Tattoo (17 page)

‘Money, fucking and food.’

He picked up his box, pocketed Carvalho’s coins and left without another word. His exit was worthy of the climax of one of Don José Ortega y Gasset’s lectures. A few moments later, Carvalho got up too. A sea breeze carried the oily smell of the sea down by Puerta de la Paz right up the Rambla. On top of his spike, Columbus was pointing unconcernedly at the noonday sky, in what seemed more like a challenge to the sun than an attempt to indicate the route to the Americas. Carvalho took off his jacket and slung it across his arm. He walked on until he came to the door of Queta’s hair salon. It was open, although there were no clients inside. The sound of his footsteps on the green lino brought a question from the mezzanine office:

‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s me, Carvalho.’

It was Fat Nuria’s voice. Carvalho did not wait for anyone to tell him what to do, but leapt quickly up the stairs and entered the office. All the papers had disappeared from the desk. Instead it was covered by plastic cloth. Queta, Señor Ramón and Fat Nuria were eating Russian salad and fried fillets of fish. The two women looked down at their plates as though they were somehow trying to protect the intimacy of
their meal. Señor Ramón on the other hand had stood up. He laid his serviette carefully on the table and said:

‘Care to join us?’

‘No, thanks. Sorry to have interrupted you.’

‘That doesn’t matter. Let’s go downstairs.’

Queta glanced at Carvalho out of the corner of her eye. Fat Nuria already had her mouth full, but was busy shovelling in another fork’s worth of salad. Señor Ramón emerged slowly from behind the desk and pointed the way back down the staircase. When they were in the salon, he sat in one of the metal chairs. Carvalho did the same.

‘When did you get back?’

‘Last night.’

‘Have a good trip?’

Carvalho pointed to the scar above his eye.

‘More or less.’

Señor Ramón barely glanced at the wound, but sat waiting for Carvalho to tell him his news.

‘The corpse has got a name. He was called Julio Chesma. He was a drug trafficker.’

‘Did he have contacts in Barcelona?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know who they were?’

‘You asked me to discover the drowned man’s identity. That was all.’

‘Yes, that’s true. My wife has a relative who’s a bit wild. A real tearaway, in fact. She knew he had a tattoo with some ridiculous motto. She couldn’t remember what it was exactly, but knew it was pretty unusual. When she read the story of the drowned man in the newspaper she was very worried, so I tried to find out who he was on her behalf. She’ll be very relieved, because that wasn’t her relative’s name.’

‘Let’s go and tell her, then.’

‘No, let me do it. I’ll find the best way. You know what women are like: they get hysterical over nothing. Now she’ll be able to get on with her life. You said his name was Julio Chesma? And that it was to do with drugs? Yes, I had heard something. I knew all the raids in the days after they found the body were connected in some way. Fine. Did you discover anything more about the case? Who he had connections to, for example?’

‘A few.’

‘In Holland?’

‘And here.’

‘Who were they?’

‘I don’t think they’d interest you. You wanted to reassure your wife, and you can do that now.’

‘But I’m curious. After all, it was me who paid for your investigation.’

‘If what you want to know is whether I found any links between Julio Chesma and you, for example, the answer is no. He was a man who lived on a lot of different levels. The police have got as far as drugs. I found the same, but also a few emotional ties he had. You don’t seem to be involved there either.’

‘Why would I be? I never knew the man. It’s all been a mistake. I’ll pay you seventy thousand: the other fifty I owe you, plus expenses.’

‘Correct.’

Señor Ramón clambered back up to his office. Carvalho went over to the foot of the stairs just in case he could overhear any conversation. Fat Nuria was sitting on the third step up, peeling a peach. The peel snaked downwards in one long piece to a plate she had placed on the stair between her legs. She smiled when Pepe poked his head round the corner, but he did not back away. She peered at him quizzically.
Pepe stared back, looking directly at the bluish triangle of her knickers. Fat Nuria quickly snapped her legs shut, and the plate fell down the stairs. Pepe triumphantly pulled his head back. Fat Nuria muttered and bent over to pick up the remains of her peach and the plate. Señor Ramón stepped over the mess and handed Carvalho a white envelope. Pepe stuffed it in his inside pocket. He walked away without another word, but paused at the salon door. Señor Ramón and Fat Nuria were both staring at him from the foot of the stairs with a look of contained fury.

‘I’m still puzzled that you should pay me so much money to find out something you could just as easily have done yourself by walking fifty metres up the street to the nearest police station.’

‘I didn’t pay you to be puzzled. I found out what I wanted to know. So now goodbye and good luck.’

‘I’m not so easily satisfied. I’d like to know a lot more than I do.’

H
e called her at six in the evening, and by eight Teresa had appeared, dressed as a rich young divorcee with leftist leanings, the sort of woman who spends summer in the city and always has another djellaba that she bought somewhere, without even realising it was a djellaba. She could just as easily have been disguised as a Touareg or a Mayan woman in the shadow of Chichen Itzá. She looked like the living symbol of liberated womanhood. She clung on to Carvalho’s arm, and spoke only after he had gone a hundred metres with no indication of where they were heading.

‘What was your idea for tonight? Are you trying to get more information out of me, or do you want to sleep with me?’

‘For the moment I want to have dinner.’

‘I’ll eat any old thing.’

‘Well, I won’t. Here: it’s my first gift of the evening.’

He handed her an old book, the covers of which had faded from pink to off-yellow.

‘
The Physiology of Taste
, by Savarin. What am I supposed to do with it?’

‘Read it at your leisure. I bet you’ve read
Materialism and Empiriocriticism
, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, of course. A … long, long time ago.’

‘Well, now read this one. That way your taste buds will be educated and you won’t torture your friends by asking them to eat frozen croquettes.’

‘What are you exactly? A cop? A Marxist? A gourmet?’

‘I’m an ex-cop, an ex-Marxist and a gourmet.’

Carvalho took the initiative and headed for Quo Vadis. He returned the friendly greetings of the family who ran the restaurant, presided over by the impressive mother sitting in a chair anchored by the front door. When she saw the prices on the menu, Teresa immediately offered:

‘I’ll only have one course.’

‘Are you short of money?’

‘No, but I feel bad spending so much on food. I would have been happy going to a much less fancy place.’

‘The thing is, I still haven’t got over my lingering respect for the bourgeoisie, and I still think they know how to live.’

‘Who says they don’t?’

‘Eighty-nine per cent of the bourgeoisie in the city dine on overcooked spinach and a tiny fish eating its own tail.’

‘At least it’s healthy.’

‘If they added raisins and pine kernels to the spinach and ate a nice piece of dorado with herbs, wrapped in silver foil and baked in the oven, it would be just as healthy, not much more expensive, and yet much more imaginative.’

‘What’s so strange is that you mean it.’

‘Naturally. Sex and food are the two most serious things in life.’

‘That’s really odd. Julio used to say something similar. Not exactly that, but similar. He also wanted to educate his palate. He wasn’t as advanced as you, he was only at the stage of sole meunière or duck with orange. Typical dishes for parvenus.’

When Carvalho saw that all she was ordering was a pair
of fried eggs with ham, he was tempted to throw the bottle of vodka at her. He had started with blinis soaked in chilled vodka, and was hoping for some support. He followed the first course with bull’s-meat steak fillet. Teresa could not help commenting on the mound of dark, bloody meat spilling over his plate.

‘It’s bad to eat all that late at night and in midsummer too.’

‘At home I always have a fire going. Even in midsummer.’

Teresa giggled like a minor starlet in Hollywood films, one who had made a career of playing dippy girls who go from bar to bar in search of adventure.

‘Would you like to see my fire at home?’

‘You may have a lot of imagination when it comes to food, but your pick-up line leaves a lot to be desired. What you just said sounds just like: “Would you like to come back to my place for a drink?” ’

‘I’ve got a bottle of lemonade.’

‘I prefer whisky. I hope you’re not going to disappoint me. Have you got Chivas?’

‘Chivas and all his court.’

‘Fine.’

As they headed up towards Vallvidrera, Teresa was humming ‘Penny Lane’.

‘If you really want to be a gourmet you have to talk differently.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘All the selef-respecting Spanish gourmets I know have a French accent. And you have to choose French-sounding adjectives to describe things. A dish is “insuperable”, or “incomparable”. And you have to say them as though you were a Frenchman. Go on, say “vichyssoise”.’

‘Vichisois.’

‘See what I mean? If you say it like that, it loses all its charm. It sounds as though it’s garlic soup.’

After they arrived, she expressed her delight at everything she saw. She allowed Carvalho to light the fire in the hearth. They sat half undressed near the door, watching the flames with the cool night air from the hills on their backs but with the shifting heat from the burning wood warming their chests.

‘When do you want to talk about Julio? Before or after?’

Carvalho did not want to yield an inch. He calmed his growing desire.

‘Right now.’

‘I think I’ve told you all I know.’

‘The key. The key you used to leave for Julio. Who did he use it for?’

‘I don’t know.’

The glow from the fire decreased at that moment, or perhaps it was Teresa’s face that suddenly betrayed her. As it was, Carvalho knew he should press her harder.

‘Yes you do.’

‘No.’

Carvalho had heard five hundred ‘no’s’ just like that during interrogations where he had been either the interrogator or the interrogated. He picked up Teresa’s djellaba and threw it on the fire. She grew hysterical, rushed towards the hearth, and tried to pluck her dress out of the flames with her fingers. Furious, she turned towards him and shouted that he was a complete idiot, although this lost some of its effect because of her awareness of how she must look: a woman in her underclothes, perspiring from the heat, caught between anger and fear. Carvalho stood up and went over to her. He grasped the back of her neck and squeezed
until he was hurting her. He forced her down to the floor right next to the hearth.

‘Who did he go to Caldetas with?’

His tone of voice was neutral. Teresa tried to discern menace in it, but if there was any, it was well hidden beneath what sounded like almost friendly words.

‘I swear I don’t know.’

‘What do you know, then?’

‘Let me go. I’m burning.’

Carvalho pushed her head even closer to the flames. As he increased the pressure, his voice remained calm.

‘What happened in Caldetas?’

Teresa was sweating freely now. Shiny rivulets ran down her throat and across her hot breasts, which were filling the scanty bra like soft nocturnal fruits. When she spoke, her voice sounded strangled.

‘If you let me go, I’ll tell you.’

Carvalho helped her stand up. He put his arm round her shoulder and they walked back to the far side of the room. He stroked her cheek, and caressed the sheen of her hot nocturnal fruit.

‘It was one Friday. A few weeks ago. I went to Caldetas with a friend. At first I didn’t notice anything. It was he who saw something odd, and eventually we discovered that something must have happened there. There were traces of blood that had not been washed off properly. Everywhere. In the bedroom. The sink. Then outside too. In the garden there were tracks made by a big vehicle, possibly a van or small truck. That’s all.’

Carvalho had learnt enough for now. His fingers did not stop at the uncovered skin. He peeled off the rest of her clothes and admired the striped golden brown and white of her body, poised between fear and desire.

H
e had a confused memory of having rushed Teresa back down the hill at top speed, and when he returned he barely had time to pull back the sheets and collapse naked in bed before he fell fast asleep. He woke up late and did not go down into the city until after lunch. He filled his afternoon by wandering through the old artisans’ district round El Borne. The narrow streets formed a maze that was sometimes plunged into darkness, while at others the filtered rays of the sun caressed its grey stone walls. He feasted his eyes on the worn edges of the buildings, the yellow flowers poking out of any crevice where time had eroded the stone to allow their roots to take hold, the heraldic crests over huge doorways, the silence disturbed only by the cries of street traders or the throb of tools in the distance, hidden deep in gloomy alleyways the sight of workshops lit by twenty-five-watt bulbs so fly-speckled and covered in decades of dust they hardly give off any light at all. Cars were parked in the wider streets, but there seemed to be few going anywhere. Carvalho drank from the fountain outside Santa María del Mar church. He bought several different kinds of olives in a salt-fish shop and ate them slowly with a soft bread roll he had discovered lying in solitary splendour in a basket at the first baker’s to open for the afternoon. Many of the shops and workshops had heavy wooden doors with layers of faded paint and huge studs smeared with the same paint,
relics of a glorious past now turned to rust. The three ages of a door and of the life of this craftsmen’s neighbourhood were given voice in these studs, hammered into wood that was as fibrous as stewed meat.