‘Some days she never leaves the apartment at all. And then she’s gone for a week at a time.’
Paco looked around the living-room. The furniture, which was cheap and mass-produced, just didn’t fit in with this high-rent area. Paco wondered if María had chosen it herself.
It was then he noticed the scuffs on the parquet floor, two lines of them – lines such as might have been made by the shoe heels of a girl who was fighting desperately for her life. So María had been killed here, in her own apartment. Which meant that whoever her murderer was, she’d trusted him enough to let him in.
‘Where does she go when she’s away?’ he asked the porter.
‘I’ve no idea. All I know is that I see her leaving the block with her suitcase in her hand, then it’s six or seven days before she turns up again.’
The two main bedrooms led off the living-room. In the first, the bed was stripped down to the mattress. Paco walked over to the wardrobe, and was not surprised to find it empty. In the second room, the bed was made up with satin sheets which must have cost a small fortune, but the wardrobe was as empty as the one in the other room had been.
‘Didn’t she . . . doesn’t she have any other clothes than the ones she’s wearing?’ Paco asked.
The porter snorted. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. She has at least five or six expensive dresses.’
‘So where are they?’
‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘Could someone have broken into here and taken her things?’
The porter puffed out his chest. ‘Not without being noticed by me,’ he said.
But if he had not noticed a murderer, why should he have spotted a robber?
Paco checked the bathroom next. Bath, basin, shower, bidet. There was a fluffy towel hanging on the rail, and soap in the soap dish. There was no sign of any other toiletries. From what he had seen of the apartment so far, it looked just like a suite in a hotel, awaiting the arrival of its next guest.
‘Does she live alone?’ Paco asked, gazing directly into the porter’s eyes.
‘Yes,’ the other man said, returning Paco’s steady gaze with one of his own.
‘What about visitors? Does she have many of them?’
The porter’s eyes flickered for a split second. ‘None. Nobody ever comes to see her.’
‘Not even one person?’ Paco coaxed. ‘A special friend, perhaps?’
The eyes flickered again. ‘Not even one person.’
Paco suddenly felt the impotence of his position. Only two days earlier, he could have dragged this man down to police headquarters and sweated the truth out of him. Now, although he knew the porter was lying, there was nothing he could do about it.
‘Let’s see the rest of the apartment,’ he said, with a sigh.
It was in the maid’s quarters – a cramped, airless space beyond the kitchen, with just enough room for a narrow bed, a night table and a closet – that he found what he was looking for. There was another picture of Villaverde’s Virgin tacked to the wall, and a cheaply framed photograph of María’s sister and mother on the night-table. So he’d been right about poor little María. The apartment had overwhelmed her, and though she’d had two perfectly good family bedrooms at her disposal, she had chosen to live here.
But if she didn’t use the other rooms at all, what was the point of the satin sheets?
In the maid’s bathroom – Turkish toilet and shower – he found her toiletries. And in the closet, he discovered the rest of her clothes.
Paco checked through the dresses. Most of them bore the label Moda de Paris, as he suspected that if he’d dared to check back at the dress shop, he would have found out they’d all been purchased by Doña Mercedes Méndez.
‘It’s time to go,’ the porter said.
‘What?’
‘It’s time to go. You’ve had more than the fifteen minutes you paid me for.’
Paco shrugged. Why argue? Without the help of a full team with hours at its disposal, there was nothing more to be learned from this apartment.
They were back in the living-room when they heard the doorbell ring. The porter went white. ‘I told you this would happen,’ he whispered.
‘Keep calm,’ Paco hissed back. ‘It could be anybody.’
‘I . . . I . . . it wasn’t my fault. You made me bring you here,’ the porter gibbered.
Paco had tried to intimidate the man earlier, and he’d taken it in his stride. Yet the sound of the doorbell had him almost on the point of collapse. Just who was he frightened of?
The bell rang again.
‘Answer the door,’ Paco said.
‘I can’t,’ the porter gasped. ‘I . . . it might be Don Ed—’ He choked off the word in his throat, and looked down at the floor.
‘Don who?’ Paco demanded.
‘Nobody. I . . .’
Paco grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. ‘You were about to say Don Eduardo Herrera, weren’t you? Weren’t you?’
The porter nodded. ‘But if anybody finds out . . .’ he mumbled self-pityingly, ‘. . . if they learn that it was me who told you . . .’
The bell rang for a third time. Paco let go of the porter’s jacket, walked over to the door, and turned the handle.
‘No!’ the porter croaked behind him.
Paco opened the door. He half-expected to see Eduardo Herrera standing there, but instead there was only a young girl in a maid’s uniform.
‘Who . . . who are you?’ she asked, tensing up.
‘Owner’s agent,’ Paco said crisply.
‘Agent?’ the girl repeated the word fearfully, as if it had sinister implications.
‘Yes, agent. There are certain repairs which need to be done in this apartment, and I was just making a note of the details.’
The maid relaxed. ‘I see,’ she said.
‘And who might you be?’
‘Belén, señor.’ She gave a clumsy curtsey. ‘I work in the apartment opposite.’
She turned to go. ‘Just a minute,’ Paco said. ‘Why did you ring the bell?’
The girl started to redden. ‘I beg your pardon, señor?’
‘What was your reason for ringing the bell? Do you have a message to deliver from your mistress?’
The question seemed to confuse her; or perhaps it was her answer which was causing her trouble. ‘No, I . . . I didn’t have a message to deliver,’ she stuttered.
‘Well? Why did you ring the bell?’
‘When I heard the door open a few minutes ago, I . . . I thought it was María . . . I mean the señorita . . . coming home.’
‘And if it had been?’ Paco asked. ‘Why did you want to see her?’
Belén shrugged. ‘To talk.’
‘About what?’
Belén’s confusion was growing. ‘Just . . . you know . . . things,’ she said.
Paco thought he understood. María – the country girl who only really felt comfortable living in the maid’s quarters – would have nothing to say to the grand people who owned the apartments around her. But with a maid, a campesina like herself, she would be able to chat happily for hours.
There were a great many questions he wanted to ask this girl, but not while the porter was looking on. He smiled – so that the next time they met she wouldn’t be so afraid of him – and said, ‘If I were in your place, Belén, I’d get back to my work before my mistress noticed I’d gone.’
The girl bobbed down again. ‘Yes, señor. Thank you, señor.’
Paco watched her disappear into the apartment opposite, then turned to face the quivering porter. ‘Visitors!’ he demanded.
‘I’ve already told you—’
‘You’ve already lied to me – about Don Eduardo Herrera. Was he the only one, or were there more?’
The porter hesitated. ‘There . . . there is one more who calls occasionally.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know his name.’
‘Then describe him to me.’
‘He’s a big man. Around
thirty-five.’
‘Anything else you can tell me about him?’
‘He moves well.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He’s got the kind of grace you see in men who’ve been trained as flamenco dancers.’
In his mind’s eye, Paco could see Luis the valet standing outside the pavement café, fists clenched and balancing on the balls of his feet. ‘Would you also say it was the same kind of grace as boxers have?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ the porter admitted. ‘I suppose I would.’
Chapter Twenty
Just as they’d intended him to, Paco noticed the three young señoritos in blue shirts the moment he stepped out onto the street. They were standing on the pavement in a rough semi-circle, the middle one on the edge of the kerb, the two who were flanking him a little closer to the buildings. Paco turned to the left, and the boy on the left moved to the centre of the pavement, blocking him. He looked over his shoulder, and saw that the boy to the right had also shifted position.
The young man in the middle reached into his pocket, and extracted a photograph. He looked down at it, then up at Paco. ‘Yes, this is the man,’ he said.
It was pure theatre, Paco thought. They’d known who he was all along, and if they’d wanted to hurt him, they could simply have sneaked up and hit him from behind. But that would not have been enough for them. They had the power, and they wanted to celebrate it by reading the fear in his eyes.
‘You were foolish to try and hurt the Falange . . .’ the boy with the photograph began.
‘I’m not interested in politics,’ Paco interrupted. ‘I’m investigating a murder.’
‘. . . and you were even more foolish to ignore the last warning you were given,’ the young man continued, playing his role for all it was worth, ‘because now we have no choice but to silence you for ever.’
‘Who sent you?’ Paco asked. ‘Eduardo Herrera?’
The boy looked genuinely surprised. ‘It would be a great honour to work for Don Eduardo,’ he said, ‘but no, he was not the one who issued the order.’
Of course not. It would be one of his underlings who had issued it, and perhaps another who had passed it on to him, but Herrera would still be at the end of the chain.
Paco looked up and down the street. Shopkeepers were setting out their wares on the pavement. Maids were walking up and down with wicker baskets over their arms. A group of well-dressed ladies stood chatting on the corner of Calle Ayala. There was no one with the power to save him. Even if there had been, it was doubtful they would have tried. No one wanted to get into the Falange’s bad books – and anyway, this barrio had fascist sympathies.
The young men had their weapons out now. A brass knuckle-duster on the leader’s hand glinted in the morning sunshine. The boy on the left had produced a blackjack, the one on the right a knife. Passers-by, sensing what was about to happen, were making a wide arc around that section of pavement.
Paco thought of Maurico, the legionnaire who, in defiance of the legion’s convention, had befriended him while he’d been in Morocco.
‘When it comes to a fight, you’re a bloody fool if you don’t use every dirty trick I’ve taught you,’ Maurico had told him – and Paco hoped he could remember a few of them now.
The leader of the Falangists studied Paco’s face, and frowned. ‘You don’t look very frightened,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you don’t fully understand what’s about to happen to you.’
‘I understand, all right,’ Paco replied. ‘And if I thought that begging you to spare my life would do any good, I’d beg. But it wouldn’t, would it?’
‘No,’ the señorito agreed. ‘It wouldn’t.’
‘Well, then, let’s get it over with.’
If they all chose to attack at the same time, Paco thought, he was done for. But they didn’t. It was the one with the knuckle-duster – the leader – who was to have the honour of bringing their enemy down, and until he had struck the first blow, his companions were content to be nothing more than spectators.
The young man took a step forward, and Paco felt his stomach tighten. What he did in the next two seconds, he told himself, would determine whether he lived or he died.
The boy feinted with his left, then brought his right hand into play. It was one of the first tricks Maurico had taught Paco, and he was ready for it. The knuckle-duster whistled through empty air, and before the boy even realized he had missed, Paco had grabbed his arm and was twisting it hard behind his back. There was a loud crack, like a rifle shot, and the boy let out a terrified and terrifying scream as he felt his arm being snapped in two.
From the corner of his eye, Paco caught the movement to his left. He swung the writhing boy round, using him as a shield against this new attack. The blade of the knife flashed once in the sunlight, then the injured boy grunted and went limp. The young gentleman with the knife backed away. There was a look of horror on his face, and the blade of his weapon was blood-red.
‘You’ve gone and killed him, Antonio,’ sobbed the boy with the blackjack.
The one with the knife took a couple more staggering steps backwards, and then stopped. The knife fell from his hand and clattered onto the pavement. Paco spun the wounded – or maybe dead – boy around again, and hurled him at his friend with the blackjack. Without even waiting to see the result, he turned back to the knife-wielder. The boy was just starting to come out of shock. Paco swung his leg as hard as he could, and kicked him in the groin.
Paco’s boot had only just connected when he heard the dull, crunching thud. For perhaps a split second, his shoulder burned with the pain of a thousand red-hot needles. Then his arm started to go numb, and though he tried to lift it, it would not obey. There was only the boy with the blackjack left to deal with – but Paco would be doing it one-handed.
He whirled round, two fingers of his right hand stretched out in a V. The Falangist with the blackjack was just raising his weapon to strike a second time. Paco’s hand travelled in an upward arc. The V found the boy’s nostrils and entered them. When he felt the tops of the fingers touch bone, he twisted his wrist as if he were opening a bottle.
The boy’s scream was even louder than his friend’s had been. Paco twisted again, this time the other way. He felt the strain on his wrist, and wondered what the pain was like inside the boy’s nose. But he experienced no sense of pity; they would have killed him if he’d given them the chance.
He pulled his fingers free. The boy’s eyes were streaming with agony. He dropped his blackjack, and tried to lift his hands to his nose. But the effort was all too much for him, and he crumpled to the pavement.
Paco had no time for the luxury of assessing his own injury, not until he was sure that his other two attackers were out of the game. He spun round and faced them. The one who’d had the knife was on his knees, fighting for air. The leader was sprawled awkwardly on his back across the pavement, his blue shirt stained by a rapidly growing patch of crimson blood, pumping out of the wound just above his belt.
Paco looked up and down the street. The maids, the gossiping housewives, and the busy shopkeepers, all stood in a frozen tableau of horror. But that would not last. Someone, soon, would snap out of it, and go searching for more Falangists. Though he knew even before he started that it would hurt like hell, Paco began to run down the street towards the Castellana.
Chapter Twenty-One
The bar was located close to the Puerta del Sol. It was one of the few still to have a cow shed in its cellar, and people who knew their Madrid history claimed it was already an old established business when Cervantes was writing Don Quixote.
From the threshold, Paco scanned the room. Fat Felipe was in the corner, his attention fully absorbed by a large dish of seafood soup. Most of the other customers were wearing the leather caps and jackets of cattle drovers. There was no one who looked like an official from the Ministry of the Interior, no one who seemed as if he might be a senior policeman. In other words, Paco thought, no one who could be a
potential enemy.
He walked stiffly over to the fat constable’s table, and lowered himself gently into the chair opposite his partner. Felipe looked up from his food. ‘Something the matter, jefe?’ he asked.
Paco shrugged, then, as a shooting pain seared across his shoulder, wished he hadn’t. ‘I got into a bit of trouble in the Barrio de Salamanca,’ he said.
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s been dealt with.’ Paco lit a cigarette. ‘I think it’d be better if we didn’t meet again for a while, Felipe.’
The fat constable frowned. ‘Not meet? But if we don’t see each other, how the hell can we carry on the investigation?’
‘Forget the investigation,’ Paco told him.
Felipe’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you going to forget it?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Paco admitted.
‘Then I’m not, either.’
‘I thought you didn’t care about the case one way or the other,’ Paco said.
Felipe gazed down into his soup. ‘That was before the big boys started screwing you around,’ he said. ‘Besides, that poor kid who got killed didn’t have much of a life. We should at least do right by her now she’s dead.’
‘Normally, I’d agree with you,’ Paco told him. ‘But after my bit of trouble this morning, I think you should drop out of the case.’
‘That’s the second time you’ve mentioned your bit of trouble,’ Felipe said. ‘Exactly what kind of trouble was it?’
‘Three young Falangists attacked me on Calle Hermosilla. They said they were going to kill me.’
Felipe’s mouth dropped open in surprise. ‘They said they were going to do what?’ he asked, recovering slightly.
‘Kill me.’
‘And what stopped them?’
‘They were young and arrogant. And that made them careless.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ Felipe said. ‘Three of them attacked one of you, and it was you who walked away from it?’
‘That’s not important,’ Paco said. ‘What does matter is that I’m a dangerous man to know.’
Felipe was smiling proudly. ‘Three of them,’ he said. ‘And I’ll bet they all had weapons!’
A Murder of No Consequence Page 12
