At Close Quarters (17 page)

Cupido took a few steps towards him.

‘Do you usually work in this street?’ he asked the man.

‘In the neighbourhood,’ the other replied, studying the bike.

‘Yes, it’s Camilo Olmedo’s. His daughter, Marina, hired me to investigate his death,’ explained Cupido, avoiding any lies. ‘Did you know the major?’ he asked, although he knew the answer. In his first interview with Marina, she had told him that Olmedo’s cleaning lady was the wife of the neighbourhood road sweeper. He remembered his name: Rosco.

‘Yes, I often bumped into him in the morning, when he left for work. And in the afternoon, when he came back.’

‘Long hours,’ observed the detective.

‘Hours? I haven’t got working hours, I have streets to sweep. And these trees,’ he said, disdainfully pointing upwards, towards the plane trees whose branches stretched out over the street lamps, ‘never stop shedding dirt.’

‘The major,’ insisted Cupido, ‘died two weeks ago.’

‘Yes.’

‘It was a Monday. Were you at work on that evening?’

‘Morning and evening.’

‘Do you remember seeing anything out of the ordinary, or someone who asked for Olmedo or visited him?’

‘What do you mean, out of the ordinary?’ He looked to the ground, at his pile of dirt, as if he was considering picking it up in order to avoid further questions. ‘Why should I remember?’

‘Because few people are better placed than yourself to know who is from the neighbourhood and who isn’t. Perhaps those who aren’t regard the street as not theirs, and throw more litter.’

Rosco looked at him in silence, pensive, as if the detective was asking questions at greater speed than he could keep track of.

‘The ones from here are no better,’ he said. ‘Some people seem
to be waiting to go out to spit their gum, throw cigarette butts or tear any piece of paper into a thousand smaller pieces.’

‘That evening someone visited the major. When his daughter rang him, he said he’d talk to her later, because at that moment he was with someone. But he never did ring her.’

The road sweeper started shaking his head even before hearing the last words. He shrugged his shoulders and pursed his lips quickly, signalling that he knew nothing. Then, seeing that the detective was still waiting for an answer, wiped the sweat off his forehead with his forearm and looked away.

‘I’m not saying no one came round. Just that I didn’t see anyone. No one asked me about him.’

‘I understand. A lot of people come and go round here.’

The detective pressed the button of the remote control and waited for the garage to open. Rosco turned his back on him and picked up the dirt with quick, deft movements of the brush, his gaze fixed on the ground, as if he meant to imply that in the posture demanded by his job there wasn’t much he could notice in his surroundings. Cupido wheeled the bike in. He hung it on its hook and took one last look at the car, the tyres and the tools. He had the impression that the road sweeper had seen something, but knew it would be pointless to insist, given his stubborn
suspicions
. And he had no authority to lean on the man. All he had left was Gabriela, and a few questions that perhaps she could not help answering: who was she, who was Olmedo, and where were they headed before, all of a sudden, the major was stopped in his tracks.

When Cupido rang her up early the following morning,
Gabriela
agreed to see him an hour later, no doubt because Marina had not yet spoken to her. Her voice, at the other end of the line, betrayed the slowness and tiredness of someone who's been
suddenly
awakened after a bad night. The detective felt awkward, as if there were something indecent in hearing her first words of the day while imagining the person uttering them: a woman still in bed, wrapped up in the warmth of the sheets, perhaps delicately wiping her eye with her index finger, unaware of how long she'd slept.

He let an hour go by and went to her place, which turned out to be a medium-sized flat, full of objects and adornments, lamps, clocks, paintings, rugs, heavy furniture and chairs which no one seemed to sit on, placed in strange spots. It was a flat marooned in a time that admitted no alteration, a house cumulatively
decorated
with remnants of the past and memories, and enough clutter to make anyone feel uncomfortable in it. With the blinds almost down, it seemed not so much a home as a hideout, and put the visitor on the alert: in the semi-darkness, one couldn't walk without bumping into this or that.

A greenish rug, wide as a prairie, was spread out under the table, the armchairs and the sofa where he was invited to sit as Gabriela raised one of the blinds a few centimetres. In better light, Cupido noticed that the dead child's face appeared everywhere; his pictures seemed to have been taken from family albums and
put in frames to catch the viewer's eye from any direction. It was impossible not to find his face frozen in the most varied
expressions
, not always of joy.

Gabriela took a few seconds to sit down, as if she were expecting a few questions or doubted whether she should offer him anything. She was quite tall, though her almost six-foot frame did not give an impression of strength, power, or arrogance. On the contrary, her height intensified her still attractive and fragile femininity. Under her light blonde hair she had that sad, puzzled gaze
characteristic
of beautiful women who reach maturity without achieving happiness. But her tempered beauty was still there, in the graceful movements of her body, and in her face, despite the fine wrinkles on her skin, the M engraved in the space between her eyebrows, and her slightly low eyelids, which looked sleepy or weighed down by invisible tears. No wonder Olmedo had fallen in love with her: a strong man would be moved by her air of vulnerability.

When she crossed her hands, Cupido recognised the ring Marina had shown him the previous day. She had put it where she would have done if Olmedo were still alive. She's surrounded by the dead, thought Cupido with a shudder. But he saw what that meant: if she had the ring it was because Marina had spoken to her and, in that case, she must know he was no longer hired to go on investigating.

‘She gave it to me last night,' she explained, seeing his eyes. ‘She asked me to take it. It was the gift her father had meant to give me. What's left of Camilo to remember him by.'

The ring looked the right size. Olmedo had calculated well the width of her fingers, thin and long like her body. She was turning it around and around with her other hand, as if it burned her skin.

‘Marina also told me that she didn't want you to go on
investigating
, that she accepts her father's death was suicide. But I don't mind talking to you. On the contrary, sometimes I'm surprised at how much I like talking about them,' she said, including among the dead, with an unequivocal look, the boy smiling in a picture on a small table by the sofa. ‘My friends, the few friends I have left,
insist that I should not think about them so much, that I need to forget them and find consolation in other things, go out more, talk to people, read, listen to music instead of staying in here on my own … But then, others expect me not to go out, to be in
mourning
, because they think it's the appropriate thing to do, and would be scandalised if I went around having fun … Fun! As if that were possible! As if you could smile when you're torn inside! I know what suffering is,' she added with the plangent pride of those who regard pain as their prerogative. ‘I don't want to forget them. I like to remember the dead, it's the only thing I can do for them. For Camilo, and above all for my son Manuel.'

‘What happened to him?'

‘He was killed by a dog,' she said calmly, in a low voice.

‘It sounds unbelievable,' commented Cupido.

‘Doesn't it? You hear a fifteen-year-old has died and you think of a traffic accident, or of a terminal illness. But you don't think another living creature could have killed him. It was a pit bull. A beast.'

‘I know those dogs,' said Cupido, who remembered an
acquaintance
who had a couple of them guarding a warehouse. Two quiet, discreet animals, tame when with their master but prone to biting. They'd been bred to bite, and locked their jaws until their teeth pierced through the flesh they'd bitten.

‘I don't know how anyone can keep them,' said Gabriela. ‘I wonder whether when you buy a dog of that breed you don't half think that one day you'll use it. It's like someone who buys a gun. They might say they appreciate it as an object, and are amused to shoot bottles on top of a rock. But deep down they never forget that they have it and that, if it should be necessary, they'll be able to use it.'

Cupido nodded gently. Most of the dogs he'd come across were harmless animals, loyal, charming and affectionate, even too
affectionate
in their way of slobbering over any stranger who patted them on the head and dirtying their jackets with their paws. But there were also cold-eyed, evil dogs, with big jaws ready to bite,
dogs that did not look like dogs but like mutant wolves, bulls or hyenas. Their owners sharpened their teeth for fights and trained them to endure suffering. Cupido didn't trust those breeds. When he was a child, dogs didn't live indoors. They were bred to
shepherd
cattle, hunt or help in some task or other. And they were also good to teach the kids of the countryside the facts of life, and show them that when one dog mounted another – he and his friends had sometimes interrupted them brutally – there were consequences a few months later: a mass of blind puppies in a basket. It was dangerous to approach the mothers protecting their litters, and the kids thought of their parents and felt safer knowing that, in case of danger, they'd be protected with as much
fierceness
. Dogs were good for things like that, not to be tended to, and cleaned and combed and dressed and taken to a psychologist or the dentist for their teeth to be brushed. Their work and company was valued, their loyalty and sacrifice too, but no one forgot they were a different species.

‘They were coming back from a football match. They'd lost and were angry. You know teenagers. They think they're adults but are still children, and see games as a battle and defeat as failure. People told me later they were making a lot of noise in the
neighbourhood
, they were shouting and kicking the ball against the fences. When they reached that house, the dog spooked them with its barks, and instead of ignoring it they provoked it, made it so angry that the pit bull jumped over the fence and attacked them. There was no one in and the dog was very agitated. It caught my son and never let go. A few people went by and a couple of neighbours tried to calm it. Someone called the police, but by the time they arrived and shot the dog it was too late.'

Although her breathing was shallow, she'd spoken slowly, for the detective to follow her memories step by step; then she looked at him to confirm that he had not lagged behind somewhere along the difficult, stony road she was revisiting.

‘My son was happy … He shouldn't have died,' she added, as if that statement bore a logical relation to the previous one. ‘I wasn't,
I was not happy at his age, and so I always made sure that he wasn't unhappy himself. I think children with an unhappy adolescence, kids that are not lucky to feel loved, admired, popular, later in life have a constant need of affection that makes them cling to anyone who might whisper a few sweet words in their ears, even someone unsuitable. But that wasn't Manuel's case,' she explained. Each time she uttered his name, her mouth shed some of its sadness, her brow relaxed and her face lightened. ‘He was a bit of a rebel, but he was full of laughter, health, strength, curiosity. He'd just started seeing someone.'

‘Was she there when …?'

‘Violeta? No, no, only the boys. They'd been playing football.'

‘And the owner of the dog? What's happened?'

‘It all went to court and the judge ruled they were not guilty. The dog was inside the fence and the boys provoked it. I learned through my lawyer that they were devastated and offered to do anything they could for me. But what could they do? They could not bring back Manuel. They moved away. Now the house is for sale, but no one wants it. It's all locked up and the bushes have grown over the fence, which is beginning to rust over. Sometimes I walk by and I stop across the road and try to imagine how it all happened.'

Gabriela looked at the pictures again, and Cupido respected her silence. He tried to find a link between the death of the child and Olmedo's but couldn't think of anything except Gabriela herself. They hadn't even met. They belonged to different worlds: a military world with a rigid sense of duty, and that of a teenager
interested
in sports, girls, and no doubt in the latest technology. Both were alien to Cupido, but, more so than by the military, he was
disconcerted
by this generation of kids he saw in the street dressed in trainers without shoelaces and baggy clothes, who started having sex very early, and many of whom smoked, drank, and took pills, and some of whom were crippled after they crashed their
motorcycles
into walls at high speed. He wanted to know more about the boy, Manuel, to complete the picture. He remembered the name of the girl he'd dated, Violeta.

‘Did you already know Olmedo when your son died?'

‘No, not yet. I met him later.'

‘How?'

‘I went out with a friend one day and we bumped into Camilo in the street. She introduced us. The conversation went on and he invited us to have a coffee in a bar. From the beginning he was very kind to me, even more so when he learned how my child had died. He was a military man, but he found violence in any form repellent. And there had also been a tragedy in his family.'

‘Yes, his wife had died after what should have been a simple procedure,' said Cupido.

‘Because of negligence,' she corrected him. ‘I think that fact moved him, and he offered to help me in anything I might need. I gave him my number and he called two days later. Then, well, we were both single and started going out. I didn't really want to, I didn't want to do anything, but he was patient and more persistent than me. He managed to help me overcome my suspicions.'

‘Suspicions?'

‘Not everybody spoke well of him,' she explained. ‘When I got to know him I found it strange that he had a reputation as a tough, intransigent man, because he wasn't like that at all, at least with those he loved. There were rumours that he wanted to close down San Marcial and people said he did it out of personal ambition. Rumours, you know – idiots believe them, and rascals spread them even if they know they're not true. I didn't mind his reputation, but I didn't like his profession, as I'd never had anything to do with that milieu. I imagined that soldiers were always
evaluating
possible dangers from the outside and forgetting to take care of what's closest to them. And I thought them irascible. But I was surprised by Camilo's kindness, his good manners.'

‘That reputation you mentioned, did he have any enemies who might think badly of him?'

‘I guess he did, but I didn't know him well enough to be familiar with the details. He sometimes spoke of colleagues whom he had trouble with, but he was vague about it, I don't remember
any names.' She paused for a few seconds and then added: ‘Once … once he told me he had plenty of enemies. But neither did he worry about them nor was he willing to change in order to avoid them. He was one of those self-sufficient people who are dead set against political chicanery, who don't take refuge in group
mentality
, who don't grovel.'

‘So would you say there were people who hated him?' he insisted, hoping a name would pop up.

‘Of course there were. It's so easy for one person to hate another. We all know what no one wants to hear about themselves. It's enough to whisper in someone's ear something another has said, and there's hatred forever. It's that easy! Hatred is a plant that grows quickly and in every terrain, with barely any need for water and fertiliser. A very small seed is enough.'

‘Did he tell you if he'd ever received any threats?'

‘No, but he was always very careful. Always carried a gun, as if he was afraid he might be attacked.'

‘Did Olmedo speak to you that evening? Did he ring you?'

‘No, I was at home, on my own, until eight, and he didn't call. Neither did I. Then Samuel came round to help me re-pot some plants. Marina and I had been to his place in the morning to pick up a few.' She looked around as if trying to find them and pointed to a rubber plant at the end of the corridor by the door, and some green blurs on the balcony. ‘Then we had some coffee and chatted till about nine.'

‘And yet,' said Cupido, pointing to the ring on her finger, ‘Olmedo told the people at the jewellery shop that he would confirm the following day whether they ought to engrave the ring. One might think he would have asked you if you would accept it.'

‘What are you implying?'