The Shadow of the Wind (50 page)

'Police! Open up!'

A thousand daggers stabbed at my mind. Another volley of banging made the door shake. My father walked up to the doorway and lifted the cover of the peephole.

'What do you want at this time of night?'

'Open the door or we'll kick it down, Sempere. Don't make me have to repeat myself.'

I recognized the voice as Fumero's, and my heart turned to ice. My father threw me a questioning look. I nodded. Suppressing a sigh, he opened the door. Fumero and his two henchmen were silhouetted against the yellowish light of the landing, ashen-faced puppets in grey raincoats.

'Where is he?' shouted Fumero, swiping my father aside and pushing his way into the dining room.

My father tried to stop him, but one of the policemen who was covering the inspector's back grabbed him by the arm and pushed him against the wall, holding him with the coldness and efficiency of a man accustomed to the task. It was the same man who had followed Fermin and myself, the same one who had held me while Fumero beat up my friend outside the Hospice of Santa Lucia, the same one who had kept watch on me a couple of nights before. He shot me an empty, deadpan look. I went up to Fumero, displaying all the calm I could muster. The inspector's eyes were bloodshot. A recent scratch ran down his left cheek, edged with dry blood.

'Where?'

'Where what?'

Fumero looked down suddenly and shook his head, mumbling to himself. When he raised his face, he had a wolfish grimace on his lips and a revolver in his hand. Without taking his eyes off mine, he banged the butt of his revolver against the vase of withered flowers on the table. The vase smashed into small fragments, spilling the water and shrivelled stalks over the tablecloth. Despite myself, I shivered. My father was shouting from the entrance hall, held firmly in the grip of the two policemen. I could barely decipher his words. All I could absorb was the icy pressure of the gun's barrel sunk into my cheek, and the smell of gunpowder.

'Don't fuck with me, you little shit, or your father will have to pick up your brains off the floor. Do you hear me?'

I nodded. I was shaking. Fumero pressed the barrel hard against my cheek. I could feel it cutting into my skin, but I didn't even dare blink.

'This is the last time I'll ask you. Where is he?'

I saw myself reflected in the black pupils of the inspector's eyes. They slowly contracted as he tightened the hammer with his thumb.

'Not here. I haven't seen him since lunchtime. It's the truth.'

Fumero stood still for almost half a minute, digging the gun into my face and smacking his lips.

'Lerma,' he ordered. 'Take a look around.'

One of the policemen hurried off to inspect the apartment. My father struggled in vain with the third officer.

'If you've lied to me and we find him in this house, I swear I'll break both your father's legs,' whispered Fumero.

'My father doesn't know anything. Leave him alone.'

'You're the one who doesn't know what he's playing at. But as soon as I get hold of your friend, the game's over. No judges, no hospitals, no fucking nothing. This time I'll personally see to it that he's put out of circulation. And I'm going to enjoy doing it, believe me. I'm going to take my time. You can tell him if you see him. Because I'm going to find him even if I have to turn over every stone in the city. And you're next on the list.'

The officer called Lerma reappeared in the dining room and gave a slight shake of his head. Fumero loosened his grip on the hammer and removed the revolver.

'Pity,' said Fumero.

'What has he done? Why are you looking for him?'

Fumero turned his back on me and went up to the policemen, who, at his signal, let go of my father.

'You're going to remember this,' spat my father.

Fumero's eyes rested on his. Instinctively, my father took a step back. I feared that Inspector Fumero's visit had only just begun, but suddenly the man shook his head, laughing under his breath, and left the apartment. Lerma followed him. The third policeman, my sentinel, paused for a moment in the doorway. He looked silently at me, as if he wanted to say something.

'Palacios!' yelled Fumero, his voice fading into the echo of the stairwell.

Palacios lowered his eyes and disappeared round the door. I went out to the landing. I could see blades of light emerging from the half-open doors of the neighbours, their frightened faces peeping out in the dark. The three shadowy shapes of the policemen vanished down the stairs, and the angry sound of their footsteps receded like a poisoned tide, leaving behind it a residue of fear.

It was about midnight when we heard more banging on the door, this time weaker, almost fearful. My father, who was dabbing iodine on the bruise left on my cheek by Fumero's gun, stopped in his tracks. Our eyes met. There were three more knocks.

For a moment I thought it was Fermin, who had perhaps witnessed the whole incident hidden in some dark corner of the staircase.

'Who's there?' asked my father.

'Don Anacleto, Senor Sempere.'

My father gave out a sigh. We opened the door to find the teacher, looking paler than ever.

'Don Anacleto, what's the matter? Are you all right?' my father asked, letting him in.

The teacher was holding a folded newspaper. He handed it to us with a horrified look. The paper was still warm, the ink still damp.

'It's tomorrow's edition,' murmured Don Anacleto. 'Page six.'

What first caught my eye were the two photographs under the heading. The first was a picture of Fermin, with a fuller figure and more hair, perhaps fifteen or twenty years younger. The second showed the face of a woman with her eyes closed and skin like marble. It took me a few seconds to recognize her, because I was used to seeing her in the half-light.

TRAMP MURDERS WOMAN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

Barcelona Press Agency

Police are looking for the tramp who stabbed a woman to death this afternoon. Her name was Nuria Monfort Masdedeu, and she lived in Barcelona.

The crime took place in midafternoon in the neighbourhood of San Gervasio, where the victim was assaulted by the tramp with no apparent motive. According to Central Police Headquarters, it would appear that the tramp had been following her for reasons that have not yet been made clear.

It seems that the murderer, 55-year-old Antonio Jose Gutierrez Alcayete, from Villa Inmunda in the province of Caceres, is a well-known criminal with a long record of mental illness, who escaped from La Modelo Prison six years ago and has managed to elude the authorities by assuming different identities. At the time of the murder, he was dressed in a cassock. He is armed, and the police describe him as highly dangerous. It is not yet known whether the victim and her murderer knew one another, although sources from Police Headquarters indicate that everything points towards this; nor is it known what may have been the motive behind the crime. The victim was stabbed six times in her stomach, chest, and throat. The attack, which took place close to a school, was witnessed by a number of pupils, who alerted the teachers. They in turn called the police and an ambulance. According to the police report, death was caused by multiple wounds. The victim was pronounced dead on arrival at Barcelona's Hospital Clinico at 18.15.

41

We had no news from Fermin all day. My father insisted on opening the bookshop as usual, as if nothing had happened and as a declaration of Fermin's innocence. The police had posted an officer by the door to our stairs, and another watched over the Plaza Santa Ana, sheltering beneath the church door like the effigy of a saint. We could see them shivering under the heavy rain that had arrived with the dawn, the steam from their breath becoming less visible as the day wore on, their hands buried in the pockets of their raincoats. A few neighbours walked straight past, with a quick glance through the shop window, but not a single buyer ventured in.

'The rumour must have spread,' I said.

My father only nodded. He'd spent all morning without speaking to me, expressing himself only through gestures. The page detailing the news of Nuria Monfort's murder lay on the counter. Every twenty minutes he would wander over and reread it with an inscrutable expression. All day long he had been bottling up his anger, letting it accumulate inside him.

'However many times you read the article, it's not going to be true,' I said.

My father raised his head and looked at me severely. 'Did you know this person? Nuria Monfort?'

'I'd spoken to her a couple of times.'

Nuria Monfort's face took over my thoughts. My lack of honesty was nauseating. I was still haunted by her smell and the touch of her lips, the image of that desk so impeccably tidy and her sad, wise eyes. 'A couple of times.'

'Why did you have to speak to her? What did she have to do with you?'

'She was an old friend of Julian Carax. I went to see her to ask her what she remembered about Carax. That's all. She was Isaac's daughter, the keeper. He was the one who gave me her address.'

'Did Fermin know her?'

'No.'

'How can you be sure?'

'How can you doubt him and believe these lies? All Fermin knew about that woman was what I told him.'

'And is that why he was following her?'

'Yes.'

'Because you'd asked him to.'

I didn't answer. My father heaved a sigh.

'You don't understand, Dad.'

'You can be sure of that. I don't understand you, or Fermin, or—'

'Dad, from what we know of Fermin, what it says there is impossible.'

‘And what do we know about Fermin, eh? To begin with, it turns out that we didn't even know his real name.'

'You're mistaken about him.'

'No, Daniel. You're the one who's mistaken. Who asked you to go digging into other people's lives?'

'I'm free to speak to whoever I want.'

'I suppose you also feel free from the consequences.'

'Are you insinuating that I'm responsible for this woman's death?'

'This woman, as you call her, had a first name and a surname, and you knew her.'

'There's no need to remind me,' I answered with tears in my eyes.

My father looked at me sadly, shaking his head. 'Oh, God, I don't even want to think how poor Isaac must be feeling.'

'It's not my fault she's dead,' I said in a tiny voice, thinking that perhaps if I repeated those words often enough, I would end up believing them.

My father retired to the back room, still shaking his head.

'You know what you're responsible for and what you're not, Daniel. Sometimes I don't know who you are anymore.'

I grabbed my raincoat and escaped into the street and the rain, where nobody would know me.

I gave myself up to the freezing rain, going nowhere in particular. I walked with my eyes downcast, carrying with me the image of Nuria Monfort, lifeless, stretched out on a cold marble slab, her body riddled with stab wounds. I passed a crossing with Calle Fontanella and didn't stop to look at the traffic lights. It was only when a strong gust of wind hit my face that I turned to see a wall of metal and light hurtling towards me at full speed. At the last moment, a passer-by pulled me back and moved me out of the bus's path. I gazed at the metal behemoth that shimmered only an inch or two from my face; what could have been certain death speeding by, a tenth of a second away. By the time I realized what had happened, the person who had saved my life was walking away over the pedestrian crossing, just a silhouette in a grey raincoat. I remained rooted to the spot, breathless. Through the curtain of rain, I noticed that my saviour had stopped on the other side of the street and was watching me under the downpour. It was the third policeman, Palacios. A thick wall of traffic slid by between us, and when I looked again, Officer Palacios was no longer there.