Barcelona 03 - The Sound of One Hand Killing (15 page)

“Hey, chief, we found this in this woman's room,” one of the
mossos
shouted.

The Deputy Inspector stepped back and opened the bag. Although she was trying to do it on the sly, we could all see it contained at least half a dozen spray cans of red paint.

“And take a look at this,” said the
mosso
in uniform as he forced Alícia to show her hands to the Deputy Inspector.

Alícia's hands were covered in blotches of red paint.

“I don't understand. I swear I didn't kill him…” she said, bursting into tears. “I only wanted —”

“Tell her what her rights are, handcuff her and take her to the station,” the Deputy Inspector ordered with a sigh. And added, turning to us, “Good news. I think we'll soon be able to let you go home.”

Just as Alícia was leaving, the forensic investigator arrived. Everyone shut up and moved to one side to let him through, as if he were the high priest of an ancient religion keen on human sacrifice. The forensic investigator walked silently towards Horaci's office, not deigning to give us a glance while some of us scrutinized his face for a sign that betrayed his macabre profession. It's not every day you get so close to a forensic investigator and I'm sure several of us shuddered in horror when he walked past.

The
mossos
took note of all our details and finally gave us permission to leave. What with one thing and another, it was well past midday. On our way out, we passed, on their way in, Sònia Claramunt, Horaci's widow, and Bernat Comes, the specialist in Bach flower remedies who turned out not to be a real doctor; their sorrowful faces showed they'd heard the dire news. Some participants who knew Sònia Claramunt offered her their condolences, but she strode on imperturbably, not stopping to thank them.

“Poor woman! She must be quite distraught!” said Valèria. “I can remember when I lost my husband…”

My brother and I inelegantly skipped the dramatic story she was about to unfold and, once we were in the street, Borja gave me his mobile so I could tell Montse I was on my way home. I wanted to reassure her, because journalists and TV cameras had begun to arrive at around eleven, and I was afraid she or Joana might hear the news on the radio or TV and get the fright of their lives. Borja then phoned Merche and Lola, who'd taken advantage of our stay at Zen Moments to go to Madrid with some girlfriends to visit the Prado.

“We've had a real run of bad luck,” I muttered as we walked along the Bonanova, trying to find a taxi. “Everything we touch goes haywire.”

“We'll have to think what we're going to do about Teresa Solana's assignment. And how we're going to reclaim our four thousand euros!” sighed Borja.

“Do you think we'll get a refund?”

“Well, that's the least they can do.”

“I'd never have said that Alícia woman was a murderer. She must have planned it all from the start.”

“I guess so. Come on, let's go home, I'm starving!” my brother shouted as he waved at a taxi with a green light.

I was famished too. Even though the
mossos
had let us into the kitchen in the middle of the morning to get something to eat and drink, as they didn't even serve decaf at the centre, my stomach was empty. The second we reached our place, I quickly prepared aperitifs with crisps, olives and slices of chorizo and cheese. The crisps disappeared immediately and the twins offered to fetch more from the local corner store run by a couple of Pakistanis.

“Bring us a couple of tins of
berberetxus
,” said Borja, handing Laia a twenty-euro note.

“
Escopinyes
, proper Catalan, if you don't mind!” Laia replied, wincing at his mix of Spanish and Catalan for the word for cockles.

Joana and Montse joined us for aperitifs and insisted we described what had happened in lurid detail. The twins also wanted to be in on how Borja found the corpse of Dr Bou and all the gore he added to spice his story; for the first time in ages they stayed with us for aperitifs rather than disappearing into their bedrooms. Arnau seemed to be the only person who was completely uninterested, and he simply asked, “Daddy, how can Dr Bou be a vegetarian if his name says he's an ox?”

Borja and I had told them how we'd gone hungry because of the vegetarian menus they served. It was lucky Montse had cooked macaroni and meat and cheese pasties for
lunch, and Borja had insisted on buying a cream sponge cake for dessert. Unusually for a weekend, when we usually start lunch after three, that Sunday we were all tucking in well before two.

After lunch, Borja said he was going home to rest, and I was all ready for a long siesta. On this occasion, Montse let me off doing the washing-up, and, discreetly, while she and Joana were busy in the kitchen, I went to our bedroom and extracted from the trunk the small statue Borja had asked me to keep for him.

“Here you are,” I said, putting it into his El Corte Inglés bag. “I'm sure you'll find a good place to hide it in your flat.”

“Of course, don't you worry,” said Borja.

“And get some rest, right?”

“You too.”

The following morning, the telephone rang just before ten. It was Borja.

“What the hell are you doing awake?” I asked, surprised to hear him so early in the morning.

“I didn't get any shut-eye last night.”

“Well, in the end I slept like a log! I needed to. And I was lucky because I still have backache from that blasted futon…”

“Eduard, we've got to recover the four thousand euros.”

I noted a nervy edge to his voice that is quite unlike my brother and felt uneasy.

“Is anything wrong?”

“No. But I'm not going to let the Zen Moments people hang on to Merche's money.”

“Right, I agree, but they killed the director yesterday, if you remember…”

“I regret what happened to Horaci, but money is money,” he insisted.

“So what do you suggest?”

“I suggest you come here and we'll both go to the meditation centre and demand an immediate refund.”

“Do you think anybody will be there this morning? After all that shit yesterday, I expect it will be shut and the
mossos
will be busy looking for clues and all that jazz.”

“I expect someone will be there. Bernat, the Bach flower remedies guy, was one of Horaci's partners, wasn't he?”

“Yes. And his wife Sònia was the other partner, so it seems. Alícia told me that on Friday when we were having dinner. Who'd have thought it?… She didn't look like a murderer.” I felt a shiver go down my spine when I remembered that she'd sat next to me.

“We'll press them and demand they refund our cash,” Borja responded, ignoring my comment. “Can you be quick?”

I sighed. I knew I didn't have any choice.

“I'll get dressed and I'll be with you in half an hour.”

I didn't expect we'd find anyone at the centre, and was even less optimistic about Horaci's partners handing back the four thousand euros we'd given them so blithely and that had probably disappeared from the centre's safe. Nevertheless, as Borja had sounded so touchy on the phone, I thought there was no point arguing and that it would be more sensible to go to his place and make him see the light there. As it was Montse's turn to take Arnau to school this week, I was still in my pyjamas. I showered and dressed as quickly as I could. Before leaving, I told Joana something urgent had cropped up and that I would go to the supermarket in the afternoon. As Borja's tone of voice had been worrying, I grabbed a taxi to save time.

Borja opened the door all ready to leave. He didn't even ask me inside. He looked in a bad state and I told him so.

“I said I didn't get any sleep last night,” he growled.

“Hey, bro, just as well it wasn't your money. You look terrible…”

“Come on, let's be off.”

As we went down in the lift, I got the impression my brother was feeling too rough to drive and I suggested we took a taxi. However, he argued we would certainly need the
car to ferry back and forth. If nobody was at the centre, he said, we'd try to get the addresses of Bernat or the widow, and, as a last resort, pay him and her a visit at their homes. I'd never seen Borja so beside himself, and concluded he urgently needed the money back. Perhaps Merche had given him an ultimatum, which wasn't like her, or he had a creditor who'd lost his patience.

“You sure everything is all right?” I insisted.

“Quite sure,” he rasped. But his “sure” implied quite the opposite.

Borja had parked the Smart by the entrance to the Catalan Trains station in Putxet that is five minutes' spirited walk from his flat. We started down Balmes and, while waiting for the green light to cross the road by Castanyer, we were accosted by three men in tracksuits who towered a good metre above us. The sky was cloudy but all three wore shades.

“Come with
nosotros, por favor
,” said one of them, while the other two surrounded us and pinioned our arms.

“What are you after?” Borja asked, trying to disentangle himself.

“Come.”

One of the men spoke to his colleague in a language I didn't understand that sounded like Russian or another Eastern European language.

“He
tambien
come,” he shouted, referring to me, as his colleague pushed me in the direction of a black Transit van parked in front of Borja's block.

“Hey, what the hell do you think you're doing?” I yelped, trying to resist. “Hel—!” but a hand was stuffed into my mouth before I could finish the word I was trying to shout.

It all happened in a flash. In a matter of seconds, Borja and I were tumbled in a heap inside the Transit. Resistance
or escape was impossible, because our pathetic limbs, the product of sedentary existences, were no match for biceps flexed by weights and circuit training. Once inside the Transit, one of the men put a cloth to my nose, dripping with a substance I guessed was chloroform; I tried to fight and kick, but it was no use. Before hitting the floor unconscious, I saw Borja also struggle to stop them from anaesthetizing him.

When I woke up, my head ached and I was sitting in a chair with my hands, but not my feet, tied behind me. I didn't know how long I'd been like that, but, wherever we were, it was almost pitch dark. I gradually recalled the men with shades, the black Transit van and the cloth soaked in chloroform. When my eyes got used to the shadowy light, I saw we were in a very big room decorated like a Chinese restaurant.

“What's happened? Where are we?” I heard Borja ask sleepily. I then realized that we were back to back, I was facing a small barred window, and he faced a wall.

“I don't know,” I whispered. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“No, but I've got one hell of a headache.”

“So have I. That must be chloroform they gave us.”

“Yeah, but where are we?”

I was slightly more awake by now and surveyed the room again. A closer look revealed that the objects were nothing like the tacky items you find in the Chinese restaurants Montse and I sometimes visited. These seemed the genuine article. The beams in the ceiling were polychrome wood, and two square columns painted red flanked a wooden door that was closed. There was a sign written in gold Chinese characters above the door and, by the window, at ground level, were a bed, a trunk that looked antique and two chairs leaning against the wall that also had an antique flavour.
The only light in the room came through the small barred window opposite me.

“What can you see?” I asked Borja in a hushed voice.

“Nothing at all. It's very dark in here. Wait,” he said a few seconds later. “There's something that looks like an old suit of armour. But it's not like our medieval armour. The helmet is different… There's a bow and quiver with arrows next to it!” he whispered.

“How extraordinary. It's as if we were inside a Chinese house,” I muttered.

“Look at the lanterns in the ceiling,” said Borja. I looked up. “You're right. They do seem Chinese. What about you? Can you see anything else?”

“A small window,” I answered, stretching my neck as much as I could to see outside. However much Borja turned his head, he couldn't see the window.

“And?”

“I don't know. It looks as if we're in the countryside.”

“In the countryside?”

“I can see the sky. And mountains. And a very long stone wall… Hey!” I paused to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me and then stretched my neck further. “Hell, I don't believe it!”

“What do you mean? What's wrong?”

“I don't believe it! It can't be true!” I muttered as I felt my heart racing.

“Eduard, say something, for Christ's sake!” Though Borja was making every effort to twist his neck, he could only see the window out of the corner of his eye.

“You won't believe this, but I can see the Great Wall of China,” I whispered. “Pep, I reckon we're in China!”

“China?”

“Shush! Don't shout!”

“China? Are you sure?” repeated Borja incredulously.

“Lower your voice. Yes, I swear what I can see through the window is the Great Wall, and we're in this room with all this oriental furniture… Welcome to China, Pep. To China!”

“Damn me…”

My head went into a spin and I took some deep breaths. China. That meant Borja and I were thousands of fucking miles away from home. How long had we been asleep? Ten hours? Twenty? And why had they bothered to transport us so far?”

“Eduard, I meant to tell you something,” Borja said all of a sudden.

“Go on, fire away.”

“On Sunday evening, when I got back to the flat, I found it had been turned upside down. I suppose someone was looking for the statue.”

“Bloody hell…”