“Don’t be naive, Mayo, only the bank knows that.”
“OK, so I’m naive… Now shock me: how big is ‘big’, Patricia?” he asked, getting ready to hear the figure.
“A good few thousand. More than a hundred, more than two hundred, more than…”
“Fuck me,” exclaimed Manolo, who started searching for another cigarette. “And why did he need all that?”
“Wait a minute, Manolo, if I were an oracle I wouldn’t be chewing dust and paper here.”
“Forget it, China, just carry on…” the Count begged her, mentally reviewing an image of Tamara, Rafael’s speech on his first day at school, the head of the camp ringing that bell, their playing field on October Tenth, the cocky unfailing laugh of the man who’d gone missing, and he laughed and laughed.
“I think it’s all about Mitachi. Mayo, the Japanese weren’t coming till February, and Rafael had first to go to Barcelona to make a purchase from a Spanish limited company I’ve still not checked out, but I bet you anything that Japanese capital is involved. And if that’s so, I’ll take a second bet, that it’s Mitachi capital.”
“Hold on, China, hold on, explain yourself.”
“Hell, Mayo, you going brain dead?” protested Patricia, as her smile engulfed her eyes. “It’s as clear as water: Rafael Morin must be doing business with Mitachi as an individual and was playing with money belonging to the enterprise or, rather, the Rose Tree. You on my wavelength now?”
“And how!” said Manolo, taken aback and trying to smile.
“And you reckon papers have gone missing, China?”
“That’s right.”
“Could they be in other filing cabinets?”
“Could be, Mayo, but I don’t think so. If it were just one…”
“So they’ve been removed?”
“Could be, but what’s odd is that they didn’t take everything, including the ones for the daily allowances that Morin himself could doctor.”
“So too many of some and not enough of others?”
“More or less, Mayo.”
“China, I know why there are too many of some, and I think I know where to find the missing ones.”
When Major Rangel told me, You don’t have to wear your uniform here, you shouldn’t work in uniform, and I saw him there in his olive-green jacket, his rank embroidered on his epaulettes and round his collar, and looking so impressive, I thought it was a joke, that I should resign there and then because it was almost like giving up being a policeman when you’d only just made it. The first time I went into the street in uniform, after I’d passed out the Police Academy, I felt half embarrassed, and half that I was really somebody, the gear fitted me like a glove and gave me something extra, made me stand out, and I thought people were always going to be looking at me, even if I didn’t want them to, because I wasn’t like everybody else. I did and didn’t like that; it was really peculiar. As a kid I’d spent my life in disguise; as I was so skinny, I wasn’t like other kids who wanted to be policemen, generals or astronauts. I dressed up for a while as Zorro, then as Robin Hood and then as a pirate with a patch over my eye and should probably have gone into acting and not the force. But I did become a policeman, and the fact is from the start was thrilled to be in uniform and really thought I was seriously playing at being a policeman until the day I drove up to a shack in El Moro in an academy patrol car. When we got out of the car, we were immediately surrounded by lots of people, I reckon the whole barrio was there, and everybody looking at us, I straightened my cap: it wasn’t mine and wasn’t new. I pulled up my trousers and put on my dark glasses, I had an audience. I was important, right? The woman who’d suffered the attack had already been taken to hospital. There was a god-awful silence, because we’d arrived, you know, and a grey-haired black man, who was really old, the chair of the committee for the block, said “This way, comrades” and we went into a small house – it had a zinc roof and its walls were part un-plastered brick, part cardboard and part zinc – and when you went in you felt like an uncooked loaf on the tip of the spatula entering the oven, and you don’t understand why there are still people who live like that, and there she was on the small bed, and I almost fainted. I don’t even like telling people, because I remember and see it as if it were yesterday, and can feel the heat from the oven: the sheet was splattered in blood; there was blood on the ground, on the wall, and she was curled up and motionless, because she was dead; her fatherin-law had killed her while attempting rape, and later I discovered she was only seven years old, and I cursed the day I became a policeman, because I really thought these things didn’t happen. When you’re a policeman, you find out they do, and worse, and that’s your job, and you begin to doubt whether you should do everything by the book or whether you should just get your pistol out and put six bullets into the guy who’d done it. I almost asked to leave, but I stayed in there, and was sent to headquarters and the major told me: you mustn’t come in uniform and you’ll work with the Count, and I think you’ll get to like being in the force. You don’t understand me, do you? Although I no longer walk the streets in uniform and people don’t know who I am, I couldn’t care less, and you’ve helped me not to care less, but people like Rafael Morin have helped me more. What a specimen! Whoever gave him the right to gamble with what’s mine and yours and the old man’s who’s selling newspapers and the woman’s who’s about to cross the road and who’ll probably die of old age without knowing what it is to own a car, a nice house, to stroll around Barcelona or wear perfume worth a hundred dollars, and is probably off right now to queue for three hours to get a bag of potatoes, huh Count? Whoever?
“Oh, it’s you? How are you, Mario? Do come in, Sergeant,” she greeted them with an embarrassed smile, and the Count kissed her on the cheek like in the old days and Manolo shook her hand; they exchanged pleasantries and walked towards the living room. “Anything new, Mario?” she asked finally.
“There’s always something new, Tamara. Papers have gone missing at the enterprise, and it could be evidence against Rafael.”
She forgot her irrepressible lock of hair and rubbed her hands. She suddenly shrank, seemed defenceless and embarrassed.
“Of what?”
“Of thieving, Tamara. That’s why we’re back.”
“But what did he steal, Mario?”
“Money, loads of money.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she exclaimed, eyes glistening; and the Count thought she might cry now. He is her husband, after all? He is the father of her child, isn’t he? Her boyfriend from their school days, right?
“I want to inspect the safe that’s in the library, Tamara.”
“The safe?” That was another surprise and came as a relief. She wasn’t going to cry.
“You know the combination, I suppose?”
“But it’s been empty for a long time. I mean there’s not been any money or anything like that. As far as I recall, there are just the title deeds to the house and papers relating to the family pantheon.”
“But you know the combination, don’t you?” Now it was Manolo who was insisting. He’d become a lean, rubbery, edgy cat once more.
“Yes, it’s in Rafael’s telephone book as just another number.”
“Can you open it now, comrade?” the sergeant repeated, and she looked at the Count.
“Please, Tamara,” he asked as he stood up.
“What’s this all about, Mario?” she asked, although she was really wondering herself as she led them into the library.
She kneeled in front of the fake fireplace, removed the safety grille, and the Count remembered how it was the eve of the day of the Three Kings who always preferred to bring their presents down the chimney. Perhaps his had arrived, amazingly early. Tamara read out the six numbers and started to turn the handle to the safe, and the Count tried to glance over the shoulder of Manolo, who was in the front row. She moved the wheel a sixth time to the left and finally pulled open the metal door and stood up.
“I hope you’re mistaken, Mario.”
“Hope on,” came the reply, and when she moved away, he went over to the fireplace, kneeled down and extracted a white envelope from the cold iron belly. He stood up and looked at her. He couldn’t stop himself: he felt palpably sorry for that woman who’d stripped him to the bone and frustrated him and whom, he now realized more than ever, he’d preferred not to have seen again. But he opened the envelope, took out a few sheets of paper and read while Manolo rocked impatiently on his heels. “Better than we’d imagined,” he said, stuffing the papers back in the envelope. Tamara was still rubbing her hands, and Manolo couldn’t keep still. “Maciques has got an account in
