At Close Quarters (20 page)

Without realising, he dozed off and when he opened his eyes the firewood was reduced to embers. Brindle was not inside, and he thought perhaps the dog had not gone after a hare but a stray bitch in heat. He stretched his legs, got up from the hammock and, with short, confident steps, walked to the door. From the doorway he looked at the deep darkness, a moonless sky, the stars shining bright and the trees stretching out as if to touch them, as if they were black hot-air balloons tied to the earth by their trunks.

‘Brindle,’ he called out. ‘Brindle!’

The dog did not reply. Something, perhaps an insect attracted by the heat, flew by and brushed Rosco’s forehead. Then, for no particular reason, he imagined a human presence, which instead of hiding in the dark wearing black clothes, appeared by a tree surrounded by a white halo. A light breeze brought to him the perfume of orange blossom, but this sweet smell was now drenched in disquiet, as if someone had scattered it about by shaking the leaves of the trees. He shivered and took a step back. Keeping a lookout, his hand fumbled for the hoe he kept by the door inside the house. His pulse settled down when he grasped the wooden handle. The tool was as sharp as a sword and as hard as a shield. Armed, his fear abated, and he thought that now he’d be able to confront anyone in that territory. He’d been born in the countryside and knew it well, knew how to move in the dark without making a noise. Walking in the country, he noticed at once who was from the city, because townies always looked at the ground, carefully placing one foot in
front of the other as if they were afraid of stumbling or slipping on cow excrement or treading on a snake that would coil back to sink its poisonous fangs into their ankles.

He approached the orange trees in silence, alert, while he imagined a violent encounter and himself giving a blow, one strong ferocious blow to the head of the urban intruder. He heard a rustle at the same time he saw a shadow and raised the hoe, only to realise it was Brindle, who rather than protect him seemed to be approaching for protection. In spite of the darkness he saw that the dog had his tail between his legs and that his ears moved nervously from side to side. He patted him without looking down and, feeling that the animal had caught his own fear, whispered in a not very convincing voice:

‘Easy, Brindle, easy. What did you see?’

He thought he heard a distant sound beyond the rusty wire fence, among the dry, thorny bushes where the darkness buried itself in more darkness. When he touched the dog again he noticed Brindle had calmed down and was no longer shaking. Still, his own hand was. For a few minutes he stayed under the orange trees, listening, looking for something that might explain what or who had been there, but the darkness made it impossible to identify any signs, any traces.

Constantly looking behind his back, he returned to the shed accompanied by the dog, locked the door and lit the gas lamp. Brindle was still looking from him to the door and back again. He barked nervously every so often and looked at him with his beautiful slate-coloured eyes which reflected two sparks of light. He looked as if he wanted to say something and couldn’t, like a person who, instead of having had his fangs extracted, had had his tongue cut out.

‘Where did you go?’ asked Rosco putting down the hoe and preparing to leave. ‘Don’t do that again, don’t leave me alone.’

‘I found her,’ said Alkalino. He walked into the kitchen and drank two glasses of water. Then he wiped his brow with a tissue.

‘Was it difficult?’ asked Cupido.

‘It was. They act as though they’ve done something wrong and are in hiding.’

‘Who?’

‘Not just the girl, Violeta, but all of them. Teenagers! Grownups always want to know where their children are, and children do all they can to prevent them finding out,’ Alkalino replied.

‘What do you mean by something wrong?’

‘Oh, nothing, nothing really. Violeta and her group of friends gather together at the end of the north beach, behind some sand dunes, not too near the water. They sit and talk, sing, crack jokes, push each another. They don’t even drink. As innocent as doves, they are. And yet they don’t look like it. Baggy clothes, shirts with drawings that a not even Malaysian pirate would tattoo on his skin, rags for trousers, as if deliberately ripped. And you should see the hair on some of them, all dishevelled, like they had just come out of a forest and their hair had caught on every branch!’

‘Did you speak to Violeta?’ Cupido cut him short.

‘No, you’d better do it. I don’t want her to think there’s a strange guy stalking her,’ he said with half a smile. ‘Don’t exaggerate.’

‘She’s very pretty,’ he added seriously. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she was stalked. She’s a beautiful girl.’

‘At her age, no girl is ugly.’

‘She’s a brunette, short hair,’ he continued without replying to his comment. ‘I don’t think you’ll have trouble recognising her. It’s like … she looks like a dead boy’s girlfriend.’

‘What do dead boy’s girlfriends look like?’

‘A little strange,’ he replied after a few moments’ thought. ‘They seem to be longing for a change and at the same time fearing that it’ll be a change for the worse,’ he said. Then he looked at his watch and added. ‘If you hurry, I think you may catch her now.’

Cupido stood up and grabbed his keys.

‘Are you staying?’

‘Yes, I’d better. Good luck.’

The detective went out into the street, took the first cab that came his way and approached the end of the north beach. Indeed, between the sea and a pinewood were a few dunes. He walked towards them, and in a small hollow, hidden from view, were a group of teenagers, looking strong, healthy, with well-defined physical traits yet something childish in their eyes and gestures, as if their bodies had grown faster than their minds and they were looking in surprise at the sudden manifestations of their species and their sex. They gave the impression of having had a long, happy childhood, filled with toys, care and protection. Seated on the sand, they chatted, listened to music and exchanged the headphones of their MP3 players, commenting on the music.

As Alkalino had predicted, he had no trouble identifying Violeta among the four girls sitting cross-legged in a small circle, a little apart from the boys.

They saw him in turn and one of them must have made a comment, because they all fell silent as they watched him approach. Cupido stopped three metres away from them, so that his height did not intimidate a group who were seated.

‘Are you Violeta?’ he asked the short-haired girl.

‘Yes,’ she replied, although she couldn’t have said otherwise, as on hearing her name several friends turned their heads towards her.

For a moment he thought of introducing himself: ‘My name is
Ricardo Cupido, I’m a detective.’ But she didn’t know him and that would only make her suspicious. So he said in the kindest tone he was capable of:

‘I’d like to talk to you for a moment about Manuel.’

Violeta tensed up and then, all of a sudden, blushed terribly and lowered her head to hide it.

‘Gabriela spoke of you,’ added Cupido as he wondered what else a private detective should say in order not to sound like a cop, not to sound authoritative to an adolescent’s ears, as if demanding answers.

‘Who are you?’ put in one of the boys.

‘A private detective,’ he replied looking at Violeta. ‘I’m investigating the death of Camilo Olmedo. The officer who was a friend of Gabriela’s.’

No further explanations were needed. Violeta stood up, shook the sand off her trousers and walked towards him.

‘All right,’ she said. She turned her head and asked the group, who remained silent: ‘You’ll wait for me, right?’

They all nodded, and she and Cupido started walking towards the shore as if they had rehearsed the scene.

‘I haven’t seen Gabriela for some time. At first I used to visit her in the afternoons,’ she said without waiting for a question. ‘She had the hardest time. But then I stopped. She depressed me too much, even when she started seeing that officer. She’s so unlucky!’

‘Did you ever meet him?’

‘The officer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just once. One Sunday I went by her house as they were going out. They said they had errands to run. Gabriela told him who I was and then the officer put his hands on my shoulder and looked at me like … I don’t know … like he was my father and he hadn’t seen me for a long time. He also seemed to be thinking of Manuel. I mean, it was not like … like when a man looks at you and you want to cover yourself with a coat.’

Violeta stopped and turned towards Cupido to make sure he
was listening. Cupido nodded silently, thinking she was still stuck in that moment when nothing can touch a girl, neither facts nor looks nor words. Any obscene compliment or dirty proposition would wash over her, protected as she was by her blushes and her terse gracefulness. She too one day will be an adult and will meet men, and will bear children, and will be tired of work, and disappointed and sad. But not yet. There’s still innocence in her eyes, still the belief that she’ll never have to utter certain words, he thought.

‘I think I know what you mean. Did you ever hear about him again?’

‘No. Not until they told me he’d committed suicide. I found it hard to believe it, because that day I saw him he didn’t look like he was depressed or sad, as Gabriela so often was. I remember wondering what might have happened, for him to make such a decision. Is that why you’ve come to talk to me?’

‘Yes, because of his death,’ he avoided the word suicide.

‘But Manuel had nothing to do with him. They never met.’

‘I just wanted to check. That was one of the things I came to find out. But you’ve answered it already.’

‘What else?’

‘Tell me about Manuel.’

Violeta stopped looking at him and started walking near the water’s edge, where the wet sat mixed with the dry. At that moment she looked older than when sitting among her friends. She seemed almost as mature as an adult, as if conflicts had made her grow up.

‘I don’t know where to begin,’ she whispered.

‘Do you remember him well?’ he asked tactfully.

‘At times I remember him very well and at others I think he’s slipping from memory,’ she said, while Cupido thought of Alkalino’s description of her: as if she wished for a change and feared it might be for the worse.

‘How did you meet him?’

‘That I remember well, although it’s been a while, more than a year and a half. One day, a friend and I went to a cybercafé, where
it was quieter than at home, to chat with some boys we’d met on the web the day before. We both took part in it, but she was doing the typing. And right beside me, on the next computer along, was this boy I didn’t know, whom I’d seen on the street a few times. He was handsome, or looked handsome to me. He was leaning forward, very attentively, looking things up. Then I looked away, because my friend was talking to me. And the next time I glanced at him, I saw drops of blood falling on his keyboard. The blood was trickling from his nose, but he was so engrossed in what he was doing that he barely noticed it and wiped it casually with his left hand. It struck me as so odd that someone should bleed and not realise it, as if he didn’t feel any pain or discomfort. ‘You’re
bleeding
,’ I said. He looked at me for a second without understanding what I meant. But then he noticed a drop going down his nose and saw his bloodied left hand, as well as the keyboard. He fumbled for something in his pocket but didn’t find it, and as I didn’t have any tissues either, I took my scarf off and gave it to him to wipe himself and staunch the haemorrhage, well, not haemorrhage, just a few drops of blood trickling down one at a time. I helped him clean the keyboard, thinking that the owner might see the stains and make us pay for it. He closed down the page he’d been looking at and we went out, just the two of us, while my friend stayed inside, chatting. I asked him if he needed help. He was no longer
bleeding
, but his nose and T-shirt were stained. I dampened a tip of the scarf with saliva and helped him clean up. He thanked me again and, although I didn’t mind, he insisted on keeping the scarf to clean it. He was about to leave without asking me for my number when I stopped him to ask when we’d meet again. He was always very absent-minded,’ she said smiling, but with an air of sadness. ‘He called me two days later. He brought me the scarf clean and ironed, and it smelled lovely. I asked him if he’d washed it himself and he said no, his mother had. Then we carried on talking. He told me he got them often enough, those nosebleeds. He’d had a vein in his nose cauterised and for a while he’d been fine, but then it’d happened again, as if he had so much excess blood that it had
to issue from somewhere. “It’s called epitaxis,” he told me. “What?” I replied, not knowing what he was referring to. “Nosebleeds. It looks terrible, all the more so because you don’t realise; it’s not like you get hit or you bump against something. But it’s not serious.” I, however, thought it very strange and couldn’t take it lightly. I didn’t understand that you could bleed for no reason, without a wound, pain or anything. I asked him if it might happen when he was asleep and he said it might, although it always had happened when he was awake. “But then, if you don’t realise, you could bleed to death during the night,” I added, scared, and didn’t understand why he was laughing. “It happens to you because you’ve got a very big heart,” I told him. From that afternoon on we started seeing each other, going to the cinema, the beach, or just sitting on a bench in the park.’

‘Seeing each other, does that mean you were an … item?’

Violeta fell silent for a few seconds. She seemed to be weighing up the word, doubting whether she should accept it, wondering if for the forty-year-old detective that word might have the same meaning it had for her.

‘At first, no. At first we just went out together. We texted each other and chatted online. Then, one day, before a maths exam, he offered to help me with some stuff I didn’t understand. I went round to his house for the first time and met his mum. Just for a few minutes, because Manuel said that she always wanted to control him and that, if he gave her the chance, she would never stop questioning me about myself and my family. So we went to his room and opened the books and he started explaining to me the things I didn’t understand. We were in the same year, but in different schools. In fact, I was a year older, as I’ve repeated a year. I knew he was a straight-A student; someone had told me he was sort of gifted. But I don’t think he was, just very smart. And very kind to me. I passed the exam and, from then on, we agreed we’d study together whenever I had difficulties. When he helped me it was all like a game. He didn’t like to sit at a desk or on the sofa to study; he sat on the floor and put the notes or the books all around
him. He’d pick a sheet of paper, read it for a few minutes and put it back where it was. Once he finished he would pick everything up and say he already knew it, that it wasn’t difficult.’

Cupido remembered meeting people like that. He thought of gifted children who cannot find a happy middle and live peacefully: they either become prodigies dizzy with success, or they don’t amount to anything and vanish with the feeling of being different, devastated by the gap between their intelligence and the world, incapable of facing up to the mob’s contempt for whoever doesn’t follow the flock.

‘The first time I saw him do that I asked him who’d taught him to study in that way,’ Violeta went on. ‘He told me it was his mum who, ever since he was a child, gave him increasingly difficult puzzles and logical games. She would sit down next to him on the carpet and wouldn’t let him go to bed until he solved them. That’s what he said, and I thought of his mother, who at that moment might be in the living room, where the TV was on, but who also might be at the door, listening to us, because Manuel told me she watched over everything he did, where he went and with whom, who rang him and whom he rang, the pictures of his friends and which pages he looked up on the internet – which was why he sometimes went to a cybercafé … But she always treated me well, perhaps because I understood why she worried so much. It seems normal, if you’ve had a child on your own, without a father, without ever asking for help.’

She stopped again to look at the detective, as if she expected a reaction to her comments. Cupido mumbled a few words of agreement.

‘And so, some time later I realised I liked him a lot. One day we agreed to meet up in a park, and when he arrived I saw he’d shaved the slight moustache that darkened his top lip, and I told him, laughing: “You’ve shaved.” “Yes. I stole one of my mum’s razors,” he replied blushing a little. It must be something special for boys, shaving for the first time. Then I touched the skin over his lip and said, “How soft!” and then I took the plunge and touched his
lips, which for the first time I felt like kissing – I hadn’t seriously thought of that before. And from that moment on, yes, you could say we were boyfriend and girlfriend.’

Her mobile rang briefly, as a warning, and Violeta took it out of her pocket and checked the caller ID.

‘I have to go back,’ she said. ‘My house is a bit far and ever since that thing happened to Manuel I’m afraid to go anywhere on my own.’

‘You’ve been very kind,’ said Cupido. He didn’t have any further questions. ‘Good luck.’

‘You too.’

Violeta walked off towards the promenade where her friends were waiting for her, as if they hadn’t trusted the detective and had followed them. Beyond the group of teens, the sun was beginning to drop behind the hills, a yellow, very deep sun, which seemed to push back the horizon. When Violeta reached her friends, they surrounded her, no doubt asking questions, and they all disappeared round a corner.