‘Not bad.’
‘You have such a way with words.’
In order to have reached the river at that point, Dieter would have had to leave the motorway at Junction 6, taking the A-road towards Barcelona, and then decided to drive round a maze of cart tracks. Or, even more bizarre, he would have had to come off at Junction 5 and double back towards Gerona. The idea that he’d been looking for a place to eat didn’t hold water, since he’d already eaten at the Jacques Borel restaurant at Exit 7, in the company of a second person.
‘Did they leave together?’
‘That I can’t say. I’ll tell you the same as what I told the police. First this German was sitting there. I remembered him because I remember thinking that the Germans had started coming early this year. Then this other man came over and seemed to be asking if he could join him. He was thin, dark-haired, and a bit on the short side. . .’
‘Were the other tables all taken?’
‘A bunch of tourist coaches had turned up from somewhere, and the place was fairly full, but it wasn’t packed. Incidentally, the other gentleman paid the bill.’
‘Did the German try to pay?’
‘I wasn’t looking, so I can’t say. The short gentleman came over very determinedly, asked me for the bill, paid it, and went back to the table. When I looked round again they’d gone.’
‘So they didn’t arrive together?’
‘No. Definitely not. But as to whether they left together, I really can’t say, because as you can see, from where I sit you can’t see the car park. All you see is the first car parked next to the door.’
‘What did the police have to say about the German’s eating partner?’
‘They asked a lot of questions about him. He was one of those short, thin types, and he had a lot of facial hair. He was clean-shaven, but you could see that he was the hairy sort, and he had sort of a big face, if you know what I mean. He wasn’t from Catalonia. He spoke Castilian. Very dry very Castilian, you might say.’
‘Did he leave a good tip?’
‘Not exactly. Fifty pesetas.’
‘Was he a regular customer, maybe? Did you recognize him from before?’
‘No. And I’m an old hand here. There’s a big turnover of waiters in this place, but I’ve been here for three seasons now.’
Carvalho decided to drive the route that Dieter must have taken to get to the river. The very idea that he’d have made such a detour was patently ridiculous and would only have made sense if he’d been a nineteenth-century violinist with a passion for listening to murmuring streams and poplars with their flashing white leaves rustling in a gentle breeze. What’s more, there was nowhere near enough water to drown a giant of a man like Rhomberg. On the other hand, if you accepted the idea that he’d faked an accident so as to disappear from history, the river Ter was only a few miles further on—a far more substantial river—not to mention all the rivers that he’d have had to cross as he sped across Europe from Bonn to the Tordera. Carvalho struggled down the riverside, along paths that were no more than muddy tracks and occasionally turned into little streams where the recent rains had washed down. He came to the point where the German’s car must have dived off. You could still see the track marks of the crane that had lifted it out, and the broken vegetation that marked where the car had gone down. Carvalho returned to the main road and made for Vich, traveling along the northern slope of the Montseny range. He was an urban creature by nature, and all this gave him an inexplicably pleasant sense of nostalgia and euphoria—the clarity of the air at this altitude; the luxuriousness of the woods which were becoming daily more lush ever since the decline in use of wood charcoal and the subsequent eradication of the small brushwood-collecting industry; the constant presence of the three peaks of Montseny, which changed in form and volume as your viewpoint shifted; and the green of a countryside that was well watered by small rushing rivers that hurtled towards fusion with larger rivers. He had never lived in the country, and in general his links with nature extended little further than his garden in Vallvidrera and the occasional contemplation of Valles from the windows of his apartment. This, on the other hand, was serious countryside, with farmhouses, woods, farmland and here and there small islands of summer residents observing the principle that mountain air is healthier than the seaside. Some had built themselves Swiss-style chalets, with almost vertical slate roofs designed to cope with a snow which was never much more than an optical illusion in that part of the world, and which generally ended up as a dirty layer of frozen slush on the ground. The Ibiza style was also in evidence, as was the style which provides a showcase of all the building materials known to man, from brick to slate, and taking in wood and artificial stone en route. The petty bourgeoisie has bad taste the world over, but the twentieth century has the honor of having conceived a specimen of bourgeoisie that is more than usually cretinous, with a level of earnings enabling them to live in splendid isolation, but with a cultural formation that extends no further than mass consumerism. Still dizzy from the curving mountain roads, he finally reached the plain of Vich, with its landscape dotted with little hillocks of grey volcanic earth. He drove into the town, where the big old houses provided an austere central nucleus surrounded by modern housing consisting for the most part of small brick-built town houses, or two-storey apartments whose scale was constrained by tight budgetary considerations. He parked the car in the main square and went in search of small shops from whose ceilings hung salami sausages, dry, smoked sausages and cured pork fillets that looked as if they were made of china. He stocked up with two huge salamis, five smoked sausages and a gammon ham, and refrained from buying butifarras in order to observe the ritual of buying them in La Garriga. He bought a box of Vich sponge cake for Charo, and the third passer-by he asked was able to inform him where to find La Chunga, the dive that belonged to the mother-in-law of Jauma’s alleged murderer.
‘It’s shut down, though. You know what happened?’
‘Yes.’
‘When the two women were left on their own, they decided to shut up shop.’
‘Are they living in Vich?’
‘No, they’ve got a flat over the bar. Who are you after, the mother or the daughter?’
‘Which would you recommend?’
‘The mother, without a doubt. She’s divine. Got such an arse on her. . . save you the price of a mattress!’
He recalled a half memory of the woman who had been talking with Paco the Hustler. He went on to fill in the outline with imagined fleshy pleasures as his eyes scanned the horizon in search of the roadside bar. In front of a furniture showroom, at the end of a long stretch of road, just at the point where the ridge of tarmac begins to turn off towards Tona, La Chunga finally appeared. A flat, whitewashed, tile-roofed building. An illuminated Tio Pepe billboard, plastic multi-coloured Coca Cola and Pepsi signs, and a curtain of plastic strips hung over a door that was very definitely shut. There were signs of life coming from the back, though, and from the one-room flat over the bar. As he came round the front of the building he saw a pick-up truck with its doors open, loading goods and chattels from a side-door of the bar. A man was doing the loading, and Paco the Hustler’s mother-in-law was telling him to be careful as she passed out the boxes. The woman had twenty-five years in each of her well-rounded breasts and fifty combined in an arse that was a sight to see. As her eyes turned to meet those of the stranger, the faded beauty in her generous features still possessed a come-hither quality that was concentrated in her impertinent lips.
‘The bar’s shut.’
‘It’s not a drink I’m wanting. I want to talk with you and your daughter.’
‘If you’re a journalist, you can go right back where you came from. I’ve had enough. Go away and leave us alone!’
‘That’s right,’ said the man. ‘Go away and leave us alone.’
He jumped down from the truck and stood between Carva
lho and the woman, legs apart and menacing. Carvalho waved his ID card under their noses, and when the man read the word ‘detective’ he relaxed.
‘He’s the police.’
On the balcony of the flat appeared a girl who was fifty per cent the image of the woman below.
‘More police?’
The girl was crying more than shouting. Carvalho nodded his head in an attempt at an authoritative gesture, and walked towards the house without turning to see if they were following.
‘How much longer are we going to have to put-up with this?’
The woman gave Carvalho a threatening look.
‘It’s all been signed and sealed. In God’s name, why do you have to keep bothering us?’
The man gave her a look that told her not to say too much, and at that point the girl arrived from upstairs, with her teenage streetwalker’s breasts showing under a thin woolen jumper.
‘Is he your husband?’
‘No. My brother. I’m a widow. And if they think that just because I’m a widow they can intimidate me, they’re very much mistaken. Take it from me. I’m no push-over, and everything I’ve got in this life I’ve earned with my own two hands.’
‘The gentleman, Antonio Jauma. . .’
‘Gentleman, you call him! Are you referring to the one who was killed? Because he was no gentleman. At least, not what I mean by a “gentleman. . .”’
‘Did you know the man?’
‘No. What I know is what the kids told me.’
‘What kids?’
The girl, here, and Paco, her husband.’
‘So you never actually saw Antonio Jauma?’
‘No. On the night he turned up I’d gone upstairs to watch TV. My favourite comedy was on..
‘According to the police, Jauma went to a bedroom with your daughter, and a short while later the girl came out again, half naked and screaming for her husband.’
‘So they say.’
‘Is it true?’
The girl lowered her eyes.
‘Don’t you say a word, you! She’s still a minor. She’s only eighteen.’
‘So who’s going to answer my question?’
‘Me, if I feel like it.’
Carvalho went up to the woman and reached out and tweaked her nose.
‘Turn down the volume, lady, it’s giving me a pain in the head. Now, you’re going to answer. Fast, and politely, because if you don’t, you’re going to get a kicking right where it hurts.’
The anger on her lips and in her eyes expressed itself only in a quiet sob and a couple of impotent tears.
‘Is that a proper way to talk to a woman?’
‘I talk to you the same way you talk to me. Like a truck driver. So get on with it. Enough pissing about. You—why did you run out screaming?’
‘Because he was wanting to do filthy things with me.’
‘What kind of filthy things?’
‘All sorts. He wanted to beat me. He wanted to see me piss. I called my husband. I managed to push him out of the room, and that was the last I saw of him. Then I heard a shot. Paco came back, very nervous, and said that the man had pulled out a gun.’
‘So where did he find a gun? From his navel? I thought he had no clothes on when you pushed him out of the room.’
‘He was dressed.’ The mother spoke up.
‘That’s right, he was dressed,’ the daughter confirmed, staring at the ground.
‘What happened then?’
‘I don’t know. Paco did it all. He drove off with his pick-up, and came back three hours later.’
‘I heard the truck driving off, and I thought. “Where’s that waster going at this time of night?” Because Paco is a waster. He’s done whatever he’s done, but I don’t blame him, though, because bastards like your “gentleman” don’t deserve to live. If a man likes women, that’s fair enough. But he should be straight about it. I can’t stand perverts.’
‘Why are you leaving?’
‘Because there’s too much scum around here. From first thing in the morning it never stops—journalists. Sightseers and nosey-parkers. It’s like living in a zoo.’
‘My sister has sold the bar, and she’s leaving. I say she’s doing the right thing.’
The woman glanced at her brother with a look that could kill.
‘Sold the bar, have you? Well fancy that! Your son-in-law gave himself up yesterday. The news wasn’t in the papers till today. They must have come pestering you all morning, and by midday, lo and behold, the bar’s sold! Who bought it?’
‘Well . . . it was only a verbal agreement.’
‘With whom?’
‘I don’t know. He said he’d be in touch. I gave him the address of a cousin of mine who lives in Barcelona. We’re going to stay there for the time being so that we can be closer to Paco, and then, depending on how things go, well probably come back to the village.’
‘Do the police have the address of this cousin of yours?’
‘Why should they? The lawyer has it, and that’s good enough for when they need me as a witness.’
‘Well I want the address too.’
The man pulled a ballpoint out of his jean jacket and wrote the address on a page of Interviu.
‘How many punters do you reckon to get in a day? One? Two?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘What do they pay for a screw?’
The girl broke into hysterical crying. The woman slapped her and pushed her into a corner of the room. Then she turned on Carvalho in a blaze of fury:
‘Why didn’t they come asking questions when my son-of a-bitch husband left us in the shit in the first place? Why didn’t they ask me then how much money I had tucked away? No chance! Anyway, here, nobody’s been sleeping with anyone. The girl sleeps with her husband and I sleep with myself. That’s my story, and if you don’t like it. . .’
‘But did she go to bed with Jauma? Because if she did, that’s prostitution.’
‘Go to bed? What on earth are you talking about? He told her: “Come in here, I’ve got something to show you.” And this poor innocent followed him, and that’s when the trouble started. Is that good enough for you? Because it’s the best explanation I’ve got. And now you can hit me and kick me as much as you like, because that’s all you’re getting out of me.’
‘Sir. . .’
The man cleared his throat. He was slow, thin, and his huge hands were covered with traces of cement and plaster.
‘Let’s be civilized about it, sir. You have to understand, sir, that we’ve been through bitter times here, very bitter, and my sister has her ways, but that’s because she’s had to make her own way in life from a very early age.’
‘Don’t waste your breath on him, Andres, they’re all the same.’
‘No, Fuensanta, no. When people talk, it helps them understand each other. Isn’t that right, sir? You understand what these two women have been through, don’t you?’
Carvalho walked between the obvious fear of the brother and the raging fury of the sister. He was furious with them, and furious with himself. The fear and anger of poor people, he thought to himself.
‘I’m going. But I haven’t finished with you yet. You’re not making a single move unless I know about it. Tomorrow I want the name, nationality and date of birth of the man who bought this Ritz, together with his address and the size of his trousers. So watch out!’
In the nearby furniture showroom they told him that La Chunga had been open for five years. The girl had still been in plaits and the woman had been living with a Catalonian gypsy who earned his living gathering mushrooms. He’d pick them and dry them, and during the season he’d sell them to packers in Granollers. One day the gypsy disappeared, and within a week or two he’d been replaced by a self-employed truck driver who worked for an art
ificial stone factory in Aiguafreda. The truck driver was the last of the regular men about the place. The bar didn’t earn a lot. The regular clientele were mainly immigrants, and the bar served the occasional wayfarer with alcohol, coffee, cold drinks, or a snack. The woman began waving her breasts around, and the place began to liven up, One day the girl went on the game too. Always trouble in the place, one of his informants observed. Punch-ups galore. No-hope whores. Then the girl took up with this pimp, an evil little bastard, but at least he knew how to keep the clients in line.
‘They were up to their necks in debts. I think one of her boyfriends got involved in some shady deals, and she got landed with the bill and didn’t have the money to pay. He’d used her signature in some fraud or other.’
At the petrol station they filled in the rest of the details for him. Fuensanta’s brother worked as a bricklayer for one of the big building contractors in Centelles.
‘He was the first of them to leave the village. Then it was the usual pattern—the rest of the kids followed, and then the parents. The parents are dead now. With the exception of the bricklayer, none of the kids will have anything to do with the woman at La Chunga. If you ask about her, they say, “She’s not one of us.” They’re ashamed of her. The bricklayer still shows up every now and then. One day he told me, “What do you expect—she is my sister, after all, and I’m the eldest brother. I’ve got certain responsibilities, wouldn’t you say?’
He waited at the petrol station for the pick-up to pass. The old man was driving, his hands still covered with plaster and cement. At his side, bolt upright, in the full consciousness of her volume, sat Fuensanta. From between them peered the contrite face of the adolescent prostitute. The bricklayer acknowledged Carvalho with a slight nod of his head, but Fuensanta dispatched a visual thunderbolt that cracked against his windscreen.
He bought his butifarras in La Garriga. They were freshly cooked, and made with blood and eggs. Catalonia is next in line after the Germans when it comes to extracting the best gastronomic advantage from pigs. Leaving aside the hams, which are always too soft and lacking in flavour, the local pigs had the honour of contributing a range of really splendid sausages. An excellent display—the proof of Carvalho’s observations on the matter—appeared on the serving-counter of the Fonda Europa, a restaurant in Granollers that Carvalho would escape to every once in a while, to confirm, with surprise and admiration, that it still maintained its high culinary standards. On the food counter there was a pile of sausages on a dish which featured in the menu under the heading plat du jour. Looked promising. Next to excellent local sausages, which probably came from Llerona, were factory-produced sausages and specimens of the damp-looking local ham, which seemed to have been cured by immersion in the sea rather than hanging in the air. The local ham had some distant family relation to Parma, but without achieving the latter’s savoury tenderness. To have ordered the chefs special for a starter was an act of Pantagruelian caprice that closed down subsequent options. He thought it advisable to pass over the hams and chorizos and settle on the pork sausages which ranged from everyday salamis to the ethereal lightness of egg sausages or fuet. The waiter left at the side of his table the trolley which came with a range of serrated knives and a large basket for rind, skin, and other detritus. When Carvalho came to the Fonda Europa, he always ordered a special tripe dish consisting of tripe and pigs’ trotters, which had a honey sweetness similar to what the Andalusians achieve by adding pig’s jowl to the austere tripe dishes of Castille. He found himself comforted by the fact that he was not alone in his desire to eat everything the Fonda Europa had to offer, a tendency also observable in his fellow diners, especially on market days, when the dining room was packed with dealers and reps, concentrating their energies in the search for the deepest and broadest dishes. It was also a restaurant with space, so that each table could create its own environment and lose itself in the operation of eating, without being watched by the people at an adjoining table with that look of superficial curiosity characteristic of people who like to spy enviously on what other people are eating. The simplicity of the late modernism of the decor was also appealing—walls that were painted in colours that were also gastronomic. Themes and colours that were digestive, either because metaphysically both can exist or because a satisfied diner will accept any murals, even those cooked in the sauce of late modernism. The wine was not up to the standard of the food, and if the choice of a Rioja was a choice of the lesser evil, Carvalho once again mused on the disparity that exists in Catalonia between an excellent popular style of cooking and the lack of finesse of its more popular wines. The mel i mato dessert offered by the Fonda Europa was up to the standard of the rest of the meal, yet Carvalho ordered it more out of respect than because he really wanted it. As one who appreciated the tragic side of eating, it seemed to him that anything other than fruit for dessert implied a reprehensible frivolity, and cakes in particular ended up annihilating the flavour of quiet sadness that must be allowed to linger at the end of a great culinary performance.
The Angst-Ridden Executive Page 18