A bouncer wearing a shirt and trousers with suspenders unhooked one of the ends of the cordon.
‘Good evening.’
‘But all that walking wasn’t just to come and have a drink, was it, inspector?’ complained Estévez, when he saw the place.
Caldas had twice tried to tell his assistant that they were heading for a gay bar where Reigosa was a regular, but Rafael interrupted him both times with his whingeing about the pain in his foot and the fish sting.
‘What do you think?’
‘What do I know?’ Then Estévez added half to himself: ‘I guessed a simple “yes” or “no” would be too much to ask for.’
‘No,’ spat Caldas, sick of his muttering.
They walked into the pub, which was dark and played electronica one decibel above what seemed bearable. Twelve or fifteen guys were on the dance floor, and a further five were propped against the bar.
Estévez went to take a seat in one of the armchairs near the dance floor. He pulled a table towards him and put his wounded foot on it, keeping it elevated. Leo asked him to wait and walked over to the bar. The barman’s T-shirt looked as if it was about to burst.
‘What can I get you?’
‘What wines have you got?’
‘Cheap wine, darling,’ replied the barman in a camp voice.
‘A beer, then,’ said the inspector.
The guy with the tight T-shirt looked at Estévez:
‘And for the big guy?’
‘Another one.’
When the barman came back with the drinks, Leo got the photograph of Reigosa out of the pocket of his jacket. He placed it on the bar and turned it so that the barman could see it properly.
‘Do you know this guy?’
‘We don’t know anyone here, it’s company policy,’ the young man snarled, without even pretending to look at the picture.
Caldas placed a fifty-euro note on top of the photo.
‘That only pays for one of the beers,’ added the other.
When the inspector placed another fifty on top, the barman recovered from his temporary fit of amnesia.
‘The beers are my treat,’ he said, stuffing the hundred euros into his jeans. ‘They call him “Big eyes”. He’s a friend of Orestes.’
‘Of whom?’
The guy pointed upstairs.
‘Orestes.’
Caldas looked in the direction of the finger, above the dance floor. A glass box, hanging from the ceiling by thick steel cables, served as the DJ’s booth. Inside, a very slender guy was working the decks. His disproportionately-sized headphones partially concealed his head of cropped hair.
For the boy’s own good, Caldas hoped those headphones were more comfortable than the ones he used at the radio station. He’d sometimes wondered if Santiago Losada’s were as cumbersome as his. He had the feeling the presenter personally took care of leaving the hardest ones to him just to torment him.
Caldas grabbed the drinks and went over to join his assistant. Estévez, who still had his foot on the table, leaned over and said:
‘Inspector, those two guys behind you at the bar are kissing.’
‘Fine,’ replied Caldas tersely.
‘Don’t get me wrong, chief, I’ve got nothing against them.’ Absorbed as he was in his sore foot, he hadn’t noticed that he was in a gay bar until now. ‘People can sleep with whomever they want.’
‘Just concentrate on your beer, and keep an eye on mine for a moment,’ Caldas asked, leaving the glasses on the table by his assistant’s injured foot. ‘I’ll be right back.’
The inspector walked across the bar, over to the ladder leading up to Orestes’s booth. He disliked the idea of climbing up such a light metal structure, but there was no other way of attracting the DJ’s attention. Once at the top he got out the photo of Reigosa and knocked on the glass. The deafening noise of the loudspeakers on both sides of the booth forced Caldas to knock harder; he was positively banging on the glass by the time the young man noticed he was there and opened the door.
‘I’m working,’ he shouted.
‘Are you Orestes?’
The DJ nodded his shaven head, and the inspector showed him the photograph.
‘No,’ said Orestes with a smile, his lips near the inspector’s ear. ‘Big eyes hasn’t come round for a few days. You’ll have to settle for somebody else.’
Caldas wanted to waste no time.
‘I need to have a word with you. I’m a cop.’
‘You’re what?’ the man frowned, and his ample forehead creased with wrinkles.
Caldas showed his badge.
‘Inspector Leo Caldas,’ he shouted.
‘From the radio?’
It couldn’t be.
‘Yes, from the radio. Can you turn this down a bit?’ he asked, pointing to the booming loudspeakers.
‘This is a bar, inspector, I’m supposed to play music.’
‘Let’s go somewhere else, then,’ shouted Caldas.
‘I’m working, inspector.’
Leo gestured with the five fingers of his right hand.
‘I’ll only keep you for five minutes.’
Orestes agreed to it with a nod, and the inspector climbed down the fragile ladder without looking below.
As he waited for the boy by the dance floor, he glanced at the spot where he’d left Estévez. He smiled when he discovered that his assistant had taken off his shoe and his sock, and was resting his bare foot on the table without any consideration for propriety.
When the DJ joined him, Caldas asked him if there was somewhere quiet they could talk. Orestes led him to a chaotic storeroom, whose door muffled the noise a bit.
‘So what are you after, inspector? Please get straight to the point, I have to be back in the booth in two songs.’
Leo lit a cigarette, offered one to the shaven-headed boy, and showed him the photograph once again.
‘He’s a musician, he’s called Luis,’ said Orestes.
‘Yes, I know, Luis Reigosa. What else do you know about him?’
‘I don’t know him that well, inspector. He’s not really a regular and doesn’t stay long when he comes here. We’ve talked a couple of times, but not much. I don’t think he likes the atmosphere here a lot.’
‘When did you last see him?’ asked Caldas.
‘To be honest, I haven’t seen Big eyes for a while now. As I said, he’s not a regular, inspector. He comes and stays until he finds someone. And then he leaves, you know.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘If he gets lucky, he leaves early. He doesn’t bide his time here.’
Hearing the roaring music behind the door of the storeroom, Caldas wasn’t surprised that Reigosa tried not to stay there longer than strictly necessary. It wasn’t the first time the inspector had been at a gay bar, and like other times he had the impression that many of the crowd gathering there had very little in common except their sexual orientation.
‘Did he have a boyfriend?’
‘Big eyes? Not that I know of. Why the question in the past?’
‘Because he’d dead,’ said Caldas coldly.
‘What?’ Orestes seemed not to have understood his answer.
‘Yesterday Big eyes, as you call him, turned up dead, tied to his bed. Murdered, in fact.’ Caldas was purposefully blunt.
Orestes was visibly shocked by the news, and Caldas noticed how his lower lip trembled.
‘Good God! Are you sure?’ exclaimed the DJ.
‘Absolutely sure. That’s why I’m here. We think it’s quite likely that he was killed by a lover. Perhaps you know some of them.’
Orestes rubbed his shaven head, as if brooding over his answer.
‘I’m asking you whether you know any of Reigosa’s lovers,’ the policeman insisted.
The lad glanced at him with bleary eyes.
‘You don’t have lovers, inspector. You have a partner or you sleep around. A guy like Luis Reigosa had no trouble sleeping with whomever he liked. You can do
the maths,’ said Orestes, looking towards the door. ‘Off the top of my head, I don’t know … I’ve seen him talk to many people, but I’m not sure if they were just friends or not. I’d need to have a think. Couldn’t we talk some other time? I really have to go back to my booth.’
‘Tomorrow?’
Orestes uttered a timid ‘Yes’ and the inspector asked:
‘Before lunch?’
‘I finish here at seven in the morning, inspector.’
‘What time can you make it?’ Caldas tried to corner the boy.
‘I don’t know … better in the afternoon. Five o’clock?’
‘All right. Here?’
‘No, not here,’ the lad replied quickly. ‘Do you know the Mexico Hotel?’
‘Near the station?’
The DJ nodded.
‘There’s a cafe on the ground floor. Shall we say there at five? I’m sorry not to be of more help right now,’ apologised Orestes, and rushed out of the storeroom.
Leo threw his cigarette on the floor, trod on it and went after him.
‘One more thing.’ Caldas held him by the shoulders, so that the boy had to look him in the eyes when he spoke. ‘Do you know if Reigosa has a friend with completely white hair?’
Orestes didn’t answer.
‘Very very white,’ insisted the inspector.
‘Very white… No, I don’t know who that might be.’ His lip was no longer trembling. ‘I’m sorry, inspector, the song’s about to end. I really must go back up now.’
Orestes hurried upstairs, and as Caldas saw him get in the booth he had the feeling that the boy was hiding something. Perhaps he hadn’t lied – he hadn’t sounded like someone who’s lying – but Caldas was pretty sure he wasn’t telling the whole truth either. He’d been too shocked by the news of the musician’s death, and Caldas could only think of two reasons for that reaction: either Reigosa wasn’t just an acquaintance, or the shaven-headed boy was afraid of something. Perhaps it was a combination of both. In the circumstances, it might be in Caldas’s best interest to meet him the following day. One could remember a lot of things during a sleepless night. There was also the risk that the boy might bolt.
Caldas went to join his assistant and claim his beer. It was then that he saw the commotion at the back of the room, in the middle of which stood Estévez, towering half a foot above everyone else. He was holding his gun in one hand and his shoe in the other, and was roaring with rage, completely wild. The volume of the music and the general hullabaloo meant Caldas had to approach the scene before he could make out his assistant’s words:
‘Whoever comes closer than two metres is a dead man.’
The policemen lost themselves in the hustle and bustle of Arenal Street.
‘I thought you were tolerant of gay people?’
‘I don’t mind what people are,’ replied Estévez, who, grinding his teeth, limped along with his eyes fixed on the ground. ‘So long as they don’t try to give me a foot massage!’
‘Did you see his face after that caress of yours?’ Caldas told him off.
‘Well he can go fuck himself,’ replied Estévez, without the least sign of remorse.
‘Rafa, this can’t go on. Is there not a way you can control yourself?’
‘If I hadn’t controlled myself I would have shot him.’
‘It was bad enough with the beating,’ said Caldas, picturing the state of the poor man’s face.
‘Don’t play with me, chief. He was lucky my foot hurt so much, or else …’ Estévez came to a halt in the middle of the pavement. ‘Now, are you going to explain what we were doing in that dive? Don’t tell me it was just for an arsehole to try and massage my foot.’
‘Luis Reigosa was gay,’ replied the inspector. ‘He sometimes went to that bar too.’
‘So I was right! The sax wasn’t the only thing he liked blowing!’
‘We’d better call it a night, Rafa. I’ll tell you more tomorrow.’
Leo Caldas got home at around quarter past two. He lay down and, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, unsuccessfully tried to fathom that nagging feeling which, since the day before, reminded him that he had missed something during the inspection of Reigosa’s flat.
But as he fell asleep he forgot all about it.
He dreamed of pale hands and piano keys.
Legend
‘You want me to draw up a list of all the people who have access to formaldehyde?’ asked Ana Solla, chief of pathology at the General Hospital.
‘If it’s possible.’
‘Inspector, this is not morphine we’re talking about. Formaldehyde is not a product that requires any safety guidelines. It’s not subject to any security measures. We don’t even keep it in a locked place.’
‘But isn’t it highly toxic?’ insisted Leo.
‘Do you keep bleach at home under lock and key, inspector? This is a hospital, and the products are supposed to be handled by qualified staff. We have to be practical. If we had to fill in a form every time we need to use a product like formaldehyde, we’d spend our day writing instead of practising medicine, which is what we’re here for.’
‘So anyone could come and take it without leaving their details.’
‘That’s right. We ask no questions.’
‘You must be the only ones around who don’t,’ muttered Estévez, who was behind the inspector.
‘Could you tell me about the men in your medical staff, doctor?’ asked Leo Caldas, trying another line of approach.
‘Tell you about them?’
Caldas knew it was forbidden to smoke inside the hospital, but he instinctively reached for the packet of cigarettes he carried in his pocket. Alba used to tell him off for his habit of lighting up the moment he started a conversation: for hiding behind a shield of smoke.
‘Yes, above all I’m interested in doctors, nurses, anyone who might have access to formaldehyde and knows how it works.’
‘How do you mean someone who “knows how it works”?’ The doctor gave him a scornful look. ‘Do you know what formaldehyde is, inspector?’
‘Vaguely,’ admitted Caldas, holding on to the cigarettes inside his pocket.
‘We’re talking about a preservative agent, whose use does not require any advanced medical knowledge.’ The doctor grabbed a jar from a nearby table to accompany her explanation. ‘You pour the solution, which you don’t have to prepare because they send it already prepared from the lab, into a jar like this one,’ she said, holding it up, ‘and then you put in the tissue you want to preserve. The tissue is preserved without any further need for handling it. Do you think you’d need to know a lot about the product to be able to repeat that procedure?’
Caldas didn’t reply. He was irritated by the doctor’s manner. As a child he’d had to put up with a teacher who, instead of explaining to his pupils what they didn’t know, made fun of their ignorance in front of the class. He asked the children to repeat their wrong answers out loud, and laughed at them, revealing a line of yellow teeth. The doctor’s tone reminded Caldas of the inflexions the old teacher preferred.
‘Are you sure you know what you’re after, inspector?’ asked the doctor again. ‘I don’t get that impression.’
‘No, I’m not sure of anything, doctor. But I’ve got a crime on my hands for which a solution of thirty-seven per cent formaldehyde, just like the one you keep here, was used to murder the victim.’
‘Formaldehyde poisoning?’
‘Something like that,’ replied Caldas with the feeling that the doctor, as his teacher had, was about to ask him to repeat it out loud.
‘Could you tell me what you expect me to say?’
‘We are convinced that the murderer had a certain knowledge of the toxicity of formaldehyde, as otherwise it would have been quite difficult for them to use it as a weapon.’
‘Are you accusing me, inspector?’
Caldas shook his head.
‘We believe the killer might be a man. We’re looking for those men who ma
tch the profile.’
‘And you expect me to tell you what the men I work with are like, just in case any of them matches the profile?’
Caldas found that mocking tone exasperating, and he had to control himself not to shout at her.
‘Precisely, doctor,’ he said, trying hard to look calm, ‘that is indeed what we expect.’
The doctor thought it over for a few seconds.
‘You only want the men’s names, right?’
‘For now,’ confirmed Caldas.
‘There’s only one doctor here – Doctor Alonso.’
‘And the assistants?’ asked Caldas.
‘Male assistants?’ The chief doctor gave a contemptuous snort. ‘None. And the nurses are all female too. There are no patients who need to be lifted here. We need more brains than brawn.’
Caldas was not there to listen to sarcastic remarks; he had enough of that kind of thing at the radio station.
‘Is Doctor Alonso married?’
‘I think so.’
‘Any children?’
‘Inspector, you’re entering into personal matters. Those are questions that affect Doctor Alonso’s privacy,’ she complained.
Caldas bit his tongue not to reply that the question he’d really like to put to her was of a far more personal nature: whether she could tell him anything about her colleague’s sexual orientation.
Instead he said: ‘I’d like to cross him off my list without calling him in for an interrogation, doctor. As you can imagine, it wouldn’t be pleasant for Doctor Alonso, or this department, or this hospital to become involved in a murder investigation. The press can be a real pest when there’s a certain kind of scandal in the air.’
‘Doctor Alonso has three or four children,’ replied the doctor dryly. ‘I’m not too sure. We can ask his secretary, if you like,’ she said, gesturing in the general direction of the phone.
‘I’d rather speak to him in person,’ replied Caldas.
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. Doctor Alonso is at a conference in the Canary Islands.’
‘How long has he been away?’
‘Does that matter?’
It did. The doctor grudgingly searched through the drawers of her desk until she found a year planner.
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