23
Clawing through oblivion was hard work. How could sleep be such toil? He surfaced, blathering like an old unvisited fool in a home for those close to the final terminus. His mobile was ringing, scintillating through the bones of his face. His mouth was as dry as bone meal. The phone ceased. He sank back into the felt grave of drugged sleep.
Was it hours later or just minutes? The mobile’s trilling madness seemed to be tunnelling through his sinuses. He burst out of sleep, flailing. He found the light, the phone, the button. He sucked cool water in over the clod of tongue in his mouth.
‘Inspector Jefe?’
‘Did you call earlier?’
‘No, sir.’
‘What is it?’
‘We’ve just had a report of another body.’
‘Another body?’ he said, his brain as thick as wadding.
‘A murder. The same as Raul Jimenez.’
‘Where?’
‘In El Porvenir.’
‘Address?’
‘Calle de Colombia, number 25.’
‘I know that address,’ he said.
‘The house belongs to Ramon Salgado, Inspector Jefe.’
‘Is he the victim?’
‘We’re not sure yet. We’ve just sent a patrol car out to investigate. The body was spotted by the gardener from outside the house.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Just gone seven.’
‘Don’t call anyone else from the group. I’ll go on my own,’ he said. ‘But you’d better notify Juez Calderon.’
The name knifed through him as he hung up. He showered, head hung, arms weakened by the cruelty of Ines’s words from last night. He nearly sobbed at the thought of facing Calderon. He shaved, turning his face interrogatively in the mirror. It would not be mentioned. Of course it wouldn’t. How could something like that be laid out between two men? It was the end of his relationship with Calderon. ‘Things … that you could never even dream of.’
He put his head under cold water, took an Orfidal, dressed and got into his car. He checked his messages at the first traffic light. There was one timed at 2.45 that morning. He played it back. The message began with some music, which he recognized as Albinoni’s Adagio. Through it he could hear the muffled and desperate squeaking of someone trying to shout or plead through a gag. Furniture knocked against a wooden floor as the music soared, with the violins taking the exquisite pain of loss to new heights. Then a quiet voice:
‘You know what to do.’
A terrible gurgling and rattling sound, that could only have been made by a constricted throat, came through the music. The struggle continued through the adagio’s emotional peaks as the ricocheting furniture became frantic, until there was a crash and an abrupt silence before the violins returned on an even higher note and the message ended.
Horns blared behind him and he took off down by the river to the next red light. He called the Jefatura and asked to be connected to the patrol car. They still didn’t have access to the house but there was confirmation of a body in the middle of the floor of a large room at the back of the house, which gave out on to the verandah and garden. The body was secured to a chair, which was on its side, and there was a lot of blood on the wooden floor. He told them to find the maid or check the neighbours for spare keys.
At the Parque de Maria Luisa he turned away from the river up Avenida de Eritana, past a police station and the Guardia Civil, which were no more than a few hundred metres from Ramon Salgado’s house.
