by David Hewson
‘Professor?’
She was barely awake. Her notepad lay on her lap, untouched for a good half-hour.
‘Captain?’
‘It’s late, and I don’t think it advisable that you should walk home at this hour. The streets are busy this week. Sometimes things get a little lively. I will drive you.’
‘It’s not far.’
‘Everywhere’s a long way at this time of year. Please. I insist.’
They walked down two flights of stairs to the police car park. Rodríguez opened the passenger door for her and held it as she climbed in. He walked round, got into the driver’s seat and buckled his seat belt.
‘You’re staying in the barrio?’
‘No. On the edge. A friend has loaned me his apartment. He’s a psychologist. Recently he moved to New York.’
‘You’re alone?’
She tried to read his expression in the street lights and failed. ‘Yes.’
‘Would you please tell me how you knew about the painting, the one in the hospice?’
‘I lived here when I was at university. Some people spent their student days in bars and discos. I preferred the galleries. The churches. It really is quite a well-known painting, in artistic circles. The Hospital de la Caridad was founded by a man called Miguel Mañara. Some people say he was the inspiration for Don Juan. A playboy. A rake. One night he saw a coffin being wheeled through the street and peered drunkenly inside. When he looked he saw his own corpse. And so he was reformed. Not that he saw it that way. On his own instructions he was buried at the threshold of the chapel beneath a stone that reads, “Here lies the worst man there has ever been.”’
‘I’ve heard that story.’
She nodded and said, ‘That’s all it is, I think. A story. Mañara’s conversion to piety was rather more mundane. His wife died. He created that place out of grief. The paintings, though . . . Murillo used to say that he could not look at those canvases of Valdés Leal without holding his nose.’
‘And what is the purpose of the painting that our murderer appears to have imitated?’
‘A very specific one. Valdés Leal, like his patron, was highly religious. The works are a memento mori. There to point out that in the midst of the glories of life there is death, that life on Earth is transient and ends in decay and corruption, and that we are judged at the end of it, where salvation or damnation awaits us.’
‘Do you think the Angel Brothers would be familiar with his work, with this particular picture?’
‘Absolutely.’ She was adamant. ‘It’s designed to shock. It contains elements that offend, even nauseate. It’s apocalyptic. When the brothers encase the corpse of a rotting lamb in Perspex and ask the wealthy to pay tens of thousands of dollars to own it, aren’t they making the same point? I can’t begin to imagine they would be unaware of it. Can you?’
‘No. As you explained it to me, no, I cannot.’
She pointed to a turning on the right. ‘It’s the third house along. Where the optician is. I have an apartment on the first floor, above the shop.’
The car drew to a halt on cobbled stones.
‘May I ask you a question, Captain?’
‘I will answer if I can.’
‘Cristina Lucena. Who is she? People seem intrigued by her.’
He sighed and looked out of the window. ‘It’s not a pleasant story, particularly after a day like this.’
‘I would like to hear it all the same. You have a way of whetting one’s curiosity. It would be unfair to leave me in the dark.’
‘And you don’t have sufficient food for nightmares already?’
‘Sufficient is sufficient. More cannot make it worse.’
‘Perhaps not.’
She waited. Rodríguez now looked old and tired under the light of the street lamps. The contrast with the men he led was more marked than ever. He might have been a university lecturer, one of the polite, distinguished old men she had grown to like, grown to admire at college, men who talked deep into the night, spinning tales, spinning history.
‘The Lucenas are an old family, very old. They date back to the Reconquest. There is a story to that. The dynasty was founded by a soldier – I forget his name – who was given lands in the south for defending a particular fortress when it was besieged by the Moors.’
‘This was unusual?’
‘The way he did it was. The Moors laid siege for six months without success, until they managed to capture his daughter who had been travelling elsewhere in the country. They took her to the fortress walls and called to him, saying that unless he surrendered they would cut her throat. Without hesitating, he reached for his belt, threw down his dagger and said: “Use this.”’
‘What happened?’
‘The Moors capitulated and left the girl unharmed. Thereafter, the Lucenas seemed destined to be not just brave, but braver than the rest. Read the military histories, the name is always there, from the Armada to the Peninsular War. Could you not feel that pride? It was bred in her. It goes back centuries.’
‘I could feel it.’
‘Doomed pride, of course. Since she’s a spinster and none of the family except her survived the Civil War.’
‘None?’
‘None. People here do not talk about the war. Even my father, who lived through it, rarely spoke to me about it. Only a few stories come out, and one of those is about the Lucenas. Something strange, something dark happened to the people here. Left and right divided, became blood enemies. The Lucenas were on the left, the aristocratic left, and for a time they were in the ascendancy. Then the right started to win, through mobs, through street gangs, through violence. One day, when the news came through that Lorca had been murdered in Granada, a group of Falangists – at least a group who claimed to be Falangists – drove to the Lucena mansion. Where you were today. It seems that they had been inspired by what was happening in the east. The Lucenas had their own guard outside. There was a battle, but their men were outnumbered. The gang broke in, took away everyone inside. Cristina’s mother and father, other relatives, brothers, sisters – I forget how many. They were kept for some time in a makeshift prison used by the Falange, on the outskirts of the city. La Sole-dad. Just as happened with Lorca, one day they were taken outside, told to dig a ditch and then to stand in it.’
She waited, knowing what was to come.
‘The story is the Falangists turned a machine gun on the entire family. The ditch was their grave.’
Rodríguez gazed out into the night, his eyes unfocused.
‘And Cristina?’
‘She was the youngest of the family. Thirteen, fourteen. When her father realized what was happening, he pushed her to the ground and told her to lie there. The bodies, as they fell, protected her. This is what we understand – this is a story that has been through some retelling, you see, and, as far as I am aware, Cristina herself has never spoken of it. The anecdotal version is that she lay underneath the dead and dying bodies for the best part of a day – some say with a minor wound, others say not. In the early evening, when other prisoners arrived to fill in the ditch, she clawed her way out from under the bodies and ran away. How, no one knows. Some say that a few of the prisoners helped her and were shot for doing so. But this is conjecture.’
A small group walked past the car in silence, dressed from head to foot in pure white. They spoke in hushed whispers, soft voices ringing faintly against the stone walls.
‘How do you live with such a thing?’ Maria said.
‘How? Perhaps it is easier for her. She is Cristina Lucena. Remember the father in the Reconquest, the dagger thrown down from the ramparts. It is her destiny to overcome adversity, any adversity; or so, I presume, she feels.’
‘This is a terrible city,’ she said, without thinking. ‘I felt that when I was here before. As a student. There is something dark, something unnatural about it. It threatens, even when it is gay—’
‘No,’ Rodríguez replied, and there was a new firmness to his
voice. ‘This is a real city. As your painting by Valdés Leal is a real painting. As the Angel Brothers, dead on their bier, are real. It threatens only because it does not seek to hide that which we would rather not see. It uses the nearness of death to help us appreciate the brightness of life.’
She looked at him in the dark, trying to see the expression in the eyes, which now glittered blackly in the reflection from the windscreen.
‘And that is what you like. That is what fires you.’ It was a statement, not a question.
He reached past her and opened the passenger door. The evening air entered the vehicle, cool and gently perfumed with orange blossom.
‘I must go back to the station. Please excuse my rudeness.’
She picked up her case and put it on her lap.
‘When should I return?’
‘When you wish. We will have a case meeting at 10 a.m. You are, of course, welcome.’
‘I will be there at ten.’
‘Observing?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘What else?’
Rodríguez scrutinized her in the dark and she was very conscious of the fact. His was an interesting face: fine-featured, pleasant, welcoming. But behind it, when you could almost hear him thinking, there was something else, some keen, aggressive intelligence that he held in check until it was needed. She did not envy anyone who became the focus of the captain’s professional attention, even at this closing stage of his career.
‘I have no objection if you do more than observe,’ he said finally. ‘None at all. Menéndez is an intelligent man, better trained than most. Ambitious too. But he thinks along straight lines. They all do. They deserve to be jolted out of it.’
‘That’s not my job.’
‘No,’ he said, and his eyes were positively glittering now. ‘No, it isn’t. But I think you should say what you feel must be said.’
She paused for a moment, then asked, ‘You’re testing him, aren’t you?’
Rodríguez laughed. It was a pleasant, deep sound. ‘You are a professor, aren’t you? I prefer to think I am cutting our little lieutenant free for a while. He has worked under my shadow for a good time, now he must work on his own a little. I shall stand back and see where that leads. I am not a fool. He sees himself as captain; of course he does. But I think I have a few years left in me yet. And who knows? Perhaps this curious little case will show us what our friend Menéndez is made of.’
‘I see,’ she said and climbed out of the car. ‘Captain?’
He smiled innocently up at her from the driving seat.
‘I do not wish to be part of any office intrigue. I must make that clear.’
‘Nothing, my good Professor, could be further from my mind. Our primary objective is to solve this case as quickly and efficiently as possible. But I want to find out if Menéndez is fit to follow me. And find out I shall.’
Then he pulled the door shut, and the little engine gunned, with a cloud of fumes. The red car drove off into the thick, velvet night.
Maria Gutiérrez turned the key in the lock of her apartment. The sound of metal on metal echoed down the long, polished hallway. Her loneliness pulsed inside her, and behind it, shapeless and only dimly recognized, the faint, ragged edges of fear.
EIGHT
‘Come on, Bear. You speak a little English. You went on the course last year.’
The more the man in the seat in front of them gabbled, the more Quemada begged. It was the following morning and Semana Santa was beginning to hot up. The office held two prostitutes under caution, one pickpocket, a couple of tourists who complained of being robbed. And Quemada’s man, who was a mystery.
‘This guy is driving me crazy,’ Quemada moaned. ‘He’s quacking more than a duck with its arse on fire, and I don’t get a word of it. Just deal with him until the tourist cops come along, will you?’
Torrillo wiped the back of his hand against his sweating forehead and cursed the weather. It was hot enough for midsummer, and he had another reason to sweat – he didn’t like to admit to Quemada just how little English had hung around once the induction course had ended, and how much of that had got jumbled up with the tourist street-talk a cop just picked up as a matter of course over the years. He leaned over to the man in the chair, stared dolefully at him long enough to win a moment of silence, then said, in slow, loud, deliberate English, ‘Shut the fuck up!’
The man paused, looked hurt, then said in a loud American voice, ‘This is the limit. This is the limit. You get me the American Consul now. I’ve had a bellyful of this goddamn city, and when you find out who you’re dealing with you’re sure gonna be sorry you—’
Torrillo looked at him again, then said, more loudly, ‘Shut the fuck up!’
‘Aw, Jesus,’ the man screamed. ‘Is that the only English you know? I’m here trying to report some vicious lunatic trying to maim me, and I get a baboon with a ponytail . . .’
The American lurched to his feet, face going red. He wore a red nylon football jacket and red training trousers. A good six feet tall, athletic build, dark hair, about thirty years old, Torrillo judged. He looked as if he could handle himself, and he was starting to get mad.
‘Shut the—’
‘I’ve been here two hours now and I want the American Consul.’
He was thumping the table with both fists. It bounced up and down when he hit it.
‘I want him now. I want a ticket home. I’ve had a goddamn bellyful of this place. Been bitten by mosquitoes, robbed blind by your barmen, got hustled at seven in the morning – seven in the morning – by some broad with a moustache my old man could have done justice to. Jesus, you guys go for it at that time of day, huh? I can’t train ’cos it’s hot enough for a Turkish bath out there, in spite of everything your oh-so-nice tourist people in New York told me – mild spring climate, Mr Famiani, mild climate, my ass – and finally, and this is just the icing on the cake, you understand, just the pee-ess de la refuckingsistance, some goddamn fucking lunatic comes at me out of nowhere and has the infinite goddamn nerve to throw this at me . . .’
The American reached into his pocket, quick as a flash, pulled out something, held it in front of him, neat and tight, between finger and thumb.
Torrillo glanced at it, glanced at the redness of the man, thought for a second, looked him in the eyes, and then, without even drawing back his arm, punched him straight in the face. It was like being hit by a brick wall. The American’s nose crumpled, then his body arched backwards, flying across Quemada’s desk, taking a sheaf of papers with it. The metal object in his hand flew in the air, then fell, scuttering and scraping noisily across the dusty, plasticized floor. The man came to rest in a heap, head fetched up against an iron swivel chair, blood starting to pump from his nose. There were tears in his eyes and this time he really was screaming, screaming like crazy, and Torrillo just couldn’t make out a word.
He walked over, past the heap on the floor, bent down, reached under a desk space, retrieved something and held it up in his hand: a brand-new, bright, shiny dart, the silver shaft stained with dark brown from the point to halfway along the shank, a yellow ribbon tied to the base of the plastic feathers.
Torrillo put it safely on a desk, a good six feet away from the man in the red jacket and the red trousers, then walked over to him. He reached into the drawer, pulled out a pair of handcuffs, roughly turned the man around, cuffed one hand, cuffed the other. Then he pulled him up, sat him down on one of the metal office chairs, hard on his backside, hands behind his back. Blood and snot ran down from his nose, over his gaping mouth, then dripped off his chin.
Torrillo said, in a slow, quiet voice, ‘Shut the fuck up.’
The American started to sob, gently, blowing bright-pink snot bubbles out of his mouth and nose.
Quemada looked at the shaking heap on the chair, looked at Torrillo, shook his head and let out a long, low whistle.
‘Jesus, Bear. When you deal with someone, they surely know they’ve been dealt with.’
NINE
Forty-five minutes later, Menéndez, Torrillo and Maria Gutiérrez were sitting in the interview room. A police doctor was dabbing at the face of the man they now knew to be Freddy Famiani, aged thirty-two, a professional athlete from Laguna Beach, California. The doctor had applied a large plaster to a dart wound in Famiani’s upper arm.
Menéndez’s English was passable, Maria’s fluent. Between them they had managed to piece together enough of the story to realize the mistake, take off the cuffs, call a medic, calm Famiani down a little, persuade him that he really had no need to call a lawyer or the American Consul, and no permanent damage was done. Famiani had been running in the Murillo Gardens at just past seven that morning when he was attacked. No one else saw the incident. A couple of uniform cops who’d visited the area could find no trace of his assailant.
‘Doesn’t look so bad. I just gave him a little slap,’ said Torrillo when the doctor finished wiping Famiani’s face. ‘If I’d hit him real hard he’d still be sleeping.’
Maria did not translate the words.
‘The sergeant believed you were about to assault him,’ said Maria. ‘There has been an attack by someone answering your description, using darts like the one you pulled out of your pocket.’
‘An attack?’
‘A serious attack,’ said Menéndez.
‘Serious? Like someone got killed or something?’
Menéndez said nothing.
‘Shit!’ Famiani ran his sleeve across his face. ‘Anyone’d think this was New York the way you guys go on at each other. You got some water?’
Torrillo opened the door, walked to the water fountain and returned with a plastic cup.
‘Got to keep up my liquid intake,’ said Famiani. ‘Important. Like these.’
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a bottle of pills. Menéndez watched him shake two into his hand and then wash them down.
‘Nothing illegal, Mr Policeman,’ Famiani said. He sniffed away some blood. ‘Vitamins. Salt. Good natural stuff. I like to win fair and square when I run. Maybe that’s why I don’t win so often.’
