The Whispering City (47 page)

‘And you want to offer me something to, let’s just say, improve my situation?’

Ana thought that here Beatriz would have told him the fable of the mouse and the lion, but she lacked her cousin’s imperviousness to the impatience of others. On the other hand, she was sharp enough to know that it was the moment to speak more clearly.

‘Why else would I have called you? But I sense that you’re still refusing to give me even a glimmer of hope. If I remember rightly, you claimed that if there was anything you could do for us, you would. Well, I’m calling because there is something you can do.’

There was silence at the other end of the line. Then, instead of Castro’s voice, she heard footsteps and a door closing. She pressed the receiver against her ear. When Castro spoke again, the words sounded so clear in her head that she feared he could read her thoughts.

‘Fine. Go on. But if at any point what you’re saying isn’t convincing, I’ll just hang up. And then don’t even think about calling me back, because in half an hour I’ll have a patrol car in front of your door. Are we clear?’

Ana started to explain her plan to him. With each sentence she uttered, it seemed flimsier, and after each pause she expected to hear a click and the dialling tone. But Castro was still there. In absolute silence, without giving a single sign of acceptance, doubt or rejection. Nothing, as if there were a machine at the other end, a tape recorder. Ana got to the most delicate part: ‘What you could do would be to put the papers that incriminate Grau in Sánchez-Herranz’s reach, saying, for example, that you found them in one of Mendoza’s filing cabinets in Martorell and that, given their sensitive nature, you chose to give them to him, since you know that Joaquín Grau is his mentor and that he will know what to do to avoid a scandal, one that would taint such a valuable institution as the public prosecutor’s office…’

There was a sigh at the other end of the line. Had she gone too far? Was he going to hang up? Only the former: ‘Señorita Martí, you don’t need to write me a script, as if this was a radio serial.’

‘Does that mean you’ll do it?’ she asked hopefully.

‘But you do realise how crazy this is, what you’re suggesting?’ Castro burst out laughing.

‘Then why did you listen to the end? To have a good laugh at my expense? Is that it? I amuse you?’

She was hurt, and she saw no reason to hide it. ‘I see that I was completely wrong about you, Inspector. Oh! Pardon me, First Class Inspector. They told me not to get my hopes up about you, that you had only said you wanted to help us to ease your conscience, that you weren’t going to lift a finger to solve the case or to help us, despite knowing that it leaves us in Goyanes’s hands. I misjudged you. That’s fine. It’s a lesson I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. Which doesn’t look as if it’ll be that long.’

‘Jesus! More cheap drama. Fucking brilliant!’

They were both quiet.

Ana’s heart was racing. Her pulse beat even faster when Castro said, ‘I’ll collect the papers tomorrow.’

He hung up without another word. He didn’t even tell her when he would be dropping by. Why would he? He knew they wouldn’t be leaving the house.

She remained sitting in the hallway beside the telephone for a few minutes. Then she went to look for Beatriz. Ana found her sitting on the sofa with her gaze fixed on the door, waiting for her.

‘One of the rocks is in the air.’

67

‘
El Noticiero
? Sold out.’

Before Pablo had time to curse Ana for saying he would be carrying that particular newspaper, the kiosk vendor knelt down and disappeared for a moment behind the little counter.

‘Wait! I’ve got one left. If you don’t mind it being a bit wrinkled… Do you have any coins? I’m almost out of change.’

Twenty minutes after leaving the house, Pablo was at the bar of the Zúrich café with the newspaper. Soon the errand boy arrived with a copy of
La Vanguardia
. The letters were hidden in its pages.

‘In the sports section,’ he said, taking a sip of coffee.

Pablo didn’t know what was appropriate in these situations, but for starters he paid for the boy’s coffee and gave him a tip.

When he returned to the house with the letters from Sánchez-Herranz, Ana met him in the entryway. She had been waiting for him there.

‘Were you able to give my father the letter? What did he say?’

‘That a police officer came to the house asking for you, but refused to tell them why, and that they were very worried.’

‘Did he read the letter?’

‘Yes, in the back room. Afterwards he was somewhat relieved, but we couldn’t say much because his boss was there. And he gave me this for you.’

Pablo produced a paperback from his jacket pocket. It was a small-format western novel,
Merciless Duel in Carson City
. He held it out to her. It had a note in it, in her father’s hand.

‘He pretended to dedicate it to me so he could write to you without anyone catching on. I didn’t know your father wrote westerns.’

Neither did she. So that was why there was more money in her family lately. She opened up the little book and read:

She made a tremendous effort to control her emotions.

‘Come on in, Beatriz is waiting for you too.’

When she saw him come in, his aunt practically ripped the newspaper from his hands. She shook out the letters and ignored everything else as she studied Sánchez-Herranz’s style.

‘She is furious,’ said Ana to Pablo in a low voice. ‘Furious and very sad about Encarni. While we were waiting for you she hid in the bathroom to cry alone.’

They looked at her. Beatriz was pencilling notes on a sheet of paper which she’d divided into columns in order to organise the characteristics of Sánchez-Herranz’s style that she wanted to imitate in the letter: connectors, turns of phrase, adjectives.

‘Are you hungry?’ asked Pablo.

‘No. We’ll eat later.’

‘Do you mind if I eat something?’

Neither woman answered him. Pablo went into the kitchen and prepared for himself one of the few things he knew how to make: rice boiled with a clove of garlic. He made enough for the three of them. It was a good idea.

Soon Ana came in, drawn by the aroma.

‘My mother makes it the same way! Can I have a little?’

‘As much as you like. Take Beatriz a plate too, so she eats something.’

Ana went out with a steaming plate of rice. She returned and sat at the kitchen table with Pablo.

‘She says she’ll eat it when she’s finished. But between reading one letter and the next she ate a good spoonful.’

They ate in silence.

They had already finished and were listening distractedly to the radio when Beatriz came in.

‘I’ve got the letter. I think I’ve captured his style well, but the signature needs work.’

She showed them the original and one of her attempts to imitate it. It was an obvious forgery.

‘Let me try,’ said Ana.

Her signature was only a little better, but you could still see the effort; it didn’t look natural.

Meanwhile, Pablo had picked up a pen and, after two goes, he produced an impeccable imitation.

‘Perfect!’ exclaimed Beatriz.

‘I’m good at drawing,’ he explained, neglecting to mention that during his school years he had learned to forge his father’s signature so that he could bunk off lessons.

‘Well, now you have to type up the letter and sign it,’ said Beatriz.

‘And then what?’ asked Pablo. ‘We send it in the post?’

‘No,’ said Ana. ‘It’s about making Grau nervous, making him feel Sánchez-Herranz’s threat. That threat has to reach him in the style that Sánchez-Herranz would use. It has to be something direct, brutal. Devastating.’

‘What are you thinking of?’

‘Grau must find the letter at his house, on a table. For him to see that they’ve entered his house without thinking twice about it, that Sánchez-Herranz’s thugs have invaded his privacy and profaned it.’

‘Grau, who is said to guard his privacy jealously,’ added Pablo, ‘for whom his house is, as the English would say, his castle, would be horrified by the idea of those brutes setting foot in his home.’

Beatriz interrupted him: ‘Do you know what’s good about there being three of us? At least one of us can ask the bothersome questions when the other two are getting all excited. How are we going to get the letter into Grau’s house?’

Pablo saw in Ana’s face that she had already thought of a way.

‘I know someone who will do it if I ask him to.’

She was talking about Pepe the Spider, one of the people she read and wrote letters for.

‘If we give him the address, he can get the letter inside.’

Ana started to type it up.

She remembered what Carmiña had always told her:
you don’t type love letters
. The one she was typing up now was a letter filled with hatred.

68

‘That’s it,’ she said.

Beatriz had retired to the bedroom. They found her immersed in
Don Quixote
.

‘This is more helpful in life than the Bible. Pablo, I have to admonish you for the lack of Spanish classics in your library. Thank goodness I found this. A nice edition.’

‘It was a gift from Papa.’ Beneath Beatriz’s scathing gaze, Pablo hastened to add, ‘I promise I’ll read it next summer. And I’m not saying this to change the subject, Tieta Beatriz, but we have something much more urgent on right now.’

Beatriz closed the book and left it on a side table next to the armchair where she had been reading.

‘Are you ready?’

‘Now we need to find Pepe the Spider,’ said Ana.

‘You know where he lives, don’t you?’ asked Pablo.

‘I’ve seen the address many, many times.’

Pepe the Spider sublet a flat on Unión Street. He didn’t trust the owner of the flat because she had once steamed open a letter from his girlfriend.

‘The letter stank of cabbage… she had opened it with the steam from a cooking pot,’ he had told Ana.

That was why he received his post at an ironmonger’s on Egipcíacas Street where a guy from his town worked. He had given that address not only because the guy was discreet: ‘Now the letters smell clean.’ It was true; the letters that she read to him from his girlfriend always carried the scent of soap. Getting a message to him wouldn’t be difficult. The guy at the shop always let him know as soon as he got any post.

‘There could be a problem,’ said Ana. ‘If he’s been arrested. The last time I saw him, he was up to something, something big. If it’s gone wrong and the police have got hold of him, our whole plan is sunk.’

Beatriz shook her head.

‘Could be. Which is why we have to behave like you do when there’s been a death.’

Ana shot a disconcerted look at Pablo, which Beatriz didn’t catch because she was looking upwards, as she always did when stringing together an argument. With her gaze again fixed on one of the ceiling mouldings, she continued, ‘When there is a death, the relatives and close friends are faced with an absolutely irreversible fact that is out of their control. They cannot do anything to change what has happened, so a whole series of rituals and activities have developed around the burial and the mourning. The idea is to do something, whether it’s writing funeral notices, offering condolences, eating, preparing food…’

‘You want us to make some cannelloni now?’ Pablo tried to joke.

Ana put her hand over his mouth to keep him quiet; she wanted to know where Beatriz was going with this thought. Pablo took Ana’s hand to move it away, but he didn’t let it go, just brought it down to the space between them on the sofa, leaving it in his. Ana didn’t turn – she had her eyes fixed on Beatriz – but she gently squeezed Pablo’s hand in return.

‘Go on, Beatriz.’

‘What I mean is that we don’t know if they’ve arrested this Pepe, but even if they have, we can’t sit around and do nothing. Which is why it’s important that we clear up the practical matters. The first of which is, where you are going to meet him.’

‘It has to be in a public place. Where there are a lot of people,’ said Ana.

‘Beside one of the flower stalls on the Ramblas?’ suggested Pablo.

‘Too exposed. It would have to be near here,’ she replied.

‘The San Antonio market could work: it’s open on Sundays and there are always a lot of people buying books and comics,’ said Beatriz.

‘What about the Apolo Amusement Park?’ suggested Pablo.

It was a good idea. It was close by, so they wouldn’t have to walk far and so risk being seen.

‘Fine. Now that I’ve become your messenger, I guess I’ll have to go back out into the street, won’t I?’ said Pablo.

‘Leave him the message that we are going to meet on Sunday at noon in front of the entrance to the Autogruta ride at the Atracciones Apolo,’ summed up Ana.

Once again, Pablo went running out of the house. They hoped that the ironmonger’s hadn’t closed for the day.

When he came back an hour later, he found the two women in the kitchen listening to the radio and he was able to give them at least one piece of good news: Pepe hadn’t been arrested, and the guy in the shop was going to give him the message that very afternoon along with a letter from his girlfriend.

‘Well, now there’s nothing more we can do,’ said Beatriz, getting up from the table. ‘I’m going to go and read for a while.’

Pablo took her place.

They listened to the radio in silence. On the news was a piece on the preparations for the Eucharistic Congress. Ana thought about her mother. They weren’t officially looking for her, though that didn’t mean they wouldn’t do anything to her parents, considering who was after them and the impunity with which he’d acted up until that point. Most likely, she told herself, they were watching over her parents in case she tried to contact them. The radio brought her back to Pablo’s kitchen, the sound of the Montserrat Boys’ Choir and a voice announcing the broadcast of a Mass.