Barcelona 03 - The Sound of One Hand Killing

by Teresa Solana

  “Silicone in the keyhole, itching powder, salty food… I think it’s somebody playing tiresome practical jokes at our expense,” sighed Borja.

  “Do you suspect anyone?”

  “Alícia. She’s the only one who’s been behaving strangely.”

  When Horaci walked into the dining room and saw the table covered in cold chips, packets of ketchup, glasses of Coca-Cola and burger boxes with the McDonald’s logo, his mouth gaped so wide that any passing fly would certainly have paid him a visit. Cecília dragged him out of the room and explained the situation. A few minutes later, Horaci returned, apologized profusely and in a deadpan tone declared that Cecília would ensure we had a decent dinner that evening.

  Xavier immediately squared up to him and demanded his money back, but Horaci took him aside and said something we didn’t catch that seemed to calm him down.

  We had an hour for a siesta and came back to the Samsara Room at four. Just in case, Iolanda ran the carpet-cleaner over the floor before we went in, and Cecília checked that everything was as it should be.

  “I imagine,” said Horaci in best schoolteacher manner, “that one of you has been playing these little pranks on us. I don’t want to know whom. I’d only ask the person if he or she is still with us to have a little respect for the people who have come here to learn. And now let’s begin the meditation class.”

  There were no more japes or incidents that afternoon, and, in the evening, as Horaci had indicated, we had to make do with a vegetarian dinner like the previous evening’s, and that made me long for the hamburgers we’d eaten at midday. This time I decided to try the sausages, which I didn’t like, and had my second helping of spinach salad. Bernat, Cecília and Horaci dined on our table, and, as soon as we finished, Bernat said he was going home, and Horaci said he had things to see to in his office.

  As we decided it wouldn’t be very sensible to go down to the garden for a smoke because Horaci would see us from his office, Sebastià invited Marta, Borja and me for a whisky in his bedroom.

  “Hey, this is like being back at school!” quipped Sebastià, taking the bottle out of his bag. “Who’d have thought I’d have to hide to smoke and drink a Scotch at my age?…”

  “Well, no one forced you to come,” I retorted. “You’re here because you want to be!”

  “It’s not quite as simple as that,” said Sebastià, winking at me.

  Borja and I exchanged glances: we’d been too hasty in making Alícia our main suspect. So, what if it turned out that this apparently benign, venerable old guy, fond of his whisky and tobacco, was behind all these annoying japes?

  Guessing what was going through our minds, Sebastià simply smiled.

  12

  At a quarter past eight on Sunday morning, a distraught Borja dashed into my room.

  “Eduard, I think you’d better get dressed.”

  “What’s the matter?” Breakfast was served at half past eight, and as I had had another bad night I had just got up and was still in my pyjamas.

  “Horaci is dead. He’s been murdered,” he said. “We just found him in his office, with his head split open.”

  “Is this another joke?”

  “If only.” Borja’s distraught face confirmed it was no prank. “We’ve informed the police. The mossos are on their way,” he said as he lit a cigarette, his hands shaking.

  “So what happened?”

  “Sebastià heard me drinking a glass of water in the kitchen and came to see if I wanted a smoke in the garden. We went down in the lift, and when we got out, we saw that the walls and floor on the ground floor were covered in red blotches. At least, that’s what Sebastià said, because, as you know, I —”

  “Blood?”

  “No, it’s paint. You can still smell it. But we noticed Horaci’s door was half open and went to investigate. We found him on the floor in the middle of his office, with his head bashed in.”

  “Did you touch him to see whether he was still alive?”

  “Sebastià did and said he was dead. I didn’t have the… He phoned the mossos.”

  “Couldn’t it have been an accident? Perhaps he fell and hit his head…” I ventured, wanting Borja to have got it wrong.

  “If you’d seen him, you wouldn’t be asking. No, Eduard, they did Horaci in.”

  People were shouting and running in the corridor. We both peered around the door and saw residents in pyjamas rushing frantically down the stairs. They had just heard the news.

  “I’ll get dressed,” I said, going to my wardrobe.

  “I’m going to change.” Borja was still in his kimono. “Better put your own clothes on, bro, I reckon our time at Zen Moments is over!”

  Borja shut the door behind him as he left. I hurriedly dressed and stuffed my belongings in my bag that I put on the futon. Before going out into the corridor, I washed my face in cold water to wake myself up, but didn’t bother to shave. My brother was waiting for me in his new jeans and designer shirt. He was chatting to Valèria and the disgruntled couple. They, too, were in their everyday clothes.

  “They’ve also put graffiti on the first floor,” said Borja, turning round to me. “They’ve made a real mess.”

  “Does the graffiti mean anything?”

  “I’m no graffiti expert, but from what I could see they were just meaningless blotches,” said Xavier.

  “Maybe they are the symbols of a Satanic sect. Or squatters,” said his wife, trying to embrace her husband. He wriggled away.

  In the meantime Marta and Cecília were trying to calm Mònica down at the end of the corridor. She had an attack of hysteria and couldn’t stop sobbing.

  “Calm down. Take deep breaths. The police will be here any moment and then you can go,” I heard her say. Just then Iolanda came out of the kitchen and took her a cup of steaming tea.

  “What we need is a cognac,” announced Borja. “Pity I left my flask at home!”

  “I heard that. It’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard since I arrived here,” said Xavier, shaking his head.

  “Why don’t we go downstairs?” I suggested.

  Borja and I went downstairs, followed by Xavier, his wife and Valèria. When we reached the first floor, we stopped to contemplate the spectacle offered by walls, doors and floor. Xavier was right: they were just blotches, I imagined made by one of those spray cans graffiti artists use. They didn’t represent any symbol or seem to inscribe any kind of message. It was as if the entire act of vandalism was about making the biggest mess possible.

  “It’s the same on the ground floor,” said Borja. And he asked me quietly, “Is this paint red as well?” Borja is colour-blind and can’t tell red from green, but for some reason or other wants to keep it a secret.

  We walked down to the ground floor, where everyone had spontaneously assembled. The only person I didn’t see was Alícia. The same splashes of paint were on the floor and walls, and I saw that the reception counter and Buddha in the entrance had also fallen victims to the spray. Sebastià was blocking the entrance to Horaci’s office to stop anyone from going in and disturbing anything. Borja preferred to keep his distance, though I stuck my nose round the door to confirm that, in effect, his death had been no accident. The small, bloodstained statue of the Buddha the doctor kept on his desk was next to the body, with a tuft of hair stuck to it.

  “What about Bernat? Where’s Bernat? Somebody go and get him. He’s a doctor, isn’t he?” I heard Carme say.

  “He never sleeps here,” said Cecília, who’d just come down with the two younger women.

  “Besides, Dr Comes is no medical doctor,” added Iolanda, unable to hide the satisfaction she derived from making such a revelation.

  “What do you mean, he’s no medical doctor? It clearly says ‘Doctor Comes’ on his door!” growled Xavier.

  “He’s a doctor of philosophy,” Cecília went on uneasily.

  “That’s right. He’s not a medical doctor,” the young girl reiterated in case anyone still was in doubt.r />
  I heard shocked mumbling all around me.

  “What cheek!”

  “This is a fraud!”

  “I want to go home! Someone open the door!”

  “You do realize they could have killed any of us?”

  Luckily the mossos arrived before there was an outbreak of collective hysteria. As the steel door that gave access to the precinct from the street was shut, Cecília went to the control panel in the lobby to enter the code and let them in. After that, she opened the security lock so they could enter the building.

  “Whoever did it didn’t force the door,” I observed. “They must have got in somewhere else. What did you and Sebastià do the other day to get into the garden?” I asked Borja.

  “There’s one of those emergency doors behind the lift that open inwards,” he replied. “You just need to wedge so it doesn’t close, because you can’t open those doors from outside.”

  As soon as Cecília gave them access, the mossos burst in like a whirlwind and asked us to stand to one side. The graffiti was the first thing they noticed, though they immediately went into the office to make sure Horaci was dead and not in need of medical help. Then one of the police, who was in plain clothes, introduced herself as Deputy Inspector Alsina-Graells from the murder squad and asked about the sprayed paint.

  “They did it last night,” Cecília explained. “There wasn’t any when I went to bed, at around eleven.”

  “And who are you?” asked the Deputy Inspector, who seemed very young, taking a notebook out of her pocket.

  “My name is Cecília Ros, and I’m the yoga teacher. I was in charge of this group this weekend,” she added, pointing at us.

  “How many people are in the building?” she asked.

  “Twelve residents plus the girl responsible for the meals and myself. Dr Comes will be here later on,” she answered.

  “And who is Dr Comes?”

  “He’s our specialist in Bach flower remedies. He should be here mid-morning to give a talk.”

  “He’s no doctor!” shouted a voice that didn’t belong to the girl who ran the kitchen.

  “He is a doctor of philosophy,” Cecília said to clarify the situation. Her cheeks blushed deep red.

  “Ah!” was the police officer’s only response.

  A group of four plain-clothes mossos, feet wrapped in plastic bags, walked towards Dr Bou’s office. Another group in uniform cordoned off the area with plastic tape and created a kind of passage from the entrance to Horaci’s office.

  “So then, tell me what happened,” barked the Deputy Inspector.

  Sebastià hurriedly introduced himself and explained how he and Borja discovered the graffiti and the body. He also described the string of incidents from the previous day. Sebastià, who hadn’t moved from the office in all that time, was still wearing his white kimono, and the Deputy Inspector was staring at him in bemused fashion.

  “But we didn’t touch anything,” Sebastià assured her. “And we didn’t let anyone in.”

  “And where is this Borja character?” asked the Deputy Inspector, giving us all a look-over.

  “This time I can’t wriggle out of it!” whispered Borja, stepping forward and raising his hand like a good boy at school.

  Borja repeated more or less what Sebastià had said.

  “Is anyone still upstairs?” asked the officer, staring at the ceiling.

  We looked around, checking that nobody was missing. I saw the two girls who were weepy-eyed friends, the unhappy married couple, Sebastià, Cecília, and the girl who ran the kitchen…

  “Alícia isn’t here,” I heard a voice say.

  “Yes, Alícia is missing,” said someone else.

  “Is she the only one in the group not here?” asked the Deputy Inspector.

  “Yes,” Cecília confirmed, doing a recount of the faces present.

  The Deputy Inspector simply raised an eyebrow and a group of mossos went up the stairs while the rest of us stayed in the lobby and answered questions. A few minutes later, we saw a mosso come down looking scared and carrying a travel bag I was very familiar with. In his wake came three policemen with Alícia in her nightdress, her hair uncombed.

  “Hey, chief, we found this in this woman’s room,” one of the mossos shouted.

  The Deputy Inspector stepped back and opened the bag. Although she was trying to do it on the sly, we could all see it contained at least half a dozen spray cans of red paint.

  “And take a look at this,” said the mosso in uniform as he forced Alícia to show her hands to the Deputy Inspector.

  Alícia’s hands were covered in blotches of red paint.

  “I don’t understand. I swear I didn’t kill him…” she said, bursting into tears. “I only wanted —”

  “Tell her what her rights are, handcuff her and take her to the station,” the Deputy Inspector ordered with a sigh. And added, turning to us, “Good news. I think we’ll soon be able to let you go home.”

  Just as Alícia was leaving, the forensic investigator arrived. Everyone shut up and moved to one side to let him through, as if he were the high priest of an ancient religion keen on human sacrifice. The forensic investigator walked silently towards Horaci’s office, not deigning to give us a glance while some of us scrutinized his face for a sign that betrayed his macabre profession. It’s not every day you get so close to a forensic investigator and I’m sure several of us shuddered in horror when he walked past.

  13

  The mossos took note of all our details and finally gave us permission to leave. What with one thing and another, it was well past midday. On our way out, we passed, on their way in, Sònia Claramunt, Horaci’s widow, and Bernat Comes, the specialist in Bach flower remedies who turned out not to be a real doctor; their sorrowful faces showed they’d heard the dire news. Some participants who knew Sònia Claramunt offered her their condolences, but she strode on imperturbably, not stopping to thank them.

  “Poor woman! She must be quite distraught!” said Valèria. “I can remember when I lost my husband…”

  My brother and I inelegantly skipped the dramatic story she was about to unfold and, once we were in the street, Borja gave me his mobile so I could tell Montse I was on my way home. I wanted to reassure her, because journalists and TV cameras had begun to arrive at around eleven, and I was afraid she or Joana might hear the news on the radio or TV and get the fright of their lives. Borja then phoned Merche and Lola, who’d taken advantage of our stay at Zen Moments to go to Madrid with some girlfriends to visit the Prado.

  “We’ve had a real run of bad luck,” I muttered as we walked along the Bonanova, trying to find a taxi. “Everything we touch goes haywire.”

  “We’ll have to think what we’re going to do about Teresa Solana’s assignment. And how we’re going to reclaim our four thousand euros!” sighed Borja.

  “Do you think we’ll get a refund?”

  “Well, that’s the least they can do.”

  “I’d never have said that Alícia woman was a murderer. She must have planned it all from the start.”

  “I guess so. Come on, let’s go home, I’m starving!” my brother shouted as he waved at a taxi with a green light.

  I was famished too. Even though the mossos had let us into the kitchen in the middle of the morning to get something to eat and drink, as they didn’t even serve decaf at the centre, my stomach was empty. The second we reached our place, I quickly prepared aperitifs with crisps, olives and slices of chorizo and cheese. The crisps disappeared immediately and the twins offered to fetch more from the local corner store run by a couple of Pakistanis.

  “Bring us a couple of tins of berberetxus,” said Borja, handing Laia a twenty-euro note.

  “Escopinyes, proper Catalan, if you don’t mind!” Laia replied, wincing at his mix of Spanish and Catalan for the word for cockles.

  Joana and Montse joined us for aperitifs and insisted we described what had happened in lurid detail. The twins also wanted to be in on how Borja f
ound the corpse of Dr Bou and all the gore he added to spice his story; for the first time in ages they stayed with us for aperitifs rather than disappearing into their bedrooms. Arnau seemed to be the only person who was completely uninterested, and he simply asked, “Daddy, how can Dr Bou be a vegetarian if his name says he’s an ox?”

  Borja and I had told them how we’d gone hungry because of the vegetarian menus they served. It was lucky Montse had cooked macaroni and meat and cheese pasties for lunch, and Borja had insisted on buying a cream sponge cake for dessert. Unusually for a weekend, when we usually start lunch after three, that Sunday we were all tucking in well before two.

  After lunch, Borja said he was going home to rest, and I was all ready for a long siesta. On this occasion, Montse let me off doing the washing-up, and, discreetly, while she and Joana were busy in the kitchen, I went to our bedroom and extracted from the trunk the small statue Borja had asked me to keep for him.

  “Here you are,” I said, putting it into his El Corte Inglés bag. “I’m sure you’ll find a good place to hide it in your flat.”

  “Of course, don’t you worry,” said Borja.

  “And get some rest, right?”

  “You too.”

  14

  The following morning, the telephone rang just before ten. It was Borja.

  “What the hell are you doing awake?” I asked, surprised to hear him so early in the morning.

  “I didn’t get any shut-eye last night.”

  “Well, in the end I slept like a log! I needed to. And I was lucky because I still have backache from that blasted futon…”

  “Eduard, we’ve got to recover the four thousand euros.”

  I noted a nervy edge to his voice that is quite unlike my brother and felt uneasy.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “No. But I’m not going to let the Zen Moments people hang on to Merche’s money.”

  “Right, I agree, but they killed the director yesterday, if you remember…”

  “I regret what happened to Horaci, but money is money,” he insisted.

  “So what do you suggest?”