A Shortcut to Paradise (9 page)

In a moment of candour or desperation, Borja told Clàudia of our difficulties in these areas. Despite her enthusiasm and the confidence she had shown in our skills, Borja must have been aware it's one thing to take advantage of the frailties of the rich and quite another for the life of an innocent man to be in our hands. Nonetheless, Amadeu's agent seemed to have blind faith in us and didn't see that as an obstacle. Mariona had clearly given us a good press and told Clàudia about our status as atypical, if not illegal, detectives.

“I think I have the solution,” said Clàudia after listening to us. “I know a retired policeman who I am sure still has good contacts in the force. Lluís Arquer lives in the Raval. My mother and he were friends…” she added, as if she needed to justify herself. “He's rather prickly, but I bet he could do with some extra cash. Here's his number” – Clàudia wrote it on a piece of paper and gave it to Borja – “Give him a ring, but don't say I sent you. Act as if you'd found your own way to him. Don't worry, I'll look after the expenses.”

Borja thanked her and put the scrap of paper in his pocket. I felt relieved to think that finally a true professional would intervene and give us the benefit of the experience and objectivity we both lacked. In any case, I couldn't fathom why Clàudia hadn't entrusted this task to a proper detective in the first place. Was Mariona Castany so persuasive? Was Borja so trusted by the wealthy? I sprang up from the sofa, convinced our meeting was at an end, but I was wrong. Borja had yet more questions for Clàudia, and was about to open a Pandora's box.

“Very well, Clàudia, now tell us a little bit about this writer Cabestany. Is he any
good
?” he enquired while I sank discreetly back into the sofa.

“I would say he is a difficult and little-understood…”

“Fine. But is he any
good
?” he repeated his question.

“You know, ‘good' as in… Writers who write like Amadeu are always good…” I expect Clàudia wasn't expecting this kind of question. “I mean he is very deep… It's beside the point that his books don't sell,” she responded uneasily.

“Or, in other words, as you see it, it is a great injustice that Marina Dolç was famous and sold mountains of books and he doesn't,” continued Borja, trying not to sound rude. “If Amadeu Cabestany hardly sells any books, it hardly makes sense for you to be his agent, does it now?”

Clàudia turned red as a tomato and took a few seconds to come up with a reply.

“The truth is you never know in this business… Literature and talent are one thing, and reviews and sales quite another… There are the occasional surprises. Readers…”

“Clàudia, if you want us to help your protégé, please be straight with us.” Ever since he'd been resurrected as the ruined heir of a family with aristocratic monikers, Borja had stopped believing in such a thing as disinterested altruism. “Are you two having an affair?”

Clàudia gave a start in her chair and turned an even darker shade of red. She took a packet of cigarettes from the drawer and lit up. She too was obviously trying to knock the habit. We decided on an act of solidarity and a smoky haze soon filled her office.

“I don't see how that might be relevant,” she responded nervously, standing up. “He is a client of mine. I have to look after his interests… Besides,” she reflected for a moment, before coming out with it, “he's married.”

Bull's-eye. My brother had hit the target this time.

“Look, Clàudia, this is all in confidence: we couldn't care less if you and this Cabestany are seeing each other, could we, Eduard? But we need to know the lie of the land. A murder is like a jigsaw puzzle” – Borja had adopted a very professional tone – “and we need all the pieces if we are going to put it together. At the moment the pieces are saying he was the one who dispatched the Dolç woman to the other side.”

“I'm sure he didn't kill her,” Clàudia retorted, her eyes glinting.

“Well then,” my brother insisted.

Clàudia stared out of the window and took her time to respond. She was weighing up what she should say. The uneasy silence justified Borja's suspicions: say nothing and admit to your guilt. After thirty seconds, in slightly better spirits, she sat slowly down, almost ready to launch into
La Traviata
. Ironically the fact that Borja had discovered her little secret had just upped our rating as detectives.

“We're not exactly lovers,” she said finally, “we simply meet up when he comes to Barcelona, which is not very often. He has a family, a wife and two daughters, and I don't think he's the kind of man to leave everything for an
amour fou
,” and she added rather soulfully, “though I suppose I am in love with him. I can't speak for him, however.”

“Sufficiently in love to bump off Marina Dolç? You must have been really upset when you heard she was going to win the prize…” Borja hinted gently.

“I already knew she would win,” her tone was icy. “I found out a week before. I knew I'd got it wrong and given him false hopes, but Amadeu seemed so depressed… I don't know why I didn't forewarn him, I suppose because he'd not been to Barcelona for two months and I really wanted to see him. I didn't think he would take being runner-up so badly. It was a struggle. If he'd known…”

“The truth,” my brother said, turning to me, “is that Clàudia didn't leave the bar at any moment. I mean there's no way she could have bumped off Marina.”

“I didn't even have time to look at myself in the mirror!” she said, shocked. “I was gossiping with everyone.”

“You could have contracted someone to do it,” I suggested.

Clàudia finally lost her temper. She didn't need to say that she thought I was a miserable little worm. She simply stared daggers at me and I thought she was going to slap me.

“How wonderful, so I'm one of your suspects, am I? Hell! If I had to kill off all the rival authors who sell more than mine…”

“No, not at all,” said Borja, trying to pacify her. “That's simply a working hypothesis…”

“I sincerely hope so.”

“You know, I don't understand why you didn't go up to his room if you wanted to spend the night with him,” my brother added for good measure.

“I didn't know he'd reserved a room at the Ritz. I thought we'd go to my place, as we'd done previously, and that was a real surprise. Besides, if you remember, when Amadeu left the bar, he was furious. I thought it better to leave him alone for a while to calm down. I knew he was angry with me too. I had other writers to talk to. It's my job. I thought I'd go up later when everyone had left.”

And she added remorsefully, “Perhaps I should have told him that Marina was going to win the prize. He'd at least have had time to digest the bad news, the poor man…”

“But you don't think that in a hot-headed moment he could have…”

“Of course not! Amadeu is the type that sinks into depression, not one to act… You don't know him: he's a congenital worrier. If he'd ever contemplated doing such a thing, he'd have acted like Hamlet in Vic for a month and then would have dropped the idea,” she sighed. “No, Amadeu may be eccentric but he's no murderer.”

“All right, let us know if they let him out,” Borja concluded, getting up from his chair, presuming our meeting was over. “We need to speak to him. In any case, we should place an ad in the dailies to see if a witness comes forward to support his alibi. If, as he says, he did go to the Up & Down club, sooner or later someone has to recognize him.”

“I'll make sure an ad is placed in two or three of the big-circulation dailies,” said Clàudia, who still seemed rather upset.

“Best put my mobile as the contact number and say something like ‘in absolute confidence'…” Borja suggested. “In case the person who recognizes him doesn't want to get involved with the police… If an eyewitness does turn up, we have our ways to make him talk.”

I didn't know what my brother had in mind, though I imagine it's the kind of thing real detectives do. I couldn't imagine him dealing out blows and covering his Armani in blood.

“It's odd no taxi driver has shown signs of life,” I mused aloud. “If things were as he says, and the entrance to the Ritz was jammed with police cars… I mean it's not a destination a taxi driver could forget just like that. I suppose the police must have contacted the association.”

“I suppose so, but so far no news on that front. Amadeu doesn't know the make of car or the licence number. He has very hazy memories and you can see he was drunk. He only remembers that both taxis smelled of pine air freshener… As if that was much help!” she sighed.

“Memory plays that kind of trick…”

“Do whatever you have to, but you must find an eyewitness or the person who killed Marina Dolç. Her murderer…”

“Or murderess,” I pointed out.

“OK, or murderess, but the fact is that while Amadeu is in prison, he or she wanders about free.”

“We'll find the culprit, don't you worry,” my brother assured her after giving her a peck on the cheek in the doorway. “By the way,” he asked as he consulted the notebook with black covers he always carried with him, “what the hell does
Squamous in the Tempest
mean? That's not Catalan, is it?”

Clàudia looked blank and glanced at her watch, as if she were in a hurry and couldn't waste more time on us.

“Frankly I don't know. Amadeu's style is a bit cryptic at times. I've still not had time to get to the end of the book…” she confessed apologetically.

“No, it's not a quick read,” my brother agreed, empathizing. “Well, I'll give it a look this weekend. It's not such a long novel…”

 

 

When we left the building, the hot noonday air blasted our cheeks. We felt we would melt there and then. Clàudia's air-conditioning had kept us cool in her office, but back in the street physical effort was the last thing the sultry Mediterranean climate encouraged, what with the heat from cars and the warm air blasting out from all the air-conditioning systems. I started to sweat and decided to take my jacket off and loosen my tie. My brother looked at me askance but said nothing. As it was still early, we went for a coffee and rang the number Clàudia had given us in order to arrange a meeting with one Lluís Arquer.

A grave, slightly hoarse voice answered, and it was evident from the start that the man was very irritable. Nonetheless, he seemed eager to see us, particularly when Borja hinted there would be an economic reward for his trouble. Then he backtracked, alleging he was very busy and not keen on time-wasters, but he gave us an appointment that morning in a bar on the Plaça Reial. Although we would go by taxi, it was a good way from where we were. Borja and I drank our coffees and set off.

For the moment, we hadn't decided whether the fact Clàudia and Amadeu were having an affair made our life easier or more complicated. We couldn't discount the fact that Clàudia's feelings towards Amadeu Cabestany might have clouded her judgement or, as Montse would say, sent her into a spin. Love and lucidity aren't good bedfellows, and perhaps Clàudia had a veil over her eyes that stopped her from seeing what the
mossos
could see so clearly: that Amadeu couldn't stomach the blow of not winning the prize and had killed Marina Dolç in an onset of rage. One hundred thousand euros are no joking matter, no,
senyor
. People kill for much less.

Luckily we didn't have to decide whether Amadeu was guilty or innocent, although if he was really innocent, it was our job to prove it. In a way, the life of a man we didn't know was in our hands because a rich lady like Mariona Castany had persuaded another rich lady that she could trust us, which, we should be under no illusions, was rather rash of her. When we left the bar, I expressed my concerns to Borja, who didn't seem at all put out.

“Stop agonizing and let's get to work. Your problem is you think too much.”

“Pep, this fellow's life is at stake. Perhaps we should advise Clàudia to contract a proper detective.”

“We solved the Lídia Font case, didn't we?” My brother was so happy back playing Sherlock Holmes again. “Besides,” he added, puffing his chest out, “I have realized I possess the main quality a good detective needs.”

“An absolute lack of common sense?” I suggested hesitantly.

But right then, before my brother could reduce me to a pulp, we managed to stop one of the very few unoccupied taxis driving down Muntaner and I was left still wanting to find out what exceptional virtue Borja possessed that gave him the wherewithal to triumph where the police were apparently failing.

10

Bad traffic meant it took us an hour to reach the Plaça Reial, where Lluís Arquer was drinking a beer and waiting for us in the Ambos Mundos. As he'd told Borja over the phone, he wore a straw hat and a crumpled, natural-coloured linen jacket. He was stumpy, though not exactly fat, and the way he sat and moved suggested he might have arthritis, something that was confirmed by the silver-topped stick he'd propped on the chair next to him.

“Mr Arquer? Lluís Arquer?” enquired Borja.

“Who else might I be?” he replied sourly, as if we were annoying him.

“I spoke to you on the phone a while ago. Someone told us you might be able to help,” Borja went on, unsure what tone to adopt.

We sat down without waiting for his invitation. The square was full of tourists queuing outside restaurants and tramps and druggies sitting on the ground and occupying all the public benches. The fountain in the middle was surrounded by Arabs, Moroccans I expect. One came over to greet Lluís Arquer and thanked him effusively for some favour or other in halting Spanish. Arquer brushed him off rather paternally and told him
he was busy at the moment. Compliments seemed to unsettle him, as if they were conflicting with the hardman image he was trying to project.