The Whispering City (6 page)

Castro didn’t even greet her or say a word as she sat down. As if he didn’t see her, he picked up a piece of paper and started to write briskly. The other three remained in silence, their attention on the sound of the pencil that scraped against the paper as if trying to tear it. Footsteps were heard through the closed door, some muffled voices and the halting tap-tap of a typewriter.

Carmen Alonso kept her gaze down. Ana hadn’t been able to see her eyes.

The inspector finished writing, folded the paper and held it out to Sevilla, who was standing behind the maid. The woman shivered at the officer’s arm passing close to her shoulder as he took the paper. She looked around and saw Ana for the first time. Her gaze asked the question ‘Who are you?’, but Castro’s voice giving instructions to Sevilla attracted all of her attention.

‘While I take care of this, go to the Ramblas and bring me what I wrote down here.’

Ana wondered if this exchange was already part of the interrogation. Carmen Alonso had to be aware of Sevilla’s body just a few centimetres from the back of her chair; she had to feel walled in between the two policemen, who seemed to regard her as just another piece of furniture. The woman remained immobile as Castro looked over her head at his subordinate.

‘Don’t be long.’

Sevilla left.

‘OK,’ said Castro, and he addressed Carmen Alonso for the first time. ‘Let’s proceed.’

He picked up another piece of paper where there were some handwritten lines and he began, ‘Your name is Carmen Alonso Ercilla, born on 8 January 1927, in Valencia de Alcántara, Cáceres. Father, Rafael Alonso García; mother, Belén Ercilla Montero?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘How long have you been working for Señora Sobrerroca?’

‘Two years, since she was widowed.’

‘Did you live in her home?’

‘When I first started I did, because Señora Mariona was afraid to be in that big house alone, but for the last six months I’ve been sleeping at my sister’s, in Hostafranchs.’

She had clearly been living in Barcelona for some time; she already referred to a house with a garden as a
torre
, thought Ana.

‘That night, too?’

‘No. I was coming from the house of some relatives in Manresa.’

‘What time did you get to Señora Sobrerroca’s home?’

‘At seven, like always.’

‘And she was no longer afraid?’

‘No, she didn’t seem to be.’

Castro spoke as if he were having a friendly conversation with Carmen Alonso, who seemed less intimidated.

‘Tell me what you did on Sunday, and what you saw when you entered Señora Sobrerroca’s house.’

She recounted the same things that Castro had told Ana. The inspector pretended to be checking her statement against the paper he held with both hands. From her corner, Ana could see the page – there was only the maid’s personal information on it.

Her story ended with her calling the police after finding her employer’s corpse.

‘Very good, very good, Señora Alonso. You studied that perfectly.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You understood me. You repeated word for word what you said to the officer who took your statement.’

Carmen looked at him with wide eyes.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You are reciting, ma’am. You are smarter than you look, and you know that the best way not to contradict yourself is to repeat exactly the same story from beginning to end.’

But you also do that when you are telling the truth, thought Ana, though she kept quiet. Perhaps it was just Castro’s strategy for verifying her statement.

‘How do you want me to tell it to you?’

‘Try the truth.’

‘That’s what I did.’

‘Well, tell it to me again.’

‘How?’

‘However you want, but without lies.’

The woman began her story again, this time hesitating; the effort not to repeat literally what she had said, to search for synonyms, add details, was clearly causing her difficulties. She was concentrating hard, with the lost gaze of someone who is recalling images to mind.

Castro didn’t let her finish, interrupting her with another question. ‘Did Señora Sobrerroca keep valuable objects in her husband’s office?’

As if coming out of a trance, Carmen replied, ‘Not that I know of.’

With a wave of his hand, the inspector indicated for her to go on.

‘Dr Garmendia’s office was like a museum. No one was allowed to move anything. When I cleaned, she would come in afterwards and make sure that everything was where it should be.’

‘How do you know that Señora Sobrerroca wasn’t keeping anything of value in there?’

‘I don’t know. But what would there be of value in a doctor’s office?’

‘Don’t make conjectures, that’s not your place.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Did she have valuable jewellery? Money?’

‘She had jewellery, in her dressing room. And that isn’t conjecture.’

The slap came so quickly that Ana almost leapt out of her chair with fright.

Castro, who had stood to deliver the blow, sat down again, put his hands on the desk and said, in the same monotone he had maintained throughout the entire conversation, ‘You’re trying my patience. How about you start telling me something I can believe?’

‘What?’ asked Carmen, tearful and scared. ‘What do you want?’

Her left cheek was red.

‘For example, you could show me your hands.’

The woman obeyed. She lifted her hands and showed them with the palms facing up, parallel to the desk. She was trembling. Castro sat up to look at them, indicating to the woman that she should show him the backs. She did. With a quick movement, the inspector seized the woman’s hands with his left. Reflexively she tried to free them, but she was prevented by the right arm of the policeman rising up to hit her again.

‘Too small to strangle Señora Sobrerroca. What’s your accomplice’s name?’

Ana didn’t know what was more menacing: Castro’s hand, which seemed impatient to fall on the woman, his sudden familiarity or his impassive expression.

‘What’s your accomplice’s name?’ he repeated.

And, although the question ‘What accomplice?’ was logical, it earned the woman another slap; a brusque, precise slap on the same cheek as the first, as if Castro were fitting his hand to the pre-drawn contour.

Carmen Alonso would have fallen from her chair if the inspector hadn’t been holding her by the hands. She hid her face between her outstretched arms. She was crying; her tears stained the thin blue cardboard folder that was on the policeman’s desk, right beneath her face.

‘Why are you hitting me?’

‘Listen, you don’t know how much it irritates me to be taken for a fool. We weren’t born yesterday, you know.’

Nothing in the inspector’s expression showed rage, or even anger. Castro spoke and slapped with the coldness of an automaton.

Ana was trembling. Why didn’t she get up and tell Castro to stop? Out of fear. Two fears, if she was honest, and one of them made her feel ashamed. Being scared to confront a man capable of such sudden violence and who, moreover, had the protection of his authority, was at least understandable. But that she didn’t dare to do it out of fear of losing her job was degrading, it sullied her.

And even then she remained glued to her seat, as Castro let the maid go, sat back with his hands on the desk and told her, ‘If you, as you confessed, knew that Señora Sobrerroca had valuable jewels and was alone in the house, how do I know you didn’t give in to the temptation of stealing them?’

Carmen lifted her head. Tears dripped from her chin. She dried them with the back of her hand, took a breath and, with a trembling but resolute voice, answered, ‘I haven’t confessed anything, I only said something.’

She raised her arms to protect herself from the slap she was expecting. Both she and Ana had their eyes fixed on Castro’s hands, but they didn’t move.

With the determined fatalism of a martyr in the Roman circus, the woman continued speaking: ‘I’m no fool. The missus treated me well and paid me much better than those of her class usually do. Sometimes she gave me clothing, and she even used to take me with her to the theatre and the cinema. Why would I do anything bad to her?’

Carmen Alonso, despite her fear, was arguing from logic and common sense. Castro was interrogating her from inquisitorial omnipotence. Ana wondered if any victims of the Inquisition had appealed to common sense and saved themselves from persecution that way. She didn’t know, but it seemed that here, somehow, it was working.

The maid lowered her arms. ‘Hit me, if you want,’ her expression said.

But Castro was interested in something else now.

‘You say that she used to take you to shows and that you used to sleep at the house. What changed? Did you do something wrong?’

‘No. It had nothing to do with me. I think that she was no longer afraid of being in the house alone.’

‘Oh, no?’

‘That’s what she said.’

Castro stared at her; his silence forced the maid to continue talking.

‘I didn’t do anything wrong. The missus was very pleased with me.’ She lowered her eyes and added, more to herself than for the other two people in the room, ‘And I with her. What am I going to do now?’

Castro didn’t bother to answer. After a few seconds he turned in his seat and told her, ‘You can leave. But you should know that we will be watching you.’

‘Can I start looking for a new job?’

‘No one is stopping you.’

What would stop her is that she had been Mariona Sobrerroca’s maid, whose murder hadn’t yet been solved. Who was going to want her in their house?

Carmen Alonso got up and left. First she nodded towards Ana. Perhaps it was a farewell. She couldn’t hold her gaze.

Castro remained staring at the closed door. Behind his back, Ana didn’t dare to move or speak. As if suddenly remembering her presence, the inspector turned and told her, ‘Well, you heard what the witness said.’

Her ‘yes’ came out in a croak. Her throat was dry.

‘So, prepare your article, a test run.’

‘Here?’

‘You aren’t suggesting taking our reports home to peruse over tea and biscuits?’

‘No, no.’

She was sure they didn’t treat Carlos Belda like this, but she was already learning what she was allowed to think and what she should keep quiet.

The door opened and Sevilla poked his head in.

‘Back already? Did you run my errand?’

‘Yes. Should I bring them to you?’

‘Later.’

Castro signalled to Ana with a movement of his head. She understood that whatever Sevilla had gone to get wasn’t meant for her eyes.

‘Another thing,’ said the officer. ‘We have a rag-and-bone man that the dead woman’s neighbour saw passing by the house.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Waiting outside the door.’

‘Bring him to an interrogation room. I’ll be there shortly.’

He rose and, before Ana’s questioning gaze, handed her a sheaf of case papers.

‘I have things to do. Write your article. You can use my desk.’

He was already leaving the room when he added, ‘Don’t even think about sitting in my chair.’

He closed the door.

It hadn’t even occurred to her, but, like Bluebeard’s wife, the warning was an incentive to go around the desk and sit in the inspector’s chair. She didn’t feel anything special about his seat. ‘Why should I feel something special?’ she thought to herself. It was a wooden chair with green padded leather arms worn from use. From sweat? As she thought this she involuntarily lifted her arms and rested them on the desk. Her eyes landed on a page from the newspaper
Arriba
that peeped out from beneath some papers and bore a list of names. She recognised what it was before she had a chance to read it: the names of those put to death the day before. She looked away before any of them could stick in her memory.

She heard footsteps on the other side of the door. She leapt from the chair and took her place again. She buried the list of the executed beneath the blue folder that still bore the damp stains of Carmen Alonso’s tears.

She started to write. By hand.

When Castro returned, she would have to give him her handwritten text, as if it were her homework. That would never do. She got to her feet and left the inspector’s office. She remembered that when he had called to his subordinate, he had shouted towards the right, and she moved in that direction along the hallway. She reached a room that smelled of sweat and aftershave lotion; among the ten or twelve policemen distributed over several desks, she made out Officer Sevilla with a cigarette between his lips. Sevilla saw her too and leapt up. The others stopped what they were doing and turned towards her. Only one, who was furiously hunting and pecking on his typewriter, remained completely unaware of her presence, absorbed as he was in his own tumult.

‘Need something?’ Sevilla asked, without taking the cigarette out of his mouth.

‘A typewriter,’ she said, pointing to his preoccupied colleague.

Sevilla looked in the opposite direction. Along one of the nicotine-stained walls he spotted a typewriter on a little table with wheels.

‘I’ll bring it to you.’

She returned to Castro’s office followed by the squeak of little wheels. Sevilla heaved the typewriter onto his boss’s desk. He didn’t leave, standing in the doorway as if he needed to keep a zealous eye on what she was going to do with the equipment. Ana turned her back to him, stuck paper in the carriage and started writing. An admiring little whistle behind her back indicated that the policeman was impressed by her speed.

Once again, the hours she’d invested in learning to type were paying off. She had taught herself with a little dog-eared book that her father had bought at the second-hand book market in the San Antonio district. Her mother had complained many times about the noise of the typewriter as she was practising her A-S-D-F-G-F, her Ñ-L-K-J-H-J and then the more advanced speed exercises. But she let her keep at it; Ana was ten years old and it was a game. They still lived in the enormous flat on Paseo de San Juan, and her mother could avoid the percussive clatter of the keys by going to the other end of the apartment. A few months after, a real clatter would come, that of the Italian air force bombardment in March 1938. Ana, wedged beside her mother against the wall of the Triunfo-Norte metro station, would try to trick her fear by doing exercises on a book cover as if it were an invisible keyboard.