The Whispering City (35 page)

A terrific sensation of déjà vu came over her as she replied, ‘I didn’t confess anything, I only said it.’

Hadn’t those been the words that had earned Carmen Alonso, Mariona’s maid, her first slap? Her gaze went from the inspector’s eyes to his right hand, but more than any possible blow it was the look in his eyes that was beginning to frighten her.

Castro struck the desk again.

‘Señorita Martí, you are trying my patience! Why did you take the letters?’

‘You gave me permission!’ The policeman looked at her with such surprise that she added, ‘Yes, you told me I could copy them. I asked permission, through your officer, Sevilla, and you said that I could copy them. Did you forget?’

‘You only took the copies?’ Castro shook his head.

‘Why would I take the originals?’ added Ana.

‘I shouldn’t have let you touch that material.’

‘You’re being unfair. Following that lead, we went to Martorell and discovered the relationship between Mendoza and Mariona Sobrerroca.’

‘And do you think we wouldn’t have worked it out for ourselves, sooner or later?’

The scorn in Castro’s reply was meant to derail her, but she wasn’t going to give in. Not with what she knew, what she had come to tell him. She wanted to launch into her explanations, but Castro’s attention had seized on another detail.

‘Did you say
we
went?’

A single oversight, a slight slip of the tongue and Castro was all over her like a hawk swooping on a mouse in a wheat field.

‘Er, yes, I didn’t go alone. I showed them to Beatriz Noguer, a renowned linguist, who —’

‘What! You showed confidential material to another person? Who is this Beatriz Noguer? A relative?’

‘Something like a second cousin, but I consulted her, as I said, because she is a language expert, to ask her for her opinion, you know? To find out things about the author of the letters and —’

‘This is unheard of! Who do you think you are?’

Ana knew that she had to keep talking, that she shouldn’t allow herself to be intimidated.

‘But Beatriz Noguer found something very important. She found out that there is at least a third person implicated in the letters, because the last letter, supposedly written by Abel Mendoza, was actually written by someone else.’

An expression of disbelief was frozen onto Castro’s face.

‘What is this madness?’

‘It’s not madness. The two authors theory was confirmed when I spoke with Abel Mendoza, the real Abel Mendoza.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘That last Friday I spoke with the real Abel Mendoza.’

She waited for her words to have their effect on the policeman. It came quickly: his fist clenched again, his lips tensed into a thin line.

‘What are you getting at?’

Ana explained her meeting with Mendoza, from the letter that arrived at the newspaper to the plan he said he had. She didn’t tell him about the bar La Cruz de Malta. The cold stare with which Castro met her story threw her off course.

‘Do you know what this means?’ she asked him in the face of his silence.

‘Yes. That once again you have been snooping where you don’t belong.’

‘And, as I did last time, I’ve brought you important information. Abel Mendoza is alive and he didn’t kill Mariona Sobrerroca. The killer must still be on the loose. Do you see?’

‘What do I need to see?’

‘That the case isn’t solved.’

‘Why? Because some guy who claims to be Abel Mendoza says so? I’m afraid, miss, that you’ve fallen for the oldest trick in the book. Wait.’

He got up, headed to the door and shouted, ‘Is Sevilla back yet?’

He waited in the doorway. As always, Sevilla appeared instantly. He looked at his boss with a questioning gaze, then saw Ana.

‘But, she’s here! I’ve been hunting for her all over Barcelona!’

Castro interrupted him.

‘And when were you planning on telling me that you hadn’t found her? Or were you going to take another spin on the motorbike?’

‘It’s just that —’

‘Forget it. Listen, Sevilla, when did the last of Calvo Sotelo’s murderers turn himself in?’

‘About a month back.’

‘How old would you say he was?’

‘Twenty-five, at the most.’

Castro let her work it out. Former finance minister Calvo Sotelo had been assassinated in July 1936.

‘You can go, Sevilla.’

The officer left. Castro stood, leaning on a filing cabinet. Ana understood that he considered the conversation almost over.

‘Look, there are always people who do these strange things. Some because they aren’t right in the head, others because they want to spend a few days eating and sleeping indoors at the government’s expense,’ he grinned. ‘You don’t know how many confessions we get for petty crimes when it gets cold.’

She gazed at him incredulously. ‘Now it’s you who’s trying to pull my leg.’

Castro shot a look towards the door, but she got there first. ‘You don’t need to call Sevilla again.’

Castro accepted that the conversation wasn’t over, and he sat down.

‘The man I spoke to knew a lot about the case. He knew things that didn’t appear in my articles.’

‘Criminals talk about crimes with each other, too; they brag about their accomplishments and their feats, especially when they’ve been drinking. They don’t need the newspapers – in their world, information circulates along different channels.’

‘And what about the letters?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The last one wasn’t written by the same person.’

‘Yeah, sure. Your little partner put that story in your head.’

‘It’s not a story. It’s a fact, linguistically proven.’

‘I think it’s wonderful, and I hope you two have had fun playing detective, but that’s enough nonsense. Let’s get serious now.’

‘I’ve been serious the whole time.’

‘I’m sorry, but no. And since I’m not in the mood for any more nonsense, I’m going to spell it out for you, and for the last time. If you want, take notes: the Sobrerroca case is closed. The killer, Abel Mendoza, is dead and soon to be buried.’

‘But —’

‘The bloke you talked to is a fraud. Are you following me? All right, on to the next thing.’

Castro hadn’t raised his voice, but with each point he enumerated, his tone grew slightly darker. He was speaking very slowly, as if he were actually dictating.

‘Finally, I strictly forbid you to take any sort of action in this matter. You can thank the fact that I attribute all this to naivety, and not bad intentions, for my not calling the paper to complain. But this is the last time I will tolerate something like this. One more misstep and I will arrest you for obstruction of justice and contempt. Are we finished?’

He picked up a piece of paper and a pencil.

‘Give me Beatriz Noguer’s full name and address.’

Ana gave it to him.

‘Is something going to…’ she couldn’t find the right word, ‘happen to her?’

‘Not if you two stay nice and quiet. And tomorrow I want the copies of the letters here,’ he pointed to his desk. ‘All the copies you have. Understood?’

Ana fought back tears of rage. She nodded her head, but said, ‘She has the carbon copies from the Martorell files.’

Castro glanced at the table that held the material, then turned towards her. ‘Are we finished or not?’

‘Yes. May I go?’

‘No one’s stopping you.’

She left. He didn’t say goodbye; she wouldn’t have been able to reply anyway.

She left the police headquarters in tears. No one paid much attention; it was all too common a sight.

48

On Wednesday morning Carlos Belda visited the morgue at Montjuïc. No sooner had he parked outside the mortuary grounds than he lit a cigarette to cover up the odour.

Now that the Sobrerroca case was closed, he had got Sanvisens to agree that the next interesting case would be his and, in a macabre kind of droit de seigneur, he had first dibs on the investigation, which in this instance meant finding himself at the morgue with Inspector Manzaneque of the CIB.

Manzaneque was waiting for him at the entrance to the morgue. They greeted each other with a firm handshake. The policeman was a hale man of about fifty. The only button on his jacket that was done up was heroically resisting the pressure from his prominent belly. His hat covered a dense head of hair, white like his moustache. He was smoking too, but rolling tobacco. He pulled out a paper from the little packet, put just enough tobacco on it to make a reedy cylinder and closed it with a swipe of his tongue.

‘Hey, Belda, you ready?’

They had known each other for years, and Manzaneque knew that morgue visits weren’t the journalist’s favourite thing.

‘Depends. What have we got?’

He pointed into the morgue with his cigarette.

‘Bloke in his twenties. They found him in the slums, all done up in make-up and women’s clothes.’

‘How was he killed?’

‘Strangled.’

‘When did they turn him up?’

‘Yesterday. Better give me your handkerchief,’ said the policeman, jabbing a finger in the direction of Belda’s jacket pocket. ‘According to the forensic doctor he’s been dead since Sunday.’

Carlos pulled out a white monogrammed handkerchief and held it out to Manzaneque so that the policeman could put a few drops of menthol on it.

‘Shall we go in?’ said the policeman.

‘Let’s go.’

They went in. They walked down a long corridor and then down to the basement.

‘Did you hear about Castro?’ Manzaneque asked.

‘What?’

‘They’re going to promote him. For the Sobrerroca thing. They’re making him a First-class Inspector.’

Carlos thought he should call to congratulate him.

They went into the morgue room. They were received by an employee dressed in a grey lab coat that was too long and too narrow on him.

‘The one from Somorrostro,’ the policeman said.

They followed the employee. He had one of his sleeves rolled up, the right one, and Carlos wondered while they were walking if there was something hidden under the left sleeve, which swayed with the employee’s every step. That distracted him from the first wave of smells: damp mould and ammonia.

He hoped it was a case worth writing about, since he had to go through the unpleasantness of seeing the body.

There were a lot of dead people, but most of them didn’t make the newspapers. Others were mentioned only in brief notes, which could be edited out if other articles grew or they needed more space for an advert for hair pomade, revitalising tonic or a fountain pen. They were those who’d died from the cold or illness in some alley. Second-class deaths that held no interest, that weren’t important because they didn’t serve to exemplify the punishment of evil nor glorify the police. Hopefully this cadaver wasn’t one of those.

They had found him in an abandoned rookery in the Somorrostro, a ‘historic’ slum that had been there since the previous century and was right by the sea, near the Barceloneta. Yes, as Manzaneque had said, the body had definitely been there since Sunday: three days of rot.

They went into the room where the bodies were held.

‘Have you already seen it?’ he asked the policeman.

‘And smelled it.’

Carlos squeezed the handkerchief in his palm to have it ready as soon as the employee opened the storage unit, which they quickly reached.

‘Open it, will you,’ ordered Manzaneque.

The employee struggled with the door; he did have a left hand after all. When he finally managed to open it and revealed the dead man’s face, they saw that it still bore traces of make-up. His skin seemed covered by a thin mask, his eyes were shaded in blue and he wore fake eyelashes. His lips were slathered in a layer of cracked lipstick.

To Manzaneque the motives for the crime were obvious: ‘A queer crime. This guy liked to dress up like a lady, but that’s it. The other one wanted to take it further, he refused and the other guy raped him. From the way he left him from behind, the forensic doctor says it was his first time. So they busted his cherry and then they finished him off.’

He turned to the mortician’s assistant. ‘Why haven’t they washed his face?’

The man shrugged before offering a hypothesis, ‘They can’t have done his photos yet.’

‘You think?’

Manzaneque turned to Carlos, indignant, but he wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were glued to the dead man’s face. Manzaneque asked him, ‘What’s up with you? Did you know him?’

‘I thought I did, but now, looking closely, I don’t reckon I do,’ he said, his mouth and nose covered by the handkerchief.

The policeman didn’t even suspect that Carlos was lying to him. The journalist shifted his attention by changing the subject. ‘It could be something for us if your hypothesis pans out. Crimes between deviants are of interest to the public, and they also serve as a moral example.’

‘That would depend on who did it,’ the policeman replied. ‘Remember the one with the son of the Civil Guard colonel?’

‘But that didn’t happen in the Somorrostro.’

‘Well, that’s precisely where some of these degenerate rich lads like to go. They find what they’re after: excitement and bodies. There are fathers who sell their daughters, why can’t there be ones who sell their sons?’

‘You’re right. And if someone from the top brass is implicated in this case, that’s another someone who’ll soon be sent to serve his country in Morocco.’

They continued their conversation as they left the room and the morgue grounds.

‘So you’re interested?’ asked the policeman.

‘At first glance, yes,’ Belda said with feigned indifference.

‘You don’t seem very enthusiastic.’

He played the ambition card with Manzaneque. With Castro’s promotion, there would be movements in the CIB and a lot of eagerness to stand out. The press was an appealing ally.