Guzmán Barrio believed that what they had there was a crime of passion: all the clues pointed that way. There wasn’t any disturbance in the room, as is often the case following a fight, and this lent weight to the theory that the dead man had not been forcibly tied up. The inspector thought Reigosa knew the murderer, or at least that the murderer had not aroused any suspicions in him. It seemed logical to assume that he wouldn’t have let himself be tied up if he had sensed any danger.
‘Will you have anything by morning?’ asked Caldas impatiently.
‘Can you make it noon?’
The inspector moved closer to the night table and looked at the photograph on it. He prised apart the wooden frame and took the picture out. Reigosa was smiling and fondly holding his saxophone, as if they were a couple of teenage lovers. It was a black-and-white picture, and the dead musician’s nearly transparent blue eyes came out in a very light grey.
‘Guzmán, I’m taking this with me,’ he said, slipping the picture into the inside pocket of his jacket.
Before leaving the downstairs floor, Leo went to take a look at the bathroom. It was all done up in white marble, with expensive-looking taps and a large hydrotherapy bath. The towels, white too, were clean and neatly piled. Thinking it was no small luxury for a jazz-club musician, he left for the living room. If there were any hairs on the floor, a trace of urine in the toilet or any other clue that might help them identify the killer, it would not go unnoticed by the methodical work of forensics.
On the top floor, Estévez was looking out of the window. Clara Barcia had moved on to the carpet in her systematic search for clues. She had turned all the lights on and divided the room into squares marked off with pieces of string. The evidence found in each of them was put into plastic bags and labelled accordingly.
Caldas noticed the glasses on the coffee table. The drinks bore out the theory that Luis Reigosa had been with someone he knew, or at least with someone who hadn’t taken him by surprise. He bent down to sniff one of the glasses, and clearly recognised the dry, penetrating smell of gin. He checked the rim to see if there were any lip marks and immediately made out some faint traces of lipstick.
‘Have you checked for prints on the bottles?’ he asked the forensics officer.
‘They are all in the kitchen, inspector,’ she replied, nodding.
Leo Caldas looked around. The kitchen was nowhere to be seen.
‘It’s here,’ said Clara Barcia as she stood up. She opened a sliding door that Caldas had believed to be a cupboard, and a tiny kitchen appeared. ‘They’re called compact kitchens. They’re all right if you don’t cook much, as they take up little space, clearly.’
Caldas moved towards it, but Clara Barcia stopped him.
‘I’m sorry, inspector. There are quite a few prints in there I haven’t had time to check yet.’
‘Of course,’ he said, moving away to allow Clara to close the door. He knew how meticulous she was when it came to inspecting hot spots at a crime scene, so he didn’t mind his curiosity being checked by an officer of lower rank. On the contrary, he was glad he could count on Clara Barcia’s expertise for this investigation. He valued her powers of observation and her infinite patience in hunting the tiniest pieces of evidence.
The inspector drew near the saxophones hanging on the wall. The oldest of them was the one Reigosa was holding in the picture he now had in his pocket. Caldas stroked its cold metal hump with the back of his hand, as if offering it his condolences.
In the living room, hundreds of CDs, almost all of jazz, were stacked up on five shelves. The top shelf featured female vocalists, while the three others housed an admirable collection entirely devoted to the saxophone. Among many unknown names, the inspector recognised some he was quite familiar with, such as Sonny Rollins, Lester Young and Charlie Parker. On the bottom shelf were dozens of scores. Leo Caldas picked one at random, which turned out to be Stella by Starlight for tenor sax, by Victor Young. He knew the piece, and had it at home in a version by Stan Getz.
Although he couldn’t read music, he flicked through the score, poring over the symbols curling on the lines of the stave, and hummed the melody to himself. He remembered with a touch of nostalgia the Sunday afternoons Alba had christened ‘of music and letters’, during which some of these very musicians had kept them company as Alba and he, dressed only in their pyjamas, read lying on the sofa.
‘Have you seen the CDs, chief?’ asked Estévez, still standing in front of the window.
Caldas nodded.
‘Our friend of the tiny fried penis must have been a bit queer, don’t you think?’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Don’t get me wrong, chief. I’m not bothered who people choose to sleep with. This is a free country.’
‘No need to make excuses,’ said the inspector, encouraging him to go on.
‘But you only need to take a look at all those funny CDs, the paintings right there or the one over the bed to guess this guy was a friend of Dorothy’s.’
‘Just because of that it doesn’t mean …’
‘Just because of that?’ repeated Estévez. ‘What did you expect, chief, a poster with a young lad in the buff?’
The inspector realised his subordinate had not seen the lipstick traces on the glasses, but he chose to keep silent rather than contradict him, as he saw Officer Barcia casting wary glances at Estévez.
‘Drop it, Rafael,’ he muttered, sensing that if he let Estévez take this line of reasoning any further, there would be even more gossip about him at the station.
Clara Barcia finished scrutinising one of the squares marked on the carpet and moved on to the next, the nearest one to the hi-fi. When she bent down, she flicked a switch without meaning to, and a warm woman’s voice suddenly filled every corner of the room.
Day in, day out
That same old voodoo follows me about.
The young officer looked in vain for the switch to stop the music.
‘Sorry, so sorry,’ she said, blushing a little for her clumsiness.
‘You can leave it on, it’s fine by me,’ replied Caldas, reassuring her that it didn’t matter at all.
‘What is this?’ growled Estévez.
‘Billie Holliday,’ said the inspector as he walked over to the hi-fi and turned up the volume. Clara smiled and kneeled back down within her square of carpet marked off with pieces of string.
That same old pounding in my heart,
Whenever I think of you.
And baby I think of you.
Day in and day out.
Estévez went back to the window and looked at the landscape that had allowed him to forget the dead man’s genitals for a moment.
‘Do you know what I like best about this high-rise, inspector?’
‘That you can’t see the high-rise from here?’ replied Caldas, without coming close to the window.
Estévez remained silent, and Billie Holliday moaned once again.
When there it is, day in, day out.
The Bar
Caldas was walking down the pavement of Príncipe Street, which bore hardly any trace of its earlier hustle and bustle. The shops were now closed, and there was barely anyone about. Most people had abandoned this part of town and, taking advantage of the wonderful May evening, had chosen the boulevard by the sea for their evening stroll.
The inspector was on his way back from the city police station, in the town City Hall, where he had presented the officer on duty with a file containing the catalogue of complaints, addresses and telephone numbers which he had collected at the radio station. He had asked Estévez not to wait for him. He preferred to walk home. He liked the city at night, when he could hear his footsteps rhythmically resounding on the pavement, and when the smell of trees prevailed over the exhaust smoke of cars. Besides, the empty streets were ideal for going over the inspection at the high-rise on Toralla Island. From the moment he’d left Reigosa’s place he’d had the nagging feeling that he
had missed something. Unable to put his finger on it for now, he followed the bend to the right in Príncipe Street, only ten or twelve steps after its start. He reached a square closed off by a one-storey stone house.
The stone façade had a Galician emigrant drawn on it, one of the many whom poverty had forced into exile, like the ones portrayed by the artist Daniel Alfonso Rodríguez Castelao in his illustrations. Beneath it, there were words once uttered by Castelao himself: ‘I’ll be back when Galicia is free’. He had died in Buenos Aires.
The door and the two windows were made of wood and painted green. A few cast-iron letters, which had been screwed into the stone, formed a word in a childish handwriting: ‘Eligio’.
Leo Caldas pushed the door open.
Since Eligio had taken charge of the bar several decades before, its rustic walls had given shelter to the intellectual cream of the town. The staff of the Pueblo Gallego newspaper, which was to be found only a few metres away, had led the way, attracted by the excellent house wines. And, little by little, lawyers, literati, poets, painters and politicians had come to place themselves near the cast-iron stove of the establishment.
Sitting in a corner, Lugrís had drawn medusas, seahorses and ships which seemed sunk in the marble table. And a few of his colleagues, long on talent but short on funds, had left their legacies painted on the walls, thus linking them forever with Galician twentieth-century art. Some painters had done this as a sign of friendship; others as payment for the mugs – there were no glasses here – that they had drunk on credit.
Near the oak casks stacked on the uneven floor, conversations had taken place between Álvaro Cunqueiro, Castroviejo, Blanco Amor and other eminent men. Their table talk was an oasis of distinction in the industrial greyness which back then was expanding to the four corners of the town.
The writer Borobó, in one of his chronicles, had dreamed up a fable about the end of the halcyon days. Apparently the Lord, who of course knew that salmon had become extinct in Galician rivers, had invited Don Álvaro to dine at a higher table. Unable to resist a freebie, the usual crowd had come along with the great writer. And to lubricate the banquet they had requested wine from on high. The story goes that Eligio, with so many friends at the party, had no other option than to go and pour it himself. The details after that are not clear, and Eligio certainly never came back to tell his version, but it is said he didn’t go up in the best of moods.
In any case, with Eligio in heaven, the bar passed to his son-in-law, Carlos, without any trouble and without losing any of the former owner’s spirit or the enlightened atmosphere it had acquired in Eligio’s lifetime. True, the wine no longer cured you of the flu, but the culprits were the winemakers of the area rather than the soul of the place. The mugs were still white china, and the benches the same strong wood as always. A series of small riveted plaques memorialised the eminent regulars.
It had gone twelve when the inspector checked his mobile. He realised it had been some time since he had received a call that made him rush out into the night. Then he asked for another mug of wine.
Cowering
On 13 May it felt like summer. The bright morning light came in through a window, filling the room at the police station. Rafael Estévez was sitting on a chair and going through a sheaf of papers. A woman, in silence, looked at him from across the table.
‘María de Castro Rasposo, a resident of Canido, Vigo, widowed, sixty-four years old.’
‘A youthful sixty-four,’ she qualified.
‘Is that more or less than sixty-four?’ asked Estévez.
Inspector Caldas, who was standing nearby, checking the contents of a folder, put in:
‘Please, Rafael, let’s focus on the statement.’
The huge officer obeyed with a heavy sigh.
‘María, yesterday, 12 May, you declared that you arrived at Reigosa’s flat like any other day, at around three in the afternoon, and that you let yourself in with your own key. According to the statement, Reigosa gave you the key about two years ago, when you started working for him.
The officer paused, seeking the woman’s agreement. She made a signal with her head that he interpreted as a nod.
‘You went up to the top floor, which is the one you normally clean first,’ Estévez went on reading, ‘is that right?’
‘It depends, sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.’
‘OK,’ said Estévez, sternly staring at the woman, ‘but do you usually clean the top floor first?’
‘Often enough I do.’
Estévez was beginning to get impatient.
‘Let’s get this clear, ma’am. Did you clean the top floor first the day you found Reigosa dead?’
‘I already told you I did, officer. You don’t have to shout for me to understand,’ she added, lifting a hand to her ear.
‘Am I shouting?’ Estévez sought the inspector’s gaze.
Caldas kindly asked him to lower his voice. He really was surprised at how easily Estévez lost his temper, with barely any incitement.
‘Let’s try and make some progress here,’ said Estévez, going back to his papers. ‘It was half an hour after entering the flat, when you opened the door to the bedroom in order to clean it, that you found the late Mr Reigosa gagged and tied to the headboard of his bed. At that moment you left the house to go and call for help.’
The officer made another pause to look at the woman and obtain confirmation of what he’d just said.
‘Is that so?’ he asked.
María de Castro seemed more interested in the floor, where her gaze was fixed, than in the policeman’s question.
‘Is that so?’ Estévez asked again, more loudly.
The woman stared at him in silence.
‘Was that how it was?’ repeated Estévez, prepared not to budge until he’d had an answer.
‘More or less,’ replied María de Castro.
‘How do you mean “more or less”? Did it or did it not happen the way I’m saying?’ insisted Estévez, more and more impatient.
‘It might have been roughly the way you describe it,’ said María de Castro at last.
‘How might it have been roughly that way? This is your actual statement.’ Estévez went back to the first paragraph, pointed at it and said: ‘This is you, right, “María de Castro Rasposo, resident of Canido, Vigo, widowed…”?’
‘Officer,’ Caldas called him to order.
‘Inspector, I’m only trying to get the lady to tell me if it was the way it says here. For fuck’s sake, it’s not a trick question.’
‘It was pretty much as it says there, yes,’ said María.
‘Well, say it then. That’s all I’m asking you.’
The woman shrugged.
‘So you can also confirm you left the flat in search of the caretaker and, not finding him, went to the sentry box at the entrance of the island to warn the security guard who controls the bridge access,’ proceeded Estévez, putting down the papers on the table once he finished. ‘Is that right?’
A slight swing of the head was all he got in the way of an answer, but he interpreted it as an affirmative, and asked:
‘María, did you see anything odd in the flat?’
‘Odd?’
‘Yes, odd, out of the ordinary,’ repeated Estévez, irritated. ‘Beside the fact that Reigosa was dead, of course. Did you see anything unusual, weird, strange, curious, anything at all that caught your attention? Anything along those lines?’
‘Well I don’t know,’ she hesitated. ‘I mean, something that may have caught my attention… no, I don’t think so.’
Rafael turned to his superior, who was still on his feet, his back resting against the furthermost wall from the table.
‘Inspector, when this lady tells me “I don’t think so”, does she actually mean “no”?’
‘Yes indeed,’ she replied.
Estévez turned back towards the woman, who held his gaze a few seconds and then scornfully looked away to the window.
> ‘You’d better carry on yourself, chief,’ said Estévez, standing up. He was throwing in the towel.
The inspector nodded and took a few steps in the room, holding up the folder in one hand and his second cigarette of the day in the other. The woman seemed to take no notice of him, so he approached the window, thus shielding her from the morning light.
‘María, what I have here is a lophoscopic report,’ he said in a calm voice, showing her the folder.
‘A what?’
‘The fingerprints report. That’s a technique that allows us to identify the fingerprints that we find at a certain place.’
The frown on her face indicated that the explanation had not been enough. But she said:
‘I see.’
‘Do you remember that we took your fingerprints yesterday?’
‘I remember a bit,’ answered the woman.
‘Since fingerprints are unique to every person, once we obtain them we can establish in all confidence who’s been at a certain place and identify which things they’ve touched.’
‘And?’ María de Castro seemed positive that the conversation had little to do with her.
‘Yours appeared all over the flat,’ Caldas informed her.
‘Mine?’ She seemed surprised.
‘Your very own fingerprints, María, they’ve appeared at the flat of the late Mr Reigosa’s,’ clarified the inspector, wriggling his own fingers.
‘Well, I work there,’ she said, ‘I guess that’s why…’
Caldas chose to ignore the reply and pressed on:
‘The thing is, the glasses were covered with your fingerprints too, María,’ he said softly.
‘The glasses?’
‘Do you know which ones I mean?’ asked Inspector Caldas.
‘Well, I know of lots of glasses,’ she replied vaguely.
Water-Blue Eyes Page 3