The Summer of Dead Toys (2 page)

“Yeah.” A pause; lately their conversations stalled continually. “And how’s it going?”
“He’s good, but I swear if pre-adolescence lasts much longer I’m sending him back to you, postage paid.” Ruth smiled. He remembered the shape of her smile and that sudden light in her eyes. Her tone changed. “Héctor? Hey, have you heard about your thing?”
“I have to see Savall at ten.”
“OK, let me know how it goes afterward.”
Another pause.
“We could have lunch together?” Héctor had lowered his voice. She took a little longer than necessary to answer.
“Sorry, I already have plans.” For a moment he thought the battery had run out completely, although finally the voice continued. “But we’ll talk later. We could have a coffee . . .”
Then it did. Before he could respond, the phone had become a lump of dead metal. He looked at it with hatred. Then his eyes went toward his bare feet. And with a jump, as if the brief chat had given him the necessary impulse, he rose and walked once again toward that accusatory wardrobe full of empty hangers.

Héctor lived in a three-story building, on the third floor. Nothing special, one of many such buildings in Poblenou, close to the metro station and a couple of blocks from the other
rambla
that didn’t appear in tourist guidebooks. The only notable features of his flat were the rent, which hadn’t risen when the area took on the airs of a privileged place near the beach, and a flat roof, which, for all practical purposes, had become his private terrace. The second floor was vacant, awaiting a tenant who never arrived, and the landlady lived on the first floor, a woman of almost seventy who hadn’t the least interest in climbing two flights of stairs. He and Ruth had fixed up the old roof, covering part of it and installing various potted plants, now withered, as well as a table and chairs for eating outside on summer nights. He’d hardly gone back up there since Ruth left.

The door of the first-floor apartment opened just as he was passing and Carmen, the owner of the building, came out to greet him.

“Héctor.” She was smiling. As always, he told himself that when he was old he wanted to be like this good woman. Even better, to have one like her by his side. He stopped and gave her a kiss on the cheek, a little awkwardly. Affectionate gestures had never been his strong point. “Yesterday I heard noises upstairs, but I thought you’d be tired. Want a coffee? I’ve just made some.”

“Nonsense,” she replied decidedly. “Men must go out well fed. Come to the kitchen.”
Héctor followed her obediently. The house smelled of freshly made coffee.
“I missed your coffee, Carmen.”
She observed him with a frown as he helped himself to a generous cup of coffee, then added a drop of milk.
“Well fed and well shaved,” the woman added pointedly.
“Don’t be hard on me, Carmen, I’ve only just arrived,” he pleaded.
“Don’t you play the victim. How are you?” She looked at him affectionately. “How did it go in your native land? Ah, smoke a cigarette, I know you want one.”
“You’re the best, Carmen.” He took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. “I don’t understand how you haven’t been snared by some granddad made of money.”
“Because I don’t like granddads! When I turned sixty-five, I looked around and said to myself, Carmen, enough’s enough— close up shop. Spend your time watching films at home . . . By the way, the ones you lent me are over there. I’ve watched them all,” she said proudly.
Héctor’s film collection would have turned more than one cinephile green with envy: from Hollywood classics—Carmen’s favorites—to the latest releases. All placed on wall-to-wall shelves, with no apparent order. One of his greatest pleasures on sleepless nights was to pull out a few and lie down on the sofa to watch them.
“Marvellous,” continued Carmen. She was an avid fan of Grace Kelly, whom she was said to have resembled when she was young. “But don’t try to distract me. How are you?”
He exhaled slowly and finished his coffee. The woman’s gaze didn’t falter: those blue eyes must have been true man-eaters. Carmen wasn’t one of those old women who enjoy evoking the past but thanks to Ruth, Héctor knew there had been at least two husbands (“easily forgotten, poor things,” in Carmen’s own words) and a lover (“a swine of the kind you don’t forget’). But in the end there’d been one last one, who had secured her old age by leaving her that three-story building, in which she could live even better were she not saving one of the apartments for a son who’d left years before and never returned.
Héctor poured himself a little more coffee before answering.
“I can’t deceive you, Carmen.” He tried to smile, but his exhausted expression and sad eyes ruined the effort. “Everything is shit. I beg your pardon. For a long time everything has seemed like shit.”
Investigation 1231-R H. Salgado
Resolution Pending

Three short lines noted in black felt-tip pen on a yellow post-it note attached to a file of the same color. So as not to see them, Superintendent Savall opened the file and looked over its contents. As if he didn’t already know them by heart. Statements. Affidavit. Medical reports. Police brutality. Photographs of that scumbag’s injuries. Photographs of that unfortunate young Nigerian girl. Photographs of the flat in the Raval where they had the girls corralled. Even various newspaper cuttings, some—very few, thank God—deliberately narrating their own version of the facts, emphasizing concepts like injustice, racism and abuse of power. He slammed the file shut and looked at the clock on his desk. Ten past nine. Fifty minutes. He was moving his chair back to stretch out his legs when someone knocked on the door and opened it almost simultaneously.

The woman entering the office shook her head without asking to whom the question referred and, very quietly, leaned both hands on the back of the chair facing the desk. She looked him in the eyes and spoke.

“What will you say to him?” The question sounded like an accusation, a burst of gunfire in six words.
Savall shrugged his shoulders, almost imperceptibly.
“What I have to. What do you want me to say to him?”
“Fine. Great.”
“Martina . . .” He tried to be brusque, but he was too fond of her to get truly angry. He lowered his voice. “Fuck it, my hands are tied.”
She didn’t give up. She moved the chair back a little, sat down and drew it back up to the desk.
“What else do they need? That guy is out of hospital. He’s at home, cool as can be, reorganizing his business while—”
“Give it a rest, Martina!” Sweat broke out on his forehead and for once he lost his temper. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t when he got up that morning. But he was human. He opened the yellow file and took out the photos; he scattered them across the desk like uncovered playing cards showing a poker of aces. “Broken jaw. Two fractured ribs. Contusions to the skull and abdomen. A face like a fucking map. All because Héctor lost his head and planted himself in this shit’s house. The guy was lucky not to have internal injuries. He beat him half to death.” She knew all this. She also knew that had she been sitting in the chair opposite, she would have said exactly the same. But if there was something that defined Sergeant Martina Andreu it was her unswerving loyalty to her own: her family, her colleagues and her friends. For her the world was split into two distinct groups: her people, and everyone else, and without doubt Héctor Salgado fell into the first. So, in a loud and deliberately disdainful voice, one that irritated her boss more than seeing those photos, she counter-attacked.
“Why don’t you take out the others? The ones of the girl. Why don’t we see what that evil black quack did to that poor young girl?”
Savall took a deep breath. “Watch it with that black stuff.” Martina gestured impatiently. “That’s all we need. And the thing with the girl doesn’t justify aggression. You know it, I know it, Héctor knows it. And what’s worse, so does that asshole’s lawyer.” He lowered his voice: he’d worked with Andreu for years and trusted her more than any of his other subordinates. “He was here the day before yesterday.” Martina raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, What’shisname’s lawyer. I put things very clearly to him. Withdraw the charges against Salgado or his client will have a cop following him until he goes to his fucking grave.”
“And?” she asked, looking at her boss with renewed respect.
“He said he had to consult him. I pushed him as much as I could. Off the record. We left it that he’d ring me this morning before ten.”
“And if he agrees? What did you promise him in return?”
Savall didn’t have time to respond. The telephone on the desk rang like an alarm. He asked the sergeant to be quiet with a finger to his lips then picked up.
“Yes?” For a moment his face was expectant, but instantly his expression became one of simple irritation. “No. No! I’m busy now. I’ll call her later.” Rather than hang up, he slammed the receiver down and, directing himself to the sergeant, added: “Joana Vidal.”
She snorted.
“Again? ”
The superintendent shrugged.
“Nothing new in her case, is there?”
“Nothing. Did you see the report? It’s as clear as water. The boy got distracted and fell from the window. Pure bad luck.”
Savall nodded.
“Good report, by the way. Very thorough. It was the new girl’s, right?”
“Yes. I made her do it again, but in the end it was good.” Martina smiled. “The girl seems clever.”
Any praise coming from Andreu had to be taken seriously.
“Her record is impeccable,” the superintendent said. “First in her class, unbeatable references from her superiors, courses abroad. Even Rosa, who’s merciless with the newbies, wrote a complimentary report. If I remember correctly, she mentions ‘a natural talent’ for investigation.”
Just as Martina was preparing to give one of her sarcastically feminist commentaries on the gap in talent and average IQ between the men and women of the force, the phone rang again.

At that moment, in the station’s front office, the young investigator Leire Castro was using that natural talent to satisfy one of the most striking features of her character: curiosity. She’d proposed having a coffee to one of the agents who’d spent weeks giving her discreet yet friendly smiles. He seemed a good guy, she told herself, and giving him what he wanted made her feel somewhat guilty. But since her arrival at the central police station in Plaça Espanya, the enigma that was Héctor Salgado had been challenging her thirst for knowledge, and today, when she was expecting to see him appear at any moment, she couldn’t take it any more.

So it was that, after a brief preamble of small-talk, with a black coffee in her hands, controlling the desire to smoke, wearing her best smile, Leire got straight to the point. She couldn’t spend half an hour gossiping in the office.

“You don’t know him? Oh yeah, you arrived just as he started his ‘holiday’.”
She nodded.
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” he continued. “A normal guy, or so he seemed.” He smiled. “You never know with Argentines.”
Leire did her best to hide her disappointment. She hated generalizations and the individual with the friendly smile automatically lost points. He must have noticed, because he made an effort to expand on his explanation.
“A couple of days before it all happened I’d have said he was a calm man. Never raised his voice. Efficient. Stubborn but patient. A good cop . . . Thorough, sleuth-style. But suddenly, boom, his mind clouds over and he goes wild. Left us all dumbfounded, to tell the truth. We’ve enough bad press without an inspector losing his head like that.”
He was right about that, Leire said to herself. She took advantage of her companion’s silence to ask: “What happened? I know the gist, I read something in the papers, but—”
“What happened was he lost it. No more, no less.” In this respect the guy seemed to have a firm opinion with no hesitation. “No one says it out loud because he’s the inspector and all that, and the super is very fond of him, but it’s true. He beat that guy half to death. They say he turned in his resignation but the super threw it back in his face. He did order him on a month’s ‘holiday’ until the air cleared. And you know the press haven’t fed on the subject. It could have been much worse.”
Leire took another sip of coffee. It tasted strange. She’d kill for a cigarette but she’d decided not to smoke her first one until after lunch, at least another four hours away. She breathed deeply, to see if filling her lungs with air killed the nicotine cravings. The trick half worked. Her companion threw his plastic cup in the recycling bin.
“I’ll deny everything I’ve said if need be,” he said, smiling. “You know, all for one and one for all, like the musketeers. But there are things that aren’t right. Now I’ve got to go: duty calls.”
“Of course,” she nodded, distracted. “See you later.”
She stayed a few moments, remembering what she’d read on the subject of Inspector Salgado. In March, barely four months previously, Héctor Salgado had coordinated an operation against the trafficking of women. His team spent a year tracking a criminal gang that made a living bringing in young African girls, principally Nigerians, to fill various brothels in Vallés and Garraf. The younger the better, of course. Those from the East and South America had gone out of fashion: too clever and too demanding. Clients were requesting young, frightened, black girls to satisfy their basest instincts, and the traffickers found themselves more able to control these illiterate, disorientated girls, taken out of extreme poverty with the vague promise of a future that couldn’t be worse than the present. But it was. Sometimes Leire asked herself how they could be so blind. Had they ever seen one of their predecessors come back, having become a rich woman, capable of lifting her family out of misery? No: it was a flight forward, a desperate route down which many were pushed by their own parents and husbands with no choice. A journey, certainly tinged with a mixture of excitement and suspicion, which ended in a nauseating room where the girls learned that hope was something they couldn’t afford. No longer was it about aspiring to a better life; it was about survival. And the pigs manipulating them—a network of criminals and former prostitutes who had ascended in the ranks—used all means available to make them understand why they were there and what their new, repugnant obligations were.
She felt a vibration in her trouser pocket and took out her private mobile. A red light flashed, signalling a message. On seeing the name of the sender a smile crossed her face. Javier. Five foot eleven, dark eyes, the right quantity of hair on his bronzed torso and a puma tattooed diagonally just below the abs. And to top it all, a nice guy, Leire said to herself, as she opened that little envelope. “Hey, I just woke up and you’re already gone. Why do u always disappear without saying anything? We’ll see each other tonite and tomorrow you make me breakfast? Miss you. Kisses.”
Leire stared at her mobile for a moment. That was that with Javier. The boy was charming, no doubt, although he wasn’t exactly a spelling whiz. Nor very mature, she thought, looking at her watch. What’s more, something about that message had set off an inner alarm she recognized and had learned to respect, a twinkling flash that went off when certain members of the opposite sex, after a couple of nights of good sex, started asking for explanations and saying they felt like “taking hot chocolate to bed.” Luckily there weren’t many of them. The majority accepted her game without problems, the healthy no-strings sex that she laid out openly. But there was always someone like Javier who didn’t get it. A pity, Leire told herself, as she tapped out an answer at top speed, that he belonged to that small group of men. “Can’t tonight. I’ll call you. By the way, tonight has a ‘g’ and ‘h’ and no ‘e,’ remember that. See you soon!” She re-read the message and in a fit of compassion she deleted the second part before sending it. An unnecessary cruelty, she reproached herself. The small sealed envelope flew through space and she hoped that Javier would know to read between the lines, but just in case she put the mobile on silent before finishing her coffee.
The last gulp, already half cold, turned her stomach. A cold sweat soaked her forehead. She breathed deeply a second time, while thinking she couldn’t delay any longer. This morning nausea had to have an explanation. This very day you’ll drop into the pharmacy, she ordered herself firmly, although deep down she knew perfectly well there was no need. The answer to her questions lay in a glorious weekend a month before.
She came back to herself slowly and some minutes later she felt strong enough to return to her desk. She sat down in front of her computer, ready to concentrate on her work, just as the door of Superintendent Savall’s office was closing.