The Summer of Dead Toys (13 page)

Meanwhile, Leire had remained seated in the lounge, watching how Natàlia finished drawing after drawing before her mother’s tireless admiration. Father Castells had left shortly after Enric and the inspector had shut themselves in his study, and once she’d confiscated the bloodstained T-shirt, she’d sat down on a chair, waiting for them to emerge. For a moment she imagined herself like this, stuck at home on a summer afternoon, contemplating the artistic progress of a little boy or girl, and the idea horrified her. For the umpteenth time since the night before she did the fateful test, she tried to imagine herself with a baby in her arms, but her brain didn’t succeed in forming the image. No. People like her didn’t have children. That—and financial independence—was the basis of her life, of how she conceived it. How she liked it. And now her whole future was tottering because of one careless slip-up. At least, she told herself with a certain satisfaction, the guy had been worth it . . . Unfortunately, he wasn’t one of the hot-chocolate boys and he valued his freedom as much as she did. Relative freedom, she thought, since he was a slave to a job that took him all over the continent.

“Look.” The little girl had come over to her and was showing her latest drawing, an indecipherable smudge, to Leire. “It’s you,” she explained.

“Ah. Is it for me?”
Then Natàlia hesitated and her mother spoke for her. “Of course. You are giving it to her, aren’t you?” Leire put out her hand, but the little girl hadn’t decided to

give up the drawing.
“No,” she said at last. “A different one.” And she ran to the
table in search of another of her works of art. “This one.” “Thank you. And what is it?” asked Leire, although in this
one it was more obvious.
“A window. Bad dodo.”
Glòria Vergès went to her daughter. She looked deeply
worried.
“She’s taken to calling upstairs that now,” she whispered, turning to the agent. “I suppose she feels it’s bad because he’s
not there.”
“Bad,” repeated Natàlia. “Bad dodo.”
“OK, sweetheart.” Her mother crouched down and stroked
her straight, shiny hair. “Why don’t you fetch your doll? I’m
sure that . . .”
“Leire.”
“. . . Leire would love to see her.” She threw Agent Castro an
apologetic smile and the little girl hastened to obey. “I’m sorry,” said the agent. “I suppose it’s very complicated
for her. For everyone.”
“It’s horrible. And the worst is you don’t really know how
to explain it. Enric is in favor of telling her the truth, but I
can’t . . .”
“Was she very attached to her brother?”
Glòria hesitated.
“I would like to say yes, but I’m afraid the age gap was too
wide. Marc basically ignored her, and I suppose that’s normal.
But lately, since he came back from Dublin, he seemed to have
more affection for her. And now she misses—”
Before she could finish, Natàlia came running in. Somehow
that childish noise, so normal in any other house where a child
lives, sounded strange. As if the perfect set was tottering. “Natàlia, sweetheart . . .”
But the little girl didn’t pay her the least attention, and
turned to the table where she was drawing to pick up the bits
of paper.
“How tidy!” commented Leire.
“Don’t you believe it . . . Now she’ll put them all over my
studio.” She smiled. “Since I also ‘go to school,’ as she says, she
likes to leave her things on my desk. I’ll go and see what she’s
doing before it’s too late.”
Leire, for whom that scene of devout motherhood was becoming unbearable, decided to get up from her chair and wait for the inspector in the car.

There Héctor found her, when he came out weighed down with the box containing Marc’s belongings. Oblivious to his appearance, lost in thought, she was looking at the screen of her mobile as if it were a foreign object, something that had just fallen into her power by magic and was completely indecipherable. He had to attract her attention so she would open the boot. The girl stammered an apology, unnecessary apart from anything else, and put her phone in her pocket.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked her.
“Of course. I see you managed to convince Castells.” The desire to change the subject was so obvious Héctor

didn’t persist. He looked at his own mobile before getting into the car: three missed calls. Two from Andreu and one from his son. At last. He didn’t want to respond to any of them in front of Castro, and so he decided to go as far as Plaça Bonanova and then go his own way.

“Bring all this to the station. I have some stuff to do,” he said as he got into the vehicle. “By the way, the laptop is broken. You didn’t see it the day you were there?”

Leire was doubtful. She’d spent most of the time below, witnessing the removal of the corpse.
“In fact,” she said finally, “we didn’t see any laptop. There was the desktop in the attic and it was examined to see if Marc had left any message on it, something that could be interpreted as a suicide note. There was nothing. And at no time did anyone mention that he had another computer.”
Héctor nodded.
“Well, he had one. In his room, I suppose.” He didn’t say anything else, and the notion that they hadn’t done a thorough job hung in the car’s interior. The inspector noticed it, so before he got out, he commented, “I don’t think it will give us anything. It’s still most probable that the boy fell accidentally. We’ll analyse the T-shirt and see what comes from that. Oh, and when we have something we’ll have to speak to the other boy, this Aleix Rovira. But at the station. I’m sick of visiting these brats at home.”
“Good. Sure you want me to leave you here?”
“Yes, I’ll take the opportunity to run some errands,” he lied. And given that it was already almost nine o’clock, it was obvious there were few errands that could be run. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He was going to ask her again if she was all right, but stopped himself. Castro’s affairs weren’t any business of his. “Good night.”

The car moved off, and Héctor waited a few seconds before taking out his mobile again and returning Martina Andreu’s calls. She answered immediately, although the conversation was brief, the sergeant’s trademark. There was nothing new regarding Dr. Omar’s disappearance, but on the subject of the pig’s head, it had been delivered by a nearby butcher. It seemed he regularly brought him entrails for his sinister tricks. With regard to the fake doctor, he seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth leaving only a few traces of blood. Yes—the results hadn’t yet arrived but it was most probable that it was his. A hasty flight or a settling of accounts by someone who had taken all his papers and left only part of Salgado’s file. Which, in truth, was rather strange. Andreu said a brusque good-bye and Héctor immediately called his son, who, not wanting to break a habit, didn’t answer his mobile. I need to talk to him, Héctor thought. After a whole day with the parents of spoiled adolescents he wanted to hear Guillermo’s voice and reassure himself that everything was OK. He left a new message, and after doing so found himself on Bonanova with nothing to do and decided to walk for a while.

It had been some time since he strolled through this part of the city and, seeing it again, he was amazed at how little it had altered. More or less all of Barcelona’s
barrios
had undergone some sort of change in recent years, but it was clear that the exclusive areas remained immune to most of it. No tourists en masse or immigrants, except those who worked cleaning the houses of the area. He asked himself if this happened in other cities: the existence of impermeable old-fashioned areas, protected from modernizing breezes in an effective yet not hostile way. The metro didn’t reach that part of the city; its inhabitants took the trains, which to them seemed a completely different class of transport. A snobbish detail that Ruth, for example, had struggled to overcome. He smiled remembering how horrified her parents were when their only daughter abandoned the tranquil
barrio
of Sarrià, a few blocks away from where he was now, and went to live with an Argentine—the slur
sudaca
wasn’t used then—first to Gràcia, and then, horror!, down there, near the sea. However much they had changed after the Olympics, the beaches of Barcelona and their surroundings were still fourth-rate destinations to them. “The humidity will kill you,” had been their comment. And he knew for certain that his mother-in-law took a taxi every time she came to see her daughter and grandson alone.

Of course Ruth’s capacity for scandalizing her family hadn’t faded . . . Now separated, beginning a new life with another woman, she’d rented a loft not far from the flat she’d shared with Héctor, where she had room for her studio as well as living space. “This way you’ll still be close to Guillermo,” it had been her idea, shattering the stereotype of the vindictive ex-wife. Ruth had asked for what was fair, and he had conceded it without hesitation. In this, as in everything, they had been most civilized. I should have said that to the shrink, he thought with a smile. “Look, doctor, my wife left me for another bird . . . Yes, you heard right. How do I feel? Well look, it’s a kick in the nuts. Like they might disintegrate from the blow. And you keep this so-stupid-you-can’t-even-imagine face on, because for seventeen years you’ve been proud of how good it’s been in bed for you both (proud of being almost her first and in theory only man—there’s always some casual boyfriend from before with whom ‘we hardly did anything, don’t be stupid’) and however much she insists that things changed little by little, and she swears that she discovered orgasms with you and that she has really enjoyed herself at your side, and she tells you, with disarming sincerity, that this is something ‘new she needs to explore,’ you look at her like a zombie, more bewildered than incredulous, because if she says it it must be true, and if it’s true then part of your life, of both of your lives, but mostly of yours, has been a lie. Like on
The Truman Show
, remember, doctor? This guy who believes that he is living his life but in fact he is surrounded by actors who play their part and his reality is nothing more than a fiction invented and represented by others. Well, that’s how you’re left, doctor, with a Jim Carrey face.” He laughed at himself with no bitterness as he waited to cross. Although lately he hadn’t been doing it too much, inventing semi-ridiculous monologues about himself, or sometimes others, had always served as therapy for him.

He was walking slowly, advancing toward the centre of this city that had been his home for so many years. It was a long way, but he felt like walking a little, putting off the arrival at his empty flat. Also, there was something about the streets of l’Eixample, that geometric grid of parallel and perpendicular roads, and those regal old façades that gave him peace and a certain feeling of nostalgia. He’d explored these streets, and many others, with Ruth; with her he’d seen as many monuments as bars. For him, Barcelona was Ruth: beautiful without harshness, superficially tranquil yet with dark corners, and with that touch of classy elegance that was as charming as it was exasperating. Both were aware of their natural charm, of having that indescribable something that many others wanted to achieve and could only admire or envy.

He arrived home wrecked after walking for almost two hours and flopped down on to the sofa. The recovered suitcase awaited him in a corner and he avoided looking at it. He should’ve eaten something en route, but the thought of dining alone in public depressed him. He smoked to kill his hunger through nicotine and felt guilty for it. He’d left the films Carmen had returned to him on the coffee table: a selection of classics starring her favorite actress. How long had it been since he’d watched
Rear Window
? It wasn’t one of his favorites; he liked the worrying atmosphere of
The Birds
or the obsessive passion of
Vertigo
much better, but it was the one closest to hand and, without thinking about it, he put it in the DVD player. While it was starting up he went to the kitchen to find a beer, at least: he thought he’d seen something that morning in the fridge. With it in his hand he returned to the dining room and looked at the dark screen. The disk was playing, he could see on the little green screen of the machine, but there were no images. However, finally a light appeared on the screen: weak, crude, strange, shining in the middle of a blurred background. Astonished, he watched as the cloud dissipated and the light gained ground. And then, not able to take his eyes off the television, he saw what he’d never wanted to see: himself, his face contorted with rage, ceaselessly hitting an old man sitting in a chair. A shiver ran down his spine. The phone ringing startled him so much he dropped his beer. He picked up apprehensively, eyes still fixed on that other him he hardly recognized, and heard a woman’s voice, hoarse with rage, screaming at him: “You’re a bastard, you fucking Argentine. Motherfucker.”

“I’m in Barça this weekend and want to see you. T.” That was the message Leire had read as soon as she came out of the Castells’ house. She’d answered the message positively, without hesitating, almost without thinking, carried away by the desire to see him. Something that now, after a long conversation with her best friend, she regretted with all her heart; something that, combined with the stifling summer weather and the terrible yowling of a cat on heat crossing the nearby roofs, wouldn’t let her sleep.

María was a dark beauty, with a Barcelonian father and Italian mother, and she wreaked havoc in the male population. Five foot ten inches of perfect curves, she had a smiling face, a huge sense of humor and a trucker’s mouth.

“Holy shit!” she burst out in the middle of a restaurant as soon as Leire explained her intention of telling Tomás, the T of the message, that their last encounter had left behind a gift in the shape of an embryo. “What, has pregnancy affected your brain or something? Must be the baby hormones that make people stupid.”

“Don’t be nasty.” Leire finished off the tiramisu, which she’d devoured after a generous plate of spaghetti carbonara. “Are you going to finish the lemon mousse?”

“No! And you shouldn’t either . . . You’re like a piranha.” But she pushed the dish toward her. “Listen, I’m serious. What do you gain by telling him?”