Barcelona Shadows (5 page)

Blackmouth is lying, but not entirely. The two Negroes he is talking about are two Guineans from the colonies who extort their fellow countrymen and other unfortunates who believe that if they don’t pay like a good Christian should, excuse my irony, they will turn them into zombies, into walking dead who owe their masters obedience. Blackmouth got into it with them once when they caught him stealing their money, and his ribs still hurt.

“And they killed him?” asks Malsano.

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen One Eye for a while.”

“But you were seeing him to go to the doctor’s house. What kind of neighbours do you have, who are only interested in rotting bodies?”

“I can take you to them. I can help you catch them.”

“Now you want to work for us?”

M
OISÈS CORVO IS A DOG:
nobody pisses in his territory. And if that means stinking up the whole neighbourhood with the cloying stench of urine, he has no problem with that. Moisès Corvo quit walking the beat some time ago, quit being cannon fodder, with a blindfold over his eyes and a yes sir on his lips, to become the gun dog he is now.

He’s no longer the defender of the good folk, because he no longer believes in good folk. In Corvo’s specific world there are only two types of people: the ones that are like him and the ones who aren’t. And he devotes all his efforts to taking the second group out of circulation, without questioning whether, in that crusade destined for defeat, he himself has switched sides. His whole life he’s swum through the filth, and you know that if you stir shit up, something’s going to get stuck under your nails. The difference between him and the others is that he is convinced there is a difference.

Corvo is an old dog, grim-faced and filled with vices, but he isn’t ready to give the streets over to anyone. And much less to these newcomers that Blackmouth wants him to believe killed One Eye and who are abducting children for rituals they’ve imported from their savage country. As if we didn’t have enough with the riff-raff that are from here, now they come from abroad, exclaims Corvo
every time the conversation goes down those paths. The detective is of the opinion that the city’s not big enough for everyone, that these guys come to do wrong, that any day now the city’s going to blow up in their faces, but this time the target won’t be churches and convents, which is practically a tradition in Barcelona. The mark will be shopkeepers, workers who get up early each day, the midwives and the tramcar drivers. The police… we coppers are already used to the blows, we’ve got tough hides and lean flesh. Even still, Corvo’s thoughts are pure bar ramblings, cheap Lerrouxism that dissolves the second he remembers Ismael, the little son of a bitch who drives the druggists crazy, or Vicente, a real bastard who steals pieces of industrial machinery to resell them by the kilo; when he remembers how those two mark their victims’ faces with rusty knives, or beat people up just for fun, then he curses all the criminals born in this country, in a society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, blah blah blah taken from the last book he read or some newspaper headline that caught his eye.

Blackmouth gets another blow to the back of the neck from Moisès Corvo, which makes Juan Malsano burst into laughter.

“What was that for?”

“Just in case.”

They are on a roof near the Santa Madrona gate, pitch black, sea salt in the icy air that freezes the jangle of the watchman’s keys. Corvo can’t get the Apaches out of his head.

It was barely over a year ago that Moisès Corvo took part in an operation to round up a group of Frenchmen who crossed the border to rob jewellery stores in Barcelona. They were the Apaches, a clan that had formed as a criminal gang on the outskirts of Paris and just kept growing. The reason for their name was
quite simple: they acted as a group and they were very violent and merciless, like the American Indians were rumoured to be. The description they had to work with was as flimsy as “they’ve got moustaches and speak French”, so both Moisès and his colleagues spent weeks waiting outside jewellery shops and in coach houses for the Apaches to show up. After hanging out on a corner for four hours, keeping watch over the entrance to Dalmau Jewellery on Casp Street, Moisès no longer knew where to hide. He had already drunk six anises to combat the cold and, with his head foggy, he came to the conclusion that the operation was as foolish as any of the houses those new two-bit architects were building everywhere. You tell me if a municipal cop couldn’t handle this, he said to himself, as Mr Dalmau, who knew nothing of the surveillance, came out again and again to make sure that that tall, moustachioed loner who was a bit tipsy didn’t speak French.

He was so fixed on Moisès, and Moisès was so fed up with standing around there without any good spot to stretch out for a nap, that neither of them reacted when a small, stocky individual, dressed entirely in black and with a bowler hat bouncing around on his head, went into the jewellery store and punched Mr Dalmau in the eye, just like that, as motivation. His wife screams, and a second man comes in with a young bloke, both in rigorous black, like someone heading to a funeral. While the little guy beats Mr Dalmau on the floor, the second man asks his wife, in terrible Spanish, to give him everything, I mean everything, that she can grab. And even though what she can grab is none other than the lad, who keeps manhandling her while ignoring her screams and moans and begging, the poor woman leads them to the back of the store. It was in that moment that Moisès Corvo came in, sweaty, panting, and threw himself on the Apache with the big
bowler hat, who wasn’t hard for him to pin down given their size difference. One, two, three punches, and when he started bleeding from the mouth it was time to rein himself in, there had to be enough to go around. Trusting, he didn’t realize that two other Apaches were coming out from inside the store, and when they saw their partner laid out, with a big ole bloke on top of him, pulled out two revolvers and started shooting. Only one of the bullets hit Moisès Corvo’s body, in his neck, grazing his carotid, enough to splatter everything with blood, including the Apache with the oversized bowler, and leave him unconscious. I was about to take him, but Moisès Corvo’s soul clung to life. I went with him to the Hospital Clínic where he awoke a few hours later, anaemic, weak and hung-over. Sometimes there are people I go to collect who resist and get away from me. It doesn’t happen very often, but when I find one, I feel drawn to them. I follow them and savour the taste of their survival. Moisès Corvo woke up awfully close to the autopsy room. Those few metres of distance between a cold bed and a warm one are like kilometres, but they can be covered in the blink of an eye.

And that’s why, on the roof now, watching the people come in and out through the Santa Madrona gate, while Blackmouth talks and talks and says that Negroes have a special smell, like sulphur because the devil breakfasts on sulphur and biscuits, now, Moisès Corvo feels a stab in his neck and remembers me vaguely, and the last thing he wants to do is splatter any damn foreign thief with his blood. If any of the Negroes went out that dawn, they’ll go in there and pull them out of bed, out of their coffin or wherever the hell they sleep. If they sleep at all.

Corvo and Malsano wouldn’t have continued investigating One Eye’s death if he hadn’t been drained of all his blood. Deaths like
that happen every night, and Corvo has enough experience to determine which ones are worth the bother and which ones aren’t. During the day it’s the gangsters who are the copper’s favourite customers, but at night the knives, razors and pillow smotherings multiply, oblivion in kilos of piled-up shit, and bodies floating in the port. I killed him because I love him, I can’t take it any more and I’m going to hang myself, give me back my money ya bastard, you won’t live to see the dawn. I guess that’s why I like Corvo: we know each other so well, when we look into each other’s eyes I know he understands me. He respects me, but he doesn’t take me too seriously, and that makes me feel at home, because I’m not always welcome everywhere, and I usually keep my distance.

The arrest, in the end, is quicker than anyone expected, and it’s all wrapped up in the blink of an eye. Literally, because Blackmouth was already sleeping when Malsano pinched him to confirm whether the guy who’d come out to piss on the street, who?, that Negro, imbecile, was one of One Eye’s murderers. Yes, yes, he lies, and then it’s all a chase and a pipe in the hand, stop police, the Negro is still, ironically pale, a punch to the temples and we’ve got him on the ground. Searching through his colourful clothes, Malsano grabs the keys to his flat, Corvo cuffs him and both are up. Key, lock, door, kick and two more men to the ground, with their heads amid hens clucking in fear. The policemen find everything they’re looking for and more, because it’s perfect for them to shut the case so quickly: knives of all sizes, a stinking, emaciated dog hanging in a kitchen cabinet and a couple of earthenware bowls filled with blood, half thick, half coagulated, under the bed, where there are also all kinds of bottles, some filled with bugs, another with worms, one further on with rats’ legs and who knows what else. Corvo finds a bodkin
and he knows he can already go before the judge, that these three will sleep in prison and he’ll get another notch on his belt. Case closed, we can head to the whorehouse.

“What evil creatures!” shouts Blackmouth, when he goes through the whole house, among lit candles and drawings and scribbles on the floor and walls. “See, I told you they were bad people!”

One of the detained, who hadn’t received as many blows as his buddies, earns one to the back of his neck from Corvo when he looks at the lad, recognizes him, insults him and curses him.

“Is something wrong?” asks a neighbour lady from the doorway.

“Police, ma’am, you can go to sleep,” replies Malsano.

The woman disappears behind the door across the hall and a few seconds later returns with a little cardigan on, it’s getting chilly. Two minutes have yet to pass and there are some thirty people on the landing, and it’s not until after ten that the
night-watchman
shows up.

“Balondro!” Corvo gestures to him with one arm. “Go to Conde del Asalto and tell him to send a police van.”

“You’re taking them to the station?”

“No, I want to show off my wheels. You should already be on your way back!”

The entire street is awake. Sometimes Corvo wonders if the people of Barcelona really sleep or just wait around for tragedy to strike. But when he shows up with two more policemen, who take the Guineans, he has his answer: people live for bad news. When he hears on the rebound someone linking these arrests with the disappeared children, his cheeks grow red and warm despite the freezing temperatures on the street. Without a good visual inspection of the flat of One Eye’s murderers and without confirming whether the blood in the bowls is human or animal,
Corvo saw no indication that makes them think that any child was around… because they aren’t around.

The night drags on, and all morning Corvo and Malsano are busy with red tape. Reports, bureaucracy and stamps. Half asleep, they wander through the station, where everyone seems busy. They go down to the lock-up to talk to the detainees, but they can’t get a single word out of them. At midday, Barcelona’s head police chief, José Millán Astray, appears in the office of the criminal-investigation brigade and finds them struggling to keep their eyes open. Their breath smells of coffee, but Millán Astray’s shaving lotion is so strong he doesn’t notice. He is a dry, lanky man, with a tough character and a soldier’s bearing. It’s unusual to see him speaking to officers, or even detectives, but he likes to make an appearance when a murder has been resolved, and in case there is a medal involved his chest is ready and waiting. No one can stand him, but he’s the boss, as Malsano says in his Catalan-inflected Spanish, and you have to put up with the boss, listen to him and forget him.

“I would congratulate you, detectives,” begins Millán Astray, looking out on the horizon of a wall covered in papers, “but in the end you were doing your job, and I’m not one of those who congratulates people for doing what they’re supposed to.”

Why the hell did he come, then? wonders Moisès Corvo.

The chief continues: “The prompt resolution of this case is without a doubt a fortunate…”

“I appreciate that you prepared a speech, boss,” Corvo sat down after realizing that standing at attention isn’t the best position for someone who’s been awake that many hours, “but what I want to hear is that we get the rest of the week off.”

“If you weren’t so arrogant, Inspector Corvo, I could consider
the suggestion. Your constant insubordination makes you worthy of only one day’s leave. Don’t come to work this evening. Inspector Malsano…”

“Yes?”

“Come back on Monday, go with your family, rest.”

Juan Malsano is as much a bachelor as the Pope, but since it’s the first time Millán Astray speaks a word to him, he’s not going to insist he have exhaustive knowledge of his private life.

“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself, so many days with the wife,” says Corvo, when the chief leaves the office. “He’s done me a favour.”

“That mouth is going to get you in trouble, Moisès.”

“That’s not what my lady friends I’m planning on visiting tonight tell me.”

But that night Moisès Corvo is at home, unable to sleep, putting up with a chewing-out from his wife, who is certainly less indulgent with him than Millán Astray.

The next day, tired of being reclusive, Corvo passes by Dorita’s place after a light lunch of vegetable and anchovy broth, because he can’t eat much when he’s just woken up. Dorita sometimes offers him something else to eat, but today she’s not in the mood. In a flat on Ferlandina Street, shared by the mice and the sub-letting ladies, the prostitute opens the door and looks Corvo over from head to toe. She remembers him. She lets him in. She doesn’t offer him any food or drink or her usual services, because she finally knows, taking a deep breath, that someone has come to listen to her. They sit on a mattress that smells of sperm even though a man hasn’t lain there in two weeks. It is a room without windows, without hope.

“They told me you have a girl…”

“Ay, Mr Policeman, the sweetest little girl in the neighbourhood, and they’ve snatched her from me.”

“How old is she?”

“Just four, just a little woman.”

No, it’s not the idea that Corvo has of a little woman, but maybe it is the one whoever took her has.

“How did she disappear, Dorita? Did you see anyone?”

“No, no. If only I had seen the devil that took her, because I would have followed him to the very gates of hell to get back my Clàudia.”

“Where did they… make off with her?”

“Sant Josep Square! I was buying vegetables behind the Boqueria, and the girl, who is very obedient, was right by my side. Ay, poor little thing, they’ve stolen her from me, they’ve stolen her away!”