Murder in the Central Committee

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  ‘So, what makes you think I can help? Can you force me to help you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve never been a generous type. Why should I help you?’

  ‘Out of vanity, perhaps. To show me that you’re still well informed.’

  ‘I’m an invalid. What could I possibly know? What are you mixed up in?’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘It’s not hard. Fernando Garrido.’ Carvalho nodded with his eyes shut, but he still followed Wonderful’s expression and caught the glimmer of interest flowing from his eyes. ‘This business is over my head. I won’t deny that I hear a few things, but I deduce more than I know. I have a very good knowledge of the method and mechanics. So, even at a distance I can sometimes have almost perfect vision about what has happened.’

  ‘That’s why I’ve come to you.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about this case. I’m as surprised as everyone else.’

  ‘Surprised?’

  ‘Yes. The word already gives you some information.’

  ‘Was it an unexpected assassination for the Company?’

  ‘I’m just speaking for myself. Something big had already been in the air, but Garrido wasn’t the one who fitted exactly.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘Martialay.’

  ‘The Company?’

  ‘Who knows. Maybe not directly. Not like before. Now everything’s much more sophisticated.’

  ‘Why Martialay?’

  ‘The Party’s not worried, but they are at trade-union headquarters. The union elections are coming up. But it was hard to rig a scandal to get rid of Martialay. What can you dig up on a man who does gymnastics in his track-suit at six in the morning?’

  ‘Why the change of victim?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nor do I know who it was. There must be very few people in the know. Have you got a family?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity. It comes in useful sooner or later. Who will help you get out of bed and sit in your wheelchair?’

  ‘Why did they swap Garrido for Martialay?’

  ‘Don’t abuse a friendship we never had. You were right. You got me to speak out of vanity, but I’ve already said enough. Seriously, though, I can’t tell you anything. Where do you live?’

  ‘Barcelona.’

  ‘Could you do me a favour? The municipal periodicals library has complete sets of the pre-war press. Could you send me some photocopies of L’Opinió? I’ve realised that I don’t know everything I should in order to finish my memoirs. The title is I’ll Never Reach Ithaca. Do you like it?’

  ‘If it wasn’t the Company, who else?’

  ‘Or maybe I’ll Never Return to Ithaca would be a better idea. What do you think? Sometimes I regret not having gone back to Barcelona, but I find Madrid attractive and I’m afraid of returning to a city that was never right for me.’

  ‘What will be the next stage?’

  Wonderful dropped his alert composure and became just an aged, autistic hemiplegic, cut off from the forced conversation with Carvalho. He no longer looked at his visitor, nor at anything identifiable outside himself. Carvalho stood up and got ready to leave. Wonderful did not react until the detective was standing in the door.

  ‘I don’t think anything will come of it immediately. This crime was a long-term investment. I don’t know, but that’s the feeling I get. They won’t even lose the union elections. Such blows are to be feared the most. Be careful. I’d like someone to survive who has been through those years with me. Every death removes part of our own image. Has that occurred to you?’

  ‘What photocopies would you like?’

  ‘Forget it. It doesn’t matter. I haven’t written a line and I never will.’

  ‘They’ve got cocido at the Gran Tasca today’, announced Carmela. ‘Thanks to you, I’m learning quite a few things. They already treat me like a weirdo in the Party. “Do you know where they serve cocido?” Today it was the Cuatro Caminos branch secretary who told me. I was skilfully interrogating the Mundo Obrero lot, and then this comrade comes up with a brilliant observation. “Today’s the day for cocido at the Gran Tasca.” So let’s go before they run out. Is that how you go through life, picking out restaurants? Am I acceptable as an eating companion, or do you prefer that alley-cat from last night? What an exit, pal. Better than Belmondo in A bout de souffle. Even Cerdán realised, and the talk turned to the lady’s legs.’

  ‘What did Cerdán think of the lady’s legs?’

  ‘Leveder brought it up. He really is frivolous, part of the frivolous faction. But Cerdán introduced an analytic note by disagreeing about the ideal proportions.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He ended up saying, almost in German, that she had a big arse. But he sounded like Lukács, Adorno or one of those characters.’

  ‘How did the meeting end?’

  ‘I’ll swap information if you tell me how yours wound up.’

  ‘In bed, but each in our own.’

  ‘That’s a new idea, is it?’

  ‘And each in our own house.’

  ‘Even more interesting. A tele-linkup.’

  Carvalho spoke about the similar origin of pot au feu as an excellent cocido came into view. The chickpea, he said, marks the style of the Spanish pot au feu, and it is nearly always the dried vegetable that gives it its particular nuance. In Yucatán, for example, cocido is made with lentils, while in Brazil it is based on black beans. In the chickpea cocido of the peoples of Spain, the Madrid version is characterised by the use of chorizo sausage, while its Catalan counterpart relies on blood sausage and little meatballs.

  ‘You Catalans really are smart. Why didn’t that ever occur to us?’

  ‘What do you think of Martialay?’

  ‘Heroic. One of the hero sector. I mean, one of those who spent all their life in jail, plus some borrowed time.’

  ‘He’s tough?’

  ‘Tough as nails. But what’s he got to do with cocido?’

  ‘Would the trade union significantly alter its line if Martialay were no longer leader?’

  ‘No. At least, not for a long time.’

  ‘Who will replace Garrido?’

  ‘I’m sure Santos will for the moment, and then we’ll see if the congress is brought forward or not. It’s due for next summer. If Santos is the man, he’ll carry out the same politics as Garrido. If it’s not him, we could be in for a real bust-up. The only ones who could win are Martialay, Cansinos or Sepúlveda.’

  ‘Leveder?’

  ‘What! It’s a miracle he’s even hanging on. He goes his own way too much. He used to drive Garrido mad by abstaining all the time. He’s too flash, too much of a playboy.’

  ‘We’ve already dealt with Martialay. What about the others? Cansinos?’

  ‘A workaholic. He talks a lot about the popular movement and has really come into his own since the municipal election agreement with the Socialists. He’s too hard for the softies, and too soft for the hards. He may scrape in by the middle road.’

  ‘Sepúlveda.’

  ‘He’s an engineer. Let’s say, one of the few survivors from the sixties intake of intellectuals. I think he’s holding up well, because when he doesn’t want anyone to understand him, no one ever does. He gets going on the scientific-technological revolution, and in the end you can’t tell whether he believes in it or not.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘They’ve puffed themselves up too much. Burnt out in petty struggles.’

  ‘Who do you go for?’

  ‘Santos is my man. He looks like a Roman senator, and that means a lot to me. He’s a guy who’s never screwed anyone or even tricked them. He’s capable of doing anything for the Party. He was fascinated by Garrido.’

  ‘Is he ambitious?’

  ‘No. It’s hard for an ambitious man to get on in a Party that will be in opposition until the year 2000. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘Ambition can adjust to any terrain. There are even ambitious road-sweepers
’.

  ‘Santos is very special. Just think: a married man who still keeps his underground flat. From time to time, he leaves his family and goes to spend a few days in that flat from the hard years. He lives like a monk. No one has ever discovered a hobby or vice in his life. His career in the Party has no ups and downs. He has never taken any big or false steps. Everyone else on the executive has been through a difficult moment, when they were over-critical or made some gross blunder. But not Santos. Sometimes he seems like an extra-terrestrial, so firmly are his feet planted on the ground. You could imagine him in a museum. That’s what I think at times. He’s just like the model. That’s what militants must have been like before. Before what? Before all this crap we have nowadays.’

  ‘Was Garrido in danger of losing his job?’

  ‘No. The guy could be very trying, because he always ran things his own way and was used to clockwork underground activity. But he had historical reflexes, and that was much appreciated in a party that tends to take things at a gentle pace. He managed to make himself irreplaceable.’

  ‘How has the rank and file responded to the assassination?’

  ‘There was an immediate call to stay calm; not to open ourselves up to provocation. If this had happened three years ago, there would have been an armed confrontation. But the country has grown used to people dying. Terrorism has produced a general insensitivity to death. Hey! You’re not drinking, and they said you soaked it up like a sponge.’

  ‘I’d like to be on a level with Santos when I meet him.’

  ‘Well, I’ve drunk a little and I feel fine.’

  The wine had put some flourish into her delicate cheeks and softened eyes that were decidedly friendly towards Carvalho.

  ‘Why are you a member?’

  ‘Come on! What a question!’ She looked puzzled and shook her head, as if the answer had been stored in some recess of the brain. ‘At some point I opted for one particular thing, and I haven’t had good enough reason to change my mind. I guess it’s because I still believe in the Party as the political vanguard of the working class, and in the working class as the rising social force that gives a progressive meaning to History. Isn’t that what used to be said? But look, don’t act like such a saboteur. If you go round asking the membership that little question, you’ll soon land me in trouble. It’s like asking what a table is.’

  ‘I’d like to see what everyday life is like in a Party branch. In your area, for example.’

  ‘No sooner said than done. This evening, if you like. There’s a meeting.’

  ‘I can’t this evening.’

  ‘Big-arse?’

  Carvalho pinched her cheek. She gently kicked him from under the table.

  Santos stood out against the horizon, with its massed form of the faculty of philosophy and literature. He seemed absorbed in reflection, his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes lost on an imperceptible molecule of the countryside tinged mauve by the setting sun. As Santos waited and Carvalho drew closer, two men suddenly stepped in between.

  ‘Santos,’ Carvalho said, and the daydreamer turned towards the group.

  ‘Let him through.’

  The two walked together in silence. Then Santos felt that he ought to justify himself. He passed by the university complex every evening. In 1936 he had been on the point of completing his course, and despite the struggles and the years of hardship, the university city had stuck in his memory as a fascinating paradise.

  ‘It was the promised city. Virtually all the faculties were in the course of construction. An arcadia of learning. We were very naive—particularly those of us who had come from the bottom or near the bottom. It had cost us such a lot to reach university. I worked nights in my uncle’s bindery. I was like a character from one of Baroja’s novels: maybe Manuel in The Struggle for Life. But the war prevented me from ending up a good bourgeois. This view helps me to relax. At this time of year, there’s almost no one here in the early evening, apart from the occasional jogger. They make me depressed. They put on such a face of agony. Instead of running so much, they could eat and smoke less.’

  ‘I wanted to see you. It has to be accepted that the murderer is one of you.’

  ‘A hundred and thirty candidates.’

  ‘No. Twenty or so. Only twenty had the time to make themselves mobile, kill Garrido and return to their place. Personally, I’d reduce the number to six. Look at this diagram.’ Santos stopped and took his glasses from his top jacket pocket. ‘Only the first two rows of the area perpendicular to the chairman’s table. That’s where the murderer came from.’

  ‘You deduce that from the time involved?’

  ‘And from the path the killer must have taken in order to hit Garrido where he did. Don’t forget that you were all in complete darkness, so that the light from Garrido’s cigarette must have served as a beacon.’

  ‘I’m sorry to spoil your theory, but Garrido wasn’t smoking.’

  ‘Seven of the statements say he was.’

  ‘He wasn’t smoking. The question was raised moments before the meeting began. He was a heavy smoker and made a move to light a cigarette. We joked with him about the formal ban on smoking in a closed room. Besides, he joked about it himself when the meeting began. He said we should get it over straight away, because he couldn’t take not smoking.’

  ‘Sure. So those statements. . .’

  ‘Hallucination or an obsessive fixation with the fact that he was a smoker. It’s hard even for me to imagine him without a cigarette in his mouth. A journalist once wrote that he seemed to take cigarettes ready lit from his jacket pocket.’

  ‘A lighted cigarette would also solve how the murderer found his bearing.’

  ‘The problem remains, as I said, because Garrido wasn’t smoking. Ask Helena or Martialay. They’ll confirm it. Or ask Mir. There’s also the tape-recording, in which he jokes about not smoking.’

  ‘How is it possible that seven statements refer to him as smoking, even though no one was specifically asked about it? One even says that as soon as the light of the cigarette disappeared. . .’

  ‘Light and the cigarette. Nobody saw one on the table. Nor on Garrido’s clothing when we lifted him up. He wasn’t smoking. Get the idea out of your head.’

  ‘How did the murderer get his bearings? How could he strike such an accurate blow?’

  Santos shrugged his shoulders. Carvalho thought he could detect a certain relief in Santos’s movements, as if the false scent had covered an awkward truth.

  ‘In any case, I’m sticking to these twenty names, and especially the six I’ve underlined.’

  Santos put his glasses back on less readily than before. When he looked up from the sheet of paper, he had a sceptical smile on his face.

  ‘Packed in those twenty names are a hundred years in Franco’s jails and another century of militant activity in worse conditions than anyone can imagine. For God’s sake! And these six names. Do you know who they are?’

  ‘No. But you do.’

  ‘They’d have to be the most cynical, two-faced people in the world. It’s incredible, and I don’t believe it.’

  ‘You’re a materialist, and that includes being a rationalist.’

  ‘I’m a communist.’ He had raised his voice and stopped in a rigid posture, seemingly prepared for a fight to the finish. But he gradually became less tense. A leaden weariness gripped his features and spread to a frame that seemed to shrink with the collapse of its essential pillars. ‘Take no notice. What do you want to know?’

  ‘More details about twenty names, and especially these six.’

  ‘You’ll have them tomorrow morning.’

  He quickened his pace, as if to shake off Carvalho’s company. Carvalho suddenly grasped him by the arm and forced him to stop.

  ‘I didn’t get into this out of curiosity, my friend. You’re the one who called me in. If you like, I’ll drop it now and you can hunt the killer yourself with the complete works of Lenin or Muza the Moor.’

>   ‘Please excuse my irrationality. Try to understand. I’m the least able to accept that a comrade could have killed Fernando. They’ve pinned a bloody legend on us that doesn’t fit what we’re really like. During the war, it was a question of life or death. Then there was the guerrilla struggle. But every attempt to prove that bloody legend has been a complete failure. Do you know the libels written by Semprún and Arrabal against the Party?’

  ‘I don’t even read such things.’

  ‘When they want to mention concrete names, they always stick to one event that occurred in 1940.’

  ‘Don’t tell me the story of your life. I’m not interested.’

  ‘It’s our ethical heritage that is at stake. That heritage is the great historical force of communists. The day we lose it, we’ll be as vulnerable as any prophet, as implausible as any prophet. In today’s world, people hate prophets who demand a constant tension with reality.’

  ‘Please. Don’t tell me the story of your life. Presumably when a plumber or an electrician calls on you, you don’t explain to him how the world was created. Just think of me as a plumber, nothing else.’

  ‘Don’t you realise that Fernando’s murder is an attempt to kill a party with more than forty years of struggle behind it?’

  Carvalho shrugged and turned around, so that now Santos was following him. They quickly resumed a normal pace, and Santos finally broke the silence with a neutral, forceful voice.

  ‘You’ll have what you asked for at ten o’clock precisely. If need be, I’ll call together the twenty, the six, or as many as necessary.’

  ‘All I need at the moment is a very detailed report, including personal information. Resources from work or accumulated wealth. Private life.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but our files don’t contain such material. You’d better ask Fonseca.’

  ‘I was already thinking of that.’

  [1]* October 1934: date of a working-class insurrection in Asturias.

  [2]* Maquinista: a large engineering factory in Barcelona.

  [3]Via Layetana: location of the Barcelona headquarters of the political police.

  [4]Mundo Obrero: newspaper of the Communist Party of Spain.