cubicle door swung to let in the skeletal form of Manuel Palacios, right hand signalling a “V”.
“Maria Antonia,” he said, and returned to his seat opposite the woman, now putting her small handkerchief back in her small bag. “For some days I’ve been under the impression you wanted to tell us something which perhaps had to do with Alexis’s death. Or did I get it wrong?”
The woman looked him in the eye.
“I don’t know why you imagine that.”
“Rather than imagine it, I’m sure, particularly after yesterday when you phoned Alberto Marques and told him you’d found the medallion in Alexis’s trinket-box. I don’t know why, but I’m also convinced you knew it was Alexis’s and that you called the Marquess so he’d call us. Or have I got it all wrong?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure…”
“Let me help you, for you’re the only one who can help us now, if you know something, which I think you… Listen carefully: next to Alexis’s corpse they found a piece of Montecristo cigar which, according to the laboratory, belongs very probably to the box Faustino Arayan has in his lounge… That and Alexis’s medallion placed in his trinket-box don’t prove anything, but they might mean a lot. Do you understand?”
At each of the Count’s words the woman’s head sank a little lower, as if the world had deposited the burden of truth on her neck and all she wanted to contemplate, as she suffered her punishment, was the bag her two gnarled hands were fingering nervously. The Count waited, feeling his hopes fading, defeated by fear, until he saw the burden disappear and Maria Antonia’s face look up, and meet his beseeching gaze. The woman’s eyes now gleamed, though she didn’t look about to cry.
“There were two threads of red silk on the trousers he wore that night. He put them in the washing machine, but I took them out because it was a blue dye that might have stained other clothes. I was surprised because the turn-ups were muddied and that’s why I inspected them closely… Let him fucking rot,” she said, and the Count was surprised by the power in her voice, the evil glint in her eye and the way her hands twitched murderously, oh, Maria Antonia, so fleet of foot. “The son of a whore,” she said, pronouncing every syllable, and she burst into an aristocratic, disconsolate flood of tears.
“I’ve brought you a present, but it’s not to smoke,” the Count warned, placing on Major Rangel’s desk the tray with three transparent envelopes where the massacred cigars were visible.
“What the fuck’s that?”
“It’s the second piece of evidence in the case against Faustino Arayan for murdering his son, Alexis Arayan.”
Major Rangel slapped the palm of his hand down on his desk.
“What the hell do you mean?”
“Don’t play deaf… The great Faustino killed his son in the Havana Woods. Get it now?”
But before Major Rangel really got it, the Count had to relate the results of his conversations with Maria Antonia Galarraga, the fact that Faustino was AB blood group, the story about the medallion with a line etched under the arm and the two threads of red silk on mud-stained trousers which belonged to that same Faustino Arayan.
“But what I still don’t understand is why he killed him,” the ever sceptical Major Rangel insisted.
“The only people who know are Alexis himself, who can talk no more, and God, who gets less of a look in now but was involved in this affair… For what it’s worth, Major, I suppose Alexis did, said, demanded or reminded his father of something so terrible that Faustino decided to kill him. It seems the boy was beside himself and suicidal, and blamed Faustino for all his personal tragedy. Look what he wrote in this page from his Bible… Then he dressed as a woman, went to meet him, they had a row and Faustino killed him. That simple.”
“Has this country gone mad?” the Major asked, and the Count thought that was his moment.
“It seems to be the case. Must be the heat. Look what they did to Maruchi and Fatman Contreras…”
The Old Man stood up.
“Don’t start, Conde, don’t start,” and now his voice floated in the air, exhausted and bitter. “What they did to Fatman? Do you know why I’m here now? Well, because of Captain Contreras… because Captain Contreras shat outside the pan, Mario Conde, and they caught it all sides.”
The Count tried to smile. The Boss was bad at jokes, that’s why he never told any. But this just had to be a joke.
“Are you mad, Major?”
“This is no madness, Conde. For starters, foreign currency trafficking, bribes and cooked investigations. For seconds, extortion and smuggling. And they’ve got loads of proof. What do you reckon now?”
Lieutenant Mario Conde felt in his pocket for a cigarette and, though his fingers touched the packet, he couldn’t take it out. His friend, Captain Contreras, one of the best policemen he’d known. No, he thought, it can’t be.
“This is shit those guys want to smear him with,” he said, still resisting the idea.
“He did the shit and smeared me as well. It’s his fault they’re investigating even my hair… Wait, let me calm down.” But he didn’t shut up, only changed his tone: ever more exhausted and bitter. “He fucked it, Conde, fucked it, and there’s no excuse… This morning the Chief Attorney put out the arrest warrant and they went after Contreras. That’s how things stand… I think you know me: I trusted Captain Contreras, like I trust you, and got my fingers burnt for him, in fact up to my shoulder, and twice I stopped them investigating him, and put my rank, my position, even my rocks on this table to prevent them even suspecting him… But they were right all along, Conde, and I wasn’t. Now I have to explain why I put my trust in Contreras. Do you know what that means? It’s the end for me. ..”
“I’m off home, Boss,” replied the Count, as he half turned round.
“You just stay there, you’re not going anywhere. You finish your case. What the hell’s up with you? Aren’t you a policeman? Behave like a man, and then like police. Understood?”
The Count finally managed to extract the cigarette, light it and taste shit. He decided to sit down, as infinite exhaustion invaded his muscles and mind. The Boss was still the man he admired and respected, and didn’t deserve him acting like a child. Would they screw the Major as well? No, I don’t want even to imagine that, he thought.
“And since you’re so interested in Maruchi’s final destination, listen to this: she too worked for Internal Investigations and was the agent they planted here to trigger off this investigation, from that bastard desk out there, in front of my office door. How do you like that bit of news?”
“It’s squalid and moving,” he opted to say and nodded: another mask had dropped. “Well, Boss, let’s finish this off: how shall we resolve the case? Should I bring him in and kick Faustino up the backside till he tells us his thousand and one nights, or do you have to call in someone and review all this?”
The Major eyed covetously the remnants of cigar in the envelopes. Then he looked in his desk drawer and took out another of those short, sinewy items he’d been smoking over the last few days.
“I’ve got to make a call, Mario. This is a bombshell, and you know it. This will resonate as far as Geneva when Arayan doesn’t go to that conference on human rights… Yes, this country has gone mad. Look, they’re now making cigars in Holguin and putting a Select label on them… A plague on Fatman Contreras’s mother…”
The only thing Lieutenant Mario Conde would regret as investigator in charge of the Homicide Department at Headquarters would be not seeing Faustino Arayan’s face the moment they arrested him, on the charge of murdering his son, and sentenced him, long before his trial, to lose all his perks and trips, all his immaculate affairs and dazzling guayaberas, an embassy close to heaven and his exquisite cigars, a mansion in Miramar with two cars in the garage, the taste of caviar and whisky – and I like whisky and can never drink any – his powerful friendships and the servant who, much to his chagrin, washed his clothes and always inspected them to gather more evidence on his sly sexual adventures which had become shakier and shakier, the same servant who on this occasion hadn’t done her housework properly and had decided to keep to one side those trousers stained with river-mud from which hung two threads of red silk rotted by damp and years of censorship… The Count wondered whether they’d put him in a prison for common prisoners. Surely not. He was Faustino Arayan and, much to the Count’s disgust, they wouldn’t shut him inside a jail with murderers of every kind and type, capable of forcing him to clean out their cells and their sexual backwardness, making his arse as pink as a bunch of carnations without even paying him two copper pesos. Apart from that, he was glad he’d concluded the investigation and could return to his isle of melancholy and longing for coffee which never came, to think about Polly and the next story he was going to write,
