Antonio Hill - The Good Suicides

“You’re right, Inspector. And now, if you don’t want anything else, I’m leaving. I have things to do.”

Héctor wanted to keep them in, but he couldn’t: he’d hoped that discovering what had happened months before in that house far from the city might bring an almost instantaneous solution to the mystery of the alleged suicides. It could be that one of the men before him had been assigned the role of executive arm to protect the others, in the same way that they could all be victims of revenge; just then there was no way of knowing.

He watched them leave, one by one, encased in their wool blazers and well-cut overcoats. Kings and henchmen of a gray army. Subjects without a queen, who was still locked up after betraying them. Enough nonsense, Salgado, he told himself. There are no princes or kings here, just normal men. Albeit with a good bit more money than most …

And suddenly, as if they were no longer people but dominoes, able to fall in sequence with the lightest touch, Héctor stood up, left Señor Alemany and almost ran up the corridor toward the room where Sílvia remained. The queen about to be overthrown.

He burst in so forcefully she jumped.

“Answer me a question. When do you have to deliver the money they’ve asked for in exchange for keeping quiet?”

Sílvia moved her head and pressed her lips together. Much was riding on this answer and she knew it. But she also knew that the enemy wouldn’t cease in his pursuit.

“Come on, answer. I can extend the twenty-four hours. You’ve lost. You’ve all lost.”

“Friday, tomorrow,” she finally answered. “Before five.”

“Don’t tell anyone. And do exactly what I tell you.”

Héctor didn’t see Fort at his desk and decided to go outside and smoke a cigarette. His lungs were craving nicotine and his brain fresh air. It’s already night, he said to himself. The day was over and he hadn’t even seen daylight.

When he went back in, Fort was waiting for him at the door of his office.

“Inspector,” said the agent, suddenly animated on seeing him, “I thought you’d left and there’s something I wanted to tell you.”

“Something to do with the case?”

“No, sir-”

“Then it can wait until tomorrow,” Salgado resolved.

“The thing is, sir, it can’t.”

“Okay, tell me.”

There was already too much noise in Héctor’s brain to concentrate on something that didn’t bear close relation to what had occupied him in the last few hours. So he didn’t manage to pay attention until, among the murmur, he made out two words that together set off every alarm: his son’s name and the word hospital.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“Your son Guillermo called, Inspector,” repeated Fort. “He’s in Sant Joan de Déu, at the hospital. But don’t be alarmed, it’s not him. He went there with Agent Castro. She’s in labor.”

From then on Roger Fort could brag that he was one of the few who’d seen Inspector Salgado completely floored by something.

Newborn babies have the virtue of arousing tenderness in adults, thought Héctor, and fear in kids. Or at least that’s what he guessed looking at Guillermo, who was contemplating the tiny creature in a kind of waterless fish tank with a look that fused fear and apprehension.

Although perhaps the fear isn’t due to the newborn, Héctor said to himself, but to all Guillermo had had to tell him on his arrival and which he still hadn’t processed completely. Little by little, while they waited for news from the doctor attending Leire, Héctor heard about how and why she and his son had met at Ruth’s house, and also the Charly story. Damned Charly … Héctor didn’t know whether to get angry or not, or with whom, but slowly other pieces fell into place: the theft of Ruth’s file, the refusal of Sergeant Andreu to explain further …

“Are you angry?” Guillermo asked him.

Héctor thought so. Or at least he would have been if he didn’t also feel happy about this child, born weak but healthy. And because he was worried about Leire, lying in bed with her friend María at her side. Her family would arrive the following day and Héctor didn’t want to ask about the little one’s father. He was satisfied by knowing that neither Leire nor the baby was in danger.

“We’ll talk about it all another time, okay?” he told Guillermo, putting an arm around his shoulders. “It’s better if we go home now. There’s nothing else to do here.”

They spent a few more minutes gazing at the newborn baby, at Abel, who was going to spend his first night in a world that, at the beginning, was already mistreating him a little. He could only hope that it would treat this child a little more gently from now on.

The woman looks at the world through lost eyes, of pale blue. Eyes that no longer seem capable of seeing the present as it is, lost in the mists of a past that insist on pervading that bedroom, furnished with sturdy pieces of wood aged by the years. The half-lowered blinds block the light from outside. Héctor doesn’t dare raise them: clearly the old woman prefers shadows to the sun’s dazzling rays. Perhaps she feels better enveloped in this friendly darkness. Brightness has become an enemy: in the sunlight everything acquires defined, yet remote and unknown contours.

Héctor approaches the corner where the woman is sitting, facing the balcony, and she finally seems to notice his presence. For a moment the cloud blotting her mind disperses a little, enough to notice someone is there: someone whose features are familiar, although it’s been a long time since she had them before her.

“Hello,” he whispers, coming a little closer. And he raises his hand to caress that cheek, which, despite time and illness, is still surprisingly smooth, but the embrace hangs in the air, halted by the sudden panic attack that overwhelms the old woman. Her eyes fill with tears in an instant, although Héctor barely has time to see them, because the woman covers her face with her arm, as if she wants to defend herself against a presumed aggressor. “Don’t hit me. Please. Don’t hit me anymore.”

Héctor takes a step back and looks at himself in the mirror on the wall, a mirror as old as the furniture, with a gilded frame. And then he understands what is frightening his mother. She doesn’t see him, her son Héctor, and yet she recognizes his face. The face of that bastard husband who hit her for years in secret, in that very bedroom.

The worst thing is that he also sees him in that mirror: in his own reflection, in his face, identical to what he remembers of his father when he was the age he is now.

The worst thing, thought Héctor, still awake on the terrace in the early hours, is that this isn’t a customary nightmare, but a real and painful memory. The last trip to Buenos Aires while his mother was still alive, seven years before. It was the trip that marked the end of his relationship with Lola and the beginning of a new stage in his marriage to Ruth. There were many ways of hurting a wife, of doling out invisible blows. Of making her suffer.

And that was something he couldn’t permit himself.

“Are you sure they’ll come for the money today?” Lola asked. She’d come to the station because she didn’t want to leave before seeing the outcome of the case. Héctor knew she had to return to Madrid that same night to cover an event taking place on Saturday in the capital. If the weather permitted, that is: they kept announcing the possibility that, however strange it seemed, snow might fall on Barcelona in the next few hours.

It was five o’clock on Friday afternoon.

“Let’s just say I don’t think they’ll be able to resist the temptation to come. They’ve done a lot of things for this money, apart from sending photos, and they must really want to get their hands on it. They won’t wait.”