The Whispering City

by Sara Moliner

  ‘What are you thinking about, Tieta Beatriz?’

  ‘About Cardinal de Retz.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, unable to hide his disappointment.

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know who he is. Jean-François Paul de Retz. He lived in the period of Richelieu and Mazarin. He died in 1679.’

  Why was she bringing up a French cardinal now?

  ‘Are you writing about him?’

  ‘I’m not one of those dispassionate idiots who only reads an author when they’re writing some article about him.’ His aunt paused and changed her tone.

  ‘No, sweetie. It’s just that your story reminded me of him. There is an interesting passage in his memoirs where the Cardinal de Retz tells how he won over a young courtier, a nobleman from a minor house. First he scared him by accusing him of a crime he hadn’t committed. Then he summoned him to clarify the matter. On that occasion a third person intervened, one of the Cardinal’s trusted men, whose role was supposedly to defend the young man. This “defender” refuted all of the Cardinal’s accusations, but without proving the young man’s innocence entirely, merely questioning his guilt. The young man, of course, became indebted to the Cardinal and, above all, to his trusted man, which in the end was the same thing.’

  Beatriz gestured to the waiter and ordered another dry sherry.

  ‘What happened to the young man?’ asked Pablo.

  ‘They cut his head off with an axe. The guillotine was invented later.’

  Pablo waited for the explanation.

  ‘They sent him on an espionage mission for the Cardinal, and he was discovered. Retz boasts in his memoirs of managing to plant in the young man’s spirit a mix of fear, indebtedness and gratitude. He bragged about being able to do what he wanted with him.’

  Here she paused again and looked at him. Pensive, Pablo took a napkin and wiped off a few drops of sherry that had spilled on the table.

  ‘You mean that it was all a set-up?’

  Beatriz stuck another cigarette into the holder.

  ‘Maybe.’

  Pablo lit it for her. Then he said, ‘The anonymous letter is still at the firm. Pla could take it out of the safe whenever he wanted to, and spread it around.’

  Beatriz released a mouthful of smoke. Pablo understood that she was waiting for him to keep talking. Talking and thinking.

  ‘I’ll have to get that letter.’

  ‘I think so.’

  It would be difficult.

  ‘How can I do it?’

  Beatriz laughed. ‘You’ll think of something.’

  13

  Isidro Castro kept a complete register of the names of people they were looking for, those they’d already had in custody and those they had released. Isidro was methodical, a quality many members of the CIB boasted about, and which Goyanes said he truly appreciated in him. Methodical, systematic, and rigorous were adjectives that the Commissioner used in his assessment of his subordinate’s work.

  On the list were the names of the city’s notorious criminals, and some of its most illustrious families. The two columns were separated only by a fine red line drawn by hand with the help of a ruler. Some of the names were already crossed out. They had good alibis, or were the result of fake leads. The article in La Vanguardia had led to a few reports being filed: a woman from the Barrio Chino who accused her lover of the crime, since she hadn’t seen him for a while. The woman’s spite quickly turned to regret and insults directed at God knows whom when they told her that the man’s absence was due to the fact that he’d spent the last two weeks in jail. The doorman of a block of flats neighbouring Mariona Sobrerroca’s also turned up, but all he really told them was what had appeared in the article.

  ‘The guy’s just a show-off,’ declared Sevilla.

  Two more people came in, anxious to ‘cooperate’, but after talking to them the policemen didn’t understand what their story was nor why they were telling it.

  ‘Slim pickings,’ said Isidro. ‘There are some people who aren’t even good at informing.’

  He had also talked with some of the names from the right-hand column of his list, the list of ‘good’ people. He hadn’t got much, except the uncomfortable feeling that he smelled bad, judging by the looks on their faces when they let him in.

  If the murderer had read the article, he hadn’t felt the need to turn himself in. It’s not that he’d thought Goyanes’s expectations would be met, but he felt somewhat frustrated and he took it out on the author of the article. He couldn’t shake the impression that Ana Martí had muddled him with her arguments and that he had allowed himself be softened up by her eagerness and – he had to admit it – by her appearance. What was it that Gil, the head of the CIB, always told them? ‘Be careful with women in investigations. No one should let themselves be swayed by personal charm.’ He immediately put the rest of Gil’s speech out of his mind because he’d warned that ‘women use other methods to achieve their goals’, and that was unfair to the journalist. But she was a woman and, while she struck him as very honest, the couple of times he found himself repeating Sevilla’s words – ‘magnificent skull’ – as he thought of her made him uneasy. Really, the fact that he was thinking of her at all bothered him. As soon as she arrived he would tell her that, since they had to continue working together, he would prefer, as he had initially suggested, to give her the official texts so she could rework them. And if she didn’t like it, that was her problem.

  Now he had something more important to do.

  ‘Sevilla, bring Boira up to me,’ he ordered his subordinate.

  Ten minutes later, the man walked into his office.

  Lorenzo Boira was the most veteran of Barcelona’s confidence men. He was sixty years old and, despite having been arrested an infinite number of times as a suspect, he could boast that he remained in the clear: he’d never been prosecuted. The same prodigious imagination that allowed him to concoct elaborate scams with absolute precision, and the same power of conviction he had used for years to deceive his prey, also came in handy for distorting the prosecutors’ accusations, the victims’ testimonies and even the judge’s intentions.

  But Boira had a weak point: his family. As in any other family business, he had taught his sons all the tricks of his trade. The three of them had been well schooled, but the eldest, Alfonso, hadn’t inherited his father’s composure and they had caught him after a knife fight with his accomplice in a tavern on Blay Street. That had been on 24 December 1950. Alfonso Boira had been given ten years; he had been saved from capital punishment because Isidro made him confess quickly and they found the other guy in his hideout in Hospitalet. They arrived before he died from his wounds, though it was a close call.

  Boira senior tried everything to shorten his son’s sentence, but it was no use. When the old conman threw in the towel, Inspector Isidro Castro – who was the one who’d arrested his son and persuaded him to confess – turned up at his house and offered him, in his words, a deal. ‘Information. In exchange, better treatment for your son in prison.’

  They had sent him to the notorious Modelo prison.

  Lorenzo Boira didn’t think it over for long before accepting. Part of the deal was to give him a certain degree of immunity.

  ‘Thank you, Inspector. I have a large family to support. Now I have to take care of my daughter-in-law and the two grandchildren Alfonso gave me.’

  Deep down, Isidro disdained the victims of Boira’s scams, who were as hurt by their own greed as they were by the scammers. Besides, it was important that Boira remained active and respected in the city’s underworld. There wasn’t much he could inform on if he stayed at home.

  He’d had him arrested on Tuesday, left him to marinate for a night in the cells and now, when Sevilla brought him to his office, he was going to go over the list of usual suspects with him.

  ‘Come on in, Boira, come on in.’

  Sevilla closed the door and left.

  Despite his night in the cells, Lorenzo Boira maintained
his decorous appearance, which was one of the secrets of his success. His sixty years gave him a gravity that was very useful in his profession.

  ‘How can I help you, Inspector?’

  ‘Mariona Sobrerroca, what have you heard?’

  ‘There’s not much being said, even though there’s a lot of talk.’

  The case was gossip all over the city. Boira adjusted the cuffs of his shirt, which was somewhat the worse for wear after a night on a straw mattress, but still looked as if it had been ironed. Isidro saw the gleam in the conman’s eyes; clearly he was already calculating what he could request for his son. I won’t haggle too much this time, thought the inspector.

  ‘Let’s see then, what are they saying?’

  Isidro opened his notebook and picked up a pencil.

  ‘They say that what they did to the woman was horrific, that they took out her eyes.’

  Isidro didn’t correct the increasingly morbid version that was being spread by gossipmongers; he wasn’t there to give information, rather to get it.

  ‘They mention she had a lot of money, jewels, furs… And that since she lived alone she was an easy target.’

  ‘Is there a specific name being mentioned for the killer?’

  ‘There are a few names.’

  He gave them. They were all burglars. Isidro knew most of them, but there were also a couple of new names, Roc Vives and Diego Gascón.

  ‘Do you know if they’re violent?’

  ‘Don’t know. Only that it seems they steal for politics: for the party in exile and for the resistance.’

  ‘Then I’m not surprised they were so rough on the woman. Cowardly Reds, they’re bastards.’

  ‘I’m not one to judge, sir.’

  Boira’s son still had eight years left in jail, but in the next visit from his wife and kids he was going to get several parcels containing food, tobacco and Western novels, his favourites. An hour and a half later, Boira was on the street and several people on the list would soon find out they’d be spending that night and the next few in a cell. Isidro asked the guys from the Social Brigade for information about the two men Boira had mentioned. One was soon eliminated. Gascón had been killed by the Civil Guard a week earlier in Lérida, at a country house where he was taking shelter with several of his men before crossing the French border.

  They said that there were rumours that Vives was in Barcelona gathering funds for the Communist Party. He was suspected of being behind the break-in at a jeweller’s shop on Rambla de Cataluña ten days earlier. But Vives seemed more interested in big jobs. In Mariona Sobrerroca’s house they had found jewellery the thief had left behind, probably because she had surprised him, but it wasn’t worth enough for Vives to go to that house in particular. In any case, he would follow up on the lead.

  14

  At first there is only a bare wall. Time and creeping ivy, now long gone, have broken away the plaster in several places. The holes in the middle are from bullets. There is also one way up high, perhaps from someone who didn’t want to kill any more.

  Ángel appears to the right, as if coming on stage, shyly, insecurely. He looks at the uneven floor, afraid of falling. He is alone and his hands are behind his back. A voice gives him instructions: ‘Further to the left’, ‘Closer to the wall’, ‘Not so close’.

  He complies because of the photographers. ‘That’s it,’ says the voice. Ángel stops, separates his legs slightly and lifts his head. He looks ahead, not at the firing squad but at someone behind the men gripping their weapons. He looks at her. Then he parts his lips to say something, but the shots come before his voice does. Then, he closes his eyes and remains standing as the blood starts to emerge from the wounds on his chest. His white shirt becomes completely soaked, but Ángel doesn’t fall. He never falls.

  Ana woke up, once again, just at the moment when his lips started moving.

  She gave a start in bed. She was covered in a thin layer of sweat that made her tremble with cold when she pulled aside the sheets. It had grown cooler overnight. She sat up in bed without putting her feet on the floor. The floor tiles were always freezing in that flat, and she found her slippers by tapping around quickly with her feet. The old felt slippers that had belonged to her brother were cold too. She headed to the bathroom with hesitant steps and turned on the water heater. The pressure left much to be desired; a straight trickle fell from the shower, sending out a few streams of cold water at regular intervals. Her body responded by moving to one part of the shower tray, which was cold too because the hot water hadn’t touched it.

  She dried herself off, wrapped herself in a robe and went into the kitchen. She turned on the radio while she made coffee. It was real coffee – she wasn’t willing to give that up, she’d rather have terrible coffee with reused grounds than drink a mug of roasted ground chicory or carob beans. Her father had given her a small new packet from the grocer’s when she left, soon after lunch. ‘A reward for the article,’ she thought.

  As the coffee percolated she let her gaze wander along the walls of the inner courtyard her kitchen windows overlooked. The news theme tune sounded on the radio.

  ‘Barcelona, opulent Spanish and Mediterranean city kissed by the Latin sea, refuge for foreigners, seat of courtesy, as Cervantes wrote, opens its arms to Catholics from the world over and to all men in a vast prayer for inner peace and peace from war, the peace from God of which the angels sang beside the cradle in Bethlehem, and which transubstantiated Christ’s majesty. After fourteen years of disruption, the glorious work of the International Eucharistic Congresses will resume in this city thanks to the Pope’s fondness for Catholic Spain. Our country is an oasis of peace in our tormented world, and here Christians will gather for the thirty-fifth International Eucharistic Congress.’

  The announcer’s leaden voice gave way to sacred music. She turned off the radio before the music made her even more gloomy.

  The Eucharistic Congress. This meant that at the end of the month the city was going to fill with priests, nuns and the devout from all over the world. There would be holy music on the radio and more police in the street. Masses, sacred images, Mother in an overexcited state, insisting, since Ángel’s death, on saving the whole family herself with her prayers and penitence. And Father sunk further into resignation with each passing day. Or maybe not. Why had he uncovered his old typewriter?

  15

  ‘Goyanes is hopping mad,’ a colleague warned him when he saw him heading to the Commissioner’s office. Isidro thanked him with a nod of the head. Like sailors out on the high seas, knowing that a storm was brewing didn’t mean he would avoid it, but it did help him to confront it with the hope of emerging not too battered.

  ‘Come in, Castro.’

  He had called him by his last name. The storm was going to be a tempest, unleashed by a small piece of paper on his superior’s desk. His arms framed it like grey fabric parentheses. Isidro recognised the official letterhead. He pointed to the paper.

  ‘Acedo?’

  ‘Even worse: Grau.’

  Notes from Acedo, the Civil Governor, were indisputable orders. Those of his enforcer, Public Prosecutor Joaquín Grau, were no less binding. But they also carried with them the fear inspired by his furious fits of rage. If, for some reason, Grau formed the impression that his orders, his will, were not being followed, he wouldn’t hesitate to assert his position and turn up unannounced at the office of the civil servant in question to threaten him, no matter who was listening. And everyone knew that he followed through on his threats.

  ‘What a leader the Legion lost!’ Sevilla had once said after one of Grau’s tirades.

  It’s true, thought Isidro. There was something of a swagger in Grau’s tone, as if there was a military man inside him, beating on his chest as he fought to get out of those dark suits he wore, perfectly cut by one of Barcelona’s best tailors. Grau was feared by his enemies and surely by his friends as well.

  So the note on Goyanes’s desk was from Grau. Bad news.
/>
  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘Well, it’s a short note, but it says a lot about you.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘Don’t get too excited, it’s not a birthday card, although he was the one who insisted I give you the case.’

  He could imagine whom Goyanes would rather have entrusted it to, Burguillos, whose words were slurred from drink. He wasn’t a bad cop, but Isidro couldn’t stand arse-lickers. While the Commissioner informed him of Grau’s complaints, he counted the lines on the note with lowered eyes and wondered how Grau had put everything his boss was recriminating him for into so few words.

  ‘Not only did the men you sent to the Tennis Club turn up scruffily dressed, they acted like real louts, both when announcing the news of Señora Sobrerroca’s death and when making their enquiries. Some members complained directly to Grau, who is also a club member. He also mentions you directly. The Señores Parés complained of your bad manners not to Grau, but to the Civil Governor, who then conveyed to Grau his interest in having this case resolved not only as quickly as possible, but also with courtesy and respect. Acedo strictly demands that it be wrapped up before the Eucharistic Congress.’

  ‘And when is that?’

  ‘What world are you living in? Don’t you listen to the radio? Don’t you go to the cinema? Don’t you read the newspapers?’

  ‘Only the sports pages.’

  And, as of two days ago, the society pages, too. And the women’s magazines he’d had Sevilla buy for him.

  Goyanes told him the dates as if he were doing him a big favour: ‘It’ll be from 27 May to 1 June. But you will tie this case up before then.’

  Ten minutes later, he left the office. Less than four weeks. The jails would fill up with suspects and informants. If he didn’t have anything by then, he could always pull some unlucky rake from up his sleeve, but tampering with the outcome always left him unsatisfied. That meant he’d failed.

  Sevilla met him in the hallway. He was going to say something, but Isidro spoke first.