Water-Blue Eyes (6 page)

Estévez nodded slightly.

Ramón carried on with his speech.

‘Anyway, I’m allergic to the lab myself, and that’s why I’m here as little as possible. I often get these rashes, you know, which only heal with seawater and a nice breeze. I’m sure it’s some kind of incompatibility between wine and one of the substances we produce here. Do you want to know
something
?’ he asked, looking at Rafael Estévez.

‘No, thank you,’ replied the officer, who, after listening to the maelstrom of words Ríos was capable of, thought it more advisable not to take part in the conversation.

‘Leo tells me you’re not from round here.’

‘No, sir, I’m from Zaragoza. Have you been there?’

‘Do you say “sir” because I’m bald?’

‘Pardon?’ asked the officer.

‘You can call me by my first name, young man. I may be ugly, but I’m not that old. See?’ he said, opening his mouth wide. ‘I still have all my teeth on this side.’

‘There’s no use trying, Ramón,’ put in Caldas.

‘As you like, but one starts with all that sir-business and ends up genuflecting, as we used to do at school.’

Ramón started walking along the corridor that abutted at the hall.

‘Come this way, we’ll carry on talking at the tennis court.’

Estévez stood bolted to his place, looking at the inspector in bewilderment.

‘Where?’

‘His office,’ replied Leo Caldas, following Ríos.

Ramón Ríos had a huge office with walnut wood panelling. A Persian carpet covered nearly all the floor. On one side, in an area reserved for meetings, eight leather chairs surrounded a large conference table with a state-of-the-art telephone on its centre. On the other, by the window, an antique piece of furniture served as a desk. There was a sports newspaper open on it.

‘Crikey, for someone who doesn’t do any work here, it’s not bad,’ joked Caldas on coming in.

‘I know,’ admitted Ramón Ríos, taking a look around.

On several occasions Leo Caldas had witnessed how envious his schoolmates were of Ramón Ríos’s way of
casually
talking about his opulent life. But Leo had never
harboured
such feelings himself; on the contrary, he valued Ríos’s generous and faithful friendship. If there was
something
he would have wished for himself, it was Ríos’s
impetuous
self-confidence, a far cry from his own natural shyness.

‘Do sit down and tell me what miracle brings you
gentlemen
here,’ said Ramón Ríos.

The policemen chose two of the chairs around the table and waited in silence for Ramón Ríos to take another one.

‘Formaldehyde,’ said Caldas tersely.

‘Formaldehyde, how do you mean, formaldehyde?’ asked Ríos. ‘What can you possibly mean, Leo?’

‘Formaldehyde is one of Riofarma’s products and we’d like to know the names of your clients in the city.’

Ramón looked at Caldas as if he’d spoken in a foreign tongue.

‘Well, we’ll need to check that,’ he replied at last, when he realised that his former schoolmate was being serious, and that formaldehyde really was the reason for his visit.

‘By the way, Leo, how’s your father these days?’ he asked, pulling the cord of the telephone and dragging it towards himself.

‘As always. A bit in his own world. We’re having lunch tomorrow, but we haven’t seen a lot of each other lately. Tomorrow we’re meeting up because he must come to Vigo on some errand, but if it was up to him he’d never leave the vineyard.’

‘I don’t blame him. What’s the wine like this year?’

‘It seems to be top-notch in quality, but the old man complains that production has dropped. Apparently it rained at the wrong time. I don’t know what the hell he means by the wrong time, but that’s what he says. I think he actually likes to complain – but we’re only in May and he’s already sold half of this year’s lot.’

‘He sells it too well,’ assured Ramón Ríos. ‘Last year, when I wanted to order a few boxes, he was already out. And the year before that I couldn’t taste it either.’

‘Well, you know, it sells out in no time,’ said Caldas, as if excusing his father.

Ríos nodded, and then said: ‘When you see him tell him I’d like to sample a few bottles. Tell him to put aside as many as he can. Remind him I’m solvent if needs be.’

Leo smiled and pointed to the phone.

‘I’ll take care of the wine, you make that call.’

Ríos pressed one of the buttons of the fancy telephone, activating the loudspeaker so that all three could hear the conversation. The dialling tone rang clearly in the room.

He had to make several calls. First to ascertain that, as Caldas claimed, the laboratory owned by his family did
produce
formaldehyde. Then to find out which division
produced
it and so on. When he finally got the right number, there was a feminine voice at the other end.

‘Good morning, Solutions and Concentrates, how can I help?’

‘Good morning, Ramón Ríos here.’

‘Don Ramón, what a surprise!’ The woman faltered and tried to fix the comment that had just slipped out. ‘I’m sorry, Don Ramón, what I meant was

‘Don’t worry, it would have been strange not to be
surprised
,’ he reassured her, tipping a wink at the inspector. ‘Who am I speaking to?’

‘Carmen Iglesias.’

‘Hi Carmen. I’m trying to find out something about one of our products. Would that be possible?’

‘That’s what we’re here for, Don Ramón,’ replied the woman, obviously eager to please.

‘Do we produce formaldehyde?’ asked Ríos.

‘It depends what you mean.’

‘I understand your division produces it,’ explained Ríos.

‘We don’t actually produce the substance, Don Ramón, but we do work with it. We buy it from the manufacturer and here, in Solutions and Concentrates, we treat it and bottle it according to the different ways our clients might use it,’ clarified Carmen Iglesias.

‘The thing is, I’m here with some friends who’d like to know a few details about the process. Would you mind
helping
them?’

‘By all means, Don Ramón.’

‘I’ll put them on in a moment, Carmen, but before that let
me tell you that your voice sounds very…’ Ramón Ríos trailed off, searching for the right word, ‘charming.’

‘Thank you, Don Ramón,’ said the woman, amused.

Caldas bent over the telephone.

‘Good morning, Carmen, this is Inspector Caldas.’

‘From the radio?’ Carmen’s voice betrayed emotion.

‘You see?’ said Estévez just before Caldas gave him a
withering
look.

Caldas accepted the woman’s congratulations, and her assurances that in Solutions and Concentrates they never missed a programme of
Patrol
on
the
Air.
But as soon as he saw an opening he limited himself to the subject that had taken them to the laboratory.

‘Carmen, would it be possible to obtain a list of the clients who buy formaldehyde from you?’

‘In all concentrations?’ she asked.

‘In all concentrations?’ repeated Caldas, looking at Ramón Ríos in search of an explanation.

Ríos shrugged his shoulders and bent over the phone.

‘Carmen, would you be kind enough to explain to the inspector and me what you mean about the concentrations?’ he asked.

‘It’s quite simple, Don Ramón, every formaldehyde solution is a different product, used for different things. We have solutions ranging from a concentration of eight per cent formaldehyde, as used by paper manufacturers and
tanners
, up to solutions with thirty-seven per cent
formaldehyde
, which is what we normally send to hospitals, and then we have…’

‘I need the second one, Carmen,’ interrupted Caldas. ‘Is it possible to know which medical centres you provide with thirty-seven per cent formaldehyde solutions? I’m
particularly
interested in your clients here in Vigo.’

‘Of course, inspector. The best thing would be to speak directly to Isidro Freire, the representative for the area. He’s in charge of the sales of all our products in Vigo.’

‘Would it be too much to ask you to transfer me to Mr Freire?’ asked Caldas.

‘Not at all, inspector, but Isidro had an appointment and I saw him leave a moment ago. I don’t think he’s even had time to reach his car. If you like I can call him on his mobile and ask him to wait.’

‘If that’s not a problem …’

‘Of course it isn’t, inspector. I’ll call him right away.’

‘Many thanks, you’ve been very kind.’

‘You’re welcome, inspector. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll leave you so I can make that call.’

‘Just another thing, Carmen,’ interrupted Ramón Ríos, who never missed a chance.

‘Yes, Don Ramón?’

‘I was wondering how old is the owner of that lovely voice?’

‘Thanks, Don Ramón, I’m about to turn twenty-seven.’

Judging by the woman’s honeyed intonation, Caldas understood she hadn’t minded his friend’s comment in the slightest.

Ramón Ríos shook the policemen’s hands, disconnected the loudspeaker, and unhooked the receiver.

‘I’m just curious, Carmen, do you like sailing?’

It was coining up to one o’clock in the afternoon, and it was quite hot when the policemen left the Riofarma building. The lawn surrounding it smelled of recently mown grass. The sprinklers cast water as they turned slowly in one direction and then, upon reaching the end of their curve, quickly went back to the starting point.

Leo Caldas and Rafael Estévez went round the laboratory following a path of flagstones sunk in the thick grass. They’d been told that Isidro Freire would be waiting for them in the car park at the back.

As they turned the corner, they saw a man playing with a small black dog whose coat of long black curls resembled a Rastafarian’s dreadlocks. The puppy ran towards them, its fur swaying this way and that, and hurled himself at Estévez’s feet.

‘Get the fuck out of here, you mongrel!’

He kicked the dog away, and a ball of black dreadlocks was suddenly aloft.

‘Rafa, don’t be so horrible, he’s only a puppy,’ said Inspector Caldas.

‘Puppy schmuppy, chief. Do you think he doesn’t have any teeth?’ replied Estévez, convinced he was in the right. ‘I don’t know what dogs see in me, but they always come and annoy me,’ he added. ‘I can be in the middle of a crowd, and if there’s a hound on the loose it’ll surely single me out.’

‘It can’t be the way you treat them.’

As soon as the puppy scrambled up, he charged the
officer
’s shoes.

‘You see what I mean, inspector, he’s practically
asking
to be kicked.’

‘Rafael, don’t do anything, please – here comes the owner,’ said Caldas as the man who’d been playing with the dog approached quickly.

‘This shitty dog will end up ruining my new shoes,’ said Estévez, as he reluctantly allowed the puppy to play with them.

‘Pipo, come, Pipo!’ called the man as he approached.

‘Go on, Pipo, go with Daddy.’

Estévez pushed the dog with his foot, launching him a few metres in the direction of his owner.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the man, ‘Pipo’s been in the car all
morning
, and there’s no stopping him when you let him out. But as soon as his adrenaline wears off a bit he’ll obey me again.’

To Caldas it didn’t look like the dog would ever obey, whether pumped full of adrenaline or heavily sedated.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Are you Isidro Freire?’

The man picked Pipo up and held him.

‘Are you Don Ramón’s friends, the gentlemen from the radio?’

Rafael Estévez let out a chuckle, and Caldas explained himself.

‘I don’t think they passed on the right information. We are indeed friends of Ramón’s, but we don’t exactly come from the radio. We’re police officers from the Vigo station. I’m Inspector Caldas and your dog’s friend is Officer Rafael Estévez.’

‘From the police station? Is anything wrong?’

Caldas noticed the man trembled slightly as he spoke. He had read many years ago, in Camilo José Cela’s
The
Hive,
that a slight tremor of the lower lip was a giveaway of fear. He had often witnessed the accuracy of the Nobel
Prize-winning
Galician writer’s observations.

‘Don’t worry, Mr Freire,’ Caldas reassured him. ‘It has nothing to do with you. At least not with you personally.’

Isidro Freire breathed out in relief.

‘We’d only like a list of your clients in Vigo, those who
buy the thirty-seven per cent formaldehyde solution from Riofarma,’ clarified the inspector. ‘We’ve been told you’re the right person to get that information from.’

‘Of course, Vigo is my area, and formaldehyde one of the products I sell,’ confirmed Isidro Freire, brooding over the matter for a moment. ‘I haven’t got many buyers for clinical formaldehyde, but I’d like to check my records to be
absolutely
sure. Would you mind walking over to my car to get my diary?’ he asked, pointing towards the car park, and
putting
the puppy back on the ground.

‘Of course not,’ replied Caldas as they started walking.

Isidro Freire was a little over thirty and taller than Caldas; he combed his short brown hair with a parting that seemed branded on his skull. He was wearing dark trousers, a light blue shirt and black leather shoes. Most probably he’d left his jacket and tie in the car, as the heat didn’t allow unnecessary extras, but even so he looked handsome. Caldas thought he must be among those men who are successful with women.

A few steps behind, Pipo insisted on fighting Rafael Estévez’s ankles, and Estévez went on trying to kick him. When Leo Caldas realised the danger the animal was in, he alerted his owner with a flick of his head.

‘Pipo, leave the gentleman alone!’ ordered Isidro Freire, and crouched down to push away the obstinate little dog. He lifted him up, carried him for a bit, and dropped him gently in front of them.

They walked to the car along the flagstone path, and Pipo broke into a run on the grass.

‘I’d never seen a dog with such long curls,’ commented the inspector. ‘What breed is he?’

‘Pipo? He’s a Puli, inspector.’

Leo Caldas had no idea what that was.

‘I see.’

‘A sheep dog, a Hungarian shepherd.’

Pipo dashed about and then chose a sprinkler as his next target.

‘Come here, Pipo, you’re going to get all wet!’ ordered Freire, apparently convinced that the animal understood his every word.

The little dog obeyed him only after getting completely soaked. Then he came back running. A set of perfectly small white teeth shone in the black muzzle of that canine Bob Marley. There was something hanging from it.

‘Pipo, what have you got in your mouth?’ asked Freire.

It was Rafael Estévez who answered from behind.

‘My bloody shoelace.’