by David Hewson
‘I get a real good deal on the thing. I come home, I put it on, she takes one look at me and says, “Since when did your girlfriend start buying you suits?” I ask you. So I stay nice and cool and don’t blow my top, and explain how I just bought it so’s to please her, seeing as how she spent the best part of the previous six months telling me I dressed like some bum from the gutter. Eventually she calms down a little and I’m getting to thinking that maybe, just maybe, I’m going to get out of the room with my balls intact.
‘Then she says to me, “So how do you wash it?” I look at the ceiling and think: Am I hearing this? “Beg pardon,” I says. “How do you what?” “You didn’t even look, did you?” she says. “You didn’t even look on the little label inside, see how you wash it when it gets dirty. Which won’t take long with you. But that don’t matter. You just go buy it – that’s that. Washing it’s somebody else’s business.”
‘So I look at her and I say, “Sure, Dolores, sure I looked. I looked real good, I pulled the label out in the store and it says: ‘Washing Instructions – give the suit to your wife and say Fucking wash it!’” Then you know what she does?’
Velasco looked at his partner from under wilting eyelids. ‘Let me guess. She says, “God, I just love being married to this witty and charming hunk of manhood, let’s go buy two seats for the opera.”’
‘Yeah. Like hell. She packs her bags and she goes. You beat that? I gave her plenty of reason before, mind. I had a couple of girlfriends from time to time – who doesn’t? Once or twice I pushed her around a little, and I don’t feel proud of that. But still she stays. Until I buy some dumb fucking suit and don’t look at the washing label.’
Velasco doodled with his pen on the notepad. ‘Maybe it was sort of the culmination of things. Lots of things. The straw that broke the camel’s back, like they say.’
Quemada stared him straight in the eye. Sometimes, thought Velasco, just sometimes, he scares me a little.
‘That, my friend, is precisely the point. You live with ’em in the same house, share the same bed. You think you know them, then some little thing comes along out of the blue and . . . pow! You find the person you been sleeping next to these last ten years turns out to be the Creature from the Black Lagoon.’
‘Maybe they switch ’em. After the wedding. They take away the one you married and put the new one from Mars in its place. And you don’t even notice. ’Cos you’re drinking all the father-in-law’s booze.’
‘Yeah. Very funny. The point I’m making . . .’
‘Point? You mean there’s a point?’
‘. . . the point I’m making is. You got men. They get bad moods. They get mean. They do something about it sometimes, and that’s wrong. But usually it’s kind of predictable. Village priest don’t usually turn out to be a cat burglar in his spare time. Don’t go around murdering people, unless there’s something wrong with him. Women. They’re different. All of ’em. One little thing, something you don’t even know, it just triggers ’em. They go from dumb little wife sitting quiet at home waiting to make your dinner direct to Creature from the Black Lagoon all in one go. Straight to jail. Do not collect your money when you pass Go.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning this aunt of the Lucena woman. She could have done all that stuff with the kid. Pinched him. Brought him up. Just ’cos she felt like it. She looked at the girl’s belly, the curtains were green, there’s beans cooking in the kitchen, it’s her time of the month, whatever. She could turn from Mother Teresa to Bluebeard just like that.’
Velasco thought about the proposition. ‘I can buy that.’
‘Equally . . .’
Quemada let the words drift off into nothingness.
‘Equally?’ asked Velasco.
‘Equally the Lucena woman could be telling us one huge heap of shit.’
‘The whole thing?’
‘No. Not the whole thing. Just the details. The parts that matter.’
‘You mean, maybe the baby did die? Maybe those people just got sick of the sight of the Lucena girl and decided they’d rather be on the other side of the sea than listening to her go on and on about how this dashing devil killed her family and did unspeakable things to her?’
‘Precisely.’
Velasco looked at the pile of folders on the table. They were old, faded manila covered in titles written in fountain-pen ink. He picked up one marked ‘A. Alvarez’ and threw it across the table. When it landed, a faint film of dust blew out from its torn and grubby mouth.
‘I guess that’s what we’re supposed to find out.’
Quemada hated paper, so he threw the folder back to Velasco, then placed the call to the local police in Melilla. He wasn’t expecting wonders. He wasn’t disappointed.
‘You want what?’ asked the voice on the other end of the line. The officer had introduced himself as Sergeant Flores with the same kind of warmth and enthusiasm Quemada expected from a town-hall clerk at one minute to lunch break.
‘It’s important, Sergeant. We got a murder inquiry on here. A multiple murder. We need some help.’
He could hear Flores fuming on the other end of the line.
‘You want me to track down two people who lived here just after the war? Find out what happened to them? Who their family was? And you’d like me to do it all now?’
‘I appreciate the timing’s not great . . .’
‘You appreciate nothing, Detective. You ever been here?’
‘No, sir,’ said Quemada, and heartily hoped his personal ignorance of Melilla was not about to disappear. ‘No, sir, I have not.’
‘Well, let me tell you something. I came here from Galicia, God knows why, and this is not what you think. This is Africa. You understand.’
‘I hear you, sir.’
‘No, you don’t. This is Africa. Not Spain. Not in any real way, anyway. Africa. You know what that means?’
‘Let me guess, sir. Your filing systems aren’t too good.’
‘Jesus! They don’t even exist. I can’t push a button here and tell you that kind of information about people living here right now. Let alone forty, fifty years ago.’
‘I understand that. But you must have some kind of records.’
‘Yeah. A basement full of them. Covered by a couple of thousand dead beetles. If you want to go through them yourself, you’re welcome.’
Quemada did not want to hear this.
‘Not sure I would know where to start, sir.’
‘Me neither. And I got better things to do. Like chasing drugs and stuff like that. You know. Real policing.’
‘Finding someone who goes around killing people is real policing too, sir,’ said Quemada with an edge to his voice. ‘I appreciate he isn’t killing people where you are, but he is right here and we’re concerned about that all right.’ Even if you aren’t, you provincial little pen-pushing bastard, Quemada said to himself.
‘Yeah, well. I appreciate that.’ Flores took the criticism. He went silent for a moment, then came back sounding marginally more amenable. ‘But you gotta understand, I just don’t have the human resources to go chasing these things.’
‘That’s the same thing as people, right?’ said Quemada. The sergeant talked just like the ice queen: straight out of some university handbook.
‘Right,’ said Flores. ‘And the point I’m trying to make to you is, if you want to go through the records we have, fine. You come here and do it. No problem. But we’re not doing it for you.’
‘I will pass that message on to my captain, sir.’
‘You do that. If he’s got a problem, he can talk to my captain. Meantime . . . if you want to come out, let me know. We’ll fix a room for you. I may even buy you a beer.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Quemada. ‘I would look forward to that. One more thing?’
‘Yeah?’ said Flores.
‘There must be some long-time residents. People from the mainland who’ve lived with you for years. Maybe you could put me in touch with th
em. I guess it’s quite a small community you got over there. Maybe we could all save ourselves a lot of time if you give me a phone number and I just call them, see if they remember anything.’
‘That’s an idea,’ said Flores.
‘Yes.’
‘Let me think on it. I’ll call you back.’
‘Thank you, sir. Any idea when?’
‘When I’ve finished thinking on it. And the sooner you get off the line, the sooner I can start doing that.’
The line went dead. Quemada thought of the dirtiest curse he could muster and threw it at the handset.
‘Our guys in the colonies not so helpful?’ asked Velasco.
‘Man’s a complete arsehole,’ spat Quemada. ‘We just don’t have the human resources . . . Where’d they get shit like that?’
‘Courses. The training courses. I did one myself a couple of years back. It’s easy. You just got to remember to use the right lingo. Human resources. Goals. Strategies. That kind of thing.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Bullshit goes down real well with the management these days.’
‘Fine. Well, this human resource would like a strategy that would give him the goal of a nice cold beer in the space of the next hour or so. You got one?’
Velasco looked at the pile of paper in front of him, picked out a couple of sheets, then threw them across the table.
‘Funny you should say that,’ he said. ‘Yeah. Maybe I have.’
Quemada finished looking at the last piece of paper Velasco had thrown him and let out a long, low whistle.
‘This guy . . . when did he die?’
‘Ten years ago. Cancer of the throat.’
‘Well, can’t say it happened none too soon. This was not a nice human being. Maybe that Lucena woman saw something in him, but I’ll be damned if I can understand what it was.’
‘People change. Things change people. Maybe the person she met wasn’t the person he became. Maybe . . .’
‘Maybe, maybe, maybe . . . No relatives, right?’
‘No legal relatives. Not so far as I can see. His wife died five years before he did. No kids. Neither of them had a brother or sister. There’s some good filing here. Even down to a couple of newspaper obituaries and the funeral report. No mention of relatives.’
‘Yeah,’ said Quemada, sifting through the pages. ‘Plenty of little Antonio spawn around town from the other side of the blanket, though. Least, if the internal stuff is anything to go by.’
The file began with the first complaint in 1947. It ended in 1964. In all there were thirteen separate reports. Twelve of them were sexual, all but one involving minors.
‘These kids. They were all girls, all aged between thirteen and sixteen. You think that’s what he liked?’
Velasco nodded. ‘Seems so. Goes along with the Lucena woman’s story too.’
‘This guy must have had some friends somewhere. Good friends. There’s different detectives on every case, different names, same conclusions. And none of ’em ever went to court. Now one false accusation of rape I could believe. Two maybe. But twelve?’
Velasco blew his nose, couldn’t stop himself examining the contents of his handkerchief, then said, ‘Maybe people just misunderstood his intentions.’
‘Sure,’ said Quemada, and pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘Inma Cuellar. Fourteen at the time of the complaint. Says Antonio paid her once a week to come to him. Did most anything he liked with her. Medical evidence of anal bruising. Eyewitness saw her sucking him off in the park. Pregnant. Jesus! Six of them are pregnant when they make the complaint. Maybe they misunderstood something too. Thought he was playing pat-a-cake.’
‘Look at the addresses. All in Santa Cruz or Triana. They could have been kid whores. Maybe he paid them and they made the complaint when he didn’t want them any more. When they got pregnant. You don’t know who else they might have been screwing.’
Quemada gave him a filthy look and said, ‘Don’t matter if they were whores from the barrio or trainee nuns with an address in heaven. The law’s the law. He should have been in court on this. He should have been in jail.’
‘Maybe they gave people a little more leeway in those days.’
‘Leeway? Leeway? This looks like leeway? The guy had influence. That’s all. Look at the way the case notes are signed off . . . “Insufficient evidence”, “untrustworthy witness” . . . All of them? They all got knocked up by the local school stud and suddenly decided to blame it on poor old Antonio?’
‘You don’t know what happened. You’re talking about a long time ago.’
‘No? My guess is this is just the stuff we know about. The tip of the iceberg. Old Antonio was probably poking half the school population of the poor neighbourhoods in his heyday, and you know it as well as I do.’
Velasco looked at the sheaf of paper, the thin black lines of fuzzy typing. He liked the work. He liked being with Quemada. The man could be a pig, but he could see into things sometimes. When he had a hunch it was usually a good hunch.
‘Yeah,’ Velasco said. ‘I guess you’re right.’
‘And that probably means there’s a whole generation of Antonio offspring out there with every reason in the book to feel somewhat cool towards him and his memory. Not just the Lucena woman. Kids he took advantage of. Kids he fathered.’
‘That’s an enchanting thought.’
‘Yeah,’ said Quemada. He turned up the last set of notes, which Velasco had set apart from the rest.
‘And this is what they finally get him on? Except they don’t get him at all.’
Quemada stared at the report. It was the only one that ran to more than a single page. He shook his head and said, ‘Well, well, well. Antonio wasn’t so smart. Alongside everything else he was creaming the brotherhood. They made him treasurer, he cooks the books. It’s vague in there, but looks like he got away with the best part of two million pesetas over some two, three years. Wonder what he spent it on. Church donations? Mickey Mouse T-shirts for his little harem?’
‘They could have prosecuted him on that one. For sure.’
‘They could have prosecuted him on every one. What’s it say here?’
Quemada squinted at the fine writing at the bottom of the report. The black ink was old and fading. He read out the words.
‘“Señor Alvarez has resigned from the brotherhood. Recommendation: no action.” No action. Well, isn’t that a surprise?’
Velasco said, ‘What do we do next? We got to show this to Menéndez. He’s going to want us to trace every name in those reports.’
‘He’s going to want to know about the couple in Melilla too. He’s going to want to know everything.’
Velasco sighed and waited.
‘Guess that settles it then,’ Quemada said. ‘’Scuse me for a moment.’
He got out a comb, leaned over the desk, stared into Velasco’s suit and made out he was using the mirror of its fabric to comb the long, greasy swatch of hair on the side of his head. Then he looked at his watch.
‘Thanks, Partner. You come in real useful sometimes. Those good Catholics out there are having a nice time tonight, some extra big procession or something. Some parade, some heavy audience participation stuff. I read it on the detail. We got more men out there trying to keep the drunks upright than chasing our guy in the red jumpsuit. I guess God’s putting in a guest appearance on the pavement or something. If we get a move on, you never know, we might meet some ladies full of the Holy Spirit.’
‘Sure,’ said Velasco and wondered why the hell he took it. ‘They’re gonna go from God to us in five seconds flat.’
Quemada nodded and it made the little dewlap under his chin shake. ‘Point taken. I guess we’ve got an hour before we need to call the man. How many beers do we normally drink in that time?’
Velasco stood up, put on his jacket, and thought about the hard metallic taste that San Miguel made on the back of the throat when you were coming down with a cold.
‘He who counts is l
ost,’ he said and walked out of the door.
THIRTY-TWO
Menéndez got out of the car at the station, said the captain expected them all at eight the next morning, then went inside. The night was now black and velvety. Even the floodlights on the cathedral seemed powerless in front of it. Their deep-yellow rays were swallowed up by the darkness. Only a faint aurora of light glowed beyond the surface of the city. Above the crowded streets and the tinny, local clamour of the parades the world was silent and still.
Torrillo put the car into first and pulled slowly away from the kerb. There were too many people around to go much above a crawling pace.
‘What will he do tomorrow?’ asked Maria. ‘Where do we go next?’
Torrillo thought the question over.
‘We’ve got leads,’ he said. ‘Cristina Lucena. Alvarez. Romero. That painting thing you came up with. There are things to chase. And the captain’s getting more involved. You could see that today. He’s a busy man, but he’s on top of things.’
She listened for doubts in his voice and thought she could feel them, just creeping in at the edges. Torrillo, of all people, had seemed impervious to the ups and downs of the case. Now even he was beginning to wonder what would happen next.
‘You’re waiting, aren’t you?’
He turned round from the driving seat, puzzled.
‘Huh?’
‘You’re waiting for something to happen. Another killing. Because that’s what might bring you closer to him.’
Torrillo squeezed the steering wheel and grimaced.
‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s just not true. We’re doing our best. We’ll get there. And we know a lot, when you come to think about it. We know the guy likes paintings. We know he mixes in some kind of sex scene, maybe drugs too. We know he’s into the bulls. And all that other stuff, the old stuff, maybe it’s something, maybe it’s not. It’s like that sometimes. It doesn’t just happen. Life’s a mess, Maria. Cops just reflect that. You think you’re way behind everything, that it will never come to an end. Then you turn a corner, half-thinking, and suddenly you’re there. Bingo!’
