Barcelona 03 - The Sound of One Hand Killing (19 page)

“And does he suspect anyone?”

“He never really took to the widow.”

“Fine. We'll talk to all the suspects and tell you what we think,” said Borja, getting up and shaking the Inspector's hand.

As he was about to open the door, Borja turned to the Inspector and asked, “On another front, have you found out who killed Brian, our neighbour?”

“We've got one or two leads,” the Inspector replied laconically, terminating our exchange.

We couldn't say no to the Inspector. We both knew that. When we'd walked a good distance away from the police station, we went for a beer.

“After all we've been through, I'd completely forgotten about the doctor's murder,” I told Borja.

“Me too. Frankly, we could have done without this…” came his reply.

“You know, lately we just seem to have been treading in shit.”

We were silent for a time, chomped on the crisps we'd ordered with our beers and put up with the deafening racket in the bar. Two tellies were switched on, broadcasting different channels on different sides of the bar. If that wasn't enough, a radio was droning on as well. A bad habit shared by lots of bars in Barcelona.

“Look at it from another point of view,” Borja said finally, always looking for the positive side. “The Inspector's assignment will help us flesh out the report we have to write for Teresa Solana.”

“So what do we do now?”

“What the man said: talk to the people on his list.”

“Do you really think we'll find out anything new? Do you think the Inspector has got a screw loose?”

Borja shrugged his shoulders.

“How should I know, bro? In any case, we didn't have much choice.”

We finished our beers and retraced our steps to get to the Smart. Borja offered to drive me home and, when we'd almost got there, he looked for a place to park the car.

“You want to come up for a moment?” I asked, bemused, because I thought he was keen to get off home.

“No, it's just that there's a very big Chinese bazaar near here.”

“You're going shopping in a Chinese bazaar?” I asked again, even more bemused. The last thing I expected my sybarite of a brother to do was yield to the temptation of the cheap goods on sale in the Chinese bazaars.

“I've had an idea for a hiding place for the statue,” he said. “I can't carry it around with me all the time.”

“You mean you had it on you in the police station?”

“Of course I did. And Brian's keyring too. I'm not happy about leaving that at home.”

“So what's your bright idea?” I asked, not daring to imagine what might have happened if the Inspector had suspected Borja was carrying on his person a valuable, smuggled statue and a CIA spy's pen drive.

My brother smiled and said I should go to the shop with him, if I wanted to find out. We went in, and Borja grabbed a basket and filled it with lurid objects with one thing in common: they were all more or less the size of the statue in his pocket. A total of eight euros and seventy cents of junk in bad taste.

“What are you going to do with all that?” I asked.

“I'll clear out one of the drawers in the dining-room sideboard and put these objects in there next to the statue. So, if anyone opens the drawer, they'll think they've found the odds and sods.”

“The odds and sods?”

“Yes, you know, the odds and sods,” he repeated as if it were obvious. “The presents you say are just more ‘odds and sods' because you don't know where to put them. So you make a special place…”

“I suppose that might work,” I admitted grudgingly. “And what are you going to with the keyring?”

“For the moment, I'll take it with me, as we don't know what's in the pen drive.”

“But what if it's some kind of secret formula? Or the plans for a horrific weapon?” I said, contemplating the possibility that information that was vital to world safety had fallen into our hands.

“Don't be so melodramatic,” responded my brother, throwing the bag of junk into the Smart. “If it were really important, Brian would never have entrusted it to a complete stranger.”

PART III

Iolanda leapt out of bed when she woke up, without any prompting from an alarm clock. It wasn't quite seven a.m. When she realized she was out of work and had no reason to get up early, she slipped back in between the sheets, though she knew she wouldn't get back to sleep. Her six-month contract at Zen Moments had run out and not been renewed, and she was too angry with herself to turn over and snooze as if her life was continuing as normal. She kept telling herself she had only herself to blame. Why the hell hadn't she kept her big mouth shut? Would she never learn?

Iolanda had fixed her CV to get that cleaner's job at the meditation centre. Bitter experience had taught her that putting down her degree in biology guaranteed she wouldn't get any job she went for. At the moment, biologists weren't in demand, and you didn't need a university degree to work as a shop assistant, checkout operator, waitress or housemaid. What's more, Iolanda knew her university years counted against her, because the moment they saw she had a university degree they assumed she was far too clever and sent her packing. For certain jobs, young women without degrees were more vulnerable, and more easily cheated.

Iolanda felt guilty when she got the job at Zen Moments: she kept thinking her lies had allowed her to beat off an
immigrant girl who, unlike her, had no academic qualifications and no chance of aspiring to anything better. She
had
been to university, but how did it help? All the effort made by her parents to give her a good education and university place, so she would have a better future than them, had been a complete waste of time. Everyone said that her only option was to study for an MA, but MAs were expensive, and her parents' savings had disappeared long ago. Iolanda was prepared to work at anything, except whoring, to pay for a course, but her big mouth had now lost her that job.

And she'd been very lucky because it was a doddle. As the building was new with decor designed according to the latest minimalist aesthetic, all she had to do was go round with the vacuum cleaner, dust the few objects on display, clean the windows, change the linen and clean the rooms of residents on Monday mornings. This was the most onerous part, but all in all it didn't amount to very much. She was young and energetic enough, and her job left her a few hours to go and clean a couple of houses a girlfriend had found for her.

Even so, the fact they'd contracted her because she was Catalan and spoke Catalan had annoyed her from the very first day at the centre. Lots of cosmic harmony and smooth talk, she thought, but, at the moment of truth, they preferred a local girl to anyone from India or speaking with an East European accent – and at the same low rate of pay. Iolanda had noticed that, apart from the gardener, who was Peruvian – and, naturally, never moved from the garden! – not a single employee was foreign. Then there was the centre's atmosphere of good karma and fake cheeriness that she couldn't stand. Iolanda was sick to the back teeth of that jumble of second-rate mysticism and Eastern philosophies, so sick that when they found the corpse of Dr Bou in his office with his head smashed in and
someone had said Dr Comes ought to be alerted, she had simply felt the need to shout out something that was quite true: Dr Comes, however skilled he was with Bach flower remedies, or however handsome, wasn't a medical doctor, but a doctor of philosophy. Naturally, her comments soon came to the ears of Sònia Claramunt via Cecília, and Sònia Claramunt, apart from being Dr Bou's wife, was also the centre's financial director, and she soon informed her that her contract had run out, good riddance and
adéu
.

She soon tired of lazing in bed and got up at a quarter to eight. She'd agreed to meet Maribel, the receptionist, for a drink that morning. As they always caught the bus together after work and in the end had become friends, Maribel was annoyed Iolanda's contract hadn't been renewed. Maribel had worked at the centre for a year and a half and knew all the gossip; even though she was on holiday, she still had first-hand, last-minute information.

“They're going to make lots of changes,” Maribel told her in that secretive tone she adopted when talking. “To begin with, they intend installing a spa and beauticians' rooms in the basement. And they will charge more for weekend courses that will now include massages and beauty treatment.”

“I don't think the old director would have liked these changes one bit,” commented Iolanda.

“Oh, they've also cancelled the rubbish vegetarian catering. Sònia wants to contract one of Ferran Adrià's protégés as a chef. And you can drink wine with your meals, because she says research has shown that a drop of alcohol is good for you.”

“In other words, now that the old witch has sacked me it's getting lively!…” Iolanda lamented, sighing as she spoke.

“Well, you did stick your neck out…”

“So what? What I said was true!” she retorted, trying to act the innocent and not succeeding.

“Yes, but you said Bernat wasn't a doctor so sarkily,” replied Maribel, who was no fool.

It was true. She had been very sarcastic. But the fact was that Bernat was an idiot. All that homeopathy and Bach flower remedies was nonsense. All the same, the bastard was handsome. Far too handsome. With that glowing tan and bright eyes, he was handsome in a virile kind of way that was quite genuine, and brought tremors to Iolanda's tummy whenever she bumped into him in the centre's corridors. What's more, Dr Comes (he'd never told her to call him Bernat) always smelled sweet and had the prettiest feet Iolanda had ever seen: Greek feet in line with classical ideals of beauty, with an index toe that was longer than the big toe. Iolanda also wondered whether his svelte body would be like those young bodies she'd seen sculpted in marble in books and museums, with the difference that Bernat was no downy adolescent, but a fully grown man who, unlike a lot of boyfriends Iolanda had suffered, would surely know how to run his expert hands over her body and excite her to an ecstatic climax. Iolanda got the shakes whenever she speculated about Bernat's amorous dexterity.

“The fact of the matter,” said Maribel in a gentle, commonsense tone of voice, “is that you've got the hots for Bernat!”

“You're crazy.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Fancy him? How could she fancy someone who spent his time cheating people?

“Homeopathy and Bach flower remedies are one big piss-take,” continued Iolanda.

“That's what you think, darling. There is scientific proof that they work,” retorted Maribel, who didn't share her friend's scepticism.

“There is
no
scientific proof, Maribel. The homeopathic belief in
similia similibus curantur
, that is, like is cured with like, is based on the medical ideas of Hippocrates, a Greek doctor who lived in the fourth century
BC
, in an era when they had only the vaguest notions about how our bodies work and doctors did what they could.”

“You mean Hippocrates was a nincompoop?” asked Maribel. Her only contacts in the world of the ancients were
Gladiator
, Brad Pitt disguised as Achilles and a television series based on the exploits of Hercules.

“No, Hippocrates was a pioneer and many people think of him as the father of modern medicine because he transformed it into an independent discipline, separate from philosophy and religion, the opposite of today's homeopaths who think they are his descendants.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Maribel, who'd lost the thread.

“Curiously enough,” continued Iolanda, “Hippocrates was the first person to reject the idea that illnesses were caused by supernatural or divine causes, and he sought their causes in environmental factors, diet or way of life. It's true he believed that illness derived from an imbalance of bodily fluids, that is, blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm, what he called ‘humours', but to continue to think all his theories are valid, without taking into account the discoveries and advances made over twenty-five centuries by his followers, is really ridiculous. Hippocrates himself must be turning in his grave.”

“You are so knowledgeable,” said Maribel with genuine admiration. “I am sure you'll get a job as a secretary. But, in the meantime, why don't you ring Bernat and apologize? He might persuade them to give you your job back…”

It was quite unfair the way they had sacked her. And, besides, she needed the work. Although she didn't go along with that philosophy for the idle rich they peddled
at Zen Moments, she had to recognize it wasn't the worst job in the world. Considering she'd only been able to save six hundred euros towards the MA from the wretched pittance they paid her, it would be worth her while making the effort to apologize. Perhaps Maribel was right and she could persuade him she had only said he wasn't a doctor in all good faith, to stop them from swamping him. She'd go to the hairdresser's, spend an afternoon shaving and applying creams, put on a low-cut dress and on a work pretext phone him and arrange to meet for a coffee in a quiet café where she would tell him she was a biologist and not merely the girl who did the cleaning. After all, Bernat couldn't possibly be as nasty as he seemed, and, you never know, with a bit of luck and the right kinds of hints, they might end up dining together.

Two days after we escaped safe and sound from our kidnappers, the dailies and television news were still talking about the spectacular police raid in Poblenou, though fortunately the reports said nothing about any kidnapping. In fact, what struck me most was the way politicians and commentators said the
mossos
had gone too far, while others reproached them for not going in hard enough. Afraid an angry spy might retaliate if he handed the pen drive Brian had given him over to the authorities, Borja had decided to keep it hidden at home. In the meantime, my brother still hadn't heard from the person he was supposed to deliver the statue to, so the antique and the keyring had ended up in the drawer with the junk made in China he'd bought in the bazaar near our flat.