All Is Silence (23 page)

‘What’s that, Leda? Wait!’

There were ambulances and police cars parked at the main entrance to the football pitch, so he turned at the crossroads in A de Meus, took the left fork along the coast as far as the mirador in Corveiro.

From there he could see the pitch. What under his presidency had been renamed the stadium the day they inaugurated the covered stand with its directors’ box. From afar, it looked like a table-football table whose players had detached themselves from the metal bars and taken on a life of their own. In fact he didn’t want to see. He grabbed the binoculars not to get closer, but to have something between his eyes and the other.

Chelín was hanging from the crossbar.

THEY STOPPED TO
have lunch at África’s place. A small bar and shop on the corner between the coastal road and the track leading to the refrigerated warehouse. As soon as they entered the bar, even before she served the coffee, África signalled to Brinco to approach the counter. ‘Some clients of yours arrived early. A jeep went up the track.’

‘The same two as always?’ asked Brinco ironically.

‘No. They weren’t guards, nor were they from around here.’

Brinco was grateful for the information. And knew how to pay for it. Inverno was driving the Land Rover and they were accompanied by Chumbo sitting in the back. When they reached the bend overlooking Cons, before they could see the warehouse built on reclaimed marshland, Brinco ordered Inverno to stop. Told Chumbo to get out.

‘Go and check out the scenery.’

Chumbo didn’t ask any questions. Just disappeared down a track between bushes, in the direction of the rocks.

When he was driving, Brinco liked to go slowly so he could enjoy the sight of the wall with the company’s name and emblem. A swordfish and narwhal. Underneath were the intertwined initials ‘B&L Frozen Foods’. This time Inverno also drove slowly, but Brinco’s attention was centred on the yard in front of the warehouse, which was devoid of vehicles. They must have left, he thought. The old woman can’t have realised they’ve gone back.

Víctor got out of the jeep and jangled the keys like a rattle. Suddenly he stopped playing around and stared at Inverno. ‘The dogs? Why aren’t the dogs barking?’

They left them loose inside the warehouse. They’d always bark excitedly and whine behind the doors. They recognised the sound of the Land Rover’s engine from afar.

He whistled. Called out to them: ‘Sil! Neil!’

This was the involuntary signal. The doors opened and out walked two stocky men holding cocked pistols equipped with silencers. Inverno had held back. As a precaution. He’d also grabbed hold of his weapon. But from the right of the warehouse, from behind a fuel tank, came another guy, aiming a sawn-off shotgun.

They were skilled and highly trained. An office job to get back the two-thirds that was owing.

Brinco had miscalculated the payment period. He’d thought he had more time. But just as he was sending a message, the office had taken the initiative.

They pushed them inside. The guy with the shotgun stayed downstairs in the warehouse, aiming at Inverno after tying him up. The two dogs, a German shepherd and a Dobermann, lay dead. Little blood for so much silence.

The other two went upstairs with Brinco, one behind and the other in front. He dialled the number he was told to.

‘Hello? Milton here.’

The person talking deliberately emphasised his name. He didn’t want the other man blurting out his real name. The one buzzing about inside Víctor Rumbo’s head.

‘Milton, this is no way to behave.’

One of his assailants, standing behind him, suddenly began to strangle him with a kind of thin wire. He felt the wire penetrating his skin. Making a furrow. Feeling the pain, he instinctively tried to resist. He banged with his elbows, gasping for breath, but the assailant opposite him stuck the barrel of his gun against Brinco’s forehead. The other loosened the wire. And the one with the gun told him to pick up the receiver again.

‘Ah, music, sweet music. Compliments of the house. The best material for tuning. They’re doing their job. They’re professionals. You’re a professional. That’s how it’s done.’

Brinco passed his free hand over his neck. The sensation that an invisible cord was still pressing into it. The digital stain of blood.

‘Listen, Milton. We had a problem with a partner. The guy who was supposed to make the payment was trustworthy. This has never happened before. He lost his head.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. That’s what they’ve been complaining about. They don’t want it happening again. We deal with serious people, not kids.’

‘He lost control of the situation. Hanged himself yesterday. You can check this out if you like.’

‘Don’t come to me with videos. It’s a very sad story. Don’t air it any more. Cover up the hole and leave it. You can do that now, can’t you?’

‘Yes, of course I can . . . He hanged himself, that’s all. I think it was my fault. I pushed him too far . . .’

‘The world is a valley of tears. Why walk about with a tombstone around your neck? I’m going to hang up. This is a public phone. Grow up a bit!’

Brinco glanced at the wall clock.

‘You’re right, Milton. There’s no point drowning in a cup of water. I’ll give these gentlemen the treatment they deserve.’

He hung up. Passed his hand over his neck again. Took a deep breath.

‘Good, let’s see to that debt, shall we, piano tuner? You killed the dogs now, didn’t you? Well, right underneath the doghouse is the bag with the money.’

They left the office. The warehouse was empty. The automatic shutters started to rise. Neither henchman had time to ask what was going on. Chumbo, Inverno and half a dozen armed men overpowered them.

‘Where’s the other guy?’ asked Brinco.

‘In the fridge, taking some fresh air,’ said Inverno, pointing to one of the cold storage rooms.

Brinco rummaged in his assailant’s pocket. Found what he was looking for. Tautened the piano string.

‘You know? I just felt a strange pleasure, something I’d never felt before.’

Milton decided to place the call reserved for extreme circumstances.

If happiness is to travel from cold to hot, he’d gone in the opposite direction. From a hot sweat, the atmosphere of a large hotel’s kitchen and the euphoria of someone who has the power of intimidation and uses it, to the cold sweat of someone whose internal affairs have been badly disturbed. As a boy he’d lived in Moravia, in a settlement raised on a mountain of rubbish. He’d grown on top of the discarded waste of Medellín’s rich quarters. There the floor of his home gave off a sticky smell through the cracks, the methane that emanates from decomposition. The senses learn. They reject the base smell in order to perceive the rest. But the day comes when the methane sweeps away all the laboriously constructed scents. And the settlement burns. Moravia burns.

Which is why he always took quick decisions, a ‘Do it!’ whenever he got a whiff of methane. As now. There was a telephone in the kitchen, which he’d been watching for hours. He decided to take every precaution. He removed his head chef’s uniform, put on a holster and jacket. Loaded the magazine in his automatic.

‘I’ll be back in a minute. Pay attention to the phone. Don’t go to sleep on me.’

He made the call from a public booth in a small square next to the Hotel Coruña Road. He had no idea who Palindrome was, but he knew it would work. Palindrome answered. Yes, sir. Milton here. From Madrid, that’s right. It was an emergency. He’d lost track of some men he’d sent to Galicia. They were his best archangels, though he didn’t say this. They’d gone to collect a debt. An office job. They were supposed to call. In a maximum of twelve hours. But he hadn’t heard from them for a day and a half. The debtor? Brinco’s group. In Noitía.

There was a silence. He couldn’t tell what the silence smelled of because his head was overwhelmed by methane.

‘Understood. Thank you for the information. First of all, calm. And no noise.’

In the hotel lobby, a receptionist gestured with his hand, came out from behind the counter and rushed over to him. ‘Boss. We got a call in reception. A strange call. They said they’ve left the piano at the door to the warehouse.’

‘The piano?’

‘That’s what they said. Nothing else. A piano for Milton.’

That’s right. Everything so clean. The stink of methane.

‘Warn the kitchen! Tell everybody to go to the entrance to the warehouse. With their weapons!’

The warehouse was reached down an alleyway that opened out into a patio at the back of the hotel. Milton’s men took up position there and at the entrance to the alley. The only thing in the way, right in the middle of the patio, was a large crate. Water poured out from between the boards. Two metres long and half a metre wide, more or less. Everything required by a man packed in ice who’d come to deliver a piano string.

Inverno communicated with Chumbo by means of a walkie-talkie. He occupied the shade next to the sea gate of Romance Manor. Sentinel for Leda and Santiago. By the shore, the water around his waist, the boy was swimming, or pretending to swim, with some goggles. Each dive was followed by a series of shouts and gestures aimed at attracting his mother’s attention.

Leda watched him. Returned his attention. She was alone, sitting on a towel on the beach, wearing a printed T-shirt that seemed to attract all the breeze.

On a boat anchored next to some rocks that acted as a natural embankment, dressed in sea clothes, pretending to be a fisherman seeing to his nets, was Chumbo, holding a Winchester kept out of sight on deck.

There were two more people, hidden, but taking part in this unfolding drama. Fins and Mara on a dune, behind the marram’s herbal screen. The rumours of a settling of scores in Brinco’s circle had brought them here, to this oblique position as the capo’s bodyguards. But the capo was nowhere to be seen.

Mara whispered ironically to Fins, ‘Everybody watching the lady of the shipwrecks.’

And the lady of the shipwrecks watching everything. She was blinded for a moment by the sun glinting on the water. She set about reconstructing everything. First of all, the child. His greeting calmed her. She’d been like this for days. An activated inner sense that kept her on the alert. Permanently ill at ease. Checking out every single place, trying to turn any sound into a murmur, a source of information.

A diver emerged on the port side of the boat where Chumbo was. Chumbo had his back to him. When he turned, alerted by the splashing, the diver fired a harpoon into his chest.

Reality is an outer layer. There is a hidden world. And in this hidden world there is a conflict of forces which for her take on the shape of currents, underwater angels. For years the sea has sent her good signals. Even at the time of the accident, when the explosion sank Lucho Malpica’s boat, her father was saved. He almost couldn’t swim. The current took him in its arms, after he’d chafed himself against rock after rock, and deposited him on the beach.

Leda got up in a state of agitation. Surveyed the blanket of water, the glittering crumbs, that infinite, ephemeral silverwork a hand of wind had wrought on the sunny sea. She suddenly felt this was a place of horror. She couldn’t shout. She ran and could hear – a sticky, faulty sound – the whistle of her own drowning.

Santiago finally reappeared. Took off his goggles and waved at his mother.

‘How long can you stay under without breathing?’

‘You what?’

‘How long can you stay under without breathing?’

Leda heard a violent roar. She quickly identified where it was. It was coming from the palafittic horizon of the mussel rafts. It was a speedboat heading quickly towards the beach. Inverno came out of his lookout post by the sea gate of Romance Manor. Tried to speak to Chumbo, but got no answer. All he could hear was the sea moaning. The strangest thing was that Chumbo was there, on his boat. Inverno could perceive his silhouette in the distance. He had his back to him. Must have been trying to work out the nature of this piercing sound approaching over the sea.

He decided to expose himself and head for Leda and the child while trying to establish communication with Chumbo.

‘Chumbo, can you hear me? Over.’

The sound of interference like a hum.

Something burning tore into his shoulder. Another bullet smashed his head open.

How could Chumbo possibly kill Inverno? Even for something like that, he’d have asked for permission.

But there he was, firing a rifle from the deck. That blasted Judas.

Instead of taking to her heels, Leda did something surprising. She took Inverno’s weapon, protected the child behind her and aimed at the place of betrayal. Let him see what rotten wood he was really made of.

‘Chumbo, you son of a bitch!’

But the marksman responded by carefully aiming his precision rifle. Leda realised her reaction was absurd and they had no way out. Chumbo was part of the enemy. The marksman wasn’t going to stop the speedboat roaring towards them.

She grabbed Santiago by the arm and they ran barefoot across the sand. The sand that loved her so much now seemed to restrain their feet. When the child fell on his knees and she tried to pull him up, to Leda’s disbelief, help came from the hidden world.

‘Lie down beside him and don’t move!’ shouted Fins.

They waited for the speedboat to come alongside the shore. There were three crewmen. Two of them got ready to jump while the third kept the speedboat steady.

‘They’re not out to kill them, they’re out to kidnap them!’ exclaimed Mara.

It was time to shoot. And for the sea to lend a miraculous hand. For the reports to multiply several times over. As sometimes happens.

THE TOLLING OF
the bells has to make itself heard above the seagulls’ chatter, their scandalmongering on top of St Mary’s cemetery in Noitía.

‘They’re always after people, keeping an eye out, throwing insults.’

The old sailor glances at the sky in disapproval. He is one of the few not wearing a tie, the same as his companion. The top button of his shirt squeezes his Adam’s apple. As he lifts his head, the white points of the collar grow tense. They’re dressed very similarly, in black suits and waistcoats, but the top button makes a difference. His companion’s collar is open. There’s also a contrast in the whiteness and style of their hair. His hair forms a crest ending in a summit, a kind of wick on top of his forehead. His face is heavily lined, but his seniority is somehow intemporal, as if he’s returned from another age. His partner’s hair has been carefully combed, a humid whiteness, possibly smarmed down in such a way as to conceal any bald patches. They’re both tall and upright for their years. The main difference is in the way they walk. The position of their arms. One seems to be carrying a weight. A sack. A body. His own. Without the use of hands.