For Juan Olmedo, that moment—the arrival of the ambulance team, the sound of their equipment as they set it out on the floor, the whispering that was soon replaced by sympathetic looks and words of condolence—remained imprinted on his mind like a milestone, a line, the end of the day. This was how he would always remember it. And he would always remember the following day, the horrendous hangover that felt as if he was wearing a helmet that was far too small for him, the cocktail of analgesics he took in an attempt to get rid of it, and his equanimity, his ability to grasp what was going on around him, what had happened, and what might happen in the future. By then, Dami was with him. He couldn’t see him, but he knew he was there, sitting on the curb outside their old house in Villaverde, wearing shorts and a striped T-shirt, his wavy chestnut hair looking almost golden in the sun. He was holding something, a broken gadget he’d found in the street and was fixing, and he looked up at Juan and smiled, showing his dazzlingly white teeth. Dami was there inside him, somehow slipping through a crack in time and sitting down beside him, lodging his smile in the absolute blank of Juan’s mind.
His mind had been empty, disconnected from the world for several hours. For the rest of his life, Juan would always remember how the cold white dawn of that day had seemed to stretch endlessly until, in the afternoon, he woke up sweating, with a merciless headache, not knowing where he was. He had fallen asleep on a sofa in the sitting room at Damián’s and someone had covered him with a blanket. Dami was looking at him, smiling, forcing Juan to remember. But he never remembered everything. He could recall the doctor offering his condolences, a paramedic holding out a form, and he remembered signing it, nodding as someone told him that in a case like this—obviously a domestic accident—an autopsy would not be necessary. He remembered that he’d carried on drinking.They must have removed Damián’s body before the rest of the household woke up, but he wasn’t sure. He was aware of having spoken to the maids, telling them what had happened, and asking them to clean the stairs before Tamara got up. He could remember—as if in a dream—the deathly pallor, the horrified expression of one of the maids. She was South American and she broke into panicked sobs at the idea of cleaning up the blood. The other maid, who was calmer, must have cleaned it up, or maybe it was one of his sisters, because he remembered seeing his sisters. He must have called them, although he was unaware of having done so.They later confirmed that he had been the one to phone, waking them at around seven in the morning, such an odd hour to ring on a Sunday morning that they had feared the worst before he even spoke.When they arrived at Damián’s, they found Juan asleep in a chair. Paca got him onto the sofa, covered him with a blanket, then shut the sitting-room door and told the maids to let him sleep.“There was nothing else you could do,” she said to him later. He’d apparently told them the whole story when they arrived and was so distraught, so incoherent, that they were worried about him.“Please get some rest, Juanito, or you’ll fall to pieces, and that’s all we need.”Tamara’s voice was what woke him. He wanted to see her and give her a kiss before she left.This was his first mistake.The little girl was surprised to find her two aunts there when she came down to breakfast, and she immediately asked where her father was. Trini said Damián had called them because he had to go on an urgent trip, and he worried Tamara might get bored being alone all day with Alfonso, so he’d asked them to pick her up and take her to spend the day with her cousins. Usually, Tamara would have been delighted at the idea, but this time she was reluctant to accept, and kept asking questions. Her father didn’t usually go away, all his business was in Madrid, and her aunts were acting very strangely, smiling a lot but with reddened eyes as if they’d been crying. Anyway, she always stayed at home with Alfonso and the maids when her father went out, which was happening more and more lately, and he’d never seemed concerned about her before. But she got ready to spend the day with her cousins because she had no other choice. She was almost at the door when Juan appeared, as pale as a ghost, and she realized they’d been lying to her. Going to see Tamara was Juan’s first mistake, but he wasn’t aware of it at the time.
His second mistake was less a matter of chance, and more a clumsy miscalculation on his part,The only decision that Juan Olmedo would later recall having taken during those hours when he was absent, when he never managed to fall fully asleep nor to be fully awake, concerned Alfonso. His sisters had agreed that Trini would take Tamara back to her house, and Paca would take Alfonso, but Juan had asked her not to: “No, he already knows what’s happened,” he explained, “he woke up with all the noise and saw Damián on the floor. I’ve spoken to him and I’d rather have him here with me.We don’t how he’ll react when he wakes up.”This was true, he wanted Alfonso there so he could talk to him before he had a chance to talk to anyone else, to tell him what he should say. He was sure that Alfonso would be asleep for a long while yet, because he’d given him a sleeping pill. He wasn’t sure when he’d given it to him, but he knew what he’d given him, and sleeping pills always had a strong effect on his brother’s nervous system. Juan calculated that he would probably not be able to sleep properly himself, and would therefore wake up before Alfonso, but he was wrong. Alfonso had already had several hours’ sleep when Damián fell down the stairs, and the next day he woke up around one in the afternoon, still terrified, and very hungry. A couple of hours later, emerging from the bathroom after washing his face and combing his hair, Juan heard Alfonso talking in the kitchen, and recognized the voice of the person he was talking to. An icy shiver ran down his spine.
Alfonso was sitting at the kitchen table, playing with a spoon and the pot from the crème caramel he’d just eaten. He smiled when he saw Juan. He was looking quite cheerful, as if he didn’t really understand what had happened. Nicanor, on the other hand, looked devastated. He and Juan had never got on, but that morning they hugged each other tightly.
“Why didn’t you call me?” asked Damián’s best friend. His eyes were red and swollen, his hands were shaking, and his voice was weak.“I was with your brother last night. He said he wanted to have a shower and get changed, and I waited for him for ages. I couldn’t think what had happened. I only found out from the maid, when I phoned a little while ago.”
“I’m sorry, Nicanor,” Juan said sincerely, almost affectionately.“I’m so sorry. I just didn’t think of phoning you—it’s all been such a shock. I know I called my sisters, but I can’t even remember doing it. But I should have called you too, you’re right, I just didn’t think.”
Nicanor hugged him again, to show that he accepted Juan’s apology, then he sat down. Meanwhile, one of the maids offered Juan some coffee.
“I was scared something like this might happen,” said the policeman. “Really scared. I kept telling him he was going to kill himself, crash his car or something. He was really overdoing it. I don’t know how his body could take it. I mean, he was still going to work. I thought he was going to fall ill, and in the end . . .”
He couldn’t finish his sentence. For a few minutes, all that could be heard was Nicanor sobbing violently despite his efforts to stop. Juan felt sorry for him. Nobody, except possibly Tamara, would ever grieve as deeply for Damián as this abrupt, severe man who was quite unused to weeping.
“I loved him like a brother, more than a brother. I loved him more than I loved anyone, you know that.”
Juan nodded—he did know. When the family moved to Estrecho, Nicanor’s district, he and Damián still shared a room and lived at the same pace, but they had already cut the invisible thread that had bound them in childhood.Then Juan had fallen in love with Charo, and Damián had become friends with Nicanor.“Little Martos,” as he was called in the neighborhood, was well known because his father was a policeman who liked to do his job outside office hours as well, although he only ever intervened to calm situations down, restoring order and breaking up arguments before they became fights. He had a reputation as a good man because he never went too far, and had never beaten anyone up, not even whe
n he arrested someone on his own initiative and hauled him off to the police station in handcuffs. Nicanor was his only son and he liked to boast about his father, his uniform, his gun, the status these things brought him, but when he met Damián—who was not only more of a show-off than him, but also more used to being a leader—he stepped back and gave him the limelight, becoming his faithful shadow.
In all this time, over twenty years, Juan had never had much to do with Nicanor. Unless they bumped into each other in the street, they’d never met without Damián being there, and even then they hadn’t got on well. Juan didn’t like Nicanor. He didn’t like his job, or his manner, or his way of walking, of looking, of intimidating people. Now with his own uniform and gun, Nicanor had become as much of a show-off as Damián, but he was never as clever, amusing or seductive. He was a hard, insensitive, dull man, grim and silent. And he was jealous of Juan, of his position as Damián’s brother, of the influence he sometimes had over him, and their past closeness. Juan and Nicanor had never got on, but on the day of Damián’s death, as he watched Nicanor struggle to regain his composure, Juan Olmedo realized this was the worst thing that had ever happened to Nicanor and he pitied him.
“How did it happen?” asked Nicanor.
“I saw it, I saw it, I saw it,” shouted Alfonso, still playing with the spoon and the glass pot.“Damián fell down, right to the bottom, boom! I saw it, and then Juanito revived him. Boom! Boom! Boom!”
As Alfonso slammed his fist on the table again and again in time to his words, Juan felt a cold sweat running down his back.
“Go for a little walk, Alfonso, go on,” said Juan, but Alfonso went on banging the table as if he wanted the others to join in. Nicanor, head bowed, was paying no attention to him.
“But I saw it, I saw it.”
“Why don’t you go to Damián’s room,Alfonso?You can lie down on the bed and watch TV there for a while.”
“He gets cross. He gets cross if I do that. He comes and shouts at me,” said Alfonso.
“He won’t get cross with you today,Alfonso.” Juan looked at him, and saw out of the corner of his eye that Nicanor was looking too. “Not today.”
“Where is he?” asked Alfonso, looking first at Juan, then at Nicanor. “Where’s Damián?”
Neither of them answered. After a moment, Alfonso got up, asked Juan if he was sure Damián wouldn’t be cross, and then left the room. Nicanor stretched in his chair and Juan told him everything—almost everything—in the exact order in which it had occurred, including his own drunkenness,Tamara’s tantrum, his anger at Damián for missing her birthday party, then his worry about him when he didn’t call and nobody knew where he was. He told Nicanor how, when Damián got home at last, he’d looked terrible and was barely able to walk in a straight line. He’d seemed furious with himself, and then was angry with Juan when he’d told him to start taking care of himself, saying he didn’t have to take lectures from anyone. He’d gone to his room to have a shower and change, and then he’d sniffed another line of cocaine. He’d started down the stairs and Juan was about to follow him. He’d gone down the first step, then turned round as if he wanted to say something else to Juan, but then he lost his footing.
“At first he fell sideways, then head first. He somersaulted over and landed face up. At some point during the fall his head struck one of the steps. When I got to the bottom of the stairs I examined the wound. He’d hit the base of his skull. I lifted his head carefully and blood just poured out. I called an ambulance straight away, but I knew there was nothing anyone could do.”
Nicanor didn’t say a word. He sat very still, staring at the ceiling and looked as if he were about to cry again.
“What are you going to do now?” he asked after a moment.
“I don’t know,” said Juan. “I’ll take Alfonso back to my place for a couple of days.Tam’s with Trini and I think it’s best if she stays there, at least until after the funeral.That way her cousins can keep her company. After that, I don’t know. I have no idea.”
“Call me,” said Nicanor, putting a hand on his arm and squeezing briefly,“and if there’s anything I can do . . .”
At that moment, they should have parted and their lives would have continued on their separate paths, until they’d lost sight of each other completely. But Alfonso, usually so meek, so obedient, was not upstairs when Juan saw Nicanor out.
“I saw it.”
He was kneeling in the same position as Juan when he’d examined Damián’s body, and was thumping something that looked like a dirty old rag against the bottom step.
“I saw it, I saw it,” said Alfonso, laughing. “Damián fell down the stairs—boom! And Juan took his head and revived him. Boom! Boom! Boom!”
Nicanor went over to Alfonso and took the old rag from his hands—it was the remains of a teddy bear. He handed it back to him, turned around very slowly, and looked into Juan’s eyes.The blood froze in Juan’s veins.
“Why is he doing that?” Nicanor asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I saw it, I saw it.” Alfonso laid Perico the teddy bear’s corpse in his lap, grabbed him by the snout, turned him as if he wanted to place his fingers behind his head, and then smashed him against the step.“Revive him—boom! Revive him—boom, boom!”
Juan moved a little to his right, seeking the support of the handrail to stop himself from falling, trying to make his move look casual.
“Why is he saying that?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Juan was sure all the color had drained from his face, but somehow he managed to keep his voice steady. It had sounded natural, firm, but he didn’t think he’d be able to keep it up for long, so he thought it better to remain silent and appear surprised by what Alfonso was saying—his poor brother with a defective brain, a witness no court would ever accept. But Nicanor was looking at him strangely, and Alfonso realized it.
“Where’s Damián?” he asked, but no one answered, and he started to get cross, crying and tugging at his hair.“Where is he, Juanito? Where is he?”
When he understood that neither of the two men was going to answer, he let go of his teddy bear and flung his arms around Juan’s neck.
“I assume there’ll be an autopsy,” said Nicanor.
“No.The doctor who certified the death thought it wouldn’t be necessary,” Juan replied, not looking at him, grateful for the distraction Alfonso was providing as he cried on Juan’s shoulder.
“Really?”
“Yes, that’s quite normal if a body shows no signs of a violent death. Saves the taxpayers’ money.”
“Right. And where was that doctor from?”
“From Puerta de Hierro.”
“Well, well!” Nicanor raised an eyebrow.“That’s the hospital where you work, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Juan calmly, as if the policeman’s hard tone had dispelled his own fear.“It’s the closest.That’s where the ambulance came from.”
“Well, there is going to be an autopsy,” said Nicanor, looking him straight in the eye. “There is going to be an autopsy, because I’m going to request one. I’ll see you when we get the results.”
Nicanor closed the door behind him and Juan didn’t move. Leaning on the handrail, he held Alfonso, stroking his face and hugging him until he’d calmed down.There was no longer any point in saying anything to him—Nicanor now knew his version of events. If Alfonso went around saying that his older brother had tried to make him change his story, to get him to lie, it would only make things worse. If Alfonso was going to talk—and at some stage he undoubtedly would—it would be better if he also said that Juanito had comforted him, hugged him, taken care of him as he always did. As he felt his body return to normal and the blood begin to flow again, Juan Olmedo tried to think on his feet.There would now be an autopsy, but he knew what the results would be. He hadn’t pushed his brother. Damián had had enough toxic substances in his system to make even a much larger man lose his balance.This wa
s why he had fallen down the stairs, all on his own, and his body would preserve a memory of the accident, bruises and cuts that would enable the forensic pathologist to reconstruct precisely the trajectory, the speed, the phases of Damián’s fall, and the moment when he cracked his skull against the step. It would be difficult to survive such a fall. Juan, like any good orthopedic surgeon, knew that it was impossible to calculate the force that would be needed to break a bone when the body of a heavy adult male fell down a long straight staircase. Juan had done a great deal of studying in his life. So he was sure that he’d exerted exactly the right amount of force, striking hard enough to break a bone that was already cracked without producing any secondary fractures, any shattering that might enable a forensic pathologist to find signs on Damián’s skull of a violent, excessive, intentional assault.
The autopsy report echoed all of this so exactly that Juan might have dictated it. The report was definite, conclusive: accidental death, with nothing discordant, nothing suspicious, no margin of doubt. As he read it, Dr. Olmedo reflected that the text was almost identical to the passages he’d studied in textbooks. He didn’t know the forensic pathologist who’d signed it, but the name of the pathologist who had carried out the second autopsy, whose report was stapled to the first, sounded familiar. The second report consisted of only two points, with an introductory paragraph in which the author agreed with all her colleague’s conclusions, underlining the levels of alcohol and other substances detected in the victim’s body. She emphatically discounted the possibility that Damián might have been pushed down the stairs, specifying that, had this been the case, the fall and the injuries would have been different. She also stated with equal vehemence that the skull fracture showed no signs of having been produced by a deliberate blow to the head, and therefore confirmed that the death had been an accident.
The Wind From the East Page 62