The Whispering City (12 page)

Isidro didn’t correct the increasingly morbid version that was being spread by gossipmongers; he wasn’t there to give information, rather to get it.

‘They mention she had a lot of money, jewels, furs… And that since she lived alone she was an easy target.’

‘Is there a specific name being mentioned for the killer?’

‘There are a few names.’

He gave them. They were all burglars. Isidro knew most of them, but there were also a couple of new names, Roc Vives and Diego Gascón.

‘Do you know if they’re violent?’

‘Don’t know. Only that it seems they steal for politics: for the party in exile and for the resistance.’

‘Then I’m not surprised they were so rough on the woman. Cowardly Reds, they’re bastards.’

‘I’m not one to judge, sir.’

Boira’s son still had eight years left in jail, but in the next visit from his wife and kids he was going to get several parcels containing food, tobacco and Western novels, his favourites. An hour and a half later, Boira was on the street and several people on the list would soon find out they’d be spending that night and the next few in a cell. Isidro asked the guys from the Social Brigade for information about the two men Boira had mentioned. One was soon eliminated. Gascón had been killed by the Civil Guard a week earlier in Lérida, at a country house where he was taking shelter with several of his men before crossing the French border.

They said that there were rumours that Vives was in Barcelona gathering funds for the Communist Party. He was suspected of being behind the break-in at a jeweller’s shop on Rambla de Cataluña ten days earlier. But Vives seemed more interested in big jobs. In Mariona Sobrerroca’s house they had found jewellery the thief had left behind, probably because she had surprised him, but it wasn’t worth enough for Vives to go to that house in particular. In any case, he would follow up on the lead.

14

At first there is only a bare wall. Time and creeping ivy, now long gone, have broken away the plaster in several places. The holes in the middle are from bullets. There is also one way up high, perhaps from someone who didn’t want to kill any more.

Ángel appears to the right, as if coming on stage, shyly, insecurely. He looks at the uneven floor, afraid of falling. He is alone and his hands are behind his back. A voice gives him instructions: ‘Further to the left’, ‘Closer to the wall’, ‘Not so close’.

He complies because of the photographers. ‘That’s it,’ says the voice. Ángel stops, separates his legs slightly and lifts his head. He looks ahead, not at the firing squad but at someone behind the men gripping their weapons. He looks at her. Then he parts his lips to say something, but the shots come before his voice does. Then, he closes his eyes and remains standing as the blood starts to emerge from the wounds on his chest. His white shirt becomes completely soaked, but Ángel doesn’t fall. He never falls.

Ana woke up, once again, just at the moment when his lips started moving.

She gave a start in bed. She was covered in a thin layer of sweat that made her tremble with cold when she pulled aside the sheets. It had grown cooler overnight. She sat up in bed without putting her feet on the floor. The floor tiles were always freezing in that flat, and she found her slippers by tapping around quickly with her feet. The old felt slippers that had belonged to her brother were cold too. She headed to the bathroom with hesitant steps and turned on the water heater. The pressure left much to be desired; a straight trickle fell from the shower, sending out a few streams of cold water at regular intervals. Her body responded by moving to one part of the shower tray, which was cold too because the hot water hadn’t touched it.

She dried herself off, wrapped herself in a robe and went into the kitchen. She turned on the radio while she made coffee. It was real coffee – she wasn’t willing to give that up, she’d rather have terrible coffee with reused grounds than drink a mug of roasted ground chicory or carob beans. Her father had given her a small new packet from the grocer’s when she left, soon after lunch. ‘A reward for the article,’ she thought.

As the coffee percolated she let her gaze wander along the walls of the inner courtyard her kitchen windows overlooked. The news theme tune sounded on the radio.

‘Barcelona, opulent Spanish and Mediterranean city kissed by the Latin sea, refuge for foreigners, seat of courtesy, as Cervantes wrote, opens its arms to Catholics from the world over and to all men in a vast prayer for inner peace and peace from war, the peace from God of which the angels sang beside the cradle in Bethlehem, and which transubstantiated Christ’s majesty. After fourteen years of disruption, the glorious work of the International Eucharistic Congresses will resume in this city thanks to the Pope’s fondness for Catholic Spain. Our country is an oasis of peace in our tormented world, and here Christians will gather for the thirty-fifth International Eucharistic Congress.’

The announcer’s leaden voice gave way to sacred music. She turned off the radio before the music made her even more gloomy.

The Eucharistic Congress. This meant that at the end of the month the city was going to fill with priests, nuns and the devout from all over the world. There would be holy music on the radio and more police in the street. Masses, sacred images, Mother in an overexcited state, insisting, since Ángel’s death, on saving the whole family herself with her prayers and penitence. And Father sunk further into resignation with each passing day. Or maybe not. Why had he uncovered his old typewriter?

15

‘Goyanes is hopping mad,’ a colleague warned him when he saw him heading to the Commissioner’s office. Isidro thanked him with a nod of the head. Like sailors out on the high seas, knowing that a storm was brewing didn’t mean he would avoid it, but it did help him to confront it with the hope of emerging not too battered.

‘Come in, Castro.’

He had called him by his last name. The storm was going to be a tempest, unleashed by a small piece of paper on his superior’s desk. His arms framed it like grey fabric parentheses. Isidro recognised the official letterhead. He pointed to the paper.

‘Acedo?’

‘Even worse: Grau.’

Notes from Acedo, the Civil Governor, were indisputable orders. Those of his enforcer, Public Prosecutor Joaquín Grau, were no less binding. But they also carried with them the fear inspired by his furious fits of rage. If, for some reason, Grau formed the impression that his orders, his will, were not being followed, he wouldn’t hesitate to assert his position and turn up unannounced at the office of the civil servant in question to threaten him, no matter who was listening. And everyone knew that he followed through on his threats.

‘What a leader the Legion lost!’ Sevilla had once said after one of Grau’s tirades.

It’s true, thought Isidro. There was something of a swagger in Grau’s tone, as if there was a military man inside him, beating on his chest as he fought to get out of those dark suits he wore, perfectly cut by one of Barcelona’s best tailors. Grau was feared by his enemies and surely by his friends as well.

So the note on Goyanes’s desk was from Grau. Bad news.

‘What does he say?’

‘Well, it’s a short note, but it says a lot about you.’

‘About me?’

‘Don’t get too excited, it’s not a birthday card, although he was the one who insisted I give you the case.’

He could imagine whom Goyanes would rather have entrusted it to, Burguillos, whose words were slurred from drink. He wasn’t a bad cop, but Isidro couldn’t stand arse-lickers. While the Commissioner informed him of Grau’s complaints, he counted the lines on the note with lowered eyes and wondered how Grau had put everything his boss was recriminating him for into so few words.

‘Not only did the men you sent to the Tennis Club turn up scruffily dressed, they acted like real louts, both when announcing the news of Señora Sobrerroca’s death and when making their enquiries. Some members complained directly to Grau, who is also a club member. He also mentions you directly. The Señores Parés complained of your bad manners not to Grau, but to the Civil Governor, who then conveyed to Grau his interest in having this case resolved not only as quickly as possible, but also with courtesy and respect. Acedo strictly demands that it be wrapped up before the Eucharistic Congress.’

‘And when is that?’

‘What world are you living in? Don’t you listen to the radio? Don’t you go to the cinema? Don’t you read the newspapers?’

‘Only the sports pages.’

And, as of two days ago, the society pages, too. And the women’s magazines he’d had Sevilla buy for him.

Goyanes told him the dates as if he were doing him a big favour: ‘It’ll be from 27 May to 1 June. But you will tie this case up before then.’

Ten minutes later, he left the office. Less than four weeks. The jails would fill up with suspects and informants. If he didn’t have anything by then, he could always pull some unlucky rake from up his sleeve, but tampering with the outcome always left him unsatisfied. That meant he’d failed.

Sevilla met him in the hallway. He was going to say something, but Isidro spoke first.

‘How do they expect me to solve this case if all they do is give me deadlines and conditions?’

‘Isidro…’

‘We still have to talk to several of Sobrerroca’s little lady friends, but we have to treat them like delicate crystal figurines; Goyanes, Acedo and Grau have got us fixed in their sights, ready to leap on my jugular as soon as any of her pals have their feathers ruffled.’

‘Isidro…’

‘And all for a routine job, because Goyanes knows full well that none of these people is a suspect, and no matter how much he says we can’t leave any loose ends, that we might turn something up, I don’t know who he thinks he’s fooling. Mostly we’re talking to them so they can see that the police are bending over backwards to solve this case. I mean, this is just…’

He was about to say ‘fucking brilliant’.

‘Isidro…’

‘What the hell do you want, Sevilla?’

‘The girl from the newspaper is here again. I sent her to your office.’

‘The society news lady. Just what I need to complete my collection.’

‘What collection?’

He didn’t answer. He had hit on a possible solution to the problem he was having with ‘those people’.

Which was why he never got round to saying ‘fucking brilliant’, as Sevilla was expecting him to. Although he was trying not to show it, he was glad to have the journalist there, and not just because of her magnificent skull.

16

Castro stepped into his office. Ana noticed that he was enveloped in a surly black cloud. As at their previous meeting, he didn’t greet her. Unless you considered accusatorially grumbling ‘You are very punctual’ a greeting.

‘It’s important in my profession.’

‘Of course, I almost forgot that you call yourself a journalist.’

She had prepared herself before coming, by putting together a short speech with arguments about her suitability to shadow his investigation. She decided to postpone it for a little while.

The inspector sat down and shot her a sullen look.

‘What brings you here?’

‘I came for the next article, as agreed.’

‘We agreed, did we?’

‘Yes.’

She didn’t allow herself to be intimidated by the pause that followed; she avoided filling the space, out of fear of silence, with unnecessary words that were dangerous around someone like Castro.

He stared at her blankly. Suddenly he started rummaging around on his desk. He found what he was looking for – several copies of
¡Hola!
magazine with little pieces of paper sticking out of them. He opened one at a marked page and, still holding onto it, placed it before her eyes.

‘Here,’ he said, and pointed to an article.

It was a piece about a reception at the Tennis Club. The photo showed Mariona Sobrerroca dressed in a tennis outfit, among other members of the exclusive club. That would be Mariona Sobrerroca’s final appearance in the society pages. Perhaps the penultimate, Ana corrected herself: there was still the funeral. The rest would be material for the crime pages, her material.

The article praised the elegance and sportsmanship of the participants in a charity tournament whose donations would go to a hospice. Those that weren’t counts or marquises were their spouses, and they posed willingly for the photograph that would immortalise them.

The society news page reported on two debutante parties, a baptism and a charity ball. Castro’s bony finger pointed to the photo illustrating the last of these.

‘Do you recognise her?’

Even though her head was covered by the inspector’s not very clean fingernail, she knew who he was talking about. It was Conchita Comamala Abad, the wife of Narciso Rocafort, owner of the Hilaturas del Segre textile mill.

‘I wrote that article. It says so right there, you see?’

As she pointed to her byline, she realised that Castro had already seen it. What was he playing at?

‘I suppose she was pleased with it.’

‘I suppose so,’ she said before he could read her the string of adjectives that decorated her text. Without them, there were only a couple of lines without much content. It was the moment to give him the persuasive speech she’d developed and practised in her head on the way over.

‘I wanted to tell you that —’

‘It’s good that she was pleased, because I have to go and see her today and you are coming with me.’

Castro didn’t allow for many questions, but he knew how to pre-empt answers.

‘I’m sure that Señora Comamala and a couple of other women we have to talk to will be more willing to give us information on the late Mariona Sobrerroca if you are the one asking the questions, since they already know you. And you are a woman.’