1993 - The Blue Afternoon (23 page)

She followed him to the top of the stairs as he made his farewells. Her smile was still ambiguous, a sense of power seemed to be emanating from her, he thought, of someone now perfectly in control. But how? Why? What had happened to bring this about? His clumsiness? His stunned, faltering behaviour? He walked out into the rain, enjoying the drenching he was receiving, his hair soon slick, drops of water running down his hot face, not looking back. As he walked along the road to Quapo, to the bodegon where Constancio was waiting with his carriage, the questions nagged at him again. As far as he could tell he had behaved, before and after the fall, with absolute propriety, had been the very model of polite discretion. So why did she act as if she knew something he did not? The balance of this relationship had altered markedly, he thought, with a small thrill of foreboding: the weight had swung to favour her.

T
he woman’s body lay face down in a small vigorous torrent, swollen by the rains that ran into the Tatuban estero. The stream was some way to the north of the city, between the Dagupan railroad and the Santa Cruz racecourse. Carriscant looked around him: they were barely a mile from Intramuros and yet all around them was bushy scrub and marshy fields under low pewtery clouds. It was a depressing scene, drear. Drear was the perfect word, he thought. Or drookit, a good Scottish word, except that had connotations of cold and here it was warm and steamy. The rain pattered steadily against his hat and yellow slicker. Bobby, beside him, held an umbrella above his head and not far off half a dozen native constables stood by stoically, soaked through.

“This track here leads to Tondo,” Bobby said, pointing, then swivelled round. “Go the other way and you get to the Chinese hospital.”

“Is she Chinese?”

“Mestiza, I think. We can’t identify her. Chances are she’s from Tondo.”

The woman was unshod and her clothes were mean and worn. Carriscant shrugged. “Tondo. It could take you months to find out who she was, if at all.”

“We got to try,” Bobby said tersely.

Carriscant frowned: Bobby was not in a good mood—understandable, perhaps, but he could not see why he had been summoned. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

Bobby signalled to the constables to move the body from the streambed and turned away and offered Carriscant a cigar which, for once, he accepted. They dithered and fussed over the lighting process, Carriscant taking three damp matches and Bobby two. Carriscant exhaled smoke, looking out over the drab scene. The cigar was cheap, tasted dry, of straw, hot on the back of his throat, an odd contrast as everything he saw spelled ‘cool’: grey skies, muddy greens, rain, waterlogged ground. He felt he was breathing in tepid consomme. Under his shiny raincoat he felt completely damp, hot and damp.

Bobby blew on the end of his cigar and said, “I think it’s the same fellow.”

“What do you mean?”

“Same person killed her as killed Ward and Braun.”

Bobby led him over to the four-wheeled wagon where the woman was now laid out. She was young, not much more than twenty-five, Carriscant guessed, her face covered in smallpox scars. She looked thin and malnourished and the right side of her muslin blouse was torn. As Bobby lifted her arm Carriscant saw, through the rip, the rough puckered slit of a knife wound between her fourth and fifth ribs.

“Stabbed in the heart,” Bobby said. “And like the others found in or near water at the site of Filipino or American lines as they were on 4 February 1899.”

“Who was up here?” Carriscant said, surprised.

“First Montana.” Carriscant was sceptical. “If she’d been a dead American soldier, I’d grant you your supposition. But she’s a peasant, a sick peasant too, I’d wager, from a Tondo slum. And there’s no L-shaped wound.”

Bobby’s hand went into his pocket and drew something out. He showed it to Carriscant: it was a scalpel. Carriscant took it.

“We found it by the body, just on the bank there,” Bobby said.

It was a Merck and Frankl scalpel, heavy duty, with a strong two-inch-long bevelled blade, Carriscant saw.

“It’s what we call a straight, sharp-pointed bistoury. Not for precision work. It’s a common make,” Carriscant said, returning it.

“We figure the murderer was surprised. Otherwise I’m sure we’d have an L-shaped wound and a missing heart.”

“But why a woman? Why a slum dweller?”

“I don’t know.”

“We…” Carriscant paused, not knowing quite how to express this. “We have these scalpels in the San Jeronimo.”

“I know,” Bobby said. “And in the San Lazaro and the First Reserve hospital.” He carefully put the scalpel back in his pocket. “Could you tell if one of these was missing?”

“Possibly.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

Carriscant looked back at the corpse. The soaked clothes were plastered to the small thin body. He could see that the belly was markedly distended. The mouth was slightly open showing stained front teeth. His brain was working quickly, troubled and agitated.

“I think you’ll find,” he said to Bobby, “that this woman is pregnant. Four or five months.” He pointed to the swell of her belly.

“Really? God…” The information seemed to have disturbed Bobby unduly. “That’s awful.”

“I’ll confirm it at the hospital,” Carriscant said. He made his farewells.

On the ride back to Manila he found his mind returning again and again to the same troubling conclusion. The scalpel found by the woman’s body, he was sure, would be traced back to his operating theatre at the San Jeronimo. He could not explain where this conviction came from. But it came to him with the numinous clarity of a revelation. Someone had stolen it and that someone, or some people, had placed it by the body for the sole purpose of implicating him in the murders.

W
e’ve had terrible problems,” Pantaleon said. His face looked drawn and his chin was dirty with stubble. “But I think we’ve solved them.”

They were in the doorway of the nipa barn looking out at the rain falling steadily on the meadow. Behind them in the musty gloom stood the Aero-mobile, almost complete, lacking only one propeller.

“Problems of torque,” Pantaleon went on. “The propellers make the plane want to pull to the right and I’ve had to counterbalance one propeller with the other. Very complicated.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “And weight. I need extra fuel. It’s put me back by several weeks, but we’re almost there.”

“Don’t exhaust yourself, Panta,” Carriscant said, laying a gentle palm on his friend’s shoulder. “You can’t hurry these things. One day, I’m sure, you’ll take to the air.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Pantaleon said excitedly. “I’m not alone. There are others.”

“Other what?” Carriscant was beginning to grow concerned about him now; the mood was too sustainedly febrile and neurotic.

“Other flyers. You’ve got Santos-Dumont in France, Bosendorf in Germany, that fellow in America what’s his name?—with his manned gliders.”

“But you’re practically there,” he turned and gestured at the machine. “Look at it. Amazing achievement.”

“Chanute, that’s him. But it’s Santos-Dumont I’m most worried about. He’s extremely rich. Money no object, you know.”

“Panta—”

“And this!” He actually shook his fist at the rain. “It’s not due to start for at least another two months. What’s going on? Look at that field. It’s a quagmire, practically underwater. That’s why I bought this place. The ground is meant to be drained naturally. The farmer swore on his children’s heads that would happen.”

Carriscant peered up at the sky as Pantaleon ranted on about the farmer’s duplicity. It was noon and the clouds seemed to be thinning. He could not be sure but he thought he could make out a bluey haze beyond the pale grey blanket.

“You need a road,” he said, without really thinking. “A metalled road, like the ones the Americans are building in Intramuros. Take any amount of rain—and smooth—then you could—” He stopped. Pantaleon was staring at him, his thumb and forefinger pinching his bottom lip. “What is it?”

“A road…Of course.”

“Something firm, anyway. A beaten track, a—”

Pantaleon strode out into the downpour, heedless of the wet, measuring out the ground with his big strides. Carriscant sighed, erected his umbrella and followed him out into the field, tugging his collar away from his neck, the dampness making it chafe. He had actually found mould on a shirt in a closet that morning. A perfectly good white shirt with blue mould growing on it, mildewed like a cheese.

He caught up with Pantaleon at the end of the meadow. Through a fringe of guava trees was a paddy field and beyond that the swollen brown mass of the estero, dotted with more than its usual cargo of water cabbages, like vivid green footballs, no doubt. The Pasig had been full of them this morning, he had noticed, as he crossed the Colgante bridge.

“I’ll build my own,” Pantaleon said fervently, holding his arms out straight in front of him, pointing back at the barn. “A base of crushed stones, bamboo poles set a metre apart, wooden planks nailed to the top of them.”

“Panta, that’s almost a hundred yards. Think of the cost, man!”

“No, no. It’s an excellent idea. Thank you, Salvador.” He gripped his hand and shook it excitedly. “Thank you, bless you.”

“My pleasure.”

They squelched back towards the barn.

“Have you reconsidered, Salvador? You know how important it is to me.”

“I told you, I can’t possibly. I’d be terrified, I’m not like you. I’d be useless. Train some youngster. I’m too heavy, anyway.”

“No, no, we can take the weight. It has to be you. I’ve calculated everything based on your weight.”

“No, Panta, really—”

“Don’t say
no
. Don’t. Just think about it some more.” The rain let up momentarily as Carriscant was driving back to Intramuros. The wind was coming from the east and he could see huge cloud continents building over the foothills of the Benguet mountains. Only a temporary respite, he thought, taking off his hat and mopping his face with a handkerchief, we’ll really catch it this evening.

At the hospital, in his consulting rooms, he saw the inventory he had asked his senior theatre nurse to prepare. Numerous items were missing from the stores including one Merck and Frankl straight, sharp–pointed bistoury, as he had surmised. Who could say when it had gone, however? It could have been lost, it could have been stolen months ago, it could have been thrown out accidentally in a bundle of soiled swabs…So why did he suspect the hand of Drs Cruz and Wieland? He started, as methodically as he could, to explore the ramifications of this supposition but stopped after two minutes, exhausted by its crowding implausibilities and inferences. In this kind of mood, he realised, anyone was capable of being turned into an enemy—Cruz, Wieland, even Bobby. Perhaps Bobby had planted the scalpel there, to unsettle him, to test him out in some way…But why? What did that imply? This way lay madness, he knew, and put the whole matter out of his mind. There was a long queue of patients outside his consulting room door.

Later, his work over for the day, he stood at the rear window of his office looking out at a corner of the hospital’s garden. The air was loud with the mumblings of distant thunder and tall plum-coloured clouds were building high over the city. Yet to the west, over Manila Bay, the sky was clear and the sinking sun was shining brightly, filling the garden with a heavy creamy light, making the ancient tiled roofs of Intramuros glow, their vibrant terracotta temporarily renewed, set starkly against the boiling bruised mass of the thunderclouds. The first drops began to fall, silver like coins, through the garden’s radiant light and, as the clouds hunched over the city as if to smother this audacious sun, a brief blending of mauve thundercloud and late afternoon luminescence turned the air blue, it seemed to him, almost changing its nature from something invisible to something there, tangible, as if the blue light that filled the garden was a fine mist of droplets suspended in the atmosphere. Enchanted, rapt, not really thinking, Carriscant opened his window and stretched his hand out like a child trying to catch, trying to touch, this beautiful phenomenon. His fingers closed on nothing. He saw instead the hundreds of shades of green in the leaves and bushes and grass; he smelt the ferrous, musty reek of the impending downpour; big gobbets of rain thwacked his outstretched palm and he heard the thunderclap break over San Juan del Morte as the afternoon turned blue before his spellbound eyes.

His reverie was interrupted by a small commotion of protesting voices in his anteroom. Señora Diaz’s polite protests presaged her rap on the door, around which her plump, apologetic face appeared.

“There is a patient, Doctor, I’m so sorry. I said it was too late but it’s an emergency, I think.”

“Show him in, Señora Diaz. And you may go. I’ll be here ‘til late.”

He sat down behind his desk and, with his fingernail, idly drew joins between the ink blots on his blotter. The rain began to fall now in earnest, beating down, filling the gutters to overflowing, the sound of water plashing everywhere. That effect of the light in the garden, he thought, extraordinary. The atmosphere so charged with moisture, the white glare of the sun and the bluey greyness of the clouds seeming to fuse in the microscopic drops. Some sort of one-tone prism effect, he supposed, if that made sense, quite magical. Felt he could touch the air, scoop blue handfuls almost.

He looked up and saw her. She had come into his room so quietly that for a crazy moment he thought she was a vision too, another sublime trick of the light. He gave a small cry of astonishment which he managed to turn into a cough and rose abruptly to his feet.

“Mrs Sieverance…”

She wore a straw boater, a navy-blue cotton jacket over a pale grey ankle-length skirt. Her thick hair was gathered at her nape with a maroon velvet ribbon.

“I’m so sorry to be so late, Doctor. I wasn’t feeling well.”

Carriscant came round from behind his desk and pulled out a chair for her to sit on. He noticed she was not using walking sticks any longer. He had not seen her for some days, but that still indicated rapid progress. She looked pale, her brow moist, and her breathing was swift and shallow.