Off Side (26 page)

‘You’ve come to rob me! I’ll scratch your eyes out!’

Marta backed off up the corridor, and tried to remember where she had left the knife. However the speed of her retreat was less than that of her advancing adversary. Doña Concha dived on her without giving her time to think, but in the blindness of her anger she didn’t notice an apparition reaching up from behind her — the shadow of a young man with a bottle in his hand. Doña Concha had just succeeded in grabbing a handful of Marta’s hair and digging the nails of her other hand into her face when the bottle smashed over her head, and water, glass and blood erupted into a kind of halo around her head. Her body leaned further and further forward until it finally collapsed and fell to the floor. Once there, she tried to protect her face with one hand while the other grabbed at the girl’s frail legs. The man began mercilessly kicking at the mass of flesh, anger and fear, until Marta all of a sudden realized that she was out of her clutches, and leapt over
her body. The pair of them ran to the door, and there they turned to see whether the woman was trying to follow.

‘She’s not moving. I must have killed her.’

‘Don’t be stupid. Come on, get the car.’

As they leapt down the stairs, he tried to get sufficient air into his lungs to be able to tell her that they had no money, and that there was hardly enough petrol in the car even to get them out of town. But as they arrived on the pavement down below she forced him to a walking pace, and told him that they should separate and go in the direction of pasaje de Martorell and the La Garduña parking lot. There was no sign of Doña Concha’s feared presence on the balcony behind the pot of ivy which she tended with such loving care, and they reached calle de Hospital with a sense of having arrived at the frontiers of a country where, fortunately, nobody knew them. At this point they could no longer contain the urge to run, and they raced to the car park. He sat himself at the wheel of the car that he had stolen an hour previously in the upper part of the city — in paseo de la Bonanova, curiously close to the house where his parents lived. For a moment he had almost decided to call the whole thing off. He’d wanted to go and knock at their door, and let himself be treated once more as the returning prodigal son. But in the end he decided that their decision to leave made more sense, because Marta was the only thing in his life that had any meaning.

‘Let’s head for the South.’

‘No. Take the coast road and turn off towards Pueblo Nuevo. Then we’ll think what to do next.’

‘What are we going to do there?’

‘We’re going to be leaving with money. I made you a promise, and I’m sticking to it.’

Then, as they drove along, he finally summoned up the courage to repeat that he was sure he’d killed the woman. He needed Marta to say that he hadn’t, but she didn’t oblige, either because she had her mind on something else, or because she was enjoying
his suffering.

‘Head towards the sea and pull up somewhere. I’ll ask someone the way.’

Marta stuck her head out of the window to ask a couple of garage mechanics where the Centellas ground was. He tried to hide behind the wheel, because he was convinced that the fact of what he had done was written all over his face. They had to ask the way three times before they finally found themselves down backstreets that were as ruined as the abandoned factories that had been their
raison d’être
, and emerged into a wide panorama of newly constructed apartment blocks. There stood the perimeter wall that surrounded the Centellas ground. A huge ochre monstrosity of a wall, which had borne the indignities inflicted by the elements over many years.

‘I killed her. They’re going to be searching for us.’

‘If you really did kill her, they won’t be after us for a while. The real danger is if you
didn’t
kill her. Leave the car parked so’s we can make a quick getaway.’

It was as if somebody was trying to make things easy for them, because as they walked in they saw the faded lettering of a sign over one of the doors, which said: ‘Dressing Rooms Only — No Entry’. Marta pushed the door, and it opened onto a small courtyard paved with weeds and broken bricks. On the other side was the door which led into the dressing rooms. From outside they heard the sound of somebody kicking a football, and voices, and a whistle, and people shouting to each other. The woman steeled herself and penetrated into the half light of the dressing room, where she was suddenly confronted with the sight of all the lockers hanging wide open. As her eyes got used to the dark, her gaze wandered downwards, and she saw a body lying on the floor, in a pool of dark blood. It was the body of a man. He was staring at the ceiling, and Marta leaned over him, and thought that she saw a glimmer of light in his eyes and his lips attempting to say something. Her companion just stood there, petrified, but she
stretched out a hand to see whether Palacín was dead or alive. Then his lips stopped moving, and his eyes glazed over. It was at this point that they heard a screeching of car brakes outside and the opening and shutting of car doors. Before the pair of them had time to gather their wits, the dressing room door smashed back against the wall, threatening to demolish it on the spot, and a squad of policemen leapt at them, shouting, and with their guns raised and ready to strike. All the pair were aware of was a hail of blows raining down and a total internal silence.

The dressing gown was made of silk, and the tube of sleeping pills was innocent sky-blue in colour. This much registered on Carvalho as he toyed with the pills, while from the bathroom came the sound of Camps O’Shea spewing his guts up the sink. Basté de Linyola wrinkled his nose, as if his impatient pacing up and down the living room of his PR man’s flat was not already a sufficient display of his disgust. The dressing gown looked like the best that money can buy, and it was awaiting the arrival of its owner once he had finished vomiting up the tube of pills that he had consumed shortly after having written notes to both Carvalho and Basté. Carvalho had not opened his. Since the attempted suicide had been a failure, he was waiting for Camps to give him permission before he read it. From the bathroom he heard the sound of a voice — that of the doctor who was directing the intestinal evacuation of the would-be suicide. The doctor was the first to appear, in shirtsleeves and looking as if he’d just supervised a particularly difficult birth. He was very young, too young in fact, and evidently felt it necessary to conceal his age: ‘Everything’s under control,’ he said, with excessive rotundity, as if World War Two had just come to an end. Only when he had put his jacket on did he write out a prescription, which he left on top of the silk dressing gown.

‘Do we owe you anything?’

‘I’ll see señor Dosrius about the bill.’

Just as he was about to beat a seemly but hasty retreat, Basté walked across and into his path.

‘Just a moment. Is that all?’

‘He was trying to tell someone something. The number of pills he took would only have been enough to put him to sleep for a day. I’ve made him vomit, but only as a precaution. He wanted to give you a fright. That’s all.’

By now any residual sympathy in Basté had totally evaporated.
He sat in an armchair facing the bathroom, and positioned himself into the stance of a father waiting to receive an ungrateful and inconsiderate son. There was no sound from the toilet, and when Camps finally appeared, he came in slow motion, as if willing himself forward. He stood before them, in his pyjamas, but obviously feeling naked. He had dark rings round his eyes, his lips were tinged with purple, and his face was hanging so low in shame that at any moment it looked like falling off. Basté allowed himself a dramatic pause so as to enable his first words to ring out more emphatically.

‘So? You owe us an explanation, Sito. And particularly to me.’

‘I’m sorry, Carlos.’

‘Sito, you are a grown man, and I have helped you as much as I was able, out of the respect that I have for your father. But I cannot permit you to play stupid tricks, frightening your friends like this. I insist, you owe me an explanation.’

‘It’s in the letter …’

‘Your letter is gibberish, Sito. I can’t make head or tail of it. What are you supposed to be guilty of? Whom have you killed? In the name of all that’s holy, who have you murdered, and what’s all this about anonymous notes?’

Camps needed something to cover him, and he retrieved his silk dressing gown in order to don it as a protective armour. He thus regained sufficient stature to be able to lose it again in the depths of a leather armchair which enveloped him like a friendly glove.

‘Well?’

‘Stop it! I won’t have you treating me like this! I’m not your slave, Carlos! For fuck’s sake!’

It was probably the first time in his life that Camps had ever said ‘fuck’, and it was probably the first time in his life that anyone had said such a word to Basté de Linyola.

‘Don’t take it like that, Sito.’

‘How am I supposed to take it? I am confused, humiliated,
and angry with myself. Can’t you see that? At least you understand, Carvalho, don’t you …?’

‘I don’t know anything about anything. I haven’t opened my note, but I think I know what it says. You’re the author of the anonymous letters, aren’t you …’

‘Yes. It’s horrible.’

‘Very good, Sito. So you’re the author of the anonymous letters. But does that mean that you have to go round committing suicide and putting on this ridiculous performance? You have shown a degree of stupidity that I would not have expected from you. And that is that. Why do you have to complicate my life, and everybody else’s?’

‘I knew nothing about it until last night. I turned the radio on before I went to bed. That was when I found out about the murder.’

‘What murder?’

‘You mean you haven’t heard? You neither, Carvalho?’

Carvalho admitted his ignorance. Basté also claimed ignorance, although he may only have been pretending, having by now recovered his bearings.

‘You really haven’t heard? It turns out that a footballer was killed last night. From one of the lesser clubs, but you’ll know the name. Palacín. The centre forward who one time looked set to conquer the world. I remember him from when I was a kid. I used to think he was amazing. Do you remember Palacín, Carlos?’

Carlos remained silent.

‘He signed a few weeks ago for Centellas, and yesterday the police found him dead. Apparently they also found the two people who killed him. And in four of the players’ lockers they discovered drugs.’

‘Well?’

‘Is that all you can say?’

‘No. The truth is, I’m going to get very annoyed in a minute. What exactly is the connection between this murder and your
anonymous notes? Was it you who killed him?’

‘No, for heaven’s sake. What I was doing was a game, a dangerous game, maybe, but still a game. I didn’t even know that Palacín was in Barcelona and that he was still playing. I swear it.’

‘All right, you’re going to have to explain, then. What on earth persuaded you to go and make yourself responsible for the murder, and drag us all out of bed at four o’clock in the morning?’

‘Don’t you remember, Carlos: “Because you have usurped the function of the gods who, in another age, guided the conduct of men, without bringing supernatural consolation, but simply the therapy of the most irrational of cries, the centre forward will be killed at dusk.” He was killed at dusk! Don’t you understand? I’m sure Carvalho understands, don’t you?’

‘I understand. You are a sensitive soul. A poet.’

‘Stupid, more like.’

Basté got up and began buttoning his charcoal-grey velvet jacket. Its elegance was almost an affront at that hour of the morning.

‘I am not concerned with the extreme stupidity of what you have done — both things — the anonymous letters, and then this ludicrous suicide attempt. The problem is that now you’re going to have to be very careful, so that the police don’t try and link your notes with the murder. They are two entirely separate issues, and I have no intention of letting the club’s name get mixed up in this grubby little business. Not just for my sake, you understand. I’m concerned for the prestige of the club that I represent. You’re going to have to get yourself sorted out with the police. I can cover for you as long as the situation gets no more complicated than it already is. That’s as much as I have to say. When this has all blown over, I shall expect your resignation. As for you, Carvalho, you’ll receive what’s due to you, and I expect to hear no more of it. You haven’t done a lot for your money. You’ll get a cheque, and I won’t require a receipt.’

‘So at least I’ll save on the VAT.’

‘And the cheque will be sufficiently generous for you to keep your mouth shut. This whole business has been ridiculously childish. And before I go, Sito, I want to say something else. I realize that this job has been a bit restrictive for you, and you wanted to live it as a work of literature. That’s a very dangerous exercise, of a kind which could destroy even the best of writers — which you, incidentally, are not. I am the president of a football club in the same sense that I could be president of the United Nations. I don’t feel that I have been banished here from some higher destiny, probably because I have done things in my life. You, on the other hand, have acted like a spoilt child. You wouldn’t even make an actor. And another thing: please, the next time you decide to try suicide, don’t come bothering your friends.’

The noise of a closing door indicated that Basté was on his way out. Camps had a look of increasing incredulity on his face, and launched into a tirade against the cruelty of his departing employer, the cold-bloodedness of victors in their hour of triumph, and the even greater cold-bloodedness of victors who feel that their victory wasn’t as great as they deserved.

‘His only interest is in getting the shit buried.’

‘I expect Contreras will be wanting to see us.’

‘He’s rung already. He’s expecting us at ten this morning. He’s of the opinion that the whole business has now been cleared up. Apparently the police found a couple of no-hopers standing next to the dead man’s body. They had some kind of relationship with the man, although it’s not entirely clear what. It appears it was a revenge killing, or a settling of accounts. The cocaine which turned up in the dressing rooms seems to have implicated other Centellas players too. It was a magical coincidence, Carvalho. Magic. Do you believe in magic? No. I thought as much. How else can we explain it, though?’