“Did you get on well with the Arayans?”
“Yes, Fabiola, Matilde’s mum, behaved very well towards me, and I loved the kid as if he were my own. For many years we three lived alone in the house, especially here in Miramar, when they began to give Faustino work outside Cuba. The boy spent more time with me and his grandmother than with his parents, and we went out a lot, to the cinema, the theatre, museums, because Fabiola had been a university teacher and was very cultured. Faustino says it’s our fault the way he turned out, well, you know how, but I swear I brought him up like my own child. The fact he was such a loving, helpless child, and that Faustino put so much pressure on him, threatened him a lot, even hit him more than once, I think it was Alexis’s way of taking his revenge on him. They had a very difficult relationship, for a father and son. They didn’t speak to each other for several years…”
“What do you think of Faustino?”
Maria Antonia looked for a pocket handkerchief in her bag and wiped the sweat from her top lip. The air in the cubicle was perfumed by a wave of that handkerchief, which made the Count feel even sorrier for her: the woman had assumed a perfectly aristocratic manner that seemed out of kilter with her submissive attitude in the Arayan household. How many of her real aspirations and aptitudes had she hidden for years, as she deferred her own life to be close to the child of another she’d adopted as her own?
“I don’t think it’s my place…” was her response, finally.
“Tell me something,” the lieutenant continued. “Nothing will go beyond these walls.”
“Well, what is there to tell? He’s somebody in high favour with the government, you know, that’s why he travels so much, has been an ambassador and the like. He’s always behaved well towards me, although never like Fabiola or Matilde, you understand. And I never forgave him for the way he acted towards his son. The poor boy got to be afraid of his father. That’s why he left home. I was very, very happy, and we decided if he ever got his own house, I’d go and live with him.”
As he saw the tears running down Maria Antonia’s black cheeks, the Count thought the end of this soap would more than consume his Sunday quota of pity. He reproached himself for mistaking, in a flash judgement, the face of love for the mask of submission and tried to imagine the woman’s stellar solitude, her life lived at the wrong time and place, whose only reason to live was the strangled transvestite she’d reared and cared for like her own son. The Count stood up and let her cry: he supposed her pain to be as deep as her boundless solitude. Then he heard her asking him to forgive her, just as he looked at his watch and calculated that Manuel Palacios must be about to arrive, and he wanted to see a victory “V” on the sergeant’s hand more than ever. For the sake of Maria Antonia, hapless Alexis, even the Marquess and himself and his blessed prejudices. He wanted it so badly that his cubicle door swung to let in the skeletal form of Manuel Palacios, right hand signalling a “V”.
“Maria Antonia,” he said, and returned to his seat opposite the woman, now putting her small handkerchief back in her small bag. “For some days I’ve been under the impression you wanted to tell us something which perhaps had to do with Alexis’s death. Or did I get it wrong?”
The woman looked him in the eye.
“I don’t know why you imagine that.”
“Rather than imagine it, I’m sure, particularly after yesterday when you phoned Alberto Marques and told him you’d found the medallion in Alexis’s trinket-box. I don’t know why, but I’m also convinced you knew it was Alexis’s and that you called the Marquess so he’d call us. Or have I got it all wrong?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure…”
“Let me help you, for you’re the only one who can help us now, if you know something, which I think you… Listen carefully: next to Alexis’s corpse they found a piece of Montecristo cigar which, according to the laboratory, belongs very probably to the box Faustino Arayan has in his lounge… That and Alexis’s medallion placed in his trinket-box don’t prove anything, but they might mean a lot. Do you understand?”
At each of the Count’s words the woman’s head sank a little lower, as if the world had deposited the burden of truth on her neck and all she wanted to contemplate, as she suffered her punishment, was the bag her two gnarled hands were fingering nervously. The Count waited, feeling his hopes fading, defeated by fear, until he saw the burden disappear and Maria Antonia’s face look up, and meet his beseeching gaze. The woman’s eyes now gleamed, though she didn’t look about to cry.
“There were two threads of red silk on the trousers he wore that night. He put them in the washing machine, but I took them out because it was a blue dye that might have stained other clothes. I was surprised because the turn-ups were muddied and that’s why I inspected them closely… Let him fucking rot,” she said, and the Count was surprised by the power in her voice, the evil glint in her eye and the way her hands twitched murderously, oh, Maria Antonia, so fleet of foot. “The son of a whore,” she said, pronouncing every syllable, and she burst into an aristocratic, disconsolate flood of tears.
“I’ve brought you a present, but it’s not to smoke,” the Count warned, placing on Major Rangel’s desk the tray with three transparent envelopes where the massacred cigars were visible.
“What the fuck’s that?”
“It’s the second piece of evidence in the case against Faustino Arayan for murdering his son, Alexis Arayan.”
Major Rangel slapped the palm of his hand down on his desk.
“What the hell do you mean?”
“Don’t play deaf… The great Faustino killed his son in the Havana Woods. Get it now?”
But before Major Rangel really got it, the Count had to relate the results of his conversations with Maria Antonia Galarraga, the fact that Faustino was AB blood group, the story about the medallion with a line etched under the arm and the two threads of red silk on mud-stained trousers which belonged to that same Faustino Arayan.
“But what I still don’t understand is why he killed him,” the ever sceptical Major Rangel insisted.
“The only people who know are Alexis himself, who can talk no more, and God, who gets less of a look in now but was involved in this affair… For what it’s worth, Major, I suppose Alexis did, said, demanded or reminded his father of something so terrible that Faustino decided to kill him. It seems the boy was beside himself and suicidal, and blamed Faustino for all his personal tragedy. Look what he wrote in this page from his Bible… Then he dressed as a woman, went to meet him, they had a row and Faustino killed him. That simple.”
“Has this country gone mad?” the Major asked, and the Count thought that was his moment.
“It seems to be the case. Must be the heat. Look what they did to Maruchi and Fatman Contreras…”
The Old Man stood up.
“Don’t start, Conde, don’t start,” and now his voice floated in the air, exhausted and bitter. “What they did to Fatman? Do you know why I’m here now? Well, because of Captain Contreras… because Captain Contreras shat outside the pan, Mario Conde, and they caught it all sides.”
The Count tried to smile. The Boss was bad at jokes, that’s why he never told any. But this just had to be a joke.
“Are you mad, Major?”
“This is no madness, Conde. For starters, foreign currency trafficking, bribes and cooked investigations. For seconds, extortion and smuggling. And they’ve got loads of proof. What do you reckon now?”
Lieutenant Mario Conde felt in his pocket for a cigarette and, though his fingers touched the packet, he couldn’t take it out. His friend, Captain Contreras, one of the best policemen he’d known. No, he thought, it can’t be.
“This is shit those guys want to smear him with,” he said, still resisting the idea.