A Not So Perfect Crime (15 page)

“But what if the neighbours catch us?” he objected. “If they see us coming and going with a big package, they're bound to think we're thieves and inform the police ... You can't hide a package that size under a topcoat!”

“I'll give you a key.” He seemed to have thought his plan through. “And there aren't many people living in the building. Most of the flats are offices like mine. The porter isn't there at nights or on public holidays. Nor are there cameras or other security devices. It's an old building, as you've seen. It'll only take ten minutes ...” he said, poohpoohing our fears.

I was convinced that what Lluís Font was suggesting was practically a crime. He wasn't asking us to get rid of the murder weapon or provide him with an alibi, but our client did possibly see a connection between his wife's unexpected death and that mysterious portrait. If we contributed to its disappearance, we would be hindering police investigations and could perhaps end up accused of being part of a coverup.

“The problem,” reflected Borja, “is where to find a picture of that size in the next twenty-four hours.”

In other words, he'd already accepted the commission. I should have predicted as much.

“I'm sure you'll think of a way.” And saying this, he looked at me askance, opened a desk drawer and took out an envelope. “Here's something towards your expenses.”

It plainly looked like a bribe, if not worse. I agree some of the things my brother and I do from time to time verge
on the illegal, but to date we've never had to confront a woman's dead body. I was hoping Borja would refuse the envelope, wish him goodbye and we'd disconnect from the whole business.

Instead of that, my brother said thanks and solemnly pocketed the envelope without looking at its contents. Not wasting any time, the MP gave him the keys to his office and thanked us once again for this great favour we were doing him.

“I shall never forget this. You will always be able to count on me,” he asserted wholeheartedly. And repeated, “I shall be eternally grateful.”

Before leaving the house, we called a taxi. Once inside the vehicle, almost in the dark, Borja counted the notes in the envelope.

“Ten grand! Ten thousand euros!” he whispered in my ear, his voice trembling with emotion.

“Pep,” I said – when I was annoyed or particularly worried I'd call him by his real name – “we're getting into really deep water. We should watch out ...”

At that time in the early morning, Barcelona was dark, silent and hung-over. The snow had covered the city in an eerie layer of white that disguised its Mediterranean character. It was cold and there wasn't a soul to be seen, but it had stopped snowing and a few stars were peering between the clouds. The moon had even put in an appearance.

“Everything will turn out fine,” he answered, unable to hide his euphoria. “But if there is a problem, I'll take full responsibility, don't you worry. In fact, you don't even need to come tomorrow. I'll manage it by myself ...”

“As if you didn't know me! ...” I regretted my wellmeaning comment. “Though I don't know where we'll get a picture that size tomorrow. It's a holiday and all the shops are shut.”

“I'll think of something. Just leave it to me,” he said in a complacent tone.

But the bright idea my brother eventually thought up was only to make our lives even more complicated.

PART TWO

11

As I'd predicted, Borja rang on Boxing Day to excuse himself from lunch. Lola was invited, as usual, for this annual fixture. Initially I felt relieved, thinking that this way we'd have a quieter celebration, but I was mistaken.

“Well, might we know whose side his lordship's on?” Montse recriminated in the kitchen while she cut the turrón. “Why the hell did you have to say something like that to Lola, in the susceptible state she's in?”

“I only ...” I started on my self-justification but couldn't think what to say next.

“I'll go and see if she's recovered!” she said, taking the tray of turrón and letting fly with her parting shot, “Eduard, you men always put your feet in it! You kept your mouth shut for the whole meal and then regaled her with one of your stupid comments! ...”

In fact, I'd only told Lola to bear in mind that love and sex are two different things, hardly an obscenity, or a discovery that's going to win me the Nobel Prize, let alone a slight on Lola, as Montse reproached me later. I might perhaps have kept the comment to myself, but we were halfway through the meal, had been debating for a good three hours the kind of work my partner and I were engaged in and I couldn't stand a minute more. What was our connection with Lídia Font's murder (now reported on the television news)? Why hadn't Borja shown up for the meal? Had she been stood up? What did I think of her relationship (that
is, did two shags make a relationship ...)? Were there other women in my partner's life apart from Merche? Etcetera, etcetera. I was sick and tired of my wife and sister-in-law submitting me to a third degree about whether Borja really had an upset tummy or if it was just an excuse because of what happened with Lola, as if they didn't know perfectly well. Apparently, they'd developed the theory that if you fuck once it's only sex, but if the man comes back for more there must be
something else
.

And all this in front of the girls, who were all ears, and Arnau, who was luckily out of his depth. And it had been more of the same since Lola arrived. Although the cannelloni were delicious, my Montse's are always first-rate, the conversation on the topic of Borja put me off eating them. I only managed seven, instead of the usual dozen. What with this and the previous night's hassle, I wasn't in the best of moods. That's probably why I blurted out a home truth: namely that one night of passion doesn't amount to an engagement ring, with the result that Lola left the table and went for a weep in the bathroom.

“I knew you were in the know! ...” my sister-in-law reproached me as she left the room sobbing her heart out.

Montse was right that Lola was more susceptible than usual, but I was pretty positive her parlous state was also down to the three large vermouths she'd drunk before lunch and the bottle of wine she'd downed by herself to accompany the hors d'oeuvres.

After shedding crocodile tears, my wife tried to distract her sister by letting her in on the gossip from her Centre and lecturing her on the virtues of new massage techniques from the Orient she was learning somewhere or other. Montse had promised her a session of I Ching with her coffee, and Lola couldn't wait. The twins, who were beginning to find their aunt's scenes tedious, nibbled on the turrón and announced they were off to their bedroom to listen to music. Just what I felt like doing: leaving the witness box and going to lie down for a while. I didn't obey my instincts, however, aware that if I vanished mid-crisis, Montse would take it badly.

Boxing Day is the worst day of the holidays, because it follows on after the excesses of Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas Day lunch, and I had a thick head and a belly fit to explode yet again. I sat down on the sofa and pretended to leaf through a newspaper supplement from way back while they both chatted and saw off a bottle of one of those so-called digestive liqueurs the ladies knock back at family dos. Finally, despite my titanic efforts at staying awake, I dozed off listening to coins jingling and my wife's voice reading those ridiculous predictions in the reverential tones of a guru inspired. I've always wondered how it's possible my Montse, who read a more or less scientific degree at university and even got good marks, can believe that the way three coins fall can reveal a person's future fortunes and deliver wise advice on how to behave.

“The fact is you don't understand these things,” she always retorts when I raise an objection. “Men are too rational. And then you end up killing each other in wars and destroying the planet with your inane sense of macho superiority. The wisdom of the Orient,” she adds from the depths of her wisdom, “is infinitely more subtle. And much more ancient. We have so much to learn!”

As a general rule, when Montse launches into this kind of philosophical disquisition I opt out. Occasionally I've tried to get her to see that the main spiritual adviser of the
planetary boss is the God of the Bible, not Aristotle, which is hardly what you'd call rational. As far as I know, Margaret Thatcher, Ana Botella and Imelda Marcos are women (women Montse particularly loathes), and I've yet to have the pleasure of meeting a female Dalai Lama. I argue that the enmity between the Chinese and Japanese, who not so very long ago engaged in mutual slaughter, is as ancient as their venerable philosophies, and that
chakras
are like the Holy Spirit: nobody has ever seen them. Finally, as my parting shot, I remind her that the Orient is all well and good if one is lucky enough not to be a woman or belong to the pariah caste, but, when I say that, she accuses me of hankering for an imperial past and turns her back on me in a huff when we get into bed.

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.