The Good Suicides (38 page)

That night he didn’t even hear the howls of the neighboring dogs. The silence was absolute. It would have unsettled someone else, but for him it was already normal. Soon the house would fill with people, children, in-laws, friends, acquaintances, and this peace would end. He sighed: he’d have to go through it. It was the penultimate chapter before beginning a new story. A widower, about to take early retirement, and with enough money to face his twilight age with dignity. Ironic that, if nothing changed, he couldn’t complain about how things had gone for him.

He had to force himself not to smile when he picked up the phone to call his son and tell him that his mother had died.

Manel didn’t like storms, or rain. And snow even less, which according to the news was coming closer to the city. A snowfall that would conclude some horrible, shameful days in which he’d been treated like a criminal. He, who’d scarcely done anything except watch and agree. They’d locked him in a filthy place, with a couple of stinking prisoners, and then taken him to a public hospital where he had to wait to be
attended amid a mountain of old, sick people. Bastards. It wasn’t fair. Hadn’t it been Sílvia who was driving the van? And Gaspar who’d given that dirty North African the whack with a spade? And in the end it was this Mar Ródenas who had killed Amanda and pushed Sara to suicide. But only he, Manel, had had to suffer hell. He, who’d just followed the directives of the majority without hurting anybody.

Life is definitely unfair, he said to himself bitterly as he went to the kitchen to drink his usual glass of water. Cold water to clean him inside before taking a shower. His nightly routine was more necessary than ever after the experiences he’d suffered. Only for a moment he thought how horrible it would be if one of the others went back on their word and confessed what they’d done with the bodies: he didn’t know if that would send him to prison, but the very idea that it could happen brought him out in a cold sweat and made the glass fall from his hand, breaking into pieces on the floor.

He interpreted the breakage as a bad omen. He gathered up the pieces, haunted by the terrible sensation that his life, his safety, lay in the hands of people who wouldn’t mind letting him fall. Seeing him crushed.

Héctor was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn’t hear someone knocking at his door and he was startled when it suddenly opened.

“Inspector Salgado.”

“Yes?”

It was Brais Arjona.

“I know it’s late, Inspector, but they told me that you were still here. And I don’t want to wait until tomorrow to do this.”

Brais took a chair opposite the inspector.

“I’ve told my husband everything. Since I agreed to that damned pact, my only aim was hiding it. Now he’s left, and the fear of losing him has gone with him. You know? I always thought that if this happened I’d be filled with remorse: for what we did there, for Gaspar, for
Amanda, for Sara. For everything … But I felt nothing. Nothing. Not regret, not remorse, not even sadness. It’s as if my emotions have frozen in this damned winter. That’s why I’m here. Because either I came and confessed or I threw myself out the window. And I don’t want to do that. I’ve always thought suicide was a bad solution.”

Two hours later the street received Héctor with the subdued liveliness of a Friday night in winter. It seemed wrong that outside there were normal people, people who didn’t commit atrocious crimes. He took a deep breath and the cold pierced his lungs, and despite everything he took out a cigarette and lit it. Fucking tobacco.

Héctor smoked in silence for a few minutes, under an extraordinarily dark sky. He couldn’t go home like this. Although he understood those who drank to forget, alcohol had never been a refuge for him. What he needed was air, people. To empty his mind of good and bad. It was too cold to stand still, so he decided to walk home.

He took Gran Vía, walking for only a few minutes when he remembered the dream he’d had the night before
Reyes
. There were no toy stalls, or colored lights, or deafening Christmas carols. But he was the same, walking alone. He almost expected a damned glass globe to fall from the sky and trap him. And suddenly, as in the dream, the pedestrians stopped, surprised: they didn’t disappear but just looked toward the sky. Héctor also raised his eyes on noticing it was beginning to rain. It wasn’t rain; no, it was snow, just as they’d predicted.

Héctor was on the verge of smiling. There was something about snow that brought out the child in everyone. He went on, slowly, as he contemplated how, little by little, the street was being covered in an unusual white blanket. And he was near the Universitat Central when, cheered by this unusual weather that wasn’t easing, he took out his cell phone and called Lola, telling himself that that night everything was possible.

In the superintendent’s office, Martina Andreu was finishing her tale, in which she brought her boss up to date with everything that had happened after the removal of Ruth’s file. For his part, Savall listened to her with an expression of concentration and a furrowed brow.

“Leire hasn’t discovered a huge amount, although she didn’t have much time,” the sergeant concluded.

They said it was snowing outside. Inside the office the atmosphere wasn’t exactly warm either.

“Martina,” he said after a few moments of silence, “you know if it weren’t you telling me this I would have to take a series of measures.”

“And also even though it is me, Lluís. No problem, I’m ready to accept them.”

“Let me think about it. One is tired at the end of the week. I learned a long time ago that it’s not a good time to decide anything.”

“In any case, everything is stamped, classified and added to Ruth Valldaura’s file. It’s not much: the contents of the file Castro took from Ruth’s house, some handwritten notes, and the tapes she got from Fernández. This one, with the asterisk, is the one where Ruth appears.”

Savall nodded.

“Poor Ruth. Seeing that character up close can’t have been a pleasant experience. I say it firsthand.” He lowered his voice. “I suppose Ruth
went to intercede for Héctor. God, what naïveté … as if that man could be persuaded of anything.”

“Yeah. But we’re the same. Omar died and, between you and me, they should send that lawyer who did it to a spa instead of putting him in prison.”

“Of course no one will miss Omar,” Savall agreed. “I swear, very few times have I dealt with someone so vile.”

“Yes, I remember him. Well, you have it all there.” Martina thought about her next sentence for a moment. “Lluís, I know I’m not in a position to do so, but I want to ask something of you. Leire has done all this in her free time: leave her alone. If you have to open a case on me, do it.”

He brushed off this possibility with one of his typical gestures.

“You know I’m not going to do that. We’ve spent too many years together, Martina.”

“Thank you,” she said. Deep down she’d expected it, although one never knew for sure with something like that. “Precisely because of the trust we share, I want you to know that neither Castro nor I would have become involved in this if the investigation were in other hands.”

She said it in all sincerity, but at the same time Martina knew that Ruth Valldaura’s disappearance seemed condemned never to be solved. It wasn’t the first time something like that had happened, nor would it be the last.

Savall shot her a reprimanding glance.

“I don’t think you can permit yourself the luxury of criticizing Bellver. Not now, not in front of me. And,” he added, “if you’re referring to Salgado, I don’t want him involved in that again. It was a mistake to allow it in the first place. It went against all logic, and you know it. As well as against every rule.”

“Rules … Good people have too many and bad people hardly any. You know that too.” Martina got ready to get up, but didn’t. She looked at her boss and added in a low voice, “At least put the case in someone else’s hands, Lluís. If I were Héctor and Bellver was in charge of
something concerning me personally … Well, it doesn’t matter. Better I keep quiet.”

“Yes.” He took a deep breath and his large body appeared to swell. “Leave it, it’s Friday and it’s already night. We superintendents shouldn’t work these hours.”

“Neither should mothers,” she replied, going toward the door.

“Speaking of mothers, how is Castro?” asked Savall.

“Well. The birth was a few weeks early, but it all went off without too many problems.”

“It’s not hard to believe Agent Castro’s son was in a hurry to be born,” he joked. “I’ve rarely had anyone so impatient in my charge.”

Martina smiled. It was everyone’s first comment as soon as they met Leire Castro.

From her hospital room window, Leire was also contemplating that dense snowfall, so strange in Barcelona, and told herself: everything seems to be changing. Starting with herself. She had just been with Abel; only a short while, because the baby weighed very little and had to stay in the incubator like a defenseless guinea pig full of plastic tubes. When the nurse told her she had to return him to that tank Leire obeyed, but couldn’t help a strange feeling. She would have stayed for hours observing him, checking that he was all right. Whole, healthy, perfect. The nurse must have read her mind, because she calmed her with the efficiency of someone who has spent years handling premature babies and neurotic mothers. And with that same authority, she sent her to her room to rest. “Don’t worry,” she said to her, “I’ll be here all night, with these four little ones. Nothing will happen to Abel.”

And Leire believed her, although then, as she watched how those flakes were changing the city and converting it into a Christmas-card scene at the end of January, she thought about how terrible it would be if that nurse’s friendly face hid someone capable of making the baby
disappear, telling you that he’d died, and selling him as if he were an object. A baby like Abel, or like Ruth …

She told herself she still had something in her power that proved nothing and implied much, something that opened the door to a new enigma around Ruth Valldaura. If these suspicions were confirmed, Ruth’s life had drawn a sadly perfect circle: she disappeared from a cradle at birth, and from her home, that loft she shared with her son, thirty-eight years later. All those who took pleasure in her as a daughter, mother, lover or spouse were now obliged to search for her as perhaps a woman had done many years before. A single woman who maybe had to face a whole world against her. A hierarchy of white robes and black habits, pieces aligned in this perverse chess, which, to be able to act with impunity, also counted on accomplices in other spheres.

She didn’t hesitate to use the word “perverse.” Leire thought that in this world, in this city disguising itself as pure, bad people existed. And she wasn’t thinking of delinquents, or even killers, but of monsters without conscience like Dr. Omar. The images of Ruth in that old man’s clinic were still fresh in her memory and—she was convinced of it—were still part of that impossible jigsaw. She’d just managed to add new pieces to an incomplete puzzle. I’ll have to accept that, she thought. Someone had told her once that to get older is to give in a little. Well then, she gave in, at least for a few months. And without feeling bad about it.

Leire stayed a little longer at the window, enjoying that white night, thinking about Abel. About her own parents, who were arriving the following day, caught by surprise first by a premature birth and then by adverse weather. About Tomás, who, disregarding everyone’s advice, had started out on the journey and was now trapped on the train. And she remembered what her mother had said to her that day in the kitchen, the premonition that in fact seemed to have come true. “In the end, when the moment comes, you’ll be alone.”

But, as she watched the snow fall, Leire found she didn’t feel like that at all. And with a smile she told herself, actually, it was the complete opposite. Since the previous day she’d never be really alone again.

It hadn’t taken Ruth long to collect what she wanted to take. It would be two days, so she only needed a few things, which she put in a small travel bag. The sun flooding the house made her want to go even more. In an hour she could be lying on the beach, reading a book. With no more obligations than using sunscreen and deciding where she wanted to eat. It was a good idea. She needed a couple of days for herself. Just that, a weekend of sea, calm and boredom. She deserved this small reward after a few complicated weeks, and some very unpleasant moments. She still hadn’t got that sinister man out of her head, and the fact that he might have disappeared didn’t calm her much either. Enough, she said to herself. She’d made a mistake going to see him, but beating herself up for it wouldn’t do any good. She hadn’t told anyone … Sometimes even she didn’t understand why she got herself into these messes, which were really none of her business.