A Murder of No Consequence

by James Garcia Woods

  ‘Clutching at straws,’ Felipe said softly.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing, jefe.’

  Paco took the dress out of the box, laid it on the desk, and placed the shoes and underclothes next to it. Just touching the dress brought an image of the girl to his mind – the wide, trusting eyes, the generous mouth. She may not have been a virgin when she died, but in some ways, he was sure, she had still been an innocent. ‘Do the clothes tell us anything?’ he asked Felipe.

  The fat constable picked up one of the shoes, stuck his hand inside, then wiggled the heel to see how secure it was. ‘These won’t have been cheap,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think they’re in the same class as the frock.’

  ‘I agree. And the underclothes?’

  Felipe examined the rough-cotton knickers. ‘Barely better than a peasant would wear,’ he pronounced.

  ‘It doesn’t add up,’ Paco said. ‘It shouldn’t be important for us to know how she got the frock, but if it isn’t, why are so many people going out of their way to stop us finding out?’

  He turned his attention to the contents of the girl’s handbag. Handkerchief, hair clips, metro ticket. His eyes stopped on the colour photograph of the Virgin. Country girls really did take their Virgins seriously, he thought. Why, only an hour earlier, Concha, the other maid, had sworn on the Virgin of her village that she was telling him the truth.

  He slapped his forehead with the flat of his hand. ‘The Virgin!’ he said aloud. ‘Of course! What an idiot I’ve been! Why didn’t I think of it earlier?’

  ‘Think of what earlier?’ Felipe asked.

  ‘It’s not any ordinary postcard she was carrying around with her. It’s—’

  The two detectives heard the door click open behind them. ‘You have no right to be going through the evidence of a case which had been assigned to someone else!’ said an angry voice.

  Paco swung round. Standing in the doorway was a man who was somewhere between fifty and fifty-five. He was small, dapper and carried himself with an air of self-importance. It was almost like looking at a more successful version of Ramón.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Paco asked.

  ‘I am the Minister’s private secretary,’ the man answered. ‘And you, I assume, are Inspector Ruiz.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Paco admitted.

  ‘I am here to inform you, Inspector Ruiz, that as of now, you are suspended from duty.’

  The hairs on the back of Paco’s neck prickled, but it was no more than a mild irritation. Suspended? He couldn’t be. That was insane. ‘On what grounds has this decision been taken?’ he asked.

  The little man entered the room and stopped just short of the desk. ‘What grounds? There are so many that they’re almost too numerous to list.’

  Paco gritted his teeth. ‘For example?’

  ‘Insubordination, unauthorized investigation, irregular interrogation, harassment of innocent citizens.’ The secretary smiled maliciously. ‘Any one of those is enough to hang you.’

  ‘You think you are an important man,’ Luis had said. ‘But compared to the people you’re dealing with, you’re nothing.’

  ‘I will require your warrant card and pistol,’ the private secretary told Paco.

  The prickling sensation was becoming more acute, and Paco’s head was starting to pound. His warrant card and his pistol! After more than twelve years as a policeman, those two things had become almost a part of him.

  ‘I am waiting, Inspector,’ the secretary said.

  Paco reached into his pocket and forced himself to produce his warrant card. Then, with his free hand, he pulled his pistol from his shoulder holster. The secretary was holding out his own hand for them, but Paco ignored him and put both objects down on the desk. ‘So what happens now?’ he asked.

  ‘You will leave this building immediately, and will not return to it until such time as you are summoned to appear before a disciplinary board.’

  Despite the prickling sensation, the whole situation had, up to that moment, felt vaguely unreal, a little like a disturbing dream. Now, the words ‘disciplinary board’ hit Paco with the impact of a bucket of icy water.

  He could lose his job. And if he wasn’t a policeman, what was he? Nothing. He was experiencing a desperate need to talk to Hidalgo, to seek advice from the man who was both his boss and his old comrade from the wastelands of Morocco.

  ‘Am I to be allowed to see my captain before I leave the building?’ he asked.

  The secretary shook his head. ‘No, in accordance with the regulations, that cannot be permitted. In any case, there would be no point. This matter is now being dealt with at a level much superior to your captain’s.’

  Paco took a deep breath. He had powerful enemies ranged against him, he thought, but he wasn’t beaten yet because he might – just might – have one little thing he could use to fight back.

  He reached for the dress. ‘Don’t touch that!’ the private secretary ordered him.

  ‘I was only going to put it back in the box,’ Paco said mildly. ‘Leave things tidy.’

  ‘Putting the evidence away will be entrusted to other, more competent, hands,’ the private secretary said.

  ‘Please yourself,’ Paco told him, as he palmed the colour photograph of the Virgin into his back pocket.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The nun walked along the long, cool corridor with small, mincing steps, her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes fixed firmly on flagstones just ahead. She did not speak, nor did she give any indication that she was anything other than alone.

  Walking a couple of steps behind her, and taking one stride for three of hers, Paco looked around him. It had been years since he’d entered an ecclesiastical building, years since he’d come into contact with religious statuary of the kind which now seemed to be waiting in ambush for him in half a dozen recesses in the walls.

  He’d imagined he’d put his childhood dislike of school behind him, but now he discovered that he hadn’t. The longer he was in the building, the more uncomfortable he felt. His neck was starting to itch again, and he found himself running his finger around the edge of his collar.

  The nun stopped in front of a solid oak door, and gave the briefest of nods.

  ‘Thank you,’ Paco said.

  The nun nodded her head a second time, then continued her journey down the corridor. Paco looked at the brass plate inscribed with the single word ‘Headmaster’, and knocked on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ said a rich baritone voice.

  Paco entered the study and ran his eyes quickly over the man behind the desk, who had just stood up to greet him. He was a tall man, and very broad. His hair, which grew into a widow’s peak, was starting to turn grey, but his eyes had an alertness which proclaimed that he still found life fascinating. It had been fifteen years since they last met, but Paco recognized him immediately.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ José Manuel Ordovas said.

  ‘Too long,’ Paco replied.

  When they’d been at school, Ordovas has been a holy terror. Paco remembered the tricks they’d got up to together, the pranks they’d played on the Brothers who were entrusted with the almost impossible task of educating them. And then later, when they’d grown out of such childish things, there’d been the girls – the respectable young ladies they always saw in the presence of a chaperone, the jolly whores they’d visited in the Calle Echegaray when they had money in their pockets.

  But that was all behind them. Paco was a married man, faithful in deed, if not in heart. And José Manuel was Father José, already an important figure in the Society of Jesus.

  They shook hands. ‘Take a seat, Paco,’ Ordovas said, returning to his own chair.

  ‘Thank you, Jo . . . er . . . Father.’

  ‘José will do,’ the Jesuit said.

  Paco sat down. ‘I have to admit that you’re looking very well, José,’ he said.

  ‘And you look as if you’re drinking far too much and sl
eeping far too little,’ the Jesuit told him.

  Paco grinned. ‘There was a time when we both did that,’ he said. He examined the study. Rows and rows of heavy, leather-bound books. A huge crucifix with a hanging Christ who seemed to manage to look down on José with approval, while at the same time showing disdain for his visitor. A second, smaller desk, where Ordovas’s secretary probably worked. It was hard to reconcile any of this with the man he’d once known. ‘Do you sometimes regret going into the Church, José?’ he asked, before he could stop himself.

  The Jesuit smiled. ‘Did you ever hear the story about the rabbi and the priest?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I did.’

  ‘It appears that the two of them are the only occupants of a railway carriage on the Avila train. For the first few minutes, they sit there in embarrassed silence, then the priest decides to get one over on his spiritual rival. “Tell me, Rabbi,” he says, “don’t you find it hard, when we have such fine pigs in Spain, never to eat pork?” The rabbi looks evasive. “We all have to give up things if we are to serve our God faithfully,” he says. “But you must have tried pork,” the priest persists, sensing a weakness. “Well, once when I was a young man, I did eat some sausages,” the rabbi admits. The priest leans back in his seat, well pleased that he has uncovered a hypocrisy. “Tell me, Father,” the rabbi says, “have you ever been to bed with a woman?” Now, it’s the priest’s turn to feel uncomfortable. “Not since I took holy orders . . .” he says. “But before then?” the rabbi asks. “When I was a student, yes,” the priest begins. Then he notices the broad smile on the rabbi’s face, and asks, “What’s the matter?” “Better than pork, isn’t it?” the rabbi says.’

  Paco threw back his head, and laughed. ‘Better than pork!’ he repeated.

  ‘Whatever your chosen profession, you must give some things up by the very act of choosing it,’ the Jesuit said, more seriously. ‘I am happy with my life, Paco, happier – it would seem to be – than you are with yours.’

  Paco nodded soberly. ‘You’re probably right about that, José,’ he admitted.

  The Jesuit smiled again. ‘So what brings you to see me after so long? Are you here for spiritual guidance?’

  Paco shook his head.

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ the Jesuit said. ‘So exactly what can I do for you?’

  ‘I asked at the cathedral if they had an expert on local Virgins,’ Paco replied. ‘They told me nobody in the whole of Spain knew more about them than you.’

  ‘If pride were not a sin, I’d have to agree with that,’ the Jesuit said. ‘In fact, I’m writing a book on the subject.’

  ‘Why the interest?’ Paco asked. ‘Are Virgins really such a fascinating subject?’

  ‘Indeed they are. And so are the people who venerate them. The Archbishop of Valladolid once said that while the peasants would willingly die for their local Virgin, they would burn that of their neighbours’ at the slightest provocation. And it’s true. You have only to see the processions during Holy Week. The members of a poor parish come down one street, their Virgin at their head, and reach the main square at the same time as the congregation from a rich parish arrive down another street, with their Virgin at their head. How the rich scorn the Virgin of the poor! And how the poor look with pure hatred on the lavish Virgin of the rich!’

  Paco took the colour photograph out of his pocket, and slid it across the desk. ‘Could you identify this Virgin for me?’

  ‘Why should you want me to do that?’

  ‘We found it in the handbag of a murdered girl. She had no identification on her.’

  ‘And you think this is the Virgin of the place which she comes from?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The Jesuit frowned in concentration. ‘It is obviously from one of the poorer churches,’ he said, ‘and the style is that preferred by country folk, especially in Castile. But since you’re looking for the name of a specific village, I’ll have to do more research.’

  ‘What kind of research?’ Paco asked.

  The Jesuit pointed to the bank of metal filing cabinets behind his desk. ‘I have photographs of hundreds of Virgins in those,’ he said. ‘Your particular Virgin is not necessarily among them, but, God willing, she will be.’

  They started with photographs of the Virgins in the villages closest to Madrid, and then worked their way outwards. They rejected scores of pictures before Father José finally said, ‘Do you think that this might be it?’

  Paco compared the photograph to the one he’d found in the dead girl’s handbag. The former was in colour, the latter in black and white, and the two pictures had been taken from different angles. Still, it was the closest they’d come to a fit so far. ‘Yes, I think it might be,’ he said. ‘Where can I find this Virgin?’

  Father José took the photograph from him, and examined the notes he had made on the back of it. ‘This particular Virgin’s in the Church of San Francisco,’ he said, grinning at the thought that the church and Paco should share the same name. ‘It’s in a village called Villaverde.’

  ‘The name doesn’t ring any bells with me,’ Paco confessed.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ the Jesuit told him. ‘It’s not a big place. In fact, my records show that there are only about 250 houses in the whole village.’

  ‘And where exactly is it?’

  ‘It’s the other side of Navalcarnero. Just inside the province of Toledo.’

  Which meant the village was probably no more than sixty or seventy kilometres from Madrid. Yet despite the relatively short distance, Paco knew from his own experience that it would be like another world, a world both frightened and fascinated by the thought of Madrid. Had the girl been the daughter of one of the two or three rich men you always found in villages like that? he wondered. Or had she, instead, been the daughter of some dirt-poor peasant, who had scraped together just enough money to buy her bus ticket to the capital?

  If José’s theory about the two Virgins being one and the same was right, the answer was only two hours’ drive away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The village of Villaverde lay huddled on a flat plain. It consisted of a single, slightly twisting street, which bulged in the centre of the village to form a square. From the mountain road – which was where travellers got their first glance of it – it looked like nothing so much as a long, white snake that had not yet fully digested its lunch.

  Paco had left Madrid at nine o’clock that morning, and it was just before noon when he drove on to the village square. He stopped his car and looked around him. The place presented no surprises. It was just like hundreds of other villages in central Spain.

  The biggest building, of course, was the brown-stone, baroque church. Beside it was the casino, the place where the more prosperous villagers would go to drink and play cards.

  ‘Does your father go there, Dead Girl?’ Paco said softly to the empty square. ‘And will I have to go there, too, to tell the poor man that he no longer has a daughter?’

  Next to the casino was the town hall. Paco looked up at the balcony. On election nights, the mayor would make his speech from up there. And when the village was in fiestas, and the square became a temporary bullring, the village notables would sit on that same balcony, fanning themselves and watching third-class matadors fight third-rate bulls.

  Beyond the town hall there was the pharmacy, and after that there were houses which were only slightly grander than the mud-brick dwellings which made up the rest of the village.

  Paco got out of his car and walked over to the church. He expected the main door to be locked – after the recent outbreak of sacrilegious attacks, many were – but when he turned the handle, it swung open.

  He stepped through the door. His footsteps rang out on the stone slabs, and reverberated deafeningly around the ceiling. The smell of incense, which he’d never been able to tolerate, invaded his nostrils. He felt as uncomfortable in this church as he had in every other church he’d ever visited, but at least it was
cooler in there than it was outside.

  Though the light was dim, he could see the Virgin. When she was paraded around the village during the fiestas, she’d be dressed in a sumptuous cloak and wear a crown of imitation gold, but for the rest of the year she remained as she was now, a plain carved figure, standing in an alcove to the left of the altar.

  Paco took the picture out of his pocket, and positioned himself where he calculated the photographer would have stood. The two seemed to match. He took a step closer. A piece of gold paint had been chipped off the carved Virgin’s robe, and he could see that exactly the same piece was missing in the photograph. So now he had found the Virgin. All that was left to do was to find the victim’s family. He turned round and walked back towards the door.

  He had not been in the church long, but even so, his eyes had forgotten how bright it was outside, and for a second he could see hardly anything. Then his vision adjusted. The square was no longer deserted, as it had been when he arrived. A little, old woman, dressed in black, was hobbling painfully across it. Paco strode up to her. ‘Excuse me, señora, I wonder if you could help me?’

  The old woman raised her head, and narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re a stranger, aren’t you?’ she said accusingly.

  ‘Yes,’ Paco admitted. ‘I’m from Madrid.’

  The old woman clicked her tongue and shook her head. ‘You’ve come a long way.’

  ‘Yes,’ Paco agreed. He took a photograph of the dead girl out of his pocket. ‘Do you recognize this muchacha?’

  The old woman took the photograph in her gnarled hands and angled it first one way and then another. ‘It’s María Sebastián,’ she said. ‘But I’ve never seen that look on her face.’

  That’s because you’ve never seen her dead, Paco thought. But aloud he said, ‘You’re sure it’s her?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’