by David Hewson
‘Even though his wife said it was impossible. Said he was incapable of killing himself.’
‘Excuse me if I sound like I’m talking down to you on this one, Lieutenant, but I done a lot of suicides myself. They always say that. It’s automatic. It’s their way of trying to take the blame off themselves. Most of these guys, they kill themselves because of some trouble at home. Maybe she’s sleeping around, maybe there’s money problems. A woman don’t want to admit that. When they say, “He didn’t do it”, what they mean is: He did, but I don’t want to admit it. Believe me, it’s not unusual.’
Menéndez shuffled through the file again. It was depressingly thin. There was scarcely anything on Romero’s background, his job, his family life.
‘Do we know much more about Romero than this? Who he was? There must be something on the death certificate.’
Quemada reached over and picked up the single-sheet bio of the dead man. ‘Pretty flimsy, huh? I looked at the death certificate. It was a reissue. You know, the one they put out when they don’t have a birth certificate for the guy? We talked to his wife. She said he never had one. It gave him some trouble when he wanted to get a passport. Same thing happened to a lot of people born during the war. The paperwork isn’t there, so it has to be reinvented.’
‘Have we asked his wife about his family?’
‘I sent some boys back to talk to her some more. Romero said he was an orphan, got brought up in some children’s home here in the city. No relatives she could tell us about. Seems he didn’t like talking too much about his childhood. It was just an area he’d rather avoid. Interesting, huh? You thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘That there could be a link with Cristina Lucena?’ Menéndez asked. ‘The city’s got lots of orphans, particularly of that age. It’s a long shot.’
‘Yeah. And I don’t know how we could prove it. Maybe the guys in Melilla will get back to us with something.’
‘What about his work? You talked to people at the university?’
‘The guys went there after they spoke to his wife. Funny thing is, you know she painted that picture of him, kind of like a playboy figure? Screwing around, not minding much what he was screwing? Well, if he did, he did it quietly. The people at the university seemed to think he was a pretty ordinary guy. Hardworking, pretty straight, quiet. “Kept himself to himself” – you know the line. They didn’t see him as the playboy type, so maybe he did it after hours. I got some people looking into that. Nothing so far.’
‘Did they talk about his marriage? His colleagues?’
‘They said . . . maybe it wasn’t so good. Seems she never showed up at the university. Never went to any of these things they put on – you know, the art shows, the social evenings; Jesus, those college people got a party a night, you want to go to one. Some nice women around too, not that I found anyone who thought old Luis was chasing them much. Couldn’t have blamed him. Seems most people thought his old woman was a seriously cold fish. Not liked. Not liked at all.’
Menéndez looked at his watch. It was two in the afternoon. The city was half-dead under the shock of the previous night’s calamities. Torrillo hung between life and death. They seemed no closer to the killer, no nearer to catching a glimpse of the identity behind the cowl.
‘The papers are printing the photofit this afternoon?’
‘It went out on the lunchtime news too. We’ve had some calls already. They’re following them up. He looks like a lot of people, though. He really does. This photofit stuff can be nice if there’s something distinctive. A tattoo or a scar. Or if you got somebody in the frame already. But when everything’s cold . . . I dunno.’
‘I want every call followed up. Properly.’
‘Sure,’ said Quemada. ‘I’ll see to it. You mind my asking – any news about Bear? The guys will ask. When I come out of the office, they’re sure to.’
Menéndez’s face was expressionless. ‘It’s just the same,’ he said. ‘He’s unconscious. He’s lost a lot of blood. If he survives there may be some long-term damage. It’s too early to say.’
Quemada folded his arms tight and grimaced. ‘To think I had that bastard in front of me last night and he got away. I can’t believe it. I may not be great at this job, but I’m not normally that stupid.’
Menéndez closed the file in front of him. ‘Don’t kill yourself. I’d have done the same thing. Torrillo’s a colleague, a friend for you. The woman was hurt. In a situation like that, you’re a human being first and a cop second.’
‘Never looked at it that way,’ said Quemada, a note of surprise in his voice. ‘Trouble is, I keep remembering him climbing up those stairs, I keep remembering the sound of his steps, and I think if only I’d taken him then. Instead of waiting.’
On the way out Quemada stopped at the door.
‘Lieutenant?’
Menéndez looked up from the desk.
‘I wasn’t going to mention this, but there was one more thing that was bugging me. About Romero’s death.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We’re working on the assumption that he was killed. Right? We think someone killed him, then tried to make it look like a suicide?’
‘That’s got to be the assumption, yes.’
‘Well, what bugs me is: how do you cut someone’s wrists like that? Both of them. How do you actually do it? Romero was not a small man. He isn’t going to sit there and let you get on with it. There’s no trace of drugs in his blood, like there was with the Angel Brothers. So he wasn’t doped or anything. There’s no marks on his body to suggest he was tied up.’
Menéndez looked at Quemada. Maybe Torrillo’s absence could be accommodated after all.
‘I don’t know. It would be very difficult.’
‘Unless . . .’
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless there were two of you. That would make it easier. Come to think of it, that would make the Angel Brothers a lot easier too.’
Menéndez stared at Quemada.
‘That’s a very interesting idea, Detective,’ he said.
THIRTY-SEVEN
‘This is a wonderful job. A truly wonderful job,’ said Quemada.
They were cruising around in an unmarked grey Opel that smelled of stale cigarettes and sweat. Outside, the city had a strange atmosphere: silence underlined by tension. People weren’t going to work. It was a traditional holiday. But they weren’t going out to play, either. They mooched in bars or sat outside their houses, silent, miserable. Even the kids weren’t kicking footballs around.
Quemada stared into the street and said, ‘Jesus! I hate it like this. It’s better when they’re all rolling drunk and fighting. At least you know what’s going on.’
Velasco flicked a cigarette out of the window, out into the hot, dusty air of the afternoon. ‘Give it a day. Come the bullfight tomorrow, they’ll be back to normal. They won’t remember a thing. Meantime, meantime . . .’
‘Yeah. Meantime,’ said Quemada. ‘Meantime maybe the captain ought to be coming up with something. You know, I don’t like saying this, but it’s true. Menéndez is running this one. The old man’s just sitting back like he’s waiting for retirement.’
‘He’s done it before,’ said Velasco. ‘I’ve seen it a dozen times. Lets us stay in the dark, then comes through with something you never expected. Maybe he’s just letting Menéndez hang himself before he comes in. It’s no secret the creep’s after his seat.’
Quemada scowled at him.
‘I’m sick of these little games. Menéndez is just trying to do a decent job. We got Bear in the hospital, for Christ’s sake. It’s not just the scum getting hurt out there.’
‘Oh,’ said Velasco. ‘Lieutenant’s pet now, are we? Don’t worry. The captain’ll come through. Don’t he always?’
‘He’d best get a move on,’ Quemada grumbled.
Then he looked through the mess of papers on his lap and tried to think about the next name on the list.
They had visit
ed the last known addresses of three of the complainants who had filed rape allegations against Alvarez. They were ticking off the pregnant ones first. That seemed the most obvious bet. They were not making progress. The first address was a tiny two-up, two-down hovel close to the bullring in El Arenal. It was boarded up and derelict, the roof missing, the windows black holes like rotten stumps of teeth. A whole line of houses in the street had been condemned by some urban improvement scheme, then left to moulder while the city hall found enough money to go ahead with the work. That was a good ten years ago, or so they were told by the nearest resident they could find. Everyone got moved out to one of the tower blocks in the suburbs. Quemada made some notes, shrugged his shoulders and notched up another task to pass on to the growing case team back at the station. They could waste days, weeks even, trying to track down anyone who’d gone out into the sprawling arid flatlands on the edge of the city.
After that they drove over to La Macarena and banged on the door of the second address. There was no reply, so they knocked up a neighbour, flashed their cards, used the name they had in their records. No recognition. From what they heard, it sounded as if the family now in residence had no connection with the one there twenty years ago. Another trail winding off into nowhere. But at least that didn’t happen with the third name, two streets away. An old woman with whiskers, dressed in a shabby red floral dress and carpet slippers, told them straight: the woman in question was dead, killed in a car accident a good five years before. And the kid had been stillborn.
Velasco checked out the details of the current name again. Magdalena Bartolomé had, with the aid of her mother, filed a complaint of repeated rape against Alvarez in June 1960. She was thirteen at the time. According to the records, Alvarez had been a regular visitor to her house. When the two were left alone one afternoon he’d forced her into sex. This went on for several months. The girl was pregnant. According to the case notes, scribbled in some ancient spidery hand by a detective long gone from the force, Alvarez had vigorously denied the accusations. He said he’d visited the Bartolomé house in Triana regularly, but out of charity, handing out allowances for the brotherhood. Nothing had happened when he went to the house, the mother had never left them alone, and he was innocent of the charge. The detective asked around the neighbourhood. There was no evidence to suggest she was involved in a sexual relationship with anyone else. No evidence to the contrary, either. The detective described the girl as surly, unhelpful and untrustworthy, and totally under the spell of her mother, who seemed to be instrumental in filing the complaint. Recommendation: No action on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
‘What do you think?’ asked Quemada, slowing the car to a crawl as they crossed the Triana bridge.
‘Sounds like the mother was charging him for his pleasure. When he quit paying, she tried to get her own back.’
‘Yeah. I mean. They’re saying there he screwed the girl – how many times?’
‘Too many to count.’
‘And they wait months before complaining?’
‘Mother says she never knew,’ Velasco pointed out.
‘Sure. A man comes along wanting to give you money. You leave him in the house, alone with your thirteen-year-old daughter for an hour or two. What did she think they were going to do?’
‘You can see why it didn’t come to court.’
Quemada stared at his partner. ‘Like hell I can. They should have nailed Alvarez for underage sex and the mother for pimping her own daughter.’
‘Great! Alvarez and the mother go to jail and the girl goes to the poorhouse or worse. There’s justice for you.’
‘I’m not talking justice. I’m talking the law. If someone else wants to make those decisions – some politician, some judge – fine. Let them do it. It’s not our job. Break the law, we charge you. Beginning. End. Not our job to work out the consequences.’
He looked at the street sign. They were nearly there. The little square blue-and-white house numbers counted down.
‘Interesting,’ Quemada said. ‘This woman’s five streets in from the river. That bullfighter could walk here, if he wanted. He lives in the Calle Betis, Menéndez said.’
‘Million and one people live in Triana,’ Velasco replied.
Quemada muttered a low curse, then parked the car in a gap between a bread van and a rusting Seat sitting on its axles. The street smelled badly of rank drains and cat piss. It comprised a long, low line of dirty-white terraced houses, two storeys mainly, with the occasional – probably illegal – third floor added. There was the odd balcony, a few flowers, a striped sunshade. The pavements were strewn with rubbish that had been gutted from black refuse bags by the feral cats that now lay still, but attentive, in every shaded corner.
‘Nice neighbourhood,’ said Velasco.
‘Consequences,’ muttered Quemada.
‘You still acting the sensitive type?’
Quemada sat rigid in the car, refusing to get out until the conversation had been closed.
‘Will you think about this woman, for once? We’re going in there, asking about how her mother was hiring her out for sex more than thirty years ago, asking what she remembers, how she feels. What if her old man’s around? What do we do then?’
‘We ask him to leave. That’s one of the nice things about being a cop. You get to tell people what to do.’
‘And what then? What if he comes back? Beats it out of her? What if we start something, it ends in a divorce, her marriage goes out the window?’
‘You got too active an imagination, Quemada. What if . . . what if . . .’
‘Maybe it bothers me more than it does you.’
‘Ha!’ Velasco laughed. ‘I always did have you marked down as the sensitive type. You know what bothers me? Bear. Bear, and those other people getting killed like that. The ice queen. If we cause a little marital discord on the way to stopping that, I guess I can live with it. Besides . . .’
Velasco looked at the house ahead and tried to cut some kind of mental pathway through the mucus that was beginning to clog up the inside of his head.
‘Besides, we’re wasting our time here. You know this kind of neighbourhood. If they’ve got someone who’s a cat burglar, they’re upwardly mobile. No one’s going to talk to us. If they live here, the state of their marriage is the last thing they got to worry about.’
They left the car and walked to the house, trying to ignore the smell of bad drains and cooking that hung on the air. Then Velasco placed his thumb on the doorbell, pushed hard and listened for a ring. No sound. He put his ear to the door, pressed again, again heard nothing except the far-off chatter of a TV set and what sounded like a child wailing. He balled up a fist, drew back his arm and started to hammer on the door.
THIRTY-EIGHT
On the other side of the Guadalquivir, Maria Gutiérrez woke with a start, her head filled with the after-images of unpleasant dreams. Somewhere a headless dove had fallen to earth, blood streaming from its open neck. Somewhere a blade had flashed silver in the moonlight, a metallic streak across a starry black sky. She lay back on the pillow, closed her eyes, tried to recapture the pictures.
They no longer frightened her. They had something to say. But nothing remained except the blur of phantasmal colours, smeared across the darkness of her inner vision.
She opened her eyes again, sat upright, then swung her legs over the side of the bed. The iron frame creaked. She could smell that unmistakable hospital odour: fresh sheets, antiseptic, the sharp, chilling aroma of medical chemistry.
On an upright wooden chair opposite was a neatly folded pile of her clothes. Menéndez must have asked for them to be sent while she slept. Someone would have crept quietly into the room, some nun, moving silently like a grey ghost. Maria wondered at her vulnerability, then tried to push the thought out of her head.
She rang the bell and the same sister came, in the same quiet, unemotional way. She was followed by a doctor, young, with a matter-of-fact manner. He made her tu
rn over, undid the shift, pulled off the dressing with a quick, efficient hand. The nun rubbed some cream gently into the wound, covered it with a simple, light plaster, then tied the drawstrings of the gown again. Maria turned over. There was nothing in the doctor’s face. He signed a piece of paper, told her she could leave at the end of the afternoon, prescribed some antiseptic cream to rub into the wound and advised her to rest.
‘Why can’t I leave now?’ she asked.
‘Because I don’t want you to,’ he replied. ‘Physically there is no reason. But you may still be suffering from shock, so I want you to stay a little longer. Besides, we must pick a time. The police are willing to take you themselves. They will need to know where you want to go; whether you want them to arrange something or go back to your own apartment.’
‘The apartment,’ she said. ‘You can tell them that now.’
He nodded. ‘I will. If you change your mind . . .’
‘I won’t.’
‘No,’ he said, and there was the trace of a smile on his face. ‘I imagine not. All the same, I would like you to rest for a few hours. Here . . .’
‘I can wear my own clothes?’
‘Of course. The sister will show you to the bathroom, if you wish. She can help you there if you need some assistance. Now, if you will excuse me. We have a busy hospital.’
‘Doctor?’
‘Yes?’
‘I asked if I could see the sergeant. The man who came in with me. And someone else too. A patient in the geriatric wing.’
‘There’s no problem with the woman. We asked her and she’s content to see you.’
‘Is she well?’
He made a rolling gesture with his hand, the same one the nurse had used. ‘Difficult to tell. Each day is different. It’s not a good condition to contract, for someone of her age. She’s fine at the moment. But I don’t see her leaving the hospital. At least for a few weeks.’
