The Good Suicides (16 page)

“I know. Don’t worry, it’s nothing. It’s a loose end I haven’t managed to explain,” said Héctor. He didn’t want to give away any more information and felt even worse because of it, so he ended the conversation there.

They went out into the street and Héctor inhaled deeply, as if he’d emerged from an airless well. He remained in the doorway for a few minutes, smoking, as he watched Mar walk away. At the corner a boy was waiting for her and without saying a word put his arm around her shoulders, as if wishing to console her. At least she isn’t totally alone, thought Héctor, throwing the cigarette on the ground, something he detested but which seemed the only solution when obliged to smoke in the street.

If he’d remembered the address correctly, the garage owned by Gaspar Ródenas’s father should be in one of those streets in the center. Héctor found it without difficulty and spent a few minutes standing at the door, looking inside. He didn’t know if it was worth going in and speaking to the owner, and he was almost on the verge of leaving when a man came out of the garage and lit a cigarette. He was a man of about sixty, and judging by his appearance and his hands, he’d been working for more than forty. Not really knowing why, Héctor approached him and asked for a light. Smoking is an unhealthy ice-breaker, he said to himself, remembering he’d just stubbed out a cigarette less than ten minutes before.

“Are you Señor Ródenas?” he asked as he returned the lighter.

The man pointed to the garage sign, but did so with a glance of distrust.

“Excuse my bothering you,” continued Héctor. “I’m Inspector Salgado, and—”

“What do you want?” The question sounded almost hostile.

“Maybe it’s not a good time, but I’d like to talk to you about your son.”

Señor Ródenas smoked in silence. Héctor was going to add something else when the other man spoke without looking at him.

“Do you have children, Inspector?”

“One.”

“Then you’ll understand. I raised mine to know the difference between good and bad. So I can’t believe Gaspar did this. I’ll never believe it. I don’t know what happened, but I know it didn’t happen as they say it did.”

He threw the butt into the street and turned around. From inside he pulled down the shutter without another word. On the metal some traces of the graffiti could still be made out, a reddish shadow, accusatory and unjust.

Sílvia Alemany looked in the car’s rearview mirror before turning the engine on. God, if the face was the mirror to the soul both were in need of a professional makeup artist. In the end that’s what we do, she thought, as she maneuvered out of the company parking lot. Falsify souls. She could make a list of their products: rejuvenating creams, nourishing creams, antioxidant creams … Whichever: their effect on the face was at best circumstantial; the inner face, the one that really mattered, aged with no remedy. It would crack, it would dry up and there was no balm or salve that could prevent it. Because of that, wrinkles reappeared, because of that, businesses like theirs went on being necessary. At heart they were like Dorian Gray’s picture: they relegated old age, evil and decay to that internal secret face, maintaining the visible one relatively young, beautiful and pure. But the picture was there, crouching within you, ready to betray you when you least expected it.

Her car merged into the many vehicles entering Barcelona at that time of the evening. An army of obedient, industrious beings retiring for a few hours, who would the following day make the opposite journey. As tired and bored in the mornings as by night: the epsilon men of 2011 who’d found happiness in buying on the installment plan. She smiled ironically at the thought that she at least had the pleasure of being something resembling an alpha woman for a few hours. A kind of queen consort, necessary and appreciated and slightly feared.

The line of cars stopped and Sílvia was taking advantage of it to put on some music when her cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

The hands-free disoriented her: she always had the feeling the other person couldn’t hear her.

“Mama?”

“Hello, sweetheart. I’m in the car.”

“Are you coming home for dinner?”

“I don’t know. There is food at home, isn’t there?”

“Yes, of course. But Pol says he’s starving and he wants pizza. If you’re not coming, we could order one.”

The car behind beeped the horn, impatient. Sílvia realized the traffic had moved a few meters forward.

“I’m moving, I’m moving …”

“What?”

“No, not you, Emma. I’m in a traffic jam.”

“Well, can we?”

Sílvia hesitated.

“No.”

“But Mama—”

“I said no. Emma, there is chicken in the fridge. And pasta salad I made yesterday. If I’m not back in an hour, make dinner for yourself and your brother, sweetheart.”

For a moment there was silence. Then she heard Emma’s voice: docile and polite.

“All right. I already told him you wouldn’t say yes. Don’t worry about the time. I’ll take care of it.”

“Thank you, angel. Listen, I’ll see you at home; you know I don’t like talking while I’m driving. A kiss, and tell Pol not to argue.”

“A kiss, Mama. See you tonight.”

Sílvia blew an imaginary kiss to her daughter. If only everyone was like Emma, she thought proudly as she turned on the car radio. She was sure dinner would be made and the kitchen tidied when she arrived. She
had raised her well—not an easy thing nowadays. Few girls of sixteen were so responsible, so trustworthy. If in the end she went abroad to study Second Baccalaureate, she would miss her a lot. Emma still hadn’t decided, but she couldn’t take too much longer. And this wasn’t the only thing Sílva had to attend to. The wedding, for instance. However simple the ceremony would be, there were a number of things to be done … She took a breath. She was in no mood to think about celebrations just then. She had even considered the possibility of postponing it, but she didn’t know how César would take it. And despite rarely admitting it, the truth was she wanted to marry him. Have someone in the copilot’s seat, empty for years. He wasn’t the love of her life. Thank God, she’d beaten that, as if it were the measles, and been immunized forever. She found something else in César: respect, company now the children were beginning to fly the nest … She was sure he was a good man, someone she could trust who, at least, loved her as much as she did him.

You’ve become a cynic, she thought. Cynicism wasn’t good for the soul, but it was necessary for survival. Sílvia had had to swallow many things when she returned to face her father. Yes, the old man had helped her: he supported her while she finished her degree, left half-finished when she fled. He’d given her a role in the company, although he’d made sure her brother, the good twin, would be the true heir. Old hypocrite: lots of moral lessons only to end up dying of a heart attack in a Cuban prostitute’s bed. Fortunately, Víctor was easy to manipulate, and she’d acquired large reserves of cynicism over the years so that she didn’t say aloud that her brother’s mediocrity would have sunk the company if not for her, steering from the shadows, avoiding unnecessary expenses and crazy risks. Luckily Víctor, deeply infatuated with that idiot Paula, had stopped being involved in company affairs, leaving them in her hands more and more.

He’s getting a good deal, Sílvia told herself, but in exchange she’d gained something else that was better compensation than money: exercising power. An addiction she wasn’t planning to give up.

That very afternoon, for example. She was leaving when Saúl, her
second in command, told her Alfred Santos wanted to see her. The lab’s technical director was a friendly guy, with an easygoing manner, one of those men who caused few headaches. Because of that she’d received him immediately. If there was anyone who deserved attention it was Santos; he certainly wouldn’t disturb her over trivialities.

It really wasn’t trivial. An indignant Santos, more angry than she’d ever seen him, spent a long half hour setting out the faults, conflicts and problems that Manel Caballero was generating in the laboratory. So many, and in Santos’s opinion, so serious, that he’d decided to fire him. In fact, he would have done it some time before had it not been that the lab assistant’s attitude and words hinted that if necessary he could turn to higher powers than his direct boss and thereby make him look ridiculous in front of the whole department. Sílvia had had to muster all her diplomacy to keep the idiot Caballero in his post. After a good spell of excuses and reasoning that seemed to be lifted from the cowardly businessperson’s manual, Santos had looked her in the eyes and blurted out: “You’re not going to fire him, are you? He’s right: I have no say.” And for once in her life, Sílvia Alemany hadn’t known what to say. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on around here lately, but I don’t like it. Suicides, assholes who think they’re the king of everything and managers who seem incapable of managing sensibly.”

To hell with it, she thought as she accelerated to cross an orange light only to have to stop ten meters on. She had to speak to Manel Caballero and she’d do it that very day, as soon as the meeting in César’s house ended. They’d all be there: Amanda, Brais and the asshole, as Alfred Santos had called him. Octavi couldn’t attend, as she’d imagined, but generally he was on her side. And of course, Sara and Gaspar wouldn’t be there. Sara and Gaspar. Gaspar …

She’d never have believed that it would be Gaspar Ródenas who would have a crisis of conscience. She’d have expected it of Amanda, for example. She was so young, so innocent, and at the same time belonged to that group of creative people who in her opinion dealt with the general business of life in a very impractical way; the perfect
combination to suffer remorse or apply mottoes that appear in calendars beside photos of sunrises. But no: Amanda hadn’t shown the least sign of worry, perhaps because the only thing young and innocent about her was her appearance. That almost virginal, unpolluted, luminous beauty … Like Dorian Gray, Amanda seemed immune to the evils of the world.

No, it had been Gaspar who had stood in her office after the summer, weighed down by a feeling of guilt from which he couldn’t free himself. Gaspar, the pragmatic, honest and upright accountant; the father of a family with most to lose. Sílvia had turned to her powers of persuasion, all her ability to convince. She even resorted to a veiled threat in a clear demonstration of that cynicism now part of her character and, subsequently, almost without blinking, went from reprimand to praise: “You’re very important, we count on you, don’t let us down, I rely on you so much …”

“We’re a team, Gaspar. I understand, believe me. But you gave us your word—we made a pact. I’m sure that you are a person for whom giving their word means something, isn’t that right? At the moment we’ve all behaved like gentlemen. And I find it difficult, no, I find it painful, to think that someone as honorable as you wants to go back on his word, retract what he promised his colleagues and consequently lose everything he’s gained in the name of … of what, Gaspar? Of what exactly? Do you really think it’s worth it?”

A brilliant, twisted argument as false as a Christmas wreath. Appealing to solidarity from a position of authority, distorting concepts like honesty and responsibility, and placing the other person in a position in which, freely, by their own will, they decided to do as she asked, not to obtain any benefit from it but because they felt it was how it should be. In the company, as in life, friendliness generated deeper debts than imposition. Sílvia knew it and used it, especially with weak or insecure people. This couldn’t be applied to Brais Arjona, for instance, although neither was it necessary. Brais understood that they were all in the same boat and he either paddled in the same direction or sank with them. It
seemed with Gaspar she hadn’t found the right carrot, and the result, that family tragedy, was something she preferred not to think about.

She saw a tight space in which to park and, as the rules demanded, she signaled her stopping and began the maneuver. She was about to get out of the vehicle when her phone rang again. Number withheld. She answered out of habit, although she was sure it was one of those promotional calls from some communications company.

Héctor caught the metro at L’Hospitalet station to go toward Plaça Espanya, the same line Sara Mahler had chosen to end her life. Standing as the train moved through the tunnel, he focused on observing the passengers. At that time the majority were workers or students returning home after the working day. Buried in freesheets or concentrating on their cell phones, the train car emanated fatigue, the disillusion of monotony. A girl was shouting into her cell: she was shamelessly arguing with someone and no one seemed to pay any attention. We are in an ever more autistic world, thought Héctor. He was brought out of his musings by the entrance of an older lady into the car, weighed down by a heavy shopping cart she could barely drag. There was no free seat and for a few minutes the lady leaned on the cart, tottering, until a young man sitting to his right saw her and signaled to her to take his seat. The passengers in front of the old lady blatantly turned their heads.

The young man remained standing, near Héctor, and greeted him timidly. The inspector suddenly remembered: this boy was Nelson, or Jorge—he couldn’t remember which—the older brother who had come back to the platform to return Sara Mahler’s cell phone on
Reyes
night. Héctor loved this provincial facet of Barcelona, a city that wasn’t as big as it liked to believe.

“How are you?” asked Héctor.

The boy shrugged his shoulders.

“Life is hard,” he said by way of an answer. He looked at Héctor as if he was surprised to see him here in a metro train. “Have you found out anything else about that woman? The one who jumped onto the tracks …”

“Not much,” replied Héctor.

“Well, I’m getting off at the next station. Don’t worry, my brother won’t be getting into trouble again.”

“I’m sure he won’t.” Héctor smiled. “But don’t let him out of your sight just in case.”

The doors opened and Nelson, or Jorge, nodded and got down onto the platform.