Antonio Hill - The Summer of Dead Toys

While she waited for him to return from the bar, she felt disappointed. Stupid, she scolded herself. What did you expect? He’s your boss, not a friend. And even as a boss you’ve known him for only four days. Héctor returned with his mojito and sat down again. The mobile remained silent.

“I told you a secret,” she said. “It’s your turn.”

“When did we make that deal?”

“Never. But it’s a craving. .”

“Oh no. My wife harped on at me with that for months until I found out it was completely untrue. My ex-wife,” he pointed out, before drinking.

“Do you have children?”

“Yes, one boy. They never become exes.” Unless they’re ashamed of a father convicted of murder, he told himself. He didn’t want to think about it. “I warn you, and tell your boyfriend too.”

He realized he’d put his foot in it when he saw her face.

“OK.” He took refuge in his mojito, which was tart and strong. “Fuck, your friend’s made this one strong.” He stirred it vigorously. “You know what? You don’t need him. I mean the father. I swear I could have lived without mine.”

Leire watched him as he took another long drink. When he put the glass on the table and she could see his eyes she believed she understood the depth of the darkness glimmering in them and felt what her friend María called “the seductive power of sad childhoods.” A mix of attraction and tenderness. She looked away so he wouldn’t see while she cursed these turbulent hormones that seemed to be plotting against her. Luckily, just then some late customers took the table right beside them, so close that any confidence between them would have been an indiscretion. Both she and Héctor did everything they could to restore informal conversation but their efforts resulted in a chat so forced that Leire was glad when he finished his drink and suggested that perhaps she might be tired.

“A little, to be honest. Do you want me to drop you somewhere?”

He shook his head.

“See you tomorrow.” At least I hope so, he thought. “Drive carefully.”

“I haven’t been drinking, Inspector Salgado.”

“Not Héctor any more?” he asked, half smiling.

Leire didn’t answer. She went to the bar and paid for the drinks, ignoring his protests. Héctor watched her from the table as she chatted to the owner. He heard her laugh, and he told himself that was exactly what he had been missing in his life lately: not someone to fuck, or walk with, or live with. Someone to laugh about this shitty life with.

He was in the bar, alone, until it closed, like a local drunk who didn’t want to go home. However, that night the mojitos had no effect on him. He thought ironically that the heroes in the movies drink bourbon or whisky. Not even in this do you measure up, Salgado. When the bar owner discreetly said it was closing time, he went out into the street. He wandered aimlessly for a while, trying not to think, to let his mind go blank. He didn’t succeed and, just as he was about to enter another joint to add more alcohol to his body, his mobile took revenge for being so long silent. He answered immediately.

“Martina!”

“Héctor, it’s finished. It’s finished! All over. Fuck, Inspector, you owe me one. This time you really owe me one.”

As soon as Héctor had left, Sergeant Andreu had gone back into the flat where Omar’s mistreated corpse lay. She was by then mentally prepared for what she was going to find, so this time she observed the scene with the detachment required. If in life that man had caused pain, it was clear that he’d paid for it with a slow death, she said to herself as she knelt by the body. Abandoned like a dog. She wasn’t an expert in forensic science, but she knew enough to see that the old doctor had died between twenty-four and forty-eight hours earlier. The large contusion visible on the nape of his neck, however, was older than that. Yes, the doctor had been given an almost fatal blow days before, the day of his disappearance, and they’d left him there, tied up, gagged, dying. In a show of sadism, she thought, remembering the disk in the DVD player, his killer had recorded the exact moment of his death for posterity.

She stood up slowly. However much she wanted to avoid it, all the evidence pointed to Héctor. A witness had seen him with the victim the evening he disappeared; a man with an Argentine accent had ordered then paid for the pig’s head over the phone. The call could have been made from anywhere. She hadn’t received a very trustworthy description from the boy at the butcher’s. Apart from the accent, the information contributed by the boy had been rather vague. Vague, yes, but not contrary to Salgado’s physical appearance at all. And then there was the corpse, just below Héctor’s flat. And the discs in his house. Martina closed her eyes and could visualize part of the sequence of events, though not all. Of course it was hard for her to imagine Héctor recording anyone’s death, in an act of perverse voyeurism, and much less attacking that poor neighbor of his. But what if Carmen’s assault was a mere coincidence? Something that had happened that day and had nothing to do with the Omar case?

Enough, she admonished herself. There was nothing more to see. She left the room as she’d found it, and then did the same with Carmen’s keys. A strange uneasiness came over her when she’d done so, the indefinable feeling that she was overlooking something. Or perhaps it was the fear that someone might find out what she’d taken upon herself: those hours of a head start she’d given to a possible murderer. . She was playing for him, she thought, without the slightest guarantee she could win the game.

She dismissed the idea of going back to Omar’s flat and decided to go to the station, shut herself in her office with all the material and find a crack, a thread to pull. She looked at her watch. A long and possibly pointless night lay ahead of her, but she wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. Not yet.

Two hours later, however, with a crick in her neck and red eyes, the feeling of being beaten was overwhelming her. She’d re-read all the files, the ones from before the doctor’s disappearance when he was under investigation for his connection with the network of pimps, as well as the most recent. She had produced a detailed outline using the witness statements: the lawyer who said he’d seen him on Monday night; the butcher; and above all that of Rosa, which placed the doctor in his office on Tuesday evening. She’d posed all the questions, and although she hadn’t managed to answer them all completely, they all directed her thoughts to one name: Héctor Salgado.

For the last time, she went over the questions still unanswered. Some were circumstantial, along the lines of: how had Héctor moved Omar’s body to the empty flat in Poblenou? He could have borrowed a friend’s car, she told herself. Or his exwife’s. What’s more, she thought, he could even have taken one of the police vehicles. Not easy, but he could have done it. Question dismissed. Another point against the inspector.

She was exhausted. Her back, head, stomach all hurt. Hurt her to the point of irritability. But this same extreme fatigue forced her to keep going in an almost masochistic effort. She closed her eyes for a moment, breathed deeply and returned to the task, from the beginning. Another question dangled around the search of the house and the doctor’s accounts. If she assumed, and she had no reason to doubt it, that this quack had collaborated with the women-trafficking ring, where was the money he got from it? Not in the bank, logically, but not in his house either. The question remained unanswered, but in no way did it exonerate Héctor. His motive, were he guilty, had never been robbery, but revenge. A distorted sense of justice. The same thing that had driven him to beat Omar.