Antonio Hill - The Summer of Dead Toys

Leire took another sip of coffee. It tasted strange. She’d kill for a cigarette but she’d decided not to smoke her first one until after lunch, at least another four hours away. She breathed deeply, to see if filling her lungs with air killed the nicotine cravings. The trick half worked. Her companion threw his plastic cup in the recycling bin.

“I’ll deny everything I’ve said if need be,” he said, smiling. “You know, all for one and one for all, like the musketeers. But there are things that aren’t right. Now I’ve got to go: duty calls.”

“Of course,” she nodded, distracted. “See you later.”

She stayed a few moments, remembering what she’d read on the subject of Inspector Salgado. In March, barely four months previously, Héctor Salgado had coordinated an operation against the trafficking of women. His team spent a year tracking a criminal gang that made a living bringing in young African girls, principally Nigerians, to fill various brothels in Vallés and Garraf. The younger the better, of course. Those from the East and South America had gone out of fashion: too clever and too demanding. Clients were requesting young, frightened, black girls to satisfy their basest instincts, and the traffickers found themselves more able to control these illiterate, disorientated girls, taken out of extreme poverty with the vague promise of a future that couldn’t be worse than the present. But it was. Sometimes Leire asked herself how they could be so blind. Had they ever seen one of their predecessors come back, having become a rich woman, capable of lifting her family out of misery? No: it was a flight forward, a desperate route down which many were pushed by their own parents and husbands with no choice. A journey, certainly tinged with a mixture of excitement and suspicion, which ended in a nauseating room where the girls learned that hope was something they couldn’t afford. No longer was it about aspiring to a better life; it was about survival. And the pigs manipulating them-a network of criminals and former prostitutes who had ascended in the ranks-used all means available to make them understand why they were there and what their new, repugnant obligations were.

She felt a vibration in her trouser pocket and took out her private mobile. A red light flashed, signalling a message. On seeing the name of the sender a smile crossed her face. Javier. Five foot eleven, dark eyes, the right quantity of hair on his bronzed torso and a puma tattooed diagonally just below the abs. And to top it all, a nice guy, Leire said to herself, as she opened that little envelope. “Hey, I just woke up and you’re already gone. Why do u always disappear without saying anything? We’ll see each other tonite and tomorrow you make me breakfast? Miss you. Kisses.”

Leire stared at her mobile for a moment. That was that with Javier. The boy was charming, no doubt, although he wasn’t exactly a spelling whiz. Nor very mature, she thought, looking at her watch. What’s more, something about that message had set off an inner alarm she recognized and had learned to respect, a twinkling flash that went off when certain members of the opposite sex, after a couple of nights of good sex, started asking for explanations and saying they felt like “taking hot chocolate to bed.” Luckily there weren’t many of them. The majority accepted her game without problems, the healthy no-strings sex that she laid out openly. But there was always someone like Javier who didn’t get it. A pity, Leire told herself, as she tapped out an answer at top speed, that he belonged to that small group of men. “Can’t tonight. I’ll call you. By the way, tonight has a ‘g’ and ‘h’ and no ‘e,’ remember that. See you soon!” She re-read the message and in a fit of compassion she deleted the second part before sending it. An unnecessary cruelty, she reproached herself. The small sealed envelope flew through space and she hoped that Javier would know to read between the lines, but just in case she put the mobile on silent before finishing her coffee.

The last gulp, already half cold, turned her stomach. A cold sweat soaked her forehead. She breathed deeply a second time, while thinking she couldn’t delay any longer. This morning nausea had to have an explanation. This very day you’ll drop into the pharmacy, she ordered herself firmly, although deep down she knew perfectly well there was no need. The answer to her questions lay in a glorious weekend a month before.

She came back to herself slowly and some minutes later she felt strong enough to return to her desk. She sat down in front of her computer, ready to concentrate on her work, just as the door of Superintendent Savall’s office was closing.

The third man in the office might intend to earn his living as a lawyer, but if he were to be judged by his eloquence and capacity for expression, the future before him was a little gloomy. In his defense, he wasn’t in a comfortable position, and neither the superintendent nor Héctor Salgado was making it any easier for him.

For the fourth time in ten minutes, Damián Fernández wiped away sweat with the same wrinkled tissue before answering a question.

“I already told you. I saw Dr. Omar the night before last, around nine.”

“And did you communicate the proposal that I made to him?”

Héctor didn’t know what proposal Savall was speaking of, but he could imagine it. He threw an appreciative glance at his boss, although anger shone in the depth of his eyes. Any deal in that bastard’s favor, even in return for saving his neck, left his stomach feeling hollow.

Fernández nodded. He loosened the knot of his tie as if it were strangling him.

“Every word.” He cleared his throat. “I told him. . I told him he didn’t have to accept it. That you had very little on him anyway.” He must have noticed the rage rising in the superintendent’s face but he justified himself immediately. “It’s the truth. With that girl dead, nothing links him to the trafficking. . They can’t even accuse you of malpractice when you don’t pretend to be a doctor. If they locked you up for that, they’d have to lock up all the fortune-tellers, quacks and holy men in Barcelona. . the prison couldn’t hold them all. But,” he hastened to say, “I emphasized that the police could be very insistent and, since he was already recovering from the assault,” and saying that word he directed a rapid and nervous glance toward Inspector Salgado, who didn’t turn a hair, “maybe the best thing would be to forget the whole thing. .”

The superintendent inhaled deeply.

“And did you convince him?”

“I think so. . Well,” he corrected himself, “the truth is that he just said he’d think it over. And he’d call me the following day to give me an answer.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No. I called his clinic yesterday, various times, but no one answered. That didn’t surprise me. The doctor doesn’t take calls while he’s working.”

“So you decided to go to see him first thing this morning?”

“Yes. I had to have an answer for you, and well. .” he hesitated, “it’s not as if I have much to do these days.”

Not for the foreseeable future either, Savall and Salgado thought in unison, but they said nothing.

“And you went. About nine.”

Fernández nodded. He swallowed. Pallor was too poetic a word to describe the color of his face.

“Do you have any water?”

The superintendent exhaled.

“Not in here. We’re almost finished. Continue, Señor Fernández, please.”

“It wasn’t even nine. The bus came immediately and-”

“Get to the point, please!”

“Yes. Yes. What I was saying was that, although it was a bit early, I went up anyway and when I went to knock on the door, I saw it was ajar.” He stopped. “Well, I thought I could go in; at the end of the day, maybe something had happened to him.” He swallowed once more; the tissue came apart in his hands when he tried to use it again. “It smelled. . it smelled strange. Rotten. I called him as I went toward his office, at the end of the corridor. . That door was ajar as well and. . I pushed it. Christ!”