Books Burn Badly (43 page)

‘It’s a tic,’ said Laboure one day, ‘that smile of yours. The tic of the frozen smile.’

‘One moment, Santos. Allow me to introduce you to an impregnable fortress. Chief Ren!’

Paúl Santos had heard about Chief Ren. He’d come from Barcelona. Two years’ intense work experience in Crime. Every police station had an unusual character who became famous further afield and Chief Ren was one of those veterans. The only reference he had was the inspector’s name. Nothing else. ‘You’re from Galicia? Then you’ll know Chief Ren.’ ‘No, I don’t.’ ‘Well, you’ll meet him.’ ‘What’s so special about him?’ ‘You’ll meet him soon enough.’

What did surprise him was that the station chief should call Ren chief, albeit colloquially. People on top don’t tend to fool about when it comes to hierarchy. But Santos soon learnt that Ren moved in a different orbit. Had his own circle of power. Which he carried with him. The chief, that is the station chief, had been right when he described him as a fortress. Aside from a few details of clothing, such as his hat and his tie, which he wore tight as a hangman’s rope, splitting his neck in two, and which Santos would have loved to pull loose, apart from such details, Ren looked like a large, medieval defence work.

‘Chief Ren, this is Paúl Santos Unknown, who’s joining Crime. The first year to graduate in Modern Criminology. We’re getting old, Ren.’

‘You just got out of school?’

Santos knew he was walking a tightrope. There was no way he was going to call him chief.

‘I’ve come from Barcelona, Ren. Two years on the streets.’

‘Listen, Santos,’ said the station chief. ‘In this building, Chief Ren carries a lot of responsibility. He’s in charge of the Brigade of Politico-Social Investigation. But you should also know he’s one of the greats. This is one of the greats, Santos. Hierarchies aside, in our view he’s the best. In terms of information and in terms of application. Did you hear what the Minister said when he was decorated?’

‘That’s enough, boss! I’m getting overweight.’

‘He called him Great Captain. A great captain of State security. Now what do you say?’

‘It’s a great honour.’

‘It is. He called him something else. A soldier of God and the State. Sometimes you have to recognise things for what they are. Listen to this, Santos. If our archives ever disappeared, there’d be no problem. We’d have Chief Ren’s brain.’

‘Thank you, that’s enough. I think Mr Unknown is like me. He’s not easily impressed. Doesn’t give words great importance.’

‘No, no. I give them every importance.’

Ren’s head was very wide. So was his body. But not his eyes. His eyes were small, didn’t stop moving in their sockets, seemed to suffer from a deliberate squint in contrast to the amimia of his podgy face. The boss’s deference went beyond mere courtesy and momentarily pulled in his large body, which was wide and asymmetrical. The structure of his torso was still that of a strong man, but taken together, Paúl Santos reached the conclusion he was in the presence of a body that was seriously dysfunctional, starting with a belly that had long since stopped trying to be discreet. As for his face, it was noticeably swollen. Santos was meeting him for the first time, but it was a work in progress and he assumed it had something to do with the abuse of alcoholic drinks. It could also be a physical strategy since, when they shook hands, Ren’s face revealed a hard kernel, the scrutinising look of those sunken eyes. His hand was almost twice as big as Santos’, but he didn’t hold back on the handshake.

‘At your service, Mr Ren.’

‘I’m in a dilemma. I’m not sure which you like better, Santos or Unknown.’

‘My friends call me Unknown.’

‘Then I’ll call you Santos. Let me tell you what a confessor told my rather gullible spinster aunt, “Listen, Milucha, even saints have pricks.”’

They burst out laughing. Santos felt his colleague’s slap. A slap of intimacy, which knocked him forwards. Ren seemed to feel better, having got this off his chest. He crossed his arms and his body regained a certain symmetry.

‘Till now, the only Unknowns I’ve met were criminals. Santos, right? So you went to university. Got yourself an education.’

‘I studied law, Mr Ren,’ said Santos, who couldn’t help varnishing his words with a hint of pride.

‘Yeah, me too,’ said Inspector Ren, looking at the station chief. ‘It was lawful.’ They again burst out laughing as if they’d played a joke on a novice.

Santos went along with it. Forced a smile. His first impressions were confirmed. The tone used by the station chief to refer to Ren wasn’t just one of loyalty, even friendship. It pointed to the mental position of a subordinate.

‘I’m called Unknown because I grew up in Charity Hospital, Mr Ren,’ said Santos politely.

‘I know that,’ Ren replied gruffly.

‘His head contains our finest archive,’ said the station chief. ‘All the city’s secrets.’

‘You’re exaggerating. But we have picked up something along the way. Now things will improve. Our friend Santos here will incorporate new methods. Long live scientific police work! I always wished I’d had a scientific training.’

‘The departments are different, but you’ll have to work together when necessary,’ said the station chief. ‘So welcome and don’t hesitate to seek help from a master like him.’

Ren couldn’t hide the fact he enjoyed adulation. Paúl Santos measured his proportions. Ren’s ego was large, physiological. It had increased in size. Ren took up more space now than when they’d first been introduced.

‘Tell me something, Santos,’ Ren intervened. ‘How did you get to Charity Hospital? Did someone take you in their arms? Were you left at night at the wheel? What’s your story? Have you looked into who your parents were?’

The man was wide. That was the word. Strong, robust, but above all wide. His manner of speaking was also expansive. With his arms crossed, he heaped rubble at the other’s feet, without caring if it landed on top of him. The only thing that was different were his eyes. They were lively and small calibre.

‘I was born in the Room for Secret Deliveries.’

Ren fell quiet. He’d be searching through the Archive for Secret Deliveries. This is where rich women gave birth to their indiscretions, so it was said. Santos thought Laboure had trained him to deal with just such people. People like Ren. Laboure’s pauses were not meant to transmit calm, but greater speed to the engine. First she’d drink some coffee. Light a cigarette, inhale deeply and seem to wait for the smoke to go to her head. Then she’d stand up and blow a plume of smoke, ‘
Courage!
’

It wasn’t easy to explain. A nun who gave him strength. Not with tales of martyrs. Her motto was, ‘No excuses’.

‘You weren’t born just anywhere. You were born in the Room for Secret Deliveries. You’ve been called. You’re a chosen one. You have to fight against evil.
Il faut tuer le mal!
’ She spoke with drunken clarity. Catherine Laboure visited every corner of the city. Went down alleyways. Knocked at doors. Left a trail of black tobacco, her Gauloises. She’d go down to the port, where she had some local skippers who kept her supplied. But today she was smoking thanks to a legionnaire who’d gone blind and sometimes dealt in cannabis.

‘You can tell good by looking at it.’

She was half crazy. Perhaps the only way to gain respect in such an enclosed space.

‘
Ah, que tu es beau!
’

Then very seriously, ‘You were born in the Room for Secret Deliveries.’

‘So what?’

‘Never be inhuman.’

When they were left alone, the boss said about Ren, ‘He’s not a bad person, it’s just he has a problem with people. There was a British king, George I, a Hanoverian, who was said to be an extraordinary person because he hated only three people in this world: his mother, his wife and his son. Ren’s mother died long ago and he doesn’t have a wife or child. So he’s plenty to choose from.’

Santos smiled the Paúl Santos smile.

‘I think he includes you in that category.’

‘What category?’

‘Humankind.’

On leaving the office, Santos had formed a different idea about the boss’s character. He was one of those who, instead of taking your hand, let theirs hang loosely and quickly withdraw it like a slippery concession. He wondered now whether this sharp observation he’d made about Ren, to his surprise and in confidence, wasn’t in fact a message. A warning from on high.

The Inhabitants of Emptiness

The inexplicable hadn’t changed with the passing of time. Sometimes the crane’s arm wasn’t long enough to reach an object lying on the bottom. But it was long enough to reach the bike. Which became visible at low tide and still seemed, on its own, to be quickly turning its wheels without moving, as if it had acquired the existence of a mechanical echinoderm. The boy with the lazy eye who lost control, Pinche, was saved by one of the Phosphorescents.

‘They killed him. I told you a thousand times,’ the crane operator sighed impotently. ‘So don’t ask me why they killed him if he was champ.’

‘Why’d they kill him if he was champ?’

‘What does it matter if he was champ? Dumb boy. They were out to kill and they got him.’

He had to be discreet. Some people were impenetrable. Memory acts like a mollusc, secretes a protective shell. But sometimes he came across ugly, disgusting scabs that were in denial. With Korea, it was different. He felt strangely obliged to try and explain the inexplicable.

He’d tell him what happened to the Montoyas, the gypsy basket-makers.

There’s a night brigade in the car, the black Opel. September 1936. They’re not out to see what they can get. They’re obeying the orders of the so-called Invisible Tribunal, which is where terror, the decimation of the adult population, is planned. The Falangists are out searching for someone from San Pedro de Nós to ‘give him coffee’. That’s the expression they used. They were sitting in the Union Café, in Pontevedra Square, and the one in charge said, ‘Today we’re giving so-and-so coffee.’ The Delegate of Public Order had agreed, using the same expression, ‘Coffee!’ The radio broadcasts of a nationalist general, Queipo de Llano, had made it fashionable to talk about death in this way. The gypsy basket-makers are in Ponte da Pasaxe, heading west. So they’ve all the pyrotechnics of dusk in front of them. The sun will be sizzling like hot iron in Bens Sea. It’s the end of summer. Nightfall. They can feel it on their backs, almost hear its wickerwork shadows. But what they see are the purple dyes, from reddy blue to clot-like, in the woolly clouds. The Montoyas like colours, prints, wherever they may be, on the landscape or bodies. But today this is also their direction. They’re heading westwards for the simple reason they’re going home, to Gaiteira, next to the railway station. After Ponte da Pasaxe, they’ll turn right along Xubias Road and then dusk won’t be in front of them, but on their left, behind Eirís Mountains. But they haven’t turned yet. The Montoyas are spellbound by the range of purples and one of them bursts into song. As is only natural. He should have started earlier, think the other two. The oldest of the three basket-makers is Manuel, aged forty-five, married to Guadalupe, with whom he has eight children. And then there are his two nephews, Antonio, sixteen, and Manolo, fourteen. It’s Antonio who starts singing. Singing for all of them. Singing a fandango with a grown-up’s voice. Manuel is silent. He thinks when Antonio sings, he’s doing it with his voice, the way he’d sing were he to have the gift of expressing what’s inside. ‘And my sorrow is your sorrow. Your pain is my pain. Your happiness is my joy.’ Merchandise on their backs, purples in the sky, Antonio’s fandango, the smell of sex at low tide. None of the three notices the black Opel coming the other way, from the city. The black Opel’s occupants, however, with the sun behind them, spot the three gypsy basket-makers from far away.

‘Gypsies?’ asks the one who’s co-pilot.

The driver nods.

‘You know something? We still haven’t given it to one of them.’

And adds, ‘That other rabbit can wait.’

No one inside the black Opel says anything else. The third occupant is sitting in the back. Playing with a ring he twiddles around his wedding finger. The ring bears a skull and the inscription ‘Knights of Coruña’. One of the names used by the paramilitaries. The back seats fold down, so the car can be used for transporting cargo and people. Ideal if you’ve a large family. They confiscated two cars from the same owner. The black and the cherry Opel. The cherry Opel, a soft-top, is a beauty. Not that the owner was a tycoon. He made his money in America and, on his return, set up a garage and car-wash. He was crazy about cars. Now he prefers to walk. Avoids cars if he can. When they went to take them, he stuttered, said he’d already given money, paid what they’d asked. He was obviously fond of the cherry Opel. That summer, he’d taken his daughters and their friends for a ride along the coastal road. The driver of the death outing remembers it well. It happened by chance. They’d just been practising their shots in Bastiagueiro, greasing and warming their weapons for the military coup that was close. Having finished their training, they returned to the road, openly dressed in Fascist uniform, and one of the cars that passed by was the cherry soft-top with Mr Alvedro and the four girls wearing white silk chiffon with floral patterns. The driver remembers it with a kaleidoscopic memory. Their eyes were used to aiming at the target, concentrating so hard that all the rest – the ocean, the city grafted on to sea rock – disappeared behind the small black sign with white circles. So their eyes reacted like bees that have found their way out of darkness through the eye of a bullet when they saw the cherry soft-top come into view with those girls wearing floral patterns, their hair trailing in the breeze. They shouted. Or rather they burst in unison into a sound that might also be described as a return bullet. A visual onomatopoeia: their eyes snarled in the wake of the car accelerating down the road to Santa Cruz lined with plane trees.