The Good Suicides

by Antonio Hill

  Mar looked away from the screen and fixed her eyes on the inspector.

  “No,” said Héctor. “I want you to see how Sara died. You deserve to see it.”

  He started the recording: the gray platform appeared before them. And Sara, anxious, looking behind her, with her cell phone in her hand.

  “Seeing her phone blank she must have realized you were plotting something,” Héctor continued. “That your threats weren’t a joke. Look at her!” he ordered. “Have the decency to see what you did.”

  Mar Ródenas obeyed. Then she really did become upset.

  “Then you sent her the photo, from an Internet café near the restaurant. It could have arrived later, but she received it on the platform. She became more afraid. And Iván, who’d seen her descend, only had to come out for a moment: call her, or show her a knife. And Sara was so desperate that she did the only thing she could think of to get away.”

  The metro was arriving in the station. The Dominicans took up the foreground, but Héctor could almost see what the images didn’t show: poor Sara leaping onto the tracks to avoid something that in her mind was worse than death.

  “You have no proof of this, Inspector,” Mar challenged him.

  “Well, I’m sure your fiancé will confess when we put the other possibility to him: that he deliberately pushed her. I don’t think he did, to be honest. Too risky, and also you need a real motive to kill someone in cold blood … No, Iván wanted to frighten her.”

  Mar Ródenas hung her head. By then there was palpable fear in her expression.

  “So once the rough patch was over you decided to go ahead with your plan and send the photo to everyone. They began to get nervous. Sara always had her computer on, so on a visit to her house you had obtained the email addresses. Not knowing all the details of the story didn’t matter: there was no longer any way of finding them out and you weren’t planning on giving up what you considered yours. What’s more, you guessed Sara’s death would have unsettled them all. But Sílvia didn’t prove easy: she refused. You were so furious, I’m sure. Your threats weren’t being taken seriously.”

  Héctor saw the tears brimming in Mar’s eyes. Of self-pity, rage or simply fear. He didn’t care; he pressed on without a break, raising his voice, accusing this girl of the crime she had to have committed.

  “By this point nothing mattered anymore: Sara’s death had made you both unwilling killers, so the next step wasn’t so difficult. And Amanda was the perfect victim. Sara, scandalized by such practices, had told you about their games, and also told you where Amanda left the key every Sunday evening. Finding her half-asleep suited you: I don’t know if you’d have been capable of killing her in any other circumstance.”

  “This is no more than supposition, Inspector.”

  “Come on, Mar! Don’t try to fool me: you set up the blackmail, you threatened Sílvia with someone else dying if she didn’t deliver the money. Amanda died to make your threats credible. Don’t expect anyone to believe it was chance.” Héctor smiled. “Right now one of my men is charging Iván, and however much he loves you he won’t take the blame for this. You know it.”

  Héctor lowered his voice and looked intently at Mar Ródenas.

  “Just answer me one thing: why do you hate them so much?”

  Mar held his gaze unblinkingly. Then she said, “You paint me as a monster, Inspector, and you speak of poor Sara as if she were a saint. But they were the monsters. They’d killed two people and went on with their lives, with their money, with their jobs, with their partners. Even after my brother. I just wanted the same as them: work, a house, a future. Don’t tell me I don’t have a right to that. You know how all this will end? I’ll go to prison and they’ll still be free. Because no one will bother looking for the bodies of the wretches they killed. The poor men who don’t matter to anyone.

  “Read the note Gaspar left, Inspector. I carry it with me always. Read it and don’t tell me those bastards don’t deserve to die. Read it in front of me and I’ll confess everything in writing.”

  And Héctor read it to her.

  Alba is crying. I can’t make her stop. I had written a full confession, but I don’t have the time or energy to repeat it now … what does it matter, anyway? This world doesn’t let you do things properly. I told Susana everything, I said the only decent thing I could do was confess. I can’t live with those deaths in my head. With the image of those dead dogs, the sound of that spade. With a promotion that is payment for the crime. A crime we hid among ourselves: Sílvia, Brais, Octavi, Sara, César, Manel and Amanda. I told Susana, I explained it to her, but she didn’t understand.

  Fuck, she won’t stop crying … I told Susana and she didn’t understand, she told me it was fine, I wasn’t any more to blame than the others, she wouldn’t let me throw it all away. It was like talking to Sílvia or Octavi …

  I wrote my confession anyway. Tonight. While they were sleeping. I put everything in, without forgetting a single detail. And when I’d finally finished I felt like a new person. Calm, for the first time in months. I went into Alba’s room … Her bedroom smells so good, of clean dreams, of sleeping baby. I gave her a kiss and left.

  Susana was in the bathroom. She’d torn my confession into pieces, she was throwing it down the toilet. I heard the water flushing away the truth, as if it were shit.

  Alba won’t stop. When she gets like this, Susana is the only one who can comfort her. I can’t … I can’t leave her crying now her mother’s no longer here.

  44

  It was almost nine o’clock on Friday night and Héctor was still in his office, alone. The confession, which Mar had finally signed, was on his desk. He added it to the file, lacking the definitive report that fell to Agent Fort to write up, not able to get rid of the uncomfortable, uneasy feeling that usually overcame him at the end of cases as complex as this one, although never with such force.

  You’re getting old, Salgado, he said to himself. He wasn’t sure it was just age. He was sure he’d done a good job. Mar Ródenas had killed Amanda Bonet and prompted the suicide of Sara Mahler. But she was right about one thing: the two dead boys in Garrigàs deserved justice. And he wouldn’t rest until he’d achieved it.

  He attached the note to the rest of the papers, not knowing whether it was rage, helplessness or grief, pure and simple, that was clouding his vision. The pain given off by that desperate letter was more than anyone should bear and he knew that in his hours of insomnia Gaspar Ródenas would haunt him. He needed something to restore the little faith in humanity he had left or nothing would be worth it anymore.

  He wondered how those four seemingly normal people had been able to live with it. He tried to think about how they would be feeling at that moment, but he couldn’t put himself in their place.

  Sílvia was lying on the sofa of her house, in the dark, listlessly watching the weather forecast announcing the possibility of heavy snowfall in Barcelona that night. She’d put her phone on silent so as not to hear César’s calls, nor his messages pleading for forgiveness. If he’d really mattered to her, she’d still have been unable to forgive him. There was no pardon for César Calvo because it simply wasn’t worth conceding it to him. Just as there would be none for any of them if the whole truth were discovered. She was ready to accept it. Live with it. Last thing that evening, her brother had told her that now the case seemed resolved, the sale of the company would go ahead, although he took the opportunity to hint that he couldn’t promise her that the new owners would want to continue relying on her. Sílvia hadn’t bothered to respond; she was too busy looking for a boarding school for Emma, not abroad, as they’d once discussed, but in Ávila: a religious school for children of good families, which her daughter would detest with all her heart. She’d even called the school to ask if they would admit her mid-term, as a special favor. Fortunately, money still opened doors and Emma would begin a new life, away from her, at the beginning of February. She had communicated this to her a while before, in a tone th
at brooked no argument.

  At least that problem is solved, she thought, unable to face all the others. She leaned her head on the armrest and lay down fully, eyes fixed on the screen, where images of past snowfalls appeared, and closed her eyes out of weariness. The next thing she knew was a hand grabbing her hair and a rough voice, different from the one she knew as her daughter’s, whispering in her ear: “If you think I’m going to that convent you’re crazy, you bitch.” Sílvia smothered a moan of pain and saw Emma, smiling, leaving as silently as she had come.

  She remained still, curled up on the sofa trembling, more from fear than rage. Had it not been for the pain, she’d have thought what had happened was a nightmare. But no, it was real. As real as the music coming from Emma’s room at a deafening volume. Not knowing what to do, Sílvia looked for César’s number in her cell phone contacts and called him: there was no one else to turn to. César was strong, he could protect her … After waiting awhile she had to give in to the evidence that no one was going to answer and, still shaking, she switched off the television and shut herself in her room.

  The music kept playing like a declaration of war. That night Sílvia decided to surrender without a fight and pretend not to hear it.

  César would happily have answered if he’d received the call an hour before, while he was still at home, contemplating the fucking stained carpet that seemed to sum up his present and a large part of his future. Sílvia forgiving him seemed as impossible as forgetting the taste of Emma. So, when he’d smoked an entire packet of cigarettes waiting for an answer that didn’t come, he decided to go out to do something he’d put aside for a long time. He didn’t take his phone.

  The girly bar on Muntaner embraced him with the kind of servile affection he was seeking. He was sure that for the price of a drink, even if it was absurdly high, this place of dark corners would offer him what he needed to calm his nerves. He realized he hadn’t showered since the morning, but he didn’t care. No one there was going to throw it back in his face. At the bar, glass in hand, he scrutinized the faces of the girls working in the place, looking for someone who would awaken enough desire for him to open his wallet. After a while he found them all old, faded, so different from what he had in mind that he didn’t feel able to fuck them. Then, after draining the whiskey in a gulp, he asked for another and took the opportunity to ask the waiter, in a very low voice: “Listen, know where I can find a young girl? You know what I mean: young—really young.”

  Octavi Pujades’ wife died at dusk, when the snow was still only a threat. She simply fell asleep mid-afternoon and never woke up. Going in to see her before dinner, he realized her heart wasn’t beating.

  He closed her eyes and sat down on the bed beside her. He knew he should call his children and give them the news, start to prepare everything, but he needed to be alone with her for a while. He stroked her forehead and said a prayer in a low voice because it was the only thing that seemed appropriate. He’d already said good-bye on many nights when he’d believed it was all over, so now, the moment having come, he didn’t have too much to say to her. Eugènia had died too many times for the definitive end really to affect him.

  He went to the door of the house in an attempt to fill his lungs with air that didn’t smell of death and, unable to help it, he thought not of his wife but of Gaspar, Sara, Amanda and the two dead boys. He told himself that he was the oldest of all, the one who logically should have gone first. And yet, there he was. Alive, smoking a cigarette that refused to kill him and with a relatively well-insured future before him. If everyone kept quiet, of course. He had to trust in that.

  That night he didn’t even hear the howls of the neighboring dogs. The silence was absolute. It would have unsettled someone else, but for him it was already normal. Soon the house would fill with people, children, in-laws, friends, acquaintances, and this peace would end. He sighed: he’d have to go through it. It was the penultimate chapter before beginning a new story. A widower, about to take early retirement, and with enough money to face his twilight age with dignity. Ironic that, if nothing changed, he couldn’t complain about how things had gone for him.

  He had to force himself not to smile when he picked up the phone to call his son and tell him that his mother had died.

  Manel didn’t like storms, or rain. And snow even less, which according to the news was coming closer to the city. A snowfall that would conclude some horrible, shameful days in which he’d been treated like a criminal. He, who’d scarcely done anything except watch and agree. They’d locked him in a filthy place, with a couple of stinking prisoners, and then taken him to a public hospital where he had to wait to be attended amid a mountain of old, sick people. Bastards. It wasn’t fair. Hadn’t it been Sílvia who was driving the van? And Gaspar who’d given that dirty North African the whack with a spade? And in the end it was this Mar Ródenas who had killed Amanda and pushed Sara to suicide. But only he, Manel, had had to suffer hell. He, who’d just followed the directives of the majority without hurting anybody.

  Life is definitely unfair, he said to himself bitterly as he went to the kitchen to drink his usual glass of water. Cold water to clean him inside before taking a shower. His nightly routine was more necessary than ever after the experiences he’d suffered. Only for a moment he thought how horrible it would be if one of the others went back on their word and confessed what they’d done with the bodies: he didn’t know if that would send him to prison, but the very idea that it could happen brought him out in a cold sweat and made the glass fall from his hand, breaking into pieces on the floor.

  He interpreted the breakage as a bad omen. He gathered up the pieces, haunted by the terrible sensation that his life, his safety, lay in the hands of people who wouldn’t mind letting him fall. Seeing him crushed.

  Héctor was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn’t hear someone knocking at his door and he was startled when it suddenly opened.

  “Inspector Salgado.”

  “Yes?”

  It was Brais Arjona.

  “I know it’s late, Inspector, but they told me that you were still here. And I don’t want to wait until tomorrow to do this.”

  Brais took a chair opposite the inspector.

  “I’ve told my husband everything. Since I agreed to that damned pact, my only aim was hiding it. Now he’s left, and the fear of losing him has gone with him. You know? I always thought that if this happened I’d be filled with remorse: for what we did there, for Gaspar, for Amanda, for Sara. For everything … But I felt nothing. Nothing. Not regret, not remorse, not even sadness. It’s as if my emotions have frozen in this damned winter. That’s why I’m here. Because either I came and confessed or I threw myself out the window. And I don’t want to do that. I’ve always thought suicide was a bad solution.”

  Two hours later the street received Héctor with the subdued liveliness of a Friday night in winter. It seemed wrong that outside there were normal people, people who didn’t commit atrocious crimes. He took a deep breath and the cold pierced his lungs, and despite everything he took out a cigarette and lit it. Fucking tobacco.

  Héctor smoked in silence for a few minutes, under an extraordinarily dark sky. He couldn’t go home like this. Although he understood those who drank to forget, alcohol had never been a refuge for him. What he needed was air, people. To empty his mind of good and bad. It was too cold to stand still, so he decided to walk home.

  He took Gran Vía, walking for only a few minutes when he remembered the dream he’d had the night before Reyes. There were no toy stalls, or colored lights, or deafening Christmas carols. But he was the same, walking alone. He almost expected a damned glass globe to fall from the sky and trap him. And suddenly, as in the dream, the pedestrians stopped, surprised: they didn’t disappear but just looked toward the sky. Héctor also raised his eyes on noticing it was beginning to rain. It wasn’t rain; no, it was snow, just as they’d predicted.

  Héctor was on the verge of smiling. There was something about
snow that brought out the child in everyone. He went on, slowly, as he contemplated how, little by little, the street was being covered in an unusual white blanket. And he was near the Universitat Central when, cheered by this unusual weather that wasn’t easing, he took out his cell phone and called Lola, telling himself that that night everything was possible.

  45

  In the superintendent’s office, Martina Andreu was finishing her tale, in which she brought her boss up to date with everything that had happened after the removal of Ruth’s file. For his part, Savall listened to her with an expression of concentration and a furrowed brow.

  “Leire hasn’t discovered a huge amount, although she didn’t have much time,” the sergeant concluded.

  They said it was snowing outside. Inside the office the atmosphere wasn’t exactly warm either.

  “Martina,” he said after a few moments of silence, “you know if it weren’t you telling me this I would have to take a series of measures.”

  “And also even though it is me, Lluís. No problem, I’m ready to accept them.”

  “Let me think about it. One is tired at the end of the week. I learned a long time ago that it’s not a good time to decide anything.”

  “In any case, everything is stamped, classified and added to Ruth Valldaura’s file. It’s not much: the contents of the file Castro took from Ruth’s house, some handwritten notes, and the tapes she got from Fernández. This one, with the asterisk, is the one where Ruth appears.”

  Savall nodded.

  “Poor Ruth. Seeing that character up close can’t have been a pleasant experience. I say it firsthand.” He lowered his voice. “I suppose Ruth went to intercede for Héctor. God, what naïveté … as if that man could be persuaded of anything.”