The Angst-Ridden Executive (27 page)

‘Carvalho, the very idea of Fontanillas is absurd. It does your professionalism no credit at all, I’m afraid. Fontanillas is a politician, of no great aspirations and no great qualities, but who is likely to end up in the government some day. You should have known at once that it was me. When you leave this house, you may find you don’t have long left on this earth.’

The servant reappeared with the phone.

‘A call for you, from Terra i Foe, from La Bisbal again.’

Carvalho repeated almost exactly the formula of the previous call. Argemi had allowed himself to be swallowed further into the sofa. His eyes were twinkling.

‘That’s a rather expensive life insurance you’ve taken out, there.’

‘You’ve not seen the half of it.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m enjoying it. Anyway, to continue. As you know, officially speaking the loose ends have all been tied up. Jauma was murdered. Rhomberg was going through a personal crisis and disappeared. The authorities think that you’re just a troublemaker trying to stir things up. So there’s nothing for you to do, now. I suspect that you’re not a moralist—in fact I know you’re not. So I’m going to give you exactly what you’re looking for: the satisfaction of knowing that you were on the right track, and also a few details that you don’t yet know. For a start, I didn’t actually kill Jauma with these hairy hands which the good Lord gave me. To be honest. I couldn’t have done it. I was terribly fond of him, and in fact I still am. For instance, I’m seriously worried for his family’s future, so I’ve just found a buyer for his yacht. It’s not easy to sell a yacht these days, particularly when everyone’s expecting tax reforms that are going to hit luxury items in particular. Incidentally, my own view is that this is only fair. The keystone of any radical democratic reform has to be progressive taxation. As I was saying, I didn’t kill Jauma personally, but I did give the orders for him to be killed. Jauma was an excellent manager, but he lacked a proper global overview of Petnay’s role in the world. I, on the other hand, was Petnay’s political confidant, and a number of decisions passed through my hands. There’s a good cover for all this, since my company has production links with Petnay. My real functions, though, were rather more complex. For example, Petnay is very worried about Spain’s political future. Not simply because the company itself could lose out, but also for what a chaotic political situation in Spain could mean in the context of politics and economics at the international level. Reasonably enough, Petnay has been trying to influence the political situation in Spain, and will play a part in any solution that is progressive, yet doesn’t fundamentally change things. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, however. Petnay considers that a powerful democratic Right is needed in Spain, to prevent a revolutionary free-for-all. For that to happen, there needs to be a permanent threat of destabilization. I’m sure you take my meaning. Petnay is banking on a democratic solution, but at the same time they are financing far-Right violence so as to generate fear, which in turn will guarantee order. Let’s be frank, Carvalho. Franco taught us a very basic lesson. Under a strong hand, a country produces. Democracy cannot permit the use of a strong hand, but in order to succeed it needs terrorism in the background, a dirty war, which drives people into the arms of stabilizing forces that appear to have clean hands. Petnay started off, rather tentatively at first, directing funds to this end. When Franco died the caution vanished, and that was when Jauma and his picturesque accountant discovered that two hundred million pesetas had disappeared somewhere along the line. Petnay’s explanations only made Jauma even more suspicious. He carried on investigating, and discovered that my company had been the channel by which Petnay had funneled the money to its unknown destination. He approached me. At first he came right out and accused me of embezzlement, on the assumption that I had been in cahoots with some senior Petnay executive to defraud the company. I decided to give him the whole story. But then something happened which I hadn’t anticipated. Jauma began to feel the call of his political past. It got particularly bad after the right-wing violence at the start of this year—labour movement people being killed, kids shot in the street, and so on. Jauma was going off the rails, and I could see it. In the end he rang me and gave me an ultimatum. I was to make a public statement about Petnay’s financial arrangements. I warned him that it would all end in tears. He, personally, would be socially and financially ruined, and there would be a political scandal which would do nobody any good. After all, it suits the centre parties to have a bit of right-wing violence about, because it makes them look like the lesser of two evils. The same goes for broad sections of the Left. The ultra-Right provides the Left with a useful alibi: they can’t afford to overturn the centre parties, because the fascist savages would step in and occupy the resulting political vacuum. And of course all this is great for the ultra-Right, because they get the chance to crack a few heads and kill someone every once in a while, and this keeps the Left right back at square one and does any reformist government a tremendous favour.

‘Now, I didn’t offer my services in all this without a lot of reservations and soul-searching. In the end, I think that what I have done has been justifiable even from a progressive point of view. Jauma refused to understand, though. I had discussions with Petnay, and we concluded that there was no choice but to kill him. Then you came along and started sticking your nose in—or rather, you, and Concha with her idiotic puritanism, and Nuñez and his having nothing better to do with his time. It was all the fault of you three that I had to kill Rhomberg, and it cost me a lot of money, let me tell you. You can’t imagine what it costs these days to hire a killer who’s willing to go through a trial, plus three or four years in prison, and everything that it entails. It costs a fortune. In comparison, Alemany’s archives worked out cheap. And, as it turns out, Carvalho, getting rid of you is going to cost me even less. Almost nothing, in fact.’

This time it was the fish shop ringing. Carvalho was becoming uncomfortably aware that Argemi had good reason to laugh.

‘What other guarantees did you set up?’

‘What I want from you is a complete explanation of what has happened, to be deposited with a mutually trustworthy person.’

‘Very literary. I’d almost be tickled to oblige. Anyway, as I was saying, getting shot of you isn’t going to cost me a lot. The price of a good lunch, in fact—to which it gives me great pleasure to invite you. I also wanted to invite you to share a really special moment with me.’

He rang a small gold bell to summon his servant.

‘I bought this in Vienna. It’s the bell that the emperor Franz Josef used to use when he fancied sex with Sissi. Ding-ding, and she’d come running like a little dog. Ah, Miguel—would you please bring us the bottle I told you about.’

‘And what about Rhomberg? How did he die?’

‘There’s no point you talking in front of the servants. I pay them so well that they’d kill for me if I told them to. Anyway—Rhomberg. . . The main thing is that he’s dead. There’s no point in your trying to find the body. We learned from the Jauma case, and decided to cover our tracks. I don’t know the details of how he died, but I gather that the people who do this sort of thing can be pretty ruthless. I don’t know the men involved personally. I rely on middlemen. Raspall, for instance. He was the one who bought Paco’s mother-in-law’s bar to set up a discotheque, and he was also the one who bought Alemany’s papers, with a view to presenting them to the Institute of Business Management library—purged, needless to say, of anything that might incriminate me, but in such a way that the figures still add up.’

The servant carried the silver tray at a perfect right angle as if it were an extension of his arm. On the tray were a dust-covered wine bottle and two slender cut-glass wine glasses.

‘Look at that. It’s a ’66 Nuits Saint Georges. Exactly a year ago I brought ten crates back from France, and the producer there told me that I had to lay it down for at least a year before I touched it. And now you and I are about to have a well-deserved first tasting.’

The servant opened the bottle. Argemi immediately took the cork, closed his eyes, and savoured the bouquet. Then he tossed it over, and Carvalho caught it.

‘Smell that—this is a superb wine.’

Carvalho smelt it, and immediately regretted having entered into the game.

‘Well, say something! It’s excellent, isn’t it!’

The wine occupied the transparent belly of the glasses, and as it lay there it took on a redness that was the most basic red in all the world. The servant handed one glass to Argemi and another to Carvalho. He nodded deferentially and withdrew to where he had come from.

‘Drink, Carvalho. It’s a wonderful wine.’

They looked at each other across the room. The only one smiling was Argemi, but his smile suddenly evaporated as Carvalho slowly emptied the contents of his wineglass onto the carpet. The detective got up, making no attempt to conceal the pain in his muscles. He turned his back on Argemi, went towards the door, and continued walking as Argemi commented in a calm voice:

‘Jauma didn’t deserve the sacrifice you’ve just made for him. Nineteen sixty-six was a great year for Bourgogne wines.’

Carvalho went down to his car. He waited for the motorbike to pass one more time, to get another view of the strong, young body that needed milk like the whole world needs milk. He started the car, drove past the iron gate, which was solicitously opened for him by the groundsman, and made his way mechanically down the driveway that connected with the main road. The entire geography of his brain was taken up with the phrase ‘the angst of the senior executive’, and minutes later he found himself heading for home, humming those six little words to the backing of a tune which he had never heard before, and which would never be heard again.