Antonio Hill - The Summer of Dead Toys

“Agent Castro tells me you questioned her yesterday. Did she seem like a decisive person? Sure of herself?”

Decisive? Héctor hesitated only for an instant. Leire’s voice was more unequivocal.

“No. Not at all.”

“Well, in that case she had a good pulse. Look.” Celia Ruiz turned to the bathtub and without thinking twice she took the right hand out of the water. “One cut, deep and firm. The other one is the same. Teenage suicides usually make a few cuts before daring to make the definitive one. Not her: she knew what she wanted and her hand didn’t shake. Neither of them.”

“Can we remove the body?” asked an agent.

“I’m done. Inspector Salgado?”

He nodded and moved away from the bathtub to let the others past.

“Thanks, Celia.”

“No problem.” Héctor and Leire were going out of the door when Celia added: “You’ll have the full report Monday, OK?”

“Yes, sir.” Héctor smiled at her. “Let’s go to her room. I want to see this note.”

Leire accompanied the inspector. The box of teddy bears was in the same corner that the agent had seen it in the previous evening. On the table, beside the computer, there was a glass with the remains of some juice.

“Now I’ll tell the boys to take it to the lab, in case they find something.” Hands protected by gloves, Leire moved the mouse and the computer screen came back to life. There was a brief message, written in large letters: “I cant take it any more. I have 2 do this. . I cant live with the remorse.” There was something else.

Leire minimized the message and brought up another page. The first thing Héctor saw was a blurred photo of a little girl and just below it another, in black and white, of a young woman with blonde hair blown by the wind. Leire scrolled up with the cursor until she reached the top of the page. A simple heading, typical blog format, said: “My stuff (above all because I don’t think anyone will be interested!)” At the side, a small photo revealed that this was Marc Castells’ blog. But what most caught Héctor Salgado’s attention was the blog entry Gina was reading before she died, dated 20 June. The last one Marc had written before dying. It was very short, just a few lines: “Everything’s ready. The hour of truth is approaching. If the end justifies the means, justice will back up what we’re going to do. For Iris.”

“The name was familiar from the list of Marc’s calls, and the text is very strange.”

Héctor thought of Joana’s email. Alwaysiris. .

“We’ll take it.” Before closing it, he saw that Marc’s blog didn’t have many followers; in fact, just two: ginaM and Alwaysiris. “We need to speak to the Martís. Then we’ll take care of this.” While they went downstairs, he brought Leire up to date on his conversation with Joana Vidal. “This Iris who signed the message asked her not to mention her to anybody until they could see each other in person. I think it’s best to follow her instructions for the moment. I hope that Sunday will tell us something important.”

Leire nodded.

“Inspector, what do you think of all this?”

Héctor had a lost look on his face for a few moments.

“I think that too many young people are dying.” He turned his head toward the room they’d just left. “And I think there are a lot of things we don’t know.”

“To tell you the truth, Gina Martí didn’t strike me as the suicidal type. Yes, she was sad, but at the same time I got the impression she was enjoying her role. Like Marc’s death had elevated her into the main-character category.”

“Main characters sometimes die too,” he replied. “And maybe Gina’s problem wasn’t depression, but the feeling of guilt.” Leire shook her head.

“I don’t see her pushing him just because he didn’t love her back. They’d been friends since they were kids. . Anyone could have typed that note.”

“Friendships can sometimes become twisted in unexpected ways.”

“Do you think she killed him out of love?” she asked with a touch of irony.

Just then, a hysterical sob followed by a murmur of footsteps rose toward them. Regina, who hadn’t said a word all night, broke into loud and uncontrollable weeping when the agents took Gina from the bathtub, on a stretcher and completely covered by a white sheet.

Savall was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs, beside the door leading to the lounge. It was obvious that he was longing to leave.

“Salgado, will you take care of this? I don’t think you’ll be able to speak to the Martís tonight.”

Regina’s tense, hoarse voice reached them.

“I don’t want a tranquillizer. I don’t want to be tranquil! I want to go with Gina. Where are they taking her?” Regina escaped her husband’s arms and walked toward the door. They saw her almost run in pursuit of the agents. But at the door she stopped, as if an invisible barrier prevented her crossing. Her knees buckled and she would have fallen to the floor if not for Héctor, who was behind her.

Her husband approached her with the hesitant step of an old man and looked at the agents with deep-rooted hostility. For once, words failed Salvador Martí and he just demanded: “Can you leave us in peace for today? My wife needs to rest.” It seemed unbelievable that the streets could be so calm, so alien to the drama unfolding just metres away. If on summer weekends the barrio was empty, this one, after days of hellish heat, had provoked an almost total exodus. Not even the rain in the evening had managed to dissuade anyone. A middleaged man was walking a dog of undetermined pedigree in the centre of Via Augusta; closed shops, dark cafés, parking spaces on both sides of the street. A panorama of peace broken only by the blue lights of the police cars that were moving away without making a sound, silent sparkles that took with them the last remains of the tragedy.

Héctor and Leire strolled toward the Diagonal almost without intending to. Unconsciously, they sought light, traffic, a feeling of life. She knew that Tomás was waiting for her but she didn’t feel like talking to him. Héctor was putting off calling Joana to tell her what had happened, because he didn’t really know what to say to her and needed to clarify his thoughts. Returning to his flat didn’t appeal to him either: he felt as if appalling surprises might await him in that once welcoming space. The vision of him mercilessly hitting that bastard was neither easy to forget nor pleasant to remember.

“I saw what you left me about Aleix Rovira’s calls,” he said. And he went on to tell her about his chat with Óscar Vaquero: the suspicion that Aleix could be passing cocaine was a strong link to his calls to this small-time dealer, this Rubén. The calls to Regina Ballester were more curious, thought Héctor. He went on, not giving her time to say anything, speaking to himself as well as to her. “I think that I’m starting to have an idea of what happened that night. It was San Juan, a good day for Aleix’s business. Gina told us he arrived later, so he must have sold something, but he definitely had more. He was receiving calls, and if we assume he was making a living from this, they had to be possible customers. But he didn’t answer any of them. And if what his brother says is true, he returned home as soon as he left Marc’s. If there was a fight, and the blood on Marc’s T-shirt makes it more than likely, it’s possible that the coke was the reason for the argument. Or at least part of it.”

Leire followed his reasoning.

“You mean they fought and Marc destroyed the coke? That would explain why Aleix didn’t answer his customers’ calls. But, why would they fight? Gina told us about an argument: she said Marc had come back changed from Ireland, he wasn’t the same. . But there has to be a more important reason, something motivating Marc to confront Aleix and take revenge on him by destroying the cocaine.”