Outlaws (45 page)

‘You mentioned it; the inspector also told me that after that summer you lost touch with each other for some years, after which you began to see each other again as if you’d never met.’

‘It’s true. We pretended we didn’t know each other, and we pretended very well. We mostly saw each other at the time when he worked for the civil government, almost directly across the street from my office, as a security advisor for the governor. We became rather friendly during those years, but even then neither of us ever mentioned anything, much less whether he had been on the verge of sending me to prison for belonging to Zarco’s gang. Later we stopped seeing each other again and then, not long ago, I heard that he’d been chief of the airport police station for some time. And there, at the airport, my secretary found him that morning. When I told the inspector I needed to talk to him, he just asked: Is it urgent? It is for me, I answered. He said his morning was pretty busy but we could see each other mid-afternoon, and suggested I come see him in his office at the airport. It’s a private matter, I said. I’d rather talk somewhere else. I heard silence at the other end of the line; then I heard: Well, as you wish. He asked when and where we should meet; I said the first thing that came into my head: at six, on a bench in Sant Agustí Plaza.

‘At quarter to six I was already sitting in the sun on a bench in Sant Agustí Plaza, in front of the statue of General Álvarez de Castro and the city’s defenders. Shortly after six Inspector Cuenca showed up, out of breath and with his jacket folded under his arm. I stood up, shook his hand, thanked him for coming, suggested we could have a coffee at the Royal. The inspector dropped onto the bench, loosened the knot of his tie and said: First tell me what you want to talk about. I sat down beside him and, without giving him time to catch his breath, asked: You haven’t guessed? Still panting, he gave me a look that was halfway between ironic and suspicious; he asked: You want to talk about Zarco? I said yes.

‘The inspector nodded. He seemed to be ageing well, but for some reason his face made me think of a tortoise; a sad tortoise. He was facing straight ahead, his gaze fixed on the statue of General Álvarez de Castro or on the maple trees that surrounded the centre of the plaza or on the big white parasols that shaded the terraces of the bars or on the arches or the cream-coloured façades covered with strings of wrought-iron balconies; a drop of sweat trickled down his cheek. Well, he said with resignation, once he’d caught his breath. I suppose it had to happen sooner or later, didn’t it? Arranging his jacket on his lap he asked: What do you want to know? Just one thing, I answered. Who was the informer? Inspector Cuenca turned to me as he wiped away the drop of sweat from his cheek; I asked: You know what I mean, don’t you? Before he could answer I reasoned: You were waiting for us outside with your people. You knew we were going to rob that bank. Somebody must have told you. Who was it? Inspector Cuenca didn’t look away; he seemed more annoyed than intrigued. What do you want to know that for?, he asked. I need to know, I answered. What for?, Inspector Cuenca repeated. This time I didn’t answer. Inspector Cuenca blinked several times. I’m not going to tell you, he finally said, shaking his head. Professional secret. For fuck’s sake, Inspector, I said. It was thirty years ago. That’s true, said the inspector. And that’s precisely why you should have forgotten this story by now. I, however, still have my obligations, especially to people who confided in me. Would you reveal a client’s secret, even thirty years after they confided in you? Don’t play games, Inspector, I protested. This is not a normal case. Don’t play games, Counsellor, he protested. There’s no such thing as a normal case.

‘We fell silent. I let a few seconds go by. OK, I conceded. I’m not going to ask you to tell me who it was. I’ll just ask you to tell me yes or no. I paused and then asked: Was Tere the informer? Now Inspector Cuenca looked at me with genuine unmitigated curiosity. Tere?, he asked. Which Tere? Zarco’s girlfriend? I was about to tell him that she wasn’t actually his girlfriend but Zarco’s sister, but I just said yes. Inspector Cuenca’s face gradually lit up, until the laughter illuminated it entirely; I think it was the first time in my life I’d ever seen him laugh: it seemed like a strange laugh, the cheerful laughter of a young man from the disillusioned face of an old one. What’s the matter?, I asked. Nothing, he answered. The inspector barely smiled but he wasn’t sweating any more, although it was still hot; his thick veiny hands were still holding his jacket on his lap. It’s just that I can’t believe you’re serious, he said; immediately he asked: You liked that girl, didn’t you? I blushed. And what’s that got to do with it?, I asked. Nothing, said the inspector and, meaning you, he added: The journalist who’s going to write about Zarco told me. What he told me is that you joined Zarco’s gang for the girl. Is that true? I couldn’t see any need to lie, so I told him it was true. I asked the inspector why he asked; he said no reason; he went on: And might I know where you got the idea that the girl was my confidante? I didn’t say she was your confidante, I corrected him, I just asked if that time she was your informer. Same thing, he said. Who knows what you’ve told that journalist . . . But have you forgotten how things worked with Zarco? Do you really think one of his own would have dared talk? Would you have dared talk? Don’t you remember how scared everyone was of Zarco? I wasn’t scared of him, I hastened to reply. I did what he said but I wasn’t scared of him. Of course you were scared of him, said Inspector Cuenca. And if you weren’t you were more oblivious than I thought, more oblivious than any of your friends. Zarco was a nasty piece of work, Counsellor. Very nasty. As far as I know he always was. How would any of his own dare to inform on him? And, least of all, that
quinqui
girl; you must have known it: she was as loyal as a dog, I couldn’t have got her to give up Zarco even if I pulled her fingernails off.

‘I thought Inspector Cuenca was right. I thought that, actually, before talking to Inspector Cuenca I already knew that Tere could not have been the informer, and that I’d only wanted to talk to Inspector Cuenca to confirm it. I have another question, I said to Inspector Cuenca. He was staring straight ahead, with his eyes half-closed against the sun; the jacket placed on his lap concealed his belly. I said: I’ve always wondered why you let me go that night, why you didn’t arrest me. Inspector Cuenca immediately understood I meant the night he came looking for me in Colera, and the proof is that only a couple of seconds went by before he murmured: Now that is a good question. He said it without looking at me, curving his wide mouth and thick eyebrows; since he didn’t go on I asked: And what’s the answer? He let another couple of seconds go by and said the answer is that there is no answer. That he didn’t know what the answer was. That he had no idea. That he had never let any other guilty suspect go on purpose and at first he even regretted having done so, until he reached the conclusion that he might have done it for the wrong reasons. Here he seemed to reflect for a moment and added: Like all the best things I’ve done in my life.

‘I thought he was joking; I looked him in the eye: he wasn’t joking. I asked him what he meant. Then he started to tell me about his life: he told me he hadn’t been born in Gerona but he’d been living in Gerona for almost forty years and that he often thought that, had he not ended up in this city, his life would probably have been a disaster, in any case it would have been much worse than it had been. And do you know why I ended up here?, he asked. Without waiting for an answer he raised one of his hands and pointed towards the centre of the plaza. For that, he said. I looked in the direction he was pointing and asked: For the statue? For General Álvarez de Castro, he answered. For the siege of Gerona. Do you know there’s a novel by Galdós about it? Sure, I said. He asked me if I’d read it and I said no. I have, he said. Twice. The first time was many years ago, when I was eighteen and doing my practical training in Madrid. The book made a big impression on me, I thought it was a great war novel, and that Álvarez de Castro was a fabulous hero. So, when it came time to choose a posting, I decided to come here: I wanted to see the city, wanted to get to know the city where Álvarez de Castro had fought, or Álvarez de Castro’s men, I don’t know. Inspector Cuenca then told me that a few weeks earlier, exactly when he was talking to you about his relationship with Zarco, he’d mentioned the Galdós novel and what it had meant to him, and having done so piqued his curiosity and he reread it. And do you know what?, said Inspector Cuenca, turning once again towards me. I thought it was shit; rather than a novel about war it seemed like a parody of a war novel, an affected, gruesome and pretentious thing set in a cardboard-cut-out city where only cardboard-cut-out people live. And as for Álvarez de Castro, Inspector Cuenca also said, Frankly: he’s a disgusting character, a psychopath capable of sacrificing the lives of thousands of people in order to satisfy his patriotic vanity and not surrender an already defeated city to the French. Anyway, Inspector Cuenca concluded, after I finished reading the book I remembered that I once heard a professor on TV say that a book is like a mirror and that it’s not the person who reads the book but the book that reads the person, and I thought it was true. I also said to myself: Damn, the best thing that happened in my life happened to me due to a misunderstanding, because I liked a horrible book and because I thought a villain was a hero. Inspector Cuenca fell silent; then, without taking his eyes off me, looking at me with infinitely ironic mischief, with absolutely serious irony, he asked: How do you like that?

I thought over my reply, or rather pretended to be thinking it over. I was actually thinking that it wasn’t Tere who had lied to me but Inspector Cuenca, and that the inspector was telling me all that to distract me from the fundamental issue, to continue protecting his confidante more than thirty years after she’d confided in him. For a moment I wanted to persist, carry on the interrogation, but I remembered my last conversation with Tere and told myself it made no sense: La Font and Rufus and the district had disappeared decades ago, and Inspector Cuenca and I were nothing but two relics, two
charnegos
from back when
charnegos
still existed, an old cop and an old gang member turned shyster sitting on a bench in the late afternoon like two pensioners talking of a vanished ruined world, of things nobody in the city remembered any more, and that didn’t matter to anybody. So I chose to let it go, to keep quiet, not to keep asking: I didn’t know if it was Tere who had told me the truth and Inspector Cuenca who lied, or if it was Tere who had lied and Inspector Cuenca who was telling the truth. And, since I didn’t know, I couldn’t know if Tere had loved me or not, or if she had only loved me in an occasional and conditional way, while she had loved Zarco permanently and unconditionally. Actually, I said to myself then – and I was surprised I’d never thought it before – I didn’t even know how Tere had loved Zarco, because I had no proof that Tere and Zarco were sister and brother and that Tere hadn’t lied to me years before, in my office, telling me they were, to convince me to keep helping Zarco up until the end; actually, I said to myself then, I didn’t even know either if, supposing it was true that Tere and Zarco were sister and brother, after finding out the real kinship between them that Tere had loved Zarco in a different way than she’d loved him before knowing it. I didn’t know anything. Nothing except that it wasn’t true that everything slotted into place in that story, and that there was an infinitely serious irony in it or an absolutely ironic mischief or an enormous misunderstanding, like the one Inspector Cuenca had just told me about. And I also thought that after all perhaps it wasn’t the end of the story, that perhaps not everything that had to happen to me had happened and that, if Tere came back again, I’d be waiting for her.

‘I looked out of the corner of my eye at Inspector Cuenca, and said to myself that in spite of his air of a sad tortoise and disillusioned old man he was a fortunate man. I thought it but I didn’t tell him. The question I’d asked him remained unanswered and we sat there in silence for a while, enduring the sun on our faces, watching through half-closed eyes the urban hustle and bustle of Sant Agustí in front of General Álvarez de Castro. Until at some point I stood up and said: Well, now can I buy you a coffee? Inspector Cuenca opened his eyes wide, as if my question had woken him up; then he sighed again, stood up as well and, as we started across the plaza towards the Royal, said: If it’s all the same to you, let’s have a beer.’

Author's Note

This novel would not have been possible without the collaboration of Francisco Pamplona and, especially, Carles Monguilod, whose book
Vint-i-cinc anys i un dia
was one of the initial spurs to this story. Aside from them, Carmen Balcells and David Trueba read a draft and provided extremely useful observations. I've borrowed from Antony Beevor an expression I heard him use over dinner in London, one evening in the winter of 2011. What the books I've written over the last twenty-five years and I owe to Jordi Gracia would never fit in an acknowledgments note. I am also in debt to the following books:
Hasta la libertad
, by Juan José Moreno Cuenca;
Historia del Julián
, by Juan F. Gamella;
Els castellans
, by Jordi Puntí;
Quinquis dels 80: Cinema, prensa i carrer
, by various authors; and
Memòries del barri xino
, an unpublished manuscript by Gerard Bagué. I'd also like to thank Joan Boada, Josep Anton Bofill, Antoni Candela, Emili Caula, Jordi Caula and Narcís Caula, Jordi Corominas, Mery Cuesta, Daniel de Antonio, Tomás Frauca (not Franca), Pepe Guerrero, Ramón Llorente, Llorenç Martí, Puri Mena, Mariana Montoya, Isabel Salamanya, Carlos Sobrino, Robert Soteras, Guillem Terribas and Fernando Velasco.