Antonio Hill - The Summer of Dead Toys

“See?” insisted Castro. “It doesn’t fit with the idea that he was drunk and fell accidentally. And also, if he was dizzy, he would have noticed and in that case, why go out?”

Héctor thought of the fear he’d read in Joana Vidal’s eyes just a moment before, of Enric Castells’ words, denying with excessive vehemence that his son might have thrown himself into the void voluntarily. Could it have been a suicide? A desperate outburst, because of something that had happened that night perhaps? Or had someone come in, argued with him and ended up pushing him out of the window? It had to be a relatively strong person, which discounted Gina. Aleix? Had they fought, and the broken computer was the result? Leire seemed to follow his reasoning as her eyes were sparkling.

“I did something else,” she said. “This morning I called the Faculty of Computer Science, where Aleix Rovira studies. It wasn’t easy, but in the end they told me: he hasn’t passed a single subject; in fact he’s practically not attended classes since Easter.”

“Wasn’t he some kind of child prodigy?”

“Well, it seems he lost his superpowers when he went to university.”

“Check his calls. I want to know everything about Rovira: who he calls, where he goes, what he usually says, what he does in his spare time, which must be plentiful if he’s not attending class. I get the impression these two brats are playing with us. I’ll call him into the station on Monday so he’ll have to sweat a little. Any problem?”

Leire shook her head, although her expression wasn’t nearly as certain. In fact, that evening she had to collect Tomás from Sants station, and in theory she was off this weekend. She was going to say so out loud when she thought having something to do might not be a bad idea.

“No problem, Inspector.”

“Great. Another thing: Marc wrote to his mother saying he had something he had to sort out here. I don’t think it’s important but-”

“But in this case we’re going along blindly, don’t you think?”

“Completely blind.” He remembered what Savall had said to him and added, unable to avoid a slightly ironic tone, “And don’t forget all this is ‘unofficial.’ I’ll talk to the superintendent. I want to get all possible information on Aleix Rovira together before Monday. Take care of it; I’ll look after interrogating Óscar Vaquero.”

She seemed taken aback.

“The fatty they played the trick on. Yes, I know it was a couple of years ago, but sometimes grudges don’t disappear with time, more like the opposite.” A cynical smile spread over his face. “I assure you.”

The air conditioning in that sorry room made an infernal noise. With the curtains-stiff pieces of a moss-green fabric-pulled to block out the blazing sun falling on the city at that hour, the drone of the machine resembled the labored roar of a beast from the underworld. It could have been a roadside motel, one of those establishments that, despite their sordidness, radiate romance or at least sensuality. Rooms that smell of sweaty sheets and intertwined bodies, of furtive but inevitable sex, of desires never fully satiated, of quick showers and cheap cologne. In reality, it wasn’t a motel but a pensión near Plaça Universitat, discreet and even clean if you looked at it with a favorable eye-or, better still, didn’t look at it too much at all-specializing in renting rooms by the hour. Given the proximity to the Gayxample, the gay area par excellence of Barcelona, the majority of the clientele were homosexual, something that in a way was reassuring to Regina. In the seven months of this year so far she’d come more or less regularly to this pensión without ever bumping into anyone she knew. The worst was going in and coming out, but up to now she’d been lucky. Certainly because deep down she couldn’t care less. Not that she and Salvador had an explicitly open relationship, but it had to be more or less obvious to her husband that if he wasn’t making love to her, someone else would have to take his place in bed at least once in a while.

If she was honest with herself, Regina had to admit that when she married Salvador, sixteen years her senior, it wasn’t because the man was an animal in the sexual realm, although in the early years she’d had no cause for complaint in that respect. No, Regina wasn’t an especially passionate woman, but she was proud. She’d been married for twenty-one years and for the first half of that time she had been tremendously happy. Salvador adored her, with a devotion that seemed unswerving, eternal. And she blossomed in his flattery, in those glances that caressed her like a tight mesh enhancing her curves, but not too tight. The only thing she didn’t allow for when she married this gentleman, unconventionally attractive, tall and already gray in the wedding photo, was that this well-known intellectual’s tastes wouldn’t change over time. If at forty-five Salvador noticed twentysomething girls, at sixty-five his interests were still centred on the same young bodies, the same insultingly smooth faces. The kind that need only soap and water to shine. And those young girls, even sillier than Regina had been years ago, found him distinguished, charming, intelligent. Even romantic. They excitedly read his love stories-urban fairytales with titles like The Sweet Taste of First Dates or Overlooking Sadness , which he started to write when his profound books with experimental aspirations bored even the most pretentious critics-and attended his lectures in which words like desire, skin, taste and melancholy were repeated ad nauseam.

It was a hard blow to Regina, realizing that his constant admiration was fading little by little. Or rather it was subtly shifting in other directions. At thirty-eight Regina was no longer the coveted white ball of the billiards game, the centre of her husband’s attentions; and by forty-five she’d definitely become the black ball, the one whose turn comes only at the end of the game when there’s no other option. Now, turning fifty, after various facial touch-ups that hadn’t received more than a glimmer of recognition from Salvador, she’d decided to change her game. One day logic had prevailed over selfesteem: she had realized that she was fighting against an enemy as brutal as it was implacable, one she could hold back but not defeat. It had been her New Year’s resolution of the previous year: raise her self-esteem whatever the cost. And looking around her, she discovered that the glances her husband no longer gave her could come, surprisingly, from unexpected corners. In one sense, she thought, infidelity restored order and balanced her marriage. And although at the beginning she wasn’t really seeking sex, more to heal a battered ego which didn’t respond to anti-wrinkle treatments or the incisions of a scalpel, the avalanche of feelings she experienced from those strong muscular arms, hard smooth buttocks like blunt rocks, clumsy kisses and that restless tongue, which reached the most remote corners of her sex, was a real surprise. This new-generation lover was capable of fucking her to exhaustion and never losing his smile, of biting her neck like a playful puppy, even of slapping her when the pleasure was so intense his eyes closed without wanting them to. Like her, like everyone, he wanted to be seen and admired, but involuntarily unlike others, the big opinion he had of himself stayed in the street; in bed he was generous and tireless, demanding and affectionate. Some days a real bastard; some days a scared kid who asks for hugs. She wouldn’t have known how to say which she preferred; she did know that week by week she’d become hooked on those games behind closed doors, and the idea of going a month without seeing him, exiled on the Costa Brava with a sexagenarian husband she found repulsive now- the image of Salvador in trunks had become a nightmare she couldn’t escape-and a daughter in a full-on emotional storm was frankly disagreeable. Thank God, she wasn’t “in love” with someone who could be her son; in fact for a while now she had doubted the existence of this love with a capital “L” of which her husband never tired of writing, to the delight of women who wanted to live in such books. It was, simply, the inescapable lure of weeks that without him would have had no core. Although at times, alone in her room, she enjoyed remembering these encounters so much, nevertheless she thought she could go without them. . That day would come, she was sure, but in the meantime she would hoard explicit gruesome details in her memory to which her body responded without hesitation.