Antonio Hill - The Summer of Dead Toys

“Was there anyone else at the pool?”

“No. Only my nephew and I. I told him to go away, but he didn’t listen. I wanted to save him seeing the little girl’s body laid out beside him, so I stayed in the water, with Iris in my arms. I still remember his frightened little face. .”

“And the dolls.”

“How did you know?” The priest stroked his beard. He seemed truly disturbed. “It was. . sinister. There were half a dozen of them in the water.”

Little dead Irises, recalled Héctor. He waited a few seconds before continuing.

“Who put them there?”

“Iris, I suppose. .” He’d made a great effort to hold back, but the tears glinted in his tired eyes. “That little girl wasn’t well, Inspector. I didn’t know how to recognize it, despite what her mother said. I realized too late that she was disturbed. . deeply disturbed.”

“Are you telling me that this twelve-year-old girl committed suicide?”

“No!” The negative came out of the priest’s rather than the man’s mouth. “It must have been an accident. We guessed that she’d gone down to the pool by night, with the dolls, and at some point got dizzy and fell into the water.”

“We guessed? Who else was in the house?”

“It was three days before the next group of children was to arrive, so we were alone: Marc, the cook and her daughters, Iris and Inés, and I. The monitors were to turn up that afternoon: some were on a summer-long contract and worked through all the camps, but others rotated all summer. However, even the summer-long ones had gone back to the city for a few days. You can’t have young people in the country too long, Inspector. They get bored.”

Héctor sensed the priest hadn’t finished. That he had something else to tell him now his guard was down. He didn’t have to wait long.

“Inspector, Iris’s mother is a good woman, who’d already lost her husband. Thinking that her daughter had died of her own volition would have finished her.”

“Tell me the truth, Father,” said Salgado purposefully. “Forget your collar, your vows, that girl’s mother and what she could or couldn’t take.”

Castells took a deep breath and half-closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he spoke with resolve, in a low voice and almost without stopping.

“The night before, while we scolded her for running away, Iris looked at me very gravely and said to me: ‘I didn’t ask you to come looking for me.’ And when I insisted that we had suffered a lot because of her, that she’d done something very bad, she smiled at me and replied in a scornful voice: ‘You can’t imagine how bad I can be.’ ”

From where he was sitting, Héctor could see Leire Castro poking her head around the door of the café.

“Anything else you’d like to tell me, Father?”

“No. I’d just like to know where all this is coming from. Digging up old tragedies can’t help anyone.”

“Did you know your nephew Marc wrote a blog?”

“No. I don’t even know exactly what that is, Inspector.”

“A sort of diary. He talked about Iris in it, about the day he found her.”

“Hmmm. I thought he’d forgotten about it. After that summer, he never mentioned it again.”

“Well, he remembered it while he was in Dublin. And wrote about it.”

Leire was still at the café door. Héctor was about to say good-bye when Fèlix said something else: “Inspector. . if you have any more questions, you can ask Savall.”

“Ask Savall?”

“He was an inspector then and stationed in Lleida. It was he who took care of everything.”

If the news surprised Salgado, he did everything he could to hide it.

“I’ll do that. Now I must go. Thank you for everything.”

Fèlix Castells nodded.

“My brother should be about to arrive.”

“We’ll see each other upstairs then. See you soon.”

As he walked toward Leire, he saw that her eyes were fixed on Father Castells. She looked at him distrustfully, harshly, without the least compassion. And Héctor knew she’d also read Marc’s blog, and that the same dark thoughts that had seized him were crossing Agent Castro’s mind, be they just or unjust.

Leire had read Marc’s blog that morning, before meeting the inspector and after getting through a fresh bout of morning sickness. Though she didn’t know why, Marc’s tale had moved her more than she would ever have imagined. She was definitely more sensitive in front of her computer at home, she told herself as soon as she’d finished reading. For once she wished she had someone at her side to share this worry, this feeling that she-both in body and mind-was changing at an alarming rate. The image of that little girl-the same one as in the black-and-white photo-submerged in the water turned her stomach and filled her with a mixture of rage and sadness that lasted long enough to make her wonder if there was any other cause of the intertwined emotions. Of course there was. She was grateful to be obliged to go to work, even though in theory it was her Saturday off. Anything except hanging around waiting for Tomás to call.

She’d seen his note when she arrived home the night before. “You’ve been ages. . some colleagues called and I’m going for a drink with them. See you tomorrow. T.” T.? As if that afternoon she’d been fucking a Tomás, a Tristan and a Toby. . Tomás’s way of leaving his stamp on everything he did was beginning to irritate her. And spending half an hour wondering how to break the news to him only to come back to an empty flat irritated her even more. Knowing that wasn’t entirely fair didn’t help calm her down.

So, at the café door, when the inspector came toward her, leaving Father Castells sitting at the table looking as if he’d seen a ghost, Leire thought exactly as Salgado suspected. That she didn’t like stories of little girls and priests at all.

“Let’s go,” Héctor said to her. “Did you sleep OK? You don’t look well.”

“It’s the heat,” she lied. “Shall we go up?”

“Yes.”

“Nice shirt,” she said as they crossed the street, and was surprised to see him blush a little.

Salvador Martí opened the door to them and for a moment Leire thought he was going to throw them out again. However, he stood to one side and let them in without saying a word. They could hear voices in the lounge, but Gina’s father didn’t take them there but to the stairs that led to the upper floor, where the bedrooms were. They followed him, and waited while he went to his wife’s room and entered after knocking softly at the door. He came out shortly afterward.

“My wife wishes to speak to you, Inspector. Alone.”

Héctor nodded.

“Agent Castro will go through Gina’s room, in case we missed anything last night.”

Salvador Martí shrugged his shoulders.

“You know where it is. If anyone needs me I’ll be downstairs.” He stopped for a moment on the stairs and turned his head. “People keep calling. Some have already come. Regina doesn’t want to see anyone and I don’t know what to say to them.” He was the epitome of a defeated man, hunched shoulders and a weary expression. He shook his head, almost to himself, and began to descend slowly.

Regina received the inspector dressed in black and sitting in front of the window, next to a little table where a tray with an untouched breakfast lay. The contrast with the dazzling, boisterous, summery Regina of two days before was absolute. She seemed, none the less, possessed of a strange calm. The effect of the tranquillizers, Héctor said to himself.

“Señora Ballester, I am truly sorry to bother you under these circumstances.”

She looked at him as if she didn’t understand him and pointed to an empty chair, situated on the other side of the table.