‘Why?’
‘Your father didn’t think that Raul Jimenez had the right to alter the course of another man’s life. I said, if it was for the better, so what? He’d made his fortune out there, he’d become famous … But he wouldn’t listen. He stormed around the house shouting: “He ruined me, that cabron ruined me.” And for the life of me, Javier, I couldn’t see the ruination in all he’d achieved.
‘He was also maddened just by the fact that Raul Jimenez had told him what he’d done. He couldn’t understand it, until he found out what had really happened to the man’s family. The wife had committed suicide. The little boy died. The daughter was in a mental institution and the son didn’t speak to him any more. It was a disaster and that’s when he realized that the last thing Raul Jimenez wanted at this stage of his life was an intimate friend. What he wanted was a new life … one without Francisco Falcon.’
‘You said earlier that my father had solved his loneliness problem.’
‘He told me he didn’t want any friends, that what he really wanted was companionship.’
‘What about Manuela?’ asked Javier. ‘Didn’t Manuela ever go and see him?’
‘She did, but he never liked Manuela. She came for a few hours a week, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. He just wanted somebody to fill the empty spaces in the house. He liked the idea of young people, uncomplicated and forward-looking people, who would be relentlessly cheerful. And he came to an agreement with the university here and in Madrid that they could send him the occasional student for a month at a time. It worked for him. I’d have hated it.’
‘He didn’t tell me about that.’
‘Maybe he didn’t want to admit that to you,’ said El Zurdo. ‘Maybe he didn’t want to alter the course of your life.’
It was nearly dark by the time Javier had taken a long circuitous route home. As he entered the house he kicked two packages across the floor. Both had been pushed through the letter box and neither was addressed. Only the numbers 1 and 2 were written on the outside.
He took them to his study, where he had a pair of latex gloves. He opened the first package and took out an envelope that had Sight Lesson No.4 written on it. Inside, the card read: La muerte tragica del genio. The tragic death of true genius.
There was something else in the package with more weight to it. He laid paper on the desk and emptied out what he thought was a piece of glass, until he saw that it was the back of a shard of mirror. He turned it over with the nib of a biro. The initials P.L. were written in what looked like dried blood.
Falcon sat back in his chair. He knew what Sergio was doing. He was hijacking the media’s myth by telling him that he’d used the shard of mirror to distract Pepe Leal when he went in for the kill. Javier didn’t believe it. It just wasn’t possible. But it interested him because he realized that he’d finally forced Sergio’s hand. There was some desperation in this arrogant and unsubtle ploy.
He tapped the card with the sight lesson written on it. The same words his mother had used when telling Manuela about the contents of the clay urn. Hints pressed against the membrane of his consciousness, but nothing came through. He flipped the card across the desk. He opened the second package, which contained a set of photocopies. He could tell from the handwriting that these were his father’s journals.
7th July 1962, Tangier
I have quite lost track of Salgado since our return from NY when, just as that thought had drifted across the flat calm of my horizon, a boy arrives with a note from him written on Hotel Rembrandt notepaper and telling me to come immediately to room 321 alone. I’m not so surprised by the note. There is no phone here. It’s only as I make my way to the Boulevard Pasteur that I become unnerved. What could have happened that he should think to interrupt me in my work time? I am intrigued and disturbed. The lift in the Hotel Rembrandt, which is only a few years old, is one of those halting affairs that make me feel as if the cable is about to snap at any moment. I arrive at the door to 321 in a state of impending doom. There’s a short corridor between the main door and the door to the room, one of those perplexing design features that seem to be made for just this kind of occasion. It means that Salgado can pull me inside and explain the direness of his circumstances without the full horror of the incident overwhelming us.
The short version — there’s a dead boy in the room.
Salgado tells me he’s accidentally been killed.
‘Accidentally?’ I ask.
‘He fell over and hit his head,’ he says. ‘He must have hit himself in the wrong place, but he’s definitely dead.’
‘How did he fall over?’
‘Tripped on his way to the bathroom … but I’ve put him back on the bed.’
‘Then why don’t we call the police and explain the incident like that?’
Silence from Salgado.
‘Shall I just take a look at him?’ I ask, and don’t wait for an answer but push into the room and find the naked boy growing out of a twist of sheet. An arm is flung out. His tongue protrudes from his mouth and his eyes are bulging. There are bruise marks round his windpipe.
‘I don’t think he knocked his head, did he, Ramon?’
‘It was an accident.’
‘I don’t know how you accidentally strangle someone, Ramon.’
‘I was trying to make it better.’
We blink at each other and Ramon suddenly turns to the wall and starts hitting his head against it and intoning something which sounds like Basque. I sit him in a chair and ask him what happened. He presses his fists into his head and repeats over and over that it was an accident. I tell him I’ll call the Chief of Police and he can tell him just that, with the boy lying on the bed sodomized and strangled. He gets up and starts striding about the room, throwing his hands about and making great declamations in the same strange tongue. I slap his face. He
