Water-Blue Eyes (17 page)

The smell of wood panelling suffused the dark living room.

‘You’ve got to make an effort, madam,’ insisted Caldas, asking her to cast her mind back.

‘You can’t come here, after ruining my life, and ask me to make an effort,’ replied the woman, running her words together. ‘How can you be so heartless? My husband is in jail because of you, he’s going to be judged for such gruesome crimes I don’t even want to think about them, and you’ve got the gall to come here and rub it in my face over and over again?’

‘There might be a chance your husband isn’t guilty of all the crimes he’s being accused of.’

‘Of course he’s not, inspector, he’s not guilty at all,’ moaned Mercedes Zuriaga, slumping on to a sofa and
bursting
into tears.

The policemen stood there, in respectful silence, waiting for her to calm down. They felt awkward confronted with Mrs Zuriaga’s transformation; there was no trace of the
elegant
woman who had received them so gracefully but a few days before. The house, as if in sympathy, had also gone from constant activity to sombre stillness, from light to darkness.

‘Mrs Zuriaga.’ It was Estévez turn now: ‘Try to remember if Isidro Freire visited your husband. We’re sure they spoke on the phone regularly in the days after the murder. It could be important for your husband.’

‘I’ve already told you I know no Isidro Freire,’ she said, as she wiped the tears away from her puffy eyes. ‘I’ve never monitored Dimas’s calls. I’m not his secretary. I’m Doctor Zuriaga’s wife!’ she added with a flash of dignity.

Estévez nodded. Seeing Zuriaga’s wife in such a state was too much for him. As for Caldas, he knew that opening these wounds would prove very painful, but he wanted no gaps in his inquiry.

‘You must have seen or heard something. Freire sold
medical
supplies. He phoned your husband several times in the days before our first visit.’ The inspector pressed the point. ‘They must have discussed products, probably formaldehyde. Didn’t you hear anything?’

The woman shook her head.

‘Maybe he was here under a different name,’ added Caldas, trying another approach so as to jog the woman’s memory. In his haste he may have condemned Dimas Zuriaga to a personal hell, but Caldas still wanted to leave the house with some kind of hope for him. ‘
Someone
must have visited in the last couple of weeks.’

‘Yes, you two. You burst into our house and shattered my husband’s life and mine,’ she paused to take a breath. ‘You’ve destroyed a family. Do you know what that is? Have you any idea what the word
family
means?’ The woman was once again moaning bitterly, burying her face in her long hands. ‘You’re scum.’

Rafael Estévez offered her a handkerchief as he implored Caldas with his eyes to leave the woman alone. Caldas gave up and placed his card on one of the low tables in that huge living room.

‘It’s OK, Mrs Zuriaga. We’re going back to the station now. I’ll leave my card here. Should you remember anything, do not hesitate to call me.’

‘I’ll walk you to the door,’ said Mercedes Zuriaga, wiping her tears with Estévez’s handkerchief.

‘There’s no need, madam,’ said the officer.

She ignored this reply, stood up and led them down the hallway to the imposing front door.

‘Goodbye, inspector,’ she muttered, offering her hand. ‘I hope I never see you again.’

Mercedes Zuriaga opened the door, and a small dog with curly black fur slipped in.

‘Pipo! Get out of the house right now!’ she shouted.

Officer Estévez, his eyes on stalks, stared at Freire’s little dog, which was once again having a go at his shoelaces.

Caldas turned to the doctor’s wife.

‘Where is Isidro Freire, madam?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ replied the woman, holding the door to let them out. ‘Now, if you please

‘Where?’ asked Caldas again, without budging.

‘Don’t you have any respect for
anything
?’
she reproached him, once again bursting into tears. ‘I’ve already told you I don’t know who that man is, inspector.’

Leo Caldas was not buying it.

‘You know perfectly well, madam – Isidro Freire is the sales representative from Riofarma, and the owner of that dog,’ he said, pointing to Pipo.

‘That’s not possible,’ she mumbled through her sobs.

‘Enough of this farce!’ ordered Caldas. ‘The doctor may not be an ideal husband, but he’s not a murderer,’ he said, getting closer to her. ‘I think you should come with us to the station, you’ve got a lot to explain.’

Mercedes Zuriaga stopped sobbing, and Caldas saw her fix him with eyes that had suddenly turned as cold as ice.

When, on the way to the car, he asked again about Isidro Freire’s whereabouts, the woman gestured in the direction of the sea.

‘He’s down there on the boat, terrified.’

Caldas asked Estévez to go and fetch him, and Mercedes Zuriaga added with disdain:

‘Another coward, just like Dimas. They’re all cowards.’

In the course of the interrogation, Mercedes Zuriaga related how, shortly after she and Zuriaga had started courting, she left her job as a nurse to become the famous doctor’s wife, and found herself living in greater splendour than she had ever thought possible.

However, in spite of a good start, the long days Zuriaga spent at the Foundation ended up killing their passion, and soon enough their marriage was reduced to little more than the amicable relationship of two people who simply lived together. Mercedes resigned herself to Dimas’s absences and lack of affection. Even if she had an unfulfilled love life, she still held her husband in deep admiration.

She related how, over their two decades together, she had always respected the fact that the doctor preferred intellectual to physical pleasure. But she started being suspicious when, three years ago, she noticed that he had started taking greater care of his appearance and that, without her even asking, he would make excuses when he came home late from work. Mercedes thought he might be seeing another woman, and decided to find out if there were grounds for her suspicions. She was amazed to discover, however, that the reason for those excuses was a man: Luis Reigosa, a saxophonist who lived on Toralla Island.

She felt threatened for months, until she realised Dimas was not planning to leave her. She decided to carry on as if nothing had happened: in a way, she had lost her husband a long time before. But she did promise herself she would not be cast aside after so many years of sacrifices.

Once the initial shock had passed, Mercedes started sailing more often, and in this way she met Isidro Freire, a
handsome young man who shared her hobby and who, by becoming her lover, had a soothing effect on her frustrations. She even pulled some strings to get him a job at Riofarma, a laboratory near her husband’s hospital.

Time went by until, a few weeks previously, she’d found a compromising email on her husband’s laptop, complete with pictures. Upon reading it she realised there was a chance her husband might be forced to make a choice and abandon her for Reigosa.

Ever since she had learned of her husband’s relationship with the musician, she wondered how she might be able to make it end if she needed to. And she had convinced herself that the best solution would be to eliminate Reigosa and leave circumstantial evidence pointing to Dimas. The murder should look both like a crime of passion and the work of a doctor. One afternoon, lying with her lover on the deck of her boat, she found the perfect method while flicking through Riofarma’s catalogue, and noticing the safety
guidelines
indicated on one of the products.

Coldly, she explained that her first move had been to
follow
her husband on one of the days he made a payment to his blackmailer. By then she had decided not to let the
extortion
ruin her plans. She saw Dimas leave a bag containing the money behind some shrubs, and she hid until a young man, who was none other than Orestes Grial, appeared for the pick-up. She approached him and informed him she knew all about the extortion and could report him to the police at any moment. The man was terrified, and he swore he’d never send the doctor another message in exchange for Mercedes Zuriaga’s silence. He also promised to let her know if anyone ever declared an interest in the doctor or his lover in his presence.

Mercedes went back home and, enticing Freire with the promise of sharing the doctor’s great personal wealth,
convinced
him to seduce the saxophonist. They decided to do it on a rainy night, and they had a lucky strike on the first
night they tried. She knew Reigosa sometimes sought brief encounters with other men, who found his water-blue eyes irresistible. Reigosa was indeed in the mood for company on the night they chose, and Isidro Freire was at the Idílico, ready to be noticed, and later to be taken to the flat on Toralla Island.

Once in the bedroom, as if in a fit of passion, Freire tied the musician to the headboard, gagged him, and went down to open the door for Mercedes, who had reached the island on her boat.

She came into the bedroom with gloved hands and injected formaldehyde into the musician’s penis, while Freire fought to keep his legs still. After that, following a
meticulously
premeditated plan, Mercedes left Hegel’s book, with its sentence about pain and repentance faintly underlined, on the bedside table next to the dying man. He writhed in pain as the formaldehyde spread throughout his body.

Isidro Freire, fighting back nausea, cleaned any traces of their presence from the bedroom. His accomplice took care of the living room on the upper floor, but she deliberately left the gin glasses from which Reigosa and Freire had drunk. That way, she insured herself against her lover in case he started to have doubts or decided to betray her, or if she simply wanted to change him for another. Once that was done, she sailed away from the island under cover of
darkness
. Freire drove out in Reigosa’s car, which he abandoned in a forest after setting fire to it.

The following day, on one of his professional visits to the Zuriaga Foundation, Isidro Freire called Radio Vigo from one of the phones in the lobby of the hospital. When he was put through to the presenter of
Patrol
on
the
Air,
he read Hegel’s phrase twice, then hung up.

Once the police found the book, Zuriaga and Freire only needed to sit and wait for Leo Caldas, the famous patrolman, to remember that mysterious call to his show, tie up the loose ends, and link the crime to the Zuriaga Foundation –
and the doctor to the saxophonist. After that, with Reigosa gone and her husband not only behind bars but also
repudiated
by society, she’d be able to enjoy the fortune of the Zuriagas.

However, one afternoon Isidro Freire phoned her at home several times. He was frightened. Two police officers had been at the lab and questioned him about formaldehyde. The following morning, Orestes Grial, as good as his word, also informed her that two police officers were poking about to see if he knew anything about Reigosa and the doctor. He had managed to postpone a more formal talk until the
following
day.

The bloodhounds had failed to notice her bait and, even worse, were now tracking a more dangerous scent.

After those very same policemen visited her at home, Mercedes Zuriaga convinced herself she must silence Orestes Grial for good: she couldn’t let the DJ compromise her. She turned up on his doorstep pretending she had money for him as a thank-you for his information.

The young man was sleeping when she knocked on his door; he got up to let her in and immediately excused
himself
. Mercedes Zuriaga grabbed a pillow to muffle the shot and followed the sleepy Orestes to the bathroom. She put on a latex glove and, on top of it, another one she had found, used, in the bin of her husband’s office. Back in the street she disposed of the glove, leaving it where she thought the police would look for such a thing first.

The seed had been planted. Only water was needed now for the tree to grow and bear those fruits she was planning on enjoying.

‘Pity about the dog,’ said Caldas, remembering he wouldn’t have found anything if it hadn’t been for little Pipo.

‘No, inspector,’ corrected Mercedes Zuriaga, ‘pity about men.’

Caldas walked under the heavy rain. It had gone eleven by the time Mercedes Zuriaga and Isidro Freire finished their confessions.

The inspector decided to visit the jazz bar in the old town for the third time in his life. He was in no mood for the solitude of his home. He needed to forget Dimas Zuriaga’s bewildered face and clouded eyes as he had accepted his apologies.

Leo Caldas pushed open the door of the Grial, walked over to the bar and looked at the stage, where a group of musicians were about to begin the show. The small,
fair-skinned
woman greeted him with a nod. She then placed her pale hands on the keyboard, leaned forward a bit, and sang breathily into the microphone:

Domingo Villar was born in 1971 and lives in Madrid. He is a radio food critic, a frequent contributor to various periodicals and has also written scripts for film and television.
Water-blue
Eyes
won both the Brigada 21 Prize for best first crime novel, as well as the Sintagma Prize. Domingo Villar is currently working on the second instalment in the series featuring Inspector Caldas.

Martin Schifino is a freelance writer and translator. He regularly contributes essays and reviews to
The
Times
Literary
Supplement,
Revista
de
Libros
and
Revista
Otra
Parte.
He is co-translator of José Luis de Juan’s
This
Breathing
World
and Eugenio Fuentes’s
Blood
of
the
Angels.
He lives in London.