Fabregat’s hand opens and closes on the table. He does not interrupt.
‘I know everyone who reads Illuminatus. I have handled all the available material.’ Fabregat drinks the information in slowly. The energy lowers in his belly. ‘The lines of verse you received in 2003 quote a document Rex Illuminatus salvaged in the late 1200s. A Greek poem that may have been hidden for nearly two millennia. Only one copy of the Serpent Tongue Poem is known to exist, and it came into our records three years ago. This fragmented poem had spent over a century at the bottom of a sealed archival box at Oxford University. And who knows how much longer locked away in an old Mallorcan monastery. It would not have been available at the time of your murders.’
‘Val.’
‘So your author either had access to an alternative edition of the poem in print, or knew an oral version of the poem . . . a song which fell out of popular circulation over seven centuries ago. That puts them in a fairly limited category. Such a limited category that I can tell you, with almost one hundred per cent certainty, who she is.’
‘She?’ Fabregat chokes.
‘Natalia Hernández.’ Ash in my mouth: hair of the flea. Almost an apology. I had expected Fabregat to rage, to shout, to kick, but instead he is profoundly contained. Professional. Quiet. Natalia Hernández? I’m not sure where to begin. I feel the weight of shadows settling in the white walls around us, resting their spines against door handles, peering over the photograph and papers. Still angry. I say it bluntly, because I can say nothing else. I speak about Cristina Rossinyol, about the books I have found – though not what I am looking for. I tell Fabregat about the nature of a colophon, the signatures of scribes, how the ouroboros is a family mark belonging to Natalia Hernández, knowing that they are also listening. The wording crucial. An order, an invective. It positions you in the mythology. It’s like a sign post – a street name. I take him through the beats. Like mother like daughter, I recognize the hand, shared between scribes. Facts aid me. Fabregat’s letters, written in 2003, quote the single page of Ruthven’s palimpsest verbatim. But Harold Bingley’s research team only discovered Ruthven’s palimpsest in the spring of 2011. The translation of the Greek subtext occurred a year and a half later. Even if someone had seen Ruthven’s page, if they had opened the sealed box in the dusty archives of Oxford, and read through Ruthven’s laboratory notes to find the cut sheet of parchment, they would have garnered nothing. The Greek subtext is illegible to the naked eye. No one could have divined the content of the poems so accurately without being familiar with the original. This makes for a valuable temporal incongruence. I parse through Natalia’s lines, translating them as I see fit. She wanted you to understand, Fabregat. That if you do certain things, you will find me. Then you will become Serpentarius, Snake Bearer. One-who-is-arriving! And the holy path that they have called knowledge will be yours. You must speak the language of the deaf-mute, hear the voiceless, see the silenced one.
Fabregat sits by the low table in the police meeting room. He stares at his hands. ‘This changes everything. But you can’t prove it yet.’ He looks at me fiercely. Combative.
I falter. Try to speak more clearly.
‘The language of birds, the language of the deaf-mute, the book of leaves – all that is code for a universal language that Rex Illuminatus believed could express and control the smallest elements of life on a fundamental scale. He describes this language as an essential magic. An elemental force that the alchemist codified into the alphabet carved onto your victims bodies—’
‘Why are you the only person to see this?’ He cuts me off.
‘I have one area of expertise. I can only tell you what I have deduced in relation to that body of knowledge.’
Fabregat gestures to the officer. Put these back in their boxes. Take them back to the grave, to the sealed containers, to the mobile shelving units. Take them away.
In the dusk light, Fabregat steers with confidence. The inspector’s guide to the city. With the life-long habit of an investigator, he reels off facts, veering down Carrer Nou de la Rambla while I struggle to keep up.
‘At eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, Adrià Sorra leaves his parents’ vehicle and walks into the Girona train station with his uncle. He initially caught the 11.23 train to Barcelona, due to arrive in the city at 13.26. But Adrià leaves his uncle’s care in Mataró, stepping off the train under the pretext of going to the bathroom. He then boards the subsequent train to Barcelona, and refuses to respond to any contact from his parents or his uncle. He purchases a water bottle from the station café in Passeig de Gràcia at 14.40, along with a chorizo bocadillo. His movement through the station is captured on CCTV footage.He goes off the radar for twenty-four hours, staying at a squat outside of the city, before coming in for a midsummer’s party on the evening of Sant Joan, 2003. At 18.00 and 18.07 on 23 June 2003, Adrià makes calls to Lola Jiménez, a twenty-two-year-old Comparative Literature student from the Universitat Autónoma, and Sjon de Vries, a twenty-six-year-old foreign resident and local drug dealer of Anglo-Dutch parentage. Sjon (aka Tree) and Adrià Sorra plan to meet here – at a bar called La Rosa del Raval – at 22.00. Adrià arrives at La Rosa around 22.30, de Vries is also late for the appointment. Sjon and Adrià share a few drinks (according to the barman, several Voll-Damms). They meet a stranger: an Austrian–Venezuelan actor and Raval local by the name of Kike Vergonoya, who invites them to a party at the club in Plaça Reial. Ostensibly to deal drugs.’
Fabregat stops on the Carrer de l’Hospital and points down the street to the top of the long oval roundabout that forms the Rambla del Raval. We turn, heading back towards Las Ramblas.
‘Sjon and Adrià Sorra left La Rosa del Raval around 00.45 on 24 June 2003.’ He veers down an alleyway lined with trash, inhaling the sticky air of the darkness. In the distance, the night sings, flooded with inky female voices from a neighbouring bar. Then right again, onto an ugly street lined with ramshackle buildings.
Fabregat winces slightly, running his hand through his hair. He pauses.
‘Cigarette?’
‘No, thanks,’ I say. I’d smoke too many with you.
For a while we are silent.
We reach a once-glamorous dive on the Plaça Reial. A large square, muted marigold and cream, peppered with palms. Black fountain at its centre. Font of the Three Graces. Daughters of Zeus. Colonnades bristling with cafés and restaurants, nightclubs and boozers. Despite the cold, Fabregat chooses to sit outside. Palm trees windswept. Water drenched. Embittered. The regulars at the bar recognize him – they nod their heads slightly, agree to behave. Fabregat on home turf. He orders two Voll-Damms from the waiter.
‘You have a boyfriend?’ he asks in the chair beside me. His eyes scan the buildings above us.
‘Yes.’
‘He knows what you’re up to?’
‘Not entirely.’
‘You should tell him.’
‘Why?’
‘Don’t you always tell him what you’re up to?’
‘No.’
‘And he doesn’t mind.’
‘I think he does.’
‘But you don’t care?’
‘My work is more important.’
‘Huh,’ Fabregat says. He looks at me sharply. ‘And what about me? Do you tell me everything? Can I trust you?’
What’s in this for you? is what he wants to say.
You are hunting for a man, Fabregat, but I? I am hunting for a book.
And I will only help you so far as I can.
‘Now,’ Fabregat says. ‘You can see the entrance to the members club Eufòria in the corner of the square. The bar’s not marked, you buzz into what looks like an apartment complex. You can see the entrance to it just there –’ he points to a black unmarked door across the street from our bar. ‘Natalia Hernández attended a party here with Oriol Duran. Playboy actor and wild child, generally harmless. Duran, Natalia Hernández, Villafranca, Sánchez, Joaquim Espuma, Alejo Castelluci and several other members of
the glitterati theatre scene are all in attendance . . .’ He pauses.
‘Just a stone’s throw from where I worked. Five minutes walking.’ He sighs. ‘Almost in sight of the police station. Everything happened right under my nose. I wanted you to see the place before you get properly started. Walking this shit in person is always better than reading your books, I’ll tell you that.’
He throws back the beer, snaps his finger at the barman. Food? Calamares. Fabregat is hungry.
‘Adrià Sorra and Natalia Hernández meet for the first time here. Zero evidence suggests that they have been or ever were in contact before.’
‘Do you have any surveillance camera footage from the bar? Any photographs?’
‘Yes.’ A machine on task. ‘The paparazzi did us a favour.’
He slides another set of pictures across to me. The scene: the internal bar at Eufòria shot from a camera positioned overhead, looking down from a balcony into the crowd. Natalia Hernández leans over the bar, elbows extended, hands clasped beneath her chin. Oriol Duran. Auburn hair, sideburns, forelock cut close to the face, good-looking and he knows it – body like a gymnast.
Fabregat notes the contours of Oriol’s muscles with his index finger: ‘A strong cabronazo.’
Oriol orders a whisky. Natalia tugs on his shoulder, whispers in his ears – No, two. Natalia turns around, she’s seen someone she knows, comes back, orders a third drink – for who? Three drinks in two hands cupped together to form a triangle. Toma. Duran hands Natalia a drink. The cameras at the bar catch it well – the first sign – three drinks but no third party appears, not yet. Natalia is laughing. She’s wearing a doll-collared silk shirt, tied at the throat with a pink ribbon. Neat. Precise. Low profile, though you can slightly see the contour of a bra through the shirt, which shows up dark on camera. Her hair is pulled back against her neck in a tight, black bun, make-up minimal, except for the signature tint across her lips, and that amber, flawless skin. Her hands move nervously when she speaks, agitated, energetic, but I have a feeling that’s more personality than anxiety – she’s not afraid of him. Not Oriol, she’s smiling, intimate, Oriol’s hands outstretched, laughing – and he’s reaching with money for the drinks, the bartender cracks a joke. They laugh. Their shoulders move – she touches his shoulder – the crowd is heaving but they exist apart – did you catch that? – she touched his shoulder – and then they left? They or he?
‘And Natalia, when does she leave the bar?’ I ask.
‘For good? We’re not certain.’
‘So you know where she is from midnight to around 4 a.m.’
‘Yes. Staff confirm this.’
‘And that she reappears dead. At the foot of the cathedral in the arms of Adrià Sorra, who leaves her just before dawn, whereupon her body is found by a street cleaner.’
‘All correct,’ Fabregat confirms.
‘Right. Returning to the photographs at the bar. The third drink?’
‘Goes to a young man with long black hair.’
‘Adrià Sorra?’
Fabregat nods.
I roll this fact around in my mind, looking across at the shuttered club. ‘They definitely meet at the bar?’
‘It appears so.’
‘Sorra’s journey afterwards?’
‘Never clear.’
‘When did he arrive?’
‘Came through the doors at 01.23.’
‘Accompanied?’
‘By one friend.’
‘Who?’
‘Sjon de Vries. Well known little shit. Brought in a couple of times before. Drug dealer. Dutch. Moved back to Holland ten years ago.’
‘When did Oriol leave?’ I ask.
‘Earlier than Natalia did.’
‘He left her there alone? At his own party?’ Curiosity must have shown on my face.
‘Apparently they had an argument. He doesn’t feel good about it.’
Fabregat turns and gestures at the waiter. ‘Do you want another?’
‘No. I can’t keep up.’
He laughs. ‘Senyor! Una caña sisplau! And water for the girl! It’s a lot to take on board,’ he says, mouth dry.
‘Our coroner’s report reveals that Natalia downed a lethal cocktail of drugs sixty to ninety minutes before she was attacked in the Gothic. The barbiturates started to take serious effect as she left the club. Slurred speech had already set in, and she was stumbling, half asleep. Everyone presumed she was drunk. Very, very drunk. No one remembers exactly when she left, but we estimate that it was between three thirty and four in the morning. We think Adrià followed her at a distance, that he had taken an interest in the actress. She crossed the square down that side street there.’ Fabregat points to the arch across from us, at the north-eastern corner of the Plaça Reial.
‘Then she’s off camera for a while,’ he says darkly. ‘She goes down Carrer dels Tres Llits.’
I follow the inspector as he strides into the maze. A side alley near Carrer d’en Rauric.
‘Someone met her here, though she may have already collapsed from the drugs. Unlike the others it wasn’t systematized or clean,’ Fabregat says. ‘The act was impulsive. Passionate. Brutal. The assailant punctured through her carotid artery with a thin, sharp blade before stabbing her repeatedly and cutting off the tip of her tongue. The whole thing was incredibly quick. She had no time to cry out. The neighbours say they heard nothing.
‘Adrià would have stumbled upon her in that state. She may even have died in his arms. Why he didn’t call us I don’t know. Off his face, I suppose. He was covered in her blood. That’s the markings we found on his shoes. They all match hers. And he carried her, up the winding streets to the cathedral, where he laid her out on the steps before taking his own life.’
Fabregat kicks the stones. ‘When we finally traced her back to this place, the street cleaners had washed most of the evidence down the drains. Who knows what we would have found otherwise.’ Fabregat glares at the wall. ‘She was stupid. If it was her who sent the letters, then she knew what was going on intimately. If it really was her, Nena, then why didn’t she come directly to me? If she knew all this was happening?’
The inspector’s voice suddenly harsh. ‘Silence is a choice,’ he says. ‘It is a decision. If she knew him, she knew what was happening. If she did it, well, that’s something to consider. But if we follow your line of thinking we know she had access to information – she knew about each of the victims, and she knew my name. If she was close enough to the killings to have been involved in them . . .’ He shudders and falls silent. ‘It makes my own failure more painful.’
We keep walking. He runs over details. Adrià carried Natalia up through here, to Plaça de San Josep Oriol, then to Felip Neri, then to the Cathedral. He processed past the churches with her. As I listen I feel myself loosening. Drifting. And then it comes.
Hello?
The expectant wave. A hazy, lucid richness. No more than a few seconds, but it will feel longer. Rest here. Follow. Keep your eyes open. Bright-faced girl buying drinks at a bar. Midnight: peach-cheeked, sun-painted, jeans dirty. She has an arch of freckles across her nose like a crescent moon. When she laughs I see valleys and rivers full of life. Coins clinking in her pocket. Vodka? Gin? Cervesa?
You choose.
I follow her through the crowd.
The sweet sway of her hips. The loose joints of her knees. The men turn their heads in unison to catch the wake of her movement. Her spectacle fills them with drunken pleasure. She is queen of the room. Music condenses into a fog of cigarette smoke. Soot marries the cloth round her throat, swims into her hair. I notice him then, standing in the corner of the room. Watching her. Hunting her. Selecting her. It is difficult to discern, through the haze, what was real. What did he look like? I ask the vision. But I do not know his name. I cannot call him. My vision blurs. How had he stood? The weight of his figure, the curve of his voice? Look away. I shake myself. Dance. Shift the weight into your hips; push your centre of gravity low, toes str
etching in their sandals, legs bare and brown. Each move is slow, breathing to the rhythm of Nu Cumbia. I stop. A stranger is standing in front of me. Face shadowed. Blurred memory.
‘Who are you?’ He asks. Smelling my hair.
I take a step back. I cannot make out his face. But it is him. I am certain it is him. She has disappeared into a menagerie of flesh, a formless mass of arms and limbs and lips pressing closer to one another, one thousand hearts working towards the same end: begging for a kiss, a union – I cannot shake his eyes. There is something unnerving about him. I see every piece of him. The stubble round his cheek. The fabric of his collar light on his clavicle, the wave of hair that floats across his temple. And yet I do not recognize him. I cannot find a name.
‘You don’t have to answer,’ he says. ‘You can tell me if it’s too personal.’
Something deep and dark inside me turns. A hand that opens the pages of this book and shows me the past, a feeling stronger than words. I see Natalia Hernández with the shadowy figure of a man. It is not Adrià. It is not the night she died. It is a night much longer ago, in a deeper past. I am for you and you for me.
When I close my eyes, this is what I hear.
Two words spoken soft and low.
Follow me.
As I walk with Fabregat I feel the constriction of the narrowing streets. We track north through El Call, the old Jewish quarter. Graffiti on bolted wooden doors. Retrace her steps. Second shadow: man who kissed her hand. Walked with her to a point about a mile above the city – it is a dusty path that snakes around the mountains overlooking the sea. La Carretera de las Aigües. You cannot see his face but feel his fingers, skin brittle and bare. There is a bench here. A lookout near a lemon tree and a wild grape vine. She sat on the stone bench, knees knocking together. Inhale the aroma of pines. The sweet citrus scent of eucalyptus. Below her the city moans, sleepy and sluggish stretching into luscious bleary-eyed contentment. He picks a lemon from the tree and takes a knife from his pocket and slits the skin of the lemon. Cuts a slice from the flesh of the fruit and gives her the rind to taste. ‘Querida, Maca, darling, stick out your tongue.’ He takes the pulp of the lemon between his fingers and places it on the centre of her tongue. The lemon juice drips down his fingers. Two leaves from the grape vine behind her ears. He cut two more slices, one for him and one for her. The lights come on over the astral spires of the cathedrals and later they are silent still as they walk down the dirt road to the car at the station below Tibidabo. Again. Watch again. Now they are dancing. His hands run over her arms, his eyes never leave her face. I know nothing about him. I cannot see him clearly. Not his history, nor his creed, nor his origin. He is a phantom birthed on the aether of this hot night by the sea. I want to show you – her heart opens – I want to show you love! To tell you that when he came into my dreams, he sat at the end of my bed, looking at me. I move when I felt the weight of his body against my legs, through the covers, causing my hips to roll slightly forward. Now see I am awake. Put out your hand and touch my cheek. See her stirring. Orange koi swimming down silk spine. Hair black and matted and tangled, tumbling down. Small feet on a cold tile floor. Bare and frozen. I see his emptiness, his goneness. Apprehension tight in my stomach. In the vision I stumble over the tiles, but catch her eye. She moves through me not seeing. Searching for him.
The Serpent Papers Page 21
