The Best Thing That Can Happen to a Croissant

by Pablo Tusset

  ‘Hang out, wait a second, I’ve got the newspaper here with me. Let me read it and I’ll call you back.’

  Page twenty-two, Society section, News Briefs subsection. ‘Spectacular fatal accident in Les Corts.’ Two columns. Photo: just beyond a piece of crushed metal railing, the camera breaks out onto a massive excavation site. At the bottom, right next to a giant crane, you could make out the image of an upside-down car. Caption: ‘The vehicle crashed into the security railing and fell into the pit.’ Article: ‘El Periódico, Barcelona. Francesc Robellades Marí, 28 years old, was taken to the Clinical Hospital in Barcelona early this morning and pronounced dead on arrival. The death has been attributed to the severe wounds he sustained when the vehicle he was driving fell into the pit of a construction site where a car park is currently being built, located at the intersection of Travessera de Les Corts and Jaume Guillamet. Also involved in the accident was a second automobile which, according to a material witness who offered testimony to the City Guard, left the scene shortly after the accident occurred, close to midnight last night. A search team has already begun an investigation to track down the second vehicle, a Red Renault 600, to clarify the facts of the occurrence and to assess the possible responsibility of the driver who left the scene of the accident. A source representing the construction company responsible for the site declared that “the area in question was appropriately lit” and that “all security measures required by the law currently in force for this type of excavation were taken.” According to these same sources the fatal outcome of this accident could only be explained by an unusually violent crash, caused in part by the fact that the vehicle in question was driving at a velocity far beyond the legal speed limit. Several neighbourhood residents who heard the thunderous crash from their homes confirmed this hypothesis when they described the sound of the engines and the screeching of the tyres that preceded the spectacular fall from 12 metres high. Unfortunately, the unusual circumstances of the accident complicated the rescue attempt and despite the efforts of the emergency medical workers and the firemen who arrived on the scene, it was impossible to save the life of the young driver of the vehicle, who died en route to the hospital.’

  Holy shit.

  I went over to the phone and dialled Lady First and she immediately picked up.

  ‘Don’t worry, it could have been an accident. Things like this happen every day …’ I said, to see if I could calm her down a little.

  ‘An accident? What do you think? That they’re going to put a Post-It on the corpse to say that they murdered him? No, there is no question about it: the police are already looking for a second car … and it happened 200 metres from this house and Sebastian’s office, so don’t tell me you think it’s a coincidence.’

  Right. Not to mention the bit about Jaume Guillamet and the small red second car, neither of which she even knew about.

  ‘Well … it’s probably related, but we can’t be sure. In any event, we ought to try and prove it first.’

  ‘Prove it? How?’

  ‘I could call the editorial office of the newspaper, or the hospital, I don’t know … I’ll take care of it. For now, just stay calm and don’t leave the house.’

  ‘Don’t leave the house? Of course I’m not going to leave the house. I’m still terrified. I have two small children here with me …’

  ‘I’ll take care of that, too. I’ll get my father to send someone over as soon as possible.’

  Somehow I convinced her. I guess she was so nervous that she was glad to have someone who could fend for her.

  ‘Have you looked in the letter box? To see if that envelope you sent yourself arrived yet?’

  ‘Yes, I checked this morning … but the letter box was empty. Plus our name plate was missing. And then I remembered how you’d gone down the day the Robelladeses came over and took it off for God only knows what. You didn’t put it back?’

  Shit. No. I hadn’t put it back. When I’d left the house that afternoon I’d forgotten all about it. The envelope should have arrived days ago and because of my stupidity we might have lost it for good. Although if the package had no return address on it, it most likely would have been returned to the district post office and would be waiting there for someone to claim it.

  ‘I’m going to need your identity card to get it from the post office. Or wait … did you send it to my brother?’

  ‘I sent it without a name. Just the address.’

  ‘The same address on your identity card?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘All right. Listen, at some point this morning I’m going to stop by your house to pick up the ID card. If the guys my father’s sending over come by first, give them a description of me so they’ll let me upstairs.’

  ‘What kind of a description?’

  ‘I don’t know, toots: tell them I’m attractive, elegant … and just in case, add about twenty kilos, a Lotus Esprit and a blood-red shirt, that’s what I’ll be wearing.’

  Nothing like breakfast with a dead man to help you wake up and face the day. I felt badly for the kid, he seemed like a nice guy, and I felt almost worse for the father, probably because I remembered his face a little better, and it’s easier to feel badly for someone whose facial features you can recall. They had irrevocably embittered his old age, and his golden tooth would shine a bit less brightly from now on. And then, I was hit by something that has happened to me less than five times in my entire life: I got really, truly, negative, thinking about Robellades Junior, Robellades Senior, my father and his getting hit by a car and even for The First, so mysteriously disappeared. The whole thing was entering a totally different phase. Now we were going to have to seriously roll up our sleeves and get to work. For the moment, however, my next move was to put together a good Sicilian defence for us.

  I rang my parents’ house. Beba picked up and I had to do a little dog-and-pony show so that she wouldn’t suspect anything. She sounded so sad – she didn’t have the foggiest idea of what the hell was going on, but she had a hunch it was something major. She told me that FH had been up all night in his office, and in the morning fired the kitchen maid. I asked her to send the call into his library.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We need a couple of tough guys to go over to Sebastian’s house.’

  ‘Now you tell me.’

  ‘Have you seen today’s El Periódico?’

  ‘Yes, and La Vanguardia, El País, ABC, El Mundo …’

  ‘So you know?’

  ‘If you’re referring to Robellades Junior, I have been aware of it since two this morning.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

  ‘I tried calling you from four-thirty to six in the morning, at least twenty times. And listen, the next time you try to throw off the people I hire to follow you, please at least do me the favour of listening to your phone messages. I have half of Spain’s Civil Guard waiting for a Lotus to drive by at 250 kilometres per hour.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea what was going to happen.’

  ‘Well, don’t rush. You’re not going to escape quite so easily this time.’

  Had they hired a McLaren with driver included? He was perfectly capable of something like that. The fact is, he’d had Lady First’s residence under surveillance since early that morning, but hadn’t told her anything because he didn’t want to alarm her. The guys he had watching Robellades Senior had alerted him about the accident. He had already gotten in touch with someone from the Ministry of the Interior (FH never gives out names) which meant we could safely assume that the big guys were on the case now – discreetly, Miralles style, as one might say. No forms to fill out in the local police station.

  ‘Eusebia told me about the maid.’

  ‘Yes. I told her about the situation without getting into too much detail, and told her she could take a few days off until things got back to normal. But she decided to leave for good. Th
is isn’t her war. And to tell you the truth, I’m much calmer now. I signed a check and that was that.’

  ‘And Mom?’

  ‘Still refuses to speak to me. Incidentally, it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to come over and see her, if you don’t mind. Every conversation between her and Eusebia ends in a fight.’

  ‘Right. I’ll stop by at some point later on today. Can I bring you anything?’

  ‘No. They bring us everything we need.’

  ‘OK. Listen, tell the goons over at Gloria’s house to make themselves known to her. She’s already read about Robellades in the paper, and she’ll be much calmer when she knows she’s got protection.’

  For the first time in his life, I think, my father accepted my instructions on something.

  All right. Given that my father was now shouldering the majority of the defence in his own way, it was time for me to pull my own strings. In my telephone book I looked up John’s number in Dublin and rang him. Monday mornings he doesn’t have class, and so Sunday night is technically still the weekend for him. His voice, as was to be expected, sounded something akin to the hangover-hammer: ‘Come on, leave me alone, could you please? I’m hangovering, and I’m not your arsehole of a …’

  I didn’t give him time to finish. What I tried to do was get him to understand that something big was going down, and he finally let me talk.

  ‘John. Listen. You’re gonna just be quiet now for a second and listen to a bunch of questions I have to ask you, one by one. All right? Now let’s go. One: have you received my email?’

  ‘What email?’

  ‘Good, we’re on the right track. As soon as you hang up I’d like you to do me the favour of connecting to the Internet and looking at your email. Read what I send you and then send the document to someone who knows something about English literature, I want them to date it for me. Don’t you have some respectable philologist on campus somewhere, or are they all like you?’

  ‘I could send it to Woung. He went home to Hong Kong for the summer, but I’ve got his email. Listen, can I ask you …’

  ‘Just read the document and when you finish, you’ll be the first to know where it came from. Another thing. I need a hacker. The best one you can find.’

  ‘A hacker?’

  ‘What was the name of that German group that infiltrated the main Interpol system?’

  ‘Stinkend Soft?’

  ‘That’s it. You’re friends with one of them, aren’t you?’

  ‘With Günter. We met at one of those country meeting things that they organise with other groups …’

  ‘Right. That’ll do fine. I need them to find out everything they can about the domain worm.com. That’s where I downloaded the document you’re going to read for me. I want to know where their server is, what they do, and if possible I would like to get access to their main system hard drive. And write this down, will you?’ I waited as he went to fetch pen and paper. ‘Jaume Guillamet 15. It’s a Barcelona address. I’m very interested in knowing what, if any, relationship exists between this address and the domain name I just gave you. Think you can get all that out of the Germans?’

  ‘If I nudge them enough, they’ll move, but they aren’t like Woung. These guys only move when they want to, and if it doesn’t sound interesting enough they won’t go for it.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, they’ll have plenty of fun with this. The first thing I need you to do when you hang up, though, is get in touch with them. And then second, read the document. Something like seventy pages. I’m giving you three hours. I have to leave the house in a little while, though. When can you confirm for me that you’ve made contact with your friend Günter?’

  ‘I don’t know, I can try set up a meeting in the Metaphysical chat room. And I can get Woung in on it, too. Say about five o’clock?’

  ‘You can’t do it sooner?’

  ‘Sooner? You sonofabitch: the only way to locate Günter is by phone, in Berlin, and he may not even be at home … and anyway this is all your goddamn …’

  ‘John!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  That last bit was in Gaelic, and was immediately followed by the cluck-clong of the telephone hanging up. Right away, in a brief bout of hyperactivity, I looked at the masthead of El Periódico and dialled one of the numbers I found there.

  ‘Front page, good morning.’

  ‘Good morning. I was interested in finding out some additional information related to a news piece that appeared today in El Periódico de Cataluña …’

  ‘Just a moment, please, I’ll connect you to the news desk.’

  At the news desk, another young lady connected me to Society and in Society they patched me in to News Briefs. Finally I got to speak to someone who actually seemed to know something, but he turned out to be the sassy type.

  ‘What company are you calling from?’

  ‘Well, I’m calling on my own behalf.’

  ‘And what is your name, if that isn’t too much to ask?’

  ‘Pablo Cabanillas.’

  ‘Any relation to the politician?’

  ‘No. No relation at all.’

  ‘Any relation to anyone worth mentioning?’

  Motherfucking son of a bitch and servile peon, I was going to say. But I refrained.

  ‘I’m a private investigator, I don’t mind giving you my licence number if that’s necessary. The issue is that this accident may have something to do with one of my clients.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Detective, but we can’t give out any information other than what we publish in the paper.’

  ‘Yes, I assumed that, but I don’t expect anyone to tell me anything that I couldn’t find out by going over to the scene of the accident myself. I simply thought that the reporter who was there might be able to save me a bit of work, that’s all.’

  ‘We can’t make any exceptions to the rule. Anyway, the reporter who covered the story isn’t here right now.’

  Ah, fuck it. Only about one out of every ten thousand guys is like that, but when you get stuck with one of them there’s nothing you can do about it. I assumed that the police would be even less explicit, so I decided to pursue another avenue of investigation. I looked for the number of Robellades’s office among the papers still sitting in my printer tray and called him. A voice answered, different from the other time I had rang. Twentysomethingish.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘Mr Robellades, Senior, please?’

  ‘Who may I say is calling?’

  ‘Pablo Molucas, a client of his.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Mr Robellades left a report for you last night. He’ll be out of the office for a few days due to a death in the family. There’s nobody else here, but if you can’t come by to pick it up I can send a messenger out. Unless you’d rather wait a few days and speak to Mr Robellades yourself about it …’

  I told her that I’d read about Robellades Junior’s death in the papers and asked after him. She told me they would be burying him the following day. This very morning they would be transferring the body to the Sancho de Avila funeral chapel. I asked her to give me the office address again, and said that I would most definitely stop by that morning to pick up the report.

  Apparently, the anatomical-forensic people had finished examining the corpse. What conclusion could I draw from that? No goddamn idea. I took advantage of this moment of doubt to prepare my first cup of coffee of the day, smoke a six-euro joint, shower and dress. I figured maybe the activity would help banish the major wave of negativity that had come over me.

  Out on the street I was greeted by the sun and the spring entering into its finale: sidewalks all lit up like fashion show catwalks, housewives running breathlessly through the markets, clusters of office workers going back to their cubilces after breakfast, old men soaking up the UV rays and scraggly pigeons nibbling away at trash on the street. Fortunately, the Play Station generation was safely in school, which meant there was no one arou
nd to drive you batty with bicycles and balls. I arrived at the intersection of Travessera and Guillamet, not paying much attention to the path I had taken, turning here and there, more focused on sticking to the shady side of the street.

  When I arrived at the corner where the accident had occurred, there was nothing at all that even suggested an accident had taken place that morning. The yellow barriers that had been put up to provide a walkway for pedestrians were back up, and the other one, a metal barrier that went all the way around the excavation site, had also been repaired. I had to look closely to identify the exact spot of the crash, but once I spotted the first tell-tale sign, the other evidence stood out more clearly: bits of broken-glass dust glittering against the asphalt, a few gnarled metal crossbeams, but most especially, a massive, curved tyre mark, a bit darker than the rest of the road, indicating a serious slamming of the brakes. When I tried to envision the logical continuation of the car’s path based on the skid marks, it looked as though the car had come out from Guillamet and had taken too wide a turn round the Travessera curve. There were signs of another brake-slammer, too: the marks were shorter and shallower, and stopped short just before cutting off the longer tyre tracks from the side. This seemed to indicate that two cars had been cruising at top speed and had tried to stop short in the middle of a curve. One car had taken the barriers head-on and had jumped the metal railing, whereas the other car had managed to hit the brakes a bit earlier, or maybe had crashed into the first car, judging by the tiny chips of yellow plastic, possibly the smashed-in headlights, gleaming on the asphalt.

  To clear up any lingering doubts I tried to discern whether the fallen vehicle had any kind of lateral dent, and so I stuck my head into the excavation site, just above the railing. It was a sheer drop: three or four stories’ worth.

  It couldn’t be very easy to haul a car up from all the way down there, but it was nowhere in sight. Given the situation, the only possible line of investigation was to go back and follow the tyre marks of the brake-slammer and try to establish the precise spot where the chase had begun, if in fact there had been a chase at all. Traffic was light on that stretch, and so I walked down Jaume Guillamet in the street, intently focused on the road surface. Less than fifty metres beneath number 15 (right next to the auto-repair shop) I found another set of tyre marks: someone had torn out of there like lightning, no doubt about it. That was exactly what I had been looking for, but I didn’t want to hang around the scene for too long and so I kept walking down the street. That was when I thought of passing as a journalist to try to get some information out of one of the neighbours mentioned in El Periódico. It wasn’t going to be easy to identify them, I realised as I looked up at the block of flats on that stretch of road. And I also realised that it was slightly absurd to start investigating the death of a detective whom I had hired specifically to investigate a case of my own. Absurd and possibly very dangerous.