Water-Blue Eyes (15 page)

‘About three years ago.’

‘And are you sure your wife doesn’t suspect anything? Three years is a long time.’

‘Mercedes? No, I don’t think so. I’ve never been a model husband. Always too busy for that.’

‘You do know Reigosa was killed, don’t you, doctor?’

‘Since his death I’ve been terribly depressed, cut off from the world. I’ve only left the house to go to the cemetery,’ he said.

Caldas thought Zuriaga hadn’t proved so depressed when it came to complaining to Caldas’s superiors.

‘Do you know what formaldehyde is?’

‘Inspector, you’re talking to a doctor who’s head of a
hospital.
Of course I know what formaldehyde is.’

‘They used it to kill Reigosa.’

‘Did they put him to sleep?’

‘Not exactly.’

He didn’t want to explain any further. He’d have time during the interrogation at the station. He had enough on Zuriaga.

‘Shall we go back?’

They did so in silence. The afternoon sun penetrated into the undergrowth, and the shadows of the trees made strange patterns on the ground. As the sun went down, the smell of the plants grew stronger.

When they were near the house, the inspector decided to round off with one last question.

‘Does the name Orestes Grial ring a bell?’

‘No.’

‘Take your time, doctor. You’ve already lied once.’

The comment visibly annoyed Dimas Zuriaga.

‘I don’t know who Orestes is, inspector. I’m being honest with you now – there’s no need for sarcasm.’

‘Have you been here all day?’ asked Caldas, changing his approach.

‘I have indeed. I’ve already told you I haven’t left my property in days. Why do you ask me about this Orestes chap now, inspector? What does he have to do with me?’

‘Remember this morning I said I had a witness who knew about your relationship with Reigosa, doctor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Those photographs I’ve shown you, the same ones you said you’ve received before, were stored on Orestes Grial’s computer. We should’ve talked to him today, but he wasn’t able to come to our appointment. He was murdered. We found him in the bathroom of his flat. Someone shot him in the back of the neck when he was urinating. And the reason we were meeting, curiously enough, was to finish a conversation we’d started the day before on the subject of Reigosa.’

‘Luis?’

‘Do you know what the Idílico is, doctor?’

‘Yes, a gay bar, but as I’ve said I don’t go to that kind of place.’

‘Not you, but it seems your friend Reigosa dropped by every now and then. The boy who was killed worked there as a DJ.’

Zuriaga was listening carefully.

‘Where are you going with all this, inspector?’

‘I don’t believe in coincidences, doctor. I would like you to come with me to the police station to make a statement.’

‘Are you arresting me?’ stuttered Zuriaga.

‘I won’t handcuff you, if that’s what you’re afraid of, but you should be thinking about contacting your lawyer. Two deaths might prove too much, even for a man like yourself.’

‘Two deaths?’ Zuriaga looked at him imploringly. ‘After what I’ve told you, you can’t seriously think I’ve killed Luis or that lad.’

‘I don’t think anything, doctor. I’m only doing my job. And I’ll be happy for you to prove your innocence. Of course, I could leave now without you, but with the evidence we’ve got I’d be forced to come back before long with an arrest warrant signed by a judge.’

The doctor remained silent for a moment, as if gauging
the situation. ‘Let me get my coat,’ he muttered with a resigned expression.

Caldas looked on as Dimas Zuriaga dragged his feet towards his majestic stone mansion.

‘Doctor!’ he called out.

Zuriaga stopped and turned round.

‘If you want to speak to your wife … I’m not ruling out the possibility that nothing comes of this, but there’s a chance it’ll all get out. I think she’d be grateful if she heard it from you first.’

‘I’m not sure she’ll believe me,’ the doctor confessed. ‘But it’ll be a relief to finally talk to Mercedes.’

Once in the police station they accompanied Dimas Zuriaga to a meeting room. They left him sitting on a sofa and offered him a cup of coffee from the coffee machine. The doctor may be a suspect, but his eminence required the greatest courtesy.

Caldas and Estévez were summoned to Superintendent Soto’s office.

‘Will you tell me what the fuck Zuriaga’s doing here?’ greeted Soto with his usual kindness.

Estévez sighed nervously, and Caldas started to speak.

‘It has to do with the death of Luis Reigosa, the musician who turned up murdered at the Toralla tower.’

‘I know who Reigosa is,’ cut in Soto. ‘I’m asking what the hell Doctor Zuriaga’s doing in my station. Do you know they expressly asked me to keep you away from him? Is this what you understand by staying away from someone?’

Estévez hung his head, but Caldas was undaunted.

‘If it’s any consolation, we haven’t brought the doctor by force, sir. He decided to come with us of his own free will.’

‘Of course he did. And I bet he also asked for a very dark cell,’ spat Superintendent Soto, visibly agitated.

‘Sir, may I explain why the doctor’s here?’ Leo waited for his superior’s answer, but it didn’t materialise. ‘You may want to make something up when one of his minions, any moment now, calls up demanding an explanation.’

The superintendent sat down and pointed to the chairs on the other side of the desk.

‘Go on,’ he ordered, ‘and keep it short.’

The policemen sat down. Caldas put a closed envelope on the desk and launched into his account.

‘In a nutshell, Doctor Zuriaga had a relationship with Luis Reigosa for a couple of years …’

‘A relationship?’ interrupted Soto. ‘What do you mean?’

‘A relationship, sir, an … er … amorous relationship, if you want to call it that.’

‘Give me a break, Leo,’ exclaimed the superintendent, standing up and raising his arm in a theatrical display of disapproval. ‘Let me remind you we’re talking about Dimas Zuriaga.’

‘May I explain it or not?’ said Caldas tersely.

The superintendent, seeing the inspector’s serious face, sat down again. Caldas interpreted this as a yes and started over.

‘Zuriaga and Reigosa had been in a relationship for the last three years. A secret relationship, hidden from the eyes of society and even from the doctor’s family. No one in his circle of friends and family knew of Reigosa’s existence. Now, about a month ago the doctor started receiving
anonymous
emails. Those emails, which were sent from fake addresses, had explicit photographs attached of him and Reigosa. Whoever sent them asked him for money in exchange for not going public with the images. The doctor, who is of course a very discreet man, and was distressed at the possibility that his secret might come out, decided to pay up.’

Caldas, who played around with the envelope as he told his story, paused for a moment.

‘So far, I’ve done nothing but relay what Zuriaga himself has told me,’ he pointed out. ‘The doctor can confirm it to the last word.’

‘But where are you going with this, Leo?’ asked Soto. ‘You won’t tell me you’ve brought the doctor in so he can report he’s being blackmailed?’

‘No, sir. He’s here because we think he’s involved in the death of the musician at the very least.’

‘Have you not just told me he was his lover?’ The
superintendent
was visibly reluctant to deal with a problem as big
as the one posed by the Zuriaga Foundation. ‘For the love of God, Leo…’

‘I’m trying to be as clear as I can,’ replied Caldas. ‘Now let me tell you my theory.’

‘Have you brought Zuriaga in on just a theory?’

Rafael Estévez fidgeted in his chair.

‘For now it’s only that,’ confirmed Caldas.

‘Shit, Leo, you’ll be the ruin of me, of us all.’

Superintendent Soto buried his face in his hands for a moment. After vigorously rubbing his eyes he looked at Caldas.

‘Go on,’ he ordered dryly.

It was all that Caldas needed.

‘Once he got over the shock of the first email, Zuriaga concentrated on finding the sender. He needed time, and so, week after week, for as long as the blackmail lasted, he paid as instructed. But a powerful man like Zuriaga, with enough resources to make people talk, ended up discovering who was behind the operation, and did so without arousing the blackmailer’s suspicions. It took some time, four weeks or so, but he eventually found what he was after.’

Estévez and Soto listened attentively.

‘Discovering the author of the blackmail was a far more painful blow to the doctor than actually being blackmailed,’ carried on Leo, ‘because behind the messages were the DJ of a gay bar – an amateur photographer – and none other than Reigosa, his lover.’

Soto opened his arms, demanding more explanations.

‘The doctor’s deepest secret had been betrayed by the person he trusted most,’ went on Caldas, fighting interruptions. ‘First he was devastated, but his confusion and depression soon turned into hatred and a desire for revenge. Luis Reigosa had played with Zuriaga’s feelings and had taken advantage of them. The doctor wanted to get even, to cause as much pain as he had suddenly, and unexpectedly, suffered.’

‘Can you prove any of this fairy tale?’ asked Soto.

The inspector opened the envelope he had in his hands, and took out the pictures he had printed at Grial’s flat.

‘This morning when we first paid him a visit, the doctor assured us he didn’t know Reigosa,’ Caldas pointed out, as he laid out the compromising photographs on the table. ‘Now he’s saying he lied to cover up the blackmail and keep the pictures secret.’

Caldas allowed a puzzled Soto to examine the images at length before he carried on with his explanation.

‘So Doctor Zuriaga waited for the right circumstances to get his revenge. Of course, he wanted to leave no trace, but he needed to get on to an island with restricted access and a sentry box guarded twenty-four hours a day, and he needed to get away unseen. But, you see, Zuriaga had been to Toralla a couple of times and knew that, when it rained, the guards waved familiar cars through without leaving the
comfort
of the sentry box. So the first rainy night was the perfect opportunity. The doctor arranged to meet Reigosa
somewher
e
, and they drove across the bridge together in the
saxophonist
’s car. As Zuriaga had predicted, the security guard didn’t come out. He just raised the barrier for the car to move on, and didn’t notice that there was someone in the passenger seat. The darkness, the rain and the time of year, when the Toralla tower was empty of holidaymakers, made it very hard for anyone to see him that night.’

Caldas interrupted his hypothetical story to make sure Soto was following. Soto simply waved his hand, motioning him to go on.

‘Once they were in the flat they had a couple of drinks like any other day. The doctor’s attitude, his killer instinct, which had served him so well in business meetings, didn’t arouse Reigosa’s suspicions. Feigning passion, the doctor tied Reigosa’s hands to the headboard of the bed. Reigosa was now at his mercy, and he discovered what was really going on too late. Zuriaga had coldly planned the most painful
vengeance he was capable of imagining. Being a surgeon, he knew the devastating effect formaldehyde would have when injected into live tissue. After he heard Reigosa’s terrified confession of blackmail, he gagged him to stop him shouting. Then he injected formaldehyde into Reigosa’s defenceless penis, thus perpetrating his fatal revenge. You’ve seen the gruesome result of that injection in the autopsy room.’

Superintendent Soto nodded gently.

‘As if one could forget it,’ said Rafael Estévez, who had a very clear recollection of the saxophonist’s genitals.

‘Well, with all this you can certainly prove that Zuriaga knew Reigosa,’ said the superintendent, holding up one of the pictures. ‘We’d even have a clear indication that he was being blackmailed. But we’re treading on thin ice here. To press charges against the doctor we’d need more than these conjectures. We’d need evidence.’

‘We can get some,’ said Caldas, going back to his story of the events on Toralla Island. ‘While his lover lay dying the doctor did a great job of cleaning the flat. Any trace of his presence there, whether that night or another, could have been enough to link him to the crime in future and ruin his plan. He must have left the glasses on the living room table for the end, as he would have wanted to wipe the fingerprints off them. But something must have worked against his cold blood and made him flee in a rush. It may have been a light, a noise, I don’t know, but the fact is that he left the building without wiping off those fingerprints. And although the cleaning woman ruined most of them, we were able to
recover
part of a fingerprint, which we can compare with the doctor’s. If they match, we will have placed Dimas Zuriaga at the scene of the crime.’

‘I still don’t see enough evidence to charge a man like Zuriaga with murder,’ replied the superintendent. ‘Even if, for argument’s sake, the print turns out to be his, it would only prove that Zuriaga has been at the musician’s home. As for the way he contradicted himself, that can be easily
explained away in terms of his fear of seeing the pictures come to light. Why don’t you wait for the full report from forensics?’

‘There’s also the DJ,’ said Caldas, who could not
contemplate
a retreat once he had started charging.

‘Who?’ asked Soto.

‘As I’ve already told you, I think Zuriaga found there were two people blackmailing him. One was Reigosa. But it was his accomplice who took the pictures and sent out emails and instructions to the doctor.’

‘Have you found him?’ asked Soto with interest, expecting more solid evidence than he had heard so far.

Leo confirmed they had.

‘Last night. He worked as a DJ in a gay bar on Arenal Street called the Idílico.’

‘I see,’ said Soto, giving Estévez a reproachful look as he remembered the lawsuit which, thanks to his behaviour, that team of gay lawyers was filing against the police force.

‘The boy said he knew Reigosa,’ said Caldas. ‘He told me Reigosa wasn’t a regular, but went to the Idílico now and then. However, he seemed a bit evasive when I asked him about a man with extremely white hair – the doctor’s most salient physical trait, as you’ve no doubt noticed.’

The superintendent confirmed he had with a slight nod.

‘When I told him Reigosa had been killed,’ continued Caldas, ‘the boy looked like he was scared of something. I got the impression that he didn’t feel safe there, and he refused to talk any further in the bar. We arranged to meet today at five in the afternoon, at a place far enough from where he lived, from the station and from his work.’

‘And what did you get?’ asked Soto.

‘Nothing, sir. The DJ didn’t make it to our appointment,’ explained Caldas. ‘His name was Orestes Grial. He’s the boy who’s turned up with a shot in the back of the neck at a flat on Camelias Road. I’m convinced it was Zuriaga who did him in.’

The superintendent, who’d known for a couple of hours about the new crime in the city, passed a hand over his face.

‘Is that another hypothesis, Leo?’

‘For the moment it is, sir. But the photographs you have on your desk were stored on the dead man’s computer. I bet Orestes’s death happened a little after one, when we left Zuriaga’s mansion. The doctor must have gone to the boy’s house. Orestes worked until seven in the morning, so he must have been sleeping at the time. Orestes seemed quite frightened when I spoke to him. The doctor must have threatened to go to the police if he didn’t open the door. Once inside, he only had to wait for the boy to lower his guard and shoot him. Incidentally, Zuriaga doesn’t
remember
leaving his house. He claims he’s been at home for days, sunk in depression. His wife, however, casually said that the doctor went out on some errands in the afternoon. It seems our visits have healing powers.’

Soto raised a hand and Caldas stopped his exposition.

‘Leo, all this doesn’t quite fit together. How could Zuriaga have known that you’d been to see Orestes Grial the night before when you hadn’t even paid Zuriaga himself a visit?’

‘He didn’t. But in the morning I’d told him that I had a witness who was prepared to confirm he knew Reigosa. In fact I was only trying to make him nervous, to confuse him and see if I could trip him up,’ explained Caldas. ‘Zuriaga must have come to his own conclusions and decided to kill off the other blackmailer before the boy could talk. Then he pulled the necessary strings to make sure we didn’t come near him.’

‘They must have got tangled,’ replied Soto in a whisper.

Estévez smiled, and relaxed a bit now his superior’s
conjectures
were seen to be more than mere flights of fancy.

‘A few minutes ago they informed me that a glove’s turned up. I guess you know of it, sir?’

‘Yes, I’ve got the note here somewhere.’ Soto found the paper in a drawer. ‘They’ve found a latex glove in the
rubbish bin nearest to the hall of Orestes’s house,’ he said, skimming the text. ‘Apparently, it has traces of powder on it.’

‘If I’m right, sir, we should find Zuriaga’s DNA on the inside.’

‘In that case, the doctor would be in hot water,’ said Soto, who was starting to give in to Caldas’s theory.

‘The pieces will all fit together as soon as Isidro Freire appears.’

‘Who?’ asked the superintendent, who wasn’t familiar with that name.

‘A guy with a little black dog,’ put in Estévez, earning himself a reproachful look from Caldas.

‘Isidro Freire works at Riofarma. He’s the sales
representative
in charge of the Vigo area,’ explained Caldas to his
superior
. ‘He’s the one who provides the Zuriaga Foundation with formaldehyde. If you ask my opinion, I don’t think Freire will turn up alive either.’

‘Oh, come on, Leo!’ exclaimed the superintendent, but Caldas ignored the comment and carried on.

‘Isidro Freire is the link between Zuriaga and the
formaldehyde
, between the murderer and the weapon. I’ve asked for a list of the salesman’s telephone calls, and over the last few days he called Zuriaga’s home number several times. Freire has not shown up at the office today, and he’s not answering the phone either. You know what, sir? If Zuriaga got rid of Luis Reigosa and then of Orestes Grial, I see no reason to believe that he may have spared Freire’s life – that is, if Freire was indeed able to implicate him in the murder of the musician.’