He obediently took a step back on the landing. With the door open, the stench from inside the flat was spilling out on to the landing, completely undiluted.
“What did you find in there?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Omar’s in there, Héctor. Dead. Beaten to death.”
Héctor Salgado had learned to keep calm in tense situations, to control his emotions so they didn’t surface on his face. They remained face to face for a few seconds, like two expectant duellists, while she tried to work out what she should do next. She had a murder suspect before her: someone who’d been seen with the victim the afternoon he disappeared, someone who had a score to settle with the dead man lying inside, in whose home there was evidence linking him to the case. And above all, someone who lived in the flat above the place she’d just found the body. She knew there was only one option. If he were in her place, Salgado would do exactly the same.
“Héctor, I have to arrest you on suspicion of the murder of Dr. Omar. Don’t make it any more difficult for me, please.”
“Are you going to cuff me?”
“I hope I won’t need to.”
“Does it make any difference if I tell you I had nothing to do with it?”
“At this moment in time, no.”
“Yeah.” He hung his head, like someone accepting the inevitable. The gesture made the sergeant take a step toward him.
“I’m sure it will all be cleared up, but right now it’s best for you to come with me. For your own good.”
He nodded slowly; then he lifted his head and the sergeant was shocked to see a smile on his face.
“You know what? The only thing I care about right now is that Carmen is going to be all right. That old lady is tougher than you and I put together!”
“You’re very fond of her, aren’t you?”
Héctor didn’t answer. There was no need. And that peaceful expression, more grateful than afraid, made the two Martinas struggling within the sergeant suddenly establish a truce, a non-aggression pact.
“Héctor, I’m the only one who has seen the body.” She silenced the start of a protest. “Shut up and listen for once in your life! Nothing can be done for Omar, so it’s all the same if I find him today or tomorrow.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“That I can take a few hours to investigate this case without any pressure. Not even from you.”
He still didn’t fully understand.
“Give me the keys to your house and get out of here. Disappear for a few hours until I call you. And promise me two things: first, that you won’t come near here or Omar’s flat under any circumstances.”
“And second?”
“Second, you turn up at the station as soon as I ask you to. No questions.”
Very slowly, he took the keys from his pocket and passed them to the sergeant. She snatched them roughly.
“Now get out of here.”
“Are you sure about this?” asked Héctor.
“No. But I am sure that as soon as I call in the discovery of the body the entire investigation will centre on you, Inspector Salgado. And no one, not me, not anyone, will be able to prevent it.”
He began to go down the stairs, but turned around mid-flight.
“Martina. . Thanks.”
“I hope I won’t live to regret it.”
Héctor went out into the street and began to walk toward the seafront where he usually went running. He walked slowly, not looking at anyone, carried by inertia. A while later, sitting in front of the twinkling Agbar Tower, that blue-and-red monolith that seemed to have been plucked from a Tokyo street, he realized he had nowhere to go. He felt like an accidental tourist, a poor Buenos Aires imitation of Bill Murray who didn’t even have the excuse of being “Lost in Translation.” No, he was alone in the city where he’d lived for nearly twenty years. He took out his mobile, an act as instinctive as it was useless: what the fuck was the point of it if he had no one to call? To make him even more fucked, he thought, smiling bitterly. He was checking his missed calls when it rang again, curbing that incipient melancholy for an instant. It wasn’t Scarlett Johansson, of course, but an excited and satisfied Leire Castro.
Hours before, Leire had parked the car she’d borrowed from the station on the kerb in an unloading bay, ten minutes before the time fixed for the meeting with Rubén. It was one of the unofficial cars, of course, those the Mossos used for trips when they didn’t want to attract attention. Nervous, she waited to see the boy in the photo appear, and once more she told herself she’d have been much more calm if someone, Salgado for example, had been ready as they’d planned, ready to intervene if things got ugly. She exhaled slowly: it was no big deal. She was only going to arrest a small-time dealer, to ensure his cooperation in putting pressure on the Rovira brat. And she could do that alone, fuck it.
She saw him arrive, on foot, his hands in his pockets and with the slick air of a third-rate delinquent. She was a little calmer. Leire considered herself a good judge of faces and this kid, barely twenty years old, didn’t seem particularly dangerous. She didn’t want to have to use her weapon, even to threaten him. He stood at the corner of Diputació and Balmes, and took a quick look around him. She flashed her lights, as if she were waiting for him. Rubén approached the car and, obeying the driver’s gesture to get in, he opened the door and sat in the passenger’s seat.
“I wasn’t sure if it was you,” she murmured in an apologetic tone.
“Yeah. Got the dough?”
She nodded and, while she pretended to search in her bag, she activated the car’s central locking. The kid gave a start which became a sigh of annoyance when Leire showed him her badge.
“Shit. I fucked up.”
“Only a tiny bit. Nothing serious.” She paused briefly, then started the car without taking her eyes off her new companion. “Calm down, kid. And put on your seatbelt. We’re going to go for a spin and chat for a while.”
He obeyed with a bad grace and hissed something between his teeth.
“Something you want to say?”
“I said chatting takes two. .”
She laughed briefly.
“Well then, I talk and you listen. And if at the end you think it suits you to tell me anything, you do.”
“And if not?”
She put the car in reverse and moved off.
“If not, I’ll start up the monologue again to see if I can convince you. We girls are very tiresome, you know that. We like to hear ourselves talk.”
Rubén nodded and looked away indifferently toward the window. She’d already joined the sliproad, relatively empty of cars this July Saturday.
“I want to talk to you about a friend of yours, pretty posh of course. You know who I’m referring to, don’t you?”
Since there was no reaction from her companion, Leire continued her monologue without pausing, certain that he was listening to her attentively even though he pretended otherwise. When she mentioned the word “killer” he was tempted to turn toward her but resisted the impulse. However, as soon as she brought up Aleix’s family’s money, their contacts and the good lawyers they could hire to get their prodigal son out of this predicament-money, contacts and lawyers that he, a poor local fall guy, could only imagine-his survival instinct outweighed any other and Rubén told her what he knew and thought he’d seen on the eve of San Juan.
After making him promise to turn up at the station on Monday at the time she said, Leire let him go. She was sure the boy would keep his end of the deal. Then, for the third time that day, she grabbed her mobile and called Inspector Salgado.
34
When the old clock in her grandmother’s flat struck nine with the spirit of a chamber quartet, Joana realized she had been in front of the computer for hours, immersed in Marc’s texts and photos. She’d read them again and again, she’d looked at the photos, she’d seen him alive, drunk, smiling, playing the fool, serious, or simply caught by surprise with an absurd expression. He was a stranger to her, and yet in some spontaneous gestures she clearly saw young Enric, he who cared about nothing and lived to party, he who rejected his family’s ideals of effort and work. He who had won her over. And she understood with a mixture of relief and disappointment that the boy in the photos had maybe missed a mother figure when he was a child, but never her. Not Joana, with her faults, obsessions and virtues. In these photos, this boy was happy. Unconsciously happy. Happy as you can only be at nineteen, away from home and with the future stretching before your eyes as an unending succession of exciting moments. Maybe she was partly to blame for all that had happened to him, even the cursed chain of events that ended up throwing him out the window, but no more than Enric, no more than Fèlix, no more than these friends she didn’t know, no more than this Iris. Everyone had played their part, more or less honorable, more or less dignified. Thinking that she, a stranger after all, could claim a prominent role in Marc’s death was a sign of arrogance.