Murder in the Central Committee

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  Julio also had a gun in his hand and was looking anxiously at Carvalho.

  ‘It’s an old story. Those bastards in the van spend the night knocking my balls around.’

  Julio swapped the gun for a biro and took down the van’s licence number.

  ‘There’s no point. They’ve got connections. I don’t know who exactly, but they want to show me they’ve got some.’

  The van drew alongside again. The man next to the driver lowered his window and held out a sheet of paper in the wind. Carvalho stretched out and snatched the paper and the man’s hand.

  ‘Accelerate!’

  He heard the man cry out as his arm broke against the rim of the open window. With the sheet of paper in his hand, Carvalho looked back to see the van losing speed and other cars filling the gap between them: five this evening at the Princess VIP-lounge.

  ‘What a stupid idea! That guy won’t forget you in a hurry.’

  ‘He’s an American fucker who got what was coming to him. Now drop me by a market.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘A food market.’

  ‘Ah! A supermarket?’

  ‘No, a market.’

  ‘There’s a small one in Diego de León.’

  He told them to inform Carmela that he wanted to see her mid-afternoon.

  ‘Can you two suggest a place?’

  ‘She often goes to La Manuela, in Malasaña.’

  ‘Okay. At six o’clock.’

  At the entrance to the market a man was playing Los estudiantes navarros on a Spanish lute. Some newspaper lying by his feet had collected a precious rainfall of one- and five-peseta pieces. Carvalho passed through the little market with the close interest of someone visiting a tiny Romanesque church. Madrid markets provide a lesson in polychromic symmetry, with their plumed onion, metallic tuna-heads, glassy, finely dressed trouts, scraps of humanised cardboard boxes, oily Toro pastry, chorizos from Candelario, individually polished green beans from La Granja, porcelain chickpeas. He bought some cooked tripe, capipota, frozen peas, the first fresh artichokes of the year, a head of garlic, almonds, pine kernels, a chunk of meaty tuna fish, a tin of anchovies, oil, onions and tomatoes. Eventually he found himself with his hands full at the gates of the market, on a day when it was not good to be there with his hands full. This obvious fact struck him as he stood by the lute-player, now strumming the popular Basque tune Maite, Maitechu mia. The musician looked like any railwayman on strike, with strong cubic arms and dangling legs. Suspicious and sarcastic, he watched Carvalho put the bags on the ground and drop a five-peseta piece on the newspaper. His eyes filled with gravity and he played more slowly and precisely. The music was drowned by the roar of traffic as Carvalho walked up the narrow pavement wondering what to do with the bags. He stopped a taxi.

  ‘Go to the Hotel Opera and tell the receptionist to take these bags up to room three hundred and eleven.’

  ‘What’s in them?’

  ‘Supper for two.’

  The driver eyed the contents.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you, but anything can happen.’

  He smiled at the sight of the tip.

  ‘I’ll go like the wind. Have a good meal.’

  Carvalho went into a telephone box without a telephone, then into another with its cords snapped and its pieces scattered about. In the end, he managed to phone from a bar after he had consumed a portion of live shellfish and half a bottle of chilled white Rioja.

  ‘Haven’t you got any Ruedas?’

  ‘No. Only Valdepeñas or Rioja.’

  Madrid’s wine life is fully programmed in advance. That was his last banal thought before he shut the cubicle door and began to arrange meetings with the six men on the list. He rang the central committee and asked them to find the comrade from La Mancha for the next day.

  ‘It’s a bad day for me. I’m preparing classes for tomorrow. I’m surrounded by hungry students who think only of studying. Tomorrow too. Maybe we could eat together. Any old thing.’

  ‘I never eat any old thing. Be my guest at Lhardy’s.’

  ‘Have you won the pools?’

  ‘The Party’s paying.’

  Leveder knew his way around the menu but he made expiatory efforts to forget. Suppressing his impulse to help Carvalho, he sat back and somewhat uneasily waited for him to choose. His eyes reacted approvingly, but he himself ordered oxtail soup and fresh grilled salmon.

  ‘I’ve got an ulcer. Otherwise I’d be living it up with you.’

  Carvalho had ordered Iranian caviar and Madrid-style tripe.

  ‘Well chosen,’ Leveder said with a convincing expression. ‘The best caviar is Iranian and the best tripe is here at Lhardy’s. When you return to Barcelona, you can take a portion of jellied tripe. They sell it in the shop downstairs. Will you be going soon?’

  ‘As soon as I’m through. I’m not staying for the fun of it.’

  The Lhardy atmosphere surrounded the meal like an English private club decorated by a French interior designer of neo-classical inspiration from the late nineteenth century. It was an ideal atmosphere for steaming-hot dishes, but perhaps not very suitable for cold ones.

  ‘An excellent place to talk about the Party.’

  Leveder winked and lifted a glass of mineral water to his lips.

  ‘Wonderful mineral water. Seventy-two vintage. It was a great year for the water. But keep clear of 1973: it rained little and the water tastes of the bottom of a well. Don’t you butter your toast?’

  ‘It seems idiotic when the caviar is so sweet.’

  Carvalho poured another glass of ice-cold vodka and let Leveder rack his brain for the purpose of the meeting. Leveder returned to Lhardy’s, to Carvalho, and even leant over to ask:

  ‘Have you got me down as the prime suspect?’

  ‘As a conversation partner.’

  ‘Did the old guard denounce me? They don’t actually dislike me, but we speak two different languages. I never use expressions like “objective conditions”, “resituate”, “social structure”, “it is necessary to obtain the optimum conditions”, “the working class is paying the price of the crisis”, and so on. Do you understand me? It’s not that I don’t believe in the reality behind all such language, but I have to struggle to find synonyms. In every tribe there is nothing as alarming as violations of the linguistic code. Maybe that’s why I’m under suspicion. Besides, I voted against Garrido—as I’m sure you know. But I didn’t kill him. I have a great historical appetite and I’d certainly like to be Napoleon or the Virgin Mary. But I haven’t quite got the necessary determination, especially if it’s a question of tyrannicide.’

  ‘Was Garrido a tyrant?’

  ‘A scientific tyrant, like all the general secretaries of Communist Parties. They exercise their tyranny not by divine appointment but with a mandate from the executive committee, which itself has a mandate from a central committee mandated by the Party. And the Party in turn has a mandate from History. You will have recognised that I am a Trotskyist. So why don’t you ask what a Trotskyist like me is doing in a party like this? Go on, ask me.’

  ‘Take it as asked.’

  ‘Avoiding the temptation of joining a Trotskyist party. As Che said, if you have to make mistakes, it’s preferable to make them with the working class. I’ve always preferred to be where the objective vanguard of the real working class has been. And so, I’ve turned my back on a lot of people: on my brother, who is president of the Coria pigeon-shooters and owns half the region, and on my wife, who belongs to some Marxist grouplet. She’s been through all the tiny Communist Parties, because she has a great capacity for affection. She likes all the sweet little left-wing parties. Before we got married, I used to give her little chairs or coffee-pots to make her happy. The present that excited her most was an Italian coffee-pot that only made enough for two people. It was the same in politics. She joined the cause of anyone who put together a tuppeny-ha’penny left-wing Marxist party. Now I think she’s a Marxist-Leninist
Anabaptist or something like that. Señor Carvalho, I like to make mistakes on a grand scale. As I sit before you, I assume repsonsibility for all Stalin’s crimes and all the bad Soviet harvests since the liquidation of the kulaks and small private farmers. What I don’t take responsibility for are all the little idiots like my wife or Cerdán, who go around setting up trashy market-stalls or cobbling together Cerdán’s type of snivelling Marxism. It’s obscene. They go around showing their sores and saying: “We’ve been betrayed.” Shit! they should have it all stuffed up their arse.’

  Leveder was really and truly indignant.

  ‘From everything I’ve said, you will conclude that I did not kill Garrido. At bottom, I had a great affection for the old man, even though I was losing my historical respect for him. Given his age and position, he should have set off a real reform of the Party. He should have carried destalinisation to its ultimate conclusion, arriving at an identification of rank and file and leadership without which any project for a mass party is no more than a swindle. He should have used his authority from the days of underground activity to launch an internal cultural revolution. I repeat, cultural, because every Communist Party has an internal culture, an awareness of its identity conditioned by its evolution as an organic intellectual. Do you follow me? Do you think such an internal culture can be the same in a party influenced by Gramsci and Togliatti and a party influenced by Thorez and Marchais which drummed out Nizan, Lefebvre and Garaudy, to take them in chronological order?’

  ‘For you, then, Garrido was in the way.’

  ‘Yes, because he was alone. He’d been ditching valuable people who could have helped in the struggle. And when the time came to join battle, he was surrounded by people who were neither alone nor willing to help him put the Party right. Besides, he didn’t trust those who didn’t say amen after his speeches. The die was cast. We might have gone on till the year two thousand in that dead-end situation, neither fish nor fowl, neither one thing nor the other. Now at least it will be necessary to make a decision.’

  ‘Who is your candidate?’

  ‘Anyone except Santos.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because he’s a nice old chap who would practise necrophilia with the Fernando Garrido of his heart. I prefer a climber who has some sense of reality.’

  ‘Who’s a climber?’

  ‘Everyone and no one. In such a party, a climber is always a relative concept. The absolute climbers are in parties that can win here and now.’

  ‘Is anyone enough of a climber to have killed in order to take over?’

  ‘No. That’s a stupid way of posing things. This was not a murder directed at Garrido but at the Party. Who would wish to murder a party in order to take it over?’

  ‘Still, the murderer is one of you.’

  ‘The murderer is a traitor. You don’t have to be an eagle or a private eye to see that.’

  Carvalho put his sketch of the Hotel Continental murder-room on the tablecloth, a few millimetres from a sorbet Marc de Champagne. He drew a circle in front of the presidium.

  ‘If the time available is taken into account, then the murderer must have come from this circle. Look at the names written here and tell me who is the traitor.’

  Leveder stared at Carvalho and then glued his eyes to the sheet of paper, examining rather than reading each name. He flopped against the back of his chair and let out a sigh. Tears seemed to be in his eyes.

  ‘Are you paying for the meal?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then please excuse me.’

  He stood up and went in search of the stairs to the street.

  ‘I’m meeting the parliamentary commission at five o’clock. At six I must go to San Cristobal and try to convince some comrades that the Polish working class is not paid by the CIA. At eight there’s an Executive meeting to finalise the last details for the next meeting of the central committee—the one that will elect a provisional general secretary and convoke an emergency congress. With a lot of luck, I hope to be home by four in the morning. Don’t be surprised if I tell you I haven’t much time.’

  Sepúlveda Civit still smelt of deodorant mixed with face lotion. Smart appearance, muscular frame, efficiency, an upright sense of existence already noticeable in the rare Cortes speeches that Garrido’s leading role had allowed him to make. He could have continued his day’s schedule. At seven I’ll get up for a spot of jogging. At eight I’ll have breakfast with the kids and take them to school—the only way I can ever see them. At nine I must report to my engineer’s office at Entrecanales y Tavora, but by eleven I should be at the town hall, where I’m an adviser on transport matters. At one I have to discuss with the Entrecanales y Tavora management the possibility of a tunnel at Salardú that won’t cause the Pyrenees to collapse. At two Carvalho recalled a song from his adolescence: the moon comes out at one, the sun comes out at two, the train comes out at three, the cat comes out at four, San Francisco at five, his wife at six, he puts it in her at seven, it’s coming out of her at eight, the baby comes out at nine, it’s all starting again at ten. Sepúlveda Civit could not guess the silent song echoing in Carvalho’s head, but he did guess that the detective did not take his time problems seriously. He looked at his digital watch, which responded as if to a signal by emitting an astral melody vaguely reminiscent of the Last Post. He raised his eyes critically towards Carvalho. You see? The music warns me, hounds me, and you just sit there without saying a word.

  ‘Were you saying something?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I usually have trouble with my digestion.’

  ‘You should do as I do. I hardly eat anything. Just a roll with vegetables and very occasionally some meat, a cup of milk, a fruit juice, coffee, and that’s that. Then I catch up in the evening—when there isn’t a meeting, of course. The problem is that there’s always a meeting. You’ve got to have an arse of iron to be active in politics. That’s what they call Berlinguer: iron-arse.’

  Carvalho placed before him the same sketch of the conference room that he had shown Leveder.

  ‘You were sitting here,’ he said, pointing to the circle.

  Sepúlveda looked painstakingly at the diagram.

  ‘Right. And I’ll jump on to what you were about to say. The man with the knife must have come from that area. Look.’

  He opened a drawer and took out a plan exactly like Carvalho’s. The desks were shaded differently according to their distance from the presiding table.

  ‘I got one of my assistants to calculate the time it would have taken to move from each spot and back. It’s not so simple, because there are also age factors involved. I even expressed it in a mathematical formula. Here.’

  ‘That’s very useful.’

  ‘I’ll explain it to you if you like.’

  ‘My last contact with maths was when I failed my exam at fourteen. After that I did arts.’

  ‘Can you be a private detective without any maths?’

  ‘I assure you I’m very good at arithmetic.’

  Not a trace of a smile on this executive of the pasteurised revolution.

  ‘Let’s see if your maths and my arithmetic have led to the same conclusions.’

  ‘I can see that they have, from the way you’ve drawn the circle,’ Sepúlveda replied. ‘But I can demonstrate that someone sitting on the side would have had time to approach, kill and return before the lights went back on. The problem is still the same. One of orientation. Those at right-angles to the table could have found their way more easily.’

  ‘Found their way? But the room was in darkness.’

  ‘That’s the crux, and I’ve worked it out. Garrido was smoking. The murderer found his way by the faint glow of the cigarette.’

  ‘More than three—no, more than four will swear that they made Garrido put his cigarette out before he entered the room. Even if he didn’t, the murderer could not have relied on such a chance factor. He’d have assumed that Garrido would respect the formal ban on smoking. Anyway, it’s very
hard to aim such a precise blow by such a weak light.’

  ‘Training makes everything possible, and the blow was obviously struck by an expert.’

  ‘An expert who trained by the light of a fag-end?’

  ‘You must solve the problem of the signal—that’s my advice. Solve that and you’ve solved the case. All the rest is a waste of time, even these interviews with well-placed suspects.’

  ‘Do you accept that you are a well-placed suspect?’

  ‘I do. It’s an objective fact, and we Marxists believe in objective facts. If there was no guiding signal, the only possibility is that the murderer had cat’s eyes capable of orienting him in pitch darkness.’

  ‘Another method is to work from the testament.’

  ‘Which testament are you talking about?’

  ‘Who gains from the will? That’s usually the first question in detective stories.’

  ‘I’m sorry to contradict you, but this isn’t a detective story. It’s a political story, and the murderer tried not only to destroy a man but also to discredit his testament.’

  ‘That’s what eveyone keeps telling me.’

  ‘It’s enough to be a rationlist. You don’t even need to apply dialectical materialism.’

  He had spoken with a certain Madrid accent, stressing the syllables, separating them with short puffs of air, much as the Chinese do. Someone had once told him that the people of Madrid speak like the Chinese.

  ‘Let’s get back to the testament, just in case. Sometimes the classic answers allow us to ask the true questions. Who stood to gain from the testament?’

  ‘You’re looking for a political dauphin, eh? Don’t be so naive. This is a different ball-game. And don’t look at me. I’ve never been a dauphin. We intellectual workers carry great weight in the Party, for we bring concrete knowledge and a capacity for theorisation. But we’re still mistrusted. Don’t forget that although intellectuals set the communist movement in motion, they never trusted their own sort. Look at Lenin. And the grandaddy of them all, Marx himself, had some very harsh things to say about intellectuals. For our part, we have a definite guilt complex and we realise that the throne has to be given to someone closer to the working class by origin. Maybe by the year two thousand, when the working class will be something different, it will have disappeared in its original sense. Adam Schaff has already pointed to that possibility. But for the moment, the working class is the working class; we are still a long way from such a change in the economic formation, driven by automation, the microelectronic revolution, and so on. Do you follow?’