A Not So Perfect Crime

by Teresa Solana

  I’m convinced Montse knows all this, but, as a standardbearer for the hippy movement, she has to cling to this string of incense-scented superstition in order to stay sure the world is still a good place to live in. I’m considerably more pessimistic, because I don’t think the problem can be reduced to a handful of wise men from the East and a bunch of perverts from the West. It’s my firm belief that the problem is that there are right bastards everywhere, in mass-production, in fact, and they’re the ones who fuck us all up.

  “Eduard, wake up. Lola and I are off to the cinema,” said Montse tapping me on the arm.

  The girls had arranged to go and play in the house of some girlfriends (or rather, to talk about boys, which is what they do at their age) and Arnau was asleep.

  “They’re showing Oliver Stone’s Alexander with subtitles at the Verdi. Perhaps we can have a bit of light entertainment!” she said.

  I think Montse was also beginning to tire of banging on about Borja.

  “They’re showing a French flick that’s won loads of prizes too ...” suggested Lola, who liked to give herself intellectual airs.

  “No gloomy dramas thank you very much!” Montse shook her head.

  “I need an adventure film with a handsome hero. And then we’ll go for a drink at the Salambó. You don’t need to go out, do you?” she asked in a tone of voice that wouldn’t accept I couldn’t baby-sit Arnau.

  “Well ... no, of course not.”

  I imagined – foolishly – they’d be back early. I didn’t want to tell Montse (especially in front of Lola) that I’d have to meet up with Borja at some point in order to do a job for our client. I’d risk another avalanche of questions and recriminations. I didn’t know then that the film they were going to see would last nigh on three hours and that the famous drink in the Salambó would be prolonged to midnight.

  Just after six, with Montse and Lola gone, Arnau woke up. I gave him the snack-supper Montse had left ready and we watched telly for a bit. Borja rang at around nine.

  “Is Lola there?” he asked warily.

  “No, she’s gone to the cinema with Montse.”

  “I’ll pass by your place in a minute,” and added, “Eduard, I’ve had a fantastic idea.”

  My brother tends to frighten me with his fantastic ideas, but I have to recognize that this time he’d come up with a winner. Twenty minutes later, Borja turned up with a big roll of brown paper, a few empty boxes and some rolls of paper for wrapping presents. It was lurid paper, with thousands of colourful Christmas motifs against a red background.

  “Let me explain,” he announced, very pleased with himself.

  My brother had evidently spent the day ruminating over logistics. We had to ensure the neighbours didn’t catch us in the act walking up or down the stairs of the building where the MP had his office. Perhaps there weren’t many residents living there, as our client had assured us, but we could have a problem if one of them caught us carrying a very large package on Boxing Day night. It would be difficult to hide the fact it was a painting, however well wrapped it was. The neighbours might well deduce we were burglars and would ring the police.

  “Eduard, I have found the solution!” he exclaimed as ponderously as if he’d just hit on the theory of relativity. “It’s the Christmas holidays and people go visiting from one house to another, so it won’t seem strange if two well-dressed people are seen going in and out of a front entrance ...”

  “Possibly not. The problem is the painting. It’s too large to hide,” I pointed out.

  “Precisely. So we won’t hide it. Quite the contrary,” he smiled. “We’ll cart it out without any inhibitions.”

  I couldn’t tell where he was heading and eyed him sceptically.

  “Tell me now. Where would you hide an elephant?” he asked raising his eyebrows.

  “I don’t get you.”

  “Well, it’s clear enough. What you need is a zoo,” he said emphatically. “Look, that’s why I’ve brought these boxes and this gift wrap. And hey presto.”

  His idea was as follows: first we’d wrap the substitute picture in brown paper and then cover it in gift wrap. Previously we’d stuff the package with empty boxes to give it a weightier look and camouflage its contents. Once in the office, we’d repeat the operation with Lídia Font’s portrait, that is, we’d use the boxes to conceal the fact it was a painting and wrap it in the same festive wrapping paper so it looked as if we were carrying the same package.

  “At this time of year the least possible suspicious activity is walking around with a Christmas present,” he said proudly.

  The boy had done good and I was annoyed I’d not thought of it first.

  “But we don’t have another painting,” I objected, noticing Borja wasn’t carrying one. “Where will we get one? If we don’t have a painting to make the big swap, then you tell me ...”

  “We do. There’s a painting that’s more or less the same size.”

  “As soon as Montse gets back, we can go and get it.”

  “In fact, that won’t be necessary. It’s right here,” Borja declared, as if it were a self-evident truth.

  “Right here? Right where exactly?”

  From the look on Borja’s face I knew he had in mind one of the paintings hanging on the walls of our flat. I wasn’t mistaken.

  “That landscape you’ve got down at the back of the passage will do us very nicely.”

  We had several paintings in the passage, but I realized immediately which one my brother was referring to. There was a frightful oil painting in the darkest corner where Montse and I thought it would be out of sight, a present from my mother-in-law a couple of Christmases ago. It was, in a word, awful. An attempt at a landscape, but in fact a messy swathe of colour in true schoolboy style. But Borja was right. It was roughly the same size.

  “You must be joking!” I protested. “It’s a present from my mother-in-law! And apart from that, it’s horrific ...” I noticed that detail didn’t seem to worry him in the slightest. And I added, “And what do I tell Montse when she sees the empty space on the wall?”

  “I don’t know ... We’ll think of something. I’m sorry,” he justified himself smiling angelically, “none of mine would have done, I can assure you ...”

  No, I thought, especially since they must all belong to Merche. Like everything else in “his” flat.

  “Come on ...” he insisted. “It’s only for a couple of days. Then we’ll return it to its rightful place.” He paused while I reached a decision. “Just think about what Font said: “I shall be eternally grateful to you.” Eternally, Eduard. That can mean one hell of a lot of dough.”

  “Montse will kill me!”

  I don’t know how I let him bamboozle me, but I went and unhooked the painting and, between the two of us, we wrapped it as Borja had suggested. After stuffing the boxes in, it looked a lot fatter, not like a painting. Perhaps we’d manage it, after all. Ten o’clock had crept up on us, and still no sign of Montse. I suspected that after the film she and her sister could spend hours gassing in the Salambó, particularly if fuelled by a drop of alcohol.

  “Better still, we’ll take Arnau with us,” suggested Borja, not batting an eyelid. “If two men with a big Christmas present aren’t suspicious, two men, a big Christmas present and a little boy are even less so.”

  “But he’s still asleep! ...” I said half-heartedly. In fact we had no alternative.

  “We’ll only be an hour. We’ll be back before Montse, you just see.”

  I wasn’t very happy about involving my young son in this rigmarole, but, to innocent eyes, we were only going to leave one parcel and pick up another, and I could see no other option except for Borja to see to it solo. If we took a taxi (because we wouldn’t all fit in the Smart), we’d be even quicker. I probably wouldn’t even have to tell Montse we’d taken Arnau. At this time of night he slept so soundly he’d most likely think it had all been a dream.

  “Come on then!” I said finally.

&nb
sp; Borja rang for a taxi as I got Arnau ready, coaxing on his coat, scarf and cap.

  “Come on, love. We’re going for a ride.”

  “I’m sleepy, daddy. I want to sleep,” said Arnau, rubbing his eyes. “I want mummy ...”

  “We’re going to get mummy,” I replied persuasively. “You be a good boy.”

  Luckily the taxi soon arrived. There was hardly any traffic and we were outside Lluís Font’s office within ten minutes.

  “I want a wee-wee ...” announced Arnau the minute we got out of the taxi. I expect it was the cold.

  “We’ll go for a wee-wee right now, just wait.” He seemed to have woken up.

  We opened the front door and went up in the lift without bumping into a single resident. Everything was going to plan. We got into the office with the key the MP had given us and, while Borja saw to the paintings, I saw to Arnau and his wee-wee.

  “It’s not coming out,” he said, rubbing his eyes again.

  I was patient and turned the tap on, as Montse had shown me. The lavatory door was open and I could hear the noise Borja was making with the packages.

  “Now I’ve got to wash my hands,” said Arnau after he’d finished.

  “Leave it for now, we’ve got work to do and Borja needs some help. You wash them at home,” I said taking him out of the bathroom.

  Just after we shut the door behind us, my son and I had the fright of our lives. We heard a loud crash, the floor shook and we were plunged into darkness. We also heard a woman shout, right next to us, and I protected Arnau instinctively with my body as we both threw ourselves to the floor. I didn’t know whether it was an earthquake or an explosion. A few seconds later, I checked there was no smell of smoke or burning, and that calmed my nerves slightly. We were in complete darkness and could see nothing at all.

  “Help!” I heard a woman shout, her voice choking.

  “Hey, what the hell’s happening?”

  Borja groped his way towards us, his cigarette lighter guiding his way. Arnau had started to cry.

  “Ouw ... ouw! Help!” The shouts were coming from the bathroom.

  We opened the door as best we could. There was a naked woman in the bathroom covered in dust and rubble. The ceiling was one big hole and someone looking very scared was peering down. The light still worked in the flat upstairs.

  “Ow, heavens! ... Sílvia, amor, are you all right?” we heard a young man ask in a Cuban accent.

  “Ouw! ... Ha, ha, ha ... Ouw! Ouw! ...”

  The woman said something else we didn’t understand. Apart from being injured, she seemed high as a kite.

  It wasn’t a bomb, a gas explosion, or an earthquake, which was what I’d thought at first. It was much simpler. The bathroom in the flat above had collapsed while that woman was having a shower and the fuses (or whatever) had blown. Maybe God wasn’t playing dice after all tonight, I thought, because the disaster occurred only a few seconds after Arnau and I had left the bathroom. We’d been lucky, because a few seconds later and ceiling, bath and woman would have fallen on our heads, although it was already quite some coincidence that that ceiling had collapsed at the very moment Borja and I were carrying out a rather shady commission.

  “You should call an ambulance!” I shouted at the Cuban up above. “I think she’s hurt herself. Hey? Are you up there?”

  No one answered. Seconds later we heard a door shut suddenly and footsteps running downstairs. The Cuban hadn’t had second thoughts about scarpering.

  The woman seemed to have fainted and Borja decided we should take her out of there before trying to switch the light on. The bath was full of water and rubble and we were afraid there’d be a short circuit and the woman would be fried alive.

  We left the stranger in the lobby and managed to get the lights back on. She’d recovered consciousness but was raving. In her wet and naked state, we tried to wrap her up as best we could in our topcoats. To judge by her whimpering she’d only broken a leg. The bell rang and the neighbours were beginning to gather, visibly angry. Some wore dressing gowns and slippers, and looked threatening. Borja announced he was going to ring for an ambulance and disappeared.

  “So who might you lot be? You don’t live here ...” a woman in her sixties shouted accusingly, pulling her turquoise, size-24 housecoat tight. “I must inform you,” she introduced herself ceremoniously, “that I am the chair of the residents committee.”

  I explained that we worked for the MP and had come to the office on his behalf to collect some papers our boss urgently needed. The majority of residents looked as if they didn’t believe a word.

  “What about this poor little child? Can’t you see he’s very frightened?”

  Arnau was no longer crying, but he was shit-scared.

  “It’s my son,” I explained. “He insisted on coming for the ride.”

  “I want my mummy! I want my mummy! ...” sobbed Arnau.

  “We’d better call the police,” said the woman in the turquoise housecoat wrinkling her nose. “Something odd’s going on here.”

  The rest of the neighbours seemed to agree and their chair left the office, presumably to look for a telephone. That word “police” was like a knife thrust into my stomach and it set off a cruel comic strip of events in my imagination. I saw Borja and myself leaving the building handcuffed and accused of some dreadful crime. I imagined myself in the Modelo raped by inmates, ill-treated by the guards and abandoned by Montse and I had a dizzy turn. It was my second queasy spell in two days. I was beginning to behave like a pregnant woman.

  “Are you really sure that’s ... necessary?” I managed to ask. “An ambulance ... It seems there’s been an accident. The ceiling’s collapsed ...” I tried to explain.

  “No, not the police! ...” bawled the injured woman.

  “You bet we’re going to call the police!” shouted another neighbour, a man in his fifties in dressing gown and pyjamas on the arm of a woman whose nightshirt was peeking out from under her overcoat and who was nodding.

  “I’ve just rung them. They’re on their way,” Borja stated cool as a cucumber. He’d just emerged from the MP’s office and looked totally unfazed. “I thought it must be the right thing to do. Of course, I rang for an ambulance as well.”

  That disconcerted the neighbours and meant the woman in the turquoise housecoat came back with her tail between her legs, but it was obvious none of those present had the slightest intention of leaving until the police arrived. I thought my brother had gone mad, because we’d have lots of explaining to do, for sure.

  Nevertheless, his news seemed to soothe the neighbours. The injured woman, for her part, kept shouting incomprehensibly, laughing and groaning simultaneously. Arnau cried and I wished I was far away. My brother, on the other hand, didn’t seem at all worried. Quite naturally, using all his charm and politeness, he’d succeeded in asserting control over the situation.

  “This lady doesn’t live in this building!” explained one woman in a pink tracksuit whose face bore greasy traces of moisturising cream. “In fact, the flat upstairs is empty. No one lives there.”

  “That’s a lie!” countered the injured woman, who swung from the delirious to the lucid every few seconds. “This flat belongs to a friend ... Ouch, my leg! It really hurts!”

  “And I’m telling you that nobody lives there,” repeated the track-suited woman. “Both this flat and the one opposite are empty. So you might like to tell us what you were doing there ...”

  The injured woman tried to pull herself up but fell back on the floor writhing in pain. Borja ran over to help, but she signalled she wanted nobody touching her.

  “Who the hell do you think you are anyway? I’ve no reason to give you any explanations! ...” She shrieked angrily.

  “No, you can give them to the police,” said the woman in the turquoise housecoat who clearly suspected she was a streetwalker who’d taken advantage of the empty flat. “You two as well,” she fulminated in our direction.

  I swallowed, but Borja lo
oked at me as if to say keep calm. After several interminable minutes, the ambulance men arrived as did a couple of city police cars. Borja introduced himself and summed up what had happened. He said we were working for Lluís Font MP and had come to the office on his behalf to collect some urgent documentation and that they could phone to check if they so wished. He also showed them the keys the MP had lent us and the card with his telephone numbers.

  “Lluís Font? You mean the politician?” one of the policemen asked, sounding surprised.

  “The very same,” nodded Borja.

  “Wasn’t his wife murdered yesterday?” asked his colleague, a much younger man who looked more like a university teacher than a policeman.

  “Yes, very unfortunate ...” my brother replied. “But what’s happened here has nothing to do with that. There’s been an accident. Presumably water leaked, built up and the ceiling finally gave way ...” He paused. “And now, if you’ll forgive us, we must be on our way ...”

  “Not so quick, policeman,” trumpeted the woman in the turquoise housecoat like a general from the bad old days, not knowing which policeman to address, “I am the chair of the residents committee and I can assure you nobody lives upstairs. This flat’s been empty for years.” And she added, “We don’t know who this lady is. Or these gentlemen for that matter!”

  “So they’ll have to wait a moment until we’ve cleared all this up ...” sighed the policeman who was apparently in charge.

  While we argued, the ambulance men tried to attend to the injured woman, which wasn’t at all easy because she was still under the effects of something rather more potent than her crash. They wrapped blankets around her, took her blood pressure and announced they were ready to take her to hospital. The woman did nothing but complain and snarl incoherently.