Southern Seas (2 page)

His eyes scanned the dark, weatherbeaten patch of ground. He reckoned that the building work had been abandoned for a fair while. The battering he had blindly inflicted on himself was now becoming identifiable sources of pain. His muscle joints were strained and aching, and a cold sweat was soaking him. He looked for somewhere to hide, in case they tried to follow him onto the site. It was then that he saw him—a man, with his head resting against a pile of bricks, his eyes staring back, and his hands palms-upwards to the sky.

‘Jesus! Damn!’ said Darkie, panting. He went up to take a closer look, but maintained a respectful distance. The man was not looking at him. His eyes seemed to be fixed on the old door at the top of the slope, as if it had been his last hope before he died. On the other side, the whistles were getting closer, and the sounds of pursuit became more distinct. The dead man and Darkie seemed to share a mutual moment of hope in the door. Suddenly, someone began pushing against it, and Darkie collapsed in a flood of tears and a hysterical ‘Aaaaaah’ that came all the way from his stomach. He looked for a pile of rubble, to sit down and await the inevitable. The look that he gave the dead man was full
of reproach: ‘You bastard! You’re all I needed tonight. Now I’m fucked!’

‘Do you realize, Biscuter—we private eyes are the barometers of established morality. I tell you, this society is rotten. It doesn’t believe in anything.’

‘Yes, boss.’

Biscuter backed Carvalho up, not only because he guessed that the boss was drunk, but also because he could recognize a catastrophe when he saw one.

‘Three months without an assignment. Not a single husband chasing his wife. Not a single father looking for a runaway daughter. Not even the occasional pathetic wretch wanting proof of his wife’s adultery. Don’t women run away from home any more? Of course they do, Biscuter. More than ever. But nowadays their husbands and their fathers don’t give a shit if they do. The basic values have been lost. You people wanted democracy, didn’t you?’

‘It was all the same to me, boss.’

But Pepe Carvalho wasn’t talking to Biscuter. He was questioning the green walls of his office, or an imaginary person seated on the other side of his desk—a forties-style desk with a smooth French polish that had faded over thirty years, as if it had slowly absorbed the gloom of the detective’s office on the Ramblas. He swallowed another glass of ice-cold orujo, and puckered his face at the shiver that ran down his spine. Hardly had he put the glass on the table than Biscuter returned to fill it again.

‘That’s enough, Biscuter. I’m popping out for a breather.’

He went out onto the landing, where the sounds and smells of the building assailed him. The foot-tapping and castanets of
the ballet school; the meticulous tap-tapping of the old sculptor; the mustiness emanating from thirty years’ worth of sedimented garbage, combined with the smell of faded polish and the impacted dust that had found refuge in the window frames and the opaque, rhomboid skylights poised above the stairwell. Carvalho took the stairs two at a time, helped or driven by an alcoholic energy, and went out to savour the brisk, chill air of the Ramblas. Spring had gone mad. It was cold and overcast on that early evening in March. A short walk and a few deep breaths helped Carvalho clear his dulled brain and intoxicated liver.

He had one million two hundred thousand pesetas in the savings bank, which brought in five per cent at fixed intervals. At this rate, he would not have enough capital to retire at fifty or fifty-five and live on the interest. The crisis, the crisis of values, he mused, with the dogged persistence of the alcoholic. He had read in the papers that labour lawyers were also in crisis, because workers were now turning to the unions’ legal advisors. Both were victims of democracy. Doctors and notaries were also victims of democracy. They had to pay their taxes now, and they were beginning to think that perhaps it was preferable to have been professionals living under fascism while practising a degree of liberal resistance.

‘We private detectives are about as useful as rag and bone men. We retrieve from the garbage can that which doesn’t yet belong with the garbage, or that which, on closer inspection, was never garbage in the first place.’

No one was listening to him. Threatening drops of rain sent him running towards Calle Fernando, in search of the canopied shop windows of Beristain. There he found himself in the company of three prostitutes, who were swapping advice on the best way to make packet soup. A very small boy left the shop with a very large hockey stick. His father was asking again and again: ‘Are you sure that this one’s right for you?’ ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ replied the boy, obviously peeved by this paternal lack of confidence.
Carvalho left his shelter and began to walk faster in the direction of a delicatessen where he often bought cheese and sausage. He stopped again, this time attracted by the sight of a litter of puppies wriggling on a pile of wood shavings behind a pane of glass that separated them from the street. With one of his fingers he made as if to play with the pert nose of a little German shepherd dog, whose hind paws were being nibbled by two spaniel puppies. He spread his hand flat on the window, as if to communicate warmth or some message to the little creature. The dog licked the glass in a vain attempt to reach Carvalho’s hand. Pepe moved away abruptly and completed the short distance to the deli.

‘The usual.’

‘The tins of pork loin and butifarras in sauce have arrived.’

‘I’ll take two of each.’

The assistant went through the rest of the order with routine precision.

‘This Salamanca ham isn’t what it used to be.’

‘They call everything Salamanca ham these days. If ham isn’t Jabugo or Trevélez, then it’s Salamanca. You’ve got to be so careful. But even then you can’t be sure whether the ham you’re eating is Salamanca or Totana.’

‘Yes you can.’

‘
You
can tell, because you know about these things. But I’ve seen people selling Granollers as if it were Jabugo. You see what I mean?’

Carvalho left with a bag containing Casar, Cabrales and Ideazábal cheeses, Jabugo chorizos, Salamanca ham for everyday eating, and a small portion of the Jabugo for when he was feeling fed up.

He was in a better mood by the time he reached the pet shop again. The owner was just shutting for the day.

‘That dog …’

‘What dog?’

‘The one that was in the window.’

‘It was full of dogs.’

‘The little wolf one.’

‘It was a bitch. I’ve got them all inside. I put them in cages for the night, so that no one comes smashing the window and taking them off to torture them. There’s a lot of sick minds around these days.’

‘I’d like to buy her.’

‘What, now?’

‘Now.’

‘It’ll cost you eight thousand pesetas,’ answered the owner, without reopening the door.

‘Can’t be much of a shepherd dog at a price like that …’

‘She’s got no pedigree. But she’s a very healthy dog. You’ll see for yourself. Very brave. I know the father, and the mother belongs to one of my brothers-in-law.’

‘I’m not worried about pedigree.’

‘Fine.’

The dog wriggled as Carvalho tucked her under his arm. In his other hand, he was holding a bag full of cheese, sausage, tins of dogfood, rubber bones, insecticide, disinfectant and a brush—everything a man and a dog could need to be happy. Biscuter was surprised at the dignity of the little dog. It planted itself solidly on its hind paws, sticking out half a yard of tongue. Its huge ears looked like the swept-back wings of a plane going into a nosedive.

‘Looks like a rabbit, boss. Shall I keep her here?’

‘I’ll take her up to Vallvidrera. She’ll shit over everything here.’

‘By the way—there was a call for you. I jotted his name down in the office book.’

Jaime Viladecans Riutorts. Lawyer. As Carvalho dialled the number, he called for Biscuter to heat up some food. He heard him moving around in the kitchenette that he had built next to the toilet. Biscuter was humming a tune, happy in his work, and the little dog was chewing the telephone wire. Two secretaries testified to the importance of the man he was calling. Finally the
voice of an English lord, speaking with the accent of a Catalan dandy, came onto the line.

‘It’s a very delicate matter. We’ll need to speak in private.’

Carvalho noted the details of a rendezvous, hung up, and leaned back in his swivel armchair with a certain air of satisfaction. Biscuter laid before him a steaming portion of wild rabbit with vegetable stew. The dog was trying to get a share of his meat, so Carvalho gently put her on the ground and tossed her a little piece of the rabbit.

‘It’s true what they say. Children do sometimes arrive with a loaf of bread under their arms.’

Viladecans was wearing a gold tiepin and platinum cufflinks. He was impeccable from head to foot, starting from his balding pate which shone like a dry riverbed confined between two banks of white hair. Judging by the care with which the lawyer periodically brushed his hand back over the surviving undergrowth, it had recently been trimmed by the best hairdresser in the city. At the same time, a diminutive tongue moved with relish across a pair of almost closed lips.

‘Does the name Stuart Pedrell mean anything to you?’

‘Rings a bell.’

‘It may ring several. It’s a remarkable family. The mother was a distinguished concert pianist, although she retired when she married and subsequently only performed for charity. The father was of Scottish origin, and was an important industrialist before the war. Each of the sons is a public figure in his own right. You may have heard of the journalist, the biochemist, the educationalist, or the building contractor.’

‘Probably.’

‘I want to tell you about the building contractor.’

He placed before Carvalho a set of local press cuttings mounted on file cards: ‘The body of an unidentified male has been found on a building site in Holy Trinity.’ ‘The body has subsequently been identified as that of Carlos Stuart Pedrell.’ ‘Pedrell had parted from his family a year ago on the pretext of a trip of Polynesia.’

‘Why “on the pretext”? Did he need a pretext?’

‘You know the language journalists use. The embodiment of impropriety.’

Carvalho tried to embody impropriety in his mind, but failed. Viladecans launched into a resumé of the situation, peering over folded hands that had been cared for by the finest manicurist.

‘This is how things happened. I’ve known my friend—and he was, I must tell you, a really close friend—since we were at a Jesuit school together. Recently he was going through a sort of crisis. Some men, especially men as sensitive as Carlos, find it hard to adjust as they pass forty and see fifty looming up. That’s the only reason that I can find, why he should spend months and months on a plan to abandon everything and head off to some island in the South Pacific. Suddenly the project picked up speed. He let the business side of things drop and disappeared without trace. We all assumed that he’d taken off for Bali or Tahiti or Hawaii, or some such, and that he would soon be back. But the months passed, and everyone had to face up to the fact that he was apparently gone for good. So much so that Señora Stuart Pedrell moved to take charge of the business.

‘Then, in January, came the report that Stuart Pedrell had been found dead, here in Barcelona, stabbed, on a building site in Holy Trinity. We now know that he never reached Polynesia. But we’ve no idea where he was and what he was doing for all that time. That’s what we want you to find out.’

‘I remember the case. The murderer was never caught. Do you also want to know who killed him?’

‘Well, if the murderer comes to light, well and good. But our real concern is to find out what he did during that last year of his life. You must understand, there are a lot of interests at stake.’

The office intercom announced that Señora Stuart Pedrell had arrived. The door opened almost at once on a forty-five-year-old woman who gave Carvalho an ache deep in his chest. She entered without so much as looking at him, and imposed her slim, mature figure as the only presence worthy of attention. Her face had dark, striking features that were showing the first painful signs of age. Viladecans’s introductions merely allowed her to accentuate the distance between herself and Carvalho by means of a curt ‘How d’you do’. As Carvalho replied, he was staring so intently at her breasts that she felt obliged to check with her hands to make sure there was nothing wrong with her dress.