them.
‘I wondered how long it was going to take,’ said a voice, as Falcon walked to the bar.
The cutlery activity stopped, the soap on TV continued. The dark-faced man with horse teeth who’d spoken stood up. He had grey hair just visible under a black hat, which had a number of badges and brooches pinned to the band. He was dressed head to toe in black.
‘You must be Javier Falcon,’ he said.
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because you’ve just walked in here with a roll of canvases under your arm, looking like someone’s lost child.’
‘El Zurdo?’
The man pointed him to a chair opposite his own.
‘Have you eaten?’
‘You were wondering how long it was going to take …’
‘For Javier Falcon to come and find me,’ he said, looking over his shoulder to the blackboard menu. ‘Now,
El Zurdo shouted the order across. Falcon leaned the canvases against the adjoining table. Red wine was poured for him.
‘We only met once,’ said Falcon.
‘I have an eye for faces,’ said El Zurdo. ‘You didn’t like me, I remember that.’
‘We didn’t even speak.’
‘You wouldn’t shake my hand.’
‘You’d just used it to scratch yourself.’
El Zurdo laughed. A woman put a plate of lamb stew in front of Falcon.
‘What have you got?’ asked El Zurdo, nodding at the canvases.
‘Five paintings. I don’t recognize them. They’re not my father’s work. I wanted to know if you copied them.’
El Zurdo pushed his empty plate back and took a toothpick from a jar on the table. Falcon started eating.
‘Why do you want to know about these paintings?’ asked El Zurdo. ‘You’re a cop, aren’t you? Your father told me.’
‘I’m not working, if that’s what you mean,’ said Falcon. ‘I’m on leave.’
‘Do you want to sell them?’
‘I want to know what they are before I burn them.’
El Zurdo lit a cigarette, stood and pushed two tables together. He undid the roll of canvases and leafed through all five dismissively.
‘They’re all mine,’ he said. ‘They’re copies I did for your father, but they’re not his work. He asked me to do him a favour and make copies of these paintings for a Swiss painter who’d just sold them at Salgado’s gallery and wanted to avoid paying tax. Of course, the Swiss guy should have taken the copies with him to show Customs that they hadn’t been sold. So I don’t know what they’re still doing in your father’s studio.’
‘Did my father give you the canvases?’
‘Yes. They were all old and there was something already on them which he’d painted a wash over.’
‘Something he’d done?’
‘I didn’t ask.’
El Zurdo smoked some more. Falcon ate his food.
‘Do you want to know what’s under there?’ asked El Zurdo.
‘I think so.’
‘You don’t sound so sure.’
‘You think you want to know until you find out what it is.’
They caught a cab, which took them through to Calle Larana and the Bellas Artes Institute. They went across the internal patio and up to the first floor. For 15,000 pesetas a friend of El Zurdo’s put the canvases through an imaging machine and gave them five print-outs of the original work underneath. What came out looked like nothing: a mass of cross-hatching, swathes of black on white with the occasional discernible detail such as an eye, a leg, a hoof, an animal’s tail.
El Zurdo could make nothing of them. They parted at the building’s steps. El Zurdo told him if he needed to talk again he was always in La Cubista for lunch. Javier walked home. He dumped the canvases and print-outs, called Alicia and arranged to see her that evening.
‘I’ve been relieved of my command,’ he said, as Alicia took hold of his wrist. ‘I go back in ten days’ time for psychological assessment.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ she said. ‘Your behaviour was probably becoming quite strange.’
