Yes, yes, a real simple case. And better yet: the next day, case closed. The woman’s husband, the ex-convict who’d done time for the murder of her lover, had fallen to the Ronda del Litoral from one of the pedestrian bridges and thus ended his miserable life. Good thing he threw himself, I thought, because if it had been the woman I was protecting who’d pushed him, who knows what kind of future I would have had.
When I got the check from Mrs. Gallard, I told myself it wasn’t bad at all for my first case, although I was a little sorry about such a hasty ending, especially because I wouldn’t have any more contact with her.
“It’s a shame what happened, but now there’s nothing to fear,” I said.
“No, no, no — it isn’t a shame,” she replied.
“Excuse me?” Once more her voice was so tenuous I could barely hear her. I remember I got a little worried: maybe my ears were stuffed up.
“He was a despot,” she said. “He would have gone after her for sure.”
The patio at the Catamarán was quiet at that hour of the morning. A group of tourists strolled along the beach, and on the path, cyclists and runners crossed each other in opposite directions. It was a sunny day, windless, the sea as calm as a lake, and there was that woman who provoked a flurry of emotions whenever she was in front of me. She was intense, out of reach, and she wrapped me up in a fog. And she was imperfect: her nose was too big, her mouth too straight. That’s what made her truly beautiful. I thought it was a real tragedy to never see her again.
“You don’t need me anymore,” I said, with just the slightest tone of disappointment.
She responded with a firm “No,” and blinked behind her dark glasses while her long hands showed off three rings, one an antique, and a finger touched the edge of the glass in which the ice from a martini was slowly melting.
The ex-convict’s accidental death seemed straightforward. Apparently, he was blind drunk as he headed to the Ronda, so he probably slipped. It had been eleven o’clock at night, when there’s scarcely a soul around. There were no witnesses. He fell like a sack and was run over by a truck. Still, the idea of suicide, or less likely, that someone had pushed him, hadn’t been entirely ruled out. The police completed the task of investigating without too much fanfare. Obviously, they interrogated the widow: if there was a possible suspect, it was her, but she had an alibi, and a very good one; I actually corroborated it. After a few days, it was confirmed that it had been an accidental death and that was that, case closed.
But I resisted the idea of having to stop seeing such an extraordinary woman. I guess I could say that my bloodhound instincts made me think something was off, that if it was a puzzle, it had missing pieces; I knew from my time on the force that all cases are like puzzles. But that wasn’t what brought me back on the case. I was crazy to see her again, to reveal the enigma in her sensuous voice, to ask her to dinner, and... well, to shamelessly throw myself at her. Yet I hadn’t found an excuse to see her until Dos Emes pointed out an important detaiclass="underline" the companion of the woman I was protecting, the lady from the afternoon prior to the ex-convict’s death, was the widow of the man killed twenty years earlier in La Licorería.
“I was going over the file to get information for you when I noticed the coincidence,” explained Dos Emes. “Everything happened so quickly I didn’t have a chance to tell you before. To be honest with you, this death smells fishy.”
“Fishy! Fishy!” I was furious. “What’s the connection? The two women must have become friends after the tragedy.”
“But, boss, doesn’t it strike you as weird?” Even though I’m not her supervisor anymore, she’s continued to call me boss. “Would you become friends with the woman who was your husband’s lover, whose husband was killed by your husband?”
“What a mess!” I said. “But I don’t know. For starters, I don’t have a husband...” At that moment I realized I had the perfect excuse to see Diana Gallard again. “You’re right,” I added very quickly. “I’ll call my client and ask her to clear up a couple of murky points about the case.”
Late that afternoon, we met at the casino; this time I thought it was important to meet in a quiet place.
“What’s there to clear up?” she asked, trying to mask her evident irritation.
“Did you know your aunt and her lover’s widow are friends?”
Her voice changed again. “What’s so strange about that?”
“Girl, you don’t become friends with the woman who rolled around with your husband — the husband later killed by her husband!”
“Perhaps grief brought them together.”
“What was that?”
“That maybe grief brought them together,” she repeated, a little forcefully.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”
I have to confess, I really didn’t want to work this angle. For me, the case was closed. Dos Emes is finicky, and the more I looked at Diana Gallard, the more I was attracted to her. That’s why I soon changed the conversation and invited her to dinner at the best restaurant in the neighborhood.
“Do you know Els Pescadors?” It’s an old-style bar with a kitchen, which has done very well thanks to a group of famous theater people, and has been turned into a fancy eatery on a charming plaza untouched by time, with three beautiful bella ombres trees for shade. “It’s got the freshest fish in town, artfully cooked... By now you must know the quality of Catalonian cuisine.”
I don’t know why she accepted. The easiest thing would have been to disappear; I’ve always wondered if that was part of her strategy. After all, what could Diana Gallard see in me but a nobody who thinks of herself as a Miss Marple. You have your complexes, and at a certain age you know your possibilities and your limits — which doesn’t mean that every now and then I don’t get carried away by naïve dreams. In any case, the truth is that I very much enjoyed the dinner. We talked about her life and mine, what we liked, and though she was somewhat restrained, I got the feeling she had a good time. I think if that hadn’t been for the case, she probably wouldn’t have let slip a confession.
“I’ve lived in Florence since I was very little and the woman you protected isn’t my aunt but my mother.”
“Good god! Then the deceased... I’m so sorry.”
“My mother sent me to Italy to live with her sister so that I’d be free of him.”
“And when they jailed him, why didn’t you come back?”
“I was an adolescent and it’s not good for a kid to have her father in jail for murder.”
I understood that, just as I understood why she wouldn’t feel any special affection for her real father.
“My parents are in Italy,” she said. “I’ve always stayed in contact with my biological mother. She’s been honest with me; she’s never lied to me.”
“That’s why you wanted to protect her now.”
“She deserved it.”
Given the serious turn the evening had taken, I didn’t think it appropriate to suggest spending the night together. I’ve always been a little dumb about these things. And anyway, she was leaving for Italy the next day and I wouldn’t see her again. In the end, the feeling you get for somebody you meet one day and instantly traps you, that desire to please them, to protect them, to care for them — it has no future. So... I contemplated her imperfect beauty one last time: the too-straight mouth, the too-large nose, and I thought: she hired me, I’ve done my duty, she paid me well, and that’s the end of the story, with a wonderful meal and a kiss on the lips — the way you always say goodbye to impossible loves.