by Sara Moliner
They had already walked all the way around the lake. Mendoza headed towards the exit that opened on to the Salón de Víctor Pradera.
‘In case they want to get me out of the way, I left important information hidden in a safe place. I’m meeting this person on Sunday. Afterwards, if everything goes well, I’ll need a few days to prepare for my departure. Before I leave, I will get in touch with you. If you haven’t heard from me between now and next Friday, that means my meeting ended very badly.’
‘And then?’
‘Then you have to go to the La Cruz de Malta bar on Conde del Asalto Street. Ask for “Ears” Amancio, and tell him that you came to pick up Abelín’s gift.’ Abel stopped and turned to face her. ‘I’m not going to ask you if you’ll do it. I believe you will, and that’s enough for me.’
Ana was about to speak, but he wouldn’t let her.
‘No, I don’t want to know. You have the information. I hope that Mariona wasn’t wrong. Wish me luck. Goodbye.’
In a flash, he set off running and left her in the middle of the Ciudadela’s main path.
Shortly afterwards, she too went out of the park. At the end of Víctor Pradera boulevard, near the Arco de Triunfo, she thought she saw the disappearing back of a man. A tweed jacket. Like the ones Carlos Belda usually wore.
44
She had been sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper for half an hour, chewing on a pencil. The image of the monastery of San Millán, with its monks meticulously writing and its manuscripts, kept slipping from her mind, despite her efforts to concentrate. Instead, she saw herself arguing with Ana and being, as always when she knew she was right, stubbornly uncompromising. Ana had been less obstinate and had left room for ‘reasonable doubt’ in her article. What had her boss said to her about that? She hadn’t talked to her since their meeting at the Zúrich café.
When she had returned home that day, she had told herself that it was for the best. That way, she could go back to her work. But the words that had been said insisted on getting between her and her books. She stroked the cover of one of the volumes of the etymological dictionary that, after arduous negotiating, she had got from the bookseller for a good price. That was one time when she appreciated her inflexibility. She had been working with it for two days, and already had several rows of index cards on the table. What she had to do was concentrate on her work, on summing up all the ideas and getting them down on paper. That was what she must do.
The pencil broke in her mouth. Suddenly she was spitting out bits of wood, varnish and lead, accidentally splattering the page she’d been trying to write on.
She got up and went over to the kitchen. She heard Encarni’s voice singing along softly to the radio.
‘Juanito Valderrama sings so well!’
‘You’re not so bad yourself.’
‘Did you know that on Radio Juventud there is a programme where they give prizes to people who turn up and sing?’
‘You and your competitions, Encarni.’
‘If I ever decide to go and sing, I’ll dedicate a song to you, ma’am. To you and my mother, of course.’
‘Thank you very much,’ she replied distractedly. ‘I’m just going out for a moment.”
‘Will you be back for lunch?’
‘I think so.’
Encarni returned to her song.
Beatriz put on a jacket and went out. In the street she was met by a cold breeze. It was mid-May, but it didn’t feel like spring yet. Going down the Rambla de Cataluña, she passed groups of Sunday walkers, many of whom were already carrying little parcels from one of the local bakeries; they supported the cardboard tray with one hand while a finger of the other went through the bow of the string that held the wrapping closed. Beatriz stuck her hands into her jacket pockets.
She walked at a good pace, and about twenty minutes later she was in front of Ana’s house on Riera Alta. She opened the front door and went into a rather decrepit front hall. The chequered tiles were good ones, and at some point had gleamed; now many of them were cracked. To the right, twelve rusty postboxes were laid out in two rows; then came the staircase, whose railing ended in a marble pilaster. Beneath each step metal brackets meant to hold the carpet stuck out uselessly. They too had seen better days.
She started to mount the stairs. Halfway up, she heard a voice behind her. ‘Can I help you with something?’
She turned. At the foot of the stairs was a short, stout, middle-aged woman. Despite the distance between them, she could smell a mixture of stew and sweet wine coming off her. The woman’s face was red; she must have run to catch her from the flat on the lower floor, whose open door was almost hidden opposite the staircase, as if it were more a storage room than a flat.
‘Señorita Ana Martí?’
‘Third floor, second flat.’
She thanked her and continued walking up. She didn’t hear the woman, who she reckoned was the famous Teresina Sauret whom Ana had complained to her about, close the door. Surely she had been lying in wait. Typical doorkeeper. Someone would have to do a study on whether such traits were nature or nurture, because the one at her house would have done more or less the same thing, except with a bit more discretion owing to the difference in neighbourhood.
She reached Ana’s flat and rang the bell. As the door opened, Beatriz saw surprise on Ana’s face. She invited her in and led her to a sitting room.
Beatriz had been preparing her speech the whole way over. As soon as they were both sitting down, facing each other on two sofas, she began.
‘Listen, Ana, I wanted to apologise for being so stubborn and for…’
‘You were completely right.’
‘… for not having listened to… What? I knew it! I was right. What made you change your mind?’
‘Abel Mendoza.’
Ana watched her reaction carefully.
‘Abel Mendoza?’
‘I spoke to him.’
‘When?’
‘On Friday.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? It doesn’t matter. Tell me now, what did he say?’
Ana explained how she had received a letter signed by Abel Mendoza, how they had met up and walked around the Ciudadela and Mendoza had told her about his brother Mario.
‘So,’ said Beatriz, ‘Mario was the one who wrote the letters, and Abel took care of… of the rest.’
‘That’s right. And it was Abel who wrote the last letter asking to meet up with Mariona. He waited a day, and when he arrived at her house, he found her dead.’
‘And he confessed to having killed the other guy, his brother?’
‘Yes, during a struggle. It was an accident. So you see, you were right: there were two authors.’
Beatriz didn’t feel at all happy about having been right; instead she felt a strange feeling of loss. Again she pictured the house in Martorell – the study, the books, the filing cabinets – and reflected that the author of those letters, who had shown such linguistic sensitivity, such an accomplished style, was dead.
Ana told her that Mario Mendoza had, since shortly after the war, been living secretly in the house. That’s why there had been that absurd wardrobe in the study. Beatriz had noticed that there was something strange about the house. Now she understood that it was missing a room on the first floor, the room where he hid. The blinds and thick curtains made sense as well. That way, no one would see any light in the house when Abel was out.
‘Why were they fighting?’
‘He says that Mario didn’t agree with the direction his relationship with Mariona was taking.’
‘Had they fallen in love?’
‘He laughed at me when I asked the same question, but perhaps he had. It seems he didn’t want to continue with the business. They wanted to move away together, to the Côte d’Azur.’
‘To France, the mature woman and her young lover, like in a nineteenth-century romance novel. Can you imagine the scandal, here?’
She could indeed imagine.
‘D
id you say he’s very handsome?’ she asked Ana.
‘Like a film idol.’
‘Do you think he is the killer?’
‘I don’t know what to think. I would say no, but sometimes I wonder if he isn’t playing with me and using me for something I don’t understand. Although honestly, it’s hard for me to believe that he is Mariona’s killer.’
‘Then who killed her, and why?’
‘It could have been a break-in, as the police originally thought.’
‘Perhaps someone was after the house,’ ventured Beatriz.
‘What house?’
‘Mariona’s. It’s worth a small fortune, and at Aunt Blanca’s funeral I heard some comments about it.’
‘Well, well, well. So when you were shooting looks at me and my mother while we bickered about my veil, it was because we were preventing you from eavesdropping on more interesting conversation.’
She burst out laughing. She was glad that Ana was starting to talk to her like this again. She had missed it.
‘Inheritances are one of the biggest causes of family strife,’ continued Ana.
‘You’re telling me. My brother Salvador has made a lot of money out of that kind of dispute. Literature is filled with fights over inheritances, starting with Cain and Abel. Not to mention Esau and Jacob. Or King Lear, to get away from the Bible. Greed is one of the great motives in the history of crime.’
‘That’s all well and good, but Mariona didn’t have children, and, as far as I know, the house will go to her brother, who is much wealthier than she was.’
‘Love is, too; love scorned is an important motive, not only in literature.’
‘Maybe, maybe.’ Ana seemed to have an idea.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘That maybe one of the women Abel broke up with found out about his relationship with Mariona.’
‘How?’
‘Claudia Pons said that Mariona was planning to bring someone to her daughter’s First Communion. What if she wanted to go with Abel? I can imagine that she would talk it over with a friend she trusted. Just think if it was one of Abel’s “lovers”, or that she knew someone who had been? And then that woman…’
‘Too incredible, too many coincidences. It’s not a good story; it wouldn’t work in a book.’
‘Exactly! Because this is real life, Beatriz. And in real life stranger things happen than in books.’
Beatriz didn’t share that opinion in the least, but it wasn’t the moment to explain to Ana that, in her view, literature exceeded life in every aspect.
Ana related the rest of her conversation with Mendoza, that he had plans he hadn’t wanted to reveal, and he had instructed her to go to some bar called La Cruz de Malta and ask for someone named Amancio, alias ‘Ears’, to pick up a parcel from ‘Abelín’. It was all very confusing.
‘Let’s say he isn’t the murderer. What do you think it is he wants to do?’
‘I haven’t stopped thinking about it since our meeting. I’ve been over his words, in case he somehow gave himself away, but I’ve come up with nothing. Just that he has an idea of who it was. Maybe he saw him; maybe something in Mariona’s house gave him a clue. But I don’t know what he’s looking for.’
‘Revenge.’
‘Vendetta, tremenda vendetta di quest’anima solo desio… Di punirti già l’ora s’affretta,’ sang Ana softly. ‘Sorry, you reminded me of Rigoletto. Revenge, you say, because he really did love Mariona?’
‘Or because her death deprived him of what promised to be a good life, at least for a few years.’
‘You’re no romantic, Beatriz!’
‘I’m afraid not.’
She knew they could end up fighting again, yet she had no choice but to take that risk. She said, ‘Ana, I know I have the habit of telling people what to do, and that I can be somewhat demanding, but I have no alternative. Get yourself out of all this.’
‘Out of what?’
‘You don’t owe Abel Mendoza anything. You yourself realise that he set a trap for you when he said that Mariona valued your journalistic integrity. But don’t forget that he is a murderer. And what if he kills again? Or, even worse, imagine if the police arrest him and they find out that he spoke to you. You’ll be an accomplice.’
Ana chewed her lip. She got up and stuck her head out of the sitting-room window. Since her back was to her, Beatriz couldn’t see the effect her words had caused. After a brief silence she said, ‘You’re right. I have to talk to Castro. He isn’t going to like this.’
‘He’ll only like it less the longer you wait to tell him.’
‘Yes, but he thinks he has the case solved, that the killer is dead. He is pleased, the public prosecutor’s office is pleased, everyone is pleased. Even Abel Mendoza is pleased.’
‘But the case isn’t solved. Not really.’
‘You and your inconvenient truths, Beatriz.’ Ana turned around, smiling. ‘Tomorrow I’ll speak to Castro. It’s his business. This is too big for you and me.’
Those final words came as a huge relief. They meant that she and Beatriz were giving it up. That all of this was no longer hers to deal with. They would go back to their daily routines. For the first time in a long time, that last word glowed with positive implications.
45
Although Isidro claimed to read only the sports press, it was true that he read the newspapers – when, as was now the case, they were talking about him.
He wasn’t an experienced reader, or as touchy as some, which was why he had even enjoyed the mitigating features that had tempered Ana Martí’s first article on the resolution of the case, because they meant his name was featured more prominently: ‘According to declarations by Inspector Isidro Castro, who headed up the investigation’, and ‘In the opinion of the police officers investigating the case’, which was to say, his opinion and his alone.
‘Of all the deadly sins, pride is the least reprehensible because it is so very Spanish,’ he said to himself as he put down the newspaper with the new article on the table and gave it a few approving pats, like an obedient little dog. He was in a great mood.
Now all that was left was the paperwork.
They were going to bring the evidence they had gathered at the house in Martorell to the guys in the Social Brigade, who wanted to go over Abel Mendoza’s correspondence with the ladies to see if there were any paid carnal relations. He preferred not to know much about that, although he had trouble imagining how a man would do it – a male whore? It’s easier for the women, because they don’t have to do anything. But the men?
Several boxes were filled with letters, books, drafts… He was a real professional in his craft, that was clear. One of the slippery ones, like Boira, and maybe even better, because they didn’t have Mendoza in their records. Who knows how long he’d been carrying on that business, or other, similar ones, without them having the slightest clue? He was smart; he chose a type of victim who, mostly out of shame, wouldn’t turn him in. Maybe that was Señora Sobrerroca’s fatal mistake, threatening to shop him. They would never know. It was the sole blemish on an otherwise perfect investigation. Perfect? Something was keeping him from seeing it that way, the shadow of a doubt that he couldn’t manage to catch hold of, whose reason escaped him and which tinged the resolution with uncertainty. It wasn’t perfect, then, and not only because he owed one of the key clues to a rookie journalist.
‘Gratitude is a sign of a good upbringing.’
That was what his father had taught him, and he’d taught it to his children. Pride was a sin, gratitude a virtue. One compensated for the other. And the two went hand in hand a few minutes later, when he got a call.
‘Inspector Castro? This is Joaquín Grau.’
Castro sat up straight as a rod, as if the prosecutor could see him. They dispensed perfunctorily with the usual greetings and Grau got to the point.
‘Castro, we here at the public prosecutor’s office want to congratulate you on your excellent and prompt resolution
of the Mariona Sobrerroca murder case.’
‘Thank you very much. It’s my job.’
‘Of course, and your duty, but it is only fitting to praise a job well done, to laud the fulfilment of duty, which is the foundation of the new Spain.’
‘…’
The good thing about receiving praise from a lawyer is that it contains more words, and goes on longer.
Isidro didn’t have the eloquence to offer in return.
‘Furthermore, I must commend you again, as I said, for the speed of your work at such an important and delicate moment, just before the Eucharistic Congress, when the eyes of the world will be on Spain and on Barcelona in particular. We want them to see a clean city.’
After Commissioner Goyanes had mentioned it, Isidro could no longer ignore the Eucharistic Congress. They talked about it on the radio, they mentioned it in bars, in newspapers, in the shops his wife went to. The guys over in the Social Brigade were going to be short-handed if they tried to get rid of all the indigents tarnishing the city’s image. But that wasn’t his problem. Because of the Congress, they had asked him to solve the case urgently. And now he was being congratulated for it. And still Grau wasn’t finished.
‘Castro, I consider you one of my best men, I’ve always trusted you and once again you have proved me right. Therefore, I want to express my deepest respect and my gratitude. Your sense of duty and your loyalty are worthy not only of praise, but of a tangible reward. Which is why I want you to know that I am going to nominate you for a promotion to Inspector, First Class. What do you say?’
‘Well… I… this… thank you so much, but…’
‘No buts allowed. You must accept.’
‘Of course. I am very honoured.’
‘That’s what I like to hear.’
Grau paused, cleared his throat and switched to a less solemn tone.
‘On a separate issue, I’ve read your preliminary report. Where is the material found in the house in Martorell currently located?’
‘Here, in an office.’
‘The prosecutor’s office is interested in inspecting it again. In a few hours, two of my assistants will come and pick it up.’