The Frozen Heart (110 page)

She wanted a cigarette, but that was not why she asked. Taking the packet out of her bag, lighting a cigarette, picking up the ashtray on the desk and setting it next to her, was all a carefully calculated ploy to cover another strategic pause.

‘It’s not just books, there are films too, they’re making documentaries about the war, about the post-war period, about the Spanish camps, the French camps, the children that were taken away from republican prisoners, the disappearances ...’ She feigned surprise. ‘Back in 1977, nobody ever mentioned these things, did they?’ She allowed a hard edge to creep into her voice. ‘Judges these days are happy to issue an exhumation order for anyone the fascists summarily executed during the war, or after the war. They’ve been digging them up from ditches on the roadside, finding them in wells and canyons ... Have you seen it in the papers? They even mention it on TV sometimes. Imagine what the killers must feel like, because most of them are still alive, the Falangists, the members of the Guardia Civil ... They’d be about your age now, though some of them would be younger. Imagine them, retired, happily, watching TV and suddenly a judge makes an order and
bam!
it all comes out ...’

Raquel Fernández Perea was betting everything on a single card. It was her one shot and she was making it up as she went along, but she put her trust in fear, this ancient fear that had been slowly curdling since a warm May afternoon in 1977. Her rival’s impassivity made it impossible to judge the success of her performance, but at least he wasn’t laughing.

‘Oh, I know nobody’s going to do any more than that, nobody’s going to put them on trial or lock them up, but their children, their friends, their neighbours, the grandchildren’s classmates ...’ She closed her eyes, and shook her head. ‘Not a pretty picture, is it? Not that I think they don’t deserve it, but it can’t be pleasant, especially in this country. But, you know, everything changes, nothing stays the same, especially here in Spain.’ She smiled, her courage returning. ‘I won’t lie to you, I’m delighted. I think of it as justice, but I realise that justice is something that is rarely observed here in Spain. That’s why I said that I understand you, I understand why you feel you should be allowed to get away with it. But I think you’re mistaken, Señor Carrion, I have to tell you, in all honesty. You’re mistaken, like all those other men, and for them it’s too late to stop their grandchildren finding out who they really were, the crimes they committed, the people they tortured or kidnapped.’

Raquel Fernández Perea stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray and realised her heart was pounding. She had shown her card. It was there on the desk, and it was all she had. ‘On the other hand, I’ve given this a great deal of thought, as I told you, and I think one million euros is a fair price. I know no one is going to put you on trial, Señor Carrion, at least not at the moment. I hope by now you’ve realised I’m no fool. I know that nobody is going to take away what never belonged to you, because it’s one thing the political parties and unions taking back what was stolen from them, but private individuals are a different matter. Don’t think for a moment I don’t know that. But if we can’t come to some arrangement, you are leaving yourself open to severe repercussions — not prison, I’ll grant you, but deeply unpleasant nonetheless.’

Julio Carrion loosened his tie and opened the top two buttons of his shirt. He was deeply uncomfortable now, and he could not have chosen a worse moment to show it. Raquel Fernández Perea felt her body relax, her smile broaden, her foot shifting easily to the accelerator.

‘If we don’t come to some arrangement, I might be forced to publish these documents. I’m sure they would make a fascinating addendum to a book, a book that told the story of your life, Señor Carrion, and that of your mother-in-law, the woman who gave Paloma’s husband up to the Falangists ...’

She forced herself to take an unscheduled pause to calm herself a little.

‘My family still has photos of your mother-in-law, and of your wife Angelica when she was a child. We might even publish the beautiful love letter Carlos sent to Paloma when he was in prison a few days before they shot him. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bestseller, but I’m sure it would sell, it’s a popular subject these days. I wouldn’t make much out of it because I’d have to split the money with the author, but that doesn’t matter. I’ve made enough money out of the Calle Tetuán apartment so ... Just think about it, Señor Carrion. I wouldn’t be famous, but you would be.’ She gave a little laugh as though this last thought amused her. ‘I know that a scandal in a large city is different to a scandal in a little village, because in a place like Madrid everything gets watered down, and your children probably already know that you’re a crook, I mean, you all work together, but I’m betting it would make your company famous ...’

When she had stepped into the office, she hadn’t been sure that she would have to go this far. She had rehearsed this part of the speech as carefully as the rest, but she was aware that it was more precarious, more risky, than personal threats. She had been prepared to wait for a more propitious moment, to wait for him to explode, but Julio Carrion was not looking well, he was very pale, and his breath was coming in gasps.

‘I don’t think it would be to your advantage, because like all big construction companies you’re very dependent on public investment, commissions, subsidies ... If people were to find out who you really are, where your money comes from, there would be no more motorways, Don Julio, no more building permits allowing you to build luxury developments as long as you agree a percentage of social or affordable housing should be built on-site.’ He didn’t even smile. ‘That’s how it works, isn’t it? No political party would risk the backlash of continuing to line your pockets, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t think many private companies would risk it either. I’ve thought long and hard about this and I think a million euros is very reasonable. I’m not trying to ruin you or even to leave you in poverty. I could have multiplied that amount by any figure I liked, but then you would have had to explain things, sell off assets, leave a big hole it would be difficult to account for. Of course, that would be the perfect revenge, but I don’t want revenge. All I want is a fair deal. I’m sure it won’t be too hard for you to lay your hands on a million euros without anybody noticing. I can give you a hand myself, if you like. As I’m sure Sebastián told you, I’m an investments adviser, and you’re one of our clients; I checked our files. You’d simply need to sell off a few shares.’

Now Julio Carrion began to move. His hands were shaking as he reached into his shirt pocket and took out a scuffed silver pillbox and poured the contents on to the desk, looking for a small white pill, which he picked up with trembling fingers. He put it in his mouth and swallowed it without water, although there was a bottle and some glasses next to him. Suddenly, Raquel was scared. She saw him close his eyes, saw his head fall back against his chair and realised that this little drama was over.

She gathered up the photocopies, slipped them back into the briefcase and got to her feet. She was sure that nothing else would happen, but just then Julio Carrion opened his eyes, leaned forward, gripping the arms of the chair, and finally spoke:

‘You’re nothing but lowlife scum ...’

‘I know,’ Raquel smiled, ‘but I think it’s about time that the lowlife scum was a Fernández, don’t you?’

Then she headed for the door. She was so excited, she wanted to scream, but when she reached the door, she turned and said: ‘Sebastián has my details. I’d be grateful if you could get back to me as soon as possible.’

But Julio Carrion González would never get back to Raquel Fernández Perea. This was the one detail she had not reckoned on, the one eventuality she had not foreseen as she began to plan her future.

 

At work, nobody saw any problem in giving her a mortgage against the Calle Jorge Juan apartment so she could pay for her grandmother’s apartment in cash. When it was all over, Raquel decided, she would sell the apartment, pay off the mortgage and keep the profit. The rest — the million euros she expected to get any day now — she would give to Anita so that, when the time came, she would inherit no more than her rightful share. The mechanics of how this would work was the only weak point in her plan. She had not worked out how to restore some part of the Fernández Muñoz fortune without her grandmother realising she had broken her promise, but there was plenty of time to think about that. When Carrion did not get back to her immediately she was not worried. It’s difficult to raise a lot of money without inviting suspicion, she knew this better than anyone, and she assumed that the president of Promociones del Noreste would once again ask Sebastián López Parra to handle the matter. So, when she showed up at the solicitor’s office for their meeting, she was quite certain the documents to be signed would not be the only thing they had to discuss.

‘I suppose you heard?’

‘What?’ She tried to sound jokey, but she realised something serious had happened.

‘Don Julio had a heart attack about a week ago, not this Friday but the Friday before, the day you came by the office.’

‘You’re not serious!’ Her alarm was palpable. ‘That’s terrible ... I thought he looked a bit pale ...’

‘Yes.’ Sebastián nodded. ‘Me too. When I went up to see him he said he was going home, that he didn’t feel well. He said I shouldn’t be angry with you, that you’d just stopped by to ask some silly question ...’

‘Yes, it was just a family thing, it’s a long story ...’ Raquel paused and looked at Sebastián. She realised that he had no way of knowing the truth. ‘Anyway, it’s not important. The poor man, how is he?’

‘Not good, not good at all. He’d already had a serious heart attack six months ago and a couple of close calls before that — his heart is weak and ... I don’t know, but I don’t think the doctors expect him to come through this time.’

He did not come through. Two weeks later, the Carrion family published his death notice in three Madrid newspapers. The notice was simple and tasteful and gave no date or time for the funeral, but Raquel Fernández Perea had an idea. While in Madrid, no cemetery would have given her the information she asked for; in Torrelodones, they did not even ask for her name.

The first day of March 2005 dawned, the sun was shining, the sky a deep cobalt blue, so pure, so intense, it looked like an illustration in a children’s book — a perfect sky, clear, deep, translucent. Raquel arrived in the village before the funeral cortege and stopped to let it pass. When the hearse turned into the cemetery, she locked her car and went into a bar for a coffee, but it was so cold that she couldn’t get warm.

A quarter of an hour later, she went back to her car and drove to the cemetery. There, standing apart from the others, halfway between the cemetery gate and the grave, a dark-haired man turned towards her and looked into her eyes.

I
was eleven years old, and my parents had a summer house in a little village in Navacerrada. It was a two-storey house with a garage and a garden in a development divided into half-acre plots, all exactly the same, although some of them had swimming pools. It was set on a hillside surrounded by pine forests, the classic summer resort for the aspiring middle classes. There were no gates, no security of any kind, the streets were little more than tracks, but there was an open space the size of a football pitch and about a dozen kids of my age.

 

‘Rafa?’

‘Yes?’

‘Hi, it’s Alvaro.’

Four years later my father built a house in La Moraleja where we could live all year round, with a garden so big we never really used all of it and a swimming pool three or four times the size of the one we had had in Navacerrada. His family was no longer part of the middle classes so he sold the summer house. Nobody seemed to miss it apart from me. My older brothers were too old now to enjoy the monotony of summers in the mountains and Clara hadn’t yet discovered the bicycle, but I had always been happy there, and I still have a scar on my left leg to remind me.

‘I’ve been expecting you to call.’

‘Are you at the office? I need to talk to you.’

‘Not now, Alvaro, it’s nearly half past two ...’

That afternoon, a few of us had taken our bikes down to the dam. We had been expressly forbidden to go there, which is why we went. To get there, you had to cycle along a busy road and then cross it to get to the finish line — the bridge over the reservoir. The fishermen didn’t even look round at us when we arrived, but we felt proud, a feeling that quickly dissipated when we realised there was nothing to do there but look at the water. We left our bikes by the path and lay down on the grass on the far bank of the reservoir, reminding each other that we were now in Becerril rather than Navacerrada, and thinking about the ride home, which was much steeper than the route we had taken to get here.

‘OK, then. Why don’t we have lunch?’

‘No, I can’t, I’ve got a meeting with someone from the Castilla — La Mancha Department of Public Works.’

‘What time will you be back in the office?’

Until one of us realised that there were a lot of different ways to race. The idea probably came from the stages of the Tour de France or the Vuelta a España which we would watch on television in the afternoons, each day in a different house, scrupulously following a specific order so that nobody’s mother got angry, and avoiding houses that had a swimming pool as much as possible so that we could continue to go swimming in the mornings. We didn’t have stopwatches, but we always synchronised the second hands of our watches and raced against the clock along the last street of the development, although to celebrate the finals, we always went to the bridge over the reservoir.

‘About five o’clock ... I don’t know, Alvaro, I don’t think there’s much point us meeting today, do you? I already know you’ve left Mai, I know that you’ve left her for another woman, and I’m not having a go, I have to assume you know what you’re doing. Isabel and I have no intention of getting involved, so ...’