Miguel Forcade; he must act with the utmost discretion, because he already appreciated the new political implications of what would be a juicy item for the international press, always keen to discredit the government; he should report to him personally twice a day – though he could talk to Major Rangel to his heart’s content – because every evening he had to phone Somebody who in turn had to phone Someone charged by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs with speaking to the American consul to report on how investigations were progressing; and he should try to be as orthodox as possible in his methods, though he had carte blanche to do whatever was necessary: everything on the condition that within the three prescribed days he should get to the truth, whatever that truth might be: the affair could become another international scandal, which the yellow press would feast on, the Colonel emphasized, apparently obsessed by the taste and colour of the mass media, and the only way to cut it dead was by coming up with the truth. And he repeated his organic military salute.
Standing in front of the Vedado mansion from which the currently American, now deceased Miguel Forcade had set out to an unforeseen fate and whither he had returned eleven years later, Mario Conde wondered what might be the price for finding the truth required by his boss… First of all, why did they kill Miguel Forcade like an animal?
“What’s our way in going to be, Conde?” Sergeant Manuel Palacios asked eventually, after slotting away the aerial and locking the car under the irritated gaze of his superior.
“The dead man’s parents live here and his wife must be here as well, as she came on the trip to visit… For the moment let’s just try to find out a bit about Miguel Forcade the man.”
“Who was a bastard?”
“We can take that as read, but we need to know the brand and type,” the Count emphasized as he opened the gate leading to the ’20s mansion, equally a victim of neglect and apathy, crying out for a new lick of paint.
The surrounding garden was a damp, bushy arbour, with a peculiar mixture of shrubs, flowers, creepers, exuberant trees and grasses, although all that floral disorder seemed exquisitely cared for, as witnessed by the tracery of clearly marked paths through the undergrowth that spread across the whole plot. The work of a hand both rigorous and tolerant in relation to the desires of plants was evident in that small tropical forest, where the Count registered the majestic crest of a silk-cotton tree, the dark, gnarled fruits of a
“Josefina loves the scent of the
The face of the old lady who opened the door was as exhausted from lack of sleep as the Count’s: the wrinkles around her eyes were a deep brown and her gaze was veiled by a grey mist from prolonged insomnia or several hours of sobbing. There were remains of white magnesia at the corners of her mouth, fit to turn Mario Conde’s stomach. The policemen introduced themselves, apologized for coming without prior warning and explained why they were there: to speak to the family of Miguel Forcade.
“I am his mother,” responded the old lady, whose voice seemed younger than her face. Much to the Count’s relief, the woman’s tongue executed a precise cleaning exercise and the white cream disappeared. “Come in and sit down, I’ll get his wife. My husband is the one who can’t come down, he’s feeling very poorly today. He is very sick, you know. And this has made him feel much worse, poor man,” she concluded, as her voice faded away, but without losing that youthful spark that so surprised the Count.
“And which of you is the gardener?”
The old lady smiled, as if some of her lost energy was flowing back. “He is… Alfonso is a botanist and that garden is his. Pretty, isn’t it?”
“A poet I know would say it is the place to be really happy,” said the Count, recalling his friend Eligio Riego.
“Alfonso would be delighted to hear you…” conceded the old lady, her eyes moistening.
“Who is it, Caruca?”
A voice emerged from the passage that must lead to the bedrooms and was soon joined by the figure of its owner.
“Oh, forgive me,” said the newcomer, in whose wake came a ruddy, frowning man, coughing slightly, with the dry, uncontrollable persistence of a smoker.
“This is Miriam, my daughter-in-law,” noted the old lady. “And this is an old friend of hers…”
“Adrian Riveron, at your service,” said the man, his cough erupting again.
Even before he said hello and introduced himself, the Count’s first reaction was to start counting on his fingers, but he restrained himself from a sense of arithmetic politeness: according to the report he’d read, Miguel Forcade was forty-two years when he left Cuba, so he must have been fifty-three when he died, right? But now he was looking at a blonde woman, perhaps with an excess of blonde, which he suspected might be the result of vigorous bleaching, with sturdy thighs barely hidden by shorts and prominent breasts under a thin top, poked by nipples set on perforating the material. But the Count also had to look at her decidedly youthful face, where (grey, green, or were they blue?) eyes glinted from between her curly black eyelashes: thirty at a pinch, estimated the policeman, now able to think straight again, swallowing, counting on mental fingers and calculating that in his forties before he left Cuba Forcade had married a woman not yet in her twenties. Basically, he shouldn’t give up hope, he started to speculate, before he called himself to order.
“I was telling your mother-in-law how we have come to ask a few questions about Miguel… I know it’s a bad moment for you, but we are very keen to solve this case as soon we can.”
“You are really very keen?” said Miriam, distilling irony, as she sat down in one of the armchairs.
Her friend, coughing again, swung round like a bewildered seagull trying to find his bearings and found respite against the high back of the chair Miriam had chosen, as if he felt a need to guard the young woman’s back. The Count’s gaze, inhibited by protectionist Adrian, drifted from those handsome legs, and it was only then the policeman realized he hadn’t carried out his customary detailed study of the scene and discovered, unusually, that the room merited the same scientific attentions he’d devoted to the woman. Because it contained the clearest proof of Miguel Forcade’s past as the deputy provincial director of Expropriated Property: furniture in different historical styles, mirrors in carved frames, porcelain from various eras, locations and schools, two enormous grandfather clocks, alive and kicking, a number of canvases with hunting and mythological scenes, still lives and nineteenth- century nudes – which could be dated by the area of flesh exposed – as well as a couple of – Persian? flying? – carpets and lamps that only had to cry Tiffany to prove that was exactly what they were: particularly one on a metal stand, in the guise of a tree trunk supporting a glass frond that was open and weary, perhaps from a visible surfeit of warm fruit ripening from red to purple. Impressed by the accumulation of so many undoubtedly valuable relics, the Count surmised their source to be the expropriation of treasures abandoned by the Cuban bourgeoisie and then abandoned again by Miguel Forcade when he inexplicably defected. A man who knew how to take his chances, he thought, corroborating this conclusion with another glance at Miriam’s handsome flesh, to whom he decided to return the ball soaked in irony: “It’s good to see how a family can bring together so many nice, valuable things, isn’t it?” And his hand described a circle that ended on the woman.
“I expect you’d be interested to know where it all came from?” she riposted, and the Count then realized she would be a difficult mouthful to swallow.
“Of course I would. It may help us find out that truth, an interest in which so much excites your suspicion.”
“I’m not suspicious, Lieutenant. I only know they mutilated Miguel and killed him, here in Cuba. And that’s a fact.”
The Count observed Miriam’s hardened face and the tears beginning to run down the old lady’s rotund cheeks. The silent maternal lament might disarm him so he concentrated on the beautiful widow.
“That’s precisely why we are here… And because this deed reeks of revenge we need to know more about your husband’s past… My colleague and I have a responsibility to find out the truth, and I think if you help us it will be much easier, don’t you?”
Miriam gave a long, tired sigh. She seemingly accepted the truce, but didn’t grant the Count the benefit of a momentary hesitation.
“What I think is hardly the issue now. Just tell me, what would you like to know?”
