The Serpent Papers (47 page)

‘Who is this?’ I ask, lingering on the page furthest from me. A sketch of a man, mid-thirties, warm smile, bright eyes.

A call. I feel a call.

‘I don’t know.’ Villafranca frowns. ‘A friend. A man from her imagination. He’s very well drawn,’ he grumbles. ‘Clear, sensitive lines.’ He pushes the sketch towards me.

‘Do you mind?’

‘If you must.’ Villafranca nods absently. His eyes glaze over.

I handle the paper gently. Take in the smudged charcoal. I feel forward.
She’s signed and dated the image 15 June 2000. She was warm. The day was warm. A dragonfly landed on the pond and laid a thousand infinitesimally small eggs. A man’s laughter, loud and ebullient, ever expanding. Echoing on mountains. Deep snow. Somewhere high and far off. An endless night on naked skin. Happiness. Certainly happiness.
The next picture is a sketch of a village church set against mountains and lightly brushed with watercolours, a half-finished painting with brown stains as if it was made
en
plein air
. There is another in the series, this time of a house built low and close to the ground with lime-washed walls and a Mediterranean garden painted in silvery greens. In front of the house a man reclines in a chair, a broad-brimmed hat hides his face. He reads with a book in his hands. Beneath this:
Capileira. 18 June 2000.

Villafranca nods at the inscription. ‘Capileira is the last village on the mountain road through the high sierra
of Granada. The end of the earth from here. Why she went there . . .’ He shakes his head solemnly. ‘Who knew who she had met?’

Villafranca watches me as I take pictures of each sketch. Lining them up on the table like soldiers.
Snap. Snap
.

‘I’ll get you scans,’ he says. ‘Good quality.’

There is no question of who keeps the originals. He rustles in his briefcase again, producing a pocket phone book, five centimetres by five centimetres, gold-pressed letters, black leather.

‘I thought you should have this.’ He chews his words factually. ‘My housekeeper found it beneath a wardrobe in her summer bedroom in Mallorca when we sold the house two years ago. Natalia kept it when she was a teenager. Who knows how many secrets she had?’ Villafranca shuffles the pictures back into the envelope as I finish. ‘But then again, don’t we all keep something prisoner?’

He sighs deeply. Shakes his head.

‘You must not trust us. Trust none of us at all.’

Voices echo through me. I stop beneath the ornamental bridge connecting the claustrophobic walls of Carrer del Bisbe, each pulling back from the other as the street runs tighter and tighter. I gaze up at the interlocking flowers. A skull smiles down, stone dagger plunged through his bone. I linger for a moment, arching my neck. Looking up.
Fresh air to clear your head.
I walk slowly through the cold, pulling my scarf tight round my shoulders. In my satchel I carry Natalia’s pocket address book, hard black leather biting into me. I pass the cathedral, the boulevard busy – darkness charging into the afternoon. Windows like coal fires. Chatter and music. Couples with their legs entwined around barstools. Long-necked flutes of champagne. Short coffees,
cortados
pulled until midnight. A restaurant where the blind serve their clientele in the dark. Molecular cuisine makes its mark in the technicolour foam of El Bulli copycats. The skies are clear. I can see the moon blinking above me, a fragile thin line. She feels far away in the city. Hidden by a cloak of lights, her stars drowned out. Disappeared. In her place, they light the walls of black rock. Shimmering up towards angels. Lances and spears. The scaled spine of a dragon.
A city built for defence.

I choose a tapas bar. Wooden doors open. Bundles of leather flasks hang over the windows, tied with red string. Full of light, spiralling out on the street. A
camerero
leans with his back against the wall. He lights a cigarette outside. The smoke catches on the sharp night air. ‘Quina fred!’ He shivers. Blackened barrels along the wall, blue and yellow tiles, flowers, a crowd of people standing, drinking. Along the marble counter, plates of pickled fish, salted olives, sardines, cuts of
jamón íberico
,
botifarra negra
,
fuet
, marinated capsicum stuffed with garlic, dried tomatoes shrivelled by the sun. Sandwiches on miniature rolls stacked invitingly. I take a plate and sit at the back. My thoughts flicker.
A serpent and a cross carved on each hand. To witch is to whisper. Whisper as in to hide.
I order a glass of wine.
Too many. Too many. Open Natalia’s book
.

And then I see it: a little drawing, a smudge of a serpent biting its tail. Anger builds in me. I want to shout at her:
You cannot be so passive! Why did you accept the terms of this pact? This deliberate silence! One confession, one clear answer, and you would have given the police everything they needed. Unless you yourself were corrupt?

I want to yell at her:

You are a coward!

But I understand the agony.
She kept a secret.

Greater than it all.

Her tongue bore the paralysing weight of fear.

There’s a mirror in the restaurant across from my table. Divided into gold-rimmed panels, mottled, dusty glass. I see the blurred edges of a human – red nose, androgynous lips. A frown where my face is resting. I push my hair into place nervously. Look away. I will never be pretty. Tomboyish, I scowl, my body neither long nor full, but flat and thin, dwarfed in the heavy clothes of winter, a bland grey turtleneck and brown scarf. I think of Hernández, her dazzling features, her flawless skin. Of the signature ebony curls that formed an impermeable halo of beauty around her. Who would I have been if I had been born with those eyes? Those endless lashes? Who would we all be if our faces were cut from gold?

* * *

In alchemy the best key is a simple code. A word or image that hides a true meaning. Or at least it should be. Short. Sweet. Easy to identify for the initiate, a kernel of knowledge that relies merely on obfuscation, a riddle that prompts the code-breaker in a language initially confusing but retrospectively clear.
Painfully obvious.
But you haven’t cracked hers – not yet, I remind myself.

You don’t have the full picture
, I tell myself.

So listen. This night is ripe for listening.
Evening settles in my bones. Sun sets too early in winter.

* * *

Before me: leafy trunks bedraggled and unclean. The streets empty but for the drunkards and pickpockets who make their trade with the foreign clientele of after-hours bars. Graffiti grins, the face of a leopard. Halal butchers, closed for the night. Red meat hanging from hooks. Veer deeper into the Raval, urban caves formed by a burnt-out complex, bricks falling out of the side of a stairwell, an open, hanging door of a brothel covered in piss. Bar Marsella. The first location marker. At the corner of Carrer de Sant Ramon the prostitutes are out in style – then two blocks to the south towards Drassanes – a back alley near Genet Genet – the hanging gardens of Baluard. The square of the first girl, Rosa, is lined with trees but none of them are flowering now. I saunter to the side, taking a seat on the step of a bar facing the square. Fifteen windows on the square, looking down on the action.
And no one saw anything . . . 
Even now, shivering children look down from the railings of the apartments, a woman smoking a cigarette, in a nightdress, watching with dreamy slowness, laundry flapping in the wind, the smell of fish broth burnt on a gas stove. The notion of secrecy was a farce the law clung to,
sobretot
in this neighbourhood, where the network of informants is vast and news travels faster than light.

And yet, precisely what happened to Rosa has never been clear
.

When I turn, I walk towards the square, very slowly, deliberately. Looking towards the municipal trash skips, the cracked cement. The dead borders. Pink plaster. Metal shutters. Four benches facing in. A placard on a stone.
In Loving Memory of Rosa Bonanova 1987–2003.

Roses planted in scraggy bunches to either side. Bare of blossoms. Brittle and thorny. Still winter. No summer yet.
And then I feel him.
Eyes on me.
A man standing at the upper corner of the street. A smear just beyond my field of vision. I look towards him sharply. Focus in.
You.
He waves. My heart ticks.
Striding towards me?

‘
Maca! Querida!
I followed you. You caught me.’

Oriol hides his face behind ornamental, pretty-boy glasses, frames perched behind his ears. Worn black leather loose on his shoulders, jacket smooth as silk.

‘I’m sorry! Forgive me! I wanted to know where you would wander.’ He comes very close to my neck, breathing in as he kisses each cheek.
A hot flush.
I walk with him slowly. ‘I don’t want to stay here,’ he says. He leans into me, our shoulders touch.
Not so close. An electric pulse in my chest. A scent of arousal.

He laughs. ‘I worry about the foreigners. You can never be too careful around here.’
Bashful.
His mouth is tender. ‘What chance!’ he says. ‘Luck brought me to you.’ He smiles, boyish.

As we walk, he plies me with questions.

‘I know nothing about you. And you know everything about us.’

I drift above him, keeping myself removed, listening.

‘You know where I was born, my family, my house, who I loved, who I lived with, what I suffered. You know my shows, my history, my work. And you? What I know is superficial. You are a writer. An investigator. You have come here to resuscitate a dead memory. You are clearly an accomplished young woman. Very pretty – yes, Anna – you are pretty, I am a connoisseur of ingénues – did no one ever teach you not to blush? Ah, I have found the weakness of Little Miss Foreigner. What country do you come from? And where do you call home? You intrigue me,
el meu petit misteri
.’

His hand brushes against mine. I retract.
My little mystery.
His hand moves to the small of my back, propels me forward.

‘
Tinc curiositat
 . . . I want to know more. What you stand for, what makes you tick . . .’ He leans into me. Sharp and protective. ‘You remind me of her. There’s something of her about you, it’s uncanny, almost as if she inhabits your eyes – there – I can see her, looking at me from a stranger’s face. You unnerve me, Anna.’

We walk forever. I pause and stare up at the buildings ringing Plaça del Pi.
That is the house where Ruthven lived. White on chalky orange.
The exterior façade a bright coral, with portraits of cherubim, wreaths of grain in raised plaster. Paint peeling. Faded glory marked by inlaid flowers on the internal walls and an old teak banister.
Don’t go inside.
Below, a knife shop. The doors Sitwell must have walked through with the servant Brass Buckle. The pine he stood under, the night the woman came – today the shop front below displays sharp objects made to look like art. Cooking knives, cutting knives, climbing knives. Knives to skin a lamb or whittle wood. Knives to bone a fish, knives to pull out feathers, knives to carry in a back pocket, hooked knives, jagged knives, smooth knives. Ivory-handled. Ornamental. Chopping blades. All sorts. Everything you can imagine.