Southern Seas (12 page)

‘How are your studies going?’

‘Which studies?’

‘Music. Your cleaning woman tells me you’re taking music lessons.’

‘Yes. I started them again, just like that. When I was young, I got as far as the fourth grade, but then I dropped it. It was a torture that my mother inflicted on me. But now it’s sheer delight—the best hours of the week. I’m not the only one who goes. It’s at the Centre for Musical Studies, a new place that’s full of people like me.’

‘What does “people like you” mean?’

‘Adults who want to learn something they’ve never been able to do before, for lack of time, or money, or interest.’

‘With you, of course, it was lack of interest.’

Adela Vilardell nodded and waited for the interrogation to continue.

‘When was the last time you saw Stuart Pedrell?’

‘I don’t remember the exact date. It was towards the end of 1977. He was preparing for his trip, and we talked briefly.’

‘You weren’t planning to go with him?’

‘No.’

‘Was it that he didn’t want, or you didn’t want?’

‘There was never any question of it. Our relationship had been cooling off for some time.’

‘For anything—or anyone—in particular?’

‘It was a question of time, really. Our relationship lasted nearly ten years, and there were periods of great intensity. We’d spent whole summer months together, when his family was away on holiday. By then, we were a long-established couple. We were very used to each other.’

‘Besides, Señor Stuart Pedrell was spending time on other women.’

‘Everyone that came along. I was the first to realize it. Or rather, the second, because I suppose his wife Mima was one step ahead of me. I didn’t care. The only thing that bothered me was the way he went round picking up infants.’

‘Infants?’

‘Up to the age of twenty, every man and every woman ought to be in infant school.’

‘Did you benefit financially from your relationship with Stuart Pedrell?’

‘No. He didn’t support me. It’s true that he paid for me sometimes. When we ate out together, for instance, he would pay the bill for both of us. Maybe that strikes you as excessive.’

‘Didn’t you ever offer to pay?’

‘I am, or used to be, a young lady. And I was brought up on the principle that women don’t pay in restaurants.’

‘It would seem that you live on investment income. A lot of it.’

‘Yes. I have my great-grandfather to thank for that. He was a shepherd from Ampurdán who got together enough money to send my grandfather off to what remained of our American colonies.’

‘I know your family history. I read it a short while ago in the
Correo Catalan
. It was a bit toned down, though.’

‘Daddy had shares in the
Correo
.’

‘During the time that Stuart Pedrell was missing, did he ever make contact with you?’

The grey-blue eyes opened wide, as if to reveal the absolute transparency of Adela Vilardell’s body and soul as she answered:

‘No.’

The ‘no’ had faltered slightly as the air rose from her flat chest.

‘You see how it was. Years and years of a relationship, and then nothing.’

She waited for Carvalho to make some observation. But when he remained silent, she added:

‘Absolutely nothing. Sometimes I thought: “What can this man be doing …? Why doesn’t he get in touch with me?” ’

‘Why did you think that? Didn’t you think he was in the South Seas?’

‘I was in that part of the world myself, once, and I know that they have postboxes! I’ve posted cards there myself.’

‘It didn’t take you long to find a replacement for Stuart Pedrell …’

‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

Carvalho shrugged.

‘Why does my private life interest you so much?’

‘Normally, it wouldn’t. Not at all. But now it may have some
bearing on my work. You were seen recently in black motorcycle gear, riding a powerful Harley Davidson. You were with a male lookalike on an equally powerful Harley Davidson.’

‘So, I like motorbikes …’

‘Who’s the rider you go with?’

‘How did you find out about all this?’

‘It may seem hard to believe, but you people don’t have private lives. Everything about you is common knowledge.’

‘What do you mean by “you people”?’

‘You know very well. All I have to do is knock on the door of someone who has even a half-acquaintance with you, and they know all there is to know. For instance, is the bowler-hat story true?’

‘Which story?’

‘Is it true that Stuart Pedrell arranged to meet you some years ago in a London park? And that he turned up as a City gent, bowler hat and all?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘So, will you tell me the name of the rider?’

‘You must know already.’

‘I do.’

‘Well then.’

Biscuter was sitting in the corner, on the edge of a chair. As soon as he saw Carvalho arrive, he jumped up.

‘There’s this girl waiting to see you, boss.’

‘So I see.’

Carvalho slipped a glance at Yes and ignored her movement
towards him. His mission accomplished, Biscuter disappeared behind the curtain. Carvalho sat in his revolving chair and contemplated Yes’s frozen gesture in the middle of the room.

‘Are you annoyed that I’ve come here?’

‘Annoyed isn’t the word.’

‘After you left, I started thinking. I don’t want to go back home.’

‘That’s your business.’

‘Can I stay at your place?’

‘No.’

‘Just for two or three days.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘My duties as your mother’s employee and your companion in bed go only so far.’

‘Why do you always have to talk like a private detective? Why can’t you say normal things, give normal excuses? That you’re expecting relatives, or that you don’t have room?’

‘Take it or leave it. I’m sorry. Anyway, it’s bad to see each other so often. I’m planning to have a quiet meal here, by myself. I wasn’t thinking of inviting you.’

‘I’m lonely.’

‘Me too. Please, Jésica. Don’t use me up all at once. Keep me for when you really need me. I’ve got work to do. Go away.’

She didn’t know how to go. She gesticulated with sadness, whilst looking for the door.

‘I’ll kill myself.’

‘That would be a pity. But I don’t prevent suicides. I only investigate them.’

Carvalho busied himself opening and closing drawers, putting his desk in order, and making a phone call. Yes closed the door gently behind her. Her exit coincided with Biscuter’s reappearance, ladle in hand.

‘You were too hard on her, boss. She’s a decent kid, even if
she is a bit loopy. Do you know what she asked me? If I’ve killed anyone. And then she asked whether you have.’

‘What did you say?’

‘What do you think? But she went on asking questions. She never stopped. Don’t worry. I kept mum. Is she dangerous?’

‘Only to herself.’

So saying, Carvalho slammed down the phone and raced towards the door.

‘You’re not going, are you, boss? Aren’t you staying to eat?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ve made you some potatoes and chorizo à la Rioja.’

Carvalho stopped, with one foot outside the door. Potatoes and chorizo à la Rioja.

‘They’re hot,’ Biscuter insisted, when he saw him waver.

‘Later.’

He took the stairs two by two, and emerged onto the Ramblas. Straining his neck, he glanced from one distant head to the next in search of Yes’s honey-coloured hair. He thought he saw her, and ran towards the arches of the Plaza Real. It wasn’t her. Perhaps she’d gone north to where she lived, or maybe south, to sink her thoughts in the harbour waters and the bustle of the
golondrinas
that carry trippers out to the breakwater. Carvalho strode off southwards, his arms accentuating the physical effort and his eyes scouring the street. He kept telling himself he was a fool. He darted across the big intersection at the Christopher Columbus monument, and became the instant target for malevolent stares and occasional insults from passing cars. The Puerta de la Paz seemed drained of people, although the sun was warming a few old folk on the benches, and street photographers were pursuing the occasional passing tourist.

By the hut that sold tickets for the
golondrinas
, a dirty, ragged girl lay breast-feeding a half-sleeping baby. A piece of cardboard told how her husband had cancer, and that she had no money. Beggars. The unemployed. Followers of the Infant Jesus and the
most sacred Mother who bore him. The city seemed inundated with fugitives from everything and everywhere. A boat passed by slowly, casting a heavy wash in the greasy waters. Carvalho was struck by the sight of a dignified pensioner, who was wearing an outsize jacket, an undersized pair of trousers, and a felt hat as tall as any worn by the Canadian mounties. One of those careful old men who move with terrifying resolve towards a grave that has been bought in instalments over the past forty years, with payments on the first Sunday of every month.

Who’s calling? Tell me, is an innocent person being strangled in this house? No, this is just a straightforward strangling. Where had he read that? Who’s that? Funeral insurance. Who’s that? The dead. Anyway, what’s the point of my looking for Jésica? She’s not my responsibility. She’ll screw fifteen guys in a month, and then she’ll be back to normal.

He retraced his steps to the office, but he still took an occasional look up the Ramblas, in case Yes suddenly appeared. He went into a bar near Amaya, where they only serve wine from the south. He downed three glasses of manzanilla. He gave five pesetas to one of the five little gypsy girls who swept in and held their hands under the noses of the customers as they sipped their drinks and discussed football, bullfighting, homosexuals, women, politics, and strange little deals involving scrap lead or a truckload of cloth bought cut-price from a bankrupt store on Calle Trafalgar. The cloth shops down there seemed permanently on the edge of bankruptcy, to the chagrin of proprietors, salesmen and old bachelors who measured old pieces of cloth with old rulers dating from when the metric system was first introduced. They had survived for decade after decade, since Carvalho’s childhood years, but now they had to face up to the realities of old age and death.

What about those chestnut-coloured rulers. Will they be sold off too? Pliant animals wrapped in yellow oilcloth; rigid, lignified serpents; coiled, cracking metal whips; folding rulers aware
of their concentrated power to measure the world. Children play with rulers until they kill them. Rulers in the hands of children are measuring-animals which struggle in the clutches of their tormentors, gradually becoming aware that they will never again measure anything. With a folding-rule, one could measure a pentagon or the near side of the moon.

He went into the street. The girl was wearing a flimsy blue cardigan, a skirt more like a pair of trousers, but without enough style to make its shape clear, and a pair of shoes which raised her twenty centimetres above sea level. She seemed at once ugly and beautiful as she said: ‘Excuse me, do you fancy going to bed with me? A thousand pesetas plus the price of the room.’ Carvalho noticed her bruised eye and a little scratch on the thin, veinous skin of her forehead. She walked further down the pavement and repeated her proposition to another passer-by, who passed her by with a swift semi-circular movement, as if drawing a ring of suspicion round her. She practises her prostitution as if she was asking the time, Carvalho thought. Maybe it’s a new whoremarketing technique. I’ll have to ask Bromuro and Charo.

He couldn’t make up his mind whether to go back to the chorizo and potatoes, or pay a call on Charo. She would just have got up. She would be irritated at his continued thoughtlessness and failure to contact her, and would be preparing her body for the afternoon’s telephone punters. They were mostly regular clients, who asked her advice on family problems and even on the best way to fix an abortion for a precocious daughter or a wife made pregnant after a five-glass binge on Aixartell champagne. Or maybe she’d be preparing reproaches for the increasingly absent Carvalho.

‘It won’t take a moment to heat it up, boss. Looks like mash. The potatoes should crumble a little, but not that much. The chorizo has completely disintegrated, but it’s very good. I managed not to overdo the chilli this time.’

Carvalho began to shovel down the potatoes and chorizo. But
his palate gradually made him aware that he ought to pay more attention to the food.

‘It’s wonderful, Biscuter.’

‘One does what one can, boss. Some days things go right, and others … You know how it is.’

Biscuter’s self-satisfied explanation sounded like rain on sheets of glass, and he looked for the splashes produced by the words. It was raining. It was raining hard on the Rambla de Santa Mónica, and Carvalho felt a sudden shiver down his spine that made him nostalgic for sheets and blankets, for gentle bouts of flu and the muffled sounds of domestic bustle. Pepe, Pepe, shall I make you a lemonade?
Treasure Island
in his hands, and Fernando Forga reading
The Adventures of Inspector Nichols
on the radio.