The Whispering City

by Sara Moliner

  Soon afterwards, Pablo left the house and set off towards the Vía Layetana.

  61

  As soon as Isidro arrived at headquarters, he ordered Sevilla into his office. In the blink of an eye, the officer was standing before him.

  ‘Did anyone assist you when you made enquiries into Beatriz Noguer?’

  ‘No.’

  Sevilla told him that he had followed the normal procedures to check if a person had a criminal record, that this was how he’d found out that she’d been purged, that she had lived in Argentina… The information that he had given to Isidro.

  In order to get it he had had to make a few calls and request details in writing. All of which left a trail. An internal trail, but that was exactly what had been worrying Isidro since the disappearance of the letters and other materials on the Sobrerroca case: the thief was among them, on the force.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ asked Sevilla.

  Isidro was faced with a dilemma. Could he trust Sevilla, or was he the mole? He couldn’t imagine it was him. And he urgently needed someone he could confide in. In a matter of seconds, as the officer stood on the opposite side of his desk shifting his weight from foot to foot, Isidro made a decision: he would trust him. And if he was making a mistake, he’d damn it all to hell. He’d take his wife and his kids and they’d all go back to his village in Galicia.

  ‘Sit down, Sevilla.’

  The officer obeyed.

  ‘What I am about to tell you is serious. Some very strange things have been going on here in the last few days.’

  Then he revealed the disappearance of the letters, his suspicions, his questions. Sevilla’s face darkened as he listened.

  ‘Well, there is something I have to confess to you, boss,’ he said finally.

  Sevilla didn’t know that his words were practically giving Isidro an attack of vertigo; that, in his burning desire to flee, he was clearly envisioning his family home in Galicia. The officer went on: ‘A few weeks ago I saw something strange too, but I chose not to tell you because I didn’t think it was important.’

  The inspector’s mind returned to Barcelona.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘One time when that journalist from La Vanguardia was here, while you were talking to the Commissioner, Burguillos went into your office and I caught him poking around in the Sobrerroca papers.’

  For a moment, Isidro was stock-still. Then he slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand.

  ‘Burguillos! That bastard! It has to be him!’

  Suddenly a lot of things became clear. Burguillos had stolen the letters. Burguillos.

  Burguillos, Goyanes’s lackey, his boy for everything. Hadn’t Goyanes got him out of his office on some excuse? Now he understood why: so that Burguillos could get in there and swipe the letters. Now, too, he understood why Commissioner Goyanes had asked him to treat the theft with such discretion. He had ordered the theft. He was the one who was looking for the two women. His men, therefore, were the ones who had gone into Beatriz Noguer’s house. The ones who had killed that young woman. Why? Above all, for whom? Goyanes, like Burguillos, was just a subordinate. The question was, subordinate to whom?

  ‘Fucking brilliant,’ he said to himself and also partly to Sevilla, who was waiting in silence for him to explain what was going through his head.

  Finding out who Goyanes was working for was secondary; the most pressing thing was to find the women before the Commissioner’s men did – before his own colleagues did.

  62

  A few minutes after Pablo had gone, Ana called Sanvisens. She dialled the number and sat down on the left-hand stool, while Beatriz sat on the other.

  She wasn’t expecting much from the conversation. She was calling mainly to check that the line was still working, that she’d hear Sanvisens’s voice at the other end. So she was surprised by his reaction when he picked up: ‘Thank goodness you called! I need to speak to you urgently.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve spoken with Carlos Belda.’

  Sanvisens gave her a summary of their conversation.

  ‘That cheat!’

  Beatriz jumped.

  ‘You’re right, Ana, but the most important thing is that, if what Carlos has told me is true, it’s not Castro who’s after you, it’s Goyanes.’

  ‘No! Shit!’

  Beatriz looked at her with fear in her eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ana. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’

  She couldn’t stay on the telephone with Sanvisens; she had to run, to try to find Pablo and stop him.

  Hanging up, Ana turned to Beatriz.

  ‘We’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s Goyanes who’s mixed up in this. I’ve got to catch Pablo before he talks to him.’

  ‘I’m going with you.’

  ‘No. You have to stay here in case he comes back.’

  Reluctantly, Beatriz accepted.

  Ana raced out into the street and hailed a cab.

  She reached the Vía Layetana in fifteen minutes. Pablo couldn’t be there already, unless he had taken a taxi as well. She trusted that he hadn’t. It wasn’t yet three o’clock. Pablo would be coming from Urquinaona Plaza. Ana ducked into a doorway on the opposite side of the street and fixed her gaze in that direction. Every once in a while she stole a glance at the entrance to the police headquarters, but discreetly. If someone asked her, she’d say she was waiting for her boyfriend. Why would anyone ask her anything? If someone came over and spoke to her, it would be because they had recognised her. She didn’t know Goyanes’s face, and he surely didn’t know hers either, but Burguillos and the other cop did. With a bit of luck, the porter had pierced his eardrum and he was lying in hospital. She had forgotten to ask Sanvisens what had happened after she’d managed to escape their trap. She was hoping they hadn’t retaliated against the poor man. And the other policeman? Every minute she waited added to the danger that she would be discovered.

  Finally Pablo appeared around the corner. He was walking with determined steps. She didn’t want to call his name; she had to approach him. She crossed the street, dodging cars. She hoped no policeman would feel obligated to pull her in for obstructing the traffic. Luckily no car honked, and her manoeuvre went unnoticed. She made it across the road; Pablo was so focused on his meeting with Goyanes that he didn’t see her until she was two paces away from him.

  Ana flashed him a big smile, looped her arm through his and dragged him to a stop. ‘How lovely to see you, Pablo!’

  Without letting go of his arm, she forced him to turn around.

  ‘What are you doing here, Ana?’

  ‘I’ll tell you that as soon as I can, but first let’s get out of here as quickly as possible.’ They reached Urquinaona Plaza. ‘It’d be best if we took a taxi.’

  They flagged one down and gave the driver Pablo’s address. They weren’t quick enough to tell him to avoid the Vía Layetana. Still too disoriented by the danger they had just managed to escape, they didn’t avert their faces as the cab passed by the police headquarters. There, Ana’s eyes met those of someone she knew: Officer Sevilla.

  63

  Once Ana had left, Beatriz stayed sitting on the stool in the hallway.

  Pablo’s telephone had rung twice. She knew she shouldn’t answer it, although she supposed it could be Salvador, concerned about her disappearance. Wait a little bit, Tete, she said to her brother in her head, using the nickname she’d always called him when they were little. In the gloom of the hallway she thought of Encarni, poor Encarni. She would never know what song she would have dedicated to her in the Radio Juventud contest. Her mood swung between crushing sorrow, guilt and rage that rose from her stomach and threatened to choke her.

  One of Quevedo’s sonnets came to her aid: You, oh minister!, be sure to pay great mind / injure not the strong, injure not the despised; / when you take their gold and silver, be apprised / that you have left their burnished steel behind. The first
tercet failed to console her, but there were a few later lines whose repetition saved her from succumbing to the corrosive force of her impotent hatred.

  Those who see their certain perdition, abhor,

  more than their perdition, its underlying cause;

  and it is this latter that spurs their rancour.

  She recited those lines like a litany until she heard footsteps on the stairs and a minute later the door opened. Ana and Pablo were home.

  ‘Now what?’

  It was Pablo who spoke, but any of them could have asked the question, and with the same bewilderment.

  They put the paper Pablo had taken with him from Garmendia’s collection back with the others. Pablo only dared articulate in fragments what could have happened if he’d arrived at his appointment with Goyanes. The Commissioner must already be wondering why he hadn’t turned up.

  ‘Thank goodness you didn’t give him your name, Pablo.’

  They were seated around the living room table. They had spread out all the papers on its surface and were looking at them as if in the hope that, suddenly, something new would leap out, abracadabra.

  The window was open and they heard the voices of a small group of children who were playing Buck Buck in the street.

  ‘Buck, buck, ya lousy muck, how many fingers have I got up, one, two, three or none?’

  ‘One?’

  ‘Two!’

  Laughter and shouting.

  Then a silence that matched their own, soon broken by more running steps and a voice, ‘Buck, buck, ya lousy muck, how many fingers have I got up, one, two, three or none?’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Shouts. Shouts and applause. And banging. Banging? The banging wasn’t coming from the street, but from the door to the flat. The banging was just the prelude to the doorbell. Someone was hammering on the door.

  Pablo got up. Beatriz and Ana sat paralysed at the table.

  ‘Buck, buck, how many horns do I hold up?’

  ‘Open up! Police! We know you’re in there.’

  64

  Neither Pablo nor Beatriz knew that voice. Ana did. It was Isidro Castro.

  Pablo opened the door. The two women had risen from their seats and saw him backlit in the doorway.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To talk to these two ladies.’ Castro pointed in their direction.

  Pablo stepped aside to let him in. The policeman’s solid, stocky body seemed to fill the entire width of the hallway.

  ‘Don’t you think we’ve had enough of this cat-and-mouse game, Señora Noguer? And as for you,’ he addressed Ana, ‘whether I arrest you or not depends on what you tell me now.’

  Pablo followed him into the sitting room.

  ‘Make yourself at home, Inspector.’

  Castro accepted the invitation and sat down at the table. The papers were still there, somewhat disordered in the panic at hearing him at the door.

  The policeman glanced at them.

  ‘If I’m not mistaken, there are a lot of people after these papers, isn’t that right?’

  Since he was looking at her, it was Ana who nodded.

  ‘And are you going to tell me why, or do I have to read them?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell us how you found us?’

  She wasn’t particularly surprised by Castro’s response: ‘Señorita Martí, don’t get ahead of yourself. I’ll be the one who asks the questions.’ Nor by the smirk that accompanied it. He was repeating something he’d said to her in their very first conversation. It was a wink, a sign that he wasn’t the enemy, but that he wasn’t openly presenting himself as a friend either. What Castro said next confirmed her interpretation.

  ‘But if you must know, we made enquiries into Señora Noguera when you mentioned her part in your… let’s just call them explorations. And the doorman at her house told us that she received few visitors, but one was a nephew named Pablo. And a little while ago Officer Sevilla, whom you know, saw you jump into a taxi with a young man. So, as you can see, it wasn’t that hard to work out. And now it’s your turn. What do these papers say?’

  They told him. From their discovery, to their contents, and how they were used to blackmail the people named in them.

  ‘One of the names that appears in these papers is the person who killed Mariona Sobrerroca and Abel Mendoza,’ said Ana.

  ‘And Encarni.’ Those were the first words from Beatriz since Castro had entered the house. ‘In order to get these papers, they killed her, too.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, ma’am.’

  Ana began to see Castro as a possible way out of the situation they were in; an ally, perhaps, so she said, ‘To tell you the truth, until a few hours ago, we believed that the person ordering the killings was Grau, the public prosecutor, and that you were mixed up in it too.’

  ‘Forgive me if I don’t laugh at your little joke.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to be funny. We suspected Grau because he was implicated in a case of corruption and the trafficking of adulterated penicillin.’

  ‘A crime that could cost him more than his job – it could get him the death penalty,’ said Castro after listening to the details.

  ‘And you, I hope you don’t mind my saying it like this,’ intervened Pablo, ‘have the prosecutor’s trust. He even promoted you. That was why we thought that you —’

  ‘What made you change your mind?’

  ‘The fact that we now know that Commissioner Goyanes is the one involved in the matter.’

  ‘Then you can rule out Grau. He would never ask Goyanes for a favour. What other suspects do you have?’ He said it in a tone that sounded rather cavalier, as if he were in a shoe shop trying on boots and asking for the next size up.

  ‘We’ve got Arturo Sanabria,’ Pablo said then.

  Castro looked at him in astonishment and snorted before saying, ‘Couldn’t you find a bigger fish? What have you got on him?’

  ‘Sanabria beat up a lover and took it too far. Dr Garmendia saw the woman and treated her at his house, where she died. Sanabria took care of getting her out of there and making her body disappear, but the doctor took down all her information. She was a prostitute named Estrella Machín.’

  ‘Estrella Machín? Her real name was Virtudes Ortiz. Yes, I remember her disappearance, about five years ago. Everyone thought she’d taken off with one of her “protectors”.’

  ‘You don’t seem very impressed by Sanabria as a possible suspect.’

  ‘Because in my opinion, Sanabria doesn’t have much to fear from those papers. Mariona Sobrerroca might have been able to get something out of him while his wife was alive, but Sanabria became a widower at least three years ago.’

  ‘But he killed a woman.’

  ‘No, he killed a prostitute.’

  ‘And she wasn’t a woman?’ Ana shot Pablo a look. ‘Doesn’t the law protect everyone?’

  Before Pablo could react, Castro did. ‘I’ll make it crystal clear: Sanabria, a Falangist industrialist with very powerful friends, supposedly killed a prostitute whose body was never found. Got it? Besides, it’s not about reviewing each case; what we need to know is who is after these papers. And I can tell you that Sanabria isn’t someone who has anything to fear. What else do you have?’

  ‘Fernando Sánchez-Herranz.’

  Castro snorted.

  ‘Him too?’

  ‘In this case it’s his wife, Dolores Antich, who had an affair with a fake Polish count in 1945 and fell pregnant. Her parents brought her to Garmendia so he could give her a discreet abortion. She wasn’t the only girl from a good home who ended up in his office for that reason. Two years later she married Sánchez-Herranz, who thought she was a good catch,’ explained Pablo.

  ‘Dolores Antich was a good catch,’ replied Ana. ‘He brought the ancient Castilian lineage and she brought the Catalan money. But she didn’t turn out to be the virginal flower that Sánchez-Herranz imagined her to be. And
while the abortion story is very dangerous for her reputation in Barcelona society, it’s even more dangerous for Sánchez-Herranz’s political aspirations.’

  Not long before, the president of the Provincial Council of Barcelona had been disgraced because he had been seen in public in Madrid with a woman who wasn’t his wife, a moral indiscretion for which he paid dearly. Even though it was common knowledge that many men had lovers, what was not tolerated was that it was done openly. It was a lesson she had learned well from working on society pieces, where all was known and everything was kept quiet.

  ‘And, despite your ruling him out, there is still Joaquín Grau,’ said Ana. ‘It’s odd. He is Sánchez-Herranz’s political mentor, he owes all the power and position he has to Grau, but lately they’ve distanced themselves quite a bit. Both of them were in Mariona’s hands.’

  All four fell silent. Again the children’s voices from the street came in through the window. They had changed games.

  ‘One, two, three, nobody move without the King’s say-so.’

  Laughter, complaints, protests, clapping.

  Castro’s voice: ‘Even though his crime could get him the death penalty, I repeat that Grau cannot be the one who ordered the killings.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘For the simple reason that I am certain it’s Goyanes who’s mixed up in this. I can’t tell you why,’ he said with a bitter smirk on his face. ‘And Grau has never trusted him; they’re not on the same wavelength. Goyanes is one of Sánchez-Herranz’s men. That doesn’t mean that Grau didn’t benefit from Mariona Sobrerroca’s death, but I think he doesn’t know it yet. Nor will he. Your man is undoubtedly Sánchez-Herranz.’

  ‘Our man? And you aren’t planning on doing anything?’ asked Beatriz. Her voice trembled.

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’

  ‘To solve the case properly, make sure that the people behind the murders are punished.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, but this matter is out of my league.’

  ‘Ours too,’ said Ana.

  ‘Nobody asked you to take it on.’

  ‘But you can’t leave us like this.’