The Frozen Heart (116 page)

She was so worked up that she could not hold his gaze for long. She looked away and lit a cigarette. It can’t be his son, she thought, otherwise he’d be at the graveside with the others. She easily spotted Angelica, her hair still dyed the same colour, though she was a slim, frail old woman now. Next to her stood her two elder sons, whom she recognised from the photos on the website, both tall, blond, pale skinned, though balding now. They looked exactly as Raquel had imagined them and markedly different to the other two men in the group. One of them, a tall man with dark hair and a beard, had his arm around a good-looking blonde woman who looked very much like her mother. The other, shorter, with cropped hair and a black tie, was Clara’s husband. Raquel recognised Clara immediately, because she still had the gentle, ingenuous beauty that had first captivated her when they were girls. Next to her were two other women, but there was no dark-haired man, the grown-up version of the twelve-year-old who, even in 1977, was the only one of Julio Carrión’s sons who looked like him.

She stubbed out her cigarette and turned to look at the man who stood apart from the gruop. He was smoking now, still looking at her, his expression a mixture of curiosity and surprise. Raquel realised it was Alvaro, that it had to be Álvaro, even though he was standing on his own, away from everyone else, although he looked as though he did not want to be with the others. Had she been able to think about things coldly, she would have exulted in his isolation, it was more than she had been hoping for when she arrived at the cemetery, but she could not think coldly.

This man was not Julio Carrion, though he looked like him; she was not Paloma and yet she could not take her eyes off him. It wasn’t rational, it wasn’t logical, and it wasn’t good, but Raquel Fernández Perea, together with her intelligence and all her plans, folded before this sudden attraction to a man who was not even himself but the shadow of someone else. Before Raquel had time to digest this, the ceremony ended, the sobbing grew louder as the coffin was lowered into the grave, the widow crumpled and the lone man rushed forward, hugged her and kissed her, reclaiming his place among the mourners. Raquel left quickly, suddenly intensely aware of the risk she was running in being here uninvited.

Since then she had made little headway. She had spent a lot of time thinking about what she knew and what she did not know, about Angelica and her children, she prepared a dozen different variations on the speech that had made it possible for her to triumph over an old man caught unawares, but she liked none of them. The memory of those eyes which were but were not Julio Carrión’s disrupted her plans, emphasising her weakness, her vulnerability.

Raquel Fernández Perea, who had been born with ghosts, grown up with ghosts, was now too old to believe in them, she knew now that what she had seen had been the result of her transporting herself into a time and passions that were not her own. Yet this did not prevent her from sensing that those dark eyes held a warning. This was why she had called on Paco Molinero, who was loyal, intelligent and unbiased.

‘You’re right,’ she said after his speech; it seemed so obvious to her now that she said it again. ‘Acually, you’re right. But there is another possibility ...’

‘The investments.’

‘Of course,’ she nodded enthusiastically, ‘I don’t know how I can have been so stupid.’

This had been the only irrefutable truth in the speech Raquel Fernández Perea had made to Julio Carrion González on her second visit. Before going to see him, she had gone to the records department of the bank and had found accounts in his name and in those of several of his companies. She was not particularly surprised; the president of Grupo Carrion fitted the usual profile of the clients who approached the bank to manage some small part of their personal wealth so as to forge relationships with an investment manager in case they should need them when times were hard. For Carrion, as for most of the others, these personal investments represented only a small percentage of their businesses’ investments, not because the funds invested were negligible but because the amount of traffic — and therefore of commission and fees — was almost non-existent. Raquel had quickly realised that taking over the management of the portfolio would not be difficult, but the death of Carrion had made her abandon a possible route before she should have.

The following morning she went to see Miguel Aguado, a shy, amiable, ugly man some years younger than her with whom she had barely spoken in the course of ten years. She knew nothing about his work, but it did not take her long to figure out that he was hardly a brilliant investment manager.

‘Given what you’ve said I don’t see any problem passing on the portfolio, but I warn you, you won’t make a penny out of it. As I said, I don’t really know the sons, I always dealt directly with Don Julio, but I’m fairly sure they will want to liquidate the stock. I don’t know how many of them there are, but I know it’s a big family and they’re rich. It’s always the same, you never make any money out of big families.’

‘I know,’ Raquel smiled, ‘I’m sure that’s why Clara phoned me. She’d forgotten I even worked here. We’ve met up a couple of times, mostly at class reunions, and we were best friends when we were little. But I’m sure she wouldn’t have called me just to sell off the shares ... Anyway, I’ll just have a look, I won’t do anything, and if I manage to persuade them to reinvest, I’ll send them your way — after all, they’re your clients.’

This was not the first time she had done a deal like this with a colleague, nor would it be the last. Writing to Angelica was even less difficult. She could have asked her secretary to do it, but she had a form letter on her computer and it took only five minutes to fill in the blanks. She was careful to sign it R. Fernández Perea, then she sent it off, crossed her fingers and waited. If Angelica realised who she was from the letter, she would call immediately. If not — and at this point it hardly mattered — she would have to wait. She knew from experience that it usually took heirs about a month to reply, very rarely less and quite often more, so she decided to leave it until mid-April before she began to worry. Julio Carrion González had died on 1 March 2005, and it was on the last day of the month that Mariví buzzed through to say the widow had arrived.

I’m not ready. This was the first thing she thought. She was not ready, although she had rehearsed exactly what she was going to say, every inflection, every gesture. This was just a preliminary encounter, an excuse to set up a proper meeting, at which Raquel would, at a judicious moment, place the documents in their battered leather folder on the table.

Raquel was accustomed to dealing with beneficiaries, and she invariably rattled off the same speech Angelica Otero Fernández would hear that morning, but Raquel had envisaged a very different kind of meeting: first a brief phone call, just long enough to get a sense of the woman she was dealing with, then a long series of offers and counter-offers all couched in exquisitely polite terms. She had wanted to meet with Julio Carrión’s widow in her office since it played to her advantage, but she had anticipated the fact that Angelica might decline, pleading illness or exhaustion, in which case Raquel had planned to say that she would be only too happy to come and see her at her home.

This was what she had planned to say. She had carefully chosen every word, every phrase: of course there’s no pressure, take all the time you need, I know how difficult these things can be, though it is a considerable sum of money and I would not advise leaving it too long, shall we say a month, shall we pencil in a date? This was how she had planned it, and had it gone according to plan, everything would have been fine. But she had sent the letter on 20 March, and now, nine days later, here she was knocking on the office door without even phoning first to arrange a meeting. Raquel did not understand, but she could not keep Angelica waiting any longer.

‘Come in,’ she said finally, her voice as bright, as confident, as she could make it. And Julio Carrión’s doppelgänger stepped into her office.

When she saw him, she got to her feet, though she had not consciously told her body to do so. It’s impossible, this can’t be happening, but she closed her eyes, opened them again, and Alvaro Carrion was still standing there, looking as surprised, as shocked, as she was.

‘I’m sorry, it’s just ... I was expecting your mother,’ she said eventually.

‘Yes, I came instead.’ His voice calmed her, as it was nothing like his father’s. ‘And since your charming receptionist didn’t even bother to ask my name ...’

‘Yes,’ she managed to smile as though amused, ‘Mariví is a real character.’ She tried to think what she should do next, then remembered. ‘Please, take a seat.’

After he left, she walked back to her desk, and slumped into her chair. She felt awful but could not think why. The phone rang before she had time to compose herself.

‘Is she gone?’ Paco said.

‘Yes.’

‘So, how did it go?’

‘It didn’t ...’ she took a deep breath, ‘she didn’t come, her son came, the youngest, the one I met that day I went to their place with my grandfather.’

‘That’s hardly surprising. So, what happened?’

‘Nothing happened, Paco. I gave my little speech, gave him the documents, told him to look over them and then he left.’ She took another breath and felt a little better. ‘It’s over.’

‘What do you mean over?’

‘It’s over, there’s no way I can get to the sons ... besides ... I was nervous, I didn’t know what to say. Maybe if he’d called to arrange an appointment I could have come up with something, but when he just showed up. And now ... I don’t know ...’

‘What’s the hell’s the matter with you, Raquel?’ Paco’s tone changed. ‘Honestly! You’re starting to sound like a complete beginner...’

In her profession the term ‘beginner’ was the worst possible insult.

‘You’re right,’ she admitted, then repeated it to convince herself. ‘You’re absolutely right. Nothing went wrong, I was just a bit nervous ... I don’t even think he noticed.’

‘Good. Don’t worry, we’ll find a way of getting to the widow. We can talk about it later. Are you free for lunch?’

She was free, and suggested she book a table at the restaurant they usually went to.

After she hung up, she went to the toilet and splashed water on her face. She had been born with ghosts, had grown up with ghosts, she knew they had form and heft and more character than many living people. She also knew that she should not tell anyone about what had happened that morning. That she had sat down next to Alvaro Carrion and had not been able to look him in the eye. That the whole time she was talking, she had been more conscious of how close his arm was to hers than of what she was actually saying. That when her assistant brought in the coffee and Álvaro Carrion said, ‘Just as well Mariví didn’t bring it. I’m scared to death of her,’ she had looked up at him, saw that he was looking at her, and had felt something like a fizzing inside her. She could not allow her body to fizz again.

This was something she could not tell anyone, especially not Paco Molinero. She couldn’t tell him that fifteen minutes of conversation with Alvaro Carrion had done more to turn her life upside down than a whole night in bed with him. It was at precisely that moment that her department director chose to call her about one of their more problematic clients. She had to put the director on hold when Alvaro reappeared in her office to ask why she had been at his father’s funeral, but fortunately her boss did not take kindly to being made to wait and rang back immediately, the call as welcome to Raquel Fernández Perea as the sound of the bell to a boxer about to collapse.

‘But why did you go to the funeral?’ Paco seemed worried at this new information. ‘You didn’t mention anything to me about it.’

‘Well... it didn’t seem important until now. I went to the funeral to see what they looked like, how Angelica looked ... I mean, playing hardball with a merry widow is one thing, but with a broken-hearted wife who was in a wheelchair or something would be ... I was just curious, I wanted to check a few things.’

‘I can understand that, but you didn’t have to go to the cemetery, you could have gone to the service, it would have been a lot less risky.’

‘But a lot less useful, Paco. There would have been too many people, Aguado was probably there ...’ She paused to collect her thoughts. ‘At the time, I didn’t know Aguado handled Carrion’s portfolio, but there was bound to be someone from the bank. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, and I could hardly go up and offer my condolences ... The Carrions are a big family and their father was a rich, successful businessman. The church would have been full with all those people, I wouldn’t have been able to get a good look at the family without being noticed.’

‘You’re right.’

‘I was fairly sure there would be a public church service and a private burial, and I thought why go to a public service when I could go to the private burial in a tiny village cemetery where I was bound to see everything?’ As she spoke, her reasoning sounded logical, sensible. ‘It was obvious, at least I thought it was obvious. The death notice mentioned the service but not the burial, which meant that they weren’t expecting anyone but family at the cemetery, that’s why I showed up late, so that they would be too busy listening to the priest to notice me. How was I to know that one of the sons would be standing on his own away from everyone else, that he’d notice me and that he would be the one to show up at the meeting instead of his mother? It’s just a coincidence ... It’s unbelievable. I mean, it’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t bet on if your life depended on it.’

‘True.’ Paco smiled at her.

They ate their starter in silence, and ordered another bottle of wine.

‘So,’ Paco spoke first, ‘what are you going to do now?’

‘Well, obviously I can’t tell him the truth, so I’ll have to make something up.’