He discovered it by accident, one Friday afternoon when he returned early from hockey training because he’d twisted his ankle. He thought no one would be home, since his brother also had training that day, and his mother had said she and his father would be visiting one of his aunts, who was old and unwell. Because of that, he arrived at what he thought was an empty flat, ready to enjoy the solitude that all teenagers long for. He made no noise-that was one of his father’s rules-and that let him hear, with absolute clarity, the rhythmic blows followed by muffled screams. And then something exploded in his brain. Everything around him disappeared except the door in front of him, which he pushed decisively, and his father’s face, going from surprise to panic when his younger son without a second’s hesitation swung the stick into his chest and kept hitting him on the back, again and again, until his mother’s screams brought him back to himself. The following day, still recovering from the beating, his father arranged for this outcast son to continue his schooling in Barcelona, a city in which he had relatives. Héctor understood that this was the best solution: starting again, not looking back. The only thing that he regretted was abandoning his mother, but she convinced him that there was no danger, that what had happened that day was in no way a regular occurrence. He left and forced himself to forget; but this afternoon, sitting on a plastic chair while the memory unfolded clearly in his mind, the anguish vanished to be replaced by a strange feeling of peace, bittersweet but true, that he hadn’t felt since then. And he told himself, calmly, that if injustice and helplessness were the only things that had triggered his rage, in his youth just the same as a few months ago, he didn’t give a damn about the consequences. Let the world say what it will.
He didn’t know how much time had passed, but he noticed a hand jogging his shoulder. Opening his eyes, he saw a figure in white who told him, with an expression designed for giving bad news, that Carmen Reyes González was out of danger, although they were keeping her under observation for at least another twenty-four hours and, of course, it would take a while for her to recover completely. He added, in a routine voice that sounded to Héctor like malicious admonition, that while there didn’t seem to be serious lesions apart from the contusion, they couldn’t rule out complications in the next few hours, due to the patient’s age. He could go in to see her, but only for a moment. And before allowing him in, the doctor with the undertaker’s face commented, in an admiring tone that was hardly professional, that the tenacity with which the older generation clung to life never ceased to amaze him. “They’re cut from a different cloth,” he said, shaking his head as if, in view of what the world was, this was incomprehensible
32
Leire looked at her watch and couldn’t help an irritated gesture. Why did all men disappear when you needed them? I’m starting to talk like María, she thought. But what was certain was that, despite Tomás’s hardly dignified exit, he wasn’t the target of her criticizms at that moment. The inspector had said he would call her mid-afternoon to finalize details. Well, fine; even though “mid-afternoon” wasn’t a precise term, she thought that at least he might have bothered to show signs of life. She resisted calling him; after all, Salgado was her superior and the last thing she wanted to do was fall out with a boss.
In any case, she had done her duties that afternoon, she told herself, satisfied. In order, she’d cleared the table and thrown out the croquettes; cried for a while-something she put down to this state of sensitive foolishness and not to anything else; and then, after showering and dressing informally, as she had agreed with the inspector, she’d gone to the station to carry out the first part of her orders. Task number one was done in a moment: one Inés Alonso Valls was flying from Dublin to Barcelona the following day on a flight that was arriving at 09.25 a.m., local time. She’d run her details without finding anything that seemed important. The girl was twenty-one, she had spent a year studying in Ireland and was the daughter of Matías Alonso and Isabel Valls. Her father had died eighteen years previously, when Inés was very small, but her mother was still alive. Leire had noted the address, just as Salgado had said. As for task number two. . Leire looked at her watch again, as if her eyes could speed it up. She wanted to make this call, but it was early.
There was little movement in the station that Saturday, so she didn’t have anything to distract her and it left her time free to think. Inevitably her mind went back to Tomás and the conversation with him that afternoon, but also, and for the first time, she realized he wasn’t the only person to whom she should communicate the news: there were her parents, of course, and, all going well, sooner or later her bosses too. After the summer, she said to herself. First she had to get used to the idea herself and she didn’t feel like listening to reproaches or advice. Also, she’d heard thousands of times that it was best to wait until after three months had passed before announcing it. And for the first time she began to think of that being, who up until now had just brought on morning sickness, as someone who in less than a year would be lying beside her in a hospital bed. She saw herself alone with a crying baby and the image, although fleeting, was more terrifying than comforting. She didn’t want to keep going over it, so, in view of the fact that the inspector still hadn’t called, she picked up the landline and dialled her friend María’s number. Right now Santi and the villagers of Africa seemed a fascinating topic of conversation.