Captain Jorrín smiled and slapped him on the shoulder.
“And what about yourself, Conde? You want to win a refrigerator?” he quipped as he took him by the arm and pulled him towards the Department of Information. The Count tried to explain the Boss was expecting him but told himself the major could wait.
“How’s your case going, Captain?”
“I think it’s going real well, Conde,” said Jorrín the veteran, almost smiling. “A witness has come forward who can probably identify one of the boy’s killers. We now know there were at least three and according to our witness they’re very young. We’re going to do the identikit portrait now.”
“You see, Maestro, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel, right?”
“Yes, I know. But that doesn’t solve everything… Just imagine if we finally get our hands on the murderers, and they turn out to be under eighteen. Already murderers, just imagine. That’s the real problem. It’s not just a boy who’s been kicked to death, but the fact that there are three others who will end up inside for a good few years and they’ll never become the people they should have turned into. They’re killers.”
The Count studied the wrinkles furrowing Captain Jorrín’s face and felt his arm in the desperate grip of a man who’d spent half a life hunting criminals.
“At the start I thought we’d react like doctors,” he said, staring him in the eye. “That with time we’d get used to the blood.”
“No, I hope that never happens. These things must hurt, Count. And if one day they don’t, that’s the time to give up.”
“Good luck, Maestro,” he said, opposite the Department of Information, and rushed off towards the staircase.
Maruchi’s table was also enjoying the Sunday magic: it was completely clean, and apparently sad and abandoned, without the flower the young woman brought daily. When he was by the office door he heard the major’s voice, knocked softly and heard him say: “Come on in.”
The Boss sat behind his desk, in civilian dress, wearing a grey-and-white striped pullover that emphasized his handsome chest and showed off his muscular neck. The major’s eyes pointed him to a chair while he continued on the phone. He was talking to his daughter; something was amiss, “Don’t be upset, Mirna, after all… All right, yes, phone your mother and tell her I’ll pick her up to go and have lunch with you, a good idea.” He added “give the kid a kiss from me, right” and hung up. All that time he spoke in a warm charming tone, never grumbled, the most pleasant sample the Count had ever heard from his broad repertoire of voices.
“What a bloody mess,” rasped the major after retrieving the Davidoff 5000 he’d just lit. “Another one who’s gone missing: my son-in-law. But we know where he is. He’s gone off with a nineteen-year-old bimbo. And my stupid daughter still loves him. Can you believe it? That’s why I don’t think I’ll ever retire. You can have a thousand problems here, staff problems, calls from on high, cases that prompt them, but I prefer this madhouse to being at home and having to sort out the hassles there. Do you know what Mirta, my other daughter, wants? You’ll never bloody imagine… She met an Austrian at university with hair down to here, who’s travelling the world saying there’s a hole in the ozone layer here and the sea’s being polluted there, and she says she’s going to marry him, that he’s the most sensitive man in the world and she’ll go anywhere to be with him. Do you know what that means? Well, I don’t even want to contemplate the prospect, but I can tell you one thing for nothing, Conde, she’ll not marry him. And now this business with my son-in-law.”
“I thought Austrians were an extinct species. Have you ever seen an Austrian?”
The major looked at his cigar.
“No, the truth is I’d never seen one before clapping my eyes on this fellow.”
The Count smiled, and although he wasn’t sure whether he should, he chanced his arm: “Look, just tell your daughters you have a lieutenant who’s available and single, a fine upstanding lad, with a good brain, who’s looking for a partner and better still if she’s the major’s daughter.”
“You know,” replied the Major, unsmiling, “that’s all I need… You know, it’s turned cold, hasn’t it?”
“Who told you to act the hero and wear only a pullover?”
“I left my coat in the car; I didn’t think it would be so bad. How’s your case going?”
“So, so.”
“Like how?”
“I don’t really know. We’ve got several leads, but only one going anywhere: we don’t know where Rafael Morín was on the afternoon and evening of the thirty-first. He told his wife he was going to his mother’s and his mother that he was going to the enterprise, and his secretary says the thirtieth was the last day they worked. We’re also investigating a woman he knew called Zoila and nobody knows where she’s been since the first. And the other lead is that it seems he was having an affair with his secretary.”
“And what if he lied so as to cover up what he was doing on the afternoon of the thirty-first because he was up to no good, and it’s got nothing to do with his disappearance?”
“Uh-huh. What I want to do is talk to deputy minister Alberto Fernández-Lorea. Today, if possible. I can’t get the party out of my head, and I need you to ring him.”
“You can ring him.”
“I’d prefer you to. Remember I’m only a sad policeman, as someone told me yesterday, and he’s a deputy minister.”
The major leaned back in his chair and began to rock. He puffed on his cigar and exhaled a blue curl of smoke. He was enjoying himself. Mario Conde, meanwhile, pulled one of the major’s telephones to his side of the desk and started to dial a number.
“Take this, the phone’s ringing in Fernández’s house,” he said and waved the phone. The major grunted and accepted the inevitable.
“I don’t think anybody’s there,” he retorted, and just as he was starting to put the phone down he stopped and said: “Yes, I can hear you, is that Comrade Fernández-Lorea’s house?” He got a positive response and then told him he was needed for questioning. “Yes, today if it’s no bother… Of course… In an hour’s time? That’s fine, see you then and many thanks. Lieutenant Mario Conde. Yes,” and hung up.
“Satisfied?”
“Pass my message on to your daughters,” said the Count, as he got up and straightened his pistol.
“Call me at home tonight and tell me what’s new,” the major demanded in a decidedly authoritarian tone. “Lots of luck,” he added and gazed once more at the wonderfully pure ash of his Davidoff.
The Count went down to his second-floor cubicle. Sergeant Manuel Palacios was waiting for him, seated in his chair behind his desk.
“No clues from the list of missing people, Conde. They’re all mad or geriatric, husband and wives who’ve done a bunk, youths hiding from their parents, children kidnapped by divorced parents and only one case in October of a woman forcibly abducted by an unrequited lover. And there’s only one case of disappearance that’s still open: a twenty-three-year-old who’s been missing from April of last year, although people suspect he employed primitive means to leave the island,” explained Manolo, and his voice and eyes looked bored. “I also spoke to the head of security at the enterprise, and luckily it was his wife who also works there who was on duty on the twelve to eight shift, and Rafael Morín didn’t pay a call, though René Maciques did.”
“Maciques, the friend… And Zoilita?”
“She’s another kettle of fish. From what Greco and Crespo found out, that girl is a tasty item and people like to get a lick. They still don’t know where she’s fucking holed up, for she gets around, is a real mover and is on file as a hooker, but no criminal record as yet. She’s just as likely to be on the arm of a Mexican as with a Bulgarian living in the block of flats for Soviet Bloc bureaucrats or spending a fortnight at the International in Varadero, but all her boyfriends have cars, money and good positions. You can imagine. And when she gets bored she makes china plates and other ornaments that aren’t at all bad. Nobody saw her the day she left, and nobody knows what she did for New Year’s Eve. She’s not checked in at any hotel, and her brother hasn’t the slightest idea where she might be.”