Water-Blue Eyes (10 page)

Leo Caldas got home at around quarter past two. He lay down and, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, unsuccessfully tried to fathom that nagging feeling which, since the day before, reminded him that he had missed something during the inspection of Reigosa’s flat.

But as he fell asleep he forgot all about it.

He dreamed of pale hands and piano keys.

‘You want me to draw up a list of all the people who have access to formaldehyde?’ asked Ana Solla, chief of pathology at the General Hospital.

‘If it’s possible.’

‘Inspector, this is not morphine we’re talking about.
Formaldehyde
is not a product that requires any safety guidelines. It’s not subject to any security measures. We don’t even keep it in a locked place.’

‘But isn’t it highly toxic?’ insisted Leo.

‘Do you keep bleach at home under lock and key,
inspector
? This is a hospital, and the products are supposed to be handled by qualified staff. We have to be practical. If we had to fill in a form every time we need to use a product like formaldehyde, we’d spend our day writing instead of
practising
medicine, which is what we’re here for.’

‘So anyone could come and take it without leaving their details.’

‘That’s right. We ask no questions.’

‘You must be the only ones around who don’t,’ muttered Estévez, who was behind the inspector.

‘Could you tell me about the men in your medical staff, doctor?’ asked Leo Caldas, trying another line of approach.

‘Tell you about them?’

Caldas knew it was forbidden to smoke inside the hospital, but he instinctively reached for the packet of cigarettes he carried in his pocket. Alba used to tell him off for his habit of lighting up the moment he started a conversation: for hiding behind a shield of smoke.

‘Yes, above all I’m interested in doctors, nurses, anyone
who might have access to formaldehyde and knows how it works.’

‘How do you mean someone who “knows how it works”?’ The doctor gave him a scornful look. ‘Do you know what formaldehyde is, inspector?’

‘Vaguely,’ admitted Caldas, holding on to the cigarettes inside his pocket.

‘We’re talking about a preservative agent, whose use does not require any advanced medical knowledge.’ The doctor grabbed a jar from a nearby table to accompany her
explanation
. ‘You pour the solution, which you don’t have to
prepare
because they send it already prepared from the lab, into a jar like this one,’ she said, holding it up, ‘and then you put in the tissue you want to preserve. The tissue is preserved without any further need for handling it. Do you think you’d need to know a lot about the product to be able to repeat that procedure?’

Caldas didn’t reply. He was irritated by the doctor’s
manner.
As a child he’d had to put up with a teacher who, instead of explaining to his pupils what they didn’t know, made fun of their ignorance in front of the class. He asked the children to repeat their wrong answers out loud, and laughed at them, revealing a line of yellow teeth. The doctor’s tone reminded Caldas of the inflexions the old teacher preferred.

‘Are you sure you know what you’re after, inspector?’ asked the doctor again. ‘I don’t get that impression.’

‘No, I’m not sure of anything, doctor. But I’ve got a crime on my hands for which a solution of thirty-seven per cent formaldehyde, just like the one you keep here, was used to murder the victim.’

‘Formaldehyde poisoning?’

‘Something like that,’ replied Caldas with the feeling that the doctor, as his teacher had, was about to ask him to repeat it out loud.

‘Could you tell me what you expect me to say?’

‘We are convinced that the murderer had a certain
knowledge
of the toxicity of formaldehyde, as otherwise it would have been quite difficult for them to use it as a weapon.’

‘Are you accusing me, inspector?’

Caldas shook his head.

‘We believe the killer might be a man. We’re looking for those men who match the profile.’

‘And you expect me to tell you what the men I work with are like, just in case any of them matches the profile?’

Caldas found that mocking tone exasperating, and he had to control himself not to shout at her.

‘Precisely, doctor,’ he said, trying hard to look calm, ‘that is indeed what we expect.’

The doctor thought it over for a few seconds.

‘You only want the men’s names, right?’

‘For now,’ confirmed Caldas.

‘There’s only one doctor here – Doctor Alonso.’

‘And the assistants?’ asked Caldas.

‘Male assistants?’ The chief doctor gave a contemptuous snort. ‘None. And the nurses are all female too. There are no patients who need to be lifted here. We need more brains than brawn.’

Caldas was not there to listen to sarcastic remarks; he had enough of that kind of thing at the radio station.

‘Is Doctor Alonso married?’

‘I think so.’

‘Any children?’

‘Inspector, you’re entering into personal matters. Those are questions that affect Doctor Alonso’s privacy,’ she complained.

Caldas bit his tongue not to reply that the question he’d really like to put to her was of a far more personal nature: whether she could tell him anything about her colleague’s sexual orientation.

Instead he said: ‘I’d like to cross him off my list without calling him in for an interrogation, doctor. As you can
imagine, it wouldn’t be pleasant for Doctor Alonso, or this department, or this hospital to become involved in a murder investigation. The press can be a real pest when there’s a certain kind of scandal in the air.’

‘Doctor Alonso has three or four children,’ replied the doctor dryly. ‘I’m not too sure. We can ask his secretary, if you like,’ she said, gesturing in the general direction of the phone.

‘I’d rather speak to him in person,’ replied Caldas.

‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. Doctor Alonso is at a
conference
in the Canary Islands.’

‘How long has he been away?’

‘Does that matter?’

It did. The doctor grudgingly searched through the drawers of her desk until she found a year planner.

‘The conference started on the seventh,’ she read, placing it on the desk. ‘The doctor left the previous day, if I
remember
correctly.’

That ruled out Doctor Alonso, as he was several hours away by plane at the moment of the crime.

‘You can come by next Wednesday or Thursday, inspector. The doctor will be back by then.’

‘It won’t be necessary.’

Leo Caldas and Rafael Estévez stood up to leave.

‘One last thing, doctor,’ said Caldas. ‘Are there any other areas where formaldehyde is used?’

She looked at him once again like his yellow-toothed teacher.

‘Of course, inspector. It’s used in operating theatres. They need to preserve tissue during many procedures, for example in biopsies, to name a simple one that you can understand. However, as I’ve already explained, we’re not talking about cyanide. Anyone who may need formaldehyde, be it a doctor, a nurse or a laboratory assistant, can come along and take any quantity they need without giving any explanation.’

14 May felt autumnal from the moment the sun rose. A cloak of fog had come in from the mouth of the
ría
during the night, and it threatened to linger well into the morning.

After their visit to the General Hospital, the two policemen went over to the Policlinic in their search for suspects, where they met with similar success. The attending who received them could not think of someone familiar with formaldehyde who matched the characteristics that Caldas secretly
attributed
to Luis Reigosa’s murderer. As for the list of male staff working in operating theatres, it comprised upward of two hundred and fifty people in those two hospitals alone. At least for now, Caldas decided to focus on the pathology departments, where the real experts worked. As Guzmán Barrio had said in the autopsy room, one needed quite a bit of specialised knowledge to inject formaldehyde into
someone’
s genitals.

From the list Isidro Freire had given them, they still had to visit the Zuriaga Foundation, but Caldas wasn’t expecting much there either. He was beginning to realise that the health sector was a close order, a far cry from those areas where malicious gossip is an everyday thing. No doubt the recent barrage of lawsuits filed against hospitals for
negligence
had forced health professionals to watch over each other’s backs. It wasn’t that odd; something similar was
happening
in the police force.

They got into the car and Caldas told his assistant to head for the Zuriaga Foundation on Monte del Castro.

‘That’s the hill up there, right?’

Caldas confirmed this was so.

‘We have to go up in the direction of the park. After that, I’ll guide you.’

Monte Castro was an elevation that dropped all the way to the sea. At the top were a castle and a park with a belvedere. The panoramic view of the city and its
ría
was a must on the tourist circuit, and the guides told legends of naval battles
and sunken treasures. The Castro owed its name to an important archaeological discovery made many years ago in the area. In the first century AD, the Celts had built a fort or
castrum,
taking advantage of the drop and the unevenness of the terrain for their protection. They had never understood, those Celts, that a town could be built on those steep
hillsides
. Many centuries later, the new inhabitants still questioned the idea, but in any case Vigo had been erected precisely on these hills.

Caldas approached the service desk. The spacious lobby blended glass and granite, as did the other five storeys of the building. The Zuriaga maternity clinic, a small concern founded seven decades ago, had been successively renovated until it had become the most important private hospital in the city. It still delivered the children of the best families in Vigo, but several years ago it had also become a Foundation with many other interests. On its welcome sign, Caldas counted sixteen medical specialisms.

The second of these, in alphabetical order, was
anatomopathology
. The inspector asked after the head of the department.

‘The head doctor is a woman,’ specified the receptionist, and gave him her name. Then, pointing to the lifts: ‘Third floor.’

Third floor and third woman, thought Caldas, hoping that this one would treat him better than the one at the General Hospital.

She listened to him attentively before she spoke.

‘We do indeed work with formaldehyde. We store it in the next room. Please come with me.’

The doctor showed them a few boxes stacked up in a room adjoining her office. Caldas could see that the Zuriaga
Foundation
didn’t have any security measures in place for it either.

‘Most of it is used in our department. The rest in
operating
theatres.’

‘Of course, for biopsies.’ Caldas didn’t need another
lecture
. ‘Are there any men in your department? Any doctors or nurses?’

‘No, we’re two women doctors and three female nurses.’

‘I should have thought so,’ said Caldas tersely, resigning himself to getting only a register of the staff who worked in the operating theatre. He’d been hoping for a male specialist, a homosexual one if possible, to materialise right there and then, but he was reconciling himself to the idea that he’d have to work on a list of hundreds of names.