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“Please.”
I went in search of the thermos and poured him a cup with eight lumps of sugar. He gulped it down.
“Better?”
“Getting there. Well, then, the fact is that Don Manuel was on duty the day they brought the body of Julián Carax to the autopsy department, in September of 1936. Of course, Don Manuel couldn’t remember the name, but a look through the archives and a hundred-peseta donation toward his retirement fund refreshed his memory remarkably. Do you follow me?”
I nodded, almost in a trance.
“Don Manuel remembers all the details of that day because, as he told me, it was one of the few times when he skipped the rules. The police claimed that the body had been found in an alleyway of the Raval quarter, shortly before dawn. The body reached the morgue by midmorning. On it were only a book and a passport, which identified him as Julián Fortuny Carax, born in Barcelona in 1900. The passport had been stamped at the border post of La Junquera, showing that Carax had come into the country a month earlier. The cause of death was, apparently, a bullet wound. Don Manuel isn’t a doctor, but over the years he had learned what to look for. In his opinion the gunshot, just above the heart, had been delivered at point-blank range. Thanks to the passport, they were able to locate Mr. Fortuny, Carax’s father, who came to the morgue that very evening to identify the body.”
“Up to here it all tallies with what Nuria Monfort said.”
Barceló nodded. “That’s right. What Nuria Monfort didn’t tell you is that he—my friend Don Manuel—sensing that the police did not seem very interested in the case, and having realized that the book found in the pocket of the corpse bore the name of the deceased, decided to act on his own initiative and called the publishing house that very afternoon, while they awaited the arrival of Mr. Fortuny, to inform them about what had happened.”
“Nuria Monfort told me that the employee at the morgue phoned the publishers three days later, when the body had already been buried in a common grave.”
“According to Don Manuel, he called on the same day as the body was delivered to the morgue. He tells me he spoke to a young woman who said she was grateful to him for having called. Don Manuel remembers that he was slightly shocked by the attitude of the young lady. In his own words: ‘It sounded as if she already knew.’”
“What about Mr. Fortuny? Is it true that he refused to identify his son?”
“That’s what intrigued me most of all. Don Manuel tells me that at the end of the afternoon, a little man arrived, trembling, escorted by two policemen. It was Mr. Fortuny. According to Don Manuel, that is the one thing that one never gets used to, the moment when those closest to the loved one come to identify the body. He says it’s a situation he wouldn’t wish on anyone. Worst of all, he says, is when the deceased is a young person and it’s the parents, or a young spouse, who have to identify him. Don Manuel remembers Mr. Fortuny well. He says that when he arrived at the morgue, he could scarcely stand, that he cried like a child, and that the two policemen had to hold him up by his arms. He kept on moaning: ‘What have they done to my son? What have they done to my son?’”
“Did he get to see the body?”
“Don Manuel told me that he was on the point of asking the police officers whether they might skip the procedure. It’s the only time it occurred to him to question the rules. The corpse was in a bad state. The victim had probably been dead for over twenty-four hours when the body reached the morgue, and not since dawn that day, as the police claimed. Manuel was afraid that when that little old man saw it, he would break down. Mr. Fortuny kept on repeating that it couldn’t be, that his Julián couldn’t be dead…. Then Don Manuel removed the shroud that covered the body, and the two policemen asked Mr. Fortuny formally whether that was his son, Julián.”
“And?”
“Mr. Fortuny was dumbfounded. He stared at the body for almost a minute. Then he turned on his heels and left.”
“He left?”
“In a hurry.”
“What about the police? Didn’t they stop him? Wasn’t he there to identify the body?”
Barceló smiled roguishly. “In theory. But Don Manuel remembers there was someone else in the room, a third policeman, who had come in quietly while the other two were preparing Mr. Fortuny. He was watching the scene without saying a word, leaning against the wall, with a cigarette in his mouth. Don
Manuel remembers him because when he told him that the regulations strictly forbade smoking in the morgue, one of the officers signaled to him to be quiet. According to Don Manuel, as soon as Mr. Fortuny had left, the third policeman went up to the body, glanced at it, and spit on its face. Then he kept the passport and gave orders for the body to be sent to Montjuïc, to be buried in a common grave at daybreak.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s what Don Manuel thought. Especially as none of it tallied with the rules. ‘But we don’t know who this man is,’ he said. The two other policemen didn’t say anything. Don Manuel rebuked them angrily: ‘Or do you know only too well? Because it is quite clear to us all that he’s been dead for at least a day.’ Don Manuel was obviously referring to the regulations and was no fool. According to him, when the third policeman heard his protests, he went up to him, looked straight into his eyes, and asked him whether he’d care to join the deceased on his last voyage. Don Manuel was terrified. That man had the eyes of a lunatic, and Don Manuel didn’t doubt for one moment that he meant what he said. He mumbled that he was only trying to comply with the regulations, that nobody knew who that man was, and that, consequently, he couldn’t be buried yet. ‘This man is whoever I say he is,’ answered the policeman. Then he picked up the register form and signed it, closing the case. Don Manuel says he’ll never forget that signature, because during the war years, and for a long time afterward, he would come across it on dozens of death certificates for bodies that arrived from goodness knows where—bodies that nobody managed to identify….”
“Inspector Francisco Javier Fumero…”
“The pride and glory of Central Police Headquarters. Do you realize what this means, Daniel?”
“That we’ve been lashing out blindly from the very beginning.”
Barceló took his hat and stick and walked over to the door, tut-tutting under his breath. “No, it means the lashings are about to start.”
·40·
I SPENT THE AFTERNOON KEEPING WATCH OVER THE GRIM LETTER announcing my draft, hoping for signs of life from Fermín. Half an hour after our closing time, Fermín’s whereabouts remained unknown. I picked up the telephone and called the pensión on Calle Joaquín Costa. Doña Encarna answered, her voice thick with alcohol. She said she hadn’t seen Fermín since that morning.
“If he’s not back within the next half hour, he’ll have to have his supper cold. This isn’t the Ritz, you know. I hope nothing’s happened to him?”
