‘It was eight seconds, Mrs Malpica,’ said Leda with reference to the absence.
Now she thought about it, the mother’s strange reticence, irrational anger whenever the girl turned up, may have had to do with the information in her hands. The fact that she was in on the secret. The intimacy of measuring the length of each absence.
‘Forget about it, girl,’ she said to Leda one day after Leda had told her about the absence he’d had in the School of Indians. ‘I don’t want everyone talking about it.’
Leda answered with that manner she had from another time: ‘For me it will be as if a stone fell into a well.’
The iron gate opened again, activated from the inside. Out came a car he failed to recognise. A surprising automobile that put all his motoring knowledge to the test. A very special BMW. He realised Delmiro Oliveira had a passion for the classics. From time to time he’d appeared in a Ford Falcon or an imposing Chrysler Imperial with whitewall tyres. Like the others, he was forced to stop in order to join the main road.
Fins focused on the driver. On Don Delmiro. Then on the passenger in dark glasses. He didn’t allow any idea, any emotion, to reach his finger. He clicked his camera. That’s right. In his imagination the enlarger was already projecting the image on Baryta paper. A work of art that would go down in history.
Next to Delmiro Oliveira, on board a BMW 501, a Barockengel, he had just photographed the Baroque Angel of motoring, Lieutenant Colonel Humberto Alisal.
A car on the road had been in an accident. And burned. A Portuguese National Republican Guard stood with an extinguisher, contemplating the heavy, bewildered billowing of smoke sedated by foam around the accident. The guard turned and gestured to Fins to carry on driving. What made him hold back was the sight of the blanket on the side of the road. He pulled over and went to have a look. A second guard, near the body, was writing something in a notebook that was too small for his hands and pen. Fins didn’t have to remove the blanket. The lawyer Óscar Mendoza’s head, with wide-open eyes, seemed to want to detach itself from the rest of his body. It hadn’t burned. The impact must have been so strong it flung him straight out through the windscreen. The blood from the wounds on his face had acquired the density of flies. Fins glanced at the tarmac. Couldn’t make out any skid marks. He considered the barest gesture of covering Mendoza’s face, but ignored his conscience and thought about his camera. The car. Getting away.
‘Did you know this man?’
‘No, I’ve never seen him before.’
‘Then, please, take your car out of here and let us get on with our work.’
45
CONS LIGHTHOUSE CAST its first circular beam over Noitía and the lights went on like candles in a line. The same beam passed its hand over the whitewall tyres of Mariscal’s Mercedes-Benz in the deserted mirador. The Old Man soon felt a second beam on his back, a noisy, piercing shaft. He knew who this was. He could paint a portrait of people by the way they drove.
Brinco’s was a face of impatient greed. Greed was OK. But not impatience. Job’s patience had been rewarded. It was a shame people didn’t read the Old Testament. Jehovah had given Job twice as much as he’d had before. Fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys.
He couldn’t fail to recognise the pilot by the way he braked and slammed the door. The noise disrupted his vision of the final red glow as the sun sank into the outer sea.
‘How was the funeral?’ asked Brinco.
‘I’ve seen better ones. The priest and the mariachis weren’t bad.’
Mariscal walked to the edge of the cliff and, without turning around, said, ‘Someone ran over Dead Man’s Hand’s wife this morning. The driver took off. They obviously meant to kill him. But the wife got in the way. Fell down dead on top of him.’
‘Poor woman, going before him!’
Mariscal ignored his comment. ‘More people are dying than we can cope with.’
‘Perhaps I should disappear for a while.’
He was relieved to hear this declaration. Stroked the small Astra.38 special on his chest to put it to sleep. Then turned around. ‘Go far away, son.’
‘Where to? The inferno?’
‘A little further, if you can.’
The light of the moon illuminated part of the map on the floor of the School of Indians. The rest was aged darkness. Leda and Fins inhabited the edge of the chiaroscuro.
‘Why didn’t you go with him? You should get out of here with your son. Anything could happen.’
‘He didn’t ask me.’
‘He’ll be arriving in Río about now. We’re going to keep track of him. I can pass you information. Just for you.’
Leda ignored his proposal. She was sure Brinco hadn’t boarded that flight from Porto. He’d have sent someone else in his place. Or vanished on the steps of the plane, in an airport worker’s luminous jacket. He’d done this before. She was the one who’d arranged to meet Fins in the School of Indians. She wanted to see if the bait on the hook worked. She didn’t regret it. It was a fitting tribute. To the bait.
She asked, ‘Is it true you know how to touch-type?’
‘What does that matter now?’
‘Sit down then! I want you to write a letter for me. You know I never got a letter?’
‘I don’t have any paper.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Type anyway. I like to hear the singing of the bars. I’ll dictate… “Dear friend, now that all is mute silense…” Did you write “silense” with an “s”?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
Leda found it difficult to carry on the game. The spines of words in her throat. ‘How was it? “Now that all is loneliness, pain…” No, better not write that.’
Fins took his hands off the keyboard. ‘I wasn’t going to anyway.’
The roof groaned with the tragedy of night. Someone poured liquid through the skylight and threw in a lit piece of cloth.
But there wasn’t just fire.
The sound of a shot pinged off the typewriter. Fins flung himself to the ground, drew his revolver and instinctively sought shelter beneath the Underwood’s tiny shield.
‘Go where it’s dark!’ he shouted to Leda.
From the fire, the intruder shot at the darkness, but soon turned his attention back to the figure huddled beneath the teacher’s desk. A shot hit Fins’ shoulder. It was obvious, the intruder must have known, because Fins’ face was exposed, contorted with pain, in the moonlight, at the feet of the blind mannequin and the one-armed skeleton. But the intruder was also exposed, the length of his body, as he proudly grasped the powerful shape of a Star. Never trust an automatic. The ocean around the equator caught fire. Fins shot his revolver and the shadow fell like a sack of sand on top of the flames. A thick smoke, as from a volcano, crept all over the map.
‘Where are you, Leda?’
He shouted several times. Got no answer. Dragged himself outside, convinced he’d find her there.
Carburo stood in the doorway of the Ultramar, watching the fire on the hill. ‘Boss, boss! The old school is burning!’
Mariscal shoved him aside. Took a few steps forward, leaning on his staff.
‘It’s burning again, boss!’
He grumbled without turning around, ‘I can see that. I can see it’s burning.’
He started walking towards the fire. Accompanied by a small crowd.