The Whispering City (2 page)

2

At nine that morning, as she contemplated her half-empty cup of coffee with sleepy eyes, Ana Martí heard the telephone in the stairway. It was kept in a nook beneath the first set of stairs, inside a box with a shutter door that closed with a lock. Only Teresina Sauret, the doorkeeper and the Serrahimas, the building’s owners, who lived on the main floor, had the key. When the telephone rang, the doorkeeper picked it up and told whomever it was for that they had a call. If she felt like it; sometimes she wasn’t in the mood. Tips or Christmas bonuses, either the expectation of receiving them or the generosity of their presentation, spurred her on to climb the stairs.

That day, it was the possibility of claiming the two months of back rent Ana owed that made her legs swifter, and soon after the shrill ringing had got her out of her flat, the doorkeeper had already reached the third floor – which was really the fourth, when you counted the unnumbered main floor – and was banging on the door.

‘Señorita Martí, telephone.’

Ana opened the door. Teresina Sauret, planted in the middle of the doorway, blocked her exit. Cold, damp air came in through the spaces not filled by her plump body, which was squeezed into a plush robe. Ana grabbed her coat, in case the call was long, and the keys to lock up against the doorkeeper’s prying eyes. Teresina must have thought she was looking for the money, and she moved aside. Ana slipped through the gap to exit her flat and closed the door, leaving Teresina’s face a few centimetres from the wood, at the height of the bronze peephole, round like a porthole. The peepholes on the other three doors shone in the light of the bare bulb that hung from the landing ceiling. There were no lamps in the hallways of the floors for let, only in the entryway and the main floor, for the Serrahimas’ visitors. The owners seemed completely unconcerned by this fact, or what the tenants might think about it.

The doorkeeper muttered something; it was unlikely to have been anything nice or pleasant, but Teresina Sauret took the precaution of not saying it too loudly. That way, Ana, the layabout, would get the message just from her tone, yet anyone overhearing it would fail to understand.

Meanwhile, Ana ran down the stairs, reached the nook and picked up the heavy Bakelite receiver Teresina had left resting on the box.

‘Hello?’

‘Aneta?’

It was Mateo Sanvisens, editor-in-chief at
La Vanguardia
.

‘Do you know Mariona Sobrerroca?’

How could she not? She had been writing for the society pages for almost two years; there was no way she could have escaped knowing who she was. The widow of a posh doctor and heiress to an old Catalan lineage, she was part of the fixed cast at all the city’s important parties.

‘Of course,’ she replied.

Moving away from the door to Ana’s flat, Teresina Sauret had begun her descent, slackening her pace to be able to catch part of the phone conversation. Her feet drew closer with exasperating slowness.

‘Well, now you don’t know her, you
knew
her.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘And you need the obituary for tomorrow…’ she started to say.

The lines of text were already writing themselves in her head: ‘Illustrious Mariona Sobrerroca i Salvat is no longer with us. Garmendia’s widow, generous benefactor of…’ Sanvisens’s next remark snatched the mental typewriter right out of her head.

‘Aneta, dear, are you daft, or has watching too much opera made you feeble-minded? You think I would call you for an obituary?’

She had been ghostwriting for the newspaper long enough to know when she should leave Sanvisens’s questions unanswered. She took advantage of the silence to nod goodbye to the doorkeeper, who had finally reached the last stair. Teresina Sauret went into her flat. The sound of her slippers against the floor stopped, as was to be expected, just behind the door.

‘She’s been murdered.’

She must have startled the doorkeeper with the exclamation that slipped out when she heard those words, because there was a bang against the door.
I hope she hit her head good and hard
, thought Ana.

‘I’d like you to follow up on the matter. Will you do it?’

She had a lot of questions. Why me? Why isn’t Carlos Belda doing it? What are the police saying? What do you want me to do? Why me? She had so many questions that she simply said, ‘Yes.’

Mateo Sanvisens asked her to come into the office immediately.

She hung up, then raced up to her flat with long strides, put on some shoes, grabbed her bag and headed down the stairs. Teresina Sauret was closing the little door to the telephone.

‘Such manners! What’s the rush?’ Ana heard as she went running out onto the street and headed towards the Ronda.

She passed, without a glance, the graffiti of José Antonio’s face over block letters that read ‘HERE WITH US!’ Stencilling the founder of the fascist Falange party – the martyr, as many called him – was considered less an act of vandalism than one of patriotism. Which was why no one had dared to complain about it. They were too afraid of drawing attention to themselves. Since there were no trams heading towards the Plaza de la Universidad, she chose to walk rather than wait. She walked so briskly to Pelayo Street that soon her legs didn’t feel the cold. At the newspaper office she waited for Sanvisens to answer her questions. Maybe he’d even tell her why he’d called her instead of Carlos Belda, who always handled the crime news.

‘Carlos is off sick. He’ll be out for at least a week, if not two,’ Sanvisens said after greeting her and looking at his watch, as if he had timed her progress since the call.

Out of courtesy, she asked, ‘What does he have?’

‘The clap. They treated it with penicillin and he had a reaction.’

‘Maybe the penicillin was bad.’

It wouldn’t have been surprising. There had been more than one case of adulterated medication that had left a trail of the dead and chronically ill. Adulterating penicillin was a crime punishable by death. So was tampering with bread or milk. But it was still done.

‘Maybe,’ said the editor-in-chief.

Mateo Sanvisens wasn’t particularly fond of small talk. He was a man of few words; curt, some said, like his gaunt build, the sinewy body of a veteran mountain climber, with hands covered in ridges as if they’d been carved with a chisel. In his youth he had scaled several high peaks in the Alps and he knew the Pyrenees, where he was from, better than the smugglers did. In his office he had pictures of some of the highest peaks in the world, including Everest.

‘The tallest mountain, though not necessarily the most difficult. That’s something you often find out when you’re already on your way up. I’ll get there soon,’ he would say frequently.

Beside it was the marked page of
La Vanguardia
that had announced, two years earlier, in 1950, that the French expedition had reached the summit of Annapurna.

As soon as Ana had settled in front of his desk, Sanvisens immediately started in on the details of the case.

‘Mariona Sobrerroca’s maid found her dead at her home yesterday.’

‘How was she killed?’

‘She was beaten and then strangled.’

‘With what?’

She was embarrassed by the thin little voice that asked the question, but a growing excitement had seized her throat.

‘By hand.’ Sanvisens mimed strangulation.

The how, where and part of the when had been resolved in few words.

‘Is this news really going to be covered?’ she asked.

News of murders wasn’t well received by the censors. In a country where peace and order supposedly reigned, local crimes weren’t supposed to bring that image into question. There were clear orders on the matter, but also, as with everything, exceptions. It seemed this case was going to be one of the latter.

‘It can’t be swept under the carpet. Mariona Sobrerroca is too well known, and her family, particularly her brother, is very well connected, both here and in Madrid; so the authorities have decided it is better to report on the investigation and use it to demonstrate the effectiveness of the forces of order.’

The last few words sounded as if they were in quotation marks. Ana caught the sarcasm.

‘What if it turns out she was killed by someone close to her, a top society person?’

A series of photos of Mariona Sobrerroca in the society pages paraded through Ana’s mind, as if she were turning the pages of an album: in evening wear at the Liceo Opera House beside the wives of the city’s high-ranking politicians; delivering armfuls of Christmas presents to the children of the Welfare Service, along with several leaders of the Women’s Section of the Falange; at a debutante ball; with a group of ladies at a fundraiser for the Red Cross; at dances, concerts, High Mass…

‘Well, it would serve as an example of how we are all equal under the law.’ The sarcastic tone was still there. ‘But I don’t think so. It seems to have been a break-in. Whatever it was, we are going to report on it. In an exclusive.’

He paused as his eyes searched for something on his desk.

‘The case is in the hands of a specialist, Inspector Isidro Castro of the Criminal Investigation Brigade.’

Isidro Castro. She didn’t know him personally, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d written about him, although it would be the first time she did so under her own name. Castro had solved some important cases in recent years.

She remembered one in particular: the disappearance and murder of a nurse at the San Pablo Hospital, because she had written the copy that had appeared under Carlos Belda’s byline.

Castro had hunted one killer after another. The first was ratted out by an accomplice, who in turn accused a third man. Not a terribly long chain of betrayals, but even if it had had ten links in it, Castro would have managed to connect them all. The police used brutally effective methods, and Inspector Castro, over the years he’d been working in Barcelona, had earned a reputation as the best. Soon she would meet him. What would he look like? What would the person behind ‘the magnificent investigative work carried out by the Criminal Investigation Brigade’ – as she had written in the article – be like? It was impossible to report on crimes in Spain without using those kinds of formulas. Crimes were to be solved, and order – the country’s natural state – restored. She had done a good job. You had to do things right, even if someone else was going to get the credit for them. Perhaps Sanvisens appreciated her work, even though he had never said it, and this opportunity was her reward.

The editor-in-chief had given up his attempt to find whatever it was with just a glance and was now rummaging through the mess of documents, newspapers and notebooks that covered his desk. Ana knew that he was searching for something for her.

She owed a lot to Sanvisens and his friendship with her father, despite the political differences that had irrevocably distanced them. He hadn’t spoken to her father since he had been released from jail and dismissed from his post, and Sanvisens never even uttered his former colleague’s name. In fact, he grew angry if Ana even mentioned him. As for Ana, she struggled to banish the suspicion that her job at the newspaper was some sort of compensation because Sanvisens had the position that should have been her father’s. When he offered Ana her first article, she’d asked her father for ‘permission’ to accept it. He gave it to her tacitly, with the phrase, ‘We are a family of journalists.’ The name Mateo Sanvisens was still taboo.

And now, finally, she was getting to do some serious journalism, writing about a murder case. Her surprise, and the question ‘why me?’, must have been written all over her face, because Sanvisens, as he pulled a small piece of paper out of a pile of letters, looked at her and said, ‘Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted? Well, here’s your chance. Make the most of it.’

At the theatre or the opera, every understudy dreams of the lead losing his voice. That’s their moment, having mastered their role while watching in the wings: to step onto the stage and dazzle the audience.

And she had got a lot of answers, but she still had one final question. ‘Will it be my own byline…?’

Sanvisens seemed to have been expecting it.

‘Yes. What you write will appear under your byline.’

He read her the note he held in his hand.

‘Now get moving. You have to be at police headquarters at eleven. Don’t forget your ID. Olga is doing an accreditation for you.’

Suddenly Ana realised exactly where she had to go.

‘On Vía Layetana?’

‘Yes, that’s what I said. Is there a problem?’

‘No, no. I just wanted to make sure.’

There was no way she was going to admit to him that she, like so many others, was frightened by the mere mention of that building. Sanvisens looked at her somewhat suspiciously. Ana averted her eyes to avoid giving him any cause to doubt her suitability for the job. She had to step into the spotlight and shine, even if the setting was one of the most threatening in the entire city. This was her chance. ‘
Ritorna vincitor
,’ ran the aria from
Aida
that struck up in her head.

‘Eleven o’clock, Vía Layetana,’ she repeated, as if making a mental note.

‘Inspector Isidro Castro will be expecting you,’ added Sanvisens.

She tried to thank him, but Sanvisens wouldn’t hear of it.

‘Do me a favour, Aneta: when you leave, find the errand boy and tell him to go to the pharmacy and get me some of those little sachets of magnesium.’

Bringing a hand to his stomach by way of explanation, Sanvisens then abruptly turned round and started banging away at his typewriter. So she didn’t get a chance to ask him if Isidro Castro knew that the person covering the story was a woman.

A woman who, after giving the errand boy the message, was so euphoric that she didn’t realise she was speaking aloud: ‘This time, the dead woman does have a name.’ Unlike the macabre joke Carlos Belda had played on her when she first started working at the paper.