She was an excellent worker, honest, conscientious, responsible. She proved it yet again by hiring a builder, supervising the work, redesigning the bathrooms, choosing colors for the walls, thoroughly checking the quality of the finished work, dealing with an estate agent who failed to find a buyer after several months, changing to another agent but with no greater success, taking over the task of advertising the sale and showing people round herself in the winter of 1989. She had better luck than the agents.At the beginning of May, a predictably mismatched couple—he a white-haired, pomaded old man wearing a cashmere scarf, she a bimbo in her twenties who could have been his granddaughter—fell in love with the house before even seeing the inside. The woman announced that her name was Letizia, spelt with a “z,” talked nineteen to the dozen, and was crazy about nature, the environment and all that, as she told Sara several times. He had to hold his knees as he climbed the stairs but seemed prepared to sacrifice his remaining strength exclusively to the future glory of his young squeeze, and was constantly touching her breasts and smiling as he admitted that he could never say no to her. They tried to beat Sara down on the price, but she remained firm, and eventually they agreed an acceptable sum of ninety million pesetas, with all expenses to be paid by the purchaser. Her godmother, who’d just persuaded her doctor to increase her medication, was very pleased because it meant she’d be able to go to the seaside on the date planned, but she didn’t seemed particularly interested in the actual deal.“With things the way they are,” she pronounced, “selling the house just means one less problem to think about.” Sara could understand her point of view.
But the sale was delayed. For one reason or another, clinging to legal technicalities and the slowness of the banks, the buyers drew the whole thing out for over a month. Sara was convinced they were going to pull out of the deal, when Letizia with a “z” rang her to give her the name of their notary and the date on which the sale was to be completed. At the end of the conversation, in a different, slightly embarrassed voice, she added: “Bring a couple of bags, or a travel bag, something like that, because, well, I don’t think we’ve mentioned this before but if you don’t mind, we’d like to register the sale at seventy-eight million and pay the rest in cash.”
“In cash?” repeated Sara, smiling at her embarrassment.
“Yes. Maybe I should have mentioned this before, but talking about money is always so unpleasant.”
“Of course.” Sara smiled again, working out that this amount of undeclared money was acceptable because she’d easily be able to hide it from the taxman.“All right, we can register it at seventy-eight.Whatever suits you.”
She was an excellent worker. Honest. Conscientious. Responsible. And she was used to counting money.The twelve million pesetas in bank notes that changed hands in the notary’s office when he stepped out for a moment—deliberately—slid from her hands into the two small bags she’d brought for the purpose. But she hadn’t foreseen what would happen next.The weight of the notes.Their value.Their significance.
Back out on the Calle Núñez de Balboa, the palms of her hands felt strangely hot and tears pricked her eyes. She was losing her head, but it didn’t matter. She was more keenly aware of a shudder, an impure pleasure made up of anger and a desire for revenge that suddenly filled her mind, sharpening it to a point as deadly as a poisonous arrow, and making her heart beat faster. She was carrying twelve million pesetas that didn’t exist, twelve million that nobody had seen, that nobody would ever claim to have handed over, twelve million that the former owners would claim never to have had.Twelve million pesetas that existed only in the weight she could feel in each hand. In each of her two hands, the hands of a lost little girl who’d never had a home to return to.
Her godmother’s house was nearby, but on reaching the corner of the Calle Ayala, Sara turned left instead of right, going up the hill instead of down. She got to the Calle Principe deVergara and went on, holding on tightly to the two bags, a gentle flame in her heart, “money’s always so unpleasant,” but it kept her rooted to the ground, and made her feel more alert, kept her warm. Money could be so pleasant, it just had to mean more than the money itself. Sara Gómez Morales walked along, striding purposefully, an unfamiliar energy propelling her, going round the block once, twice, three times. Her mind was going crazy with a wild sequence of calculations: twelve million pesetas, how long would an accountant at the supermarket in El Pinar take to assemble that much money, twelve million pesetas, how many years would it take Doña Sara Villamarín to die for her god-daughter to have been able to save that much, twelve million pesetas, how many nice things, often expensive, sometimes very expensive things could a person buy with that much money?
Sara felt a shudder, a pressure across her chest like a full cartridge belt, a savage brightness, the certainty that the justice of rifles could be achieved beyond the humiliated land of her dreams.
Sara couldn’t stop thinking about the visit from the policeman from Madrid, not even when she found out Juan Olmedo’s other secret. So when she saw the development’s security guard at her front door, she felt sure the man must have come back.The guard had knocked so frantically and rung the bell so insistently that, as she went to open the door, she’d thought it must be the children, come to drag her off on one of their expeditions—after all, they had only ten days of holiday left. But it was Jesús, the security guard, and something was wrong, very wrong, because he was panting like a cornered animal and sweat was pouring down his face even though it was a cool afternoon and the west wind was blowing.
“Come with me, please!” His eyes were open very wide, and his lips were trembling as if he were about to cry.“Please, hurry, come with me!”
Sara was so alarmed that she didn’t even stop to lock the door.As she left the house, the security guard started running and she hurried after him as quickly as she could, but it obviously wasn’t fast enough for him.
“Run!” he shouted, turning his head as he ran.“Please! Run!”
She started running, feeling a little ridiculous because she was so unfit, but she kept going.As she reached the entrance of the development, her smoker’s lungs started to scream and the muscles in her legs protested loudly. She was coughing and spluttering, but she kept on going.Then she saw that the guard had stopped a few yards from the gate beside a red shape that was lying on the pavement. She stopped to catch her breath a moment, before realizing what that color meant. When she did, she started running again, but this time all her tiredness had disappeared. She felt terribly cold, panicky, but above all very scared.
Maribel was lying on the ground, on her side, curled up in a fetal position. She was wearing the same dress she’d had on when Sara spotted her with Juan in Sanlúcar.The blood rushing from her side formed a red puddle with wavy edges, like a monstrous carnation.
Sara screamed Maribel’s name and, crouching down, placed her hand on her forehead. She kissed her face, then took her hand and met her bloodless, exhausted gaze, unable to comprehend what she was seeing, what was happening, unable to take a decision or even wonder what she could do, how she could help, while the security guard shifted his weight from one leg to the other, as if he too were at a loss as to what to do. He managed to string a few words together.
“A woman at the bus stop came to tell me . . . She must have come out from behind that hut over there.The woman saw her, and came running to get me. When I got here, I found her lying on the pavement. She must have crossed the road—God knows how—you can see the trail of blood.”
At this point, Maribel closed her eyes. Sara looked up and saw the hut, a simple construction of corrugated iron with a bloody handprint on one corner, and a trail of red drops, some more like puddles, leading across the road.Then she heard Maribel’s frightened voice, a whisper as thin and sharp as a needle.
“Juan,” she said, and she squeezed Sara’s hand. “Call him. Please call Juan.”
“Of course! I’m such an idiot.” Sara turned to the security guard who was standing beside her, frozen, resigned, as if he could no longer even think. Sara waved her hand at him vigorously to make him react and get him moving. “Run to number thirty-seven, straight away. Ask for Juan Olmedo and tell him everything. He’s a doctor, he’ll know what to do. Hurry, please!”
The wound had made a dark stain on Maribel’s bright red dress.When Sara dared look at her, the precarious calm she’d obtained from telling the guard to go and get Juan evaporated instantly and her feelings of powerlessness and terror returned. Maribel spoke again, and tears slid slowly down her cheeks.
“He knew,” she whispered, looking at Sara, and she squeezed her hand again.“I don’t know how, but he knew. He knew that I was signing the contract for the flat on Monday, and it was his last chance. He’s been pestering me for money for months—he wanted us to set up a business, he said I’d be rich. But that’s not what he told me today. He said they were going to kill him and that it was all my fault. He said he needed at least half the money—two million pesetas, and that I had to give it to him, or he’d kill me himself... He said that he loved me, that he was the father of my child, I was his wife, and he’d always loved me. I told him to fuck off and leave me alone . . . ‘I’m going to kill you’—that’s what he said. ‘I’m warning you, you’re a worthless whore, and I’m going to kill you’ . . .”
A car pulled up beside them, and a moment later Juan Olmedo appeared. His face was white and there was a mechanical abruptness to his movements that belied his apparent calm.Without a word, he gently pushed Sara out of the way and knelt down beside Maribel, making a strange sound with his tongue, the kind of rhythmic clucking mothers use to soothe their babies. He was frowning in concentration, and there was a look of brisk efficiency in his eyes as he swung into action, doing a thousand things at once before examining the wound. While he extracted a packet of sterile gloves from his trouser pocket, he looked closely at the pool of blood. Still staring at the ground, he put on the left glove, and as he pulled on the other glove, he estimated the distance between the hut and the body lying on the ground. Before he’d even examined Maribel, he already had answers to a number of questions.
“Try to speak as little as possible and answer only yes or no, OK? Do you feel cold?”
“Yes.”
“How cold?”
“Getting colder.”
“But you’re not shivering.”
“No.”
“Do you feel as if you might start shivering at any moment?”
“No, I don’t think so, but . . .”
“Don’t speak more than you have to, Maribel. What’s your blood group?”
“A-positive.”
Only then did he lift the dress to examine her. He parted the edges of the wound, then pressed them together again and, keeping his hand firmly positioned against the gash in her belly, he leaned down towards her.
“What did he do it with?” he asked quietly. Sara, who had begun to cry without even realizing it, now understood why Juan hadn’t dared look at her at first and why his voice was little more than a whisper.“A kitchen knife, hunting knife, a flick knife . . . ?”
“A flick knife.”
“With a blade about twenty centimeters long.”Then he looked at the wound again and, with chilling calmness, inserted his index finger into it.“Or a little less?”
“I don’t know.”
“He moved it around, the bastard.”
“I don’t know,” she repeated.
“No.” Juan cleared his throat and when he spoke again he sounded more like his usual self.“It wasn’t a question. OK, Maribel. It looks dramatic but it isn’t serious.We’re going to go to the hospital straight away so that they can stitch you up, and then you’ll be fine. I’m going to put a towel in the wound to plug it.” He looked round at Sara and she saw that the color had returned to his face.There was something else too—a look of fury in his eyes.“In the car there’s a white towel wrapped in a pink towel. Could you bring it to me? But don’t touch it directly, only touch the pink one.”
On the passenger seat of Juan’s car there was a small case, a blanket and two white towels wrapped in pink towels. When Sara handed them to him, Juan unwrapped one of the white towels and rolled it up. Suddenly Maribel grabbed his wrist.
“Am I going to die?”
When they got to the hospital, the first thing Sara noticed as she entered the Accident and Emergency department was a clock. It was eight minutes past six in the evening.Then she remembered that when she’d heard the doorbell she’d glanced at the clock on the video and seen that it was five twenty-nine.The hospital clock must be wrong, but her wristwatch seemed to be in agreement. A porter confirmed that it was indeed only eight minutes past six on a day that now seemed endless—long, thick, and slow as if each second were a drop of lead—and this sudden cruelty on the part of time scared her more than thinking of the suicidal speed at which Juan must have driven there. He had acted quickly, so she accepted that perhaps no more than seven or eight minutes had passed from his arrival to the time they left for the hospital, but she’d always recall the scene as if every word, every gesture, every movement had happened in slow motion. Until Maribel asked if she was going to die.Then time came to an absolute halt.