The Angst-Ridden Executive (18 page)

The girl stifled her laughter with her hand, and her companion tried to rise above Carvalho’s vulgar sarcasm.

‘No. Nothing like that. That would be a material explanation, but what I have come to tell you about does not belong to the material world. I’m talking about the supernatural.’

‘Shame I can’t provide any special effects. If you’d warned me in advance, I could have prepared a few rattling chains, whistling winds, that sort of thing.’

Biscuter poked his face out of the kitchen, from where the sound of frying could be heard. He had heard the word ‘supernatural’, and his eyes took on a greater than usual fixity and betrayed his total absorption.

‘My brother is an architect. You must admit, that’s a fairly realistic, materialist sort of job. He drives around all day visiting building sites. Two months ago he was driving back from Sant Llorenc del Munt just as it was starting to get dark. He picked his girlfriend up at Sabadell, because they wanted to go for a meal in Barcelona and then go to the pictures. He then drove on towards Molins de Rei, where he had to do his last visit of the day. All of a sudden he saw a woman standing by the road, thumbing a ride. He stopped the car. Was he going towards Molins? “Yes.” “Me too.” “Get in.” So she got in, and sat in the back, and my brother drove on again. It was raining a bit, and both my brother and his girlfriend were watching the road. There wasn’t a word out of the woman in the back. Then they came to a bend in the road, and she suddenly said:

‘Watch out—there’s a dangerous bend here.’

‘My brother braked, and skidded a little. Afterwards he commented that it was indeed a dangerous bend. Since there was no reply from the woman, he turned round to repeat what he’d said, and he was completely thunderstruck. Imagine it! There was no sign of her. The two of them went hysterical. The girlfriend started screaming, “She’s fallen out, she’s fallen out!” but that was impossible, because the door was shut tight. Anyway, my brother reversed back to the bend and stopped the car. The two of them got out, and they searched the roadside inch by inch. They used the car headlights, and a camping torch that my brother always keeps in the glove compartment. No sign of the woman! Maybe she’d fallen down the embankment? They weren’t equipped to go looking for her, so they decided to go and inform the local guardia civil. They went to the nearest station. A sergeant was on duty. He listened as my brother told his story, in as matter-of-fact a way as he could—in other words that the woman had definitely fallen out, and that, maybe because of the wind, the car door had closed again of its own accord. The sergeant didn’t say a word. He went over to a desk, opened a drawer, and took out a photo which he showed to my brother and his girlfriend. “Is this the woman,” he asked. They looked at it carefully. Yes. Not that they’d got a very good look at her, but it was definitely the same woman who had got into their car. “This is the seventh time I’ve heard this story,” he said. “It happens the same way every time. The amazing thing is that this woman died in a car accident, four years ago, right on that bend. . .’

‘Jesus!’ Biscuter shouted from where he was half hidden in his corner, thereby prompting the couple to look up anxiously.

‘That’s my assistant. Don’t worry, he’s flesh and blood—not much flesh, in fact, but you know what I mean. . .’

Carvalho lit up his favourite everyday cigar, an undeniably material Condal number six.

‘Neither my brother nor his sister had known the story of that woman’s accident. This knocks out the possibility of autosuggestion. We went and saw a reputable lawyer, and he confirmed what the sergeant had said. I myself, together with my father, have tracked down the seven other people who had picked up the woman, and they said that, just like in my brother’s case, she had been hitchhiking, and then disappeared. They confirmed the story down to the last detail, and only one of them had already known about the accident previously, because he was from the same village as the woman.’

‘What about your brother and his girlfriend?’

‘She’s in a psychiatric hospital undergoing treatment, and my brother’s a complete wreck. He’s tried everything from pills to alternative psychologists.’

‘I’m not a shrink. Neither am I a voodoo doctor.’

‘We want you to take this case on, using your normal processes of logical deduction, and see if you can make some sense of it.’

‘You say your brother is a communist. Is he a rationalist communist, or a Catholic communist?’

‘None of us at home are Catholics, my brother least of all.’

‘Is he a mystical communist?’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Does he believe in the communion of the Marxist saints, and in the resurrection of the flesh in an earthly paradise?’

‘My brother is—or was—a man with both feet on the ground.

‘Has he ever read Hans Christian Andersen? Or the
Tales of Hoffmann
?’

‘His reading consisted of the set books for his exams at school, textbooks for quantity surveyors, Carrillo’s
After Franco—What?
, and the party press.’

‘Does he write poetry? Play the flute? Or the guitar?’

‘I don’t know whether it would help if I said that he and I are complete opposites. I could play the flute and write poetry, even though I don’t in fact do either. But him—never!’

‘So here we have a level-headed man who suddenly sees the ghost of a dead woman, right at a time when Francoism is being dismantled. A conspiracy. There’s something very appealing about it, I must say. But there’s no way I can take it on at the moment. Maybe I could once I get my present commitments out of the way—if I live to tell the tale. Biscuter, make a note of how we can get in touch with these good people.’

Biscuter went to take down the man’s address and phone number. Carvalho turned to the girl:

‘Do
you
have a phone number?’

‘She’s nothing to do with all this. She just happens to have come along with me. Anyway, you can find us just about any night in
El Sot
.’

‘I see—you are part of Nuñez’s entourage.’

‘He was the one who suggested getting in touch with you.’

So, Carvalho thought to himself, Nuñez must have staged this little joke. I bet he’s laughing like a drain at this very moment.

‘I don’t come cheap, you know.’

‘I’m prepared for that.’

‘Are you paying?’

‘My father’s paying.’

‘What does your father do for a living?’

‘He’s a building contractor. Don’t worry—he’s got money.’

‘And would he agree to my taking on the case?’

‘I’ll bring him here in person, and you can ask him for yourself.’

‘I’ll keep in touch.’

A portable woman. As she disappeared in the wake of the man, Carvalho imagined her on top of him, with her sex locked onto his, her hands resting on his chest, her head up, her eyes closed, her tongue just showing as she begins breathing heavily, and her hair-do going up and down as if it was being pumped from somewhere inside her delicately-featured head.

‘What do you make of all that, boss?’

‘Nothing. . . Nothing at all.’

‘Is it possible, though?’

‘It’s a story for winter, not for spring. Like stories about bears and drowned people living at the bottom of seas and lakes and garden ponds. . .’

‘It makes my flesh creep just to think about it.’

‘If you ask me, it’s a plot. The bishops have teamed up with Christians for Socialism, to make sure the Church keeps a bit of the action. Forget it, Biscuter—I want to eat.’

‘Shall I heat up last night’s supper? Kidneys in sherry and rice pilaf, remember?’

‘What are you cooking now?’

‘Chicken with artichokes.’

‘It’ll be fine heated up tomorrow. Give me the rice and kidneys. But if the rice has gone lumpy, throw it away and make some more.’

Rhomberg’s sister wouldn’t come to the phone. Instead he got her husband. Sure enough, Peter Herzen was Dieter Rhomberg. The photo had been identified by the Avis employee who had rented him the car.

‘I’m sure you’ll appreciate that we’re terribly upset. We just don’t know how to tell the boy that his father’s dead.’

‘He might have decided to disappear as a safety measure.’

‘Safety? Why safety?’

‘What are the German police saying?’

‘Nothing. They’ve taken a note of your information, and I imagine that Interpol will be in touch with the Spanish police so that you can tell them what you know.’

‘I would be grateful if you could keep in touch. . .’

‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ring off now. I hope you understand. . . We’re shattered.’

The aftertaste of the kidneys was suddenly sour in his mouth, and his stomach sent up a warning signal in the form of a sherry-flavoured burp. He had an uneasy feeling that he was out of his depth—on a voyage of no return that promised to be full of unpleasant surprises. Carvalho had to take several deep breaths in order to restore his disintegrating peace of mind. There was no match between the major crime he had got involved in and his recent past as a small-time private eye—a very different person from the ruthless cynic who had once been in the CIA, and who wouldn’t have thought twice about terminating heads of state. Dieter had been driving the car when they arrived in Los Angeles that night to look for a hotel in Beverly Hills. They had come very close to crashing into a Buick that had skidded across the road, and they had driven into town slowly, with their nerves on edge. Fear had abandoned the city to the night, and the restaurants, cinemas, shops and stores were all asleep. All of a sudden they saw a man in a tracksuit top and running shorts coming up the pavement towards them, pacing himself with the regularity of a long distance runner. He had a crew-cut and was breathing rhythmically.

‘Looks like a zombie on a keep-fit kick,’ Jauma said, and the three of them relaxed. Dieter pulled up, to see which way the night-runner was intending to go. A police car was following a few yards behind.

‘He’s got an escort.’

‘Keeping an eye on him, more likely.’

The runner drew level with Dieter’s car, but he didn’t deign to register their presence. The driver of the police car raised one finger to his forehead to indicate ‘this guy’s nuts’. Then, as if determined to exercise their authority in the presence of these unaccustomed witnesses, the police drove past the runner and suddenly braked in front of him. They got out of the car and rounded on him aggressively.

‘Stop right there, buddy!’

The athlete halted in his tracks, but continued running on the spot.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Running.’

‘I can see that. But why? This is no time of night to be out running.’

‘I work during the day, so I run at night.’

‘Are you in an athletics club?’

‘I don’t run with other people. I run on my own. Is there some law that says I can’t run on the sidewalk?’

‘No.’

‘So?’

‘You’re going to get yourself shot at this rate. People don’t like other people running round the place at two in the morning.’

‘Do you have proof of that?’

‘Of what?’

‘That people don’t like other people running at two in the morning.’

‘It stands to reason.’

The man continued running on the spot, and the cops glared at him for a moment or two. Then they glanced over to Dieter’s car, and signaled to the runner that he could go. Seeing that he was already running on the spot, he took off like a rocket, accelerated as if he was using starting blocks, and used this burst of speed to regain his breathing rhythm and get back into his stride. The cops came over to the parked car and asked to see their papers. While one of them checked them, the other kept one hand on his gun and a frown in his eyes as he followed the runner disappearing into the distance.

‘You planning to sleep in the car?’

‘No. We’re on our way to the Golden Hotel.’

‘Down this street, and then take a left. Don’t hang about, though. This is no time to be taking the air.’

‘Do you get runners like that every night?’ Jauma asked, pointing after the athlete, who was just about to be swallowed up by a dip in the road.

‘Never seen one in this part of town. He must be crazy. He’ll end up getting shot.’

‘Why?’

‘People don’t like unusual things round here. Unusual things scare them, and when they’re scared the first thing they do is get their guns out.’

Jauma went up the hotel stairs as if he was jogging, and entered the reception area breathing like a seasoned athlete. The receptionist didn’t bat an eyelid. He helped them load their luggage into the lift, and came with them to unlock their rooms. The only thing missing in each of them was a Gloria Swanson or a Mae West in lace lingerie. Carved wooden bedheads painted cream and picked out in silver. Spiral bedposts supported a canopy that was gathered over the headboard in such a way as to reveal a large plaster rosette in the shape of a crown. An ostentatious sky-blue carpet; pink, silver-flecked furniture; a bathroom with an Empire-style bath tub; marble and chrome fittings in the shape of various exotic plants and animals; and a colour TV the size of a traveling trunk.

‘Is the bar open?’

‘If I decide so, yes,’ replied the receptionist-liftman-telephonist-nightshift-bartender.

‘I hope you’ll be up at once, then. I want chilled French champagne and a hot chick.’

‘I can bring the champagne at once, but you’ll have a two hour wait for the girl.’

‘In that case I’ll settle for the champagne, for now.’

Long voyages tend to aggravate the sexual member. Each man’s favourite son was stirring in his trousers. While the others stayed awake and prepared for a two-hour wait, Dieter fell fast asleep—a solid sleep as befitted his solid stature. Jauma had donned a loose-fitting pair of silk pyjamas and was absorbed in examining the geometric variations on the test cards of the various TV channels.

‘Come in, Carvalho. I’m trying to find one of them that is sufficiently hypnotic to send me to sleep. The buzzing tone helps. I’m a bit on edge.’

He told him what the bartender had said about the girls and the champagne.

‘Two hours? That’s a pretty lousy service. They must live on the other side of Los Angeles.’