Mercedes went back home and, enticing Freire with the promise of sharing the doctor’s great personal wealth, convinced him to seduce the saxophonist. They decided to do it on a rainy night, and they had a lucky strike on the first night they tried. She knew Reigosa sometimes sought brief encounters with other men, who found his water-blue eyes irresistible. Reigosa was indeed in the mood for company on the night they chose, and Isidro Freire was at the Idílico, ready to be noticed, and later to be taken to the flat on Toralla Island.
Once in the bedroom, as if in a fit of passion, Freire tied the musician to the headboard, gagged him, and went down to open the door for Mercedes, who had reached the island on her boat.
She came into the bedroom with gloved hands and injected formaldehyde into the musician’s penis, while Freire fought to keep his legs still. After that, following a meticulously premeditated plan, Mercedes left Hegel’s book, with its sentence about pain and repentance faintly underlined, on the bedside table next to the dying man. He writhed in pain as the formaldehyde spread throughout his body.
Isidro Freire, fighting back nausea, cleaned any traces of their presence from the bedroom. His accomplice took care of the living room on the upper floor, but she deliberately left the gin glasses from which Reigosa and Freire had drunk. That way, she insured herself against her lover in case he started to have doubts or decided to betray her, or if she simply wanted to change him for another. Once that was done, she sailed away from the island under cover of darkness. Freire drove out in Reigosa’s car, which he abandoned in a forest after setting fire to it.
The following day, on one of his professional visits to the Zuriaga Foundation, Isidro Freire called Radio Vigo from one of the phones in the lobby of the hospital. When he was put through to the presenter of Patrol on the Air, he read Hegel’s phrase twice, then hung up.
Once the police found the book, Zuriaga and Freire only needed to sit and wait for Leo Caldas, the famous patrolman, to remember that mysterious call to his show, tie up the loose ends, and link the crime to the Zuriaga Foundation – and the doctor to the saxophonist. After that, with Reigosa gone and her husband not only behind bars but also repudiated by society, she’d be able to enjoy the fortune of the Zuriagas.
However, one afternoon Isidro Freire phoned her at home several times. He was frightened. Two police officers had been at the lab and questioned him about formaldehyde. The following morning, Orestes Grial, as good as his word, also informed her that two police officers were poking about to see if he knew anything about Reigosa and the doctor. He had managed to postpone a more formal talk until the following day.
The bloodhounds had failed to notice her bait and, even worse, were now tracking a more dangerous scent.
After those very same policemen visited her at home, Mercedes Zuriaga convinced herself she must silence Orestes Grial for good: she couldn’t let the DJ compromise her. She turned up on his doorstep pretending she had money for him as a thank-you for his information.
The young man was sleeping when she knocked on his door; he got up to let her in and immediately excused himself. Mercedes Zuriaga grabbed a pillow to muffle the shot and followed the sleepy Orestes to the bathroom. She put on a latex glove and, on top of it, another one she had found, used, in the bin of her husband’s office. Back in the street she disposed of the glove, leaving it where she thought the police would look for such a thing first.
The seed had been planted. Only water was needed now for the tree to grow and bear those fruits she was planning on enjoying.
‘Pity about the dog,’ said Caldas, remembering he wouldn’t have found anything if it hadn’t been for little Pipo.
‘No, inspector,’ corrected Mercedes Zuriaga, ‘pity about men.’
In the Clear
Caldas walked under the heavy rain. It had gone eleven by the time Mercedes Zuriaga and Isidro Freire finished their confessions.
The inspector decided to visit the jazz bar in the old town for the third time in his life. He was in no mood for the solitude of his home. He needed to forget Dimas Zuriaga’s bewildered face and clouded eyes as he had accepted his apologies.
Leo Caldas pushed open the door of the Grial, walked over to the bar and looked at the stage, where a group of musicians were about to begin the show. The small, fair-skinned woman greeted him with a nod. She then placed her pale hands on the keyboard, leaned forward a bit, and sang breathily into the microphone:
Some day he’ll come along
The man I love
And hell be big and strong
The man I love
About the Author
Domingo Villar was born in 1971 and lives in Madrid. He is a radio food critic, a frequent contributor to various periodicals and has also written scripts for film and television. Water-blue Eyes won both the Brigada 21 Prize for best first crime novel, as well as the Sintagma Prize. Domingo Villar is currently working on the second instalment in the series featuring Inspector Caldas.
Martin Schifino is a freelance writer and translator. He regularly contributes essays and reviews to The Times Literary Supplement, Revista de Libros and Revista Otra Parte. He is co-translator of José Luis de Juan’s This Breathing World and Eugenio Fuentes’s Blood of the Angels. He lives in London.
Copyright
Arcadia Books Ltd
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www.arcadiabooks.co.uk
First published in the United Kingdom by Arcadia Books 2008
B format edition published 2009
Originally published by Ediciones Sireuela as Ojos de Agua 2006
Copyright © Domingo Villar 2006
Translation from the Spanish copyright © Martin Schifino 2008
Has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–1–909807–07–5
This Ebook edition published in 2013
Arcadia Books acknowledges the financial support of la Dirección General del Libro, Archivos Bibliotecas del Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte de España.
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