Back home, he put the €15,000 he’d decided to pocket into an envelope which he deposited in his bedside table drawer. He immediately picked up his backpack and drew the curtains. He used scissors to undo one of the seams in the mattress, gouged out a hole in the latex and stuffed in the rest of the money. Then he resealed the mattress with a stapler and eased it into the protective cover he’d had the forethought to buy in Carrefour to ensure Marisol didn’t see the repairs, should she ever change the sheets.
He’d given the matter a lot of thought, but hadn’t come up with a better place to hide the wads of notes. And he had eventually concluded that years ago people must have had a good reason to keep their savings in their mattresses.
For months Senyor Benito continued to transfer money into the account he thought he had in Panama. The procedure was always the same: the patriarch drove his nephew to a bar in the upper reaches of Barcelona (always a different one), and Sergi would go in with a backpack or sports bag. Once inside, he’d order a beer and leave his leather jacket and bag for all to see. A few minutes later he’d go outside, ostensibly for a smoke, and hand his uncle the statement accrediting the transaction and a copy of the bank details showing the account balance. After he had watched the Mercedes disappear into the distance, he’d return to the bar, leave a handsome tip and retrieve his jacket and bag with the money.
Sometimes, it was the reverse operation: Senyor Benito would need cash and Sergi would be forced to undo the mattress and extract the required amount. Extracting money was more complicated, because he had to make up little bundles of notes, tape them to his legs and around his middle and, once inside the bar, go into the bathroom, put the money into a backpack (that he also had to carry incognito) and hand it to his uncle with the corresponding statement. Luckily, cash transfers were more frequent than withdrawals, because the operation to remove the little wads was extremely painful and Sergi was hard pressed not to yell out in the bathroom.
Senyor Benito’s business was going so well that Sergi had to refurbish one of his rooms as a guest bedroom to have an excuse to justify to Marisol the purchase of a new double bed and mattress. The mattress of the bed where they slept had become too small to accommodate the envelopes his uncle kept passing on, to the point that Marisol complained the bed was so lumpy she found it uncomfortable. Marisol was surprised that Sergi had decided to dispense with the soundproof bedroom where he practised his sax, especially when she reflected that Sergi never had any guests to stay, but as she didn’t want to be a control freak or give him any reason to poke his nose into her affairs, she didn’t say a word.
From the day he was forced to open the phantom account in Panama for his uncle, Sergi was constantly on edge, nervously keeping an eye on his mattresses. He hardly slept a wink, and was so afraid he’d be burgled that he was always on the alert, since he never now slept in Marisol’s flat and rarely saw his friends. Sergi didn’t live in La Mina but on the other side of Besòs, and he’d realized that being related to one of the most feared gangsters in San Adrià was no protection against the foreign gangs that burgled flats in his area. He was scared stiff, and what with his lack of sleep, he was becoming paranoid.
Quite unintentionally, Sergi had become a bank. And the responsibility for watching over his uncle’s savings night and day was souring his life.
*
Marisol issued an ultimatum: “You either come on holiday with me, or we’re finished.” She had noticed something was wrong with her boyfriend, but she couldn’t get to the bottom of it. Sergi never wanted to go out, and, when they had a date, he always found excuses to stay in his flat, when she would grumble, “You know, you’re like an old man, always stuck in front of the TV!” Marisol couldn’t work out what was wrong, but she put Sergi’s lethargy down to the heat and hoped a holiday away from it all, with plenty of fucks and paellas, would clear the air and restore his spirits.
Sergi knew it was absurd to fall out with his girlfriend and to spend all August shut up without air conditioning in his flat because of those mattresses, and finally, after much agonizing, he agreed to go on holiday to Tenerife. While Marisol organized the hotel and flights and packed their cases, Sergi rang all his friends and acquaintances hoping that someone would do him a favour and stay in his flat while he was away, but at that time of summer he found no one. Feeling desperate, he almost asked his mother; but, as he knew his mother liked to scavenge and hoard, he realized that, on his return, he would find his flat had been redecorated with thousands of objects from rubbish containers, with their attendant insects, and quickly dropped the idea. Even so, before leaving he hung up a sign (that he’d previously stolen from a neighbouring house) to the effect that the residence was protected by a well-known security agency. The sign lasted a day and a half, the time it took his third-floor neighbours’ adolescent son to tear it down.
Their holiday, in a five-star hotel on Tenerife, was a disaster. Sergi was so worried about the money in the mattresses that he didn’t eat or sleep, and the mojitos Marisol forced him to gulp down upset his stomach and gave him palpitations. He didn’t dare tell her how he’d fucked up – he’d have to give too many explanations, from his criminal ancestry to the delinquent nature of the family business – and the stress was lethal. By the third day, nerves had brought on a rash and his skin was covered in red blotches. Finally, anxiety affected his libido, and that also irritated Marisol.
“It would be OK if you couldn’t get it up once, but we’ve had a week of no-shows, honey!”
When they returned from Tenerife, Marisol was more tanned and Sergi thinner. After they left the airport, Sergi accompanied Marisol home, where he didn’t even get out of the taxi but headed straight off to Sant Adrià, where he saw that his door had been smashed in. The stress that had prevented him from enjoying the exotic landscapes of Tenerife and Marisol’s caresses had been more than justified.
“You idiot, idiot, idiot …”
They’d broken in and burgled his flat. While he tried to stop his heart behaving like a second-hand clothes drier on full spin and got the air circulating through his lungs again, Sergi hoped against hope that the intruders had only lifted his plasma television, sound system, MacBook and the two thousand euros he’d barely hidden as a kind of bait to catch a putative thief (who would exclaim “Bingo!”). But what was on offer was far too tempting, thought Sergi, when he saw the mess in the dining room, and immediately realized he’d been visited by meticulous professionals who had scrutinized every millimetre of his flat from top to bottom. The TV, MacBook, sax and other valuable items had disappeared, and the mattresses had been ripped open and the money taken.
Sergi was in despair. At the very least, his uncle had lost some six million euros. And he knew that his uncle hadn’t got to be who he was in Sant Adrià by being merciful and magnanimous when his subordinates put a foot wrong. If he found out about the fraudulent computer academy, the non-existent account in Panama and the wretched mattresses, he’d end up kneecapped or disembowelled in some backstreet. He’d fucked up big time. It was all over.
For a moment, Sergi was tempted to grab his suitcase, beat it and catch the first train that was heading far, far away, but he had second thoughts. Apart from being broke, he didn’t know where to go. Besides, if he suddenly disappeared, his uncle would decide he had stolen the Panama money and would move heaven and earth to find him. His death would be a slow one, knowing his uncle; it would be preceded by a long, painful session with all kinds of pincers, saws, knives and soldering irons. Not to mention Marisol, who, in retaliation, might end up gagged and beaten to a pulp in some dark alleyway, being forced to answer questions she didn’t understand and to which she’d have no answer.
Scarpering wasn’t an option, thought Sergi.
But he’d have to invent something if he didn’t want to end up in the cemetery.
It was a few days before Senyor Benito got back from his village. He did so the first week in September, furious because he’d had to drag Pac
o and Manel out of the cells after they’d had a skirmish with some musicians at a rave. Though he’d been dreading his uncle’s call for days, Sergi’s heart sunk when he heard his gravelly voice at the other end of the line.
“Are you in Sant Adrià? You’re back from Tenerife?” he asked.
“Yes …”
“That’s great. Some Russians have asked me to join in an operation, and I need a quarter of a million from my account in Panama to invest in the job.”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to get mixed up with the Russians?” piped Sergi in a thin little voice.
“It won’t be the first time we’ve collaborated, and the Russians have always kept their word so far,” replied Senyor Benito, who added: “I know they’re an odd bunch, but so are all foreigners, right?”
“I suppose so.”
“Make the necessary calls. I’ll come to pick you up early this afternoon. Don’t keep me waiting.”
And he hung up.
*
At four on the dot, Senyor Benito’s Mercedes parked in front of the block of flats where his nephew lived. It was a muggy day, but the layer of arctic sweat coating Sergi’s body was because he was scared stiff, and had nothing to do with the weather. He saw two Asian-looking men in the back of the car and his brain switched into panic mode.
“Uncle, I … Let me explain …” he spluttered, convinced his uncle had found out about the break-in and contracted two killers to do him in.
“They’re Chinese,” interrupted his uncle, who had opted to sit in the front seat. “They have a little job to do in Sarrià, but first they’ve got to go via Santa Coloma and get one of our cars so they can drive around Barcelona.” (One of Senyor Benito’s lines was buying and selling stolen cars with fake number plates.) “Chong” – the leader of one of the gangs Senyor Benito had allied himself with in the neighbourhood – “has asked me to take them, because they can’t handle the metro and you can’t trust taxi drivers.” Before Sergi could say a word, he whispered: “I reckon they don’t understand Catalan, but just in case, better wait till we’ve dropped them in Santa Coloma before we talk about our business. You never know with the Chinese.”
“Fair enough.”
Senyor Benito seemed in a good mood. “So how did your holidays go? Did you and Marisol have a good time?” he asked.
“You know, Tenerife is very nice, but nothing to write home about.”
Senyor Benito cracked a joke, saying he didn’t look very tanned after a beach holiday so he guessed he’d spent the whole trip shafting Marisol. Sergi concealed the feeling of humiliation that particular suggestion triggered and stared blankly out of the window.
“Biutiful Barcelona, right?’ he asked the man with an equally blank expression who was sitting next to him.
It was a quarter of an hour’s drive from Sant Adrià to the abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Santa Coloma de Gramenet. The chauffeur stopped the car, the men got out and Senyor Benito took advantage of the change to sit next to Sergi.
“We’d better get a move on, because I’ve got to meet the Russians at six. Where do we have to drive this time?”
Sergi took two deep breaths.
“Uncle, I have to tell you something …”
“What’s the matter?”
“The money in Panama has gone. The bank took it.”
“What do you mean, ‘the bank took it’?”
“You know, banks are a load of thieves,” Sergi went on, apologetically. “It’s a bit like what happened with that pyramid selling, except it happened in Panama and investors have lost all their money.”
“Everything?”
“Brexit is clearly to blame,” Sergi added, grim-faced.
“Brexit?” Senyor Benito furrowed his brows. “What the hell has Brexit got to do with Panama and my money?”
“It’s all to do with the collapse of the City of London. The international markets have lost it, you know, as nobody knows what the repercussions might be when the UK leaves Europe. As all economies are now connected —”
“The fucking English … Never did like them! They come here, get drunk, get as pink as prawns, jump off balconies, and spend sod all … And drink so many pintas they don’t have time to sniff … I do very little business with Englishmen. Let alone Englishwomen, who all dress as if they were whores!”
“Maybe we’ll get something back over time …” Sergi suggested. “But for now, don’t get your hopes up, Uncle. Look what happened to the banks. They lost investors’ money, were given millions by the government and not a single director has ended up in jail.”
“It’s a scandal. Can’t trust a soul these days!”
“Too right!”
Senyor Benito was beside himself. He wanted blood and guts, people hung, drawn and quartered, but Sergi managed to persuade him there was no point catching a plane and turning up at his bank’s headquarters in Panama brandishing a shotgun. What’s more, he added, his contacts had warned him that his bank was in Interpol’s sights and if he personally went to ask for his money back, they’d arrest him for tax evasion and put him in the slammer.
“And, believe me, the clink in Panama is nothing like here …” Sergi was quick to add. “The Model was a five-star hotel compared to prisons over there.”
“So what am I supposed to do now? Where should I keep my money?” Senyor Benito asked, beside himself.
“If you like, I can look into opening an account in Switzerland …”
Senyor Benito hesitated a few seconds before he replied.
“You know what, Sergi? I reckon we should forget all this tax haven malarkey and go back to the old tried and tested system.”
“What system, uncle?”
“Stuffing our money in our mattresses.”
Mansion with Sea Views
Rafael knew Ahmed was no fool, but he also knew that he wouldn’t dare go to the police.
Ahmed, a corpulent, curly-haired Moroccan who had been working for him for years, had found the bones when preparing the ground to erect a timber and stainless-steel railing designed to prevent anyone falling head first over the cliff. The brick wall that encircled the garden and acted as a barrier was low and in poor condition, and Antoni, whose mother was the owner, had asked Rafael to replace it with a modern fence as part of the general upgrade. It was a typical two-storey construction from the end of the sixties, located between Tamariu and Llafranc and overlooking the sea from the top of a steep precipice. It was a dangerous, fifteen-metre vertical drop, which gave the tenants of the currently uninhabited house spectacular views of the horizon and Costa Brava. They always grandly referred to it as their mansion.
When he’d demolished the low wall, Ahmed had also destroyed an exuberant hydrangea bush that Antoni’s mother had first planted when he was a child, and it was there, under the flowers, that his spade had hit against bone. As soon he realized what he was digging up weren’t the plant’s roots but looked more like fragments of a human skeleton, Ahmed had taken fright and gone to get his boss.
Rafael was inside the house inspecting the layout of the plumbing and went to have a look, convinced that Ahmed was going loopy.
“They’re only dog’s bones!” he’d responded, in order to calm him down and laugh the matter off.
Ahmed, however, had naively stuck to his opinion.
“What do you mean, Senyor Rafael? I think they’re a human being’s …”
“No, they’re not. They belong to the family’s pet dog, you can be sure of that. You know what? Why don’t you take the Transit and go and get some more tiles from the warehouse, because I reckon we’re going to run out soon.”
“What? Go to Barcelona now?”
Ahmed’s tone of voice was a touch impertinent.
“Yes, you bet. And take Hassan with you to help.”
Rafael was no expert, but he had immediately seen that Ahmed was right: the bones he’d dug up were human. When he saw them, he’d had a premonition, one of those that augur nothing
good, and that was why, before getting on the telephone to tell the mossos about the find, he wanted to remove Ahmed and his mate from the scene.
“Do you want us back this afternoon with the material?” Ahmed asked.
Rafael looked at his watch. It was half past one.
“No, don’t bother. But leave the Transit all set up so you can leave early in the morning.”
“You’re in charge, boss.”
Rafael waited till he heard the van drive off before picking up the spade and beginning to dig.
The skull soon appeared, together with a rusty knife and a battered, putrefying leather suitcase that contained the rotted remains of what in their day must have been items of clothing.
“Shit …”
Rafael left the spade by the side of the pile of earth around the grave and, as best he could, squeezed past. He had no doubt that the bones belonged to Antoni’s father, who had disappeared from his home forty years ago. The presence of a knife indicated that it had been a murder, and the fact he had been buried in his garden suggested that Antoni’s mother was implicated. After all, it could hardly be a coincidence she had decided to plant a hydrangea bush right on the spot where her husband was buried, now, could it?
If he had put two and two together, so would the mossos.
Poor Antoni …
Antoni’s father had disappeared from his own home on a Sunday in May 1974. When his wife informed the police, she had stated that money, a suitcase and several items of clothing belonging to her husband had also gone missing. As a result of that information, the detectives reached the conclusion that the man had abandoned his family by the back door, presumably to escape a boring marriage and seek his fortune somewhere in Latin America. It wouldn’t be the first time, given that in the seventies divorce wasn’t available and, that without the internet and DNA evidence, it was relatively simple to vanish into thin air. In the case of Antoni’s father, the police had taken it for granted that he’d gone of his own free will and they hardly bust a gut looking for him. They had enough headaches at the time chasing opponents of the regime to worry about the disappearance of a harmless local shopkeeper who had no political profile or criminal record.
The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories Page 10