Leonardo Padura - Havana Gold

“Thanks a lot,” he said to the black woman when he stood up. She’d been looking at him all that time and smiled.

“Come back whenever you want, sir.”

“I think I might,” he said waving at the women, who’d switched from the topic of eggs to the chickens that had yet to reach the butchers. The usual story: the chicken or the egg? He walked back to the central avenue and, on his right, saw the mourners coming back from the burial. He adjusted his glasses and went to look for the car, hoping he’d be able to sit down. He felt weak and ridiculous and he knew he was going soft. It’s as if I were in meltdown. Bloody shit. He tried his door but it was locked like Manolo’s. He saw the radio aerial on the back seat. He distrusts even the dead, he thought. And then thought: will she grant me my miracle?

“How did it go?”

Greco, in uniform, was waiting for them under the almond tree planted by the entrance to the parking lot at headquarters. He barely saluted when Conde came over and replied.

“Plain sailing. We got to his house at eight, as Manolo told us, called in his mother, explained it was a routine investigation connected to Orlando San Juan, and then called him in – he was still asleep. The search carried out by Cicerón’s people brought nothing to light, Conde.”

“What did you make of him?”

“He’s a bit loud-mouthed and protested to start with, but I think it’s pure show.”

“Did you tell him anything else?”

“No, not a thing. Crespo’s with him upstairs in your cubbyhole. It’s all set up as per instructions.”

“Up we go, Manolo,” he then said and they went into a building that was quiet at a time when it was usually bustling. They found the lift waiting for them, doors open, in the lobby. Miracles already? wondered the Count and pressed the button to his floor. When they were in the corridor, Manuel Palacios took a deep breath and filled his lungs, like a deep-sea diver about to take the plunge.

“Shall we begin?”

“Be tough,” said the Count following him.

Manolo opened the door to the cubicle where bald Crespo and Lázaro San Juan were sitting. Crespo stood up and saluted Manolo with almost a martial air.

“Bring him here, Crespo,” asked the sergeant.

Still in the corridor, the Count saw the boy come out. He was handcuffed and he’d lifted his hands to his forehead.

“Take off the handcuffs,” he ordered Crespo and looked at Lázaro San Juan’s face; although it bore no similarity to Lando the Russian’s, family traits were in evidence – an apparently absent gaze and almost straight, lipless mouth. He looked older than a youth who’d just celebrated his eighteenth birthday. His body was endowed with a firm, adult bone structure, and layered in rippling muscle. A few spots on his face betrayed his youth, but not even the red acne pimples obscured his masculine grace. His hair was parted down the middle and he didn’t seem scared. Lissette was a woman who ate well and badly with equal relish, because it was a way to eat twice. That boy must have been her favourite dish, thought Conde. Tough on the digestion.

They processed awkwardly along the corridor and entered the lift. They went up to the next floor and walked out into a similar corridor, one lined with glass and aluminium doors. They went through two doorways and opened a wooden door that led into the tiniest of cubicles that was in semi-darkness. There was a curtain down one side. Manolo pointed Lázaro to the only chair and the youngster sat down. Crespo switched the light on.

“Lázaro San Juan Valdés?” asked Manolo and the youngster nodded. “An eleventh grade student at La Víbora Pre-Uni, correct?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“All right, do you know why you’re here?”

The youngster looked around him, as if trying to get an idea of where he was.

“I was told it was an investigation into Pre-Uni.”

“Do you know or can you imagine what kind of investigation?”

“I think it’s to do with Lissette the teacher. I was in the lavatories the other day when your colleague came in and asked about her.” He replied looking at Conde.

“That’s right,” Manolo continued, “it’s about her. Lissette the teacher was murdered on Tuesday the eighteenth, at around midnight. She was strangled with a towel. Someone had sexual contact with her just before. Someone gave her a good beating just before. But before that, lots of alcohol was drunk in her place and marijuana smoked. What can you tell us about any of that?”

The youngster looked back at Conde, who’d lit a cigarette.

“Nothing, comrade, how could I?”

“Are you sure? Call Greco,” Manolo addressed Crespo. The policeman picked a phone up and whispered something. He hung up. In the meantime, Manolo leafed through a small notebook he was holding and opted to read, an apparently enthralling read, while the Count smoked and looked all casual, as if present at a very familiar performance. Seated in the centre of the tiny room, Lázaro San Juan shifted his gaze from one to the other, as if waiting for them to award him a deferred mark in a final examination. Doubt grew in his gaze, for all to see, like a well-nourished weed.

Two knocks on the wooden door, and in walked Greco’s sharp-pointed bones. I’m surrounded by skin and bones. I’m even turning skin and bones, recalled the Count. Greco was carrying a piece of paper. He handed it to the Count and left. The lieutenant glanced at it and nodded, when he looked up at Manolo. Lázaro San Juan’s gaze flew from one to the other. Still waiting for his mark.

“All right, Lázaro, we’ll get down to the serious stuff. On the eighteenth you were in the house of your teacher Lissette. Your fingerprints are there. And it’s very likely you were the one who went to bed with her that night: your blood is group O, the same as the man whose semen she had in her vagina when she died.” Manolo walked towards the curtain which was to the left of Lázaro, drew it back to reveal the translucent glass that, as in a game of mirrors, gave a to-scale reproduction of the room where they were, but with less backdrop, action and characters. “Your cousin, Orlando San Juan, sits in there, accused of possessing and peddling drugs, attempted illegal departure from the country and the theft of a motor launch belonging to the State. He has confessed to all his crimes and told us moreover that on the eighteenth, at around 7.30 p.m., you went to his house and stayed there for a while. Moreover it transpires that the marijuana your cousin possesses is the same kind as the stuff that turned up in the toilet in Lissette’s place. As you can see, Lázaro, you’re more trapped up in this tale of drugs and murder than mincemeat in a pie. Even if you don’t confess, any court will have a ball with all these facts I’ve given you. What’s more, the colleague who brought me these papers has just gone to get Luis Gustavo Rodríguez and Yuri Samper, your little Pre-Uni friends, and when we talk to them, you bet they will confirm lots of things. OK, as you can see, very serious stuff. You got anything to say?”

The Count watched the mutation take place. It was like a wave that advanced from the guts and surfaced through the skin. Lázaro’s muscles lost their ripple and his chest deflated. His hair was no longer neatly parted down the middle, but awry like a badly fitting wig. The spots on his face turned dark and he no longer seemed beautiful, strong or young and instinct told the Count that they’d reached the epilogue to that tale. Why would he have killed her? Why would an eighteenyear-old youth do something so bestial and definitive as that? Why could the quest for happiness end in that degeneration that had only just begun and would never finish, not even after the ten, fifteen years Lázaro San Juan was going to spend surrounded by the degrading rigours of prison life, by murderers like himself, thieves, rapists and conmen, who would fight over the dark heart of his beauty and youth like a trophy they would sooner or later devour with great pleasure. No miracle would save this Lazarus.