by David Hewson
A manservant, with downcast eyes and a tanned, pockmarked face, answered the door, ushering them into a cool, formal room, with elegant furniture finished in pale-green satin, matching curtains, a Bechstein grand piano and a few neoclassical prints on the walls. Maria stepped closer to take a look at one of the paintings: it was a Murillo Virgin and Child. Then she went round the rest. Every one was of the Sevillian School.
‘What do you see?’ asked Menéndez.
‘The paintings. There isn’t a Valdés Leal among them. But this is the same period, the same kind of style.’
Torrillo looked at the Virgin and Child. It was not one of the artist’s best: hack work, the flesh too full, the faces spoiled by oversentimentality, the sort of thing that paid the rent.
‘Women made of milk and blood,’ Maria murmured.
He looked at her, screwed up his face and said, ‘Sorry.’
‘There’s a saying. All Murillo’s women, these beautiful, placid, desirable creatures. All of them, all of us, are made of milk and blood. It’s why we exist. What we provide.’
‘Painting’s creepy sometimes,’ he said, still staring at the canvas. ‘You mean someone who liked this stuff would know about the one in La Caridad? The one that was used to pose the Angel Brothers?’
‘I imagine so. Lots of people like this style, particularly the Murillos. But everything here comes from that period. You wouldn’t find that by accident.’
‘Well, excuse my ignorance,’ Torrillo declared. ‘But it looks like the kind of stuff my mother used to hang on the wall. You got it free with soap powder – ten packets, one Virgin. Milk and blood. People from the barrio love that kind of crap.’
‘Yes,’ she said, too tired to object.
The door opened and Jaime Mateo walked into the room with the exaggerated theatricality of a second-rate actor. Maria could hardly take her eyes off him. He wore a newly ironed white shirt and cream linen slacks and carried a china teacup. His hair was a brilliant artificial gold, his face bore a deep, brown tan that seemed too perfect to be real. In the ring, even seen with the relatively close eye of the television camera, Mateo looked as if he deserved his nickname. El Guapo. In the flesh, seen from a few inches away, the glamour disappeared and in its place was something wholly artificial and exaggerated. Maria thought of the theatre, the times she had watched actors perform apparently naturally on the stage, without overstatement, without artifice. Then, when the play had ended, the masks would drop, they would walk to the front and take their bows. And the artifice would be revealed: they would be unreal creatures, plastered in make-up so crude that it seemed inconceivable anyone could have been deceived into thinking it was not there.
This was Mateo’s skill too: to seem so striking, so natural from a distance. The price he paid for it was to strut, permanently, like a peacock, once the corrida was over. Far from being handsome, he was, in fact, grotesque. The golden hair, the flawless skin, the blue eyes of the posters seemed, to Maria, to resemble the kind of primary colour portraits a child would paint – too simplistic, too overstated to be genuine.
‘The police, how wonderful,’ he said, in a curious, flat voice that mixed the accent of the barrio with a deliberate attempt at affectation. Then he sat down in a high-backed green satin chair and looked at them with undisguised amusement.
‘You know why we’re here, Señor Mateo?’
Maria tried to read the expression on Menéndez’s face. He seemed to be as shocked by the man’s appearance as she was.
‘They said something, when they phoned. About some case. I don’t know.’ Mateo waved his arms about as he spoke. She could see Torrillo peering into his face, looking closely at his eyes.
‘What do you want with me?’
‘You OK?’ asked Torrillo.
Mateo bristled, in an uncomfortable, twitchy manner.
‘Huh?’
‘I said, you OK, sir? Just that you don’t look too well.’
Mateo blinked and Maria thought – the eyes. Bear can see something there and he’s letting the man know it.
‘I’m fine.’ The matador wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘You don’t look it,’ said Torrillo. ‘You look like a man with a medical problem to me. You know what I mean?’
Mateo tried to get angry. There were flecks of white on his lips. He gestured to Menéndez.
‘This why you’re here? To hassle me? I got contacts, you know. I could pick up that phone and speak to people you wouldn’t want to talk to.’
‘Yeah,’ said Torrillo, quietly, then looked at the paintings on the wall.
‘Some friends of yours are dead,’ Menéndez said. ‘We need to find out what you knew about them. When you last saw them.’
Mateo gulped down a swig of tea. It was an ugly gesture.
‘You mean the Angels?’
‘To start with.’
‘I last saw the brothers three months ago. In Madrid. Some party. I hardly knew them, if you must know. They weren’t friends or anything.’
‘What were they?’ asked Torrillo.
Mateo chewed on his lip, then answered. ‘Acquaintances. Just that. I get to know all sorts of people. They parade me around their parties like they own me. It’s good for business. The Angels . . . I met them from time to time. They were interesting people. Stars. Like me.’
‘You go out with them?’ asked Torrillo.
‘Go out?’
‘Yeah. You know. Sex. That kind of stuff.’
Mateo’s tan was turning a deep, suffused brown.
‘Did I have sex with the brothers? Are you really asking that?’
‘Yeah,’ said Torrillo. ‘I’m asking.’
‘Jesus!’ Mateo looked incredulous. ‘Look. The circles I move in, you meet a lot of queers. Personally, I don’t like it. I come from the barrio. We’re not as tolerant as the rest of you. But in this business you meet them, you shake hands, you say hello. That’s how it goes.’
‘You didn’t meet them socially, outside of parties?’ Torrillo persisted. ‘With other friends, so to speak?’
‘So to speak what? You think I’m queer? Jesus! When I fight in that ring I can look into that crowd and choose any woman I want. You know that? You understand that? You go home to your quiet little wife, policeman. I take my pick for the night. Best you hope it’s not your old lady.’
Torrillo smiled. ‘Goes with the job, huh? Not being queer and all that?’
‘Yes,’ spat Mateo.
Menéndez checked some notes on his pad. ‘I looked at your records before we came here.’
‘Wonderful. Why don’t you just read the papers?’
‘Some petty thieving when you were young.’
‘I got caught. Most didn’t. You think this is new? You read Hola!? It’s all in there, week in, week out. Good copy – ghetto kid climbs out of the gutter. Everyone wants to read that story.’
‘Two years ago in Cadiz there was a complaint. From a girl.’
‘Sure. And your records show nothing happened. The police there didn’t do nothing about it.’
‘Why was that?’ asked Torrillo. ‘Did you get on the phone to your contacts?’
‘No need. Stupid bitch makes up to me after the fight, comes on like she knows what it’s about. We get to the room and she changes her tune. Later. When she thinks about it.’
Menéndez went through his notes. ‘She says you held a knife to her throat, then raped her.’
‘She’s a liar. Some kid who goes to a man’s room at two in the morning, what do you think’s going to happen? You play cards?’
‘She was fifteen.’
‘If you saw her that night, you’d think she was twenty-two. It’s only after, when she realizes what Mama might say, that she starts screaming rape. Afterwards. That’s why the cops let her go.’
Menéndez wrote on the pad, then turned the page.
‘Did you know Luis Romero?’
Mateo stared at the ceiling for a few moments. ‘Doesn’t ri
ng a bell. Should I?’
‘Professor at the university. This is his photograph.’
He passed over the college portrait. Romero was smiling for the camera.
‘Well?’ asked Torrillo.
‘Don’t rush me,’ said Mateo. ‘You want the truth, don’t you?’
He held up the picture to get the light on it better. ‘I’ve seen him before. Don’t know his name, though.’
‘Where have you seen him?’ asked Menéndez.
‘I don’t know. Some party. Some hanger-on. You know how many people there are like that? Hundreds. They follow you around, pat you on the back like you were an old buddy or something, then go home and tell their friends how they’ve been out partying with the famous man. Sure. I’ve seen him before. Don’t ask me where.’
‘At the Angels’ apartment?’ asked Maria. ‘Did you go there? Did you see him there?’
Mateo thought. ‘Could be. The brothers threw a party four, maybe five months ago. I went because they promised it wouldn’t be just the queer crowd they hung around with.’
‘Was it?’ she said.
‘No. It wasn’t. For once they actually told the truth. It was pretty normal really. Some women, some business people.’
‘And you think Romero might have been there?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. I go to parties two, three times a week, more sometimes. I can’t remember everyone I meet.’
‘I can understand that,’ said Menéndez. ‘What about Miguel Castañeda? Was he a hanger-on?’
‘No,’ said Mateo, firmly. ‘You know who he was. The guy who ran the brotherhood. Sure, there were social events with the brotherhood from time to time and he’d be there. But I don’t remember seeing him hanging around. That old guy was too snobby for that. He didn’t like mixing with the riff-raff.’
‘Was,’ said Torrillo. ‘You said “was”.’
‘I can read. It was all over the front page how he got killed in that little office of theirs.’
‘You knew the place?’
‘’Course I knew it. I was a member, for God’s sake. Didn’t you look through their records and find that out for yourself? I told you. I used to have to go to their crappy evenings from time to time. Do the tradition thing. They expected it.’
‘Why?’ Maria asked. ‘Why did you have to be a member?’
Mateo looked into the empty teacup. ‘Let’s just say it was kind of bequeathed to me.’
‘By your father. By Antonio Alvarez,’ she said.
He went blood-red in the face and gripped the cup so hard she thought it might break.
‘You have been pointing your long noses in places you’re not welcome.’
‘Your father found you a place in the brotherhood? He made it a gift?’
Mateo laughed. ‘A gift? A gift?’
Whatever shine, whatever energy the man first possessed had left him. His eyes now looked dull and blank, the pupils like pinpoints, unfocused, uncaring.
‘I didn’t get gifts from my father. He gave us money. To keep us alive. He paid for my lessons in the ring. He left me what he thought was the right . . . the right framework for me to live in when I grew up. I don’t think it was a gift. When you put up fences to pen in your cattle, when you inoculate them to keep away diseases, that’s just housekeeping. The kind of thing you do out of duty, like putting a dog in kennels when you want to go on holiday.’
They paused, waiting in vain for him to say more, then Maria asked, ‘Did you ever meet your father?’
Mateo closed his eyes. His face looked like a death mask. ‘Once. When I was small. I remember a man, a tall man, dressed in white, coming to the house. Talking to my mother. They went upstairs. There were sounds. Things I didn’t understand then. Then they came down again. He patted me on the head. I remember this big, brown hand in my hair, a wasted, thin face, yellow teeth. He left money on the kitchen table and my mother said that I must never, never tell anyone that Don Alvarez had visited us. I thought my real father had died before I was born. That was what she told me. When she was dying she got around to telling me the truth. I think I was the last to know. At school, they would taunt me, call me “Antonio’s bastard”, but I didn’t know what they meant. Then, when I found out, he was already ill. He refused to see me, but the money kept on coming. I used it to escape.’
Maria found herself wondering: Did anyone ever really escape Antonio Alvarez?
‘When he died, he was in some kind of disgrace,’ Mateo went on. ‘But there was a public funeral. I went to see the coffin. There was this face I didn’t recognize. It was so thin, so wasted. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t feel anything. I still don’t.’
‘Your father bequeathed you a place in the brotherhood?’
‘And a few other things too. Some money. Some paintings. I wasn’t the only bastard, you understand. There were many crows pecking at the cake. But I got more than most. For some reason, I don’t know, I think he favoured me over the others.’
‘Do you know Cristina Lucena?’ she asked. ‘Does the name mean anything to you?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’
‘You like art?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘I got money. I like to buy things.’
‘You know what you’re buying? All of these pictures, most of these pictures here, they come from the same period. The same place.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘And the same gallery too. I buy these things in job lots. You think I got time to decorate the place myself?’
‘You know who they’re by?’
‘Jesus! What is this? Some kind of test? No. They’re pictures. From the city. Here. Seville. Like the pictures we had on the wall when I was a kid, only real this time, not some cheap posters. I like that. You think I should buy the sort of shit the Angels turned out?’
No one answered that.
Torrillo said, ‘If you’re a member of the brotherhood presumably you’ve got the robe?’
‘Somewhere. It’s a long time since I wore it.’
‘We need to take it away with us.’
Mateo shrugged, went to the door and barked orders to the manservant. A minute later the man returned with a crimson cloak folded over his arm. Torrillo snatched it from him and examined it on the spot. It was slightly faded and smelled of dust and mould.
‘Do you remember when you last wore it?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Mateo wearily. ‘You don’t need them for the social functions. It’s just Semana Santa, and I’m too damned rich and famous to deal with all that shit.’
Torrillo threw the cloak down on a chair. ‘We don’t need to take it away. There’s nothing there.’
‘Whatever you want,’ said Mateo and slumped back into the chair. ‘Are we done now?’
‘You going somewhere?’ asked Torrillo.
‘No. I’m just tired. I like to get to bed early the week before a fight.’
‘Yeah,’ said Torrillo. ‘Makes sense.’
Menéndez got out of his chair and said, ‘We don’t need any more from you tonight, Señor Mateo. But we may need to speak to you again.’
‘I stay here until next Tuesday. Then I go to Malaga for a fight next weekend. If you knew how much money I make in one afternoon you’d appreciate that nothing’s going to stand in the way of me going there. Understood?’
He barely saw them leave. Torrillo led the way out of the house, unlocked the car, then opened the doors for them to get in. As they drove away along the Calle Betis, the river gleaming like a black snaking mirror to their left, he turned and said, ‘My guess is he’s shooting up right about now. You see those eyes?’
Maria nodded. ‘What do you think?’
‘Heroin. Most likely. Who knows? You believe that? A man’s brave enough to go fight bulls, but can’t get through the day without some kind of dope. Doesn’t make sense.’
‘To him it does,’ said Menéndez.
Maria thought: It’s not the corrida that frightens him. It’s s
omething else, something old. Something left behind.
She looked at her watch. It was fast approaching ten. ‘I’d like to go home,’ she said.
‘Drop me at the station,’ said Menéndez. ‘I need to do some paperwork.’
Then he stared silently out of the window, watching the evening crowds on their rounds, blankly listening to the sounds of the night.
‘He didn’t kill anyone today,’ he said to no one in particular.
‘Not that we know of,’ said Torrillo.
‘No. He didn’t kill anyone. He lets us know when he’s done it. He doesn’t try to hide what he’s done. If he’d killed someone, we’d know about it.’
Torrillo glanced at his watch. ‘Still two hours to go. Maybe he’s working late tonight.’
In the back of the car, in the still, humid air of the night, Maria shivered.
THIRTY-ONE
‘The way I see it,’ said Quemada, ‘it’s this female thing. The women you know.’
The two detectives sat facing each other across the flat, ink-stained top of the green metal desk in the office. It was approaching eleven in the evening and the place was empty. From far off, down the long corridor, came the usual echoing sounds – drunks getting dragged, complaining, down to the cells, pickpockets protesting their innocence, whores trying to talk low and persuasively. Velasco looked across at his partner and raised his eyebrows.
‘This female thing?’
‘Yeah. With women and stuff.’
Velasco shook his head, tried to clear the sea of mucus that had settled in for the duration between his ears, and blinked very slowly. ‘Women stuff. Women stuff? How long is it since you got divorced? Huh? What you know about women, what you understand about women, you could tattoo on the end of a roach’s dick and still leave space for an ID.’
‘That so?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, let me tell you something, partner. I know enough about women to know they can be real weird. Not like men. I mean real weird. Take Dolores. You know what made her leave me in the end? This you won’t believe. I promise. So she’s been moaning at me for months about the way I dress. “Your suit looks like it came from the charity shop. It’s got more shiny parts than a new Datsun.” All that kind of stuff. One day I walk past El Corte Inglés and I see they got a sale on. I go in and I buy this new suit. Kind of a cottony lineny thing. You know, pale stuff, like the politicians wear. Gotta be careful when you take a piss, in case you get drip stains down the front of the pants, but apart from that real smart stuff.
