Tattoo (21 page)

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘To Caldetas.’

‘I don’t want to go there!’

‘Perhaps it won’t be necessary.’

‘I don’t want to go! I’ll jump out of the car! You have no right to kidnap me like this!’

‘Perhaps it won’t be necessary. I know almost everything that happened. I just need to fill in a few details.’

Queta was staring at the road as though with each passing kilometre she was losing something more.

‘How did you meet Julio?’

‘Which Julio?’

‘The one in my note. I wrote his name there, and you knew who I meant.’

‘I only found out he was called Julio when you told Ramón.’

‘How did you meet him?’

‘What does it matter? What do you care? Please. I don’t want to go back to that place. Please.’

‘We could drive around until you’ve told me what I want to know.’

‘I met him in a cinema. Ramón doesn’t like films, so sometimes I go to local ones in the early evenings when there aren’t many clients left.’

‘Was this a long time ago?’

‘A little more than a year. Maybe a year and a half. I don’t know why I was such a fool. Now God has punished us. All of us.’

‘What did he say his name was?’

‘Alejandro.’

‘Did you start going to the Caldetas villa right from the beginning?’

‘No, at first he took me to places he knew.’

‘What kind of places?’

‘That kind of place.’

‘Motels?’

She did not answer. She was staring down into her lap.

‘Weren’t you surprised he didn’t take you back to where he lived?’

‘He said he had a landlady. Then we started going to the villa. He said it belonged to some cousins of his.’

‘Did he look like the sort of person who would have cousins owning a place like that?’

‘He was very classy. Very well educated. Very knowledgeable.’

‘Did your husband know about it?’

‘No.’

‘But in the end he found out.’

‘No.’

‘So why did he ask me to identify a body when he already knew perfectly well who it was?’

‘He didn’t know his real name.’

‘Which means you admit he knew the existence of your little friend.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

Carvalho leaned over towards her and shouted:

‘Don’t be so stupid! The cops wouldn’t be as polite as I am, and then you’d sing like a canary in ten seconds flat.’

‘Don’t shout at me. Who are you to shout at me? Let me out.’

‘When did your husband find out?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I want to know how he died.’

‘He drowned.’

‘No, he didn’t drown. Or if he did, your husband was watching. The newspapers made no link between the drowned man and the police raids, but your husband linked the two immediately.’

‘You know what our neighbourhood is like. There are lots of informers. Not all of Ramón’s business deals are above board. Why fool ourselves? He has connections.’

‘Obviously not good enough ones if he has to hire me to discover or confirm the identity of a drowned man. Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, or I’ll stop at the first police station.’

‘So what? So I had a friend. Or a lover, if you prefer. Ramón already knows that, so what could happen to me?’

‘It’s not every lover who appears drowned in such mysterious circumstances and with all that happened afterwards. Let me complete the story. Your husband finds out. He kills your lover. Throws him into the sea. Then he hears that the cops are after a gang of drug traffickers who might be connected to
the dead man. It all gets more complicated than he thought, and he’s in the middle of it. He hires me to see if there is any other possible link besides drugs. By the time I get back from Holland, everything has gone perfectly for your Ramón. The cops are convinced the death is all about drugs, and neither of you two has been brought into it. He acted too hastily by getting me involved, so he wanted to wrap everything up once and for all. Job done and paid for. But that wasn’t the end of it: by now, I was too interested in the case.’

‘Why? What do you want?’

‘More money. That could be an explanation. Or perhaps I simply want to close the case to my own satisfaction. I don’t like mysteries: that’s why I’ve chosen a trade that tries to unpick them.’

‘I won’t say that Ramón killed Julio.’

‘But he did. It must have been in the villa. The owner saw traces of blood there.’ Queta buried her face in her hands. ‘And he couldn’t have done it alone. How could he have tackled a man as brave and blond as beer?’

Queta looked at him in complete bewilderment.

‘It was probably the Larios family who gave him a hand. The father, or the two brothers. They owe him lots of favours. For a start, the fact that he gave Fat Nuria a job. Am I right?’

By now Queta was staring at him with something approaching admiration.

‘Was it them?’

She stared out again at the highway speeding past.

‘And you were there too. They caught you at it, didn’t they?’

Queta was in tears.

‘The fool thought he was born to raise hell in hell, and he died because he was fucking someone else’s wife. Did you look away while they finished him off?’

She became hysterical, beating her hands against the side window.

‘I want to go! Let me out of here!’

Carvalho thumped her on the back so hard it took her breath away.

‘I’ll take you home now. Tell your husband about our little chat and tell him we didn’t make it to the Caldetas villa. He needn’t worry about me blabbing to the police. But tomorrow I’m coming to the salon, and I want to talk to him. I’ve put a lot of effort into this and I’ve found out so much I reckon I haven’t been paid enough. Especially if I don’t like what he has to say to me.’

Q
ueta watched him come into the salon without moving a muscle. As usual, Fat Nuria tried to get in front of him and by the time he had climbed the stairs she was already on guard outside Señor Ramón’s office. The old man waited for Carvalho to sit down, then signalled for her to leave. When he was sure it was just the two of them, he opened a drawer, pulled out an envelope and threw it across the desk. It fell into Carvalho’s lap. He opened it slowly. Counted the money inside. A hundred thousand pesetas.

‘Take them and get out of here.’

Carvalho put the money back in the envelope, then threw it in Señor Ramón’s face.

‘I haven’t decided yet whether I want to be paid off or not.’

‘What do you want then? I’m sure Queta has told you everything.’

‘In fact, it was me who told your wife everything, and she didn’t deny it.’

‘What exactly did you tell her?’

‘You discover your wife has a lover. You turn up at their hiding place with some friends. You kill him. You take the body in a frozen-foods delivery van to the Larios family warehouse in Badalona. You stow the body in a motorboat. Put swimming trunks on him. Then take him out to sea
and throw him overboard. But it turns out he’s a dangerous corpse. He weighs about the same as a good shipment of drugs. You start getting alarming news. You see you might be linked to the death, either by the cops, or by the dead man’s friends. You don’t even know his real name. The police are snooping around, making enquiries. You hire me to find out who he was because that way I’ll be come to the case pure as driven snow and will come back to you with fresh, untainted information. Bad luck for you that I become interested in the victim. It doesn’t always happen. I used to love literature, Señor Ramón. Now I only like real-life literature, and our friend was what you might call a wasted literary hero. So I followed the leads I had, and lo and behold I stumble across the woman in the song, the real woman in the song.’

‘What song are you talking about?’

‘That’s my business. The facts are as I’ve told you. By the time I got back from Holland you knew the police investigation was aimed exclusively at the drug connection. That has nothing to do with you. You were home free, my friend, and didn’t need me any longer.’

‘Take the hundred thousand and get out.’

‘Why did you kill him?’

‘Don’t you think I had a motive?’

‘You don’t seem like a man governed by passion. In fact, you killed him in cold blood, and had help.’

‘Are you so sure I killed him?’

‘Who else could it have been?’

‘That woman is a real piece of shit.’

Señor Ramón had become agitated. His face was so flushed with anger that his pale freckles had vanished completely. He got to his feet and was trembling with fury.

‘She changed my whole life. I left everything for her.
Do you think I was born to run a pathetic little business like this? That woman was the manicurist of my real wife. Fifteen years ago I had the strength and the nerve to crush you and that layabout at the same time. I left everything for her, and it was all going well until he appeared. She’s like a jelly: no backbone. He picked her up off the street and she didn’t even think of all I’d sacrificed for her, of everything I had lost.’

Suddenly, as though all his rage and strength had suddenly deserted him, he collapsed back into his chair.

‘I’m old enough now to live a peaceful existence. My wife, the real one, is enjoying a harmonious old age, surrounded by my children and grandchildren. And at my age I need some attention, I need looking after every day. It’s a time when the most important thing to a man is harmony.’

His fingers were moving through the air as though he were playing a piano.

‘I probably wouldn’t have done anything if I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes. I went there with some friends to give him a good hiding, and to scare her. She really is a heap of shit, let me tell you. As soon as she saw us come in she started dragging herself across the floor, trying to kiss my hands. She was naked, stark naked! He means nothing to me, Ramón! You’re my life! I owe everything to you! While she was pleading with me like that, the others were beating him up in the background, until he lost consciousness.’

He leaned back in his swivel chair. Now the look he gave Carvalho was the smile of someone about to reveal a secret.

‘Do you want to know what happened then?’

He did not wait for Carvalho to reply.

‘She was trying to cling to me. She couldn’t have cared less what had happened to him. Ramón, my life! He doesn’t mean a thing to me, I swear! You’re the only one who matters!’

Ramón was gazing at Carvalho like a card-sharp sure of his hand.

‘All I did was give her the small bronze statue from the chest of drawers.’

Carvalho blinked. He could feel his eyeballs filling with blood.

‘All I did was hand it to her. She knew what she had to do with it.’

Carvalho looked away from Señor Ramón’s face, desperately searching for some fixed point in the room to hold on to.

‘She obliterated his face. She must have hit him a hundred times with the statue. When we dragged her off him there wasn’t a single recognisable feature left.’

Carvalho felt weary. He could tell by the way he was grateful for the solid seat beneath him, and the fact that all of a sudden the sound of Señor Ramón’s voice sounded almost pleasant.

‘I did all the rest to protect her. I hired you, as you said, because I was worried about how important the case seemed to have become. Look at these.’

He rummaged in the drawer again and brought out two airline tickets.

‘If you had worried me with what you found out, or if the police had come here asking questions, I would have flown far away. With her. Just the two of us.’

He pointed to Queta’s name on one of the tickets.

‘Two wrongs don’t make a right, Señor Carvalho. There’s no denying that. But I, or rather we, still have hope.’

He pointed to the envelope full of money, urging Carvalho to take it.

‘If all this stays between the two of us, I’ll give you double.’

Carvalho knew the moment had come for him to exit stage right. But he still felt so weary he would have preferred Señor Ramón to be the one to go. He waited in vain, hoping against hope that he could fall asleep until everyone had left the salon and he could finally go home. He did not even hear the old man’s final words, telling him the sordid details of how it all ended. Carvalho forced himself up. He turned his back on Señor Ramón and went down the stairs. He crossed the hairdressing salon like someone walking through an empty tunnel. He stood paralysed in the centre of the Rambla until he realised where he was, then headed south until almost without knowing it he reached the foot of the steps by the oily waters of the Las Golodrinas landing-stage. He bought a ticket and stepped on board the ferry that crossed the port to the breakwater. He walked along the top of it, peering at the languid old fishermen lounging in various states of undress against the sun’s oppressive heat. Somehow it all seemed very familiar to him. He gradually recalled a scene from his schooldays: the wharf where the
musclaires
fished from their huts on stilts, while streams of soggy condoms floated past. They were sins. One sin for each condom.

‘Do they throw them off ships?’ a more innocent schoolmate asked.

‘They come out of the drains.’

The smell of frying tomatoes and onions made life more livable once more. It was coming from a shack at the bottom of some cement steps built in the wall of the breakwater. He could see steaming pots of mussels. It was high time to eat and to comfort his complaining stomach.

C
haro told him the news over the phone. Nothing for it but to buy a paper. He made a special trip down to the printer’s in Vallvidrera to get the first evening edition. In
Tele/eXprés
, Fernando Casado reported the discovery with a lurid account of all that had happened. The body of Don Ramón Freixas had been found in a business he owned, a hairdressing salon in District Five. When two sisters who worked in the salon had arrived that morning they found the front door open. Don Ramón had a pair of scissors sticking out of his neck. The police were looking for one Enriqueta Sánchez Cámara, the victim’s common-law wife ever since he had left his family some years earlier.