Antonio Hill - The Good Suicides

Tomás had been a one-night stand that then lengthened to three, and later the odd weekend. No-strings sex. Taboo-free sex. And once, only once, although no one would believe it, sex without a condom. But accurate. Tomás’s reaction, after a plate of reheated croquettes that had already acquired mythical status for them both, was that “I need time to get used to the idea,” which in Leire’s opinion was usually the prelude to “This isn’t for me.” Nevertheless, Tomás surprised her by returning just a couple of days later to have a “serious talk.”

And they did, long and drawn-out, weighing up the pros and cons as if it were all a rational subject, and at the same time knowing it wasn’t. In the end, however, they had come to a series of agreements. One, they weren’t in love, at least not in that idyllic way in which you can’t imagine life without the other. Two, they lived in different cities, although separated by barely three hours on the AVE fast train. Three, the baby was part of both of them. So the conclusion, nicer in the wording than in the small print, had been: no, they wouldn’t be a couple-at least at the moment-but they would be parents. “Parents with touching rights,” María called them.

They were satisfied by this resolution and they truly were doing all they could to carry it out. Tomás was spending some weekends at Leire’s; he’d taken care of the move and of tasks like putting in sockets; he spoke of Abel with enthusiasm and threatened to make him a member of Real Madrid. They hadn’t touched on the subject of money; María had bought them the few things in the baby’s room and, with regards to the apartment, Leire didn’t plan on accepting even a euro from him. Until the birth of the baby no more can be asked of him, she thought. Although deep down she would have liked to have had someone by her side at the antenatal classes, at the scans, when the on-screen sight of what was inside her brought out tears she couldn’t understand, or, for example, on Friday nights, when she was too tired to go out but not so tired that she wanted to be alone. Or also during that interminable Reyes bank holiday, she thought as she contemplated the Sagrada Familia, that unfinished witness to her boredom that she was beginning to hate at times. However, Tomás was in the Sierra-the name of which made Leire think of resistance fighters or bandits-skiing with some friends. It wasn’t Tomás’s fault that she had nothing to do and that her best friend, María, had gone away for the weekend, although it hardly encouraged her to think of him fondly. Leire’s mother, Asturian and not one to mince her words, had summed everything up in some phrases that were becoming prophetic. “Alone. When the baby is born you’ll be alone. If you cry in the night, you’ll be alone. And the day he learns to say ‘Papa’ you’ll show him a photo. That’s if you have one,” she’d predicted before starting to cut a chicken into pieces with unusual fury. And she, though she didn’t dare say it aloud, had murmured inwardly something along the lines of: “I’ll worry about that when the time comes.”

Nevertheless, the truth was that she sometimes did feel lonely, not helped by her early maternity leave due to some rogue early contractions she’d had in mid-December. She’d already spent months condemned to office work, but at least she was at the station, she could participate in cases, she had people around her. There was still a month and a half before Abel’s birth. Six weeks in which-as she saw it-she would do nothing but get fat, visit her doctor, see other pregnant women and choose baby clothes. She knew by heart all the magazine articles about the best way to bathe, change and stimulate a baby, a distraction already forming a pillar of sage advice that reached half the height of the sofa.

It was as night was falling the next day that, lying on the sofa watching an episode of a detective series that had been shown at least twice before, the feeling of abandonment became so intense that she didn’t even have the urge to cry. The unfamiliar apartment, the lack of obligations and the absence of contact with others, increased by so many holidays, ended up submerging her little by little in a melancholy state in which laziness and boredom also played a large part. “Abel, your mama is being very silly,” she said out loud, in order to hear some sound that didn’t proceed from the television. She felt like crying, like letting the world know she was still there. And, without meaning to, almost automatically, she thought that if she disappeared, no one would miss her until at least Monday. And that with a bit of luck … Her mother called her every day, although certainly, knowing her, she wouldn’t raise the alarm until the mountain of unanswered calls became worrying. Tomás might send her a message over the weekend. Or not. And María, certainly, would scream the place down if she couldn’t locate her on Monday as soon as she got back. But it was Friday. Like Ruth, her boss’s ex-wife, no one would begin to look for her until it was, perhaps, too late. A vague, out-of-character fear overpowered her. You have to stop this, she told herself, and closed her eyes in an attempt to banish so many clouds from her generally clear mind.

And then, when she opened them and saw that nothing would change just by wanting it to, she knew what she was going to do for the remaining six weeks of her pregnancy.

“Leire, you’re on maternity leave.” Sergeant Martina Andreu said the sentence, stressing each syllable. “You’re going to have a baby and the doctor has ordered you to rest. Know what ‘rest’ means? I’ll tell you: no work.”

Leire bit her lower lip, cursing herself for not having foreseen that the sergeant, the epitome of sense, would stop her project outright. Throughout the weekend she had gone over the idea to find the best way of putting it, but that Monday morning her arguments met the devastating logic of Sergeant Andreu head-on.

“Also,” she continued, “the case isn’t ours anymore. Superintendent Savall assigned it to Bellver, you know that.”

“Exactly.” She struggled to find the right words, which, given her opinion of Dídac Bellver, wasn’t exactly easy. She took a breath. At the end of the day she had nothing to lose. “Sergeant, I believe not much can be done to resolve this case from the station. You know how it is-emergencies build up and are replaced by others. And missing persons merges runaways and adults who leave without warning with genuine criminal cases. Like me, you’re aware that they can’t cope. And the subject of Ruth Valldaura is already old news … it’s been six months since she disappeared.”

This-both were aware-was the worst thing of all. When it came to disappearances the first hours were critical, and in the case under discussion the alarm had been raised too late. The lack of clues made them think homicide, although Savall had used the absence of a body and the special circumstances surrounding this disappearance to assign the case to Bellver and his team.

Leire had the feeling her words weren’t falling on deaf ears. Martina Andreu’s expression softened. Just a little, enough that she, who knew her well, could gather new strength.

“On the other hand, we don’t lose anything if I spend part of my time on the case. I don’t want to do it without your permission,” she lied with the audacity of someone sure that she was right.

What was certain was that she needed information, to see what stage the file had reached, and concrete facts, to know if there was anything new since the case had been officially taken out of Salgado’s hands in a stormy conversation with Superintendent Savall, after which everyone had feared that Héctor Salgado would resign from the corps.