A Not So Perfect Crime

by Teresa Solana

  Deafened by the other customers’ hubbub, I could catch none of their conversation from where I was sitting. All I could do was focus on the man’s appearance and see whether what I’d learned from the detectives in the thrillers I’d read was any help.

  What could I deduce from his appearance? In the first place, the man didn’t seem to belong to the Fonts’ circle of acquaintances. Although he was well dressed, suffice it to say he was more in my line than Borja’s. He was wearing a dark green sweater over a white shirt, and sported bifocals. Their metal frames were very antiquated, the kind you rarely see nowadays. His was a traditional balding pate, not a shaven affair, and the scant hair he did have was neatly combed and he was clean-shaven. He seemed modest, polite and restrained. Ordinary looking, I’d have said, not someone wanting to attract attention, except for the fact he was rather dowdy. On the empty seat next to him I could see a brown blouson and a shabby black motor-cycle helmet. He was drinking an infusion of tea, and Lídia Font, as ever, had ordered mineral water.

  They chatted for some twenty minutes. The man looked on intently as she explained something sourly. I felt he was getting angry and agitated. The MP’s wife was steering the conversation and he seemed to be answering back in a way she found unsatisfactory. I wasn’t sure what Borja would make of it – he understands more about these things than I do – but from my perspective, they weren’t lovers. The stranger was clearly getting increasingly agitated and I also started to get anxious seeing that my brother wasn’t putting in an appearance. I knew when we did finally meet up, Borja would give me a third-degree and I wasn’t sure I was up to the task. I prayed he’d turn up quickly and take back the reins on this case.

  It wasn’t to be, because Lídia Font jumped to her feet and slipped on her mink coat with a minimum of fuss and in a manner that was an accomplished display of power. Haughty and overbearing, she said goodbye to the man while her face expressed her complete contempt. This time she didn’t pay the bill and left the bar without looking over her shoulder.

  The stranger looked worried and despondent. He sat there in dismay and I saw him ask the waiter for a cognac. I didn’t know what to do. I had to decide whether to spy on him or follow her, and opted, rather rashly perhaps, to go after her while I tried desperately to communicate with Borja. He must have been underground as there was no reaction from his mobile.

  Mrs Font crossed the street and went into a perfume shop opposite the Zurich, on the other side of the square, and I did the same. She spent a quarter of an hour smelling and scrutinizing various little bottles. She bought some bath salts and brightly coloured soap using her credit card and finally took a taxi home.

  I followed her in another taxi, and when I did manage to speak to my brother, I found he was still trying to park the Smart in the centre of the city. As it was still early we agreed to go for a drink. He was anxious and wanted to hear what had happened as soon as possible.

  “You know driving in the centre of Barcelona the week before Christmas is a fool’s game,” he told me over the mobile. “I need a drop of Cardhu. Get into a taxi and see you in Harry’s in twenty minutes.”

  Harry’s is an old-fashioned cocktail bar in the Eixample. It’s normally frequented by middle-aged couples that don’t look as if they’re married. The men are usually wearing ties, as they’ve just left the office, and the women are done up like secretaries or whores who own their own perfume shops. Long, yellowish hair, swooping necklines, mini-skirts and gold Duponts are the order of the day. But it’s a pleasant, quiet enough place when nobody’s playing boleros or Julio Iglesias songs on the piano. At that day at that time, it was agreeably dingy and low-key.

  Three couples were there who were past the fifty mark and jazz was being played over the loudspeakers. Borja hadn’t arrived. I sat down, ordered a gin and tonic and lit a cigarette while I started to put together mentally the report I’d give my brother. I wasn’t feeling very bright. I was worried about other matters as well and the first sips of my G and T began to go to my head. Quite spontaneously I started to think about the marks the twins were getting at school, Montse’s threat to become a vegetarian and the dinner Lola and my brother had planned for tomorrow night.

  The fact is, Lídia’s mysterious date wasn’t the only surprise that afternoon. While we were parked by the MP’s house, just before our client’s wife went to her date in the Zurich, Borja had admitted he’d agreed to dine with Lola on Saturday night.

  “I thought it was best to accept her invitation, have dinner with her and put the record straight ...” he explained as if it weren’t at all important. “Elegantly, of course,” he sighed. “I don’t want to throw it in her face but, you know, the other day I drank too much and really put my foot in it.”

  “Not just your foot, by all accounts ...”

  “You know what I mean. And please don’t be so coarse,” he rasped.

  “Which restaurant do you have in mind? I don’t expect you’ll choose any thing too romantic ...”

  “Right ... she said she’d cook. We’re dining at her place,” he confessed, head bowed.

  “Shit.”

  My pursuit of Lídia Font had forced me to go from one end of the city to another, and the fact I was the only eye-witness to our putative adulteress’s unexpected tryst had stressed me out even more. I was really enjoying it in Harry’s, my feet had warmed up and I was relishing the cold taste of gin in my mouth. I liked the music they were playing – Miles Davis, I think – and the tune made me remember times past, before I met Montse, when I still lived with my aunt and uncle and was fully up for the revolution, drinking to the death of Franco and falling in love with girls with plaits and long skirts who were on the pill and wore no make-up. As I sank comfortably into one of Harry’s leather sofas, letting my thoughts be led incoherently by the gin’s soothing effects, my eyelids closed and quite unawares, I dropped off to sleep. That improvised truce was short-lived, because I soon heard Borja’s voice ordering a Cardhu as he sat down next to me and excitedly started shooting questions at me. Reluctantly I came back to earth and packed my little collection of madeleines back into my trunk of memories. My brother was anxious to find out every last detail of the disconcerting scene I’d witnessed a while back.

  9

  Our client rang Borja on his mobile very early on Monday morning to summon us to a meeting. He called us to his office on the Diagonal, which he described as his private retreat. It had been a very quiet weekend at the Fonts’ house because they’d decided to spend it in the family chalet in Cadaqués and my brother and I had taken advantage of their absence to rest and forget each other as best we could. The bad news was that Borja and Lola’s dinner party had ended up in Lola’s bedroom with chocolate croissants for breakfast.

  “This will end in disaster!” I predicted in a foul mood as we drove to our meeting with the MP.

  “It was the oysters and the cava ...” he pleaded. “A blow below the belt from your sister-in-law.”

  “Nobody forced you to eat them. If Merche finds out you’re shagging another ...”

  “I’m not. I just slipped ...” he said lowering his eyes.

  “Yes, into the wrong bed.”

  We got to the MP’s office at almost one o’clock. It wasn’t an especially large or luxurious place, which surprised me. I mean it didn’t seem like the office of a lawyer who came into his profession through his family, although I recalled that the Font patriarch, the MP’s father, had in his day made fruitless incursions into the world of politics. Everybody knew the MP didn’t like to talk about this aspect of his father’s life, given that not so long ago Lluís Font senior had been linked to the Falange and that was now a black mark.

  Font and Associates’ legal practice was on the Passeig de Gràcia and was still one of the most prestigious and expensive in Barcelona. Perhaps that’s why I was really expecting something quite different. The office on the Diagonal where we’d been summoned comprised a lobby, a small meeting room and an office
that looked on to the street. It was here that our client conducted all manner of business. Probably nothing to do with the law, though no doubt equally lucrative.

  His desktop was a mess and strewn with papers. Five or six newspapers opened at the political pages were spread across it and heap of dossiers tottered perilously at one end. The MP was in his shirtsleeves and had loosened the knot of his tie, but still looked immaculate. A parcel wrapped in brown paper lurked in one corner behind the door and looked as if it must contain his wife’s portrait.

  “I’m grateful you were able to come here,” he said shaking our hands. “It’s been a very hectic day.”

  Apart from his secretary, no one else seemed to work there. I could see no flag, no institutional photograph, not even any election posters nor indeed anything to betray the fact we were in a very important politician’s office. There were, however, two computers (one for his secretary and one for him), a fax, a telephone and mountains of books and reports piled higgledy-piggledy on a rather rickety unit that hadn’t seen any changes rung since the Seventies. The MP invited us to sit down and offered us a cup of coffee.

  “I know it’s very early days, but I wanted to know whether you’ve uncovered anything,” he said. “We’re going to ski in Baqueira early in the morning and won’t be back till the 24th, in time to celebrate Christmas Eve. I will most probably have to come back to Barcelona for a party meeting,” he signalled, “but I will return to Baqueira the same day.”

  It was 20th December, so only five days to go to Christmas. The truth is that in barely a week we’d managed to find out nothing significant.

  “We have really only just started on the case,” Borja apologized prudently. “But if you like, we’ll explain what we’ve uncovered so far. Not very much ...”

  “Go ahead.”

  “We know,” my brother breathed in, “that Pau Ferrer isn’t currently in Barcelona.”

  We knew that because it’s what the message on his answermachine said. And he added: “He spends long periods in Paris, where he intends to pass this Christmas.” This was pure invention on Borja’s part.

  Lluís Font listened in silence to my brother’s explanations and kept shifting in his chair. He looked disappointed.

  “These matters take time,” Borja added, “particularly if you have to tread carefully. There is one thing though ...”

  “Oh, really?” the MP raised his eyebrows hopefully.

  “Well, it’s probably nothing. And perhaps nothing to do with the painting ...”

  “What is it? Have you uncovered something odd?”

  I felt our client was overdoing his alarm.

  Borja took a small black diary out of his coat pocket and ran through what had happened during the week we’d been trailing the man’s wife. He lingered on the details of her exchanges with the dark-haired woman in the Sandor and the strained encounter with that stranger in the Zurich. The expression on his face made it plain he’d immediately identified the mysterious woman with the deep tan, although he said nothing. He was much more interested in the man in the Zurich. He seemed genuine when he admitted he had no idea who it might be.

  “Are you sure he wasn’t the painter? Perhaps he’s pretending to be out of the country so you don’t bother him ...” he paused. “I sometimes make the same excuse myself.”

  “Absolutely impossible,” I interjected. “That man was nothing like the photographs we found on the internet. The man in the Zurich was much younger.”

  “And what’s he like? Physically?”

  “The Zurich man?” I asked.

  “No, the painter. You say you’ve seen photographs ...”

  “He’s older—”

  “Into his sixties,” Borja interrupted, who always explains himself better than I do. “In fact,” he consulted his diary again, “he was born in 1941, so is sixty-four years old, but he’s pretty well preserved, one has to say. He looks like an artist and apparently is not without money.”

  “I’m not surprised. The amounts his paintings fetch! ...” the MP added, arching his eyebrows.

  “Well, he inherited money from his family, particularly from his mother, who was French,” Borja continued. “At any rate he also seems to have made quite a lot of money from his paintings. He’s lived in Paris for many years and is very well known there. According to our sources, he decided to establish himself in Barcelona at the beginning of the Nineties, but got very annoyed when he tried to set up an arts foundation and no institution would support him. He bought a studio years ago, a huge hangar in Sant Just Desvern, where he also lives apparently. Mr Ferrer is reputed to be something of a bohemian and on the extravagant side. And he’s ...” Borja paused, lowering his voice, “on the left. A pacifist and such like.”

  “That’s all I needed!” the MP sighed as he looked at the ground. “Lídia in a liaison with one of that lot ...”

  “We really don’t have any evidence ...” I said to cheer him up.

  The MP lit his cigarette. At that point his secretary came in with the three coffees and reminded him he had a long list of calls to answer.

  “And the man in the Zurich?” he enquired, after the secretary shut the door. “Are you sure what you saw wasn’t a lovers’ tiff?” He aimed the question at me, the only eyewitness to that encounter. “Perhaps they’re involved in some kind of love affair.”

  “No, absolutely not,” I shook my head. “I’m sure there was no kind of ... intimate relationship between that man and your wife. You know, I felt he wasn’t the class of man to make an impression on a wife like yours. That’s to say, he looked more like an office worker or a travelling salesman ...”

  “I’ll try to take a look at Lídia’s diary, to see if that helps. In the meantime, you should use the time we’re in Baqueira to concentrate on finding more out about that painter. He’s the only lead we have for the moment. I’d like to think that this portrait,” and he pointed to the package behind the door, “is the only portrait he’s made of Lídia. If there are others circulating ...”

  “Indeed, that’s why we must go to Paris as soon as possible. We can take advantage of your stay in Baqueira and carry out an on-the-spot investigation. I am sure we’ll uncover something there,” Borja improvised.

  I didn’t know how the hell I’d explain to Montse that I had to be off and to Paris of all places just before Christmas. I’d have a mighty row on my hands at home. Montse had been talking for years about us spending a romantic weekend in the City of Light, but we kept postponing it, either because of lack of funds, or because of the children. I knew my wife wouldn’t be amused one bit if I went to Paris without her.

  “Very well, if you think it’s indispensable ...” said the MP. “I only ask you to be as discreet as possible. I mean I hope you won’t turn up on the fellow’s doorstep and ask him point blank whether he’s carrying on with my wife.”

  “Of course not!” exclaimed Borja. “There are other means. Trust us.”

  “Given the circumstances, I fear I have little choice,” he said before adding ruefully: “We politicians are used to not trusting anybody.”

  And nobody ever trusts a politician, I thought to myself. But now it was Borja’s turn. He always looks after that side of things.

  “Quite. We shall need funds set aside to cover our travel costs, the hotel ...”

  “Of what order, exactly?”

  “Well ... at least another 5,000,” Borja replied very persuasively, as if he’d been asking for a light.

  I couldn’t help giving a start when I heard the sum mentioned. Lluís Font had handed over five grand less than a fortnight ago, and the only information we’d given him we found surfing on the internet. True, we had kept his wife under close surveillance for a week, but I still considered it excessive. Lluís Font didn’t protest but opened a drawer and started counting notes until he’d got the five K Borja had requested.

  “That makes ten all told,” he said very seriously. “I hope you can tell me something rather more c
oncrete on your return.”

  “Don’t worry.” Borja rushed to soothe the MP. “I am sure we’ll get to the bottom of this mystery in Paris.”

  At that moment the telephone rang and he asked us to excuse him. There had been a meeting of party high-ups that afternoon and he still had lots of calls to make. We left his office as happy as cats who’d got the cream, and decided to celebrate that unexpected windfall with a juicy aperitif.

  “We’ll go to the travel agency this afternoon,” Borja said chomping on a prawn. “Perhaps we should leave tomorrow morning ... The man’s obviously impatient. If it all turns out as it should, we can wrap this case up in a couple of weeks. Say ... you wouldn’t be prepared to go to Paris by yourself, would you?” he asked casually.

  “No bloody way!” I protested. “I wouldn’t know where to start by myself in Paris ... Besides, it’s years since I spoke any French. Not since secondary school, to be exact.”

  “Fine, but you can be sure Pau Ferrer speaks Catalan. With that name ...” he insisted.

  “What’s up? I thought you’d fancy a trip to Paris, all expenses paid ...” I was at a loss to understand my brother.

  “The fact is I don’t really like Paris that much.” I thought I detected a sad tone in his voice.

  “Well, you don’t say!”

  I didn’t have the slightest intention of going to Paris by myself to converse with a rich, bohemian artist I didn’t know from Adam in order to try to find out whether he was having an affair with the wife of a Catalan MP.

  “Forget it, it was a passing thought. We’ll both go,” he sighed.

  But we couldn’t go to the travel agency that afternoon. After lunch, while I was lolling on our sofa, Borja rang me sounding much the worse for wear, to say he was in bed and his body felt totally exhausted. He had flu. I went to his place the next morning and found he wasn’t feeling any better. He still had a temperature, was coughing and only felt up to sleeping. As he lives by himself, I took some provisions, but discovered someone had beaten me to it and that his fridge was full. I prayed it wasn’t Lola.