Authors: Marc Pastor
“A roller coaster, or a roulette wheel, is one thing, but fucking children is quite another.”
“There’s no need to be so crude,
monsieur
. I don’t like that expression. Fucking children.”
“You don’t like it because it’s reality, and I see that you live with your back to that reality.”
“Let’s go to the casino, my fingers are freezing.” They enter the game room, where there are considerably more people than before. “Someone has to provide consumers with what they are looking for. Someone has to give them danger. It’s as licit as selling bread or meat. We humans need it to live, because otherwise we’d die of boredom. And I sell it. I give my clients what they want.”
“There are limits.”
“What are they? My clientele doesn’t know them. The law? Laws can change. In fact, my clients devote themselves to changing them when it suits them.”
“Ethics, morality.”
“Don’t try to lecture me, Mr Lestrade. You are a policeman,
and the police are the last people who should lecture on ethics and morality. When you beat somebody up to get a confession out of them, is that ethical? When you grab money off a thief, because after all it’s stolen money, are you thinking about morality? I’ve never shot anyone, Mr Lestrade.”
“No, you have people to do that for you.”
“Men shoot each other. The rest is circumstances. Let me show you something.”
They walk among the gamblers, who form little groups. Many are chatting or closing business deals.
“I think you’re not going to show me what I came to see.”
“Look, that’s the French consul”—he points to a circle—“and that one, Mr Membrado, the shipbuilder. And those ones talking to that woman in the hat with veils are German brothers who work in… what was it… something to do with the arms industry.”
Moisès Corvo looks at the woman, but doesn’t recognize Enriqueta Martí. He’s seen her around the neighbourhood, he’s passed her more than once, but since she always looked like a beggar woman, she was invisible to him until today. Another one, he would say to himself. She is very changed, very elegant, very majestic, but at the same time just as pale and giving off the same dangerous air. He looks at her for a few seconds, as if he’d known her all his life but forgotten about her. André Gireau has them open a door behind which there are stairs going down. How close he was, and he has no idea.
They cross a hallway with a door on either side from which emerge men’s voices, shouting loudly. No, it’s not what you think, says Gireau, and he stands in front of one covered in a greenish colour. One I visit quite often. When open, all the walls and the
floor of the room are white ceramic, even a ledge that serves as a chair. At the back, a smaller door opens onto a hallway that leads to the mountainside, but Moisès Corvo doesn’t know that.
“As I told you, I’m a vendor. I provide all the things no one else sells. Sometimes it’s so risky that fortunes are lost. You can’t even imagine how a millionaire suffers when he loses it all. The only thing he’s got left is life, and he wants to lose that too.”
“And you also offer that service.”
“We are a very well-rounded company.”
“How? You give them a pistol, leave them there and they shoot themselves? It’s that simple?”
“You don’t disappoint me, Mr Lestrade.”
“And I suppose the walls are like this because they’re easier to clean.”
“Exactly. So, as you can understand, our business is too large and at the same time painstaking to worry about ethical or moral details. What we don’t give them, someone else will, and at a higher price. And we can’t allow that.”
“What’s keeping me from shooting you in the stomach right now and leaving you to die in there? Your queer sniper can’t see us.”
“Yes, that’s true. But he wouldn’t like seeing you come through that door alone.”
“And if you come with me, under arrest?”
“I wouldn’t go there. We have very strict rules about possession of weapons inside the casino, and you haven’t identified yourself as a policeman at any point.”
“But I could come back.”
“Yes, but you won’t.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No, it’s a piece of advice. You can’t touch us, Mr Lestrade.”
“To bury a corpse you don’t need to touch it.”
“Now I’d appreciate it if you left. I think that we talked too much for today.”
The next day, Moisès Corvo was scheduled to meet up with Quim Morgades, the journalist from
La Vanguardia
with whom he sometimes exchanged information. Well, the term “exchange information” is imprecise, because usually it’s the policeman who goes on and on, and Quim who jots everything down in his pad, his only contribution a bottle of anise. Of course, Corvo only says what it’s in his interests to say.
The inspector debates now between speaking and not speaking. Letting it all out or keeping the investigation silent until he reaches conclusions with evidence, which is when the journalist can help him. They are meeting at the Gambrinus pub, number twenty-nine on the Rambla Santa Mònica, and Corvo arrives late and with a pounding headache. Too much pressure for him, and it’s starting to take its toll.
“You have to explain to me what the hell is going on, Moisès. It’s been a month now where nobody’s talking about anything else, but fucking Millán Astray silences it and says nothing’s going on. Yesterday another lad disappeared, and we found out that you arrested a suspect in the evening, but nobody knows who it is.”
Should he tell him? What does he have to lose? He still hasn’t talked to Malsano about it, but he fears that the guy who got beaten up isn’t the guy they’re looking for. Surely his partner wouldn’t have hesitated to tell, and last night he wasn’t visited by anyone except Morpheus. He’s going crazy, this is too much for
him, he feels nauseated and a stabbing in his temples. It’s like a permanent hangover, and almost without getting drunk. Almost. He sips on his nice, cool, blond beer.
“He’s at the Hospital of Sant Pau, but it’s not worth your time visiting him. It was popular hysteria that accused him.”
“But there is a kidnapper, right?”
Yes, there is someone who is kidnapping children and making them vanish off the face of the earth. Someone who selects from among the children who already don’t exist, but who made a mistake this time because this wasn’t the son of a whore, but of a middle-class family, without means, but from a visible stratum. And if he doesn’t hurry, another one will disappear, and another, and another, and another, until who knows when, because now it is very clear that the monster won’t stop unless he traps him, because it seems nobody else wants to do it, because the chief of police avoids problems and there’s a child-prostitution business set up and they are each mutually covering each other’s asses, as unfortunate a choice of words as it is in this case.
“They’re isolated events,” he lies, like everyone, but he does it to keep panic in check and maintain the slight thread holding the investigation together taut.
“Just isolated?”
“Coincidences.”
“And what do I say in the paper?”
“Whatever you want, but don’t talk about monsters.”
Quim Morgades gathers his notebook and puts it in his bag. He finishes his glass of beer and asks the waiter for the bill. He addresses Corvo in a confidential tone.
“Are you going to catch ’im?”
“I’m trying as hard as I can.”
Moisès Corvo reaches the conclusion, in that moment, that he needs more help than he thought. And, in his desperation, his memory comes up with a name.
If you are easily upset or have a sensitive stomach, I recommend you skip to the next chapter. Avoid the paragraph where I explain an example of the evil woman’s madness. If you aren’t apprehensive, stay and a corner of your mind will be revealed to you.
Enriqueta uses a very sharp knife to take out little Antoni’s eyes. First she makes an affectionate slice around the eyeball and rips off the skin like pieces of a mask. She introduces the point and levers, bit by bit, delicately but decisively, making sure they don’t burst and soil everything and get ruined. Now they are soft, because eyes, when life has abandoned them, gradually deflate and turn into something like gelatinous water. That’s why it’s so hard to trick me and pass yourself off as dead: the sunken, grey, liquid eyes always tell the truth. Antoni is still warm and Enriqueta can smell the gases leaving him through his mouth, in lifeless burps, the stench of decomposition.
All of a sudden, like in a miscarriage, out comes the whitish ball, flippity floppity, until she cuts the optic nerve. Blood doesn’t flow from the socket, everything is so clean that the next one is easier to remove.
She brings them to her lips and kisses them, she sucks them and she chews them up. A gasp at the explosion of salt, which her saliva sweeps down her throat.
Enriqueta feels immortal.
“
I
DEMAND AN EXPLANATION
.”
José Millán Astray demands an explanation.
Moisès Corvo and Juan Malsano are sitting in front of the police chief, a bit tense because it’s not normal that he waits around until their shift, their night shift, to call them into a meeting. Bad news, for sure.
“About what?” asks Moisès Corvo, who isn’t going to make it easy for him, no way.
“I’ve got complaints from up high.” As devout as Millán Astray may be, Corvo knows he’s not referring to the Lord Our God. “It seems you two have been sticking your noses where they don’t belong.”
“Is that what working is called these days…”
“What you do isn’t working. On your free weekend you don’t work.”
“I don’t understand, boss.” Moisès Corvo leans forward. “Are you accusing us of working too hard?”
“I’m accusing you of meddling too much. Instead of being at home, with your families, you’re going about hassling people you shouldn’t be hassling.”
“Hassling people is usually what they pay us for,” interjects Malsano.
“Then you’d rather we did nothing?” stresses Corvo.
“Let’s take it step by step.” Wham, a fly down, against the chair. “Inspector Corvo.”
“Yes.”
“What did I suggest you do a few days ago?”
“That I forget about the subject.”
“Exactly. And what did you do?”
“I forgot about it.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard. You’ve been asking questions.”
“Yeah, I was asking questions because I couldn’t remember.”
“Keep playing the jester, Inspector Corvo, and I’ll have you shot.”
“That wasn’t my intention, sir, I apologize.”
“Am I speaking Chinese, or what? Gentlemen: there is no case. There are no missing children, there is no investigation. What the hell were you doing at the casino last night?”
“I was trying to increase my income.”
“You were pestering people. And you were pestering good people. How do you think it makes me look when the mayor calls me this morning and asks me what orders I’ve been giving my inspectors?
“Bad.”
“Exactly. Very bad. If I tell you to shut your mouths and go after anarchists, shut your mouths and go after anarchists, that’s what we’re here for, bloody hell.”
“A lad disappeared yesterday.” Malsano puts in his two cents’ worth.
“And?”
“You said that without missing children there’s no case. So now there should be a case.”
“Closed, Inspector Malsano. And I have a question for you in this matter as well. Since when is this your business? The abduction yesterday was under the jurisdiction of the inspectors on duty, not you. What the hell were you doing in the hospital interrogating the guilty party?”
“That’s what I wanted to mention: I’m not so sure he’s the guilty party…”
“I’ll show you that you are wrong. The boy’s parents have identified him this morning as the man who took their son.”
“But they didn’t see it!” exclaims Malsano.
“They were too nervous and confused yesterday. Today they fingered him without the slightest hesitation. That lunatic was sent to the Model this very afternoon.”
“So, has Antoni shown up?” questions Corvo.
“We are waiting for him to confess where he has him hidden or buried.”
“But don’t you see that it doesn’t fit together at all? He abducts a lad in the morning, they see him talking to another at midday and beat the crap out of him. He checks into hospital and it turns out that he’s already killed and hidden or buried the lad—”
“That’s right, Inspector Malsano. Case closed. And you, Inspector Corvo, stay out of it or I will have to take serious disciplinary measures.”
A slight parenthesis is needed here: when Mayor Sostres met that morning with the police chief and revealed his displeasure over one of his inspectors showing up in uncomfortable places, he also gave him a message from the prefect. The rumours about these disappearances must be silenced, by any means possible. So, when he accompanied Antoni’s parents to identify the supposed kidnapper, he advised them that the best thing for them would
be to put an end to this drama as soon as possible. The advice, in the form of an envelope with bills inside, came along with the warning that, if they broke this pact, Antoni’s disappearance wouldn’t be the only one in the family. What could they have done, poor people?
Later, at Lolo’s tavern, Inspectors Corvo and Malsano use alcohol to wash down the reproof.
“At least tell me that you found something out at the casino, Buffalo Bill,” probes Juan Malsano.
“Yes. That it’s more of a tangle than we thought, and that there are too many people mixed up in it, and too much money.”
“It breaks the golden rule: if he has a knife, bloody hands or a corpse at his feet, he’s guilty. Reality is usually very simple, but this time there’s a lot of knives and no corpses.”
“Not necessarily. The fact that he’s covered up doesn’t mean that our man doesn’t exist. And if he exists, we can find him.”
“They keep sticking spokes in our wheels. I’m not sure of anything any more.”
“Those Negroes we arrested, the ones who killed One Eye…”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think they did it.”
“That doesn’t matter. They weren’t good people, that you saw. And they’re in the clink.”
“Blackmouth was lying. And I haven’t seen him anywhere, lately.”
“It’s a very big city.”
“It’s very big and has a lot of people. In the casino they are prostituting children and we can’t do anything about it. The son of a bitch I talked to was screwing with me.”
“You want us to go there? Rain on their parade?”
“We won’t even get through the door. They are ironclad, and you’ve already seen they’ve got friends in high places. If we want to take apart their business, we have to start from the bottom and that means finding the monster.”
“And the casino can’t be the only place children are getting fucked.”
“No, but it’s the most prestigious. The madam at the Xalet del Moro must be hopping mad. No doubt it’s already reached her that she screwed up by giving me a name and address. We know that our gimp has been through there, but she’s just the intermediary. We have to find out who else he could have supplied children to.”
“We’re groping around in the dark, Corvo. We’re looking for a man and we don’t know what he looks like, where he’s going, or how he lives.”
“But we know someone who can help us. What do we owe you, Lolo?”
To which side is the balance shifting in the city? Will fear keep the Barcelonians at home at night, or will they celebrate Christmas just like every other year? Ferran Street is packed with families taking advantage of the holidays to do their last bit of shopping, or taking the children for a stroll and pushing back bedtime. No one would say that the city is tense and the people worked up, seeing this behaviour. Agustí Massana’s bakery has the longest queues, and lively conversations crop up everywhere, always on the same subject: the vampire. And the conclusions don’t vary much from conversation to conversation: that the police are incompetent, that the new mayor is turning a blind eye, that the
government in Madrid has left us in the hands of God, that all this comes out of the war with the Moors, which has only ever brought us misfortune. If one stops to study the attitude of the masses individually, obviously, signs of paranoia crop up. The children play, and no adult that isn’t their mother stops to muss their hair or stroke their faces, or even return the ball to them when it goes out of bounds. Their fathers keep one eye on them at all times and are suspicious of anyone who approaches. The news of the abduction last Sunday being an isolated incident hasn’t convinced anyone. Anybody could be the ogre.
The inspectors dodge bicycles and tricycles to enter Raurich Street. The pong of piss grows very intense. They knock on the door and Doctor von Baumgarten is slow to open it for them.
“Happy Christmas,” Moisès Corvo wishes him, with the manner of an undertaker.
A little while later, sitting in armchairs, Malsano’s gaze is lost in the horrible green wallpaper. Three cups of coffee steam and Doctor von Baumgarten asks the question, “Have you reconsidered my offer?”
Inspector Corvo has trouble taking other people’s help, but he has no choice.
“What you told me about looking for the monster. How would you go about it?”
“Actually it’s not that different from hunting a wolf, a bear or any other beast of the forest. The animals leave a trail you can follow, if you are a good observer. Some, a few metres behind them, others, kilometres away, but everyone leaves a trail.”
“The killer always leaves behind or takes away something from the scene of the crime,” declares Malsano. “It’s another golden rule.”
“Yes, that’s it, but in a wider sense. What do hunters follow?”
“Tracks.”
“For example. Has your monster left any footprints?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” says Corvo, furrowing his brow. He takes a sip from the cup.
“Not literally, obviously. But has he left any belongings there where the children disappeared? A coin purse, a shoe, a hat?”
“If he had, we’d have already solved the case, doctor. We don’t even know where the kidnappings took place.”
“Perfect.” But he doesn’t think it’s perfect. “Then, we’ll look for other signs. The snatchings often aren’t seen directly. Sometimes, if the animal is wounded, there are vultures that fly over it and show us its location. At other times, the silence in the middle of the forest alerts us to its presence.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Witnesses.”
“We don’t have any,” says Malsano. “Nobody’s seen anything.”
“The gypsy did,” qualifies Corvo.
“What gypsy?” Von Baumgarten’s taken an interest.
“The one who saw a lame man trying to make off with a boy, on Marqués del Duero.”
The doctor claps his hands and spills coffee on the floor, but he doesn’t care.
“Fantastic! And what else do we know about this lame man?”
“That he was seen going into a brothel, one of the dear ones.”
“We’re making progress.”
“No, we’re not making progress. This line of investigation doesn’t lead anywhere. We followed it and they’ve closed every door on us.”
“No, not every one. Look at what we have: a man, with a physical defect, and seen in two places… are they very far from each other?”
“About a fifteen-minute walk.”
“So we can place him.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. If you go out on the street and start counting, you’ll find dozens of gimps.”
“And if you go to the port,” adds Malsano, “there are countless more, with all the ones arriving from Africa.”
“Are there any more witnesses?”
“The mother of one of the girls believes it was a demon,” answers Corvo.
“Believes. We already discussed it the last time you were here, Inspector. Belief is one thing and empiricism another entirely. There are no more witnesses, then.”
“The madam of the Xalet del Moro, but she won’t open her mouth.”
“And can’t you bring her in to the station to interrogate her or whatever it is you do?”
“We wouldn’t be here, doctor, if what we do was working for us. Continue.”
“Would you like more coffee?”
“Yes, please.” Corvo offers his cup, and Malsano shakes his head; his stomach is upset and another sip could be dangerous.
Doctor von Baumgarten stands up and heads over to the coffee pot. He is uneasy, I’m about to catch a good one, he thinks, a museum piece, the cornerstone of his study.
“How many kidnappings have there been?”
“We don’t know. For sure, we have two, but from what we’ve heard there could be at least nine.”
“In how long a period of time?”
“A year?”
“You don’t sound very convinced.”
“There are too many legends surrounding it all, and so much fear that in the end it’s hard to know what to trust,” says Malsano, still intrigued by the doctor’s words.
“That works in our favour.”
“Yes, now everything’s much easier. We’re going to arrest Hans Christian Andersen,” says Corvo sarcastically.
“He’d probably be helpful, actually… but think carefully about it. You guys have known pederasts”—the policemen nod. “And they act compulsively, unable to control themselves, right? They don’t plan, they don’t think, they can’t stop themselves. And how long does it take you to catch them?”
“Depends on the case, but… they fall fast.”
“Exactly. And I suppose you’ve gone through the archives, to see if any of them is out of prison, on the loose.”
“Here we have a problem.” Malsano sucks his teeth.
“We talked to one of them, but he’s not the one.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” responds Malsano. “And about the archives… they burned down.”
“They burned down,” repeats von Baumgarten, incredulous.
“You heard me. We’ve been putting together a fingerprint file, with the prints we have from people we’ve arrested. It’s still in the initial stages, and not very useful. We checked it and didn’t find anything of interest. The files in the Palace of Justice burned down after the summer; they were piling up in a basement until one of the guards fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand.”
“And at the Model?”
“Impossible. If there’s one thing you can say about that prison, it’s no model for anything.”
“OK, let’s get back on track here. We have a man, lame, who has been seen in a specific area…” He raises his eyebrows.
“Marqués del Duero and Escudellers Street.”
“Bloody hell, here, right nearby. And we know that he can control his impulses, that he’s cold and astute enough to keep himself from being seen.”
“Great, now we can also arrest Emiliano Zapata.”
“He’s a predator, Inspectors.”
“Predators don’t sell their victims.”
“What?”
“We believe that he’s taking the children to give them to people who can pay for them.”
“Yes, yes, that’s feasible, but… something doesn’t fit.”
“What?” Malsano gets up and places his hands on his lumbars, stretching. The dampness is killing him.