‘You were starved.’
‘Are you always so domineering in bed?’
‘Me, domineering? You did what you wanted. At least you didn’t try to bugger me. I can’t stand that.’
She dropped the tone of post-operative analysis and lightly stroked the tip of Carvalho’s nose.
‘Are you thirsty? Shall I make something? Will you let yourself be surprised?’
‘Yes, surprise me.’
As Gladys jumped out of bed, all her orbs visually jingled like bells.
‘Did you have a lot for supper?’
‘A rustic meal.’
‘A bajativo would be good for you. Do you know what that is?’
‘It sounds distinctly bad.’
‘It’s a kind of tonic liqueur.’
‘It’s my night tonight. I don’t need aphrodisiacs.’
‘Don’t be silly. I didn’t mean it like that.’
She left the room wearing only her mohair sweater. Carvalho let himself relax, uncertain whether to continue along the path of drowsiness or to get up and see what Gladys was making. He rose and tried to open the window. It was bolted.
‘What are you doing?’
Gladys was standing in the door, an amphibious animal with angora wool and red-haired sexual parts, carrying a glass of green potion in each hand.
‘They’re bolted.’
‘The house is empty most of the year and there are a lot of burglaries in the neighbourhood. I didn’t want to touch anything. I only really come here to sleep.’
Cavalho took her by the waist and put his member between her legs.
‘Again? You’ll knock the drink over.’
She pulled herself free and held out one glass while raising the other to her lips.
‘What’s this?’ Carvalho sniffed the contents.
‘It’s a very fine liqueur: peppermint, cognac, coffee cream and ice.’
‘Must be good for the ovaries.’
‘What an ass you are!’
‘No, really, peppermint is very good for the ovaries.’
Gladys was sitting on the bed, her shoulders propped against the headrest. She lifted the glass to her small lips and her eyes filled with delight.
‘It’s excellent, drink some.’
Carvalho left his glass on the little table and put Gladys’s beside it. He asked her for a deep kiss. At first she replied in the same vein, but then she softened and started tickling her tongue against the roof of his mouth. He picked the glass which she had been holding and knocked back half its contents.
‘Tastes like a purgative. It’s not bad though.’
‘What an ass you are! You really are an ass tonight.’
Gladys lifted the other glass to her lips and left it against her faultless teeth.
‘You’re not drinking?’
‘I’ve already had some,’ she replied.
Carvalho stretched out his hands to lift the lower part of her mohair sweater, but his arm did not support the action of his fingers. A tingling sensation crept over his eyes and muscles, so that Gladys’s anxious face already seemed full of ants.
‘What’s the matter?’ the anxious face inquired, but he could no longer see or hear anything.
He woke with the feeling that he was being watched. By the light of the small opaque lamp, he rediscovered the space of the room and the two or three objects he had had time to register: the shiny clothes-hanger, the cracked porcelain wash-basin. He shot out his right arm in search of Gladys’s body and found a strident, glass-shattering scream which pierced his chest like an ultrasonic alarm. He turned his head. Seated on a mattress, desperately attempting to cover the flesh sticking through the slits of her blouse, a terrified teenager with sunken eyes continued to scream while looking at Carvalho as at some vermin. He sat up and tried to cover her mouth. But he stopped when the door sprang open and two huge, breathless men flooded into the room as if they were a hundred. One of them began to spit out flash-lights at such a rate that Carvalho was forced to close his eyes. The scream had changed into hysterical weeping.
‘He tried to rape me! He hit me!’
Feeling punches on his stomach, Carvalho lashed out and kicked one of the bodies. But the other one fell on him and pounded his head with more punches. He desperately squeezed a bit of face with both hands, feeling the distortions of a cheek, an ear and an eyelid trying to close protectively over an eye. Now that the flashes had stopped, he tried to use his restored eyesight to stand up and confront the situation. He saw himself, a naked, ridiculous observer of his own limp member, and an unknown, weeping girl draped in a sheet who was now and again hurling snotty accusations from a corner of the room. There were three of them. The photographer smiled as he kept watch over his camera. The other two were drawing closer, a pistol in one of the four hands.
‘You’re a filthy swine. She’s under age.’
The gun’s orifice fitted Carvalho’s navel like a nozzle.
‘Get down on all fours.’
The one who spoke tried to hide his strong Latin American accent, producing the kind of Spanish found in dubbed Puerto Rican films.
‘What have you done with Gladys?’
‘Who’s Gladys? This is my sister and she’s called Alicia. What did this pig do to you, Alicia?’
‘It was horrible.’
‘Have the photos come out all right?’
The photographer nodded.
‘Take her out.’
The photgrapher took the girl by the arm. She had stopped crying and was smoothing the creased sheet into a blue terylene peplos. She let herself be taken from the room, glancing neutrally at Carvalho with the indifference of a life-companion.
‘Can I get dressed?’
‘We prefer you naked. We’re going to stick a bottle up your arse and then cut your balls off so that you can’t use them anymore. That’s how degenerates like you have to be treated. What’s your favourite bottle? Is coca-cola all right?’
He had wrinkled his nose and forehead as he spoke, as if it would help to make him sound more aggressive. The other man said nothing, his blue eyes watching Carvalho with a technological neutrality buttressed by his firm grip on the Beretta.
‘Where did you find her? That little slut, I mean.’
‘You’ll be sorry you said that. She’s my little sister.’
‘Well, there are sluts in the best of families.’
Carried away by his role, he made as if to pounce on Carvalho in defence of his honour. His companions held him back with his free hand.
‘Drop it. He’s provoking you.’
The man with blue eyes and fair hair had an accent suggestive of Central Europe. Czech? German? Soviet? The Latin American looked like a well-preserved ex-boxer. Even his bald patch had kept him in trim against the scandal of decay. He drew out a long black cudgel and forced Carvalho to jump by hitting him on the legs. Finally, he delivered an accurate blow to the back of the knee, so that the detective fell to the ground on his knees.
‘Don’t move!’
He held Carvalho in his sights, while the other man handcuffed his wrists behind him.
‘Put something on him.’
‘I’ll put a shirt on him. But let his balls hang down—it’ll be easier to cut them off.’
They pulled him on his back and tied his ankles to one foot of the bed. Then they switched off the light and went out. His eyes had been flayed by so much shock that the darkness had a soothing effect on them. He surprised himself humming an old Catherine Sauvage song:
Braves gens
Ecoutez la triste ritournelle
Des amants qui ont vécu dans l’Histoire
Parce qu’ils ont aimé des femmes infidèles
Qui les ont trompés ignominieusement.
He laughed and repeated the last line with delight. There must be a lot at stake for them to bring up a submarine like Gladys. Soon the pain in his arms dulled his good spirits and forced him to wriggle on his back in order to stop the piercing pins
and needles in his arm muscles. At the same time, all the danger in the world seemed to be poised over his cold, damp penis. Resting on his shoulder-blades, he finally managed to relieve the pain in his arms, but could not find a position that would equalise the muscular tension. Whenever he took the pressure off his arms, his neck started to hurt. The door opened. A rectangle of light poured onto his legs as far as the waist, leaving his neck and face in darkness. It was the Latin American.
‘Do you like the position? You can stay like that for a week. No, you wouldn’t be able to stand it. A few hours from now, you’ll be as limp as a fig. You can stay there in your own piss and shit.’
He put his foot on Carvalho’s genitals.
‘I’ll leave them as flat as two dried figs.’
He was obsessed with figs.
‘Maybe we could talk and clear things up.’
‘We’ll decide when to talk and clear things up.’
‘Forget it.’
The Central European filled the space of the door. The other man briefly increased the pressure of his foot on Carvalho’s genitals and then pulled away with a murmur of disgust.
‘You should leave him to me.’
He dived into a dark corner of the room and watched the scene unfold between Carvalho and the Central European.
‘It’s very uncomfortable talking from here.’
‘I assure you all your discomforts are precisely calculated and can easily be increased.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Just think it over.’
He stepped back and ceased to be a powerful shadow standing in his own light. The other man moved across the room and, without saying a word, locked the door behind them. As soon as the sound of the key faded away, pain re-entered Carvalho’s consciousness as if it had been awaiting the result of an unsuccessful interview.
He had bitten his lips so much that they were bloody and painful. His bones seemed like iron spikes boring into his flesh, and attempts to ease the pain by breathing deeply had gradually become gasping efforts to stifle the sound of his own suffering. But when the door opened once again, he could still piece together a priestlike face by the light of the overhead lamp. When they untied him and his legs dropped to the ground, he felt as if they were pinned by thousands of tiny needles in direct communication with every nerve centre. His legs failed when they stood him up, and the two men helped him into a long, bare corridor, like the walk to the scaffold. He was then taken into a living-room which housed millions of pesetas of distinction. The Central European sat beside a desk framed by the most ivory-like tusks in the world, while the Latin American helped Carvalho onto a spineless pouffe where he was swallowed by thousands of polyurethane pellets cross at having to make way for him.
‘Take the handcuffs off and keep the gun at the back of his neck. You must not move, Señor Carvalho. It’s a very noisy seat, and my colleague can get flustered at the slightest noise.’
The Central European was drawing or writing on a sheet of paper. Carvalho felt another’s presence just behind him as he held his newly freed wrists and rubbed his arms after their long journey through pain and impotence. The photographer’s footsteps could be heard approaching from the floor above. He passed in front of Carvalho without glancing at him. In his hand was a wad of photographs, which he deposited on the desk for the man with blue eyes and fair hair. Only then did the head look up. His eyes listlessly pecked at the photos, moving to Carvalho and back in apparent search of a point of reference.
‘Very nice pictures. They’ll look beautiful when they’re published. Show them to him.’
Carvalho saw himself pouncing on a poor half-naked girl, whose panic-distorted features were further evidence against him. Fifteen or twenty photos. The attempt to shut her up. The surprise at their sudden entry. The flagrant nudity. The attempt to conceal it. The photographer returned the pictures to the desk and left the way he had come.
‘Very nice. Very nice. Would you like them to be published?’
‘If you left the selection to me I wouldn’t care. My parents wouldn’t scold me. I’m an orphan. I haven’t got a wife or children.’
‘But you do have clients. And your present client cannot risk a scandal. After the leader’s assassination, all they need is for the private detective to be mixed up in the corruption of a minor.’
He could be Central European. But he could also be merely an aggressive executive turned out by some business school, where the language is desexed by polyglottal references.
‘Blackmail, eh?’
‘That depends.’
‘You’ve wasted too much time trying to blackmail one of the few men in the country that has nothing to hide.’
‘Nothing to hide?’
‘Nothing, not even the most horrible of things. I couldn’t give a shit about the others, my friend, and you look as if you believe me.’
‘I’ll cut your balls off with a razor-blade,’ a voice said behind his back. Carvalho remembered that he was still naked from the waist down, a victim of the voracious pelleted pouffe.
‘Your buddy must be the latest model. I’ve never met this kind of castrating gorilla before. He’s absolutely obsessed.’
The castrating gorilla caught him by the hair and forced his head back. Then he slowly dribbled onto Carvalho’s lips, in a heavy, mercury-like stream. The detective wiped it off with the back of his hand, holding down the retching that rose in concentric circles from his stomach. The blue eyes had grown smaller, as if to assess his capacity for cleaning away the saliva.
‘Don’t speak unless you’re asked to. Just answer our questions. Maybe you don’t care about these pictures, but they will certainly swell the file. Santos will be interested in them. What guidelines have you been given? Which path did they tell you to follow in your investigation?’
‘Which company are you from? Is it the CIA or the KGB? Or something quite different?’
‘We’re from the Society for the Protection of Baby Whales. You’ve already met Fonseca. What did you agree? What’s the state of the official investigation?’
‘I just talked about old times with Fonseca.’
‘Please. You’re not in the best position for being witty. The way things are at the moment, your death wouldn’t merit half-an-hour of police time, or half a thought from your Party people.’
‘I’m not in any party.’
‘Okay, but you’d better play ball. All we want is simple information that won’t compromise anyone. Who are you going to pin the murder on?’
‘Who do you advise?’
‘That’s a good question.’
‘Excellent,’ added the man obsessed with testicles.
‘This game is being played for high stakes, and you’re just the little ball in the roulette wheel. You’ll drop in the number and colour chosen by the croupier. We want to know what number and colour you’ve been given.’
‘For the moment, it’s up to me to find one.’
‘Don’t play the fool or take me for one. There are dozens of people watching you and one other. You could do with some help.’
‘What, you people?’
‘It depends on whether you co-operate. We need to be kept periodically informed on the course of your investigation. Particularly now that the little ball is about to drop into one of the holes.’
‘You seem to know everything. You tell me which hole it will drop into.’
‘I know very little. I know what I have to do with you—what I should say and ask. But that’s all. Everyone has their own task in this game. I’m just playing a role.’
‘Doesn’t the business of the photographs strike you as rather grotesque?’
‘Did you find it grotesque to be doubled up for three hours? Would you find it grotesque to spend another three or another hundred like that? Who’s to stop us? Don’t get stuck on details. Think of the whole.’
‘May I have my trousers back?’
‘My colleague is the trousers expert. Ask him.’<
br />
The man obsessed wth castration was watching Carvalho with a look of boredom. He did not quite understand that he had been given his cue. He prepared to make some impact, screwing up his nose and face and hardening his voice.
‘Out of the question. Let him think it over for a bit. Then we’ll see.’
He pulled Carvalho by his shirt towards one of the doors. The other man began to walk back through the room.
‘Think it over a little more,’ he said without turning to Carvalho. ‘You’ll be hearing from us again soon.’
They left him in the bedroom he had shared with Gladys and the rape victim. After checking that the door was locked and the window bolted from outside, he threw himself onto the bed. The static time in the room took most of the edge off the pain, and his heavy eyelids soon separated him from the physical darkness and opened the gates of sleep. Seated on a barber’s chair, he looked in a mirror and saw the smiling head of a hanged man.
He was awakened by the sound of the opened door banging in a cold persistent wind. When he put his feet on the floor, he immediately found his empty trousers. He put them on with the urgency of a drug-addict, as if recovering part of his skin, and then finished dressing. With help from a spontaneous opening of the door, he slipped into the corridor and tiptoed along it with his back against the wall. He stopped by the living-room door to listen to the sounds of the house. They were all caused by the vigorous wind, which rubbed like sandpaper against the outside walls and tried to scalp the sighing trees in the garden. One man lost in a living-room of more than a hundred metres. It was his own image that fell on him in the manner of an obvious truth. He looked through the house as if he were a Robinson Crusoe on some desert island. He had been with Gladys and the rape victim in the servant’s room. The house was a family residence whose only interest lay in the imagination used to differentiate the eight bathrooms and in the money spent on decorating its five hundred square metres of living space. Family photographs. The diploma of an agronomic engineer: Leandro Sánchez Reatain. A photo signed by Franco. Another by Juan Carlos. In the cellar, heaps of Rioja bottles without any criteria of selection. Carvalho deduced that a wholesaler had collected all the worst vintages since the Moroccan revolt of 1921. A larder full of supermarket ham and sausages. In a huge refrigerator, which could have held a thousand tins of peaches in syrup, Carvalho found ten that had escaped the voracious appetite of a syrupy family. He also nibbled with relish at a chorizo of no identifiable origin. Not a trace of the two thugs, the photographer, the rape victim or Gladys. He thought of ringing Carmela but did not know where she might be. It was seven in the morning.
Murder in the Central Committee Page 13
