Havana Gold

same faces returning, you get me? We don’t like you giving us so much to do. But at the end of the day we do our homework. You’ll be here until we know the hour your great-great-grandfather was born and the rest, because you’ll tell us. Now tell us what you know about Lissette Nunez, and the marijuana that ended up at her place or should we meet again at twelve after the late-night film?”

Lando the Russian scratched his chin again, shaking his head. His eyes had darkened another degree and his look was despairingly opaque.

“I swear to you, general, I know nothing about any of that,” he said and shook his head again. At that moment the Count would have given anything to know what lay under the apocryphal Russian’s crop of fair hair that danced to the endless shaking of his head.

“Come on, Manolo. See you later, Orlando, and thanks for the promotion to general.”

La vie en rose, sang Bola de Nieve, taking a chance with his French and openly challenging Edith Piaf. Terrific, the Count muttered and tried to think for a moment: interrogation cubicles provoke a feeling of enclosure that nurtures confessions. They are the anteroom to trial and prison, and finding yourself defenceless there can be a burden that’s hard to bear. To leave those four cold, oppressive walls is like a resurrection. But the presence of a policeman in an everyday environment can trigger the unexpected: fear and suspicion spring up with the need to conceal that undesirable apparition from others, and sometimes such fears cause the hare to make the necessary leap. Tra-la-la, he hummed. No stopping this policeman: and he decided he’d go and see the head teacher on home territory. He’d go back to Pre-Uni. A very vague idea had come to him while talking to Lando, and he’d suggested to Manolo they should go and converse with the head.

It was a benign Monday morning outside headquarters. The wind had declared a truce and a resolutely summery sun varnished the city streets. Manolo had tuned into a programme dedicated to Bola de Nieve on the radio and the Count decided to concentrate on the voice and piano of the man who was the song he sang: he was singing ‘La Flor de la Canela’, ‘with jasmine in her hair and roses on her face…’ and the lieutenant remembered the unexpected end to his last meeting with Karina. He saw himself disarmed, without arguments to prevent her departure, when she was dressed and saying goodbye on his doorstep and, looking more like a whinging kid than a pursuer of myths, he felt like stamping the ground. Why was she leaving him? The wholehearted surrender of that woman transformed by the sharp scent of sex didn’t fit with the unbridgeable distance she’d then imposed. From the start he’d thought he should have talked more, got to know and understand her, but what with his desperate monologues and the sexual conflagrations that absorbed them, there’d hardly been time to breathe, recharge batteries and drink a coffee.

The car drove very close to the hospital where Jorrin lay and turned into Santa Catalina, an avenue planted with flamboyant trees and memories, parties, cinemas and emotional discoveries of every kind, a vie en rose that seemed increasingly remote in his memory, locked in a time that was lost for ever, like paradise itself. Bola de Nieve was now singing Duerme, negrito and the Count wondered: how can he sing like that? It was a melodious whisper exploring subdued, daring notes, rarely visited because of the narrowness of that final frontier between song and mere murmur. The flamboyant trees on Santa Catalina had resisted the battering from the winds, their red flowery crests a challenge to any artist. Outside the walls of headquarters life sometimes seemed normal, almost en rose.

Manolo parked to one side of Pre-Uni and switched off the radio. He yawned and his over-prominent bones shook, as he asked: “Well, where are we at?”

“The head hasn’t told us everything he knows.”

“Who ever does, Conde?”

“It’s a very peculiar case, Manolo: everybody’s lying, I don’t know if it’s to protect someone or protect themselves or because it’s a habit they can’t give up. I’m up to here with all this lying. But what I’m after now is what this man can tell us.”

“Do you think it was him?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know anything, but I do think he doesn’t…”

“What then?”

The Count looked at the school’s sturdy structure. He was now wondering whether he hadn’t decided to see the head simply because he wanted to return, as if eternally guilty, to the scene of his favourite crimes.

“There’s a third man in this story, Manolo. I lay my neck on it. The first one is Pupy, who’s got a lot of fingers in the pie but I don’t think he’d have dared, he’s got too much street sense to ruin it with a woman whose antics he was too familiar with. Besides, he knew how to get what he wanted from her. He’d never have strayed so far. The second is the head teacher, who has even got good reason: he was in love and probably jealous. But if his alibi stands, it would have been impossible for him to go to Lissette’s at eleven, and batter and kill her. And the third man? If there is a third, he was the one who killed her and he must have been at the party, and although Lando’s fingerprints didn’t show up in the flat, I’ve not yet ruled him out. This is how I see things right now: the party ended, the third man stayed behind and for some reason killed Lissette, because of something she did to him or refused to give him. Because he didn’t stay to rob or rape her – neither of those things happened – and it’s even possible the last one to bed her didn’t murder her. What did Lissette have to interest him? Drugs? Information?”

“Information,” replied Manolo. His eyes glinted with joy.

“Huh-huh. Information about what? About drugs?”

“No, I don’t think so. She was always a live wire but I don’t think she was part of Lando’s set up and was always careful not to burn her fingers.”

“But, just think, Caridad Delgado only lives three blocks away from Lando.”

“You think they knew each other?”

“I really don’t know. But what information could she have had?”

“She knew something.”

“Or rather something worth money, right?”

Manolo nodded and looked at the Pre-Uni.

“What’s the headmaster got to do with all this?”

“I don’t know whether it’s straightforward… or convoluted. But I think he knows the third man we’re after.”

“Hey, Conde, this is like the Orson Welles film they showed the other day.”

“Don’t tell me you watched a film? Great! One of these days you’ll be telling me you’ve read a book…”

“Today I am in a position to offer you a cup of tea,” said the headmaster pointing them to the sofa that occupied one wall of his office.

“No, thanks,” said the Count.

“I don’t want any either,” added Manolo.

The head shook his head, as if disappointed, and pulled his chair up until it was opposite the policemen. He seemed prepared for a long exchange and the Count thought perhaps he’d chosen badly again.

“Well, have you got anywhere?”

The Count lit up and regretted not accepting the tea. The only coffee he’d drunk at dawn had left a feeling of abandon in an empty stomach he’d neglected after wolfing the leftovers of the chicken rice that had survived Skinny Carlos’s hunger. A hungry cop isn’t a good one, he thought and said: “The investigation is ongoing and I must remind you you’re still on the list of suspects. You’re one of the five people who might have been in Lissette’s house the night she was killed, and you had good reason to kill her, despite your alibi.”

The headmaster shifted uneasily, as if startled by an alarm bell. He looked round, as if worrying about the privacy of his office.

“But why do you say that, lieutenant? Isn’t what my wife told you enough?” His tone was pitiful, a barely contained anguish, and the Count thought again: no, he was in the right place.

“For the moment let’s just say we believe her, headmaster, and don’t worry. We’re not interested in messing up your marriage and quiet family life, let alone your prestige in this school, after twenty years in post, I can assure you of that. Is it fifteen or twenty?”

“So what do you want, then?” he asked, ignoring the exact figure the Count was after, hands raised like a child expecting to be punished.