A Not So Perfect Crime E-Book

Teresa Solana

• Herausgeber: Bitter Lemon Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

"A scathing satire of Spanish society, hilarious dialogue, all beautifully dressed up as a crime novel."--Krimi-Couch "A first novel that's spread like wildfire by word of mouth."--El Avui "Teresa Solana is great proof of the vitality of the roman noir in Catalan. . . . A wonderfully ironic hymn to the city of Barcelona."--Diari de Balears Another day in Barcelona, another slimy politician's wife is suspected of infidelity. Lluis Font discovers a portrait of his wife in an exhibition that leads him to conclude he is being cuckolded by the artist. Concerned only about the potential political fallout, he hires twins Eduard and Pep, private detectives with a supposed knack for helping the wealthy with their "dirty laundry." Their office is adorned with false doors leading to nonexistent private rooms, a mysterious secretary who is always away, and a broken laptop computer picked up on the street. The case turns ugly when Font's wife is found poisoned by a marron glace from a box of sweets delivered anonymously. This is a deftly plotted, bitingly funny mystery novel. A satire of Catalan politics and a fascinating insight into the life and habits of Barcelona's inhabitants, diurnal and nocturnal. Teresa Solana lives in Barcelona. Born in 1962, she studied philosophy and worked as a literary translator and essayist. She has written several novels kept quietly in her drawer. A Not So Perfect Crime, her first published title, won the 2007 Brigada 21 Prize for the best Catalan mystery novel.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

 

Title Page

Dedication

 

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

 

PART TWO

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

 

Epilogue

Copyright Page

Teresa Solana has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona where she also studied Classics. She has worked as a literary translator and directed the Spanish National Translation Centre in Tarazona. She has published many essays and articles on translation and written several novels she preferred to keep in her drawer. Her first published novel, A Not So Perfect Crime, won the 2007 Brigada 21 Prize for the best crime novel written in Catalan and has also been translated into French, German, Italian, Romanian and Spanish.

For Peter Bush

PART ONE

1

My brother Borja’s name isn’t Borja. It’s Pep (or Josep). And his surname isn’t Masdéu-Canals Sáez de Astorga. We’re both Martínez on our father’s side and Estivill on our mother’s.

Unlike Borja, (I mean, Pep), I’ve kept the name and surnames my parents gave me: a humble Eduard (though still a Spanish Eduardo on my ID card) Martínez Estivill. My brother’s name (or at least the one he prefers to flaunt) is Borja Masdéu-Canals Sáez de Astorga, notwithstanding an identity card he should have renewed years ago that proclaims him José Martínez Estivill, born in Barcelona, son of Rosa and Francisco. Naturally nobody knows that Pep, (I mean, Borja) and I are brothers. Twins, to boot. No one, not even my wife.

Our parents were born in Barcelona, although on my father’s side our grandparents and great-grandparents hailed from Soria, in deepest Castile. As for Borja-Pep’s imaginary family, as he himself likes to expatiate, his father was from Lleida, the youngest in a family owning large stretches of arable land and herds of cows in the region of Alt Urgell, while his mother was a rich heiress from Santander, the coastal resort where Borja’s invented parents had decided to settle down after they married, and where he claims he was born.

This canny family tree enables my brother Borja to justify the fact that, despite his spectacularly blue-blooded surnames and the handsome family fortune he should logically have inherited (he presents himself as an only child, so as not to over-complicate matters), nobody in Barcelona has ever heard of the Masdéu-Canals Sáez de Astorgas. My brother is also quick to explain, when referring to his precarious financial state, that he comes from one of those ancient families which inevitably fell on hard times and whose genealogical roots are mired in a silt of aristocratic surnames of obscure medieval origin.

“Papa,” Borja usually explains (from here on I’ll refer to him using the name everyone knows him by, the one I’m now used to), “was unable to adapt to modern times and lost his entire inheritance. He invested everything in the family business in Santander, and managed to make a fortune. But the times were changing ... The famous industrial reorganization of the shipyards came along, and, as if that weren’t enough, papa fell foul of the Revenue, which wasn’t his fault, of course, but down to a wretched accountant who lost him a heap of money,” he concludes in hushed tones with a shake of the head as he embroiders his tale with pride, fatalistic resignation and always with the utmost conviction.

Though we are twins, my brother Borja and I are not at all alike physically. I mean we don’t look like brothers. He takes more after our mother’s family, who were rather carefree and slim, while I take after our father’s, always on the sullen and chubby side. In fact, having left the womb a couple of minutes after me, Borja is the younger fledgling: nonetheless every so often it amuses my twin to remind me that, if we’d been a king’s sons (the legitimate variety, naturally), he, not I, would have been the rightful heir to the throne. I tell him not to worry, I’m sure we wouldn’t have fought each other for the honour. As far as I’m concerned, this peculiar idiosyncrasy of monarchies struggling to preserve vestiges of ignorance from past eras – namely, first spliced, last out – takes a weight off my mind. Perhaps because I’m a hesitant, shrinking violet, and Borja’s the capricious, daring type.

We are twins and will both be forty-five in May, but I have to admit that my brother seems somewhat younger. He’s still single, although for a long time he’s had a sort of more or less steady girlfriend who likes to have him on her arm at Barcelona’s most select venues. Maybe the only drawback in this arrangement – depending on your point of view, obviously – is that she is married.

Clearly, the husband of this girl (who is hardly a girl any more) is a guy with lots of money and no time to spend with his family. However, I deduce from stories Borja sometimes tells that she’s not what you’d call a downtrodden spouse. The woman, Mercedes by name and Merche for short, belongs to that cohort of successful female lawyers who graduate from the Abat Oliva University to work in Barcelona’s most select law practices. She devotes herself to the kind of work that brings in the bacon for graduates of expensive, prestigious institutions favoured by well-heeled Catholics who dedicate their talents to ensuring that the rich don’t pay too much tax. Borja and Merche usually meet up on the odd evening and spend weekends together, when her husband goes on his travels. Apparently, this happens quite often, since he’s an entrepreneur who owns factories in China (or something of the kind), and one of those successful men who revel in the ancient tradition of more than a little slap and tickle with their secretaries and other deserving causes, usually on business junkets to destinations never very far from a sweep of tropical beach. They constitute, so Borja informs me (the fount of all my knowledge on the affairs of Barcelona’s upper classes) a modern couple typical of this social background, sharing children and social activities but separating out lives and bank accounts. Merche has a teenage son who’s overly fond of snorting coke (like his mother I suspect), whereas Borja, to the best of his knowledge, has no offspring. The only worrying vice I associate with him is Cardhu, and he can’t drink that in excess because he’s perpetually broke. I know next to nothing of Borja’s love life before Merche.

In fact, despite the close relationship we enjoy now, the last twenty years of my twin brother’s life are a mystery that only receives sporadic illumination when, under the influence of Cardhu, Borja makes the occasional, apparently sincere revelation. I clutch at such straws in order to painstakingly reconstruct periods of his life, and it’s thanks to this Scottish beverage that I’ve found out he set foot in Australia, starved in Germany and would never work again as cook on an oil tanker. And also that he lived in Paris for several years, but more of this anon.

I’m still married to the same woman, my darling Montse, and we have three children: two fourteen year-old girls, also twins, and a terrible two who will soon be three. My brother Borja still boasts a splendid head of brown hair (to which I am sure Iranzo, his stylist, adds blonde highlights once a month), and loves silk ties, English pin-stripe suits and Italian casuals. I prefer corduroy and jeans, checked shirts and lace-ups. Although we are more or less the same height, just below six feet, I weigh in at twenty-six pounds more – not that I’m what you’d call fat. I’ll admit I might be developing a paunch, and, like our father, a receding hairline that I do my best to conceal. My remaining hair, of which luckily there is a lot, is unaccountably greying in a way that doesn’t give me a more distinguished air – not even when I imitate Borja and pile on the gel and comb it back. His skin is always an enviable golden brown thanks to a sun-tanning salon next door to his block, while mine stays milky white most of the year. Borja works out at a gym at least three times a week, but I get more than enough exercise with my contribution to the general house-clean every Saturday, and by playing with the kid every day while Montse’s getting dinner. Borja is rightwing (for aesthetic reasons, he claims) and I soldier on as a non-voting, disillusioned left-winger.

I must confess that I blush easily when forced to tell even the most innocent of fibs, whereas Borja only goes red when he blabs something that sounds as if it’s really true. In restaurants he is able to select wine not simply as a function of price and knows how to wield the appropriate utensils when dissecting a lobster, while I always end up ordering meat and giving the nod to whatever wine I’m asked to taste.

We are both partners (and the only employees) in a kind of consultancy, as we call it, which on our cards and letterhead proclaims itself Frau Consultants, Ltd. The name Borja chose initially was the Greek letter Tau, invoking Taurus, the sign of the Zodiac we share; it is not a word in Catalan or Spanish, and we felt that to be opportune considering the strange things that occur with language questions in our country, particularly on the Upper North Side of this city. However, someone made a mistake at the printers, and Borja, who is a touch superstitious, read it as an omen, decided to take the error on board and renamed our newly created company. Frau brings the word “fraud” to my mind, reasonably enough, and perhaps there is some of that lurking behind my brother’s new moniker and his permanent state of bankruptcy. Borja appreciates the finer things in life and likes to splash out – which, given his circumstances, is not very often.

The truth of the matter is that Frau Consultants is not a real firm because it has no legal existence at the company registry and, in any case, the activities we undertake generate little in the way of invoices and paperwork. The consultancy we offer, and which our clients require, is too confidential in nature to allow for written contracts, let alone reports and invoices; but it is quite another matter to run to a decent office where we can see clients and hand out elegant, expensive cards embossed with our names and telephone numbers. As Borja says, they lend an air of respectability that leads important people to trust us, and at the end of the day trust is what it’s all about. In terms of hierarchy, he’s the company director and I’m his deputy. In practice, to make it crystal-clear, he provides the clients, class and personal charm, and I perform the bloodhound routines.

As we don’t have a secretary (our current budget won’t stretch to a blonde goddess manicuring her nails all day in the office, though she’d be one of the improvements Borja would like to introduce into the company), we are forced to give our clients the numbers of our blasted mobile phones. These are the very latest models thanks to an acquaintance of Borja who works around the shops in the port area and gets them on the cheap (I suspect that backstreet dealing in mobiles off the backs of lorries is one of the scams Borja resorts to when we aren’t on a case). What we do have is a small, very chic office – top end as they say – on carrer Balmes, very close to the plaça Bonanova, because we pay a peppercorn rent that was fixed years ago. Borja says this rent, ridiculously low considering we work in one of those districts in Barcelona where the nakedness of the graffitifree walls verges on the obscene, is a favour granted by a grateful friend. I imagine it’s a friend who’s very grateful because my brother has kept the lid on various items of compromising information. There’s a reception area, a small sink and 400 square feet of space containing our non-existent secretary’s desk. Since it is so roomy, we’ve equipped it with two armchairs and a small sofa from the Ikea sales, together with two standard lamps and a brightly coloured carpet, a longish second-hand glass table, one side of which is slightly cracked, and six leather-upholstered chairs Borja bought on the cheap (a job-lot from a removal van, I guess). This is where we meet our clients, who are not exactly queuing up. With characteristic cunning Borja has had very flash imitation-mahogany doors set in one of the walls (the carpenter has yet to be paid, I fear), mounted with a couple of gilt plaques that proclaim our names and respective posts in italics:

Borja Masdéu-Canals Sáez de AstorgaDirectorandEduardo Martínez EstivillDeputy Director

When we see clients, our secretary is invariably on holiday or out on an errand. Nonetheless, there is always a little bottle of red Chanel nail varnish and other small items on her desk that supposedly betray a feminine presence: a Liberty foulard draped casually over the back of her chair (which, one festive night, after a couple of generous measures of Cardhu, Borja confessed he’d requisitioned from a restaurant coat-stand), a copy of Hello! (inevitably a very out-of-date copy purloined from my brother’s sun-tanning salon) and a plant that doesn’t require much water. He reckons such anodyne objects lend credibility to the idea that a woman is at work there. We also keep a filched bottle of L’Air du Temps in one of the drawers of the desk, whereon rests a Mac that doesn’t work, and occasionally when we are expecting a visit, we squirt the scent around and perfume the atmosphere with the high-class secretarial touch Borja believes to be so vital. As for our non-existent offices behind fake doors, they are always being painted or redecorated.

After all my setting of the scene, it must be apparent that our customers almost always belong to the upper classes, and that what we can offer them is absolute discretion in the matters they confide to us. “Eduard, lie under an oak tree and your acorns will prosper,” Borja likes to repeat. It’s one of his favourite sayings. The other is the one about God and dice.

“Eduard, God doesn’t play dice ...” he likes to quip when we find ourselves up a blind alley or enjoy a sudden stroke of good luck.

In fact, Borja and I play the role of intermediary in the kinds of negotiations the rich don’t like to conduct themselves, such as buying or selling whatever comes their way and pawning jewels and art objects. We sometimes get involved in collecting information on rival firms or disloyal partners, and occasionally we’ve even checked out the veracity of a prolonged absence from work brought about by a pleasant, highly dubious depression. Unfortunately, as we have to earn our crust one way or another, we must also occasionally get to grips with cases of infidelity. We aren’t detectives or anything like that, and that’s precisely why our clientele decides to place itself at our mercy. It’s not like contracting an agency of professionals to tail your wife (or mistress, which is usually what it amounts to), and then facing up to a grizzly individual who hands over a fat file and an even fatter invoice confirming your irksome suspicions – it’s more like asking a friend to find out what he can in exchange for a generously filled envelope. We provide this friendly service: we don’t bug, don’t take photos, don’t hoard files or write long reports. We work by word of mouth, and frequently relay our findings to clients comfortably ensconced together in one of the few decent cocktail bars that, according to Borja, are still left in Barcelona. We’re not anonymous employees of a sordid private detective agency advertised on balcony hoardings, but two understanding friends who, if needs be, can find a word of consolation and offer a shoulder to cry on when one of our clients decides to divulge all. “Be prepared” is our motto, salvaged by Borja from our wretched time as obedient boy scouts. As he says, it reflects the professional skills we offer, not to mention the over-the-top fees we try to command.

You can take it as read that when I accepted Borja’s partnership proposal I never imagined things would take off and that we’d find ourselves embroiled in trying to solve a murder case. I must confess neither of us had the slightest idea about how to tackle such a situation, either then or now. In fact all our knowledge of the criminal underworld originates exclusively – I kid you not – from reading crime fiction on childhood holidays spent in Premià de Mar with our parents and grandparents, when Premià was still a small village sufficiently distant from Barcelona to perform as a summer holiday resort. As far as I’m concerned, this bookish experience was supplemented on the beach at Caldetes, where Montse, the children and I still spend the summer: the main aim of such page-turning being to keep in check the tortured testosterone of a young man prostrate on the sand and surrounded by splendidly curvaceous flesh as naked as the day God brought it into this world. Frankly, our sources never went beyond Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, G.K. Chesterton, Georges Simenon, Vázquez Montalbán and, recently, Mrs Jessica Fletcher and Colombo (the series shown repeatedly on television, of which Borja never missed a single episode). You can also take it for granted that the nearest we’ve ever got to pistols, and firearms in general, was the front row of the cinema stalls. As we are orphans, we enjoyed the privilege of never being conscripted, so neither of us has ever held a CETME, that Spanish army-issue rifle with a life of its own, characterized by a tendency to backfire at will. As for our knowledge of matters legal and forensic, they add up to a combined total of zilch, if not less.

Borja, and Einstein, may be right that God doesn’t play dice, but I’m fairly sceptical when it comes to identifying coincidence and causality; I must, however, accept that in the case I’m about to relate, there were far too many coincidences for comfort. In the first place, how else would we have been drawn into the investigation of a tricky murder case in which leading figures from high society were key players? Given our total lack of know-how, the job was clearly beyond us, to put it mildly, but the strange circumstances surrounding the case (and the fact we ourselves got embroiled), put us in the position of having to take the case on. I won’t deny there were circumstances to inspire all our detective heroes, because the crime we confronted was the stuff films are made of. If newscasters tell us day-in day-out of crimes that are sordid, vicious and eminently predictable, the majority perpetrated by head cases on drugs or poor wretches who commit suicide or give themselves up to the police, tails between legs, it was our lot to investigate a case that lacked any such spice. It was at once refined and unnerving. To tell the truth, given our day and age’s fondness for blood, guts and cheap sex, the planning and execution of “our” murder suggested that a minor, yet truly macabre, masterpiece had been staged.

2

It all began one morning early in December when we were breakfasting on coffee and croissants in the San Marcos café in the High Street in Sarrià. We hadn’t anything better to do and it was too cold in the office. I had just opened the newspaper when Borja’s mobile rang.

“He didn’t say who he was, but he repeated the word ‘confidential’ at least eight times. I made an appointment for half-past four at the office,” Borja explained after he’d rung off, then added “You’d better smarten yourself up a bit. I smell a big fish.”

“That would do us very nicely. Christmas is coming and Montse’s starting to kick up ...”

“I told you not to worry. You’ll get your double bonus. When did I ever let you down?”

It’s true. Ever since we became partners, some three years ago, Borja has never let me down. It’s as if he, not I, were the elder brother, even if there were only a couple of minutes in it. I don’t know how he manages but I always end up being paid something before the fifth of every month when our mortgage payment is due. I suspect that when he’s really at his wits’ end he gets money from Merche, his girlfriend, or from Doña Mariona Castany, who has become a kind of aunt to him, but I don’t dare ask. There are five mouths to feed at home, two belong to teenagers, and we can’t make it to the end of the month on what Montse brings in. I can’t allow myself the luxury of refusing Borja’s handouts, wherever they come from, usually a brown envelope stuffed with dog-eared notes.

“You heard me, make yourself presentable.”

“But I am really quite ...”

“For the nth time, please wear your uniform.”

What he calls “my uniform” is a dark grey Armani suit he forced me to buy (he was paying), a white shirt, also an Armani (I did the honours) and a tastefully striped silk tie my mother-in-law gave me for a birthday present, and which he approves of. It’s what I wear when we see clients or take a dip in the world of the wealthy.

“And what will you wear?” I asked a touch sarcastically. “Will you dress up to the nines or say you’ve just come from the nineteenth hole?”

Borja sometimes turns up to our appointments in sports gear (not tracksuits, you understand, but designer polo shirts, cotton trousers and deck shoes), his hair still wet, as if he’d just taken a shower, a big bag of golf clubs or tennis gear slung over his shoulder. I’ve never seen him in action (in fact, as far as I recall, when we were kids my brother detested sport) and I’ve never discovered if he really plays or it’s all a pose.

“I’m still undecided,” he smiled. I knew he had something else on his mind right then: the advance we might extract. We finished our coffee, which had gone cold after so much chattering, and went our separate ways. It was almost midday and early, so I went home to eat, shower and change my clothes.

My wife, Montse, is usually very busy at this time of day and never comes home for lunch. She used to work as a professional psychologist, in a state school in the suburbs of Barcelona. When Borja suddenly appeared and our life took a 360 degree turn for the better, Montse soon abandoned her post, which she was sick to death of after years of bureaucracy, threats and disillusion. She and two friends opened an Alternative Centre for Natural Wellbeing in the district of Gràcia, just by the plaça de la Virreina. My wife and her friends were lucky enough to find roomy but decrepit ground-floor premises at a rock-bottom rent since the floor above was home to two dozen or so squatters and their dogs. The trio spent thousands transforming what had been a rag-and-bone man’s shop into a space with the requisite New Age ambience, and I must admit they made it look nice and are doing pretty well. Against a backcloth of pastel shades, subdued lighting, ethnic music and scented candles, Montse and partners offer their female clientele a plethora of alternative therapies, from massages with unpronounceable eastern names and ecologically sound beauty treatments to techniques for defeating insomnia or flab. They also put on courses in yoga, Sanskrit and vegetarian cuisine and over the last few months have organized therapy sessions for smokers who want to give up (which Montse leads, though she herself is not yet an entirely nicotine-free zone). On Thursdays they put on literary get-togethers which usually involve performances by bards who self-publish with the help of a photocopier or by scraping together a public grant thanks to an uncle who works for the Generalitat, the Catalan government, and the gigs extend into the early hours once they transfer to one of the excellent tapas bars in the vicinity. At lunchtime, the Centre is usually going full tilt, so I grab a bite wherever I happen to be, often with my brother. On this occasion I had to come home to change my clothes. There was time enough to prepare myself a salad and a double-egg omelette, which I gobbled down with a couple of slices of bread smeared with tomato and a glass of beer, and have a short siesta and even read the Catalan version of El Periódico. (Borja expressly forbids me to carry this radical rag under my arm in the districts we normally frequent).

I left home still feeling drowsy at three thirty. The sky was completely overcast and everything pointed to a storm, and that meant the streets would soon be clogged with cars and traffic lights would mysteriously break down. I’d forgotten my umbrella, but as it was getting late I resigned myself to getting soaked if there was a downpour. I had to wait almost fifteen minutes for a bus, but by a quarter past four I was nervously carrying out my duties in our office.

I proceeded with our customary ritual and squirted around the secretarial perfume, knowing full well that later on Montse would smell the perfume, frown and interrogate me. Montse had become quite jealous, especially as I sometimes had to go out at night and didn’t get back till daybreak. Fortunately, by that time she’d also turned Buddhist and was being more laidback about life. Nevertheless, whenever she felt the need, Montse would swallow a couple of valiums to bolster her worldview.

It was more than probable that Borja would show up a quarter of an hour late. Making clients wait, impatient people who were themselves usually very punctual, was his way of making them understand we had work coming out of our ears. In effect, at four thirty on the dot, the bell rang, and, as usual, I hurried to open the door. The door to the street was unlocked, as we have a concierge. The first thing I saw was our mysterious client’s sunglasses, which were obviously intended to hide his identity given that the sky was pitch-black and the stairs were a mass of shadows. When he took them off, I realized I’d failed to disguise my startled reaction. You bet he was a big fish; my clever brother’s nose had been on target! I had before me an MP, but not a second or third-rate backbencher, the kind who only warms his seat in parliament while his main contribution to democratic life is propping up the parliamentary bar and keeping liver disease specialists in clover. This man was one who liked to hold forth, hog the headlines and appear in football chat shows on television and radio. I recognized him immediately and prayed Borja would soon put in an appearance.

“Good afternoon. Mr Masdéu, I presume?” he asked most politely.

“Eduard Martínez, his partner, at your disposition,” I replied, holding out a hand and ushering him in.

At first he hesitated, but then he crossed our threshold with considerable determination. Although I’m beginning to get used to such men of power, they still put me on edge, even when they’re the ones with the problem. When faced with their preening, overbearing manner I always feel like a fish out of water.

“I had an appointment with Mr Masdéu,” he said rather uneasily, seeing I wasn’t the person he was expecting to meet.

“Yes, but I’m au courant. Please do take a seat. My partner will be here shortly. He had an out-of-office meeting ...”

At that precise moment the telephone rang on our non-existent secretary’s desk. I was expecting the call and picked up the receiver.

“Oh, hello. That you? (...) Don’t worry, Mariajo isn’t here. If you remember, she had to take those documents to the lawyers (...) Yes, fine (...) OK. We’ll be waiting for you.”

“That was him,” I explained. “He’ll be here in five minutes. He’s held up in a traffic jam ...”

“Better if the secretary’s not here.”

“She won’t be in this afternoon. We usually send her off on errands when we know we’re seeing someone who will prefer complete discretion,” I said without a single blush.

It’s a lie I’ve rehearsed so often I’m beginning to believe it myself. Sometimes I have the eerie feeling this Mariajo really does exist.

“What an excellent idea! Secretaries often say more than they should. Though, of course, there are always papers they can peek at ...” he said glancing quickly around.

I assumed that was a subtle hint as to our methods of working and I reassured him immediately: “Oh don’t worry on that count! Mariajo never finds out anything that’s gossip-worthy. We in fact only employ her to see to the telephone and run the office ... Besides, I suppose you know we prefer paper-free procedures. Believe me, nobody will ever find anything of interest in this office.” Nothing could have been nearer the truth.

I’d suggested he should sit on the sofa and could now see him looking out of the corner of his eye at our office doors. The moment had come to explain why I didn’t take him into more secluded surroundings rather than keep him in reception like a door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman.

“I do apologize. It’s all topsy-turvy in there. We’re painting and redecorating, and you know how these ...”

“Oh absolutely. One knows when they will start but not when they will finish ...” he agreed half-heartedly, trying to respond politely to my small talk.

“What’s more, it’s so cold ... and so damp ... The paint’s taking ages to dry.”

“Yes, it is rather cold this December. Perhaps we might even have a white Christmas ...”

“And Barcelona can’t cope with snow ...”

“Oh absolutely. The city generates so much heat, the snow will never harden and is going to turn to dirty slush ...”

It was clear the only conversation the man was prepared to pursue with me was weather-related. If Borja delayed much longer, we might get on to the latest Barça gossip, always a good time-filler. I suppose a professional sleuth would have used the time to make a few deductions to nonplus the new client, but I could think only of the obvious, that I was in the presence of an elegant, rather shy, high-society gentleman who was in a foul mood despite all his efforts to look the contrary. But, of course, this didn’t help. I was in no position to admit I’d recognized him, although I suspect that was precisely what he was thinking, and I didn’t dare talk politics or broach the reasons for his visit before Borja showed up. Thank God the telephone rang again to interrupt that derisory dialogue that was enhancing neither of our lives. This time it was my mobile.

“I’m sorry,” I said taking it from my pocket.

“Please feel free,” he replied visibly relieved.

I switched it on and put the tiny apparatus next to my ear.

“Yes? (...) How’s it going? (...) Seven point twenty-two? (...) Agreed, buy. (...) Fifteen thousand, right. No, our client agrees. (...) Yes, we’ve cleaned up this time. (...) Give me a ring tomorrow, won’t you? Goodbye.”

These staged calls were also Borja’s idea. After hearing such an exchange, some customers would ask if we also dealt in investments and, occasionally, we’d extract another bundle of bin ladens, as people call them, those ever elusive thousand euro notes we invested on the Stock Exchange. Nothing too risky, to be sure: all very confidential and never any contracts or paperwork. We let them think that for a small commission they’d get a higher return on their money, particularly on the cash they kept undeclared in their desk drawers. It wasn’t true, but in worst-case scenarios the client didn’t earn anything. He recovered most of his investment, made no profit and asked no questions. When a gamble worked, we kept the crumbs.

However, this time, our client didn’t bite. He was nervous, though it wasn’t undeclared funds that were apparently making him so edgy. I was about to initiate a conversation on Ronaldinho’s virtues and Puyol’s dedication when I heard the sound of keys being poked in the door. The room soon filled with a smell I found only too familiar.