The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman (7 page)

I
nspector Manchego started to lose his balance on his second whiskey. When he was out of earshot, Josi assured the others that Manchego was simply out of practice.

“He's always been more into sangria than spirits,” he told the others as soon as the inspector left the game. “In the garage at his parents' house we used to get a big tub, fill it with half red wine and half Fanta, add a good splash of vodka—not that you could taste it in so much liquid—plenty of ice and plenty of sugar. We'd open the door and they'd be queuing up outside. We were the life and soul of the party.”

“Did you used to drink out of a
botijo
, a
bota
, or a
porrón
?”

“
Porrón
, Macita, what a question! Manchego used to drink straight from the jug. Back then, he had some stamina . . .”

•  •  •

The street was dark and empty. The streetlights and the pavement were moving a bit, as if the ground had been paved with waves. Manchego had lost forty euros, Christ on a bike, what bad luck, his four kings had been beaten by the four aces that Carretero pulled out of his sleeve at the last minute.

He was walking home so he could get some air, with his gun tucked into his belt, just in case. He had bought one of those made-to-order harnesses that combine braces with a gun holster, and although he knew he shouldn't drink when he was armed, he justified it to himself, saying that they weren't allowed to use the siren without good reason, but all his colleagues used it to get out of traffic jams. It was a trade-off. He was very conscientious when it came to the siren.

He heard footsteps behind him. He tensed up.

A guy with headphones overtook him on his right.

He kept walking.

He heard footsteps again. He stopped. The footsteps stopped too.

Manchego grabbed onto the trunk of a flimsy tree. It was his anchor.

Up ahead, between the cars, someone was moving. A shadow.

“Who's there?” Manchego shouted.

Silence.

He lifted his hand to his belt. He checked that the gun was in place.

“Who's there?” he repeated. “Don't do anything stupid. I'm a police officer. I'm armed.”

A strong, rough-looking man stepped out into the light. He was moving from side to side, in time with the street. He must have been on the same boat as Manchego. He stopped a few centimeters away from Manchego.

“Got a light?” he asked.

“Don't do anything stupid, mate,” replied the inspector. “I've just warned you that I'm armed.”

“I'm only asking for a match, Officer.”

“Inspector, if you don't mind.”

“Inspector.”

Manchego took a lighter out of his pocket. He removed a pack of cigarettes from another. He offered the man one. They smoked together. They talked.

“If I had to investigate a disappearance,” said the man after listening carefully to the case of Atticus Craftsman, “I'd start by interrogating the people who knew him. Then I'd search his house.”

“The problem is that without a warrant I can't bust the door open. It takes days for the papers to come through.”

“He could be dead inside the flat,” the other man warned.

“He could be.”

“And there's no other way of getting in?”

“Not legally.”

“But . . .”

“Well,” pondered Manchego, “if someone, let's say a burglar, happened to break in to steal something and just at that moment a plainclothes police officer happened to be passing by . . .”

“Improbable.”

“Highly.”

“I'm a locksmith.”

“What a coincidence!”

The street swayed. It had been nasty whiskey.

They said goodbye and promised to meet again at the same tree one of these days. The man's name was Lucas. He picked up a scrap of paper from the ground and wrote his phone number on it.

“Call me when you like,” he told Manchego. “The guy's probably dead inside the flat, anyway,” he reminded him.

CHAPTER 11

S
oleá never answered her landline. It was hopeless. She unplugged it when she was at home; otherwise she would have to let it ring endlessly. She hated the idea of having an answering machine. She considered it an invasion of her private life and argued that answering the phone was the same as opening the door and inviting someone in.

“Just imagine,” she said, “for example, that you're eating a bowl of cereal in front of the television and the bloody phone rings. Do you have to make room on the sofa for the person who comes barging into your house, plonking themselves between the spoon and your mouth, between your ears and the end of the film?”

“And what if it's important?”

“They can wait.”

“And if it's urgent?”

“Look, Berta,” assured Soleá, “90 percent of the time it's urgent or important only for the person who's calling.”

“But I'm your boss, Soleá. I need to be able to contact you.”

“Then get me a cell phone. But a company one, Berta, because my salary won't stretch to any more bills.”

Already resigned to the bad-tempered response she was going
to get, Berta dialed Soleá's cell phone number and waited for her to wake up. It was exactly nine in the morning. On a Sunday. Thank goodness she wasn't standing next to Soleá, because that girl was perfectly capable of shoving the phone down her throat.

At the fourth or fifth ring, she heard a sleepy voice on the other end of the line. Soleá was whispering.

“Berta, I'm going to kill you.”

“Where are you?”

“At the squat on Calle Zurita.”

“What?”

“It's nothing to worry about, love, my night just got a bit complicated. I went to the opening night of that play I told you about, at the Triángulo, and it was raining when I came out, and the first thing I saw was this place. I came in and there was a guy from back home who played guitar really well. A sort of recital. It got late and in the end I fell asleep on a pile of sleeping bags.”

“Doesn't it smell of pee?”

“Oh, Berta! Shut up!”

Without giving Soleá time to come up with an excuse, Berta told her about the urgent meeting. At the office at eleven. Soleá didn't argue. Berta had never given her such an unequivocal order before.

•  •  •

Berta was lucky to catch María still at home. She had been up since seven because the kids were light sleepers and the sound of the elevator always woke them up. They were about to leave for a day out in the countryside. They had the picnic ready: tortilla de patatas, breaded steaks, and Russian salad. María had spent Saturday afternoon cooking, ironing, washing dishes,
mending trousers, bathing children, heating soup, and tidying. She planned on spending Sunday relaxing, lying on a rug all day, in the shade, while the kids played on the swings. She had even packed a DVD so she could park them in front of a screen—thank God for laptops—while she had her siesta.

Bernabé usually played soccer on Sundays and then went to a bar for lunch with the team. He would come home when it got dark, sit in front of the television until María and the kids got back, and invariably ask to have dinner early, because on Mondays he worked the early shift at the café. His was a hard life.

“And what do you expect me to do with the kids, Berta? Just put them in a cupboard?”

“Haven't you got a neighbor you can leave them with for a bit, sweetie?”

“No, my love, I haven't. I've got a gossiping witch, a drunk, and a madwoman. That's what I've got.”

“But you do pay peanuts for rent, María.”

“I suppose I do.”

In the end she convinced Bernabé to take them to soccer with him.

“Tie them to the goalpost, Bernabé, do me a favor.”

Berta's tone of voice made it clear that something very serious had happened at work. María imagined the worst and started shaking. Her life would go to pieces if she lost her job.

•  •  •

Asunción answered right away. She told Berta that she had been awake for a while, reading. The boys were out and about as usual. She wasn't expecting them back until lunchtime.

“I'm actually glad you rang,” she confessed. “Sundays make
me feel sort of gloomy. I'll go to ten o'clock Mass near the office so I can be there at eleven on the dot. Shall I bring croissants?”

•  •  •

Gaby was the most difficult. In a whisper, she explained that she was ovulating—“Spot on, Berta, your timing's impeccable”—and that she had to lie down for at least half an hour after intercourse. As intercourse hadn't taken place yet, she would try to wake Franklin up gently, wearing no underwear, to see if they could resolve the issue in fifteen or twenty minutes.

“But the earliest I can be there,” she said, “is quarter past eleven. That's the minimum for a nice romantic quickie. You understand, don't you, Berta?”

CHAPTER 12

A
sunción stopped weighing herself the day she hit 154 pounds. Her determination to spend her time thinking about more interesting things than the fluctuations of her impressive body mass was not exactly a coolly calculated decision. It was in fact the result of having smashed to pieces the solar-powered plastic scales that her sons had given her on Mother's Day.

“You've got to start looking after yourself again,
Mamá
,” they had pleaded with her. “Go out, buy new clothes, get your hair dyed . . . It's been six months now since
Papá
left. You have to get over it, move on.”

Although they were only fifteen and seventeen, they had dealt with being abandoned much more bravely than she had. And let's be clear, their father had betrayed them too. He had promised at the altar to care for them responsibly and lovingly, to protect and educate them. He had agreed and consented and sworn on his wedding day that he would love them until death did them part. And, in the end, it wasn't death that did them part but a flight attendant from Barcelona.