“Aleix, I’ll be straight with you. If you really are in trouble, you have to turn to your parents. I can’t solve your problems. Understand?”
“Don’t come over all protective on me. Not when I just fucked you twice.”
She half smiled.
“Leave it, Aleix. I don’t want to fight with you.”
It was his last card: he played it in desperation, with a pang of regret. He fell back on the bed and fixed his eyes on her.
“I don’t want to fight either.” He tried to make his voice sound cold, suddenly unconcerned. “But I think you’re going to help me in the end. Even if it’s only for your daughter’s sake.”
“Don’t you dare bring Gina into this.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t plan on telling her that I screw her mother once a week. I’ll leave that to you.” He lowered his voice: once he’d started, there was no way back. “What I will do is tell that Argentine inspector that I saw frightened, innocent Gina push Marc out of the window.”
“What the hell are you saying?”
“The cold hard truth. Why do you think Gina’s like she is? Why do you think I went to your house yesterday? So she wouldn’t be alone with the police, because your little girl is terrified of what she did.”
“You’re making it up.” Her voice was trembling. Fragmented images of the last few days flashed through her head. She tried to dispel them before continuing. This was a bluff; it had to be this bastard brat’s fucking bluff. She became indignant.
Aleix kept talking.
“She’d been dying of jealousy since Marc told us he’d met a girl in Dublin. And on San Juan she couldn’t take it any more. She put on that dress to hook up with him, but he wasn’t interested.”
Regina got up and went toward Aleix. She had to control her voice, control herself so as not to lose her temper and slap him across the face. Control herself so as to leave no doubts that she was serious.
“You left. . you stated so to the police and Gina said so as well.”
He smiled. Regina hesitated. Right now all he needed was to sow doubt in her mind.
“Of course. It’s what you do for a friend, isn’t it? In spite of Marc being my friend too. It’s in your hands, Regina. Simple: one favor for another. You help me, I help you and Gina.”
Just then Aleix’s mobile, which he’d left on the nightstand, rang. He stretched out his arm to see who it was and frowned. He answered under Regina’s glare.
“Edu? Something up?” His brother rarely called him, and never without a reason.
While he listened to what Edu had to tell him, Regina slowly picked up her bag. The conversation lasted barely a minute. Aleix said thank you and good-bye and hung up.
He looked at her, smiling. He was still naked, aware of the attractiveness of his body. She knew he had something to say: she saw it in his satisfied face, in that smile expressing more arrogance than any kind of happiness.
“What a coincidence. It seems the cop wants to see me. Monday afternoon. Just enough time for you and me to resolve this matter between ourselves.”
For a moment Regina hesitated. A cold mask came over her face. A part of her, the part belonging to the disappointed woman, wanted to slap that cocky brat’s face, but her maternal side finally prevailed. The first thing was to speak to Gina. She decided the slap could wait.
“I’ll call you,” she said, then turned around.
“What?”
Regina smiled to herself.
“Just that. I’ll let you know.” She turned back toward him, trying to make her expression as contemptuous as possible. “Oh, and if you really need that money, keep looking for it. If I were you, I wouldn’t count on me giving it to you.”
He held her gaze. Bitch, he mouthed.
“You know what you’re doing,” Aleix said instead. He desperately sought a phrase to settle thiswrangle in his favor, but found none, so he just smiled at her again. “You have until Monday to save your little girl from this mess. Think about it.”
She waited a few seconds before opening the door and escaping.
18
Martina Andreu looked at her watch. Her shift finished in less than half an hour and she had just enough time to go to the gym before picking up the kids. She needed some good stretches; her back was killing her these days and she knew it was partly due to lack of exercise. She tried to be organized, but sometimes it was simply too much. Work, husband, house, two little children overflowing with after-school activities. . She placed the papers from the Dr. Omar case in the file with a sigh of frustration. If there was anything that drove her crazy, it was cases that were going nowhere. She began to think this guy had taken off with his macabre music for somewhere else. It wasn’t a ridiculous idea at alclass="underline" if the women-trafficking network had been his main source of income, now he had to find another way of earning a living. The blood on the wall and the stunt with the pig’s head could have been just a smokescreen, a way of disappearing in triumph, so to speak. Although, on the other hand, the guy wasn’t young. In Barcelona he had his contacts and that repugnant clinic. Maybe he wouldn’t earn enough to make him a millionaire, but certainly more than he’d make somewhere else, where he’d have to start from scratch.
The man’s personality was a mystery. The people of the barrio hadn’t contributed much information. She herself had gone door to door all morning, trying to find out anything, and the only thing clear was that the name of the “doctor” inspired distrust at the very least; in some cases, genuine fear. One of the women she’d spoken to, a young Colombian who lived on the same floor, had distinctly said: “He is a strange guy. . I used to cross myself when I passed him. He did bad things in there.” She had pushed her a little more and had obtained only a vague “They say he takes the devil out of the body, but if you ask me I say he is the devil in person.” And from then on she was as silent as the grave. It wasn’t that strange, thought Martina: however surprising it might seem, a number of “exorcisms” took place regularly in cities like Barcelona, and given that now the City of Counts’ priests didn’t get involved in these affairs, believers in such things had to find alternative exorcists. She was sure that Dr. Omar was one of them. Searching his clinic had contributed very little but none the less significant evidence: a multitude of crosses and crucifixes, books on satanism, santería and other similar stories, written in French and Spanish. His banking transactions were ridiculous: he’d bought the flat for cash years before; he had no friends; and if he had clients, they wouldn’t go to the station to make a statement. Martina shivered at the thought that these things could still be happening in a city like Barcelona. Modernist façades and modern shops, hordes of tourists ravaging the city, camera in hand. . and underneath all that, protected by anonymity, individuals like Dr. Omar: no roots, no family, devoting himself to aberrant rituals without anyone knowing. Enough, she told herself. I’ll continue on Monday. She left the closed file on top of the desk and was already getting up when the phone rang. Shit, she thought: last-minute phone calls always lead to problems.
“Yes?”
A woman’s voice, trembling with nerves and with a marked South American accent, stammered on the other end: “Are you covering the doctor case?”
“Yes. Your name, please?”
“No, no. . Call me Rosa. I have something to tell you. If you like we can meet in person.”
“How did you get my number?”
“A neighbor you questioned gave it to me.”
Martina looked at her watch. The gym was fading into the horizon.
“And you want us to meet right now?”
“Yes, straight away. Before my husband gets back. .” I hope this is worth it, thought Martina, resignedly. “Where can we meet?”
“Go to the Ciutadella. I’ll be behind the fountain. Do you know where I mean?”