Eyes moist with tears, Charo put her hand on Pepe’s and squeezed it affectionately. One day I’ll marry her, he thought. The wine really must be stronger than it seemed. He would marry Charo, but only when they were old and grey.
‘Very old,’ he blurted out without meaning to.
After two coffees they returned to business. It was a warm, star-filled night. They went out into the square opposite San Cugat monastery, and strolled along while the Andalusian girl told them what she had seen. Carvalho was walking in shirtsleeves between the two women, his arms round their shoulders.
‘There are four girls as well as Queta. Her husband is always in the upstairs office, except when he comes down and goes for a drink in the bar on the corner. Otherwise he gets Fat Nuria to bring him something. The four assistants are very young and friendly. Fat Nuria is the most recent, but she’s almost more in charge than Queta is. She’s very full of herself. The others start at nine in the morning and have no fixed time to leave. Well, they’ve all gone by nine in the evening, except on Saturdays when they can be there as late as ten, working behind closed doors. Two of the girls live together. They’re sisters, from Andalusia. Real Andalusians, Pepe. They’re hard workers: they started in Jaen. And Queta shows a lot of patience training them. They’re not very talented, but they’re learning. The third assistant has a proper fiancé. He comes to meet her every day from work, even though sometimes he has to wait for hours in the bar for her to finish. She’s Catalan, from Barceloneta. Her father and brothers work in the port. Fat Nuria is the only one who has lunch in the salon because she does the shopping for Queta, and often buys the food. She always leaves at eight because she lives in Badalona and her brother comes for her in a delivery van.’
‘Is he a driver, then?’
‘No, it’s his own van. The family has a salted and frozen fish business down by the shore at Badalona. Fat Nuria’s father used to be a ship’s carpenter, but he got a bad problem with his eyes. He couldn’t stand the paint, the sawdust or anything else in the carpentry shop. Strange, isn’t it? The smell of fish from the warehouse doesn’t affect him in the slightest.’
‘How do the girls get on with Queta?’
‘Well, there’s a bit of friction with Fat Nuria, because she’s got a really high opinion of herself. The boss thinks a lot of her. You can tell because sometimes he asks for things it would be easier for Queta to bring, but that minx always gets in first. Queta doesn’t like that, it’s obvious.’
She tapped her nostril.
‘But she’s a pussycat really. She’s so fat you think she could eat everything in sight, but she’s not so bad underneath.’
‘What’s Queta like physically?’
‘Don’t tell him, you’ll only arouse his imagination.’
‘Aren’t we two enough for you, Pepe, darling?’
‘What do you mean, “we two”? I’m his girlfriend, remember.’
Pepe squeezed the two hens’ necks and prevented them taking it any farther.
‘What do they say about Señor Ramón and Queta?’
‘Well, apparently he was happily married. He has grownup children with his wife. Queta was her manicurist, and he fell for her. Things became serious, and in the end he left his wife and children. He set Queta up in the hair salon, and ever since he’s been there too, up in the office looking after the accounts. There’s no talk of either of them having anyone else. He’s getting on a bit, he must be around sixty, but Queta has just turned forty and her body is still young. Weren’t you asking what she was like? Well, she has a young body. She looks good for her age. She hasn’t had any children or brought any up, and that shows. There’s twenty years between them, and that shows too. They got together fifteen years ago, when he was in his second adolescence and she was still a child. But now … a woman has her needs, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, you’re right. What about Señor Ramón? Does he have any regular visitors?’
‘Yes, there are salesmen, people selling perfumes, hair products, that kind of thing. He’s in charge of all that side of the business. They can’t be doing too badly, because Queta told me they’ve bought land out by Mollet. It’s a very good area because that’s where they’re going to put all the factories. Which is a good idea, because factories in a city like Barcelona only pollute the air we breathe. You almost have to wear a gas mask as it is. Just take a breath up here. It’s wonderful. Come on, I’ll buy you both an horchata.’
They drank it standing up next to a stall lit up by a chain of coloured lights, yellow and red streamers and blue paper cloths. The man selling horchata was dressed in white and had a navy beret on. Around his neck he wore a polka-dot scarf. He looked the two women up and down, but when his eyes caught Carvalho’s he soon stopped his inspection. Charo and her friend were giggling at everything, pushing and nudging each other. Carvalho was trying to stay aloof, enjoying the cold horchata, which tickled his tastebuds with a thousand tiny pinpricks of creamy flavour.
‘Listen, sweetheart. How did Fat Nuria come to have so many privileges at the hairdresser’s?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘How did she get to be so important there? She can’t be more than sixteen.’
‘She’s fifteen, but seeing she’s as fat as a pig she looks older. She’s got more up here than I have,’ she said, squeezing her own breasts. ‘To tell you the truth, I’ve no idea. I think her father and Señor Ramón know each other. It was her father who got her into the salon. She wants to spend three more years there, then set up on her own in Badalona. She knows what she wants. For example, she’s got the boss to let her have Monday afternoons off so she can go to see famous hairdressers put on special styling shows for others in the business. That’s the best way to learn. Hairdressers come from all over Catalonia, as well as apprentices and even some city officials. The two sisters asked Señor Ramón if they could do the same, even if it came out of their wages. One each on alternate Mondays. But he refused. Yet he lets Fat Nuria go. She disappears every Monday and he doesn’t even take it out of her wages. I reckon Queta must be really fed up with it. I don’t blame her.’
They walked back to their cars. Charo’s friend insisted she lent her the car and stayed with Carvalho up in Vallvidrera.
‘I’ll put it in the car park and everything. Give me the keys and I’ll see to it.’
‘No and no. Pepe doesn’t want me to stay with him, and I don’t either.’
‘You want her to stay, don’t you, Pepe?’
Carvalho shrugged his shoulders.
‘Let me have the car, Charo, then you can go with him and have another supper.’
That set them both off laughing again, but Carvalho was wondering whether he could face cooking the cappelletti at that time of night. He did not want them to dry out in his fridge, but he really did not feel like spending any time in the kitchen now.
‘I’m not going to let you have the car.’
‘I really don’t mind taking it for you.’
‘But I mind.’
‘Don’t you trust me to drive it properly?’
‘Yes, that must be the reason.’
‘Did you hear her? She let’s you roam freely in her apartment and her fridge, but won’t let you have her car. Charo, don’t be like one of those men who won’t lend you their precious fountain pen, their car or their wife.’
‘Well, that’s what I am like.’
‘So you won’t lend me your car?’
‘No.’
‘Your fountain pen?’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘Pepito here?’
‘Forget it.’
The Bilbao-Andalusian turned to Pepe, her eyes completely crossed.
‘She’s a real spoilsport, isn’t she?’
Every day in the newspapers Bromuro found confirmation of his suspicions about what people are given to eat and drink. He was a stalwart champion of ecological and consumers’ problems who was so ahead of his time that his views wen
t unrecognised by theoreticians who had jumped on the bandwagon more recently. He had already broadened his attacks far beyond what he saw as the anti-erotic plot to introduce bromide into drinking water, soft drinks bottles and mass-produced bread.
‘Can’t you smell it?’
‘All I can smell is your polish.’
‘I wish that’s all it was. That’s a healthy smell. I’ve been breathing it all my life, and I’m still alive and kicking. But is that what causes my bronchitis? Or my ulcer? Of course not. It’s the air in this city. Can’t you smell it? Completely polluted.’
Bromuro ended his dire pronouncement with a stealthy look all round his client to convince him that within a twenty-metre radius there were evil forces at work that could damage his body’s most delicate fibres.
‘Shoeshine?’
Carvalho accepted his offer. As Bromuro knelt in front of him, it was as though his voice were coming out of the top of his bald head.
‘Have you got another five hundred pesetas?’
‘Have you got something for me?’
‘No, but I just thought that as you’ve been so generous lately …’
‘Are you sure you haven’t found out anything?’
‘Nothing. There’s nobody left to ask. Anyone who isn’t in the clink has left the country. It looks as though quite a few have been rounded up. They’ve gone right to the top this time. Of course, nothing will happen to the big fish, but for the moment they’re like rabbits in headlights: not making a move. What I can tell you is that your drowned man had a record, and a long one at that. And all the rest was due to him. Frenchy was the first to be picked up. She won’t be out in a long while. The dead guy didn’t say a word, but she landed everyone else in it.’
‘What’s this Frenchy like?’
‘She’s blonde. Fat, but solid. Young. A great arse. She pretended she was French. You’ve probably seen her street-walking on the Rambla, near Calle Fernando. Then she struck lucky and moved up to the Sarriá highway. She had lost weight recently. They like them a bit thinner up there. Like film stars, like that dry stick of a woman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Did you like her?’
Carvalho knew he had to be careful not to offend Bromuro.
‘She wasn’t bad.’
‘But she had nothing in front and even less behind! When that guy drew his revolver and told her to take all her clothes off, I said to myself, what, are you some kind of idiot, with a gun and a half like that you could get yourself something far juicier than her. Poor clown. I’m not saying I’d kick her out of bed: there’s no woman who doesn’t deserve having a favour done. And there’s the problem: there are so many of them, and we’ve got so little to keep them happy with.’
‘Don’t get started.’
‘Well, it’s good to have a philosophy in life. And this is mine.’
Bromuro stood up, and took Pepe by surprise. He was tense and alert as though waiting to leap on stage for his big moment:
‘The philosophy of the hand’s vital triangle.’
He put his thumb down near his trouser pocket, and his little finger over his fly. Then he flicked his thumb up and down across the trouser front.
‘Money, fucking and food.’
He picked up his box, pocketed Carvalho’s coins and left without another word. His exit was worthy of the climax of one of Don José Ortega y Gasset’s lectures. A few moments later, Carvalho got up too. A sea breeze carried the oily smell of the sea down by Puerta de la Paz right up the Rambla. On top of his spike, Columbus was pointing unconcernedly at the noonday sky, in what seemed more like a challenge to the sun than an attempt to indicate the route to the Americas. Carvalho took off his jacket and slung it across his arm. He walked on until he came to the door of Queta’s hair salon. It was open, although there were no clients inside. The sound of his footsteps on the green lino brought a question from the mezzanine office:
‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s me, Carvalho.’
It was Fat Nuria’s voice. Carvalho did not wait for anyone to tell him what to do, but leapt quickly up the stairs and entered the office. All the papers had disappeared from the desk. Instead it was covered by plastic cloth. Queta, Señor Ramón and Fat Nuria were eating Russian salad and fried fillets of fish. The two women looked down at their plates as though they were somehow trying to protect the intimacy of their meal. Señor Ramón on the other hand had stood up. He laid his serviette carefully on the table and said:
‘Care to join us?’
‘No, thanks. Sorry to have interrupted you.’
‘That doesn’t matter. Let’s go downstairs.’
Queta glanced at Carvalho out of the corner of her eye. Fat Nuria already had her mouth full, but was busy shovelling in another fork’s worth of salad. Señor Ramón emerged slowly from behind the desk and pointed the way back down the staircase. When they were in the salon, he sat in one of the metal chairs. Carvalho did the same.
‘When did you get back?’
‘Last night.’
‘Have a good trip?’
Carvalho pointed to the scar above his eye.
‘More or less.’
Señor Ramón barely glanced at the wound, but sat waiting for Carvalho to tell him his news.
‘The corpse has got a name. He was called Julio Chesma. He was a drug trafficker.’
‘Did he have contacts in Barcelona?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know who they were?’
‘You asked me to discover the drowned man’s identity. That was all.’
‘Yes, that’s true. My wife has a relative who’s a bit wild. A real tearaway, in fact. She knew he had a tattoo with some ridiculous motto. She couldn’t remember what it was exactly, but knew it was pretty unusual. When she read the story of the drowned man in the newspaper she was very worried, so I tried to find out who he was on her behalf. She’ll be very relieved, because that wasn’t her relative’s name.’
‘Let’s go and tell her, then.’
‘No, let me do it. I’ll find the best way. You know what women are like: they get hysterical over nothing. Now she’ll be able to get on with her life. You said his name was Julio Chesma? And that it was to do with drugs? Yes, I had heard something. I knew all the raids in the days after they found the body were connected in some way. Fine. Did you discover anything more about the case? Who he had connections to, for example?’
‘A few.’
‘In Holland?’
‘And here.’
‘Who were they?’
‘I don’t think they’d interest you. You wanted to reassure your wife, and you can do that now.’
‘But I’m curious. After all, it was me who paid for your investigation.’
‘If what you want to know is whether I found any links between Julio Chesma and you, for example, the answer is no. He was a man who lived on a lot of different levels. The police have got as far as drugs. I found the same, but also a few emotional ties he had. You don’t seem to be involved there either.’
‘Why would I be? I never knew the man. It’s all been a mistake. I’ll pay you seventy thousand: the other fifty I owe you, plus expenses.’
‘Correct.’
Señor Ramón clambered back up to his office. Carvalho went over to the foot of the stairs just in case he could overhear any conversation. Fat Nuria was sitting on the third step up, peeling a peach. The peel snaked downwards in one long piece to a plate she had placed on the stair between her legs. She smiled when Pepe poked his head round the corner, but he did not back away. She peered at him quizzically. Pepe stared back, looking directly at the bluish triangle of her knickers. Fat Nuria quickly snapped her legs shut, and the plate fell down the stairs. Pepe triumphantly pulled his head back. Fat Nuria muttered and bent over to pick up the remains of her peach and the plate. Señor Ramón stepped over the mess and handed Carvalho a white envelope. Pepe stuffed it in his inside pocket. He walked away without another word, but paused at the salon door. Señor
Ramón and Fat Nuria were both staring at him from the foot of the stairs with a look of contained fury.
‘I’m still puzzled that you should pay me so much money to find out something you could just as easily have done yourself by walking fifty metres up the street to the nearest police station.’
‘I didn’t pay you to be puzzled. I found out what I wanted to know. So now goodbye and good luck.’
‘I’m not so easily satisfied. I’d like to know a lot more than I do.’
He called her at six in the evening, and by eight Teresa had appeared, dressed as a rich young divorcee with leftist leanings, the sort of woman who spends summer in the city and always has another djellaba that she bought somewhere, without even realising it was a djellaba. She could just as easily have been disguised as a Touareg or a Mayan woman in the shadow of Chichen Itzá. She looked like the living symbol of liberated womanhood. She clung on to Carvalho’s arm, and spoke only after he had gone a hundred metres with no indication of where they were heading.
‘What was your idea for tonight? Are you trying to get more information out of me, or do you want to sleep with me?’
‘For the moment I want to have dinner.’
‘I’ll eat any old thing.’
‘Well, I won’t. Here: it’s my first gift of the evening.’
He handed her an old book, the covers of which had faded from pink to off-yellow.
‘The Physiology of Taste, by Savarin. What am I supposed to do with it?’
‘Read it at your leisure. I bet you’ve read Materialism and Empiriocriticism, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. A … long, long time ago.’
‘Well, now read this one. That way your taste buds will be educated and you won’t torture your friends by asking them to eat frozen croquettes.’
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