Quart closed his eyes. This left no way out. "How can you be sure?" he asked, guessing and fearing the answer.
"Because I killed him."
Macarena turned abruptly with a cry. Gavira lit another cigarette. Father Ferro stood up, clumsily buttoning his cassock. "You'd better turn me over to the police now," he said to Quart.
The moon slid slowly down the Guadalquivir, meeting the reflection of the Torre del Oro in the distance. Sitting on the bank, with his feet hanging just above the water, Don Ibrahim held a handkerchief to his bleeding nose. His shirt was untucked, showing his fat belly covered with coffee stains and oil from the boat. Beside him, lying face down as if the referee had counted to ten and it no longer mattered, El Potro too stared at the black, silent waters, lost in a dream of bullrings and afternoons of glory, of applause under the spotlights in the boxing ring. He was a tired hound waiting faithfully beside his master.
And the early risers ask you:
Maria Paz, what are you waiting for…
At the foot of the stone steps leading down to the river, La Nina dipped the hem of her dress in the water and wiped her forehead, singing softly to herself in a husky voice redolent of Manzanilla and defeat. And the lights of Triana winked from the far bank, while the breeze from Sanlucar and from the sea and – it was said – from America rippled the surface of the river, soothing the three companions:
He once swore his love,
but now he sings a different tune.
Don Ibrahim put a hand to his heart and let it drop again. He'd left Don Ernesto Hemingway's watch and Garcia Marquez's cigarette lighter and his panama and the cigars all back on the Lovely. Together with the remaining shreds of his dignity and the promised four and a half million they were going to use to set up a tablao for La Nina. There had been many bad business ventures in his life, but none as disastrous as this.
He sighed deeply and, leaning on El Potro's shoulder, got to his feet. La Nina came up the steps from the river, gracefully gathering her damp skirts. The former bogus lawyer looked affectionately at the dishevelled kiss-curl, collapsing bun, smudged mascara and withered mouth bare of lipstick. El Potro stood up too and Don Ibrahim caught a whiff of his honest male sweat. And then, invisible in the darkness, a fat round tear ran down Don Ibrahim's cheek.
At least all three of them were safe. And this was Seville. On Sunday, Curro Romero would be fighting at La Maestranza. Triana, all lit up, spread out across the river like a refuge, guarded by the impassive bronze figure of Juan Belmonte. And there were eleven bars within three hundred metres, at the Plaza del Altozano. Somewhere a guitar strummed impatiendy, waiting for a voice to start singing. And, after all, none of it mattered that much. One day, Don Ibrahim, El Potro, La Nina, the king of Spain and the Pope in Rome would all be dead. But Seville would still be there, just as it always was, smelling of bitter oranges and jasmine in the spring. Watching the city's reflection in the river that had given and taken so much, good and bad, so many dreams and so many lives, La Nina sang:
You stopped your horse,
I gave you a light, and your eyes were two green stars of May for me…
As if her singing was a signal, the three companions set off, side by side, without looking back. And the silent moon followed them on the waters of the river, until they disappeared into the shadows and all that remained was a very faint echo of La Nina Punales's last song.
XIV
Eight O'Clock Mass
There are people – amongst whom I would include myself -who detest happy endings.
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin
The policeman on duty peered curiously from behind the glass partition at Lorenzo Quart's black suit and dog collar. After a moment he left his post in front of four closed-circuit monitors trained on the exterior of police headquarters and brought the priest a cup of tea. Quart thanked him and watched his receding back with handcuffs on the belt and two bullet clips beside the holstered gun. The policeman's footsteps and then the sound of the door closing echoed in the deserted hallway. The hall was cold, white, sterile in the neon light, with a marble floor. It was three thirty in the morning by the digital clock on the wall.
He had been waiting almost two hours. After they left the Lovely, Gavira exchanged a few words with Macarena and then held out a hand to Quart, who shook it in silence. "We're not enemies, Father." He said it without smiling, looking him straight in the eye, and then turned and walked away, towards the steps leading up to the Arenal. Quart couldn't tell whether Gavira meant Father Ferro or Macarena. But the gesture had cost the banker nothing. Having diluted his responsibility for the kidnapping by his last-minute intervention, confident that neither Macarena nor Quart would cause him problems, and worried only about his assistant and the money for the handover, Gavira had had the decency not to crow over the strong position he now occupied with regard to Our Lady of the Tears. After Father Ferro's confession, the vice-chairman of the Cartujano was undoubtedly the victor that night. It was difficult to see how anyone could stand in his way now.
Macarena had seemed to be walking at the edge of a nightmare. On the deck of the Lovely, Quart saw her shoulders shake as she watched her dream collapse. She didn't say another word. They took Father Ferro to police headquarters and then Quart took her home in a taxi. He left her sitting in the courtyard by the tiled fountain, in the dark. When he said a soft goodbye, he saw that she was looking up at the pigeon loft. The rectangle of black sky looked like a backdrop painted with tiny luminous dots above the Casa del Postigo.
Quart heard a door open, and voices and footsteps at the other end of the white hall. But no one appeared, and after a moment all was silent again. He got up and paced. He stood at the glass door and smiled with forced friendliness. He went and smiled at the policeman outside, who was walking up and down in a bulletproof vest and with an automatic rifle over his shoulder. The station was in the modern part of the city. At the crossroads, deserted at that time of the night, the traffic lights changed slowly from red to green.
He tried not to think. Or rather, to think only about the technical aspects of the case. Father Ferro's new legal situation, the reports Quart would have to send to Rome first thing in the morning… He tried to keep his emotions from taking over. But his old ghosts joined the ranks of the more recent ones, and this time he could feel them drumming against his very skin.
For a long time he stared at his reflection in the dark glass of the door. The good soldier turning grey and in need of a shave. The white collar that could no longer protect him. He had come a long way, only to find himself again on the breakwater pounded by the waves, brine streaming down the cold hand to which the boy clung.
A door opened across the hall, and as Quart turned to look, he saw Simeon Navajo coming towards him, his red shirt vivid in the white, sterile hall. Quart went to meet him. The deputy superintendent was drying his hands on a paper towel. He had just come out of the toilets, and his damp hair was smoothed back into a ponytail. He had bags under his eyes and his glasses had slipped down his nose.
"That's it," he said, throwing the towel into a bin. "He's just signed his statement."
"He claims he killed Bonafe?"
"Yes." Navajo gave an apologetic shrug. These things happen, the shrug said. Neither of us is to blame. "We asked him about the other two deaths, as a formality, and he neither admitted to them nor denied them. It's a nuisance, because those cases were closed, but now we have to reopen the investigation."
He went to the door and stood watching the lights in the empty street, his hands in his pockets. "To tell you the truth," he said, "your colleague isn't very communicative. He only answered yes or no the whole time, or remained silent as the lawyer advised."