The Whispering City (44 page)

‘Another ciggie?’

‘Yeah.’

Manzaneque passed him one, then drew a box of matches from his jacket pocket. They were already crossing the Gran Vía.

‘Something up, Isidro?’

‘No.’

‘If you say so.’

Isidro shot him an incredulous look. Who did he think he was? His father? His older brother? Manzaneque didn’t catch it; he was lowering the car window to toss out his cigarette butt. Then he turned to Isidro. ‘We’ll have to find the owner, Beatriz Noguer.’

‘Yup.’

However, another question had begun to take shape in Isidro’s head. It was the reason behind the creeping irritation he’d been feeling since he entered the flat. Who, besides him, knew of Beatriz Noguer’s existence? Who could link her to the copies of the stolen letters?

60

Pablo had struggled all morning against his impulse to leave the office and return home. Early that afternoon he had an appointment with Commissioner Goyanes, whom he had called and asked to see, saying he wanted to discuss a case. He had taken the precaution of disguising his voice and not giving his name.

‘When we meet, I will identify myself properly,’ he had replied when Goyanes insisted.

Anonymous tip-offs and informants were the order of the day, the Commissioner accepted, albeit reluctantly. The bait that Pablo had offered him had been persuasive. In a tone somewhere between indignant and conspiratorial he had revealed that he had some evidence in his possession that was linked to ‘a murder case affecting top brass’, while stressing that he couldn’t be more explicit.

‘Because, unfortunately, I’m afraid that one of your men didn’t honestly fulfil his obligations. You do understand?’

Of course, the Commissioner had understood and agreed to the meeting. What Pablo hadn’t managed to get him to agree to was to meet outside of police headquarters, so he had to be careful not to run into Castro.

He was nervous, both wishing and fearing that the moment would arrive. The routine work he had on his desk wasn’t helping to make the hours pass quickly, but he had to keep up appearances. His absence from the firm would draw attention; he had never missed a day of work, not even after the liveliest nights or with the worst hangovers, whose ravages were still evident on his face when he turned up at work the next morning. Even though they hadn’t come right out and said it, he had the feeling that Pla and Calvet even appreciated his arriving at work punctually despite his lack of sleep and his pounding head. Cocaine had been a godsend for those mornings, until his bosses had set him up and he realised how vulnerable it made him. This morning he was relying on the help of coffee alone.

Now that he knew about Pla’s addiction, he felt his resentment growing, but his revenge, in whatever form, was a secondary matter. Helping Ana and his Aunt Beatriz took absolute priority. So he’d have to wait and play it cool.

He pulled it off. He went running out of his office at midday and said goodbye to Maribel. When he was already reaching the stairs, he heard her cry, ‘Pablo! Telephone!’

‘I’m late for an appointment,’ he shouted without stopping.

He started down the stairs.

‘It’s your father.’

He slowed his pace a little, but kept going. ‘I haven’t time right now.’

He reached his house just over half an hour later. As he went in he was surprised to find his Aunt Beatriz sitting in the hallway, on one of the stools that flanked the little telephone table.

‘It hasn’t stopped ringing in the last half-hour,’ she said, pointing to the phone. She was agitated. ‘But I didn’t answer it.’

As Pablo was taking off his jacket, the telephone rang again. Beatriz jumped. Ana appeared at the other end of the hallway. He couldn’t see her face because she was backlit, but he noticed the tension in her bearing. He snatched up the telephone and answered it.

‘Hello, Papa,’ he said, and grinned at his aunt.

Immediately the distress disappeared from Beatriz’s face. She leaned back on the stool and rested herself against the wall.

‘I’ve been trying to track you down for the last hour,’ said his father. ‘I called you at the office but you had already gone.’

‘I left the office on time today.’

‘They told me. That’s why I’ve been calling you at home.’

‘Ah! You must have been calling while I was on my way here,’ he said so that Beatriz and Ana would hear.

He looked up at the ceiling and composed a resigned expression. Beatriz shot him a complicit look that said ‘my brother can be so controlling’, and got up to let him speak in private. She was even smiling. Pablo couldn’t return the smile because his father had come to the reason for his call: ‘Son, something horrible has happened at your aunt’s house.’

Pablo put a hand on Beatriz’s shoulder to keep her from leaving. Ana had come closer.

‘What happened?’

Beatriz turned. The smile was wiped from her face as she heard the following words from her nephew: ‘Encarni, dead? How?’

‘Someone broke into the house. It looks as if it was an attempted burglary, and she surprised them. They hit her over the head.’

Pablo had enough presence of mind not to be distracted by the two women’s shock.

‘And Aunt Beatriz?’

‘That’s the worst of it, son, we don’t know where she is. No one has seen her in two days. I’m so worried. I’m afraid they’ve…’

His father couldn’t go on. Beatriz was making urgent gestures for Pablo to pass her the receiver. He shook his head and warned her to stay silent by bringing his index finger to his lips. He had the telephone pressed tightly to his ear and he could hear his father struggling to stifle a sob. He didn’t know how long he would have been able to hold out, between Beatriz’s silent pleading and his father’s barely contained anguish, if Ana hadn’t steered his aunt inside the flat.

‘What are the police saying?’

‘Nothing, of course. They have no idea. I spoke with the coroner, who is an acquaintance of mine, and he told me that it’s being handled by the best man in the CIB, Inspector Castro.’

‘I’ve heard of him.’

He had to remind himself how crucial his discretion was to keep from giving the game away to his father.

‘What if they’ve kidnapped her?’ his father conjectured.

‘Why would they kidnap Aunt Beatriz?’

‘I don’t know, perhaps to pressure me. I’m involved in a big property deal where there are a lot of interests at stake. I’ll just mention one name: Julio Muñoz.’

Muñoz was the king of Barcelona’s black market, a man as powerful as he was unscrupulous.

‘What can I do? What can I do?’

His father, who had always maintained his composure, even when, as a young child, a group of militiamen had burst into his family home and threatened to shoot him in the library, was falling to pieces.

Pablo had a flash of inspiration: ‘Wasn’t Aunt Beatriz wanting to spend a few days in La Rioja looking for some manuscripts? Don’t you remember her mentioning that at Aunt Blanca’s funeral?’

‘La Rioja?’

‘Yes. I remember distinctly. You were talking with somebody about some property, but she told you about it.’

His father clung to that impossible memory. Pablo wondered if the words he’d just invented weren’t already echoing in his father’s head.

‘Where could that sister of mine be…’

The expression Pablo had heard him say so many times in a disapproving tone now sounded filled with affection. His father was beginning to regain some of his calm.

‘I’ll let the police know. Poor thing! She’s going to be so upset when she finds out what’s happened! And now she’s in the library of some monastery, engrossed in a dusty manuscript.’

The more he talked, the more convinced he seemed by what he was saying. They spoke only a little longer because his father was in a rush to call the police.

He found Beatriz and Ana on the sofa in the sitting room, holding each other, both in tears. Ana was caressing her aunt’s hair and trying to console her.

‘I should have waited for her,’ repeated Beatriz in a litany.

‘They would have killed you too,’ Ana said.

‘But not her. They were looking for me. Not even that. They were looking for these damn papers.’

She lifted her face to speak to Ana. Her eyes were flooded with tears and two locks of hair fell over her forehead.

Pablo sat on her other side and took her hand.

‘Ana is right, Tieta. These people are extremely dangerous and, it seems, deranged.’

They sat for a long time until Beatriz was calmer. She had her head resting on Ana’s shoulder, who lulled her to sleep as she stroked her hair. Pablo held her hand. At one point he felt her grip loosening. She gradually fell silent too, stopped saying over and over that it was her fault. Pablo looked at her. She had her eyes closed, as if dozing. Ana had her eyes closed too, which allowed him to gaze at her with complete impunity. For a second the image of the two women resting on each other, breathing steadily, made him forget that they were in a situation that looked to be a dead end. He would have liked to preserve them like that, offer them a refuge that would keep them out of danger.

But it was merely an illusion. He couldn’t protect them from anything, and they couldn’t allow themselves to mourn Encarni’s death.

As if she had read his thoughts, Ana’s eyes sprang open with such force that Pablo thought he could hear it.

‘We can’t stay like this, waiting,’ she said.

In her face, Pablo recognised the determination of someone who knows there is no way out.

‘How long before your meeting with Goyanes?’

‘An hour.’

‘Well, let’s go over everything you have to say. Beatriz, you should lie down for a little while.’

‘How can I lie down?’

‘You have to rest a little, to get over the news of Encarni’s death.’

‘I don’t want to get over it. I don’t want to.’

Pablo noticed that Beatriz’s expression had shifted from sadness to rage. He was young, but he had been to enough funerals to know that this was the flip side of mourning, as necessary and human as the grief.

Encarni’s death didn’t change their plan; in fact, it only made it more pressing. They went over it together.

Soon afterwards, Pablo left the house and set off towards the Vía Layetana.

61

As soon as Isidro arrived at headquarters, he ordered Sevilla into his office. In the blink of an eye, the officer was standing before him.

‘Did anyone assist you when you made enquiries into Beatriz Noguer?’

‘No.’

Sevilla told him that he had followed the normal procedures to check if a person had a criminal record, that this was how he’d found out that she’d been purged, that she had lived in Argentina… The information that he had given to Isidro.

In order to get it he had had to make a few calls and request details in writing. All of which left a trail. An internal trail, but that was exactly what had been worrying Isidro since the disappearance of the letters and other materials on the Sobrerroca case: the thief was among them, on the force.

‘Why do you want to know?’ asked Sevilla.

Isidro was faced with a dilemma. Could he trust Sevilla, or was he the mole? He couldn’t imagine it was him. And he urgently needed someone he could confide in. In a matter of seconds, as the officer stood on the opposite side of his desk shifting his weight from foot to foot, Isidro made a decision: he would trust him. And if he was making a mistake, he’d damn it all to hell. He’d take his wife and his kids and they’d all go back to his village in Galicia.

‘Sit down, Sevilla.’

The officer obeyed.

‘What I am about to tell you is serious. Some very strange things have been going on here in the last few days.’

Then he revealed the disappearance of the letters, his suspicions, his questions. Sevilla’s face darkened as he listened.

‘Well, there is something I have to confess to you, boss,’ he said finally.

Sevilla didn’t know that his words were practically giving Isidro an attack of vertigo; that, in his burning desire to flee, he was clearly envisioning his family home in Galicia. The officer went on: ‘A few weeks ago I saw something strange too, but I chose not to tell you because I didn’t think it was important.’

The inspector’s mind returned to Barcelona.

‘What did you see?’

‘One time when that journalist from
La Vanguardia
was here, while you were talking to the Commissioner, Burguillos went into your office and I caught him poking around in the Sobrerroca papers.’

For a moment, Isidro was stock-still. Then he slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand.

‘Burguillos! That bastard! It has to be him!’

Suddenly a lot of things became clear. Burguillos had stolen the letters. Burguillos.

Burguillos, Goyanes’s lackey, his boy for everything. Hadn’t Goyanes got him out of his office on some excuse? Now he understood why: so that Burguillos could get in there and swipe the letters. Now, too, he understood why Commissioner Goyanes had asked him to treat the theft with such discretion. He had ordered the theft. He was the one who was looking for the two women. His men, therefore, were the ones who had gone into Beatriz Noguer’s house. The ones who had killed that young woman. Why? Above all, for whom? Goyanes, like Burguillos, was just a subordinate. The question was, subordinate to whom?

‘Fucking brilliant,’ he said to himself and also partly to Sevilla, who was waiting in silence for him to explain what was going through his head.

Finding out who Goyanes was working for was secondary; the most pressing thing was to find the women before the Commissioner’s men did – before his own colleagues did.

62

A few minutes after Pablo had gone, Ana called Sanvisens. She dialled the number and sat down on the left-hand stool, while Beatriz sat on the other.