The Angst-Ridden Executive

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  ‘You’ve been out early this morning, eh, dick-sniffer.’

  Without replying, Carvalho settled himself in his seat and swung it to right and left. Biscuter slowly recovered his confidence to the point of taking a step forwards and coming to stand’ at his side.

  ‘We’ve come to save you a bit of work.’

  Carvalho’s silence caused the two policemen to look at each other. The older man leaned the full weight of his thorax over the table and propped his hands on the edge.

  ‘It’s all been cleared up now. A pimp has owned up that Jauma was killed because he was going too far with one of the girls. It wasn’t him who killed him, and he doesn’t know who did, because he’s new on the scene. But a lot of his associates are talking about it. Our chief says that we should call on the dick-sniffer and tell him to take a vacation. The police have got things in hand.’

  ‘So there’s no need for you to go wasting your time,’ said the younger man, in a conciliatory tone.

  ‘No point in cutting up meat that’s already been sliced. One of these days we’ll pick up the murderer, probably on some minor charge, and that’ll be that.’

  ‘If you insist on carrying on with this wild goose chase, it must be because you’re a workaholic, or you’re trying to bump up your client’s bill.’

  Carvalho’s state of having apparently been struck dumb was accompanied by a semblance of being lost in thought.

  ‘Would you happen to be trying to get rid of us? You haven’t even said good morning, yet. Did you hear this gentleman say good morning?’

  ‘He doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to.’

  ‘I’d like to hear the sound of his voice, though. I don’t usually talk to people just for the fun of it.’

  He lowered the weight of his half-ton of thorax further in Carvalho’s direction, and the chair suddenly stopped rotating.

  ‘Biscuter—did you offer these gentlemen something to drink? Would you fancy something, gentlemen? It’s easier to talk with a glass in your hand.’

  ‘Ah—at last—things are looking up! He spoke! Did you happen to take in what we’ve just been telling you?’

  ‘Yes. I understand that sometimes you have to do things that you don’t like doing, and that often you don’t even know why you’re doing them. You’re just obeying orders.’

  ‘That’s right. Spot on!’

  ‘It’s obvious that someone, somewhere, is very keen for this case to be closed, and they’ve come up with some half-starved trainee pimp with more fear than pride.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s what you’re thinking—that we force confessions out of people by beating them up and waving guns at them.’

  ‘There are people in this world who shit themselves just at the sight of a police station—give them half a chance and they’d happily sign their own death warrants.’

  ‘You’re talking about the old days. Police training is different these days. I myself have studied scientific methods for observing a criminal’s behaviour without having to get physical with him. I won’t deny that the police used to beat people up, but things are different nowadays.’

  The older man seemed not very amused by his longhaired associate’s attempts to dissociate himself from the old days.

  ‘Don’t go teaching your grandmother to suck eggs. A criminal is still a criminal. Always has been and always will be.’

  ‘People can change.’

  The younger man stuck to his guns, encouraged by Carvalho’s comments on humanity’s potential for transformation. The larger policeman disagreed vigorously.

  ‘If you go through life thinking like that, you’ll never get ahead in this profession, and you’ll just find people taking advantage of you.’

  ‘I observe an interesting difference of opinion between the two of you,’ Carvalho commented, in a neutral tone. ‘In your case it’s the voice of experience speaking. . . years on the job.’

  ‘Twenty-five.’

  ‘That’s a long time. And in your case it’s technique that’s talking, and that also has its value.’

  ‘I don’t deny that you can learn through science—you learn a lot, in fact—but I believe in calling a spade a spade.’

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘Thanks, but not while we’re on duty.’

  The caveman with the double moustache calmed down and switched police roles, from the aggressive to the paternal. He smiled at those present and turned to his young assistant:

  ‘If you carry on thinking like that, you’ll find criminals getting away right under your nose. You have to be distrustful, because prevention is better than cure. My father was a guardia civil in a small village during the Depression, when everyone was hungry. People were thieving every day. Chickens, corn, rabbits, potatoes. And every day people came complaining to the guardia civil. Whenever my father picked up a suspect, crack! he’d stick his fingers in the door and crunch them till he confessed. Obviously, he didn’t always get the right man, and more than one person ended up with his fingers crunched even though he’d never stolen a thing. But he certainly stopped the chicken-stealing. Now there’s food for thought!’

  Biscuter gripped his hands and closed his eyes, as if, through the tunnel of time, he was communing with someone else’s pain, or as if he was scared that at any moment somebody might jam his fingers in a door.

  ‘Who was it rang you within the last couple of hours to insist that the Jauma case is now closed?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Did they tell you to ask me to call off my inquiries?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t worry, though. You’ll get your money.’

  ‘That’s not the problem. The hard bit is making your first million—after that, it’s plain sailing. Can’t talk openly over the phone, but you still haven’t said who rang you.’

  ‘They told me that some young criminal had confessed to the killing.’

  ‘They should be so lucky! Either under threats, or under some pressure—probably the former—he sang like the proverbial canary. Do you follow me?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Give me three more days on this case and I think I can crack it. Tell me, though, who was it who rang?’

  ‘Gausachs, Fontanillas, and Argemi.’

  ‘In that order?’

  ‘No. Gausachs phoned today. Fontanillas and Argemi called last night. In that order.’

  ‘There’s been nothing in the papers, so how did they find out?’

  ‘They were my two representatives during the police investigation. I wasn’t actually there myself, so the police dealt through them.’

  ‘The police will come knocking at your door in a few hours, trying to put pressure on you to close the case.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘I repeat, just give me three days and I’ll be able to prove that things aren’t as simple as they say they are.’

  ‘OK. Three days —but that’s your lot.’

  Nuñez was skeptical about his chances of convincing Jauma’s widow:

  ‘Sometimes she prefers Vilaseca, Biedma, and me, but when it comes to what she considers “serious” things, she’ll only trust Fontanillas and Argemi. She thinks they’re more reliable. I’ll do what I can, though.’

  Biscuter arrived from the market, puffing and carrying a basket full of treasures. He put the day’s papers on Carvalho’s desk before going to unload his wares in the kitchenette next to the toilet. As Carvalho cast an idle eye over the headlines, his attention was suddenly drawn to a picture with a caption that said, ‘Identikit portrait of Peter Herzen’.

  The Avis car-hire staff in Bonn had given the police a description of Herzen, which matched a description given by two waiters at a motorway restaurant just a few miles from where the German’s car had been found. The likeness was startling. It was Dieter Rhomberg, wi
thout a doubt. Carvalho had a half-hour wait before getting through to Berlin. Rhomberg’s sister didn’t seem particularly worried at first.

  ‘Have you read anything in the papers about the disappearance of a German subject in Spain, by name of Herzen?’

  ‘I think I read about it.’

  ‘Didn’t they publish an Identikit picture in the German press?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t usually read the news pages.’

  ‘It’s a fact, isn’t it, that your brother actually left Germany four days ago.’

  Her silence confirmed that he was on the right track.

  ‘Look, lady, let’s not play cat and mouse. This business is serious. There are people’s lives at stake, possibly including your brother’s.’

  ‘Yes. Dieter turned up a short while after you phoned. He was in quite a state. He said goodbye to the boy, and to us. He was going away on a long trip, he said.’

  ‘Did you give him my message?’

  ‘Yes. He wasn’t surprised. In fact he seemed to be expecting it. He said he was going to get it all sorted out.’

  ‘I don’t want to alarm you, but you should go out and get yesterday’s and today’s papers. Get the picture of Herzen, get a photo of your brother, and go to your local main Avis office.’

  ‘What are you saying? Are you suggesting that this Herzen was in fact Dieter?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I see no other explanation.’

  ‘But why would he go and hire a car from Avis? He’s got a perfectly good car of his own—he hardly ever uses it.’

  ‘Please do as I say. I only hope I’m mistaken.’

  ‘I must say, you’re very Spanish in your way of doing things. All high drama. You shouldn’t go round frightening people like this.’

  She was about to cry.

  ‘Listen, lady, do as I say. Get the papers, and a photograph of Dieter. My way of doing things is actually like a harp player. Very gentle. And I’ve never played castanets in my life.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ he thought, when he heard the woman start to cry. Her suggestion of his conformity to a national stereotype had infuriated him.

  ‘Come in,’ he shouted, in a voice that carried sufficient irritation for the two people entering his office to do so rather gingerly, with all the caution of soldiers in a minefield.

  ‘Does a detective live here?’

  ‘No. This is just where they hang people. There’s no detective living here. This is just where a detective works.’

  ‘That’ll do.’

  The young man was evidently not amused. He had short hair, a musketeer’s moustache, a Mexican white-wool cardigan, jeans, and ibex sandals worn over thick woolen socks. The girl only came up to his chest, but in that short distance she contained an impressive geography of mounds, valleys and dips, beneath a small roof of blond hair piled up like a coolie hat with loose curls hanging below it. All in all, her bizarre hair-do was a ploy to distract the viewer’s attention from the marvel of her minuscule body. The attempt failed. He ran his gaze over the girl, until his eyes met hers. She smiled back mischievously.

  ‘We want to consult you about a case.’

  ‘You’ve lost half a kilo of hashish and you want me to find it?’

  ‘It’s more complicated than that.’

  The girl let the male take on the active role, which he played very correctly, in a well-educated accent and a modulation to match. His gesticulatory style was convincing, as was the way she hung on his every word, and devoted equal attention to the way that Carvalho’s eyes were fixed on her cleavage as it thrust out of the square décolleté of a tight-fitting dress.

  ‘My brother has been under psychiatric treatment for the past two months. If it was a normal sort of case, we wouldn’t have come to you, because these days who doesn’t need psychiatric treatment? At least, you need it if you’re caught up in the cogs of a system of life based on production and reproduction. My brother was a rationalist. He was a member of the PSUC—he was a communist—and he wasn’t the sort of person who believes in witches and fairies, if you know what I mean. As far as he was concerned, one and one made two, and two and two made four. He’s the sort of person who was always having a go at me because, according to him, I’m a good-for-nothing layabout. My girlfriend and I are actors. You might have spotted us on one of the demonstrations on the Ramblas, seeing that they pass right under your windows. There are so many demonstrations these days that you’re bound to have seen us.’

  ‘How on earth could I ever have missed this mini-marvel,’ Carvalho thought to himself as he looked at the girl, and she knew what he was thinking, because she sucked in her cheeks to try to hold back a smile, but the smile still showed in her eyes.

  ‘But then this bastion of Marxist rationality came crashing down.’

  ‘Why? Did his wife run off with the local party chief?’

  The girl stifled her laughter with her hand, and her companion tried to rise above Carvalho’s vulgar sarcasm.

  ‘No. Nothing like that. That would be a material explanation, but what I have come to tell you about does not belong to the material world. I’m talking about the supernatural.’

  ‘Shame I can’t provide any special effects. If you’d warned me in advance, I could have prepared a few rattling chains, whistling winds, that sort of thing.’

  Biscuter poked his face out of the kitchen, from where the sound of frying could be heard. He had heard the word ‘supernatural’, and his eyes took on a greater than usual fixity and betrayed his total absorption.

  ‘My brother is an architect. You must admit, that’s a fairly realistic, materialist sort of job. He drives around all day visiting building sites. Two months ago he was driving back from Sant Llorenc del Munt just as it was starting to get dark. He picked his girlfriend up at Sabadell, because they wanted to go for a meal in Barcelona and then go to the pictures. He then drove on towards Molins de Rei, where he had to do his last visit of the day. All of a sudden he saw a woman standing by the road, thumbing a ride. He stopped the car. Was he going towards Molins? “Yes.” “Me too.” “Get in.” So she got in, and sat in the back, and my brother drove on again. It was raining a bit, and both my brother and his girlfriend were watching the road. There wasn’t a word out of the woman in the back. Then they came to a bend in the road, and she suddenly said:

  ‘Watch out—there’s a dangerous bend here.’

  ‘My brother braked, and skidded a little. Afterwards he commented that it was indeed a dangerous bend. Since there was no reply from the woman, he turned round to repeat what he’d said, and he was completely thunderstruck. Imagine it! There was no sign of her. The two of them went hysterical. The girlfriend started screaming, “She’s fallen out, she’s fallen out!” but that was impossible, because the door was shut tight. Anyway, my brother reversed back to the bend and stopped the car. The two of them got out, and they searched the roadside inch by inch. They used the car headlights, and a camping torch that my brother always keeps in the glove compartment. No sign of the woman! Maybe she’d fallen down the embankment? They weren’t equipped to go looking for her, so they decided to go and inform the local guardia civil. They went to the nearest station. A sergeant was on duty. He listened as my brother told his story, in as matter-of-fact a way as he could—in other words that the woman had definitely fallen out, and that, maybe because of the wind, the car door had closed again of its own accord. The sergeant didn’t say a word. He went over to a desk, opened a drawer, and took out a photo which he showed to my brother and his girlfriend. “Is this the woman,” he asked. They looked at it carefully. Yes. Not that they’d got a very good look at her, but it was definitely the same woman who had got into their car. “This is the seventh time I’ve heard this story,” he said. “It happens the same way every time. The amazing thing is that this woman died in a car accident, four years ago, right on that bend. . .’

>   ‘Jesus!’ Biscuter shouted from where he was half hidden in his corner, thereby prompting the couple to look up anxiously.

  ‘That’s my assistant. Don’t worry, he’s flesh and blood—not much flesh, in fact, but you know what I mean. . .’

  Carvalho lit up his favourite everyday cigar, an undeniably material Condal number six.

  ‘Neither my brother nor his sister had known the story of that woman’s accident. This knocks out the possibility of autosuggestion. We went and saw a reputable lawyer, and he confirmed what the sergeant had said. I myself, together with my father, have tracked down the seven other people who had picked up the woman, and they said that, just like in my brother’s case, she had been hitchhiking, and then disappeared. They confirmed the story down to the last detail, and only one of them had already known about the accident previously, because he was from the same village as the woman.’

  ‘What about your brother and his girlfriend?’

  ‘She’s in a psychiatric hospital undergoing treatment, and my brother’s a complete wreck. He’s tried everything from pills to alternative psychologists.’

  ‘I’m not a shrink. Neither am I a voodoo doctor.’

  ‘We want you to take this case on, using your normal processes of logical deduction, and see if you can make some sense of it.’

  ‘You say your brother is a communist. Is he a rationalist communist, or a Catholic communist?’

  ‘None of us at home are Catholics, my brother least of all.’

  ‘Is he a mystical communist?’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Does he believe in the communion of the Marxist saints, and in the resurrection of the flesh in an earthly paradise?’

  ‘My brother is—or was—a man with both feet on the ground.

  ‘Has he ever read Hans Christian Andersen? Or the Tales of Hoffmann?’

  ‘His reading consisted of the set books for his exams at school, textbooks for quantity surveyors, Carrillo’s After Franco—What?, and the party press.’

  ‘Does he write poetry? Play the flute? Or the guitar?’