I imagine Borja was afraid the fellow would take fright and disappear, or use precious time to destroy compromising evidence now he knew he’d been found out. Of course, we had no evidence to implicate him in the murder. It was all conjecture, but he wasn’t to know.
“I ... today ... my ... my mother is expecting me ...” he answered, clearly bewildered. “The girl who looks after her has to leave early today ... today ... and I don’t like leaving her by herself ...” he tried to explain. “I must go home. You must ... you must ... understand me.”
“Perhaps you’d prefer us to call the police ...” Borja threatened.
“Perhaps you could ... come home with me ... it’s my mother,” he suggested. “I assure you ... I can ... explain everything.”
“All right. We’ll come with you,” Borja agreed, given we had no alternative. “But you’d better leave the bike here and come with us.”
“Yes ... of course ... whatever you ...” he mumbled.
With no time to discuss our strategy, we walked silently down the Bonanova and hailed a taxi. For my part, I wasn’t at all sure that this was a good idea, but it was too late now. I hoped my brother had something good in mind before things got completely out of control.
“My God! So you know ...” he whispered despondently as we got into the taxi.
Right then, it was as if the whole world had come crashing down on the head of one Segimon Messegué.
23
Weren’t we walking straight into the wolf’s mouth, like two lambs to the slaughter, I remember thinking as the taxi drove off. Segimon Messegué , a man who was a complete unknown to us and who we now knew almost for certain had murdered Lídia Font, had asked us to accompany him to his den and we’d fallen into the trap.
He was a shy bachelor of nondescript appearance: a middle-aged man still living with his handicapped mother, or so his pupils said ... Hadn’t I seen it all before on celluloid? Right then, inside the taxi, I wished I were less of an unbeliever, and I could seek succour from a saint. I was gripped by an atavistic terror fed by gruesome scenes from so many films. We’d found the monster and were now staring it right in the eye.
While we drove down Muntaner I wondered what surprises awaited us in the home of this Catalan Norman Bates. Perhaps a torpid mother in a wheelchair in a gallery with modernist windows and geometrically patterned floor tiles? Prostitutes cut into little pieces and wrapped in plastic bags piled up in the pantry? Skeletons under beds or inside wardrobes? I was also extremely worried by what that man was intending to do with us once we were inside his house, because I didn’t think he would just sit back and offer us a drink while we waited for the police to arrive. And even that depended on whether he was willing to let us use his phone to ring them, because to cap it all my mobile’s battery had run out and Borja had left his mobile at home.
As we neared our destination, immersed in a sepulchral silence, I remember reproaching myself for not intuiting right from the start that a sadist or a lunatic hid beneath that appearance of a normal, very ordinary man, as any proper detective would have done. But when I’d seen him in the Zurich, arguing with Lídia Font, that wasn’t the impression he’d given. He’d seemed harassed and worried rather than violent, although evidently these things aren’t mutually exclusive. On the other hand, our murderer now seemed quite on edge. He was sweating and kept wringing his hands: he hadn’t said anything since we got in.
Indeed nobody was saying anything inside that taxi, and the taxi driver must have guessed something was up because he didn’t try to engage us in conversation either. He turned the radio up and forced us to listen to a programme dedicated to the menopause and different kinds of vaginal lubricants. I was praying my brother would have a change of heart and tell the taxi driver to take us straight to the police station: in the circumstances that seemed the sensible thing to do. What would happen, if once inside his house, the man pulled out a pistol and shot us to pieces? Or what if his speciality involved a butcher’s knife? There were two of us, but I wasn’t convinced Borja and I would be able to defend ourselves if that man did decide to attack us.
The taxi stopped in Mallorca on the corner of Muntaner. Segimon hurriedly paid what was on the meter and we all got out, heads down. I don’t know about Borja, but my legs were shaking and my heart seemed about to leap out of my mouth.
“Pep, are you sure we should be doing this?” I whispered. “He could be dangerous ...”
“We can’t turn back now,” my brother replied, his face panic-stricken.
Segimon Messegué walked a few steps and stopped in front of an ornate nineteenth-century building, its façade decorated with small red bricks. The wrought iron and glass front door was small and unimpressive, but altogether the building retained the modernist charm that had made this district so famous. Messegué took some keys out of his pocket and slowly opened the door. There wasn’t a soul on stairs which were unlit and perfectly silent.
“I live on the third floor, flat 2,” he whispered. “We can take the lift.”
The lift was small and narrow, the original wooden model; once inside we couldn’t prevent our bodies from touching. We went up silent and long-faced in keeping with the gravity of the situation. I was convinced my brother and the murderer could hear my heart thudding.
“We’ve arrived,” announced Segimon Messegué haltingly when the lift stopped.
There was no light on the landing. He explained the bulb had gone several days ago but as the ceilings were so high it was difficult to replace because normal ladders didn’t reach far enough. He also added that nobody lived in the flat opposite, and that made me even more frightened.
“Mother, it’s me!” he shouted as soon as he’d opened the door.
He invited us in and strode off down the passage. We stayed in the lobby. The passage down which he disappeared was long and dark as they usually are in the Eixample district. Although our macabre host had switched the passage lights on, the flat remained dim, perhaps because they still worked on forty-watt bulbs. Without hesitating, our murderer entered the room at the end of the dark corridor and shut the door behind him. Borja and I looked at each other completely at a loss.
Voices reached us in the lobby but we couldn’t hear what they were saying. Norman Bates re-entered my thoughts and I almost fainted. I’ve never been keen on horror films, and felt panic coursing through me. Borja was gritting his teeth and didn’t exactly seem to be in seventh heaven either. The good news was that the flat, though it smelled dank and needed a good spring clean, didn’t reek of rotting corpses.
Segimon Messegué came back a minute later and said in trembling tones that his mother wanted to say hello. He asked us to follow his line and said we’d be able to speak at ease later. Disoriented by the fact we were in a strange flat and in a situation we’d not foreseen, Borja and I set off obediently along that dark passage like two criminals entering death row.
We stopped opposite that forbidding door which our host asked us to open. Borja, who was in front, gave it a gentle push and walked in warily. I followed him trembling and ready for the worst. Once inside, we both gave a deep sigh of relief and the adrenaline levels in our blood began to drop.
That bedroom faced the street and smelled sweetly of Heno de Pravia soap. The curtains were drawn back and let in sufficient light. Although the furniture was mahogany and antique, the wallpaper had a bright flowery motif and it wasn’t the gloomy scenario we’d been dreading. A little white-haired old lady sat there in a wheelchair. She wore a sky-blue dressing gown and was watching television. When she saw us coming in, she greeted us cheerfully and asked us to come nearer.
“You must be the painters?” she asked lowering the volume with the remote control and smiling genuinely. She had only one thing she wanted to say: “Don’t take any notice of my son. You have to listen to her. The house must be as she wants it.” And convinced we knew what she was talking about, she added: “And this will be their bedroom, whatever my son says. It’s
the roomiest and looks on to the street, and I don’t need so much space ...”
“Don’t worry, mother. We’ll do whatever Lluïsa fancies,” said Segimon Messegué trying to act normally. “These gentlemen and I need to talk figures now. We’ll be in the dining room. Do you need anything?”
“No, I don’t really. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. I think I’ll have a nap ... Listen, dear, offer them a coffee and a glass of something,” she said hospitably. “I’m sorry, but as you see I can’t ...” she said touching her wheelchair.
My brother and I thanked her, half at a loss and half embarrassed. Maybe she was the one fond of serving arsenic to her guests, I thought, recalling how Lídia Font had died. Her sweet, inoffensive appearance certainly reinforced such a hypothesis.
Segimon Messegué led us silently down the passage to the other end of the flat. We entered a dining room stuffed with furniture that opened on to a gallery full of rather dusty plants.
“Lluïsa is my fiancée,” he explained rather miserably as he invited us to sit down. “Her daughter is getting married in three month’s time and we’re thinking ...” he hesitated for a few seconds and sighed bitterly, “we thought we’d modernize the flat a bit and come to live here. My mother,” he added as if from habit, “wants it all to be done to Lluïsa’s liking, so she feels at home.”
Borja and I looked at each other, not knowing how to react. There was an antique wall clock in the dining room, the kind you have to wind up, and its monotonous tick-tock seemed to slow down the passage of time. I glanced around to check that there were no desiccated animals, but the shelves were crammed with books and there was a big glass cabinet full of cut-glass and a motley selection of objects: small coloured feathers like those used to decorate Easter cakes, a small Catalan flag, faded postcards, the odd statuette, china jug and souvenir. The walls in the passage were also full of shelves and books that smelled of dust, but nothing I could see betrayed an arsenal or the habits of a murderer or perverted lunatic.
“So, you’ve found me out ...” he said softly, his eyes glued to the floor.
“It’s not been easy, but we know what happened to Lídia Font,” said Borja prudently, looking very serious.
I decided to keep quiet and let my brother do the talking. Barely an hour ago the mysterious death of the MP’s wife had us completely stumped, but then the most unexpected of coincidences had led straight to the perpetrator. This nondescript man stood before us, as we now knew. We still had to find out why.
“And now I expect you’ll want to inform the police ...” he said, still looking at the floor. Apart from being upset he seemed embarrassed. “You did say you weren’t police, didn’t you?”
“That’s right,” nodded Borja. “We work for the husband of the deceased Mrs Font. He knows we’re here.” Ten out of ten for Borja! I thought. “But obviously we will have to inform the authorities ...”
“I imagined as much ...”
And with that the man hid his head in his hands and started to cry.
Borja had taken a second shot in the dark and hit the target again. In fact, the only thing that had led us to connect Segimon Messegué to the crime we were investigating was my chance sighting of his argument with the victim in a bar in the city-centre a few days before the murder, a coincidence he couldn’t have foreseen. Apart from this circumstance, Borja and I still hadn’t the faintest idea what had happened or why, although, by not denying he’d done it, our lead had indirectly confessed to the crime. Borja decided to get to the bottom of the case before ringing the police.
“I suppose,” my brother began delicately, “Lídia Font was blackmailing you.”
“Yes,” Messegué acknowledged after drying his tears.
“It was over that Oxford business and her daughter’s marks, wasn’t it?” Borja continued gently.
“Yes.”
“And you preferred to kill the mother rather than doctor her daughter’s marks, right?” Borja hinted.
“Yes ... No ... Really,” his voice was shaking, “it didn’t really happen like that,” he muttered.
“OK. Why don’t you tell us what did happen?” my brother suggested, assuming the role of good cop.
Of the three files the police had found in Lídia Font’s house it was precisely the one initialled “S.M.” that stated that nothing had been found. That is, nothing to do with blackmail. It was very odd.
“It was self-defence,” he muttered rather more calmly. “She,” he added as if he regretted what had happened, “didn’t give me any other option.”
“So now you have the option of spending the rest of your life behind bars.” I said not wanting to appear cruel, but bearing in mind that if Borja was playing good cop, the role of bad cop fell to me. “Perhaps you ought to have had second thoughts before acting as you did. After all, what’s wrong with slightly doctoring a mark ...”
“It was already too late. I ... I’d not understood her, from the start.” He paused. “To be quite honest,” he said in a despondent, but dignified tone, “I’d rather go to prison. What Mrs Font wanted me to do was ... monstrous. She’d have wrecked my life. Mine, my mother’s, Lluïsa’s . . . At least I can go to prison holding my head high.”
Borja and I exchanged glances. What the hell had Lídia Font threatened to do to that poor devil who had preferred to go to jail on murder charges rather than accept a bribe? And when he said that bit about holding his head high, did he mean his professional integrity, the fact he’d refused to doctor Núria’s marks? If that was all it was, that teacher had taken the defence of his dignity rather too far.
“Come on, anyone would think she’d asked you to give her daughter a doctor’s or architect’s qualifications on a plate. But we’re talking year ten Latin,” I argued, recalling how when translating Caesar I always got into a state about which armies were coming or going.
“Perhaps I should tell you what happened,” he said with a sigh. “It would be a good idea to get it out of my system before I have to tell the police. It’s the first time I’ve told anyone.”
“Come on then,” Borja encouraged him. “We’re here to listen to your story. Get it off your chest.”
24
The clock struck half past four with an antique timbre that reminded me of days spent at my grandparents. After our parents died, Borja and I spent lots of weekends in a flat like this one: old, dark and melancholy.
Segimon Messegué straightened slightly and tried to recover his composure. He wasn’t crying now and seemed calmer, as if the prospect of telling us all was a form of liberation.
“In September, at the beginning of the school year, Mrs Font came to see me in my office and told me she wanted her daughter to get into Oxford. It was very important to her, for some reason or other. The girl” – he swayed his head – “wasn’t a very good student, at least in Latin. After thinking it through later, I realized Mrs Font had offered me money, a financial reward or something like, but at the time I’d not really understood her and I thought all she wanted was for me to put pressure on her daughter to study harder. I told her I’d do all I could to ensure Núria got good marks, but, obviously, I meant I’d be on top of her, would pay particular attention to what she did, not that I’d give her a top mark for the fun of it. Núria only just passed when it came to her assessments. Her mother rang me at home in a rage and summoned me to meet her in a bar.”
“And you met in the Zurich,” I said.
“Caramba! You know that as well?” he said rather shocked.
“Please continue,” said Borja looking daggers at me.
“She was very angry and insulted because I’d refused to take her money ... and hadn’t really understood what she’d been talking about. She said I was a nonentity, a shitty teacher, and demanded I change the mark and give her daughter an A. Then I got angry as well. I told her there was no way I’d do that, that if her daughter wanted to get the top mark, she’d have to earn it.”
“But didn’t you realize who
you were dealing with?” Borja asked. “I mean Mrs Font was an important ... influential person.”
Segimon Messegué sighed and lowered his head. He looked exhausted.
“I know I’m nobody,” he said, “but I don’t deserve someone like Mrs Font coming and rubbing my face in it. I do my job well, and with the salary they pay me I can’t live in the lap of luxury, as you see, but it’s more than a lot of people can aspire to and I count my blessings. Maybe I’ve not done anything important in my life ... compared to Mrs Font. But although you won’t believe this in these circumstances,” he paused, looked us in the eye and then stared back at the floor, “I am a good person.”
“Good people don’t sent boxes of poisoned sweets,” I said gently.
“I told you it was in self-defence,” he insisted.
“And what happened then? Did she offer you money again? Did she threaten you with something and you decided you had to poison her?” asked Borja.
“When I told her I wouldn’t change Núria’s mark, she got very angry and told me I’d regret it for the rest of my life. She said she’d spread it around that I abused my pupils and was a pervert ... that she knew a couple of girls who’d be prepared to tell tales ... indecent things. She also said she’d make sure I was thrown out of the school and would never find another teaching job.” He paused, “You know? I thought she was quite capable of doing that.”
“My, my, Mrs Font!” exclaimed Borja.
“And that’s not all,” the teacher continued. “She said she’d spread these terrible lies around the neighbourhood so everyone, my mother included, would find out ...” And he burst into tears.
“What a bitch!” I shouted.
I don’t know why, but I believed him. After seeing Lídia Font in action, I wasn’t at all surprised by his revelation.
“But you’d already had problems last year when you got some girls to translate a racy Catullus poem in class.”
A Not So Perfect Crime Page 22