The Serpent Papers (34 page)

‘So you know where she is from midnight to around 4 a.m.’

‘Yes. Staff confirm this.’

‘And that she reappears dead. At the foot of the cathedral in the arms of Adrià Sorra, who leaves her just before dawn, whereupon her body is found by a street cleaner.’

‘All correct,’ Fabregat confirms.

‘Right. Returning to the photographs at the bar. The third drink?’

‘Goes to a young man with long black hair.’

‘Adrià Sorra?’

Fabregat nods.

I roll this fact around in my mind, looking across at the shuttered club. ‘They definitely meet at the bar?’

‘It appears so.’

‘Sorra’s journey afterwards?’

‘Never clear.’

‘When did he arrive?’

‘Came through the doors at 01.23.’

‘Accompanied?’

‘By one friend.’

‘Who?’

‘Sjon de Vries. Well known little shit. Brought in a couple of times before. Drug dealer. Dutch. Moved back to Holland ten years ago.’

‘When did Oriol leave?’ I ask.

‘Earlier than Natalia did.’

‘He left her there alone? At his own party?’ Curiosity must have shown on my face.

‘Apparently they had an argument. He doesn’t feel good about it.’

Fabregat turns and gestures at the waiter. ‘Do you want another?’

‘No. I can’t keep up.’

He laughs. ‘
Senyor! Una caña sisplau!
And water for the girl! It’s a lot to take on board,’ he says, mouth dry.

‘Our coroner’s report reveals that Natalia downed a lethal cocktail of drugs sixty to ninety minutes before she was attacked in the Gothic. The barbiturates started to take serious effect as she left the club. Slurred speech had already set in, and she was stumbling, half asleep. Everyone presumed she was drunk. Very, very drunk. No one remembers exactly when she left, but we estimate that it was between three thirty and four in the morning. We think Adrià followed her at a distance, that he had taken an interest in the actress. She crossed the square down that side street there.’ Fabregat points to the arch across from us, at the north-eastern corner of the Plaça Reial.

‘Then she’s off camera for a while,’ he says darkly. ‘She goes down Carrer dels Tres Llits.’

I follow the inspector as he strides into the maze. A side alley near Carrer d’en Rauric.

‘Someone met her here, though she may have already collapsed from the drugs. Unlike the others it wasn’t systematized or clean,’ Fabregat says. ‘The act was impulsive. Passionate. Brutal. The assailant punctured through her carotid artery with a thin, sharp blade before stabbing her repeatedly and cutting off the tip of her tongue. The whole thing was incredibly quick. She had no time to cry out. The neighbours say they heard nothing.

‘Adrià would have stumbled upon her in that state. She may even have died in his arms. Why he didn’t call us I don’t know. Off his face, I suppose. He was covered in her blood. That’s the markings we found on his shoes. They all match hers. And he carried her, up the winding streets to the cathedral, where he laid her out on the steps before taking his own life.’

Fabregat kicks the stones. ‘When we finally traced her back to this place, the street cleaners had washed most of the evidence down the drains. Who knows what we would have found otherwise.’ Fabregat glares at the wall. ‘She was stupid. If it was her who sent the letters, then she knew what was going on intimately. If it really was her, Nena, then why didn’t she come directly to me? If she knew all this was happening?’

The inspector’s voice suddenly harsh. ‘Silence is a choice,’ he says. ‘It is a decision. If she knew him, she knew what was happening. If she did it, well, that’s something to consider. But if we follow your line of thinking we know she had access to information – she knew about each of the victims, and she knew my name. If she was close enough to the killings to have been involved in them . . .’ He shudders and falls silent. ‘It makes my own failure more painful.’

We keep walking. He runs over details. Adrià carried Natalia up through here, to Plaça de San Josep Oriol, then to Felip Neri, then to the Cathedral. He processed past the churches with her. As I listen I feel myself loosening. Drifting. And then it comes.

Hello?

The expectant wave. A hazy, lucid richness. No more than a few seconds, but it will feel longer
. Rest here. Follow. Keep your eyes open.
Bright-faced girl buying drinks at a bar. Midnight: peach-cheeked, sun-painted, jeans dirty. She has an arch of freckles across her nose like a crescent moon. When she laughs I see valleys and rivers full of life. Coins clinking in her pocket.
Vodka? Gin? Cervesa?

You choose.

I follow her through the crowd.

The sweet sway of her hips. The loose joints of her knees. The men turn their heads in unison to catch the wake of her movement. Her spectacle fills them with drunken pleasure. She is queen of the room. Music condenses into a fog of cigarette smoke. Soot marries the cloth round her throat, swims into her hair. I notice him then, standing in the corner of the room.
Watching her. Hunting her. Selecting her.
It is difficult to discern, through the haze, what was real. What did he look like? I ask the vision. But I do not know his name. I cannot call him. My vision blurs. How had he stood? The weight of his figure, the curve of his voice?
Look away
. I shake myself. Dance.
Shift the weight into your hips; push your centre of gravity low, toes stretching in their sandals, legs bare and brown. Each move is slow, breathing to the rhythm of Nu Cumbia. I stop. A stranger is standing in front of me. Face shadowed. Blurred memory.

‘Who are you?’ He asks. Smelling my hair.

I take a step back. I cannot make out his face. But it is him. I am certain it is him.
She has disappeared into a menagerie of flesh, a formless mass of arms and limbs and lips pressing closer to one another, one thousand hearts working towards the same end: begging for a kiss, a union – I cannot shake his eyes. There is something unnerving about him. I see every piece of him. The stubble round his cheek. The fabric of his collar light on his clavicle, the wave of hair that floats across his temple. And yet I do not recognize him. I cannot find a name.

‘You don’t have to answer,’ he says. ‘You can tell me if it’s too personal.’

Something deep and dark inside me turns.
A hand that opens the pages of this book and shows me the past, a feeling stronger than words. I see Natalia Hernández with the shadowy figure of a man. It is not Adrià. It is not the night she died. It is a night much longer ago, in a deeper past.
I am for you and you for me.

When I close my eyes, this is what I hear.

Two words spoken soft and low.

Follow me.

As I walk with Fabregat I feel the constriction of the narrowing streets. We track north through El Call, the old Jewish quarter. Graffiti on bolted wooden doors. Retrace her steps. Second
shadow: man who kissed her hand. Walked with her to a point about a mile above the city – it is a dusty path that snakes around the mountains overlooking the sea. La Carretera de las Aigües.
You cannot see his face but feel his fingers, skin brittle and bare.
There is a bench here. A lookout near a lemon tree and a wild grape vine. She sat on the stone bench, knees knocking together.
Inhale the aroma of pines. The sweet citrus scent of eucalyptus.
Below her the city moans, sleepy and sluggish stretching into luscious bleary-eyed contentment.
He picks a lemon from the tree and takes a knife from his pocket and slits the skin of the lemon.
Cuts a slice from the flesh of the fruit and gives her the rind to taste.
‘
Querida, Maca, darling, stick out your tongue
.’ He takes the pulp of the lemon between his fingers and places it on the centre of her tongue. The lemon juice drips down his fingers.
Two leaves from the grape vine behind her ears.
He cut two more slices, one for him and one for her. The lights come on over the astral spires of the cathedrals and later they are silent still as they walk down the dirt road to the car at the station below Tibidabo.
Again. Watch again.
Now they are dancing. His hands run over her arms, his eyes never leave her face. I know nothing about him.
I cannot see him clearly. Not his history, nor his creed, nor his origin. He is a phantom birthed on the aether of this hot night by the sea. I want to show you
 – her heart opens –
I want to show you love!
To tell you that when he came into my dreams, he sat at the end of my bed, looking at me. I move when I felt the weight of his body against my legs, through the covers, causing my hips to roll slightly forward. Now see I am awake. Put out your hand and touch my cheek.
See her stirring. Orange koi swimming down silk spine. Hair black and matted and tangled, tumbling down. Small feet on a cold tile floor. Bare and frozen. I see his emptiness, his goneness.
Apprehension tight in my stomach.
In the vision I stumble over the tiles, but catch her eye. She moves through me not seeing. Searching for him.

Calling:
Macu? Macu?
Where are you
?
Bloom-like girl. Soon to die. Natalia Hernández. I blink. We turn a street. She slips away.

‘You alright, Nena?’ Fabregat asks. Hand on my shoulder. We have emerged in the open square before the great cathedral. ‘Don’t forget to breathe.’

VI

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF LLEWELLYN SITWELL

Vol. 2

To Llewellyn Sitwell

from

CAPTAIN CHARLES LEOPOLD RUTHVEN

Sitwell. Wash your hands of nonsense. When looking to the records kept by the monks of the Abbey of La Real, historical writings & vitae & accounts & journals of religious scribes encountered etc. remember always that where torture & women are conjoined with power, you will see traces of the Order. In England we have experienced a dissipated version of these horrors; inspired by the work of such men as the Duke of Wharton in 1719 who abandoned the club to become a Freemason . . . These organizations have infiltrated Europe & therefore allow men of high reputation to live double lives & move in their public spheres as Gods while in the night they inhabit the work of the Devil, becoming debauchers & butchers & sadists . . . & yet they have the brazen audacity to call themselves men of God. Like many zealots they do not have a sense of irony. Originally I believed that this stemmed from a vulgar fascination with the mechanics of torture during the Inquisition, but I have come to realize the Assassins of Words are vehemently anti-pagan & are particularly put out by the new wave of interest in our goddess-worshipping antecedents. They dislike me intensely as I am gnostic by persuasion. Worse, I love Rex Illuminatus dearly. Their guiding principle rests on the eradication of witchcraft. Their founder, known to me only as the Duke, was a pioneer in this respect. There have never been lists of the members of the Assassins of Words – all evidence of them has been destroyed & little remnants can be traced to a secret body like that of the Freemasons – but I am certain that this group originates in the Dark Ages. They are sworn to destroy two things: Divination in Women & Alchemy, both of which they see as forms of transmutation proscribed in the Bible. Should this come as a surprise to you, know that within the famed witch hunter’s manual, the
Malleus Maleficarum
(v. edifying) the odious Mr Heinrich Kramer & Mr James Sprenger open their diatribe against witchcraft with an oft-ignored attack on Alchemy & I quote from fractured memory:

Demons do not seduce except by Art. But art cannot contain truth. For which reason it is declared in the chapter on Minerals that the alchemists who claim to transmute one species to another through the arts should know that species – whether mineral or animal – cannot be transmuted.