Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel (43 page)

And now that lawyer showed up with a spy story. A story of crimes that perhaps was too big, even for him.

“The death threats have to do with the Recasens case?”

“In part. I’m sure that Recasens had found a way to charge Publio, maybe without the papers and evidence that César was unwilling to give him. And I know that Ramoneda was the one who killed him. The same person who’s now coming for me.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because Lorenzo, my ex-husband, told me everything. He works for the congressman. They are preparing something important, a military coup. And Publio wants to eliminate any obstacle that distracts him from that.”

Marchán let out a slight whistle. Something told him that this was going to get complicated, very.

“Would he confess to all this?”

“Lorenzo? I doubt it. I don’t even know why he told it to me.”

“And you, are you willing to testify to what you know?”

María paused to think. She had been waiting for that question. She had been practicing her answer while she waited for the inspector.

“Yes, but I have conditions.”

Marchán stiffened.

“This isn’t a store where you just grab what you can pay for. I can force you to make a statement to a lawyer, accuse you of complicity in a murder, or of covering up activities of high treason against the government.”

“You can, but that won’t do you any good. It’s my word against yours. And I’ve done my homework, Inspector Marchán: I know that your word doesn’t carry that much weight lately in the police department. Especially since you’ve been carrying out the investigation into Recasens’s murder. I imagine that many people would like to see you crash and burn all on your own. I am offering you the possibility to get your way, to solve the case. But it will have to be according to my rules and with my conditions.”

Marchán’s face darkened. He understood María’s anger, her fear disguised as rage, her desire to beat him about the head with words because it was what she had closest at hand. She could have easily gotten up and started breaking the vases filled with dried flowers on the tables, or the glasses, or started insulting and spitting at the diners.

“What do you want?”

María felt very tired. Really, the only thing she wanted was to get up, run to the hotel she had made her home, and lock herself in the room with the light turned off, sink her head into the pillow, and fall into a deep sleep. But the hardest part was still ahead of her.

“I want you to put Greta into protection in case Ramoneda comes near her, and I want protection for me, too.”

“That won’t be complicated,” conceded Marchán.

“There’s more. I know that you are the only one who’s taken Marta Alcalá’s disappearance more or less seriously. I want you to share that information with me.”

Marchán clenched his lips. Then he relaxed them, looking at the palms of his hands.

“That’s not going to be possible. That is confidential information. And even if I decided to do it, you think you’re going to be able to get farther than me? There is no reliable lead on Marta’s whereabouts. Who knows? Most likely she’s been dead and buried in some empty lot for years.”

María carefully weighed her words.

“That’s not true. There is someone who says that he knows where she is being held.”

This time Marchán lost his typical composure and looked at María with his eyes squinted and anxiousness clearly on his face.

“What are you talking about?”

“Fernando Mola … I see that this name isn’t unfamiliar to you … Tell me about him, about that family.”

For more than an hour, Marchán laid out on the table all he knew about the Mola family. He didn’t leave out the fact that there was evidence that pointed to Andrés Mola having survived that fire in the fifties.

“I always suspected that the fire was the perfect excuse, the alibi for Publio to make his godson disappear. Andrés was a problem, but Publio couldn’t just get rid of him. Guillermo had declared him executor of the family with the condition that he keep Andrés safe. And Publio needed him alive to use the Mola fortune that brought him to his current position.”

“But Fernando was the elder son. He should have inherited the Mola fortune.”

“Fernando Mola was disinherited by his father. Besides, Guillermo thought he’d died on the Leningrad front at the end of World War II.”

“Well, it looks like he’s not dead. My father paid him a visit. But I don’t understand why he told my father he knows where to find Marta. What does he have to do with all of this?”

Marchán lit the second consecutive cigarette, and he let it burn up in the jammed ashtray.

“I imagine that you understand the magnitude of what you’re doing here.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, Inspector.”

Marchán sighed heavily. He shifted his gaze toward the exit. Anybody there could be an agent of Publio or of the CESID. Any of them could be discreetly taking note of that meeting, and if that were the case, his career was over. But wasn’t it over already? Wasn’t it time to put an end to so many years of swimming in shit and go home with his conscience clear?

“Andrés Mola was a real psychopath. Accused of several murders where nothing could ever be proven. The evidence always coincidentally disappeared, the witnesses retracted their statements, or the case got shelved. But the truth is that the little samurai-obsessed asshole killed at least six women between 1950 and 1955. All of them had something in common. They looked like his mother, and they were decapitated with a saber. The heads of the corpses were never found. Later, supposedly one of the cadavers found in the fire at the asylum was identified as his. But I’ve already told you that I always suspected that he’s alive and being hidden by Publio in some house in Collserola Park or the surrounding area. Rumors tell of the former Mola estate, a house with blue ceramic roof tiles. I asked for several search warrants to inspect the house, but they were denied. When I decided to go there on my own, I was received by several of Publio’s thugs. I suspect that the bastard is still there, living walled up like a zombie.”

“But I don’t see what that has to do with Marta.”

“Look at a photo of Marta Alcalá and compare it to one of Isabel Mola in her youth. The resemblance is remarkable. Andrés was very close to his mother. And Marta’s grandfather, Marcelo Alcalá, was Isabel’s murderer. I think that Publio knew how to use Andrés’s hatred as a tool to keep César’s mouth shut. Of course this is all conjecture. There is no proof. But Fernando’s appearance gives it more credibility. Maybe he found his brother, and maybe he knows that he’s living in that house with Marta. It may be that this is too much for the elder Mola son to bear any longer, and he decided to put an end to it.”

María listened with her head sunk between her shoulders. It was all too horrible, too painful.

“If what you say is true, Andrés has made a terrible mistake. That girl is innocent, like her father is, and like her grandfather was. They are tormenting them, generation after generation, for a crime that none of them committed. The real murderer of Isabel Mola was my father, Gabriel. My father worked for Publio when he was young. He’s kept the secret all these years.”

Antonio Marchán looked at María in surprise. It took him a few minutes to react.

“César knows? Does he know that your father killed Isabel?”

“I don’t think so. He knows that his father was innocent and that he was condemned by Recasens’s false testimony. I think that’s all.”

Marchán thought quickly.

“You shouldn’t tell him that under any circumstances. If you do, Alcalá will lose all trust in you and will clam up. Listen, you have to get César to tell you where he is keeping the information against Publio, at any cost. Deliver the evidence to me. With it and your declaration accusing Lorenzo and Publio of the murder of Recasens, I can get a judge to let me into the Mola house.”

María felt a stab of distrust. What if that policeman wasn’t what he seemed? And if he were ensnared in Publio’s tentacles as well?

Just then a waiter approached. Marchán had a call.

The inspector was surprised. He had given the address of the restaurant in case anything urgent came up, but he wasn’t expecting anyone to call. He went to the bar and picked up the telephone. He spoke for a few seconds. María saw him ask something into the phone somewhat nervously. The inspector could barely restrain his violent impulse to slam the receiver down when he hung up.

“Forget what I told you. You aren’t going to be able to talk to Alcalá. This morning they stabbed him in his cell.”

María felt a shudder. She thought of Romero. The deal they had …

“They stabbed him?”

“Several stab wounds to the back and arm. He’s out of danger, but they’ve transferred him to the Hospital Clínico. It seems that he’s still not in any condition to talk to anyone. I’ve ordered them to place a guard to watch over him.”

María’s expression relaxed. Several stab wounds … Perhaps Romero had taken it too far, but he’d gotten César out. The rest was up to her.

“You don’t look very surprised, María. Did you know something about this?”

“I was here waiting for you, Inspector. I wasn’t planning on visiting Alcalá today. How could I know?”

Marchán knew that she was lying. But it was difficult to figure out what kind of lie she was clinging to.

“I will find out what I can about Fernando Mola, but I suspect he won’t be easy to find. Maybe I should question your father, so he can tell us where he met with him. Where can I find him?”

“Two days ago I went to see him at our house in San Lorenzo. I suppose he’s still there. Are you going to arrest him?”

“For a forty-year-old murder whose statute of limitations has already passed? That’s not a question I’d expect you to ask, María.”

“I meant, are you going to arrest him for shielding Publio? I think my father could tell you many things about that congressman.”

Marchán felt the weight of María’s hatred toward her father. He shrugged his shoulders and said good-bye, promising that he would take care of putting a discreet tail on Greta and María herself.

María didn’t leave right away, but soon after. She needed to breathe. The city smelled of asphalt and of that clean atmosphere that sometimes illuminates the winter, like hope. Before her eyes the world was depicted in the usual, unchangeable, everyday way. A thousand years from now, she thought, things wouldn’t be much different than they were now. Other people, dressed differently, would run the same way through the traffic, they would talk at the stoplights, or they would stroll with the same worried or happy faces. The same immutable present where some enter and others exit as part of a tacit agreement between life and death. After all, she said to herself, she wasn’t as special as she used to think. She was just one more particle in that strange and sometimes infuriating universe.

26

San Lorenzo, February 11–12, 1981

It wasn’t hard to find the house. Above the leafy grove peeked out the gleaming roof tiles. Marchán stopped the car on the road. From there he could see the windows and the locked door.

“I can’t stand the winter. It brings up bad memories,” he said, warming up his hands with the vapor from his mouth.

His face was purple with cold, and the small glasses he used for driving were steamed up. He was shivering with cold. In the passenger seat was a morning newspaper stained with a little bit of coffee and some crumbs from breakfast. The inspector flipped through it quickly while he decided to leave the car.

In spite of the circumstances, he felt relatively optimistic for the first time in a long time. The Recasens case had stirred a lot of things up, just as he had hoped when he leaked the news of it to the press. The case had all the morbid and mysterious ingredients needed to attract enough journalists and keep the matter in the limelight for a few days. A spy, a violent death, the name of Congressman Publio dropped enigmatically, the nationwide search order for Ramoneda, painted as a dangerous murderer … That gave him some time and attention. While it lasted, not even the examining judge or his superiors would dare to take him off the case.

And this time he had a trump card: María’s confession. He could arrest them all if the lawyer didn’t retract at the last minute, or Publio didn’t manage to get rid of her. The first possibility didn’t worry him. He didn’t think that María was the kind of person to get intimidated. He had even gotten the feeling that she wanted to help him, maybe to exonerate herself of responsibilities or suspicion in the Recasens case, or maybe out of a desire for revenge against her ex-husband. No, she would confess. And as far as keeping her alive, his trusted men would take care of protecting her effectively.

Yet there was something that worried Marchán. Without César’s testimony and without the evidence he was hiding against Publio, none of all that held water. He had to get irrefutable proof, proof that would make the congressman fall without any of his powerful friends daring to intercede on his behalf or cover up for him. And without Marta, dead or alive, César wasn’t going to talk.

And that was where the appearance of Fernando Mola seemed crucial. He had to find him and persuade him to take him to the house where Andrés was hiding. And the way to get to him was through the old man who lived in that house in the mountains.

He got out of the car in a foul mood, trying to convince himself that the hours traveling to San Lorenzo and the cold he was feeling were all going to be worth it.

He crossed the gate into the front garden and lifted the doorknocker. He didn’t know what kind of man Gabriel would be. The only idea he had gotten of him was through María’s eyes. And the scorn she felt toward her father was clear. How could he blame her for that? Maybe it would be interesting to have a conversation, even though the murder of Isabel Mola had only relative interest for Marchán.

Nobody came to open the door, and it was locked from inside. He didn’t see anyone around. He took a stroll around the house, making sure to avoid the irrigation channels for the garden. The house seemed deserted.