Death in Seville

by David Hewson

  ‘You’re a jerk sometimes. You know that? Partner?’ Quemada looked genuinely angry. ‘Women sometimes just get to know this stuff.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  ‘’Course I believe that. Like I told you before. They’re different. Which makes the guy doubly crazy to think he can pursue it.’

  The car cruised down empty streets, under pallid lighting, the sound of its tyres bouncing off the walls as it went.

  ‘Someone has to know,’ said Menéndez. ‘In Santa Cruz. In Triana. Somewhere. If Alvarez was using a family to bring up kids, they surely would know the truth.’

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Quemada. ‘But would they tell us? They’re so close these people. Like gypsies. We’re the last people that’s going to find out.’

  ‘The university,’ Menéndez said. ‘Send someone back. See if they can dig up more than they did last time.’

  Quemada pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket, dialled straight into the office and got someone on the night team.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said into the phone. ‘I know tomorrow’ – he looked at his watch – ‘today is Sunday. I know it’s the feria. But there’s got to be a guard there or something. Get him out of bed. Go through wherever they’re keeping Romero’s stuff, every last piece of paper. We want anything that has notes about the war, in particular people he was interviewing for it. Look for a diary, an address book. Make a note of any names you can find. Any. No. Not tomorrow. Now.’

  He punched a button on the phone, then put it back in his pocket.

  ‘Why is this all so hard?’ Quemada asked. ‘This guy was brought up in the city. He lives here. Alvarez must have paid someone to bring him up. Why’s it all so elusive?’

  ‘As she said,’ Maria replied, ‘he was a gangster. He had the city in his pocket.’

  ‘He left no footprints,’ said Menéndez watching the street lamps go by.

  Maria thought about it.

  ‘Except for his children,’ she said.

  FORTY-SIX

  On the other side of town the man they knew as Antonio was in his apartment in Santa Cruz, red in the face, speaking slowly, deliberately, down the phone. The cords of his neck stood out as if they had been carved from wood. He sat, rigid, over a plain kitchen table with a dirty dinner plate and a clean set of butcher’s knives next to it. All the windows of the apartment were open. Moths, flies and mosquitoes circled the single light bulb above him in a slow-moving, diaphanous stream. He didn’t notice them. Rhythmically, to a steady, deliberate metre, he clenched and unclenched his one free hand, watching the muscles flex, then relax, feeling the power in his arm, its strength, its naked capacity for force.

  As he listened to the voice on the phone, whining, wheedling, he turned to look at the one item of decoration in the room. On the wall, next to the plain zinc washing range, pinned to the slowly crumbling off-white plaster of the wall, was a poster, three feet high: Finis Gloriae Mundi, by Juan Valdés Leal.

  Antonio’s voice was not loud. There were others in this warren of cheap little apartments who could hear through the thin, paperlike walls. He knew they tried to listen. He could feel them intruding, sense the weak auras of their small lives brush lightly against his own hard, impregnable exterior from time to time. Recently he had thought about killing one of them. Thought about teaching them a lesson. That they belonged to a different order. That they had to learn their place in order to survive.

  But killing so close to home would draw attention. The police, the stupid police, now treated everyone as equals. They lacked the discretion, the ability to see life as something real, full of orders, of priorities, the way they had in the past. To kill one of the bugs, to extinguish even such a tiny little flame, would be to invite them into his vicinity. He did not wish this. Life was too enjoyable to think about someone – anyone – interfering with it. And there was the other matter. He didn’t like to improvise too often, to commit acts that had never been demanded.

  The voice on the other end of the phone was still whining. It sounded like a wasp in a jar, and Antonio found that he could no longer understand the words. They blurred into one another, a constant drone, without syllables, without meaning. A memory came back to him, from years before. His father, on a rare visit, just after the time Antonio learned that he was his father, watching a wasp on a windowsill, noting how its presence unsettled the others in the room, how they followed it nervously, from the corner of their eye, making sure that it came no closer, that it didn’t threaten them. His father had waited, for several minutes, letting the tiny creature encroach upon the conversation, letting them become more and more unsettled by it. Then, without a word, he’d risen from the old armchair, the one with the thick black horsehair stuffing that leaked constantly from the seat, walked to the window and, in one swift gesture, crushed the insect between thumb and forefinger, pierced its chitinous shell with a crunching sound, then let the tiny body fall to the floor. Antonio could recall his shock, could remember scanning his father’s face for some sign of suffering, for surely it had stung him. But there was nothing there. Pain was as absent from his father’s face as emotion.

  The next day, when his father had gone and the old house was empty, Antonio had searched every room, checked every window, until he found one. He had crushed the wasp with his thumb and forefinger, as his father had done, then tried to hold back the tears of pain. It was impossible. His face went scarlet with the agony, he watched his fingers swell up to twice their normal size. He sat in the kitchen, holding his hand in a bowl of water, willing the redness to go away. When his hand was close to normal again he went back and looked round the house to find the next insect. He did this all day long until he could hold in the tears and his body gathered enough immunity to the poison to keep down the swelling, control the agony.

  He was seven years old at the time.

  The voice still buzzed and Antonio wondered how much longer he could take it. Where was the strength? Where was the determination? A half-brother, he said to himself. A true brother would never squeal like this.

  Then the voice changed character, became real again, and the only buzzing in the room was from the crowd of insects circling the light above him.

  ‘Antonio,’ it said. ‘This cannot go on. They’ll discover us. They may have discovered us already!’

  He could feel the anger bubbling inside him, mastered it, controlled it, channelled it into his intellect.

  ‘Brother, you sound like a woman. Or a coward. You sound like Romero,’ and his voice changed pitch, became falsetto for a moment, loud and shrill, ‘“Please, please, please, I will give you anything, anything, but do not harm me, DO NOT CUT ME!” Is this the way for someone of our blood to talk?’

  ‘I beg you. Stop this. We’ve gone as far as we can. I do not want to go to jail.’

  Antonio’s eyes were hard with rage. ‘You beg me? My brother begs?’

  The line was silent.

  ‘My brother does not beg,’ said the man at the table. ‘You cannot be my brother.’

  He put the phone back on the receiver and looked at the poster on the wall. Smiling, he reached forward and picked up one of the knives from the table, a big, long Sabatier. He rubbed his thumb gently along the blade. A thin line of blood flowed red through the skin.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The policewoman sat in one of the leather armchairs, almost flowing over the side. Her hair was tied back in a tight, severe bun that shone in the artificial light. Her face was flat and broad, the tan deep and leathery. She smiled, showing good strong, white teeth, held out a hand that looked like a paddle and said, ‘You know, I don’t think I really introduced myself properly at the hospital. No problem. Those places give me the creeps. My name’s Gema, but everyone calls me Mike. Don’t ask why. It’s not a pretty story.’

  Maria took the hand. It was dry and strong and muscular and pumped her up and down.

  ‘What do you like to be called?’

  ‘Mike’s fine. Do you mind if I sm
oke?’

  Maria shook her head. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. Sorry. But it smells.’

  ‘Yeah.’ The policewoman grinned. ‘I guess it does. I ought to cut down a little anyway. Trouble is, if I give up altogether my weight goes through the roof. End up looking like a sumo wrestler.’

  She looked Maria up and down.

  ‘Guess that’s not a problem for you.’

  ‘Not really,’ Maria replied.

  ‘You diet to stay like that?’

  ‘No. It’s just how I am.’

  ‘Lucky you. The guys at the station say I use the beer and bacon diet. They should talk.’

  Maria smiled and said, ‘Is there just you here?’

  ‘Someone making periodic checks in the street too. Personally I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. We had the crime-prevention people look the place over and they’ve done a few things. Look. I’ll show you.’

  She led the way into the back bedroom. The window was now closed. There were some new metal fastenings around the frame.

  ‘Some kind of window deadlock. The keys are in the kitchen drawer. When it’s shut, no one can come in without taking out the entire window frame. They’ve put them on here and a few of the other windows too, though if you ask me this is the only one where there’s any reasonable outside access. He’d need to be Spiderman to get in.’

  ‘He had a key.’

  ‘We changed all the locks. Put better ones on. I’ll give you the keys when you want them. He won’t be coming in that way. Hell, he won’t be coming at all.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘He’d have to be stupid, wouldn’t he?’

  Maria thought to herself: I don’t know why he came in the first place.

  ‘In any case, I’m here all night. I’ll stay in the living room. If he walks up those stairs, I’ll throw him back down again. After what he did to Bear, it’ll be a pleasure. Don’t you worry. I don’t lose people.’

  Maria got a glass of mineral water and sat down on the sofa. She was astonished to find she didn’t feel tired.

  ‘Still got the adrenaline pumping?’ the policewoman said when she mentioned it.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Happens to me too. If I get involved in something, it’s hours before I can sleep. A real pain. Take it from me, the last thing you do is drink coffee. You won’t sleep till Monday.’

  Outside there was the distant sound of a band, shouting, the noise of a far-off crowd.

  ‘Party time again out there,’ said the policewoman. ‘Can’t blame them, I guess. It’s the one week of the year they can all go crazy. Few more days of this insanity, and then it’s back to normality. Thank Christ!’

  Maria finished the glass of water. ‘I think I’ll try to sleep. See what happens.’

  The policewoman scrutinized her, then said, ‘The lieutenant called. While Quemada was bringing you back here. Said to pass on the message. The old woman? Cristina Lucena? She died just before midnight.’

  She tried to judge her feelings. There was nothing, no emotion. ‘Did she say anything? To the nurses?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Did you think she might?’

  ‘I think . . . I think she could have told us more than she did. If she’d wanted.’

  ‘I asked the lieutenant about Bear, too.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They said no change. Still in intensive care. Don’t you love hospitals? So forthcoming with stuff. “No change.” What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘It means we wait, I suppose.’

  ‘Waiting. What a way to spend your time. I love Bear. Like a brother, let me say that, before you get the wrong idea. The station’s full of shitty men. He’s like a knight. God, that’s a crazy thing to say, but you know what I mean?’

  Maria nodded.

  ‘There’s something fine hangs around him, the way it doesn’t hang around most men. I don’t have much time for men. Maybe you guessed that. Jesus, that guy. And in the end . . .’

  ‘In the end . . .’

  ‘In the end we’re all dead. Didn’t somebody say that?’

  ‘Somebody,’ said Maria, then went into the bedroom. She slipped off her clothes, put on a short cotton shirt, climbed beneath the cover. Outside, a few doors away, there was the sound of loud rock music and laughter. She closed her eyes and the world drifted away from her. The next thing she knew was the ringing of the phone by the bed, sharp and insistent. It stopped. She heard the policewoman’s voice, harsh and excited, from the living room.

  She’d forgotten to close the bedroom curtains. The sun was streaming through, powerful, relentless.

  The door opened and the policewoman who liked to be called Mike walked in, a broad grin on her face.

  ‘That was the lieutenant. They’ve got a name. A big break. He wants me to take you in as soon as we can.’

  Maria tumbled out of the bed and looked at the clock on the side table. It read seven in the morning. She had slept a mere four hours and scarcely noticed it.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Jaime Mateo sat in the interview room and shook. He was faced, across the scuffed green metallic table, by Menéndez, Quemada and Maria. She didn’t know who looked worse. The detectives or Mateo. It didn’t seem as if any of them had slept that night. The room was filled with the musky smell of sweat, stale breath and cigarette smoke. She would have opened a window, but the only one in the room, a three-foot-square opening high on the wall, was firmly and very visibly barred.

  Menéndez flipped on the black plastic tape recorder, gave the tape a spoken caption, then said to the bullfighter, ‘Señor Mateo. You’re making this statement of your own accord and at your own request. That’s correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Mateo, then pulled hard on his cigarette. ‘I . . .’

  ‘Señor Mateo phoned the station early this morning,’ Menén-dez said into the mike. ‘He told us he had information relevant to the murders of the Angel Brothers and the person being sought for them.’

  Menéndez picked up the photofit picture from the desk.

  ‘Do you know this man?’

  Mateo nodded.

  ‘What is his name?’

  ‘Antonio Mateo.’

  ‘He’s your brother?’ asked Quemada.

  The remark drew a pained expression on Mateo’s face.

  ‘That makes it sound different to the way it was.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He’s my half-brother. He lived with us for a while.’ The words seemed to be difficult for him. ‘He wasn’t my real brother.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ asked Menéndez.

  ‘I don’t know. He rang me. Last night. I don’t know from where. He moves around a lot. Rents apartments, moves on after a couple of weeks. I don’t know where he called from. He didn’t say.’

  ‘Where was the last place you did know he was living?’ asked Quemada. ‘I mean: brother, half-brother, you must have had some address for him.’

  ‘Calle Leon. In La Macarena. Number thirteen. But that was months ago. The way he kept in touch was he phoned me. I didn’t phone him.’

  ‘And last night. What did he say?’

  ‘He’s crazy. He’s just gone totally nuts these last few months. He calls me, he rants and raves. I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Last night, he starts threatening me. Threatening me? Stupid little moron.’

  Quemada stubbed out a cigarette and said, ‘You’re scared? Of your brother?’

  Mateo glared back at him over the table. ‘I told you. The man’s deranged. Look at the things he’s done. I want protection. That’s all. I want you to catch him, lock him away. Am I scared? No. Just concerned.’

  ‘So here you are. How many hours is it before you go in the ring? Six? Eight? Here you are telling us how concerned you are, just before you go into the biggest fight you got all year?’

  ‘Concerned. Scared. Does it matter? Is this important?’

  Quemada shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe no
t.’

  Menéndez picked up the photofit and held it up to him. ‘Why didn’t you contact us earlier? You saw the picture. We interviewed you ourselves. Why did you wait?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure. I mean. That picture. It could be anyone.’

  ‘Couldn’t be you,’ said Quemada. ‘Couldn’t be the Pope. Or Antonio Banderas.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure. OK?’

  ‘But after last night, after he threatened you, suddenly that changed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Quemada snorted. ‘Isn’t that funny? Did he confess? Did he say, “Hey, Brother, you know that guy they been looking for in all the papers, it’s me. Really. No joke. It’s me! Surprise!”’

  ‘Not in as many words.’

  ‘So how’d you know it was him? Did he talk about these killings before?’

  ‘He sort of referred to them.’

  The cop slammed both fists on the desk. Menéndez kept staring at his notebook. Then he yawned. This was an act, she thought. A good one.

  ‘“Sort of referred”?’ Quemada roared. ‘This guy’s a scream. Goes around killing people by inference. Quite something. So what kind of job does he do, your brother? Magician. Card sharp. Professor of philosophy or something?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  Mateo winced, then reached for the cigarette packet again.

  ‘He’s a crook. A petty crook. OK?’

  ‘What kind of crook? Stealing?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? My guess is, the reason your brother used to ring you was to sell you some dope. That right?’

  Mateo’s head hung down on his chest. ‘No.’

  ‘Really. Did he get in trouble with the law?’

  ‘A couple of times. Nothing serious.’

  ‘Here? In the city?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Menéndez scribbled down the name on a sheet of paper, went to the door and shouted for someone to take it.

  ‘Maybe we’ve got a file on him,’ Quemada said. ‘If what you’re saying’s true.’