At Close Quarters (9 page)

‘At what time?’

‘Eight o’clock. The meeting carried on till ten,’ he specified, while Cupido wondered why he was giving him such precise information, leading him to another question.

‘Did everyone turn up?’

‘No, not everyone. The two officers you’ve just mentioned didn’t. The purpose of the meeting was to negotiate the rendition, so to speak, and they didn’t even entertain that possibility.’

‘Were you there?’

‘No, I wasn’t there either. I won’t be affected by the disruption that Olmedo created. I’ll be retiring in a few months.’

Cupido was surprised to note the change in the colonel’s tone, as if the questions, which seemed to irritate him one by one, together proved the detective highly skilled and had an internal logic that was in the colonel’s best interest to answer. Because Castroviejo surely knew Cupido was inquiring into the alibis that people may have, and perhaps suspected the case was not definitively closed, so by replying he swept away any possible accusations of covering up.

‘Marina asked me to talk to you and make things easy for you. I promised her I would.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No, don’t thank me. The sooner she understands she’s wrong, the sooner we’ll all be able to put the matter to rest. Olmedo’s death has been painful for many of us. I don’t want to leave open wounds behind me when I retire. There’s something else I’d like to do,’ he said, without clarifying what. ‘On Sunday I will officiate
for the last time at the soldiers’ pledge of allegiance to the flag.’ He returned to his desk, and when he walked past, Cupido noticed again that faint smell of ripe apples. The colonel sat down and picked up a card which read, in block capitals, INVITATION.

‘I forgot your name,’ he said.

‘Ricardo Cupido.’

‘Ricardo Cupido,’ he repeated as he handwrote it and appended a long, old-fashioned, baroque signature underneath. ‘Come and see us on Sunday. It’ll be my last official ceremony at San Marcial. I think you’ll understand us better afterwards. And you’ll be able to appreciate everything Olmedo was going to take away from us.’

He hadn’t thought of it for a long time. The workings of recollection are strange and awkward, he told himself, and there seems to be neither rhyme nor reason as to why a small detail might unleash a barrage of memories, just as it is impossible to know why the whole machinery of mental cranes, pulleys and pistons, asked to bring back a piece of information buried in time,
sometimes
only digs up incoherent fragments. Perhaps he hadn’t thought of it because he’d always refused to talk about that period of his life and found it tedious whenever an occasional interlocutor, whether with nostalgia or contempt, told anecdotes of his military service. But just now, as he was leaving the pavilion after the soldier saluted him at the door, and he looked at the training grounds where a company of recruits could be seen, some clear notes tore through the afternoon and his memory was jogged by the sound of a bugle. He suddenly pictured his twenty-year-old self wearing a uniform: a rather lanky soldier who, because of his height, was one of the first in line, and who followed instructions during training with ease. As soon as he’d arrived at the barracks in the Madrid sierras, on a cold autumn morning, after a long journey on a crowded train, he’d been taken to the barber’s, where several veterans, armed with clippers, unceremoniously cropped his hair. When he glanced in the mirror to see how he looked, his head shorn of the hair he’d always worn long, he knew that
this would not be a period of ‘useful experience’, as he’d heard it described. It took only a few days before he understood how true the bit about
military
was, what with all the rules and regulations that bore no resemblance to those of the civilian world outside, and to what degree the word service was inexact, as there was
precious
little one could do to serve one’s country in there, living for a year at its expense, being required only to learn some callisthenics and how to operate a Cetme, and now and then shoot a few bullets without even trying to hit the bull’s eye. Time was punctuated by stints on reserve guard and on duty, receiving lessons on strategy which he had absolutely forgotten and getting passes to go out to a club where there was only one girl for every ten soldiers. Other nights he would get quickly and thoroughly drunk on an acrid, flinty wine that one of the veterans bought wholesale and resold by the bottle, smuggling it into the barracks in the same
sixteen-litre
cylinders in which they transported diesel, and whose
narcotic
effects wore off only after the second day, following much vomiting in the toilets and urinating a dark yellow liquid – all silently condoned by the high-ranking officers, as if intoxication were another subject in the virile military curriculum. The rest of the time was devoted to skiving, searching for a secluded spot to escape anyone’s notice, or pretending to be busy when an NCO walked by. Skiving was the utmost goal, on it the sharpest
strategies
were honed, and through it the mystique of honour and effort was exchanged for the mystique of the picaresque, so that whoever was better at making himself invisible was also the most admired among his peers.

It had been a hollow, sterile and, to all intents and purposes, lost year, always being shouted at by disconcerted officers who resented the changing times and the accusations of having been complicit in Franco’s regime, which had ended only a few years before and for which they felt profoundly nostalgic almost to a man. At the age of twenty, Cupido learned how far he was from sharing the values and certainties of the army, their codes and
traditions
, their arbitrariness and harshness when it came down to
exerting punishment for infringing a norm, no matter the reasons that might explain the infraction.

For all this he thought he understood why Major Olmedo wished for a more professional army.

On Sunday he would attend the ceremony, and he’d be able to talk with some officers and observe them in their element, but it was still Thursday, and Cupido decided to use the time to talk to Aurora and Samuel to double-check the information that Marina had given him about them. He also needed to look into two items that had caught his attention in the major’s flat: the lawsuit against the anaesthetist, and the bank documents.

He rang Marina up, and she asked him to meet her half an hour later at her house. Alkalino said he would like to come along, and Cupido had no problem with that.

Marina was waiting for him. A simple black T-shirt and dark trousers gave her a discreet air of mourning.

‘Did you speak to the colonel?’ asked Marina sitting in front of them, her back turned to a window that opened onto a terrace where one could see colourfully lush plants.

‘Yes. He’s convinced your father committed suicide, but he answered my questions politely. He also invited me to attend a pledge-of-allegiance ceremony next Sunday.’

‘Are you going?’

‘Yes. I’ll get a chance to speak to some of your father’s
colleagues
. Did you know that at the time he died there was an
informal
meeting at the base to discuss the consequences of his report?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Not everyone was there. At least two officers were missing, Bramante and Ucha. And the colonel himself.’

‘Does that mean that …?’

Marina trailed off, hesitating cautiously, as if she were afraid to look into the abyss of suspicion that the investigation was already opening.

‘It means it narrows down the number of possible suspects, if your father did not commit suicide,’ explained Cupido in a first step towards clarity, striving to find his bearings in the dense fog that would only clear once the investigation advanced.

‘He didn’t,’ said Marina, with greater certainty than the day before.

Alkalino, sitting slightly to one side, stared at her, in the same way that a painter stares at his model before the first brushstroke, still unable to choose the traits that best define her.

‘I found two things in the flat I’d like to ask you about.’

‘Yes?’

‘The first is an application to change the titleholder of that investment fund you told me about. It is signed by yourself, but not by your father.’

‘He asked me to do it. I never worried about those things. My father took care of them. Anyway, he wanted to be the only person with legal access to that money, at least for a while. We both were titleholders and he wanted to avoid the possibility that, during the divorce, Jaime might raise some trouble about our common assets. My father told me he’d take everything to the bank himself.’

‘But he didn’t. He didn’t even sign the papers. So the change is not official.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ she said, sitting back in the armchair.

‘So, if your father died before signing, your ex-husband could claim some of that money.’

‘I’m sure that won’t be a problem. I said so to my father and I’ll say the same to you now. I’m sure Jaime won’t create trouble between us for a matter of money.’

‘I’d like to talk to him.’

Marina picked up the cordless telephone lying on the table and
dialled a number with her left hand. In the quietness of the room, and since the volume was high enough, Cupido clearly heard at the other end the convivial voice of a man who readily agreed to an interview. He would help in any way he could, he said.

‘You can go over right now. He’s waiting for you at his office,’ said Marina after hanging up. Then she added: ‘You mentioned a second thing.’

‘Yes, among your father’s papers I found a lawsuit against an anaesthetist, Lesmes Beltrán. He was sentenced to pay
compensation
and disqualified from practising for four years.’

‘Because of my mother’s death,’ she explained. ‘But that was a long time ago. I haven’t heard of him since then, and I wouldn’t like to find myself face to face with him either. It was all very unpleasant.’

‘Can you tell me about it?’

Marina looked at him, her tiredness tinged with sadness, not sharing his interest.

‘We don’t have many leads,’ insisted Cupido, ‘and we cannot overlook any possibilities.’

‘My mother was obsessed with her looks,’ she said, sighing. ‘In that she was the opposite of my father. He liked to stay in shape, sure, but I think it was for health reasons. He was an austere man, of simple tastes, who didn’t ask for elaborate, exquisite food, and did not demand great comforts. My mother was
different
. She wouldn’t go out unless her hair was neatly done up, her clothes well ironed and colour-coordinated. She wouldn’t go to an important party in the same dress she’d worn to another one. She might not sleep if a hotel bed was not comfortable enough, or if it was noisy outside. If she saw so much as a mosquito flying over a dish, she wouldn’t touch it,’ she said, as Alkalino looked at her, puzzled. ‘Well, I may be exaggerating a little, but she was like that, she wanted everything to look impeccable. And though my father would sometimes mock her, deep down he too liked the fact that she made sure he was clean-shaven and wore polished shoes. It was five years ago that she decided to undergo
plastic surgery. Apparently, it was a simple procedure: to lift the skin of her cheekbones to eliminate some wrinkles or bags that only she could see. She used to say, exaggerating, that every time she looked in the mirror she saw a dromedary. Anyway,
something
went wrong during the operation and she never woke up, even though she wasn’t allergic to anything and didn’t have a
difficult
medical history. She died five days later. My father filed a lawsuit and had to fight to arrive at the truth; it wasn’t easy to break through the clannishness uniting the doctors at the clinic. It emerged that the anaesthetist, due to negligence, impatience, human error, who knows, had applied a strong enough dose to put an elephant to sleep. He was said to be an unstable man, an overworked one at that, and perhaps he shouldn’t have been doing such a delicate job. Later came the sentence, the payout and his temporary disqualification.’

‘Where’s he now?’

‘I don’t know, though I guess he must have gone back to work. It’s been a long time.’

‘Did your father ever hear of him again? Did he ever mention anything?’

‘Not that I remember. It was a subject we tried to avoid. I liked to talk about my mother and to remember her when she was alive. But it wasn’t pleasant to remember her death.’

Soon afterwards they said goodbye and walked to the address where Jaime, her ex-husband, awaited them. The company was on the ground floor in a complex of buildings surrounding a piazza. Two offices open to the public were separated from the rest of the premises by large windows with venetian blinds, through which one could see the adjoining warehouse; it was full of aluminium ladders, rope, brackets, hooks, harnesses, metal bars and also housed two vans with the name of the company, Mediterráneo Vertical, written on them in large blue capitals.

A secretary looked up from a sheaf of papers and, when they introduced themselves, stood up to lead them into the other office.

‘He’s waiting for you. This way.’

Cupido had the impression that Jaime closed a window on his computer with a quick click of the mouse. He then stood up, walked around the desk and, smiling, shook their hands too warmly, as if they were old friends he was happy to see. The detective struggled to picture him as the father of two children. He knew looks were not the reason, as no appearance is characteristic of paternity, but Jaime’s excessively youthful, restless style made it difficult to imagine him at weekends changing diapers, mashing vegetables for baby food or sterilising bottles, staying up all night when a child was ill or playing with them in a sandpit. Everything in the office was shiny and aseptic, and had that kind of
mechanical
neatness in which any tool that’s not equipped with an
electrical
engine seems out of place.

‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said pulling out two chairs of such stylish design that Alkalino looked at them with suspicion, fearing that, if he sat down on one of them, it might collapse under his weight. ‘I don’t know what I can do to help clarify Camilo’s death … if
anything
needs to be clarified. In fact, I don’t understand why Marina won’t accept what’s happened. I think there’s no use going through all this over and over. For her sake and the children’s. That’s how it happened, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’

‘She’s convinced it wasn’t suicide.’

‘But that’s a very serious thought. She seems to be implying someone out there is a murderer.’

‘Marina’s aware of that.’

‘And would she be prepared to accuse someone?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

For a second the kindness disappeared from his eyes – those big, gentle, attractive eyes – giving way to a glint of jealousy and distrust, a malaise born of the fact that a stranger could introduce the purulence of suspicion into his shiny, aseptic office – the fact that a detective who operated on the dodgiest fringes of society might meddle in Marina’s private affairs and come to know more about her than someone who’d been a member of her family. A moment later a smile returned to his lips, and once again his
face became round and kind, concealing the thought it had just revealed:
Get out of here. Are you trying to come between her and me? Get out of here.

‘It’s a mistake to think that,’ he said. ‘I’ve already told her, it’s a mistake, and she should accept it.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Because if not it’ll cause her a lot of worry.’

‘I meant, sure it was suicide.’

‘All the evidence points that way. He was on his own. He was holding the gun in his hand. He wrote that note. And then, I can’t believe that anyone would dare try to kill him.’

‘Perhaps someone he knew, whom he may have let in, whom he trusted and therefore took him by surprise.’

‘I don’t think Camilo would have let anyone take him by surprise.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because I knew him. He was always on guard, never relaxed. Before he drove out of the garage, he looked both ways. Whenever we went to a restaurant, he chose a spot where his back was against a wall. I guess it’s a military mentality.’

‘Were you on good terms?’

‘As good as an ex-son and father-in-law can be … Although I don’t like those words,’ he concluded, as if what the question suggested were so absurd that no further explanations were necessary.

‘As good as …’ repeated Cupido.

‘Yes, that’s right. Perhaps because Marina and I are on good terms too. We had an amicable separation and we had an understanding on everything: the kids, the house, the alimony.’

Cupido thought of the documents Olmedo had not managed to take to the bank, but didn’t say anything. Perhaps Jaime didn’t know. And it was up to Marina to tell him.

‘We both fulfil our obligations with our children, and never interfere with visiting rights,’ he continued. ‘She kept the flat and I kept the company. So I can’t say there’s any trouble between us.
We’re not like those ex-couples who shout insults at each another. Apparently Camilo found this hard to understand.’

‘Why?’

‘One day, a long time ago, I heard him say that in every separation there’s an aggrieved party. And he couldn’t get his head round the fact that you could take a separation in your stride. Army mentality!’ he exclaimed with a conciliatory smile, without apparent rancour. His expression changed when he looked at Alkalino and saw his puzzled expression. ‘I think that, deep down, Camilo would have liked us to hate each other, so we could break up for good. As if he feared that one day we might get back together.’

‘Did you like him?’ insisted Cupido, in a quiet voice.

‘Well, whenever I saw him I didn’t think of killing him, if you know what I mean,’ he replied jokingly, his mouth stretched into a fake smile, friendliness hiding the scorn on his face like so much make-up. Then he added: ‘Seriously now … He never liked me. I guess he would have wanted a different kind of husband for his daughter. A high-ranking officer, like himself, or a civil servant with a good job – I don’t know, someone more stable, closer to his ideas. He often repeated the phrase: “One should have one’s feet on the ground”.’

‘He didn’t like what you did for a living,’ said Cupido looking around.

‘He didn’t. He said I ran excessive risks for too little financial return. Camilo had a farm not far from here, a few kilometres inland, which he leased out to sharecroppers. Once he tried to convince me of the finer points of nature. He wanted me to take care of the land.’

‘And you refused?’

‘Of course! I have nothing against the countryside, but I am a man of the city. Can you imagine? Working from morning till night, putting up with storms, pests, sweat mixed with dirt, the smell of cows and sheep, grimy fingernails. I’ve been doing my job for the last fifteen years, and it’s going from strength to strength.’

Cupido heard Alkalino’s almost imperceptible sigh of
annoyance
, and wondered how he managed to stay quiet, he who had an opinion about everything, who went on talking when
everyone
else had nothing left to say. Surely he did not agree with that disdain of the rural world where he was from.

‘May I ask you one more question?’ said Cupido.

‘Yes, go ahead, yes,’ he repeated, as if impatient to hear it, his
expression
still friendly and composed, a slight hint of anger in his voice.

‘Where were you the afternoon the major died?’

Jaime sat back and sighed, as though the moment he’d been expecting had finally arrived. However, he said:

‘If that’s the best question a detective can ask, then that
detective
won’t go very far.’

‘It may not be, but you’ll help Marina by answering it.’

‘There are lots of people in this city who know me and like me enough to declare I was with them that evening,’ he said. ‘But I don’t need anyone to lie for me. I was here, in this office, on my own, trying to catch up with the paperwork. Some figures shouldn’t be seen by even the best secretary. I think that answers your question?’