The Silence of the Rain
Page 23
10
Espinosa awoke to the sound of the telephone ringing. Stretched out on the living room couch, completely dressed, he felt for the phone while he thought of Rose conveying the kidnapper’s orders. He didn’t immediately notice that it was light outside. He only woke fully when he heard the voice of the on-duty officer saying his name.
“Espinosa, sorry about calling you at this hour, but there’s something going on over by your house. A woman was found screaming inside an apartment, handcuffed to a dead guy, both butt naked, and the woman keeps demanding to talk to Inspector Espinosa from the First Precinct.”
The address was on Rua Barata Ribeiro, close to his house. It was six in the morning.
An old building with more than a hundred one-bedroom apartments—a well-known address in the Copacabana underworld. Two patrol cars from the military police were parked on the curb. And two cops were drinking coffee in the bar next door. Espinosa asked what floor it was and if the girl was still there. In the lobby, people weren’t leaving for another day at the office; they were coming back from another night out and yet another anonymous hookup. He went up in the elevator with a soldier from one of the patrol cars.
“Damn, the guy died the way I’d like to go; I just don’t get what’s with the handcuffs.”
When he entered the apartment, a sergeant from the military police was trying to get Rose to go with him to the hospital. She was curled up in the corner, wrapped in a sheet someone on the floor had doubtless loaned her. She was mumbling gibberish. Next to the window, covered by a sheet filled with cigarette burns, was the dead guy. His feet were sticking out. Espinosa lifted the sheet and saw the face of Aurélio.
Details he’d forgotten came surging out of his subconscious, details he himself had provided at the lunches Aurélio had kept suggesting. The ex-policeman’s experience, the insurance company’s investigation, the information he’d gotten during his lunches with Espinosa made Aurélio, now, retrospectively, the obvious suspect … and such an impossible one.
Rose didn’t look up when Espinosa came into the room, and even when he squatted in front of her she didn’t seem to recognize him. She trembled as if she was cold, clasping the sheet against her body. On her wrist was the red mark left by the handcuffs.
“Rose, it’s me, Espinosa.”
And she said mechanically:
“Inspector Espinosa from the First Precinct.”
“Rose, it’s Inspector Espinosa, don’t you remember me?”
“Inspector Espinosa from the First Precinct.”
“Yes, it’s me, remember?”
“Inspector Espinosa from the First Precinct.”
A lieutenant from the military police walked up to him and put his hand on Espinosa’s shoulder.
“Inspector, I’ve seen this before. She’s stunned, she’s talking nonsense. The best we can do is take her to the Hospital Pinel. They’ll know what to do there.”
“Pinel? Do you think she’s gone crazy?”
“It’s a kind of craziness. The person keeps saying meaningless things, like they are out of their minds…. You’ll see she really is. Sometimes it goes away; sometimes it never does.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait awhile? She may come to.”
“Inspector, in my experience, the sooner they take care of her the better.”
“All right. I’ll come with you. She may remember me on the way there.”
He picked up the clothes tossed around the room. The lieutenant helped dress her. They left behind her underwear; that could get complicated. They put on her jeans and her still-wet and twisted T-shirt. Together with Aurélio’s bag, they found her purse with her belongings, her wallet, credit card, keys, hairbrush, lipstick, and other trivial items. Rose left the room without seeming to notice the cadaver on the way. She didn’t look directly at anything or anyone; what she did look at she didn’t seem to see. She didn’t offer any resistance. When she got in the back seat of the police car, with Espinosa holding her hand, it was as if she’d never seen him in her life, even though, once they got to the hospital, she kept repeating to the doctor: “Inspector Espinosa from the First Precinct.”
He left his office and home numbers with the people on duty at the hospital and asked the lieutenant to take him back to the crime scene to get his car. From there he went straight to the Hotel Novo Mundo to pick up clean clothes and toiletries for Rose. He asked the cleaner to separate out some outfits from the closet and select some things from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He put it all in a travel bag and had the rest stored in the baggage check at the hotel. Back at the hospital, he dropped off the bag with the attendant and once again left the numbers where he could be found.
His clothes were a disaster, he hadn’t shaved, his face made it clear that he’d hardly slept at all, and his stomach was empty and nauseous. He had a café au lait and some bread and butter at the corner bar. Aurélio’s body would be taken to the Forensic Institute. He got in his car and went home.
The phone was ringing and the red light of the answering machine was blinking. When he picked up, he heard a shout and then Welber’s voice:
“Espinosa, thank God! I tried to warn you yesterday but they put something in my IV.” He stopped to breathe. “Espinosa, the guy who shot at us was Aurélio. His face came to me as clearly as in a photograph. Espinosa, are you listening to me?”
“Yes. Don’t worry, Welber. He’s dead.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. It’s a long story. I’ll come by later to tell you.”
“Are you all right, Inspector?”
“Almost as well as you, buddy. See you later.”
When he took off his jacket, he saw the envelope with the fake letter he’d prepared for the meeting. He went to his room and took the original out of the Dickens. That letter was worth a million dollars for Bia Vasconcelos or the insurance company. Of the four people who knew what it said, two were dead and one was, for the time being, half dead. It was up to Espinosa to decide what to do with it. He looked at the envelope for a long time. He would prefer not to.