The Good Suicides (11 page)

Today for some inexplicable reason the bus is half empty, so he doesn’t have to pretend to read. If someone looked at him, they would never guess that this neat, clean-cut boy, dressed in unstylish but exquisitely ironed clothes, is thinking about his two colleagues who have died in a matter of months. His face reveals no sorrow or surprise. Rather an intense concentration, as if he were trying to solve an equation too complex for his abilities.

Manel doesn’t see the email with the photo attached or the one that Brais sent in the middle of the night until he switches on the computer at work. His habit of being the first to arrive gives him a few minutes to evaluate the situation and weigh up the options. It doesn’t take him long to decide: with a rapid click he deletes both emails and then empties the bin. His bin is once again clean like his apartment. Free from the least hint of dirt.

Amanda Bonet, on the other hand, does look at her email at home, her personal and work accounts. In fact, it’s the first thing she does every morning and the last before going to bed. Always in the hope of receiving a special message, one of those emails that fill her with excitement and make the night and waking up better. She’s spent months like this, overcome with suppressed emotion, hooked on these messages and passionate weekly encounters. Happier than she’s ever been, although perhaps “happiness” is too simple a word to describe her feelings.

So, this Wednesday, Amanda follows her usual routine and her eyes acquire a special shine on seeing that there are four new messages in her personal account. Not because of the quantity, but because of one in particular. She looks at the senders of the other three: one is from a friend and another from Brais Arjona, and she tells herself she will answer them later, while the third is from an unknown address, with no subject. She deletes it without opening it for fear of a virus and concentrates on the only one that interests her. After the night she’s had, plagued by atrocious nightmares she can’t fully remember, she needs to communicate with him, and she can do so only through email. A cold medium, perhaps, but in any case better than nothing. She opens the message and smiles at the first line, an affectionate, encircling, protective greeting. She imagines him writing it in the middle of the night, thinking of her from his bed, composing this text while he evokes her in his memory.

She continues reading and, as always, she is succumbing to the effect
these words arouse in her. It still astonishes her that he brings about this response from her body with words alone. Sometimes, very rarely, she thinks that these moments satisfy her almost as much as the Sunday-evening encounters. In any case, she knows the reality would have no meaning without this part of the game, in the same way that emails and text messages would lack emotion if there were no moments of skin, touch, rewards and punishments.

She reads the message to the end, savoring every term, every bit of praise, every remonstrance and, above all, every order. He gives her precise instructions on how she should dress, comb her hair, smell. The underwear she has to wear. She sometimes disobeys him—it’s an unwritten rule—although never too overtly. She appears to follow his orders to the letter and it arouses her to put on the skirt he has chosen for that day, dab on the perfume he wants to smell, or be aware that her lingerie, difficult for him to see at work, is not the required color. The fact that they work at the same company adds the charm of disguise to the situation, the risk of illicit romance he accentuates on occasion with controlled daring. What’s more, no one has noticed their games … No one knows about them, especially now Sara is dead.

She doesn’t want to think about Sara. Suddenly she remembers the nightmare that terrified her tonight. The image of Sara running through the long metro tunnel, pursued by a pack of dogs. And her, Amanda, watching the scene like someone watching a horror film, suffering for Sara, trying to warn her that the worst is not behind her, but at the end of that damned tunnel. But it’s useless: the woman fleeing without looking back didn’t hear her no matter how much she shouted. “Stop, Sara. No one is going to hurt you. It’s not dogs, it’s us.” Then she saw herself, with the others, running in vain through the same tunnel to reach Sara. She wasn’t sure if they were following her to save her from her terrible fate or to see her die run over by a train.

She had been waiting for fifteen minutes and was beginning to get impatient, not because she had so many things to do, but because deep down she was afraid Carolina Mestre wouldn’t turn up. She consulted her cell phone to see if there was any message apologizing for a delay. Nothing. Dejected, she contemplated the herbal tea she had in front of her, and for something to do she took a small sip and made a disgusted face. The most insipid brew, matching the place.

She glanced around her, more and more convinced that Carol wouldn’t come to the meeting. She had phoned her on Tuesday morning and, after a kind of monologue on her part, rehearsed to give the right impression, the other woman had hung up with a terse “I’ve nothing to say to you.” Leire had marshaled all her patience and tried again a little later. That time no one answered the phone and she left a long voicemail. Almost a whole day passed with no response from Carol, but when she had already given up, a short, unfriendly text message arrived, asking her to meet in this café, on Wednesday at six. And there she was, in this city center café with white walls and blackboards announcing things like brunch and blackberry muffins, her only company a languid, blond waitress who seemed to think of her job as a necessary step before achieving fame, and another customer, a young tourist plundering the Wi-Fi connection for the price of a black coffee.

Leire flicked through a free magazine, full of photos and interviews
with singers she didn’t recognize and who, with few exceptions, looked like they’d been hungry for a good while. Her infusion was getting cold, but she couldn’t drink it. After the first trimester the nausea had given way to sudden foolish fads about a wide range of foods. At that moment she found the red fruits tea indescribably revolting. She told herself that she would get up and leave when she got to the last page of the magazine, and so she would have had she not received a message on her cell phone, not from the person she was awaiting, but from Tomás. Asshole, she thought as soon as she saw his name on the screen. He’d shown no sign of life since New Year’s Eve—that is, twelve days before.

How are you? I’m coming to see you this weekend. T.

Annoyed at herself because deep down she felt like seeing him, she was preparing to answer him when she heard someone clearing their throat nearby. She looked up and tried to change her irritated glare to a smile. Though she’d arrived almost twenty-five minutes late, Carol hadn’t stood her up.

She’d only seen her once, at the station, just after Ruth’s disappearance, and even then she’d been astonished at how beautiful she was. Very dark, even in winter, her whole body silently proclaimed her physical fitness. With an angular face and hair cut very short but stylishly, she couldn’t help her expression and gestures having a brusque, almost belligerent air, as if she lived in a constant state of alert. Her dark eyes and long eyelashes expressed wariness, and her tone of voice was less firm than on the phone when, after requesting a Diet Coke from the apathetic waitress, she said, “Well, go ahead.”

It wasn’t a very promising beginning, and Leire was going to lumber her once again with the discussion she’d already had twice by phone when suddenly her patience deserted her. The tea she couldn’t drink, the skinny waitress, Tomás’s message and the recent arrival’s indolent pose formed a kind of internal spring that made her lose her temper.

“Listen, if you don’t want to talk to me, you don’t have to. Really.
This isn’t an interview and I’m not here in an official capacity, so there is no obligation on your part.”

Carol raised an eyebrow without saying anything and looked at her intently. Then she shrugged and almost smiled.

“Calm down. Don’t get upset, it mustn’t be good for—”

“I’m not upset,” Leire lied. “Or no more than anyone would be having spent half an hour waiting for a person who, to top it all, doesn’t even have the decency to apologize when they arrive.”

Carol exhaled and looked away. The other customer in the café watched them, though only out of the corner of his eye. Leire grabbed her bag and made as if to get up.

“No. Don’t go. I’m really sorry I’m late.” Carol spoke in a low voice. “In fact, I arrived before you and saw you go in. I went for a walk, to think a bit … And in the end I was late.”

This is better, thought Leire. So she also softened her tone in her reply.

“What do you say we start again?”

“Well, go ahead,” repeated Carol, but this time the sentence was accompanied by a half-smile. And she immediately added, “You said on the phone you wanted to talk about Ruth.”

“Yes. I know it seems strange. I’m not even sure I understand it, but … I have the feeling that this case wasn’t dealt with in the best way.” She corrected herself before her listener could come to inappropriate conclusions. “We were all too involved, Inspector Salgado especially so. And a lot was going on at the time.”

She stopped for a few seconds before finishing her reasoning.

“I’d like to take another look from a cooler perspective. And for that I must know things about her: what she was like, what she did … What worried her.”

Carol nodded slowly. Although a hint of uncertainty clouded her gaze, she seemed determined to give Leire a minimal vote of confidence, at least.

“I wish I could tell you what she was … is like. I don’t want to
speak of her in the past tense and I’m not exactly objective on the subject.”

“It doesn’t matter, be as subjective as you like.” She understood that Carol wasn’t given to confidences, so she decided to help her. “How long were you together?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you …” She wasn’t looking at her; her eyes were fixed on the magazine cover.

“This is between you and me. I already told you, Inspector Salgado isn’t aware of what I’m doing. And I want it to stay that way,” she stressed.

Carol exhaled.

“Héctor … God, how I’ve come to hate that name! Something about that guy, isn’t there? There are men like that, who make the world spin around them. No, I know, they never ask for anything. They act as if they are self-sufficient, but at the same time they are screaming for help. Or that’s the impression they give you …”

Leire took advantage of this road to approach the subject that interested her.

“Is that what Ruth thought?”

“Ruth has spent her whole life understanding Héctor. Not as if she were his mother, but in some reactions she seemed like his … I don’t know how to say it. His elder sister. She was breaking free of this role little by little, although it took a great effort for her to do it.”

“When did you get together?”

“Officially, six months before she broke up with her husband. In reality the mutual attraction arose when we met each other. At least on my part, and bearing in mind how things developed, I’d say on hers also.”

“You were working together, right?”

“Not exactly. Ruth had spent years focusing on illustration. I don’t know if you’re aware, but it pays very badly. She’d had an exhibition as well, though not with much success. But I saw some of her work and I proposed using some of her designs in the field of interior design. At
first I thought she was going to be offended: some artists shudder at the thought of ‘commercialization.’ ” She smiled. “But she threw herself into it with enthusiasm, as if it were an adventure, something that had never occurred to her. And with amazing results.”

Leire knew it. Over the last few days, among other things, she had focused on reviewing Ruth Valldaura’s designs. She had started with a home textiles line, but within a couple of years she had increased her collection to a great variety of objects, revealing immense creativity. If you searched for Ruth Valldaura on Google, in an instant a good number of shops, mostly in Spain, France and Italy, where her products were exclusively sold would appear. Not especially expensive shops, but all original, well chosen by the woman in front of her now.

While they were talking, the young customer had decided to leave the virtual world and return to his true occupation, that of a tourist, and the waitress was still standing motionless behind the bar, less beautiful than she believed herself to be. Leire was thirsty, but she was almost afraid to disturb the stillness of that sphinx by reminding her that she was there to do something useful. Luckily, Carol decided she needed something stronger than Diet Coke and Leire took the opportunity to ask for a bottle of water. Carol went to the bar and returned five minutes later with the water, a glass of red wine and an amusing expression of desperation.

“God, I thought she was going to break in half uncorking the bottle,” she said.

Leire laughed and drank half the bottle in one gulp. She was beginning to like Carol.