Blood Crime

by Sebastia Alzamora

“Pleased to meet you, comrades,” said the superintendent. Ordinarily he would have laughed at hearing himself utter those words, but now he did not find it amusing. He was tense and intimidated.

  “Pleasure,” responded Aureli Fernández. Antoni Ordaz muttered something inaudible.

  Manuel Escorza drew out the pause in conversation, and Superintendent Muñoz lowered his eyes to the floor.

  “Thank you for agreeing to grant us some of your valuable time,” Escorza said at last. “The goal of this meeting is to establish a direct rapport between us. We are conducting a round of meetings with the heads of the Barcelona police precincts for this very purpose. As you are well aware, we are living through difficult times, and we believe this calls for closer collaboration between our Department and your most valuable men, those who, like yourself, are in daily contact with life on the streets.”

  “The gesture is appreciated, comrade,” said Superintendent Muñoz, raising his eyes again.

  “I have been perusing your file,” said Escorza, opening a folder, “and it is truly remarkable. More than twenty years on the force, steadily rising through the ranks. You joined the service as an officer in 1914; two years later you’d been promoted to corporal and, merely a year after that, to sergeant. In 1920 you were again promoted to lieutenant and, four years later, to inspector. In 1926 you passed the state exam to become chief inspector and, in 1931 the Department of Home Affairs of Catalunya appointed you superintendent. And it just goes on. Any day now, we will have to promote you to commissioner. A brilliant career, no doubt about it. Congratulations are in order.”

  “Much appreciated, comrade.”

  “You are also decorated. You were awarded the bronze medal for your role in the arrest of a band of miscreants who sold smuggled goods on the black market. They were armed and opened fire, but the two deaths that resulted from the showdown were criminals. No police officer was wounded. And that was thanks to your skill and valor as the leader of the operation, superintendent. You put your neck on the line. A well-deserved medal.”

  “You flatter me, sir. I mean, comrade. Again, thank you.”

  “A first-rate officer, is he not?” Escorza inquired of Fernández and Ordaz, who nodded as one man.

  Muñoz swallowed. He could almost feel the incoming tempest.

  “In any case, superintendent, we need men like you,” continued Escorza. “You are what the revolution needs, I mean. Intelligent, determined men. Honest and hard-working. The fascists want to wipe us out, along with our country, but we must best them and wipe them out first. Do you agree, superintendent?”

  “To the fullest, comrade,” Muñoz responded without hesitation.

  “Yes, I felt sure of it. I only wanted to emphasize that in each police jurisdiction we must approach the issue of unauthorized assemblies with extra zeal. You never know where insurgents might congregate to plot against the legitimate authority of the Republic and the Generalitat government. Basements, warehouses, abandoned or semi-demolished office buildings—that type of thing.”

  “Absolutely, comrade.”

  “Absolutely,” parroted Manuel Escorza, pausing for a moment, as if trying to remember something. “Fantastic, superintendent. That will be all then. Again, it has been a pleasure speaking with you. Carry on as you have until now, superintendent.”

  “May I go?” asked Muñoz with a measure of involuntary disbelief.

  “Back to work, yes, where this country needs you most,” said Escorza with a grin he had intended to be beatific.

  “In that case, gentlemen, that is, comrades, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  Muñoz rose from his armchair, performed the customary salute, and headed for the door. His hand was already on the doorknob when he heard Manuel Escorza`s voice behind him.

  “Superintendent.”

  It could not have gone so smoothly.

  “Yes, comrade?”

  “There is one question I forgot to put to you.”

  The superintendent stiffened. He noticed Aureli Fernández and Antoni Ordaz darkly scrutinizing him.

  “I’ll do my best to answer . . .”

  “Of course you will,” said Escorza, condescendingly. “It regards the removal of two bodies from a crime scene at a pension on Carrer Ferran—a boy and an old man, apparently. Do you know what I’m referring to?”

  “Indeed, comrade.”

  “Indeed. It appears you neglected to include in your report that both the old man and the three witnesses at the time of the removal were priests.”

  Sons of bitches. The superintendent’s thoughts paraded through the darkest curses he could level at Sirga and his entire family.

  “And? Have you anything to say about it?” inquired Escorza.

  “It’s true. They were wearing street clothes and I didn’t recognize them as religious men.”

  “Despite what you say, I have been made aware that during the course of your conversation with the witnesses this fact came out. You’re sharp, superintendent. You don’t miss a trick.”

  Muñoz bit his top lip. “I didn’t think it was relevant to the report.”

  “Of course,” replied Escorza, as though talking to a child, “you did not think it relevant. And yet, you are aware of the world you are living in, superintendent, are you not?”

  “Yes,” conceded Muñoz. “Yes I am, comrade.”

  He stood tall, almost at attention. This was a trial. A summary trial. His gaze moved from one man to another. In Aureli Fernández’s eyes he saw a thirst for vengeance; in Antoni Ordaz’s he recognized the executioner. Manuel Escorza’s were inscrutable.

  “Anyone can make a mistake, superintendent,” said the cripple, laconic. “But in these agitated times, everyone must pay for their mistakes. Your slipup, shall we call it, leaves me with two options. The first is to add high treason to your distinguished credentials and instruct Fernández and Ordaz to take the appropriate measures. The second is to grant you a second chance and put you in charge of a special mission. After all, it is true that men of your caliber are not a dime a dozen, and it would be a shame to be forced to . . . Well, it hardly needs to be said, does it? You help me decide, superintendent. Which of the two options do you think is best?”

  Muñoz breathed in deeply through his nose. “Tell me what I can do for you, Comrade Escorza. And for the revolution,” he said, his voice barely audible.

  Escorza again bared that obscene grin of his. “It is a delicate job, superintendent, in an unexpected place—the Capuchin Convent in Sarrià. Comrades Fernández and Ordaz will fill you in on the details and an officer from your precinct—he goes by the name of Sirga—will give you the rest of the information.”

  She still didn’t know where to begin; she continued to debate between C-sharp minor and A major. The eruption in the chapterhouse of the mother abbess and the stranger named Manuel had prevented her from carrying out the test with the vase, and she hadn’t been able to reach a decision. Neither bean nor almond.

  She continued, then, her study of the poem by Jacopone da Todi, which increasingly resembled an unsolvable hieroglyphic. The more she read and reread it the less sense it made to her, as though the words were dimming little by little, losing their meaning. Abstruse blots on a piece of paper. In the end she always returned to the first verses, the only ones that still commanded her attention:

  Stabat Mater dolorosa

  Iuxta crucem lacrimosa

  Dum pendebat Filius

  The mother weeping beneath her son on the cross. The image played over and over in her imagination, in her dreams and waking life. That was her theme, the theme she must translate into a musical score. But how?

  Her mother had told her not to be afraid, but she hadn’t warned her of the abominations she would encounter in life. Even inside the convent.

  Who was this Manuel who had the power to decide whether Bishop
Perugorría was to be removed from the convent? And what had mother abbess meant when she said that the bishop was stalking her? What could His Excellency the bishop possibly want with a humble novice such as herself? And what was there to fear, what was the danger that troubled the mother abbess so much?

  Why didn’t her own mother come to fetch her so they could leave and travel far from the Desert of Sarrià where thirteen-year-old girls were doomed to torment?

  She tried to guide her concentration back to the Stabat Mater, but found she could only focus on the translucent glimmers that floated across her eyes like a mirage. It must have been the effect of exhaustion, or perhaps hunger. She had learned that fear, when sufficiently intense, trumped bodily urges. But that didn’t mean she had no need to eat or rest.

  She rose from the spot on the floor where she had been sitting, her legs weak and tingly. She took several steps and was relieved to find that the cramp slowly diminished, then disappeared. She stretched out on the cot; it creaked slightly under the weight of her small body.

  When she raised her eyes she had a strange perspective: the crucifix over her bed looked like a projectile about to be launched. The hanged son for whom his mother wept. She was so unsettled that she had even neglected her prayers of late. In moments of affliction praying had always brought her solace, ever since she was a child. But until she entered that shadowy convent, what afflictions had she experienced? In any event, it was never the wrong moment to seek the warmth of our Heavenly Father, His Son, and the Holy Ghost. Three people in one, her mother had tried to explain, though she never truly understood. How could three people exist in one? Nevertheless, without shifting her position on the cot, she made the sign of the cross over her brow, mouth, and chest, and moving her lips without making a sound, she began to recite:

  Our Father, who art in heaven,

  Hallowed be thy name,

  Thy kingdom come,

  Thy will be done . . .

  She paused. Again that murmur she could not identify, a brief, faint rustling that was nevertheless audible, as though someone at a great remove was trying to tell her something. Those little noises she kept hearing—were they voices trying to speak to her? Or were they figments of her feverish imagination? More acutely than ever, she felt the need for the comfort of prayer; she shut her eyes tightly, as she used to do when she was little and was afraid the bogeyman was hiding under her bed, and she continued:

  Thy will be done

  On Earth as it is in Heaven.

  Give us this day our daily bread . . .

  Another sound disturbed her, and this time it wasn’t a murmur, but the sharp, clear sound of knocking on the door to her cell. She heard someone leaving something on the floor, then footsteps scurrying down the hall. Her meal had been brought. The Lord’s Prayer had had an immediate effect, she thought, and this notion made her smile.

  She rose from her cot, walked to the door, turned the key in the lock and opened the door. She looked down, but there was no tray with a plate of food and a pitcher of water. In their place she saw a pair of oversized black shoes and, scanning upward, a cassock and, atop that, the head of Bishop Perugorría in his stiff white clerical collar, staring at her with vitreous eyes and a terse smile.

  She stood at the door, mute and petrified, as though she had taken a strong poison. The bishop spoke in a mellifluous voice: “My dear, I was wondering if you would have a moment to speak with me.”

  “Are you telling me that a priest has bolted from the brig after killing a militiaman with his bare hands? Is that what you are saying?”

  Manuel Escorza had risen from the table and, using his crutches, limped toward Sirga until less than a span separated the men. At such a short distance, Sirga could see the tiny saliva bubbles that exploded between Escorza’s lips as he spoke. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Aureli Fernández looking as if he had just been smacked and Gil Portela looking as if he had just caught a whiff of shit.

  Sirga scratched his jaw. “That’s right, comrade.”

  With saucer eyes, as though startled by a large, poisonous frog that had just leapt into his office, Manuel Escorza looked the young man up and down, then stood there for a moment before giving a big, sonorous laugh. He returned to his place, his boot lifts screeching along the plank flooring, and let himself drop into his armchair.

  “Goddammit.”

  “How long has it been since you say you found Burntface’s body?” asked Aureli Fernández without losing his sullen grimace.

  “Less than an hour, Comrade Fernández—the time it took to contact the squad on duty and have them collect the body and get rid of it. After that, I came straight here to inform you.”

  “And how long had he been dead?” inquired Gil Portela with his customary apathy.

  “I don’t know. I never touched him.” Sirga ran his fingers through his hair and scratched his scalp. “Since last night, I suppose, when he was on guard duty. I had the morning shift and when I got there I found him splayed on the floor.”

  “With his head bashed in,” added Gil Portela.

  “With his head bashed in,” confirmed Sirga.

  Aureli Fernández and Gil Portela exchanged glances. Fernández spoke: “It’s hard to believe that Marist brother could have done such a thing. He was shitting himself back at the Tostadero.”

  “Burntface didn’t have many friends,” added Gil Portela. “He had too much pent-up resentment, was too much of a neanderthal. Quite a few had it in for him.”

  “So who could have done this?” asked Sirga. “Only he and I had the key—only Burntface and I knew the priest was being held there.”

  There was a thick silence. Aureli Fernández looked at Gil Portela again. Portela spoke:

  “You, perhaps?”

  Sirga’s hands jerked as if he’d just touched a live wire. “Me? How can you even say that?” He tried to make eye contact with the rest of the men, but they all averted their gazes. “How can you think that? But I . . . it’s ridiculous! Absurd! Tell me you don’t believe that!”

  He looked as though he was on the verge of tears. Manuel Escorza breathed in ostentatiously until a snort came out. “Leave him alone. No need to dig where there’s nothing to find.” He opened his arms. “Let’s try to fix this mess. Fernández, what’s the news from Balaguer?”

  “Everything went fine. The buses were dispatched yesterday to collect the first batch of brothers; a car was sent with Ordaz on our side and that Lacunza person on theirs. Brother Plana, the fellow who’s in charge of keeping us abreast of developments, also went along for the ride. When they arrived at the Convent of Bellpuig de les Avellanes the seminarians were already waiting, standing single file like in a procession. Apparently the hardest thing was to round up the teachers who were hiding out in the mountains, but the farmers had spread the news and in the end everyone turned up.”

  “So, how many have already left?” inquired Manuel Escorza without turning around.

  “Only the seminarians,” Gil Portela replied. “Just as we had requested of them, the folks from the Puigcerdà committee were pigheaded and refused to let anyone through except the young boys. Ordaz play-acted for a while trying to make it seem like he wanted to get everyone out. In the end, the ones who are of age were sent back to Barcelona on buses with the promise that they’ll be part of the second evacuation. Lacunza is fuming, from what I hear, but he’ll do as we tell him. He wants to get across the border at any cost.”

  “I can imagine,” said Manuel Escorza. “What’s the story with the Frenchie?”

  “He’s being held at Sant Elies,” Aureli Fernández said. “As soon as Lacunza and Plana were on their way back to Barcelona, we sent a squad to Pension Capell with search and arrest warrants. We have the rest of the money.”

  “And why have I yet to see it?” shouted Manuel Escorza. “Bring it to me at once! And the Frenchman—tak
e him up to Carretera de l’Arrabassada and shoot him in the back of the head.” He hesitated. “No, just throw him in the Modelo prison. Maybe we can exchange him for ransom once we have gotten rid of this riffraff.”

  Aureli Fernández made a grimace of disapproval. “Listen, comrade, I still don’t think it’s necessary to—”

  “Dead dogs don’t bite,” Gil Portela interrupted with a smile.

  “Precisely,” said Manuel Escorza. “And besides, this ordeal with Burntface adds new urgency. Get moving with the second evacuation and round up the Marists—including the ones who are coming with Ordaz—and take them to the Capuchin convent. Since we already have the money, let’s wind this thing up as soon as possible. And while we’re at it, let’s close down our dear little nuns’ convent; I’ve run out of patience.” He paused for a moment, perhaps considering his sister’s fate, perhaps just to cough. “We’ll stick the bishop somewhere else; I’ll think of something. Let’s get things out of the way, understood?”

  “Understood,” agreed Gil Portela with a satisfied smile.

  “Comrade, listen, please,” insisted Aureli Fernández. “Do you really think it’s necessary to—?”

  “Understood?” repeated Manuel Escorza, angry.

  “Okay, okay, goddammit.”

  “Turn everything upside down and find this damn Marist brother who’s absconded,” ordered Manuel Escorza. “Take him to Sant Elies and let the boys have their way with him. As for you . . .”

  Sirga had been trembling for a while. Manuel Escorza studied him with those same saucer eyes. Then he smiled.

  “. . . you have a mission to carry out with your superintendent.”

  “It’s a mousetrap,” said Superintendent Muñoz, waving away Doctor Pellicer’s smoke. “They have seized the Capuchin convent with all the nuns inside, and they are sending me to investigate something to do with a couple of dead pigs. To make things worse, they are making me take along that rat Sirga, presumably with orders to take me out. Exciting prospect, don’t you think?”