I let him see I was thinking hard, for appearance’s sake. It was true that the case of the Barça player with the unfaithful wife had turned out to be more profitable than we’d expected, but in any case once solved it only sorted out our lives for a month and a half at most. Given the present state of our finances, with the prospect of a summer in Barcelona dying from the heat and Arnau and the twins on our backs day in day out, I thought that six thousand euros were six thousand good reasons to take the case on. There are five mouths to feed at home, and although the Alternative Centre for Holistic Well-being that Montse has set up in Gràcia works quite well, that cash cow’s yield falls short.
“Very well, back to the grindstone!” I exclaimed, all resigned, as I lit up another cigarette. “But is this Cabestany really that good? I’ve never heard of him…”
“I don’t know, my boy, I hadn’t either. But I think Agulló is smitten and as she’s a friend of Mariona and not short of the readies either…”
“Perhaps it was robbery,” I suggested. “Have the police discounted that?”
“Yes, nothing was taken from the room. Jewels or money. Besides, there’s the small matter of her skull being smashed open by the prize she’d just been given, a Subirachs statuette. And the murderer did a good job: her whole brain was in pieces. According to the police, it seemed…”
“That’s enough!…” I cut him dead before the coffee and biscuits in my stomach decided to repeat on me. “You’ve still not told me what the hell this manuscript has to do with all this.”
“From what I heard when I was under that table at the Ritz, the members of the jury told the police Marina Dolç was murdered in exactly the same way as the protagonist of her novel and in the same circumstances. In other words, the first thing we should do is read it carefully, don’t you think?”
“Fat chance of finding anything. I mean, that was probably only a coincidence.”
“Eduard, you know what I think on that front,” he retaliated solemnly. “That God doesn’t play dice.”
8
We decided (or, more precisely, Borja decided) that I would devote a couple of days to reading A Shortcut to Paradise while he was busy negotiating something or other in the upper reaches of the city, which I think was related to a golf tournament in which Merche was competing. The novel was a five-hundred-page door-stopper I suggested we split between us. My idea didn’t prosper.
“You were the one who studied Spanish literature,” he countered.
“Yes, but I didn’t finish my degree and that was years ago!”
“You might even enjoy it.”
We now had real work, and rather than cleaning the office, I headed home, the manuscript under my arm, resigned to spending a good few hours of my life reading that unpublished novel. I usually like to read for a time in the evening, before going to sleep, and, unlike my brother, I don’t only read thrillers. A novel normally lasts me at least a month – two if there are more than three hundred pages or if there are European Champions League matches – but now Borja wanted me to rattle through the novel and take notes into the bargain. According to the jury’s unanimous verdict, A Shortcut to Paradise had deserved to win a prize that probably didn’t have the prestige others enjoyed, but was certainly well-funded, and, as prize-winning novels automatically became best-sellers, I imagined it would at least be entertaining. I knew Montse liked Marina Dolç’s novels and I thought I’d seen the odd one at home, although I must confess I’d never read any. My current bedside reading was a very entertaining book set in the Congo, which unfortunately would now have to wait.
Theoretically, Marina Dolç’s latest novel might hold the key to finding out whoever had put its author out of circulation, though I thought it was extremely unlikely. Nonetheless my brother was right: a detective must be methodical and the novel might give us a lead. So I went home, knowing I’d have peace and quiet until six, when the kids got home from school. Montse was busy with her therapies at the Alternative Centre, and I knew she wouldn’t be back for lunch. As the anti-smoking session is on Monday and there are always lots of relapses at the weekend, Montse spends the day bolstering her clients and battling with her own withdrawal symptoms. So I had a bite to eat while I leafed through the crime pages in the newspaper to put myself into the right frame of mind, and then picked up that pile of paper, ready to begin. I was curious but also felt somewhat respectful. It was the first time I’d read an original manuscript that very few people had previously read.
I’m no literary critic or expert, so I can’t say whether A Shortcut to Paradise is or isn’t a good novel. But the fact was that if Borja and I hadn’t agreed to take on this case, I’d have put it back on the shelf at page thirty and gone for a stroll. It got off to a good start with a murder on page three and looked promising, but as my children would say, the rest was rubbish, a real brainclogging hotchpotch of loves, betrayals and disillusion, to my mind without rhyme or reason. Perhaps it might be a very good novel, I can’t deny that, but it was neverending . Whenever I took another sip of coffee to help digest what I was reading, I’d remember Voltaire and his daily intake of twenty-eight cups, in order to calm my spirits, and, as far as I know, he never had a heart attack. When I did finally reach the end, my whole body was shaking and I had a stinking headache.
“You read it?” my brother asked impatiently over the phone on Tuesday evening.
“Not yet.”
“You finished it?” he rasped on Wednesday.
“No, I haven’t. It’s rubbish!”
“Hurry up then.”
It took me three days to swallow it all, though I think it remained undigested. It was Thursday by now, and as Borja had to take Lola out that night, we agreed to have a drink at Harry’s. When I arrived, he was already there and on the phone, to Lola, I supposed. They seemed to be arguing. I acted as if I was oblivious and took out the notebook where I’d jotted down my reflections as I sped through the book. Borja ended the call straight away and asked me to start off. He appeared to be genuinely intrigued.
“First things first, the action takes place in Venice in the 1920s, in other words, it’s a historical novel,” I said, consulting my notes.
“Sounds good to me,” interjected my brother, who felt rather guilty he’d landed me with reading that tome. “The Twenties are a refined, very aristocratic period… Apart from all that shit in Russia, naturally.”
“The main character is Countess Lucrècia Berluschina de Castelgandolfo,” I continued, “a refined Italian aristocrat of Catalan provenance and a wealthy widow.”
“You see? I told you…”
“Just wait. It turns out the Countess has written a novel and entered it under a pseudonym for a literary prize that’s going to be awarded in a famous hotel in Venice.”
“Of course, that must be the famous hotel in the Lido where Merche took me once. Did you know they shot a film there?”
“Then,” I interrupted so as not to lose my thread, “the Countess, who lives in Rome, decides to go to Venice to collect the prize. Naturally, she stays at the hotel where the prize ceremony will be held and where coincidentally she bumps into a bunch of ex-lovers. The Countess is pretty, young, intelligent, cultured and so on and so forth, but is marginalized by the macho attitudes of male-dominated literary circles. She’s very talented, but as she is a woman writer, everybody ignores her. What’s more, she’s envied by the other writers because she is so wealthy.”
“Mmm… Like Marina Dolç,” commented Borja.
“And there are even more coincidences. The novel the Countess enters for the prize under a pseudonym is called A Shortcut to Paradise.”
“You don’t say it’s the novel that won the prize,” Borja deduced, beginning to get excited.
“Right first time! And that’s not the end of it: that night after one of those parties you are so fond of, with champagne, oysters and caviar, the Countess is murdered in her bedroom. Someone smashes her head in.”
“Just like Marina Dolç!”
“Out with it.”
“The murder weapon was the statue the Countess had just won: a to-scale reproduction of Michelangelo’s David.”
“Well, at least it’s a notch up on the apple,” added Borja. “Did you see the photos? That hand looked like the towers of the Sagrada Familia…”
“And all that happens in the first three pages and, surprise, surprise, the remaining four hundred and ninety-seven pages are the time the Countess takes to hit the ground. In that briefest of time spans (a few seconds, in fact) our good lady reviews her whole life in minute detail trying to deduce who the guilty party is.” I took a swig of gin-and-tonic. “I can tell you that after two hundred pages I was ready to conclude that a quite different crime had well and truly been committed!”
“Well, she was a best-seller and was awarded the prize; the novel must have something going for it…” retorted Borja.
“Sure, every six or seven pages there’s a steamy scene. The Dolç woman certainly knew her dirty language if nothing else… I was soon up to here with all that heaving flesh.”
“All right. But who’s the murderer at the end?” asked Borja impatiently. “A man? A woman? A lover? Another writer?”
“Well, it is true,” I gave a heartfelt sigh, “after wading through all that trash, you’re really desperate to know who killed her. If only to thank the person concerned…”
“But there must be some clue or other…”
“Well, no. According to my notes” – I consulted my notebook – “I’ve counted forty-three male and female lovers (with the requisite detailed description of forty-three corresponding fucks), two ex-husbands, four fathers-in-law, seven girlfriends, three gay friends, at least five envious writers, six maids and a couple of butlers. The list of motives and suspects is endless. In the eighties, at the low end.”
“Fantastic,” commented Borja, wrinkling his nose.
I was in need of another gin-and-tonic. Borja, on Cardhu as usual, ordered another round. It was a few minutes past eleven and Harry’s was beginning to liven up and fill up with people and smoke. That cocktail bar in the Eixample was turning into our second office and I didn’t regret that one bit: it was a sight more welcoming than the vaudeville set where we received our clients. Just as well there are still some of these establishments left in Barcelona, because I personally hate the snobby bars where Borja likes to hang out, where I feel ill at ease and always end up in a foul temper.
“Anyway, that would be too much of a coincidence, wouldn’t it? I mean if Marina Dolç’s murderer was a carbon copy of the fictional murderer of this Lucrècia,” I added. “He’d have to be very stupid…”
“Or very clever.”
“Obviously, on the other hand, if Amadeu Cabestany had glanced at the novel, however superficially, he had reason enough to see red when he saw she’d won the prize,” I said, putting myself in his shoes. “I don’t know what his novel is like, but…”
“Here you have it.” Borja waved it at me. “ I brought it along so you can take a look at it as well.”
“You must be joking!” I refused point blank. “It’s your turn now.”
Amadeu Cabestany’s novel was much shorter, barely two hundred pages, but its title wasn’t at all appealing.
“Squamous in the Tempest,” I read. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Not a clue…” retorted Borja, now resigned to weathering the storm at the weekend. “But we can ask his agent. I’ve arranged an appointment at her office tomorrow.”
A Shortcut to Paradise was a cul-de-sac. It was apparently no short cut at all to its author’s murderer. We drank our second round and, as it was late, my brother offered to drive me home in the Smart. I immediately agreed. I wanted to get to bed and forget all about that wretched novel. If I hurried, Montse might still be awake. Perhaps I wasn’t so fed up of flesh after all.
“You know we’ve a party on the roof terrace tomorrow,” I said, remembering it was St John’s Eve tomorrow. “Montse told me Lola has invited you.”
“Yes, right, I’m not sure what I’m doing… Maybe I’ll come for a while,” he responded rather uneasily.
I imagined Merche, his official girlfriend, would be spending the night with her husband and their wealthy friends, so we’d have the pleasure of Borja eating cake on our terrace. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, particularly for Lola, whose hopes were raised by the day. She likes to vaunt her feminism and sexual liberation, but then wallows in self-pity. She may be a modern woman, but I’m sure she cries her heart out over Borja, and that’s pain of her own making.
“I’ll come for you at about ten thirty,” Borja told me when we were in front of my place. “Don’t be late.”
“And I hope you enjoy the novel…” I replied with a smile, desperately praying it would be as dreadful as mine.
If my brother thought a couple of gin-and-tonics and a ride home would be enough for me to forgive him for making me swallow that door-stopper, he was wrong, wrong and wrong again.
9
Borja usually drives Merche’s two-tone Smart she bought the moment they became the fashion among her wealthy girlfriends. Merche is a tax lawyer and also owns a stylish silvery Audi she usually uses when visiting Barcelona’s upper reaches. However, that Friday the Audi was in the garage, and, as the Smart was hers, she’d driven it to work and left us carless. We had an appointment with Clàudia Agulló, Amadeu Cabestany’s agent, at eleven, and my brother dropped by our flat well in advance to collect me. That was rather silly of Borja, because the agent’s office was much closer to where he lived, but I’m sure he didn’t trust me and wanted to run his eye over what I was wearing. To keep him happy and spare myself a sermon, I’d put on my Armani suit and the tie Mariona gave me for Christmas.
“It’s really too hot, you know. Do I really need to wear a jacket?” I grumbled. I’d started to sweat and felt it would be ridiculous to wear a winter suit in the middle of June.
“No, you don’t, but we’ll have to sort something out…” And after giving me the once over, he added solemnly, “We’ll go to Adolfo Domínguez’s this afternoon. We’ll find a decent outfit there.”
Our professional expenses were basically the rent we paid on our office at the top of Muntaner and our clothes. My brother is always concerned to create a good impression, and, as we normally mix in the most select circles of Barcelona, he forces me to wear my Sunday best, whether it’s hot or cold. Borja was wearing a Marengo grey summer suit, a sandy yellow shirt and a lurid tie, naturally all the exclusive brands. From what I remembered, he was never so self-conscious or worried about his image when he was young, but the second he returned to Barcelona as Borja, he began to spend most of his income on clothes. Luckily, the office rent is extremely low considering it’s in such a high-class neighbourhood. That’s a special dispensation from one of Borja’s millionaire friends whom he rescued from a tight corner, although I’m none too sure there isn’t an even shadier background to the deal. All in all, I’d rather not ask. As for Mariajo, the secretary we theoretically employ to answer calls and see to the paperwork, she’s a virtual being invented by Borja and comes gratis. Her existence encompasses the little pot of red nail varnish sitting on what is supposed to be her desk and the Loewe headscarf draped over the back of her chair that Borja snaffled one day in a restaurant. When we’re about to see a client, we spray around some L’Air du Temps we keep in a drawer and tell our client that the secretary is out running errands.
After he’d grumbled and given the nihil obstat to my appearance, we went to Major de Gràcia to get a taxi. There were very few about, and when we did finally track one down, Bor
ja told the driver to leave us in Plaça Adrià. The vehicle reeked of cheap air freshener and I began to sneeze. The driver, who was on the phone, seemed to be in a rush. As there were no big hold-ups, we arrived in five minutes.
“My God, that guy was in a hurry!” I exclaimed, realizing I was still in a state of panic.
“He obviously had to get somewhere fast.” Borja glanced at his watch and grimaced. “We’d better have a smoke. We’re miles too early.”
Clàudia Agulló’s office was in a modern building, no doubt built in the Seventies, that was good quality if not the height of luxury. It looked over Plaça Adrià and had, naturally, a uniformed porter and a service lift. Borja smiled in anticipation.
“Good morning. We have an appointment with Mrs Clàudia Agulló,” my brother announced when a young woman who must have been her secretary opened the door.
“I’ll tell her right away,” said the woman as she ushered us in and smiled at Borja.
We didn’t have long to wait. A highly perfumed Clàudia Agulló was expecting us, and looked serious and on edge. Borja was right in one respect: she was attractive. Tall, thin but not skeletal, with a fine head of black hair and dark eyes, she wasn’t exactly my type, but I can vouch that if that lady and I were the only survivors on the planet after a nuclear catastrophe, it wouldn’t stay that way long, at least as far as I was concerned. Borja looked her languorously but politely up and down, and she didn’t seem to object. It was obvious she was a woman accustomed to arousing passions and erections. Just in case, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to summon up the swim-suited image of my mother-in-law on the beach last summer: it never failed. Joana, Montse’s mother, has many virtues, and that is one of them.
Clàudia Agulló invited us to sit down on her sparklingly new white leather sofa and told us they were waiting for the judge to decide whether to grant Amadeu Cabestany bail, though it seemed very unlikely, whatever the cost. The stink raised by the media over the crime had unleashed an incomprehensible panic in Catalan society and everybody was trying to cash in: the dailies boosting their sales, the police winning political points and the politicians, as usual, attacking each other. Given that state of affairs, it would be difficult for them to let him out. Clàudia seemed despondent and asked us about Marina Dolç’s novel.
A Shortcut to Paradise Page 6