Barcelona Shadows (23 page)

Salvador Vaquer doesn’t comprehend Enriqueta’s reasoning, but nor does he dare to run away. Maybe he should do as Pujaló did and vanish into thin air. But he knows full well that if she falls, she’ll spill all the beans. And that before she even opens her mouth he’ll be a dead man, because that boy from the other day—or some other one—will show up after dinner or while he’s having a coffee with a splash of milk in a tavern and kill him without a word. They’ve lost all the protection they used to have, if it ever was a dependable safety net, and now he is in the hands of a woman who thinks that keeping a gagged policeman around the house is fun. It’s a sinking ship, with the hull punctured and a captain convinced she’s invincible.

Light inundates the room where Moisès Corvo lies on the floor, and the cockroaches flee in terror. The inspector holds back his vomit, because it would mean choking to death, and he inhales
and exhales deeply through his nose. Two silhouettes approach, grab him by the legs and move him to a corner. One of the voices is that of the gimp, Salvador, but he doesn’t recognize Pablo Martí, the evil woman’s father, in the other.

“Are you sure he’s unconscious?”

“Enough not to make trouble.”

Moisès touches something spongy with his shoulder, but he doesn’t know what it is. It seems like a bag filled with flesh, and gives off a stench of putrid potatoes.

“Help me prepare the mortar.” It’s the gravelly voice of Pablo Martí. “Not just anybody knows how to do this. It’s an art. You have to get the perfect consistency, not too soft and not too damp.”

“What do I have to do?” Salvador Vaquer looks at him, awaiting instructions.

“This is why you young people today are such useless loafers. Haven’t got skill or drive. Don’t know how to do anything.”

When Moisès Corvo wakes up again, the false wall is half built and the two men have stopped for the day because the sun has gone down. We’ll finish it first thing tomorrow morning. The policeman twists to get out of his ties, now that he’s slightly recovered his mobility, but there isn’t enough space: on one side the new barrier, on the other the wall, and right up against him, that noxious thing that seemed like a sack and is now rigid.

Enriqueta Martí comes in with a cup of hot broth in her hands. She pulls out the fabric that fills Moisès Corvo’s mouth and whispers, “Don’t try to scream, you can’t. It’s no use. Now drink, you need nourishment.”

And she pours the clear soup down his throat. The policeman spits out the first swig, but she grabs him by the nape of the neck and forces him to ingest more.

After a little while Moisès Corvo is asleep again, sedated, right beside the corpse of Blackmouth, the lad who stopped being useful to the woman.

Despite busting down the doors of the flats on Riera Baixa and Tallers, the police find no one there. They both seem abandoned, and there is no trace of the couple, and much less Corvo. They turn them upside down, but there are no longer any strings to pull on. They try to locate the owners they rent from, but can’t find them either.

“It’s them, for sure,” Babyface asserts.

“All we have is circumstantial evidence, nothing conclusive,” says Malsano. “But it’s them.”

Salvador has priors for corruption of minors and he is the gimp who was seen trying to snatch a girl to take her to the Xalet del Moro, which seems to provide a network of child prostitution to the upscale neighbourhoods and is protected by powerful people, able to nip any police investigation in the bud. And erase priors like the ones Enriqueta had, because she doesn’t show up anywhere and she fits von Baumgarten’s limited profile perfectly. She moves in the shadows and has knowledge of folk medicine. The nameless monster has finally come out of its den to look upon its work. However, she has become invisible again.

“Pujaló has to be easier to find.” Golem puts a hand on the inspector’s shoulder. “He’s a talker, and they’re never able to hide for very long. They go on and on and their mouths do them in. Go home, Juan, we’ll take care of it.”

But Malsano knows that he won’t be able to sleep, anxious because each minute that passes is a missed opportunity. He meets up with Quim Morgades in the offices of
La Vanguardia
daily.

“Publish it,” he requests. “If somebody knows where Teresina is, it will lead us to Moisès. Write it. We don’t have time. We have to find them.”

Morgades makes a call to the trial court assigned to the missing girl’s case and talks to the clerk, Miguel Aracil. After a few minutes he returns to the call and confirms that the judge, Ramon Mazaira, will allow the publication of the news. He is sick and tired of the police’s incompetence and lack of results in a case that has provoked such social alarm. He is fed up with the prefect, who only two days earlier sent a statement to the press denying the facts of the kidnapping. Go ahead, says the clerk. The next day, Quim Morgades writes a short column asking for citizen collaboration to find Teresina.

“Good luck,” says Malsano in parting.

When Inspector Corvo opens his eyes again, the darkness is absolute and the new wall already reaches the ceiling. He wants to move to hit it with his legs and take advantage of the fact that it must still be weak to knock it down, but he is stuck. He can’t yell, he can’t move. He can only wait. It is increasingly harder to hear the voices beyond the false wall, and he is losing hope of getting out of there alive.

On the 27th, first thing in the morning, Sergeant Major Ribot runs to tell Juan Malsano. Golem and Babyface have arrested Pujaló as he was entering his painting studio at daybreak.

“Are they at the station?”

“No.”

The port, on a Monday, is quite a silent place, a forest where topmasts and funnels bob. The fishermen aren’t there, the small Valencian boats with awnings are closed and the stevedores sit beneath canopies playing cards and chatting. The sound of splashing water and drowned shouts is all Juan Malsano hears when he gets there, leaving behind the city of tramcars and factories. But he only sees Golem and Babyface alone, on the dock, watching the water. When he approaches, he discovers Joan Pujaló staying afloat best he can, I can’t swim, I can’t swim!

“Where is your wife?” shouts Golem, squatting.

“Get me out of here! I’m drowning!”

He does the doggie paddle and gets close to the shore, but Golem extends a leg and uses his foot to push Pujaló’s head a bit further into the water.

“Please, I—” He swallows water “—I’m drowning.”

Pujaló is exhausted.

“This bastard was playing dumb when we caught him.”

“Where’s my partner?” bellows Malsano.

“Who?”

“Why were you running the other day?”

“I… I got scared!” He can barely speak.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I saw you and… since you had already talked to me…”

“What?”

“Help me. Get me out of here, I can’t swim, please.”

“Where is Enriqueta?”

“I swear I don’t know.” Ay, Joan would have his fingers crossed if he could, but he’s got enough on his plate with just staying afloat.

“She is with Salvador.”

For a moment, Joan Pujaló’s face is transfigured.

“I don’t know. Get me out of here.”

“I’d let him drown,” says Babyface. “If he doesn’t know anything, he’s no use to us. Let him sink.”

He speaks loud and clear so Pujaló can hear him.

“Where is Salvador?” insists Malsano.

“I don’t know, I don’t know.”

The inspector grabs his revolver and opens the cylinder. He pulls out three bullets and puts them in his jacket pocket.

“You like to gamble, huh? You like to bet.”

“Believe me,” he begs.

“You have a fifty per cent chance of winning, Pujaló.” He aims at him. “Where are they?”

“I told you that—”

The shot hits the water and wounds the man’s abdomen. He shrieks with pain and stops his paddling.

“Where are they?” Malsano repeats, slowly and deliberately, and the vapour that comes out of his mouth looks like sulphur emerging from hell.

“Ponent, Ponent. Help me, I’m dying.” It didn’t hit any vital organ, but it’s dreadfully painful. “They’re in Enriqueta’s flat!”

“Where?”

“Twenty-nine Ponent, fourth flat on the first floor, with the girl. I don’t know anything about your partner, I swear.”

Staff Sergeant Asens helps Golem pull the man out of the water. Call an ambulance.

Malsano runs.

Few people plan on being buried alive. But many are afraid of it, a fear clinically named taphephobia and rooted in the Romantic poets such as Lord Byron and Percy Shelley. Famous composer Frédéric Chopin wrote in his will that, once he was dead, he wanted his heart ripped out to make sure he wasn’t buried alive by mistake. It was Edgar Allan Poe who, in the story ‘The Premature Burial’, really captured the terror of being thought to be dead when one is actually still alive.

The false wall was up and Pablo Martí went back to Sant Feliu after finishing his work. She is my daughter, he justified, as if that excused anything. Salvador leant a mattress against it, and moved around a couple of little cabinets so it would look as if it had always been set up that way. I put one hand on the wall and speak.

“Moisès.”

The girl’s voice rouses him.

“Who are you?”

“Moisès, I’m here.”

“Teresina?”

“Yes.”

“Are you all right?”

“You don’t have to worry any more.”

“You have to let the police know, Teresina. You have to go out on the balcony and shout.”

All of a sudden Moisès Corvo realizes that he can talk, in spite of the rag in his mouth having slipped down his throat until it is stopping up his trachea.

“The police are already on their way over. Soon I will be free, and you too, Moisès.”

“Where is Salvador?”

“Doesn’t matter. Salvador is a loser. It’s always been her, Enriqueta. She was the one who snatched me, she was the one who took all the children.”

“You have to hide, Teresina. If the police come she will try to kill you.”

“She won’t do anything to me. It’s already been decided, all of it. And you’ve been important, Moisès. Without you they never would have found her. She knows that, and that’s why she wanted to punish you.”

“Who are you?”

“Teresina.”

“Who are you really?”

“I’m a voice inside your head, nothing more.”

“Help me out of here. We have to catch her, we have to make sure she doesn’t get away. We have to finish off the monster.”

“I can’t help you, Moisès. I can only stay here, beside you, until the moment comes. You don’t have to worry about her. She will go to prison. They will interrogate her. All the evil she has brought to this world will come to light. Many things will be revealed, but there will be many that are hidden. You already know that.”

“She will get away with it: she is protected by very powerful people.”

“Everyone forgets. Over time she won’t be in the papers, the monster will be a hazy memory. A huge ship will sink, new diseases will come, a war unlike any ever seen will break out, and Enriqueta will be a legend told to scare children.”

“She has to pay for what she’s done.”

“In a year from now, Moisès, Malsano will help Isaac von Baumgarten to get into the Reina Amàlia Prison. The doctor will
sink a stake right into the middle of Enriqueta Martí Ripollès’s chest and then he will decapitate her.”

“And Conxita? And my brother? And Andreu?”

Moisès Corvo would cry if he could shed a tear.

“You found the girl,” says Malsano to Staff Sergeant Asens. “Whatever happens in there. A lady neighbour told you that she had seen her and you went into the flat with some excuse.”

“A hygiene inspection.”

“Whatever. But you found the girl and you arrested Enriqueta.”

“If I had known it was them,” laments Asens, “…if I had suspected earlier…”

Juan Malsano knows that if they go into the flat on Ponent Street, if they arrest Enriqueta and take her into the station, they’ll use any flaw in procedure to let her go free. If it’s a municipal officer, an agent of the recently created force, they’ll have a harder time of it. The Municipal Guard could use some prestige and publicity, like any police force, but this one has the added fact of a clean record because it is so new. What really matters now is finding Moisès Corvo, saving Teresina and, obviously, capturing Enriqueta.

“I’ll wait here.” Babyface chews on a toothpick and leans against the entrance. “No one comes in or out.”

Malsano goes into the staircase and through the hall, taking the steps two at a time and gathering forces in front of the door. His hands are sweating. He doesn’t want to think too much about what he’ll find on the other side. The monster, Moisès, the girl. He chases the bad omens out of his head. And if?… No, no, no. Golem asks for permission with his gaze, and Malsano nods.

The wood around the doorknob breaks and the door opens wide as if surrendering. The two policemen enter with their revolvers aimed into the void. The beating, like a blacksmith’s shop in their temples, is so intense it hides all other sounds. Is it empty? Is this flat empty too? In the back, as if kilometres away, a girl cries, and Golem doesn’t think twice, running over there, while Malsano covers him from behind.

“The girl is here!” His voice comes from an indeterminate place in the dwelling. “On the floor, son of a bitch, on the floor!”

Malsano tenses up even more when he hears his colleague’s orders. He doesn’t know that he’s found Salvador Vaquer in a corner of the bedroom, or that he found him with Moisès Corvo’s weapon in his hand but then tossed it when he saw the giant entering the room. Juan goes into the parlour decorated with expensive furnishings and mirrors and sees Angelina seated in an armchair, her hands resting on her skirt, as if waiting her turn.

“Who are you?”

The girl is silent. She must be the daughter of Enriqueta and Pujaló. She has the lost gaze of madness. He continues to the kitchen, which is in shadow, and a silhouette moves slightly for a second.

“Halt!” bellows Malsano. “Hands on your head!”

He can’t see her well, but he senses that she is obeying the order he has just spat out. The bulb is in the middle of the kitchen. He advances a couple of paces very slowly to pull the little chain and turn it on. When he does, it blinds him, and when he opens his eyes Enriqueta pounces on him, beside herself, gripping the knife like an enraged beast. She doesn’t seem human, she isn’t human. Malsano dodges her, but loses his balance and falls against the sink. Enriqueta recovers her position and confronts him face to
face, but Malsano manages to aim his revolver at her, so that her impulse towards him places the barrel pressing on her ribs. That leaves her frozen in place, her face shaken, her arms in the air, the knife blade twinkling with the reflection of the bulb’s light.