A Not So Perfect Crime (7 page)

“I don't intend to change my name,” I objected.

“That won't be necessary,” he hurriedly explained. “You can go on being Eduard Martínez and who you are now. Well, no need to go around proclaiming you're leftwing and all that ... I expect you're still waving the red flag, aren't you?”

“And what about you?” I asked, although by this stage I could imagine his reply.

“Bah, I don't believe in politics any more!” he said, making a gesture that suggested he'd given all that up: “You know, if you have to make a choice, I prefer the good life.”

I decided not keep prodding, afraid he'd come out with some really outrageous comment. On the other hand, the decision I faced was too important to take on the spur of the moment, particularly after we'd landed ourselves with a skinful of three bottles of Rioja and a couple of glasses of cognac. I asked him for time to think the offer over.

“Goes without saying! Take as long as you like. But remember what mother used to say: ‘If you want to catch fish ...'”

“‘... you've got to get your arse wet.' Yes, I remember. Course I do!”

Thoughts of our mother made us sad, and we fell silent for a while. I could see Borja's eyes glinting and I was about to burst into tears. Then I remembered I'd not taken any flowers to the cemetery for at least two years.

Borja insisted on paying, then suggested we went for a stroll to clear our heads. We zigzagged up the Ramblas and when we reached the plaça de Catalunya, he pushed me into a taxi. He said he wanted to show me something.

He took me to the office on Muntaner, where Borja had yet to install the fake doors. For a time he even fooled me into thinking a secretary existed who was eternally absent. He adopted a professional tone I didn't recognize and explained he was dealing with a case related to valuable jewels from a legacy that had disappeared. He had to scrutinize every move made by the relative who had allegedly put his hand in the jewel box, in case he showed them in public or tried to sell them on the sly. The person compromised by the affair, a public figure, preferred not to tell the police or contract a professional detective agency. He wanted the matter resolved with the utmost discretion.

I sat on Borja's suggestion for a week. As things were in such a bad stew at home with Montse, and I couldn't sort out the situation with Raquel, I thought I'd hit rock bottom and things couldn't possibly get worse. “From lost to the river”, I told myself in good old Spanglish as a preamble to one of my few courageous acts ever. I agreed to accept the redundancy package and my brother's offer: the time had come to escape from a life that had ground to a halt. We invested the money in Montse's business and the situation began to pick up. At the age of forty-two, thanks to my kid brother, I could make a new start with my wife, and despite all the upsets and difficulties we faced at times, I've never regretted my decision.

As for Raquel, Borja guaranteed he'd get her off my back. I don't know how he managed it, but the fact is that, overnight, my lover stopped besieging me and disappeared mysteriously from my life. Apparently, she and Borja had a conversation, but I haven't the slightest idea what my brother said to her. I only know that the day I bumped into
her in one of the city's big department stores she looked daggers at me and screamed I shouldn't go near her.

“Don't even look at me!” she cried, grimacing in disgust.

I took her at her word, fled the scene and ran to tell Borja what had happened.

“Do what she says,” was all he said, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

As I know my brother and I have always been on the cowardly side, I decided to let things be and not probe further.

5

“You want candles on your cake?” I asked timidly while I was still putting my coat on.

“Of course!” Montse seemed shocked I should ask. “I want forty. Not one less!”

It was almost nine o'clock and Montse had to hurry so as not to be late. Thanks to the advance we'd extracted from the MP, she was in a good mood and didn't protest at all when I told her I couldn't take Arnau to school. I'd agreed to meet Borja to plan our approach to our new case, after I'd put the money in our bank account and bought her birthday present. My brother and I might be able to buy the cake and cava after we'd spoken to Mariona Castany. I was relying on him to bring the Smart.

I don't drive. I expect it's part of the fall out from the accident that killed our parents. Although I did try to get my driving licence for a time, I suffer panic attacks whenever I sit behind a steering wheel, even when the engine isn't switched on. Luckily Montse is an excellent driver, but I can't expect her to spend the day chauffeuring me around. Whether I like it or not, I have to see to myself and use public transport, which is very ecological but not what you'd call practical.

Borja doesn't own a car, though he usually drives Merche's two-tone Smart. I imagine it seems rather absurd for two men like us, in our particular line of business, to move around Barcelona in a tiny red and white car that catches
the eye and is really quite girly, but we don't have any choice. Merche also owns a silver Audi that's really stylish but she rarely lets Borja drive it.

My brother's girlfriend is one of these tax lawyers who earns an annual salary that shouldn't be allowed and always wears a fortune in clothes and jewels alone. Not to mention her hair-dos and various beauty treatments, what with antiwrinkle and cellulite treatments and work-outs in the gym ... Merche is four years older than us, and despite her efforts she looks her age. From what Borja has told me, I reckon she spends what I earn in a month on skincare.

It's not that she's a particularly beautiful woman; you could say she's a self-made woman by dint of her credit card. A reshaped nose (and from what I can make out, tits and bum as well), a permanent tan, immaculately peroxide blonde hair, dresses from Chanel at the very least ... Merche's hair always looks as if she's just left the salon, too stiff for my liking, and I've never seen her not made up. She usually trails a strong scent of perfume in her wake, no doubt a very expensive brand that makes me feel queasy. Everything about her is excessive, like the mink she flaunts to work even when it's not cold. She's always in a hurry and the smile permanently set on her face is more of a grimace. However, her eyes seem sad and I've never seen her laugh spontaneously.

“I can't think why you don't make an honest woman of her,” I once told Borja. “She appears to be in love with you.”

“Because she'd find out I'm Pep, not Borja. Besides, she's already married. We're fine as we are.”

“You know, if she really loves you, she'll understand why you use a pseudonym ...” I went on in good faith. “It must be really hard for you!”

I don't know if I'm a romantic or just get into a state over complicated love affairs. It doesn't mean I don't like looking at girls, particularly in the fateful summer months when I can imagine things that even make me blush. But I've been living with Montse so long I don't how I'd survive without her.

“I can't see what your problem is, I mean with leading a more normal life,” I sometimes blurt out.

“Forget it”, he invariably retorts.

There was a queue at the bank that cold December morning and I reached the office half an hour late. Borja was in excellent form.

“I phoned Mariona and we'll drop by her house for a drink at one,” he announced. “Let's see if we can find out what the latest gossip is on the high-falutin' Mrs Font!”

“We'll have to tread carefully, because if Mariona suspects we ...”

“You leave it to me,” he grunted. “And not a word about Pau Ferrer! Mariona is very clever. If it all turns out to be a misunderstanding ...”

“This case is giving me bad vibes. The painting's got a strange feel to it, you know? Sinister even.”

“Bah, that's normal in modern art! ... The gloomier, uglier and nastier it is, the more it fetches,” he pronounced like an expert. “Hey, time for a coffee, it's bloody freezing!”

“It wouldn't be a bad idea if they came to sort out the heating,” I suggested. “One of these days a client will get frost-bite.”

“You know that's not on.”

No, it wasn't on, down to some issue over the rent for the flat. I preferred not to ask.

“By the way, before I forget”, I said changing the subject.
“The shoes Lídia Font's wearing in the painting are red. A very bright red.”

“I'm glad you told me. Did you notice anything else?”

“Well, her lips are red as well. Like the ruby in the necklace. But you know rubies are red.”

Borja is colour-blind. Really colour-blind. It's not that he gets red and green mixed up, which is what people think is the case with people who suffer from this complaint, but he sees them as the same colour. Our mother discovered this when we were seven, and ever since my brother's had a complex about it. Perhaps because of the jokes he had to put up with at school, or may be it upsets him to think he sees the world differently to most of humanity. Personally I think he's being silly, but Borja doesn't want anyone to know he's colour-blind, as if it were a defect or slur that, if it were public knowledge, would destroy the sophisticated socialite image he's created for himself. As he's so preoccupied with his appearance, he has banned both colours from his wardrobe so he doesn't mix them up when he gets dressed, or so he says. The only exception I'm aware of is a crimson tie Merche gave him as a present and which he hardly ever wears.

From the moment Borja discovered he suffers from severe colour-blindness we agreed a secret code. When his disarray threatens to betray him, I scratch my nose discreetly if the colour he can't recognize is red, while if it's green, I ostentatiously put my hands in my pockets. I sometimes simply make an innocent remark to alert him, and, ever since we've been partners, this has worked a treat because nobody, not even Merche, has noticed his strange sight. On that occasion, it had gone completely from my mind and I'd not given him the agreed signal when we talked about Lídia Font's shoes.

“While we're about it,” I added. “Montse said her sister is coming to the party. Unaccompanied.”

“I feared as much. Will there be a big crowd?”

“A good few, apparently ... Naturally lots of Montse's friends, from her Centre.”

“So we'll end up plastered.”

“More than likely. Lots of alternative this and that but they all like a good piss-up ...”

“So be it,” he said shrugging his shoulders, “I hope Lola doesn't have too many high hopes.”

Montse had long been angling to pair off Dolors, Lola from the day she separated, with my business partner. Dolors, I mean Lola, is Montse's younger sister, and like us they don't at all look alike. Lola lives in the Born district near the church of Santa María del Mar and likes to design and produce jewellery, handbags and hats, although I don't imagine she earns enough to live from this activity. She prefers a very youngish, rather exotic style of designer gear, and I have to admit she's good-looking. Her hair is short, often dyed a different colour, and she wears square, paste spectacle frames. She rounds it all off with big necklaces and earrings she herself designs, and usually applies a deep red lipstick to her fleshy lips. She sometimes opts to dress in black and adopt airs from Greek tragedy that soon evaporate after a couple of drinks. She's a heavy smoker and often gives the impression she's a marble short.

“I'm sorry,” Borja apologized, “I just can't stand her.”

Lola had been divorced for four years (her former husband, who's an architect, left her for a nymphettish draughtswoman), and ever since she has drifted from one shoulder to another, or, to be more precise, from one bed to another and from one disappointment to another.
Fortunately, as her ex was well heeled, she got a hefty divorce settlement. She liked her brother-in-law Borja, and Monte was convinced they'd make a perfect item. I thought she was wrong.

“Why not bring Merche along?” I suggested half-heartedly. “You don't need to say anything about her being married.”

If Lola saw him in other female company, she'd probably desist.

“No way,” he cut me short. “Come on, put your coat on and let's get moving. I parked the Smart outside, and I don't know about you, but I need a coffee before I can look Mariona's martinis in the eye. Bugger this weather ...”

We went to the bar on the corner to warm up and kill time smoking and drinking coffee. Borja used the time to flick through the society pages of the ABC and I got depressed reading about the disasters afflicting the universe. After a while, we got into the Smart and headed towards our friend's mansion. We had to drive round a while to find a parking space, but it was barely a couple of minutes past one when we strolled up to the front door of the hugely rich and most distinguished Doña Mariona Castany.

6

My brother's aristocratic friend lived alone in one the few modernist mansions still surviving intact on the Bonanova in the upper reaches of Barcelona, with a chatterbox Argentine butler and a shy Philippine maid who never said boo to a goose. It was a vast, tastefully and expensively decorated pile you reached via a splendid garden that extended behind the house into a small wood. An enormous bougainvillea spread over one of the walls of the house that, in summer and autumn, was covered in purple flowers that gave the small palace a fairy-tale aura. A thick vegetal tapestry of dark-leaved ivy, as old as the house, completely isolated the mansion and the garden from the outside world.

Doña Mariona Castany had inherited the house and the whole family fortune on the death of her father. The one and only heir to a patrimony that the next five generations of Castanys would be hard put to pare down – not for want of trying – she refused to contemplate the sale of her palatial abode, even though estate agents were continually knocking on her door and offering veritable fortunes. In another era, the exclusive parties and concerts she held there were the envy of her female friends and enemies, but, ever since her husband died, Mariona hadn't staged a single event. She'd say sadly she thought it would be in bad taste.