A Murder of No Consequence

by James Garcia Woods

  Paco sighed again. How he would have loved to phone the police stations in all the places María had visited, and ask them if they could add to his knowledge of the girl. But a policeman under suspension had no right to do that. And Felipe couldn’t do it, either, because his only concern was supposed to be the two socialists who had been shot to death outside the casa del pueblo.

  ‘Can I go now?’ Belén asked, with an odd mixture of timidity and aggression.

  Paco, whose mind was more on the dead girl’s journeys than it was on the girl in front of him, nodded absent-mindedly. ‘Constable Fernández will drive you back to your employers’ apartment,’ he said.

  ‘I’d rather walk,’ the girl told him.

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ Fat Felipe said gallantly.

  ‘The police are always trouble,’ the girl replied. ‘I’m nervous just being with you.’

  ‘Give her the tram fare, Felipe,’ Paco said.

  ‘I don’t want the tram fare,’ the girl insisted. ‘All I want is to be left alone to get on with my job.’

  Yes, Paco thought. That’s all any of us want.

  *

  They sat in silence for several minutes after Belén had left, then Paco said, ‘Don Carlos hinted that Luis had some kind of alibi. Check on it, will you?’

  ‘You think he might be our murderer?’ Felipe asked.

  ‘It’s unlikely,’ Paco admitted. ‘But then it’s unlikely that any of them did it. Luis could have María any time he wanted, and I’m pretty sure that he was pretty sure neither María herself nor Méndez would ever dare to tell Herrera about it. Doña Mercedes didn’t care what her husband did, as long as he left her alone. Which leaves us with Herrera himself. The trouble is, Don Carlos was right about him, too.’

  ‘Right in what way?’

  ‘About the fact that Herrera had no apparent motive for killing María. If he wanted to get rid of her, all he had to do was kick her out and she’d have gone scurrying back to her village with her tail between her legs. And even if she’d wanted to hurt him politically, she’d have had no idea how to go about it. So why run the risk of hiring someone to kill her?’ Paco stopped suddenly. ‘Unless . . .’

  ‘Unless?’

  ‘Unless he had her killed for some reason totally unconnected with their affair.’

  ‘For example?’

  Paco slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘That’s the problem,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve no bloody idea.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  He had never been a marked man before, and the knowledge that he now was changed his whole perception of the world around him. Streets which had been comfortably familiar to him for years seemed filled with menace. Shadows, which only the day before he would have ignored, took on the sinister aspect of lurking assassins. Even on Calle de Hortaleza, which came as close as anything did to being what Paco called home, he felt threatened with every step he took. And the worst of it was, he told himself, he didn’t even know why he had been singled out for elimination – had no idea at all what it was that Herrera feared he might discover.

  He reached the Cabo de Trafalgar without encountering any trouble, and once through its door, a feeling of security started to seep into him.

  Bernardo was sitting alone at their usual table in the corner. Paco went over to join him. ‘Where’s Ramón?’ he asked, as he sat down. ‘It’s not like him to be late.’

  ‘Ramón won’t be coming in tonight,’ Bernardo said, a sheepish expression on his face. ‘Or any other night, for that matter. Nacho told him to find somewhere else to drink.’

  ‘Did they have an argument or something?’

  ‘No, it’s just that his face doesn’t fit in here.’

  ‘It’s fitted well enough for the last twelve years,’ Paco said, feeling anger bubbling up inside him. ‘I’m going to have a word with Nacho about this.’

  He started to rise to his feet. Bernardo reached across the table and pulled him down again. ‘Before you talk to Nacho, I think we should have a talk,’ the big market porter said.

  ‘All right,’ Paco agreed. ‘But make it quick.’

  ‘The political situation’s worsening by the hour,’ Bernardo said. ‘The right-wing newspapers have been suspended. So has the parliament. There was a gun-fight at Calvo Sotelo’s funeral . . .’

  ‘I know. I heard it.’

  ‘. . . four people were definitely killed, and fuck knows how many more were wounded—’

  ‘We were discussing Ramón – our friend – not the state of the country,’ Paco reminded him.

  Bernardo shook his head, wonderingly. ‘You still don’t understand, do you? Spain’s being split right down the middle. There was a time when the Carlists wouldn’t have been seen dead with the Falange, but now they’re acting like they’re the best of friends. And we, the socialists, have taken the communist militia into our ranks – something I thought we’d never do.’

  ‘Get to the point,’ Paco said impatiently.

  ‘Once, there was room for all shades of opinion,’ Bernardo told him. ‘But that time’s past. You’re either black or white, and since Ramón isn’t white, he has to be the other thing. So talk to Nacho if you must, but it won’t make any difference. Even if he wanted to let Ramón come back, he wouldn’t dare to do it. He’d lose most of his other customers if he did.’

  ‘What about me?’ Paco demanded. ‘Does my face still fit in here?’

  Bernardo shrugged. ‘Everybody knows you’re not political, Paco. But even you’ll have to come off the fence eventually.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘Then both sides will see you as the enemy.’

  Why did everyone always have to make things so complicated? Paco wondered. For a second he was on the point of walking out, then he remembered why he had gone to the bar in the first place. ‘I need a couple of favours, Bernardo,’ he said, ‘and I think you’re the only one who can help me.’

  ‘You’ve been a good friend to me,’ the porter replied. ‘So if you want something, you know you only have to ask.’

  Paco leant forward, until his mouth was almost next to Bernardo’s ear. ‘When they suspended me, they took my gun away,’ he whispered. ‘And in my present circumstances, it’s not good for me to be walking around unarmed.’

  ‘Are you telling me that you want me to get you a—?’ Bernardo said, in a voice so loud that all the bar could hear it.

  ‘Shh,’ Paco warned him.

  ‘You’re saying that you want me to get you a pistol?’ Bernardo hissed.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult,’ Paco argued. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t have any in the casa del pueblo.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve got some, certainly. But we don’t have enough weapons to arm our own people, let alone handing them out to anyone else who wants one.’

  Paco placed his hand on his old friend’s arm. ‘Someone tried to kill me this morning.’

  ‘Kill you!’ Bernardo repeated, finding it a strain to keep his voice down. ‘But why would anybody want to kill you?’

  ‘Because I’m working on an investigation involving Herrera.’

  ‘Eduardo Herrera? The politician?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A shrewd, calculating look came into Bernardo’s eyes. ‘What kind of investigation are you talking about?’ he asked. ‘Could it do him any damage?’

  ‘Very possibly,’ Paco said. ‘I can’t prove it yet, but I’m almost sure he’s involved in a murder case.’

  Bernardo whistled softly. ‘That could really hurt him – even in these times,’ he said. ‘All right, I’ll see you get your gun first thing in the morning. But you said two favours. What was the other one?’

  ‘They didn’t just take my pistol off me. They took my warrant card as well.’

  ‘So?’ Bernardo asked.

  ‘I need some other kind of official document to replace it.

  ‘A UGT membe
rship card?’ Bernardo said in amazement. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  ‘If things fall apart like everyone expects them to, a union card will be the passport I need to get me into a lot of places I might have to visit.’

  Bernardo grinned. ‘And to think that only a few minutes ago I accused you of not being political,’ he said. ‘You’ve got more cunning than I ever imagined.’

  Which was a reassuring thing to be told, Paco thought, because at the moment, cunning was the only thing he had on his side.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It took some courage to leave Bernardo and the comparative safety of the Cabo de Trafalgar, but it had to be done sooner or later, and at a little after one in the morning, Paco said his good nights and stepped out onto the street. It was, as always, full of people, and he recognized many of them. But what about the ones he didn’t recognize? The young man in the overalls lounging outside the jeweller’s store might be a disguised fascist. The middle-aged man who was walking a few steps behind him could, even at the moment, be reaching into his pocket for a pistol. If one of them was an assassin, there was nothing he could do about it!

  It was almost a surprise to reach his own front door in one piece. He clapped his hands – though even doing that made him feel as if he were drawing unnecessary attention to himself – and the sereno, keys jangling from his belt, soon appeared.

  ‘Have you let any strangers in tonight?’ Paco asked, as the night watchman inserted his key in the front door.

  ‘Strangers, Don Francisco? Now why should I have done that?’

  Paco shrugged. Because you were bribed or intimidated into it, he thought. Because after the failure of their last attempt, they would make sure that the man they sent after him this time had enough intelligence to talk a simple night-watchman into doing what he wanted. But aloud, he said, ‘I just wondered whether anyone in the block had had visitors you didn’t recognize.’

  ‘I’ve let no one into the house who didn’t belong in it,’ the night-watchman said, in a way which suggested that his dignity had been bruised.

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ Paco said, giving him a tip and stepping into the hallway.

  As he made his way up the first few of the seventy-two wooden steps which led to his apartment, Paco felt his heart beating against his chest so loudly that he was certain anyone waiting for him would be well warned of his approach. He would have felt safer with a gun in his pocket. Tomorrow morning, Bernardo had promised, he would have one. But by tomorrow morning, he could already be dead.

  He climbed another few steps, avoiding the spot on one of them which he knew creaked. He could go away, he told himself. He could get into his car and drive to Malaga or Soria, perhaps even across the border into France or Portugal. Once he had put some distance between himself and Madrid, he would be safe from the men in the blue shirts who wanted him dead. But he knew that he would not go away – that he was incapable of leaving a job half-finished.

  He had passed the second-floor landing and already had his feet on the first step leading up to the third floor when he heard the door click open behind him.

  He swung round. Knowing that it was pointless. Understanding that a hail of bullets in the front would do just as much harm as one in the back. Wondering why he had ever been so foolish as to return to his own apartment. Hoping that, against all odds, he might manage to survive. Accepting that . . .

  ‘I’ve cooked a paella,’ said a voice.

  ‘You’ve done what?’

  ‘My sangría was such a success with you that I thought I might as well try out a paella.’

  Paco fought to control his breathing. There was no gunman standing there, only Cindy. Cindy, dressed in a short skirt and a thin sweatshirt which, for some inexplicable reason, had the number eighteen on it.

  ‘How old are you?’ he said.

  ‘What makes you ask that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He didn’t. The question – which had popped into his head in the middle of a whirlwind which was half-panic, half-relief – had come from no logical source that he could identify.

  Cindy put her hand on her hip. ‘It’s not very gentlemanly to ask a girl’s age,’ she said, ‘but if you must know, I’m twenty-nine.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .’

  She held up her hand to silence him. ‘Oh, I know it’s rather late to be a graduate student,’ she continued, ‘but you have to remember I’m from the boonies. I’m the first person from my part of the state to even finish college, let alone go in for any further study.’

  He was feeling an unexpected surge of happiness, Paco realized, and the source of that surge was the knowledge that, despite them being separated by a cultural gap as wide as the Straits of Gibraltar, she was only seven years younger than him.

  She was looking at him strangely, as if she was trying to work out what was going on in his head. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude,’ he told her. ‘You really don’t look twenty-nine.’

  Cindy raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s too late to start playing at being gallant now, Ruiz. You’ve already revealed yourself in your true colours.’

  It was not something a Spanish woman would ever have said, and he did not know how to take it. ‘I never intended to insult you,’ he told her, feeling his response was far from adequate.

  Cindy threw back her head, and laughed. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Paco, come inside before I burn the rice,’ she said.

  *

  The paella was not the best he had ever tasted, but it was by no means the worst either, and so he compromised with the truth a little, and told her she was a brilliant cook.

  ‘Liar!’ Cindy said. ‘But thanks anyway.’

  She brushed away a strand of hair which had strayed into her right eye. He found it very hard to believe that she was nearly thirty. ‘You’re very beautiful,’ he said.

  ‘I might have passed for beautiful back home, but now I’ve seen the Spanish girls and I realize my limitations,’ Cindy said, without bitterness.

  ‘Yes, Spanish girls can be beautiful, too,’ Paco agreed. ‘But in a different way.’

  Cindy mopped her plate with a piece of bread. ‘I know you’re a policeman, but you still haven’t told me what kind,’ she said. ‘Who do you work for? If I had to bet, I’d put my money on your being on the Homicide Squad.’

  The accuracy of her guess shook him. What had made her choose that above all other branches of police work? he wondered. Did he look like a man who was obsessed with killing? Did the spectre of death cling to him like an invisible cloak? He suddenly felt badly in need of a scalding shower.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ Cindy said.

  ‘Er . . . yes. As a matter of fact, you are.’

  Cindy grinned. ‘I thought so. Somehow I just can’t see you watching for pickpockets or arresting petty thieves. You’d have to be involved in something more important – something that really altered people’s lives.’

  So, at least as far as she was concerned, there was no stink of death about him after all. Paco felt a sense of relief which was so deep it almost frightened him.

  ‘I’ve done all those things,’ he said, talking normally, trying to lower the emotional temperature of the room. ‘I’ve followed pickpockets on the metro and arrested burglars, just like every other cop.’

  ‘But that was never more than a hurdle you had to get over,’ Cindy said, ‘a step further towards what you really wanted to do. You were born to be a homicide cop, Paco Ruiz. I can tell that just by looking at you.’

  Which was much what Captain Hidalgo had told him a couple of days earlier, Paco thought. And both the captain and Cindy were right, because here he was – with no official status, with a gang of murderers on his trail – and he was still being a cop.

  Cindy poured them both another glass of Rueda. ‘You want to talk about it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your latest case?’

  ‘No,’ Paco said automaticall
y.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Cindy told him. ‘Really I don’t. Whatever you’re working on, it’s obviously preying on your mind. It might help to talk about it to someone who isn’t involved.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Paco confessed, and almost before he realized he was doing it, he was spilling out the details over the last of the wine.

  *

  They had made love, and now they sat on the bed, smoking. And naked. Paco tried to picture himself and Pilar in a similar position and failed. His wife had always considered it practically a mortal sin for her to move during intercourse. The last time he had slept with her, she seemed almost ashamed to have sex at all.

  ‘The main question is – why did she do it?’ Cindy said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘María. Why did she do all that travelling? From what you’ve said, she was very much the country girl.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Cindy blew two streams of grey smoke through her nostrils, and Paco found himself becoming aroused all over again.

  ‘Country girls don’t travel,’ Cindy said.

  With effort, Paco pushed the thought of sex to one side. ‘María came to the city,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that travelling?’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Cindy told him. ‘Let me tell you what it’s like to be a boonie . . .’

  ‘Don’t forget, I’m from the countryside, too.’

  ‘But you’re a man, and that’s different. Men have always been peddlers, or soldiers, or drovers – any number of things which caused them to travel about – but until recently, the woman’s place has been in the home.’

  Paco smiled at her confidence, her Yankee self-assuredness. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘If you’re a boonie girl, you go to the city because you really want something badly – a better life or higher education. You’re terrified by the size of everything, but slowly you get used to it, and finally you start to feel comfortable. But two worlds is enough for you to conquer. You either stay in your new home, or go back to your old one. Itchy feet are for people brought up in sophistication.’