The Whisperer (2 page)

T
he music teacher had spoken.

But that wasn’t what had struck her. It wasn’t the first time. Lots of lonely people give voice to their own thoughts when they’re in the safety of their own domestic walls. Even Mila sometimes talked to herself when she was at home.

No, it was something else that was new. And it was her reward for a whole week of waiting; sitting in the cold of her own car, constantly parked outside the brown house, peering inside with a little pair of binoculars at the movements of that fat, milky-white man in his forties as he moved calmly in his orderly little universe, always repeating the same gestures, weaving a web that only he was aware of.

The music teacher had spoken. But what was new was that this time
he had uttered a name.

Mila had seen it emerging, letter by letter, on his lips. Pablo. It was the confirmation, the key to enter that mysterious world. Now she knew.

The music teacher had a guest.

Until almost ten days before, Pablo was only an eight-year-old boy with brown hair and bright eyes, who liked speeding around the area on his skateboard. And one thing was certain: if Pablo had to run an errand for his mother or his grandmother, he skated there. He spent hours on that thing, up and down the street. For the neighbors who saw him passing by their windows, little
Pablito,
as they all called him, was like one of those pictures that have become part of the landscape.

Perhaps that was why no one had seen him that February morning in the little residential district where everyone knew everyone else by name and houses and lives all seemed the same. A green Volvo station wagon—the music teacher must have chosen it because it was like so many other family cars parked in the driveways—appeared in the deserted street. The silence of a perfectly normal Saturday morning had been broken only by the slow squeak of the tarmac beneath the tires and the gray scrape of a skateboard progressively gaining speed…It was six long hours before anyone noticed that something was missing from the sound of that Saturday. That scrape. And that little Pablo, on a cold, sunny morning, had been swallowed up by a creeping shadow that wouldn’t give him up, parting him from his beloved skateboard.

That four-wheeled plank had ended up lying motionless in the middle of a swarm of policemen who had taken over the area as soon as the report had come in.

Now, ten days later, it could be too late for Pablo. Too late for his frail child’s psyche. Too late to wake up untraumatized from his nightmare.

Now the skateboard was in the boot of the policewoman’s car, along with other objects: toys, clothes. Clues that Mila had sniffed out as she tried to find a trail to follow, and which had led her to this brown lair. To the music teacher, who taught in an institute of higher education and played the organ in church on Sunday morning. The vice president of the musical association that organized a little Mozart festival every year. The shy, anonymous bachelor with the glasses, the incipient baldness and the soft, sweaty hands.

Mila had observed him very carefully. Because that was her
gift
.

She had joined the police with a precise purpose and, after leaving the academy, had devoted herself to it completely. She wasn’t interested in the criminals, let alone the law. That wasn’t why she ceaselessly searched every corner where shadows lurked, where life rotted undisturbed.

As she read Pablo’s name on the lips of his jailer, Mila became aware of a searing pain in her right leg. Perhaps it was from too many hours spent in the car waiting for that sign. Then again, perhaps it was from the wound in her thigh, which she had stitched herself.

I’ll treat it properly later on,
she promised herself.
Afterwards, though.
And as she formulated that thought, Mila realized that she was ready to enter the house, to break the spell and bring the nightmare to an end.

“Officer Mila Vasquez to headquarters: have identified suspected kidnapper of Pablo Ramos. The building is a brown house at 27 Viale Alberas. Possibly dangerous situation.”

“Fine, Officer Vasquez, we’re sending backup, but it’ll be at least thirty minutes.”

Too long.

Mila didn’t have that much time.
Pablo
didn’t.

The terror of having to utter the words “it was too late” when giving her account of events impelled her towards the house.

The voice on the radio was a distant echo and—pistol in her fist, arm lowered across her body’s center of gravity, eyes alert, quick, short steps—she reached the cream-colored fence that surrounded the rear of the little house.

An enormous plane tree loomed above her. The leaves changed color with the wind, showing their silvery outlines. Mila flattened herself against the fence and pricked up her ears. Every now and again the blast of a rock song reached her, carried on the wind from somewhere nearby. Mila leaned over the wooden gate and saw a well-tended garden, with a shed and a red rubber hose that snaked through the grass to a sprinkler. Plastic furniture and a gas barbecue. All very normal. A mauve door with frosted glass. Mila stretched an arm over the gate and delicately lifted the latch. The hinges squeaked and she opened the gate just wide enough to step into the garden.

She closed it again so that no one inside, looking out, would notice a change. Everything had to stay as it was. Then she walked as she had been taught in training, carefully weighing her steps on the grass—just with her toes, so as not to leave footprints—ready to leap if the need arose. A few moments later she found herself beside the back door, on the side from which she would cast no shadow when she leaned over to look inside the house. The frosted glass meant that she couldn’t make out the interior, but from the outline of the furniture it looked like a sitting room. Mila ran her hand towards the handle on the opposite side of the door. She gripped it and pushed it down. The lock clicked.

It was open.

The music teacher must have felt safe in the lair that he had prepared for himself and his prisoner. Soon Mila would find out why.

The linoleum floor creaked beneath her rubber sole with each step she took. She tried to control her footsteps to keep from making too much noise, then she took off her trainers and left them beside a chair. Barefoot, she reached the entrance to the hall, and she heard him talking:

“I would also need a roll of kitchen paper. And that cleaning product you use for polishing porcelain…yes, that one…Then bring me six tins of chicken soup, some sugar, a copy of the TV guide and a few packets of cigarettes, lights, the usual brand…”

The voice came from the sitting room. The music teacher was shopping by phone. Too busy to leave the house? Or perhaps he didn’t want to leave—he wanted to stay and keep an eye on his guest’s every move?

“Yes, number 27 Viale Alberas, thank you. And bring change for fifty, because that’s all I’ve got in the house.”

Mila followed the voice, walking in front of a mirror that reflected a distorted version of her own image. Like the ones you see at funfairs. When she reached the door to the room, she stretched out her arms holding the pistol, took a breath and burst into the doorway. She expected to surprise him, perhaps from behind, with the receiver still in his hand, standing by the window. A perfect living target.

Which wasn’t there.

The sitting room was empty, the receiver resting quite normally on the phone.

She realized that no one had made a phone call from that room when she felt the cold lips of a pistol resting like a kiss on the back of her neck.

He was behind her.

Mila cursed to herself, calling herself an idiot. The music teacher had prepared his lair well. The garden gate that
squeak
ed
and the linoleum floor that
creak
ed
were the alarms to signal the presence of intruders. Hence the fake phone call, the bait to attract his prey. The distorting mirror so that he could take up a position behind her without being seen. It was all part of the trap.

She felt him stretching his arm out in front of her, to take the gun from her. Mila let him do it.

“Shoot me, but there’s no escape for you now. My colleagues will be here soon. You can’t get away, you’ll have to surrender.”

He didn’t reply. She could almost see him out of the corner of her eye. Was he smiling?

The music teacher took a step back. The barrel of the gun detached itself from Mila, but she could still feel that extension of magnetic attraction between her head and the bullet in the magazine. Then the man turned towards her and finally entered her field of vision. He stared at her for a long time. But without looking at her. There was something deep in his eyes that looked to Mila like the antechamber of darkness.

The music teacher turned round, fearlessly turning his back on her. Mila saw him walking confidently towards the piano against the wall. Reaching the instrument, the man sat down on the stool and looked at the keyboard. He set both pistols down on the far left.

He raised his hands and, a moment later, let them fall back on the keys.

As Chopin’s Nocturne No. 20 in C sharp minor filled the room, Mila breathed hard, the tension spreading along the tendons and muscles of her neck. The music teacher’s fingers slipped lightly and gracefully over the keyboard. The sweetness of the notes made Mila feel like a spectator at this performance, hypnotized by it.

She struggled to remain clearheaded and let her bare heels slide backwards, slowly, until she was back in the corridor. She got her breath back, trying to calm her thumping heart. Then she started searching quickly around the rooms, pursued by the melody. She inspected each of them, one by one. A study. A bathroom. A larder.

Until she reached the closed door.

She pushed it with her shoulder. The wound in her thigh hurt, and she concentrated her weight on her deltoid.

The wood yielded.

The faint light from the corridor burst ahead of her into the room, whose windows appeared to have been walled up. Mila followed the glow into the darkness until she met two terrified, liquid eyes that returned her gaze. Pablito was there, on the bed, his legs drawn up against his thin chest. He was wearing only a pair of underpants and a sweater. He was trying to work out if there was anything he should be afraid of, if Mila was part of his nightmare or not. She said what she always said when she found a missing child.

“We’ve got to go.”

He nodded, stretched out his arms and clung to her. Mila kept an ear out for the music, which was still pursuing her. She was worried that the piece wouldn’t last long enough, and that there wasn’t enough time to get out of the house. A fresh anxiety took hold of her. She had put her own life and the hostage’s at risk. And now she was scared. Scared of making another mistake. Scared of stumbling at the last step, the one that would take her out of this horrible lair. Or discovering that the house would never let her go, that it would close in on her like a silken net, holding her prisoner forever.

But the door opened, and they were outside, in the pale but reassuring light of day.

When her heartbeats slowed down, and she was able to forget the gun that she had left in the house, and press Pablo to her, shielding him with her warm body to take all his fear away, the little boy leaned towards her ear and whispered…

“Isn’t
she
coming?”

Suddenly heavy, Mila’s feet were rooted to the ground. She swayed, but didn’t lose her balance.

Fueled by the strength of a terrifying realization, she asked, “Where is she?”

The little boy raised his arm and pointed to the second floor. The house watched them with its windows and laughed, mockingly, with the same gaping door that had let them go a moment before.

It was then that the fear fled entirely. Mila covered the last few meters that separated her from her car. She sat Pablo on the seat and told him, in the solemn tone of a promise, “I’ll be right back.”

Then she went back to let the house engulf her.

She found herself at the bottom of the stairs. She looked up, without knowing what she would find up there. She started climbing, gripping the banisters. Chopin’s notes went on undauntedly, following her exploration. Her feet sank into the steps, her hands stuck to the banisters which seemed to be trying to hold her back.

Suddenly the music stopped.

Mila froze, her senses alert. Then the dry report of a gunshot, a dull thud and the disjointed notes from the piano beneath the weight of the music teacher as he collapsed onto the keyboard. Mila quickened her pace as she continued on her way upstairs. She couldn’t be certain that it wasn’t another trick. The stairs curved round and the landing stretched into a narrow corridor covered with thick carpet. At the end, a window. In front of it, a human body. Frail, slender, against the light: feet stretched on a chair, neck and arms stretched towards a noose that hung from the ceiling. Mila saw her trying to slip it over her head and gave a cry. The girl saw her and tried to speed up the operation. Because that was what he had told her, it was what she had been taught.

If they come, you must kill yourself.

“They” were the others, the world outside, the ones who couldn’t understand, who would never forgive.

Mila hurled herself towards the girl in a desperate attempt to stop her. And the closer she got, the more she seemed to be running back in time.

Many years before, in another life, that girl had been a child.

Mila remembered her photograph perfectly. She had studied it closely, feature by feature, running through her mind every fold, every expressive wrinkle, cataloging and repeating all distinguishing features, even the tiniest imperfection of the skin.

And those eyes. A speckled, lively blue. The eyes of a ten-year-old child, Elisa Gomes. Her father had taken the picture. An image stolen at a party as she was busy opening a present and didn’t expect it. Mila had imagined the scene, with the father calling her to make her turn round and take the picture by surprise. And Elisa turning towards him, without time to be surprised. A moment had been immortalized in her expression, something imperceptible to the naked eye. The miraculous beginning of a smile before it opens up and spills onto the lips or brightens the eyes like a rising star.