “On the contrary: I said I’d like to stop it, if only I knew how. I’m prepared to try anything you say. But I’m sceptical about the results. We don’t even know if she’d be willing to see me again face to face.”

  “Why don’t we ask her? Is there a phone here I can use?”

  Kloster indicated the bar and signalled to the barman to let me use the telephone. Reluctantly the barman reached for an old Bakelite phone with a thick spiral cord. I took it to one end of the bar and dialled Luciana’s number, waiting patiently for the dial to return between digits. A sleepy voice answered.

  “Luciana?”

  “No, it’s Valentina. Luciana’s gone to bed. But she said to wake her if you called.”

  There was a click on the line, as the receiver was lifted in another room, and I heard Luciana’s voice, weak and defeated.

  “You said you’d come,” she said, only faint reproach in her voice, as if it no longer surprised her to be let down. “I was waiting for you, because I…” Her voice faded to a whisper and she said, as if she had remained stuck at this one thought: “I can’t deal with the coffin.”

  “I’m here with Kloster,” I said. “I want to bring him with me, so you can hear what he has to say.”

  “Bring Kloster? Here? Now?” In her disbelief, she seemed unable to comprehend the meaning of my words. Or rather, I thought I perceived something helpless and disoriented in her voice, as if she could no longer think coherently and so clung to these questions, before letting them slip from her grasp. Suddenly she laughed bitterly, and for a moment sounded lucid again. “Yes, why not? We can have a chat, the three of us, like old friends. Isn’t it funny? The first time I went to see you I still thought there was a slight hope that I could convince you. I had a plan, something I’d been thinking of doing for years. I just needed your help. I learned from him. I’d planned it all down to the last detail. I thought I could pre-empt it, before it was too late. I didn’t want to die,” she said, pitifully, and she started crying quietly. A moment passed before she spoke, her voice reproachful again: “The only thing I never thought, never could have imagined, was that you would believe him.”

  “I don’t believe him,” I said. “I don’t know what to believe. But I think you should listen to what he has to say. If only for a moment.”

  There was a long silence, as if Luciana was weighing the implications and dangers of the visit, or for once was seeing everything from another perspective.

  “Why not?” she said again, but now she seemed strangely detached, indifferent, as if nothing could touch her any more. Or perhaps (but I only realised this later) she suddenly had a new plan, one in which she no longer needed me, and her sudden acceptance, the unexpected meekness, was her way of setting it in motion. “We can face each other again. Like civilised people. I suppose I’m curious to find out how he convinced you.”

  “It would only take a moment. And afterwards I’ll go and sort out the coffin.”

  “You’ll sort it out? You’d do that for me?” Her tone suddenly switched to gratitude, so that she sounded like a little girl thankful for a huge, unexpected favour.

  “Of course I would. You need to rest.”

  “To rest,” she said longingly. “Yes. I’m so tired.” She seemed to drift for a moment, lost in her dark thoughts. “But there’s Valentina. It’s too dangerous for me to go back to sleep—I have to protect Valentina. I’m the only one who can protect her.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to Valentina,” I said, aware of the dishonesty and weakness of the attempt to reassure her. Too much had happened since the last time I’d said something similar.

  “I don’t want him to see her,” she whispered. “I don’t want her to see him again.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said. “And there’s no reason for him to see her.”

  “I know what he wants. I know why he’s coming here,” she said, madness in her voice again. “But I want Valentina to be saved, at least.”

  “I’ve got
to go now,” I said, keen to end the conversation. I was afraid she’d change her mind. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  I hung up and signalled to Kloster that she had agreed. He leaned his cue carefully against the wall and followed me to the stairs without a word.

  ∨ The Book of Murder ∧

  Twelve

  I now come to the most difficult part of my story. I’ve tried many times since to return in memory to those moments, beginning when Kloster and I left the club. I’ve gone over the scenes many times, as if they were stills from a movie, searching for something that might have foretold what I failed to see until it was too late. But though I later examined them from all angles, those few, fatal events didn’t yield any clues. Kloster was plunged in hostile silence, as if he were being forced against his will to perform an unpleasant duty. We got into a taxi with a loud radio and I gave the driver Luciana’s address. The man warned he’d have to take a roundabout route as some streets were blocked off because of the fires. Although neither of us had asked, he told us the Chinese man had been caught, in a raid in the Bajo Flores district, and that a map marked with the locations of over a hundred more furniture stores had been found in his house. Despite this, he said, there had been more fires that night. Bored thugs, pyromaniacs, rival shop owners taking advantage of the chaos to settle scores, who could tell? He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, head turned slightly, appearing to address Kloster rather than me. But Kloster gave no sign that he was listening. At the first intersection there were barriers and a policeman was diverting traffic. The taxi driver pointed out the fire engines further down the street and the blackened façade of a building from which dark smoke billowed in the light of the street lamps. I asked if anyone else had died in the fires and he shook his head. The only dead were the residents of the old people’s home. Some of them were strapped to their beds, he added, so they hadn’t been able to get out. Nearly all of them had died: that was the real tragedy. I glanced at Kloster, but he remained expressionless, as if he hadn’t heard a word. He was tapping his foot impatiently on the taxi’s rubber mat. I detected no emotion in his face, but maybe he was just absorbed in his own thoughts. Every so often he looked out of the window at the street names, as if looking for a sign that the journey would soon be over.

  At last we drew up outside Luciana’s building. Kloster got out of the taxi first and walked hesitantly to the entrance. I followed and rang the bell for the top floor flat. In the deep night-time silence we heard a window open far above us and someone briefly leaned out. Then a voice came from the intercom but I couldn’t tell if it was Luciana or her sister. Kloster and I waited without speaking. We could just hear, muffled by the glass door, the sound of the lift as it descended. The lift opened and, for a split second, as a figure approached, holding keys, head slightly bowed, I thought I was seeing an apparition: the perfect, recovered image of Luciana, exactly as she was at eighteen. She wore a long woollen coat that showed little of her body, but in the tall slim girl coming towards us I recognised the same upright, determined demeanour. And as she pushed back her hair to peer at the keys, I saw in a dizzying instant that her features reproduced, in a replica so perfect it seemed sacrilegious, the fresh face of Luciana as I had known her ten years earlier. The same high forehead, the same lively eyes, the parted lips. All of her was there suddenly before me, as if by a conjuring trick.

  “My God, she looks exactly like Luciana!” I mumbled as she unlocked the door. I glanced at Kloster, as if I needed a witness to return me to reality. “Like Luciana as she used to look,” I added involuntarily.

  “Yes, the resemblance is extraordinary, isn’t it? I was amazed too the first time I saw her,” said Kloster, and I wondered, as I stared at her with a fascination both old and new, whether he’d seen her again after that first time.

  The only difference was that she looked even younger, even more radiant, than Luciana had at that age. But perhaps this was only because my eyes and I were now ten years older.

  She opened the door and without hesitation, without fear, sought Kloster’s eyes, as if there were some kind of secret understanding between them. She kissed him quickly on the cheek, then looked at me for the first time.

  “My sister’s talked about you a lot,” she said simply.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  “Calm. But that’s what worries me—she’s too calm. She’s been sitting at the window since you called. She said you were both coming and that she was going to sit there to wait for you. After that she wouldn’t say a word. She just got up to open the window when you rang the bell.”

  As she spoke she’d opened the lift door and we now rose in silence. In the stillness of dawn, sounds were magnified and you could hear the screeching of pulleys and the metallic rumble of the lift as it climbed the echoing shaft. I couldn’t get over my surprise as I stared at that face, now returned to me, and I experienced the attraction and emotion I’d once felt for those features all over again. Now that she wasn’t speaking, the impression was even more intense and overwhelming. But she seemed only to have eyes for Kloster, though she was trying with teenage gaucheness not to show it. She’d obviously been crying but had put on a little make-up, and I sensed that if I hadn’t been there she would already have been in Kloster’s arms. Perhaps Luciana was right to fear for her after all. So why hadn’t she made any excuse to get Valentina out of the house that evening? Why had she let her come down to open the door to us so that she was now standing opposite Kloster in the small lift? As I watched the floor numbers light up one after another I remembered that just now, on the phone, Luciana had alluded to her plan to kill Kloster. I’d dismissed it almost without taking it in but perhaps, as a last resort in her madness, she really did intend to kill him, and her unexpected agreement to my suggestion had been a way of getting him to the apartment. Perhaps right now, as her sister let us in, she was preparing her weapon. I thought all of this and discounted it once again, dismissing it as far-fetched and melodramatic. But I never contemplated, never glimpsed the other, yet more terrible, possibility that awaited us.

  The lift stopped and as we emerged on to the small landing we heard the scream, a scream that still wakes me in the night: the hollow, terrified scream of someone leaping into the void. And before Valentina could unlock the front door, we heard the awful sound of the body hitting the ground. We rushed into the apartment. The window was wide open. We looked out and saw Luciana’s broken body on the pavement below. She lay face down, in the ghostly light of the street lamps, her neck at a strange angle, as if it were the first thing to have been broken. She was quite motionless and a pool of blood was spreading from her side. I heard the scream, followed by despairing sobs, of Luciana’s sister as she ran downstairs. Kloster and I were alone. I moved away from the window, because I couldn’t look any more, and saw that Luciana had left a note pinned to the door. My hands were shaking violently, as if they didn’t belong to me, but somehow I managed to take it down. At least let her be saved, she’d scrawled. Was it a message addressed to me, or a final plea to Kloster? He was still at the window and when he looked at me at last I could find no horror or sorrow on his face, no hint of compassion for another human being, but something I can only describe as admiration and awe, as if he were witnessing the work of a more powerful artist.

  “Do you see?” he whispered. “It’s him again, absolutely. What could be simpler, more basic, more his style? A cosmic principle.” And he parted thumb and forefinger, as if releasing a particle into the void. “Do you see?” he said again. “The law of gravity.”

  ∨ The Book of Murder ∧

  Epilogue

  I saw Kloster once more, at Luciana’s funeral. It was one of those cold, luminous mornings in the city at the end of August when buds on the pollarded trees and lighter, more fragrant air hint at the arrival of spring. I overcame my long-standing aversion to funerals and made myself enter the citadel of terrifying, neat graves and time-worn vaults. If I was there, forcing mys
elf to walk through the sea of stone crosses, it wasn’t because of any debt I felt I owed Luciana, or to assuage my guilt—which the sight of her square of earth would only intensify—but because I wanted one last answer, or rather the painful confirmation of something I still couldn’t quite believe.

  Yet I had seen it happening before my eyes. I had seen it in Valentina’s expression as she looked at Kloster in the lift, but I had failed to put two and two together. I’d chosen to believe that it was simply platonic admiration from reading his books, a teenage crush that Kloster wouldn’t dream of reciprocating. But afterwards, in the chaos that followed Luciana’s death, I had seen the speed and energy with which he had acted. I had watched him calm and console Valentina with what looked very much like an embrace, and organise things so that after giving my statement I had found myself heading home in a taxi, still stunned, while he took charge of everything, especially her. And I didn’t protest, didn’t raise any objections, because I could tell from Valentina’s devastated face, behind her anguished tears, that this was what she wanted: to be alone with him.

  I was at the cemetery in search of the final proof and I don’t mind admitting that I hoped to find Valentina there alone. As I went over the events of that terrible night in my mind, despite all the evidence I believed there was still a remote hope that she had leaned on Kloster at that tragic moment because she was dazed and grief-stricken and he had seemed like a father figure. I kept telling myself that as soon as she had a chance to think, to reflect, she would push him away in horror.