Off Side (27 page)

‘Death is like fate. It comes to find you. But it has its own logic. Sometimes it’s so complicated to unravel the threads that you end up getting lost. One centre forward was threatened, but
another one ends up getting killed.’

‘The similarities are entirely coincidental, Carvalho. That’s the amazing thing about the whole business.’

‘On this occasion everyone will agree that it was a coincidence. Contreras in particular, especially if he thinks he’s already solved the case.’

‘We’ll have to let Contreras do the talking.’

Yes, they would have to let him do the talking. It was necessary that he made the final statement on the matter, and then signed it. The best statements are always the ones that the police write for you when they agree with you, or when you need to be in agreement with them. Carvalho turned into the street and went looking for a newspaper kiosk. There were few kiosks in the upper part of town, and this meant walking all the way to Plaza de Sarriá before he found one. The news was featured in a small item on the front pages: acting on information received, the police had shown up at the Centellas FC ground, which they suspected was being used as a base for drug dealing. The raid was mounted as a surprise operation, and as they broke into the dressing rooms of the historic football club they discovered a young couple and the body of a man who had been murdered. It appears that this was Alberto Palacín, a Centellas player. The couple were arrested, and their names have been given as Marta Becera Gozalo and M. Ll., both unemployed and of no fixed abode. It was subsequently revealed that the woman was a professional prostitute and drug dealer. After a thorough search of the dressing-room lockers, four other people were arrested — all of them Centellas players. They were found with quantities of cocaine in their lockers in excess of what could be expected for strictly personal use. It is still too early to formulate an overall view of the matter, but it has been suggested that Alberto Palacín was a linkman with the American Mafia, and that Marta Becera Gozalo and M. Ll. were drug distributors working for him. The evidence seems to indicate that the footballer was killed by the couple in the heat of the moment after
an argument, and that Centellas FC was being used as a cover for drug-dealing operations whose ramifications the police are now investigating. The club’s chairman, the industrialist Juan Sánchez Zapico, said that he was shocked to hear about these developments, because they threatened the very survival of this historic club, which has, he said, been under threat of closure after its financial troubles and its poor performance in recent years. Sánchez Zapico, who has fought hard for the club’s survival, revealed his disappointment to us, and used a historic turn of phrase to indicate how depressed he was: ‘I did not send my ships out to fight with elements such as these.’

Why did the girl have her full name printed, and her companion only his initials? Carvalho had only two possible answers: either his family had pulled a few strings, or he had been the one who had tipped off the police about the drugs. The news article said nothing about the weapon used or the circumstantial evidence of the killing. Carvalho browsed through the centre forward’s brief CV with a degree of interest that surprised him. Some people are born lucky, and some are broken before they even start, he concluded as he read of the short life and the scant miracles of Alberto Palacín, and somewhere in the inner recesses of his brain there registered the fact that the authorities were seeking the footballer’s ex-wife and son in order to inform them of his death. Carvalho had too much in front of him that day. Basté’s phone call had caught him as he was getting over the effects of a bottle of red Cacavelos which he had drunk to his own health, toasting himself and wishing for the night to turn as quickly as possible into sleep and forgetfulness.

‘They’re putting Bromide into a home tomorrow. They’ve even found him a bed.’ Biscuter and Charo had both phoned to pass on the news.

Having drunk the bottle he fell asleep. He dreamed of Camps O’Shea in the process of trying to commit suicide. He’d had to listen to the sound of his vomiting, spewing up everything, and
now his consciousness was full of premonitions of death. The centre forward had been killed at dusk. If destiny exists, he thought, a person would have to commit suicide. Sooner rather than later.

‘How many hours have you been on your feet, now?’

Marta shrugged her shoulders, but even this simple gesture sent a vibrating pain right through her body. She felt like a tensed steel hawser and she ached all over, from her swollen feet to her tired and drooping head. The weight of bewilderment in her brain was slowly turning into a tumour which was becoming increasingly malignant as she reviewed the absurd circumstances of her life.

‘Do you want to sit down?’

What was the name of this unspeakable policeman, who was just as vile as the others, but who was offering friendliness in the manner of a gentleman offering a woman a seat on a bus?

‘I’m going to tell you what happened, and then, if you care to repeat it the way I told you, you can sign the statement, and then we’ll let you sleep for as long as you want, Marta. Look, kid, it’ll be a weight off your mind. You had a relationship with the footballer. He was into big-time drug dealing, and you were just small fry. You got your boyfriend involved in the business as well. Palacín tried to pull a fast one on you. You went to see him for an explanation. When he refused to explain, you stabbed him.’

‘What with? We weren’t armed.’

‘Your boyfriend had a knife on him.’

‘For trimming his nails.’

It hurt when she tried to think. She was sore all over from the blows she had received at the hands of the police, and all her extremities were aching from the pain of not having been allowed to sit down, not even to go to the toilet. ‘I want to piss.’ ‘Piss where you are, then.’ And she had, and they had punched her in the back and threatened to make her drink it. ‘Where’s my friend?’
‘He’s said his piece. They’ll be sorting out his bail soon, and then he can go home.’

‘You did it because you were hooked on drugs. If you were hooked on drugs, the judges will count it as a mitigating factor. You know you’re hooked. If you weren’t hooked, you wouldn’t have done what you did.’

‘We only went there to steal money.’

‘What about the stolen car?’

‘Travel. We wanted to travel.’

‘You know there’s more to it than that, Marta. You can tell me — just think of me as your father. And just remember — I could always hand you over to some of our younger officers, and they’re capable of just about anything. You know that there’s a lot more to it than what you’ve told me. If you give me a way out, then I can sort things out for you. You with me? I can’t go to my superiors, and those bastards from the press, without a result. You help me and I’ll help you. I want a statement from you to the effect that Palacín was a drug dealer, and was also running you as a prostitute.’

‘No. He wasn’t a dealer. He was just a poor bastard like me.’

‘Eighteen hours without sleep, kid. Eighteen hours without sitting down. And it can go on. Twenty, thirty, forty … I can use the anti-terrorist legislation in your case if I need to, because, in my opinion, you were preparing an armed hold-up. Are you with me, Marta? Now look, your boyfriend’s been a bit cleverer than you. He’s signed his statement, and let’s say you don’t come out of it too well.’

‘Let him say it to my face.’

‘You won’t have a lot of face left, by the time the lads here have finished with you. Where did you get those scratches on your face? We don’t scratch, that’s for sure. Was it Palacín, before he died?’

‘He was already dead when we got there.’

‘I’m surprised at you, a well-educated girl like you, telling lies.
We’ve talked with your sister and your brother-in-law. They appear to be respectable people. And your boyfriend, even more so. Now listen. His father has a lot of influence, and neither you nor I have a lot going for us. He’s going to get an easy ride of it, because his family’s got money. But as far as I can see yours hasn’t. So let’s be sensible, eh? How and when was Palacín getting the drugs to you? And what did he do that provoked you to stab him?’

She had lost her sense of time, and felt the need to find out where Marçal was.

‘Where’s Marçal? How is he?’

‘A lot better off than you. He’s signed already. We’ll get him up before the judge shortly. He’ll get bail, and he’ll be off home in no time at all. Don’t be stupid, girl. You’ll end up signing what we want in the end. You’ll end up signing even for things that you never did. It’s just a matter of time and maybe a bit of rough handling. Nobody’s going to tell you that they’re going to jump you, because you’d probably like that. You’re just a bit of shit, kid, why kid ourselves? But a couple of smacks in the mouth is the least that you’re going to get from my boys … And I won’t go into what the rough ones might do. Trust me. You won’t hear a bad word against Contreras, Marta. I’ve been forty years in this job. A professional is a professional. Did you kill Palacín?’

‘No.’

‘You’ll talk soon enough. Look at the state of your face. What’s it going to look like after a good kicking? We’ve had guys in here who thought they were heroes, but they always end up singing like canaries, and I’m not going to have a dirty little bitch like you trying to bullshit me.’

A man who looked like he could handle himself and the world came into the office to tell Contreras that somebody was outside wanting to see him.

‘Watch this girl. Make sure she doesn’t move. Not even to lean her arse against the wall.’

On the other side of the opaque glass door he found Camps
O’Shea and Carvalho waiting for him. He greeted the detective with a grunt, and his companion with a handshake that suggested they were both veterans of a war that only the two of them remembered.

‘You’ve come at an interesting moment. That’s the way it is in police stations. Days and days of routine, and then all of a sudden a case that makes the headlines. It’s a shame that our man only played for a third-rate team, because if he’d been a big-time player, then we’d have an interesting case on our hands. I wanted to speak to you, very seriously. As for you, Carvalho, I really don’t care one way or the other. I’ll be happy as long as you just listen and take note.’

Having ushered them into an office, he sat down and waited for them to do the same. Carvalho did, but Camps remained standing until Contreras offered him a seat.

‘Right, now. I probably wouldn’t have bothered you if it wasn’t for the fact that we’ve got a curious coincidence here. We have a centre forward who was killed at dusk. But the centre forward who was killed at dusk wasn’t the same centre forward as the one in the letters, was he? So the question is, what is the connection here? Perhaps you can supply an answer?’

Carvalho and Camps looked at each other, but exchanged nothing more than the sense of expectation that the inspector had succeeded in creating in them. Thereupon Contreras resumed his role as the lead actor in the proceedings.

‘Do you see a connection?’

‘The stars?’ Carvalho ventured.

‘What did you say?’

‘The conjunction of the stars?’

‘I don’t know why I bother talking to you, and I find it even harder to understand why anyone ever wastes their money hiring you. The answer is, there
is
no connection. There can’t be. The purpose of the anonymous letters was to generate confusion in a particular powerful club and the cross-section of society that
it represents. The actual killing, on the other hand, was a gutter killing in which the principal characters were not much better than sewer rats. Coincidence required that the dead man in this instance was a centre forward. But this was pre-destined. Something guides the destiny of men, to be winners or losers. And once that has been established, agreements need to be arrived at. At this moment it is particularly important that the business of the anonymous letters is kept secret. Nobody must know, even if they continue arriving. In my opinion they’re being written by some poor bastard who couldn’t kill a fly. But imagine what would happen if the news about the anonymous letters got out, and the gentlemen of the press started weaving fanciful notions around the fact that Palacín happened to be a centre forward. This would be less than useful to you, and less then useful to me too, because I have my foot on the neck of the woman who killed him. She, incidentally, also managed to involve a young lad from a very good family in her dirty dealings. Anyway, the anonymous letters must continue to be precisely that — anonymous. All right?’

Camps nodded in agreement, and was about to accede to the police chief’s obvious intention of dissolving their meeting.

‘Who gave you the tip-off?’

‘That’s no business of yours, Carvalho. It’s all sewn up now. And the press has been informed.’

‘Can I see your two prisoners?’

‘Are they clients of yours? Is señor Camps paying you to worry about them?’

‘Maybe they’re something to do with the anonymous letters. Maybe I’ve seen them around the stadium.’

‘Don’t complicate our lives, Carvalho. What do you think, señor Camps?’

‘Señor Carvalho is very professional.’

‘I’m keeping the pair of them apart. For the moment I don’t want to bring them face to face. You’ll see the boyfriend first.’

The boy was sitting next to a lawyer who had been sent in by his family. He was in the process of dictating the statement which had earlier been dictated to him by the self-same inspector who was now taking it down on the typewriter. He was freshly shaved and looked more circumspect than evasive, although his eyes seemed to run a mile when you tried to read anything in them. The woman, on the other hand, was still on her feet. The huge weight of tiredness in her body proclaimed the way she had been mistreated for the whole of a lifetime. Carvalho recognized her as the young prostitute who had offered him a literary screw, but she didn’t recognize him, and she gave him a desperate look full of fear and hatred.

‘How have they been treating you, kid?’