The Antiquarian

by Julián Sánchez

  “That’s quite a bundle,” Samuel commented.

  “I don’t even know what I’ll spend it on. The truth is, I’d rather do without the money and have Artur still here with us. But I’m afraid nothing can be done on that front.”

  “Enrique.” It was a new voice coming from the other end of the room.

  They all turned at once. Standing in the doorway was Captain Fornells, looking fatigued, even despondent. His face showed the lack of sleep and a vague, barely perceptible sadness. He walked toward the group but stopped halfway, apparently uncomfortable, perhaps feeling like a stranger in a setting he was completely unaccustomed to. With a worn-down gesture, he motioned for Enrique to approach. Enrique excused himself and obeyed.

  “Fornells, what’s happened to you? You look terrible.”

  The bags under his eyes hung like flaccid half-empty sachets, his nose reddened, his face flushed like an alcoholic’s, all swollen, the result of countless hours of work, no sleep, and a healthy brace of carajillos to stay on the go.

  The captain simply looked at him long and hard with his weary eyes, crisscrossed by an infinite mesh of reddish thread veins.

  “We need to talk,” he finally said.

  “Okay. If you want we can talk in an office here. I’m sure Mr. Puigventós can arrange it.”

  Fornells, impassive, shook his head.

  “No, no. We need to talk at the station. I have a squad car waiting for us outside.”

  Enrique felt unnerved by Fornells’s request. He had always thought that law enforcement agencies were there to protect and serve citizens, not punish them. That was why he’d never had the uneasy feeling that runs down some people’s spines whenever they pass a police officer. But this time, despite his clear conscience, he detected that something was definitely wrong. This having to go to the station … and Fornells’s tone, so distant, so unfriendly compared to previous conversations, told him as much.

  “All right. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just say good-bye to my friends.”

  “Sure,” agreed Fornells, with a gesture of his hand. “I’ll be waiting outside on the sidewalk, by the steps. Don’t be long.”

  “Don’t worry. Just time enough to say good-bye and get my jacket from the office.”

  Fornells headed out the door without another word. Enrique went back to the group who, watching from a distance, had remained in expectant silence during the conversation.

  “What’s happening? Any news?” Samuel asked. “Have they found anything?”

  “I don’t know. He just told me we have to talk at the police station, but he didn’t add anything else.”

  “They’ve probably discovered something,” Puigventós contributed.

  “I don’t think so. You know that Fornells was an old friend of my father’s, and he’d taken the case like it was something personal. He seemed too upset to be bearing any good news. I’ll just go up to the office to fetch my jacket. Come with me?” he asked Mariola.

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll let you know if there’ve been any developments. See you soon, and thanks for all your help.”

  Puigventós and Samuel bid him farewell. Then, Mariola led him to the service elevator. Rendered mute, Enrique was unable to hide his concern.

  “Hopefully he’ll have some good news,” Mariola said.

  “Yeah, I hope so,” Enrique answered vacantly. Mariola decided it best to keep quiet. They came to the office. There, Enrique gathered his jacket, and they began walking toward the exit in silence. From the top of the Boulevard dels Antiquaris stairs, he could see Fornells leaning on a corner of the wall outside, waiting, a cigarette dangling lazily from his lips.

  “Seeing you worried makes me worry too. Call me as soon as you finish down there. I’ll be at home.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Please don’t forget.” Enrique thought her voice concealed a small plea.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t,” he said, and he gave her a soft kiss as if to confirm his intentions.

  Seeing him approach, Fornells tossed his cigarette to the ground and crushed it with a nonchalant stomp of his foot.

  “Car’s over there. Let’s go.” He pointed to a vehicle double-parked along the Passeig de Gràcia service lane.

  Alongside the vehicle, Fornells silently directed Enrique to the backseat door. He opened it; Detective Rodríguez, who greeted him with a nod, was waiting inside. He sat down and closed the door, which gave off an ominous clang. The squad car started up and made its arduous way into the ever-dense Barcelona traffic. Impatient, Fornells uttered a single word.

  “Go.”

  The driver, a uniformed patrolman, switched on the siren. The car picked up speed. All the other traffic made way for it as if it was a leper, making it possible for them to pull up to the Raval Precinct station just five minutes later. They had to open Enrique’s door from the outside, as it was permanently locked from within. With Fornells on one side, Rodríguez on the other, and the patrolman behind him, for the first time since they had left the Boulevard, Enrique became fully aware of his situation: he was, plainly and simply, under arrest.

  16

  Inside Captain Fornells’s office, seated before an incredibly untidy desk awash with odd scraps of paper, folders, and other documents, Enrique waited patiently for someone to tell him what the hell was going on. He’d been sitting there for nearly an hour, alone. Once they’d arrived at the station, the patrolman had disappeared, and Fornells and Rodríguez had taken him into the office without a single word. Time crept by, and the uncertainty was wreaking havoc on Enrique.

  Something was definitely amiss, but what? Had they found out about the manuscript being hidden? He was fully aware of having hidden potential evidence related to Artur’s murder; Carlos had told him so. But the killer was behind bars; given that, withholding the manuscript now seemed trivial. If they had figured it out, he could understand that they were miffed, but there was no need to put on this whole show. In any case, he doubted that was why they’d brought him there. It seemed too insubstantial.

  Rodríguez opened the office door, but halted before entering.

  “It’s Fornells. Says he won’t be long,” he heard someone say.

  Then the captain’s deputy closed the door and took a seat next to Enrique before his boss’s desk.

  “Please excuse the delay. Just as we were getting here the medical examiner called and we had to leave you to look into other matters. Fornells is on his way. He’ll be here within ten minutes. In the meantime, if you like, we can get started.”

  “Started with what?” Enrique asked, confused.

  Rodríguez took a photograph from a folder and handed it to him.

  “Know him?”

  “Yeah, I know him.”

  The large-format photograph was a shot of Manolo’s face. It must have been taken on a solemn occasion: Manolo, dressed in coat and tie, had carefully combed his hair and otherwise gave off a dapper appearance that was far from his usual dishevelment.

  “Do you know his name and what he does for a living?”

  “His name is Manuel Álvarez. He’s a philologist.”

  “When did you meet him?”

  “Excuse me, but before we continue, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a question. Is this an interrogation?”

  The detective meditated on his answer.

  “Not officially, but you could call it that.”

  “I don’t understand what’s going on. Maybe you could enlighten me.”

  “It’s pretty simple. Let me give you a rundown. At about twenty to one this morning we got a call alerting us to some kind of disturbance in an uptown Barcelona building. The call was from a retiree who lives alone. He’d heard some moaning, and then, silence. Our retiree doesn’t think much of it; it could be anything—a couple making love, that dog on the fourth floor with a discipline problem that gets beaten more than it gets petted. But when he goes to take out the trash, he notices that the door to the seco
nd-floor apartment is ajar. He thinks the owner, who he’s known for years and describes as extremely absentminded, has unwittingly left it open. He raps on the door with his knuckles but gets no response. Then he rings the doorbell. Same thing. He decides to close the door, but curiosity gets the better of him and he takes a look inside. Smack in the middle of the entry hall is his neighbor, or rather, his neighbor’s corpse.”

  “Manolo? Dead?”

  “Yes. Dead. Absolutely dead.”

  At that point, Rodríguez stopped talking, and in his silence he brazenly studied Enrique’s reactions.

  “Look, there’s Fornells. He’s back from the morgue, where they just finished the autopsy. He’ll have the medical examiner’s report with all the details.”

  “Murdered.” Enrique whispered, devastated.

  “Yes, murdered,” Fornells answered after opening the office door and closing it behind him. “You brief him?”

  “Just on the neighbor’s testimony.”

  “Funny. How’d you know he’d been murdered if no one told you?”

  “Intuition,” Enrique allowed.

  “Nice intuition. So nice, in fact, that you’ll have to tell us about it in greater detail. Look, Mr. Manuel Álvarez Pinzón, born on the curious date of February 29, taken out just last night, not even seventeen hours ago, for reasons completely unbeknownst to us. No signs of force around the door, and from the way the body was lying in the entry hall, we gather he was murdered at the very moment, or a few seconds after, he opened the door. The killer used a sharp metal object, like scissors, a letter opener, or a screwdriver. He stabbed him through his right eye socket all the way back to his brain; it took him about a minute to die. In that time, the killer tried to silence his victim’s cries with a white handkerchief, but he didn’t quite manage to, judging from the neighbor’s report.

  “The murderer’s identity as well as the motive are unknown. Nonetheless, we do have some information we think useful to get the investigation kicked off, some of which is quite revealing: the apartment was thoroughly ransacked, until whoever it was found whatever they were looking for. The other evidence doesn’t clarify much, but we were hoping your contribution would help us tie up some loose ends: Béatrice Dale, your ex-wife, currently residing in what was once Artur’s—now your—residence, went last Monday morning to the University of Barcelona, where she met with Joaquim Pagés, professor of classical philology. Béatrice needed help with a translation, and Mr. Pagés introduced her to his department’s leading expert, Mr. Álvarez. You take it from here, Juan.”

  Rodríguez, lost in thought, took a second to respond to his superior’s entreaty.

  “Sorry, Fornells, my mind was somewhere else. Look, today’s Wednesday; just two weeks ago, at almost the same time, Enrique came into this station to get information on his adoptive father’s murder. I even seem to remember that it was me who ran down our main theories, and you, just like today, came in a little later.”

  “You’re right. Life is full of those little coincidences,” Fornells conceded. “But today’s meeting is different from the one we had fourteen days ago, in so many ways. Back then, it was us trying to tell Enrique about one murder.”

  “And today it’s Enrique who’s going to tell us about another. Isn’t that right?”

  Both policemen fixed Enrique with their stares, awaiting the only answer possible.

  “Yes.” He rubbed his eyes before answering. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  Over the next three hours, while the two policemen took page after page of notes, Enrique gave a detailed account of everything that had occurred since Bety had told him of his father’s death. He began with the letter Artur sent him before he died, in which he told of his discovery and the fears it made him feel. He placed special emphasis on his initial suspicious, in which Guillem and Enric, and on a different level, Samuel, could be considered suspects of the crime, as they had learned of the discovery during their last get-together on Friday, April 22. Those suspicions grew when he received firm offers for Artur’s shop and antiques from all three of them. He told how his friend Carlos Hidalgo had helped investigate them—the good alibis that seemed to rule them out as suspects—in addition to the idea of the trap, a last resort to unmask the possible killer. When Bety told him of the Frenchman’s arrest on Sunday, May 8, any theory of the three suspects being linked to the killing was debunked. Brésard seemed to meet all the criteria to be the murderer everyone was looking for, so Carlos dismantled the undercover surveillance he had working for Enrique, considering the matter closed. In the meantime, Bety began investigating the manuscript at the root of the whole affair on her own. In so doing, she met Manolo, as they had correctly said, through Quim Pagés. Manolo, by unimaginable coincidence, also knew of the existence of the object described in the manuscript, and was happy to help. He told them about the nature of the object, the Stone of God. Then, Enrique gave him the manuscript to study in detail, an essential requirement to solve the case, as Manolo himself had said. From then on, he didn’t know what had happened.

  After he finished his account, Fornells and Rodríguez exchanged doubtful looks. The veteran captain yielded to his subordinate with a weary wave of his hand, meaning for him to continue the questioning. Rodríguez made known his intention to get the whole truth from Enrique’s statement.

  “You should know that there are several points you’ll have to clarify for us. But before starting with the questions I want to know why you didn’t tell us about the manuscript before. I perfectly recall it: you were sitting right there in that chair when Fornells asked you to think back to anything that could be related to Artur’s murder.”

  “Before I answer, I want to apologize to you. I think I’ve acted irresponsibly—”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Fornells cut him off. “Think about poor dead Álvarez. If you’d spoken up when you should have, maybe he’d be alive now, and not cold, dead flesh, recently gutted and resting in the refrigerator of the medical examiner’s office.”

  Enrique was left speechless. Fornells had just hit him where it hurt: what responsibility did he have in poor Manolo’s death? Clearly, much more than he could imagine.

  “Fornells is right, but only partly so. If you had spoken up when you should have we may not have caught the killer, but we might have been able to prevent this tragedy. So answer my question.”

  “I … When Fornells asked me for more information I didn’t want to say anything so I could figure out the mystery in the manuscript myself. I thought that if I told you about it, you’d seize it as evidence. That was at first; later, when I got those offers to buy Artur’s business, I realized what an odd coincidence it was. My friend Carlos agreed: he said, literally, that there’s no such thing as coincidence. That’s why he investigated the three suspects, though he didn’t find anything that incriminated them.”

  “So in a word, you kept quiet so it would be you who solved the mystery of the manuscript,” Fornells cut in once again. “Your motive was ambition. Isn’t that right? You wanted all the glory, all the accolades, for yourself: cracking the manuscript and solving the mystery, catching the killer with your own two hands.” He was losing control as he spoke, his hostility rising. “Why the hell couldn’t you trust us? That, by far, is what pisses me off the most! You came in here with your tail between your legs! We looked after you like we don’t look after anybody, and this is how you pay us back!”

  “Fornells,” Rodríguez piped up, trying to soothe his nerves, “let’s step outside a minute.”

  The two policemen convened briefly outside the office. Aside from feeling partly responsible for Manolo’s death, Enrique deeply regretted having lied to Fornells. The captain was right: thanks to his longstanding friendship with Artur, he had informed Enrique of investigation details that victims’ family members rarely learn about. He also remembered that Monday morning in London Bar, when Fornells had told him the story of the young Artur, things that Enrique would never have kn
own if it hadn’t been for Fornells’s kindness. He had every right to feel let down, professionally as well as personally.

  After the few minutes the policemen had spent arguing, Rodríguez came back into the office.

  “He’s really offended. He’s also pissed off, but what bugs him the most is that you didn’t tell him, and the mistrust that signifies.”

  “I wish I could tell you how sorry I am.”

  “Too late,” Rodríguez spat mercilessly. “There’s no helping Álvarez now, and Fornells will get over it sooner or later. Now then, if you’re feeling so repentant, and I don’t doubt your honesty, forget about how bad you feel and concentrate on answering my questions.”

  “Okay.”

  “Is the letter Artur sent you here in Barcelona?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll need it. What did Hidalgo think about your theory?”

  “He thought all three suspects had good alibis. He didn’t think any of them did it, but he was willing to indulge me with the trap we set for them. I want you to know that he thought we should share the information with the police. Keeping you in the dark seemed outrageous to him, and he told me it could even be a felony.”

  “He was right to inform you and wrong not to notify us of your theories,” Rodríguez mused. “But his prerogative as a private investigator includes keeping information like that to himself. Tell me something: do you realize what could have happened to you using yourself as bait?”

  “Yes. But I trust Carlos with my life: we’ve been friends since childhood, and I know he’s a competent professional. He organized surveillance that we canceled Sunday night, as soon as I got home and Bety told me the Frenchman had been arrested.”

  “I remember that, when we were talking on the phone, you swore when you found out it was Brésard.”

  “It seemed incredible to me that it wasn’t Guillem or Enric. Everything pointed to their being guilty!”

  “I notice you leave out Samuel Horowitz.”