Authors: Leif Davidsen
“But why?” I asked.
He stepped forward and pulled a pair of surgical gloves onto his elegant slim hands and carefully turned Amelia’s damaged head. I felt sick, but there was nothing left in my stomach. Small bright dots danced before my eyes.
“Look at this, señor Lime,” he said. He pointed out two indentations. With an almost gentle gesture, his thin gloved forefinger followed them round her slender neck below her small, delicate ears. I was dizzy and had trouble focusing. The disfigured neck right in front of my eyes vanished and was replaced by pictures of Amelia’s tender white throat when she threw back her head and laughed at something I had said or at one of Maria Luisa’s quaint remarks.
“Can you see? I don’t understand, and my pathologist doesn’t understand, why your wife has these contusions. You can’t see what they are?” Rodriques continued.
I must have shaken my head because he continued in the same courteous neutral tone of voice.
“They resemble strangulation marks. As if your wife was choked. And we would like to know if it happened before or after the fire. Do you understand what I’m saying? Whether she was dead when the fire broke out or whether she incurred her injuries afterwards. Possibly got caught on a flex. Whether this is an accident or the murder of 13 people. If it is a case of arson leading to loss of life, then I don’t need to tell you that it’s a very serious matter indeed. Therefore, we would kindly request permission to perform a post-mortem. You can refuse, but then we will have to go to the courts.”
Time stood still. I turned to Gloria and Oscar.
“Sell the photographs,” I said and then everything went black.
The greatest grief on earth, I fear,
That is to lose the one you hold dear.
The idea that time heals all wounds is a fallacy. Time heals no wounds, but time dulls the pain like a pill dulls a bad headache. The pain is still there, but it no longer jabs like sharp nails. Time blunts the spiked nails, and the pain that makes you want to scream your grief to the whole world is replaced by a constant, gnawing torment that won’t leave you alone, not even at night when sleep is impossible.
The period that followed the death of my family was chaotic and bewildering and, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t in control of what was happening to me. It was as if I was a child again and dependent on grown-ups’ care and supervision. Well-intentioned people took charge of my life and led me out of the tunnel of darkness to a pallid, sickly sunshine. Gloria and Oscar took care of the purely practical things with their usual efficiency. Insurance, the compensation claim against the authorities and the sale of the ten photographs which Oscar had removed from my flat and which went all round the globe and earned us a fortune. I didn’t want to be involved in rebuilding the block and sold out to the insurance company. The compensation payments were considerable, but money couldn’t make up for the loss of my negatives. The steel filing cabinets had been neither explosion-proof nor fireproof. Gloria took legal proceedings against the manufacturer and the insurance company. They had to
compensate for the unquantifiable, artistic value of the negatives. The potential fortune which had built up over the years every time I had captured a split second of reality on film. My tragedy filled thousands of working hours for many zealous lawyers. I let Gloria and Oscar do as they pleased.
For the first few days after the disaster the media went crazy. Two factors intensified the hysteria which swept through the city. The photographs of the Minister. And the official statement that the fire was being investigated as a murder case. Amelia had been strangled before the blaze. Maria Luisa had been killed by smoke fumes and hadn’t burnt to death. The other fatalities were a direct consequence of the fire. Evidence of explosives had been found. The media speculated like mad about why someone would want to blow up my flat. They hinted cautiously at the Minister. He, of course, denied everything, but had to resign because of the erotic photographs. They made his position untenable in a government with family values as its core principle.
Detective Superintendent Rodriques called by now and then to keep me informed. He had nothing to go on. They had only one witness, who had seen two men leaving the flat shortly before the explosion blew out the windows. They were burly, had black hair like millions of Spanish people, and had disappeared down towards the Puerta del Sol. And that’s where the trail went cold. Rodriques wondered whether it was an ETA action that had targeted the wrong person. There was a woman with a false identity living in one of the flats, under the witness protection system. She was a Basque and had given evidence against ETA ten years earlier. As had so often been the case, rejection by a lover had made her go to the police and turn informer. One of the leaders had dropped her in favour of another woman. The banal tends to play a bigger role in life than novelists think. She had revealed the identity of one of the underground ETA
units in Barcelona and had been given witness protection in return. A new identity and a new life in big city Madrid. Anyone could vanish there.
“Maybe they finally found her, señor Lime,” said Rodriques. “The past always catches up with us.”
We were sitting at Hemingway’s table in the Cerveceria Alemana, drinking coffee. The old waiter, Felipe, watched over me as if I was a fragile piece of porcelain. I don’t know why I kept going back to the Alemana. It was just across from my former home, which was now an open sore in the row of houses, demolished, boarded up by a high fence painted green, waiting while applications for planning permission fought their way through the intricacies of the municipal government’s red tape. Apart from that, the plaza looked the same as usual in the late afternoon light. The old men and women sat talking or reading newspapers and the children would soon be coming home from school to begin playing their games. It hurt, but the Alemana was my first haunt in Madrid and, even though it grieved me to look across at what had been my house, the place was also a lifeline back to a past that I had started thinking about more and more. I didn’t want to forget Amelia and Maria Luisa. The memory of them was both joyful and painful, both melancholy and piercing, but it was all I had left.
“So that’s your theory?” I said.
“It’s the best there is. The terrorists are very active again. They never forget and they especially never forget an informer. Colleagues in counter-intelligence have heard that they had found out where she was and were going to eliminate her. The explosive used was Semtex from the former Czechoslovakia. There’s lots of the old stuff in circulation. Maybe they got it from the IRA, or from their old friends in the GDR. All the other lines of inquiry fizzle out.”
He threw out his arms in a gesture of regret.
“How could they get it so wrong?” I said.
“Carmen Arrese shared certain traits with your wife, señor Lime.”
Carmen had lived with her husband in the flat underneath ours. Married to a lawyer. Both perished along with their daughter who was the same age as Maria Luisa. The couple had been in their mid-30s.
“Carmen Arrese spoke with an Andalusian accent,” I said. “She didn’t sound Basque in the least.”
“Her parents came from Seville, even though she was born in Pamplona. We re-taught her the language of her childhood. It was one element of her new identity. Of her new story. Her new life. It’s not just a question of altering looks. We gave her a completely new life. Even her husband didn’t know.”
“She was ten years younger. How could they get it wrong?”
“Señor Lime. I can see from the photographs that your wife was a beautiful woman. May God protect her soul. She could easily pass as being ten years younger. Carmen looked older. And actually she was older. We made her younger. Maybe the terrorists made a mistake. Went into the wrong flat. Strangled the wrong woman before they planted the explosives.”
“Why blow up the house?”
“We think they planted too much. We think they were inexperienced. ETA has problems recruiting the best today. Maybe a gas leak had something to do with it as well. But we think that your family was killed by mistake. It wasn’t aimed at you, but at the woman downstairs. I’m sorry.”
“But why explosives?”
“Why spread terror? Anxiety, fear is at the very core of terrorism. Not rationality.”
“So the case has been shelved,” I said.
He straightened up in his chair.
“By no means. But other, more qualified agencies will be involved.
The State uses huge resources in the fight against terrorists, as you know. The work will be stepped up. My job is to expose murderers. To find killers who commit murder from quite obvious human motives such as sex, greed, jealousy, drunkenness. I have more than enough to do in this city alone. Other people will have to take care of national security.”
He looked at me apologetically. He didn’t really have anything to apologise for. It wasn’t his fault that we had lived in the wrong place. But I was angry anyway, because they had placed a ticking bomb in our immediate vicinity without telling us. Somewhere along the line it was the fault of the State authorities, but my anger was still directed at the unknown assassins who now seemed more real.
Rodriques stood up, shook my hand, thanked me for my cooperation and expressed his condolences again. I stayed for a while and drank another coffee, watching the light outside on the plaza fading into blue. The Alemana slowly filled up with students from the various institutes in the neighbourhood, with their notebooks and their youth and optimistic belief in the endless opportunities the future held. I sat by myself next to the window, knowing that Felipe would make sure I could sit there in peace.
I had stayed with Oscar and Gloria for the first week. My father-in-law and I had arranged the funeral once the bodies had been released after the post-mortem. We had always been courteous and pleasant with one another, but had never shared confidences. It was as if grief brought us closer together without our having to talk about it. That wasn’t Don Alfonzo’s style. He had served the old Caudillo for 25 years as an officer in the Guardia Civil and commander in one of Franco’s numerous security services. He was over 70, a shrunken little man who now looked like Franco had when old. Like so many others, he had gone from serving the dictatorship to serving the transitional government and then democracy. If his hands were stained with the
blood of torture victims he didn’t show it, and he had never been investigated. In the Spain of reconciliation following the Caudillo’s death, there were matters that were best left unmentioned.
The funeral was meant to have been private, and Don Alfonzo, Oscar, Gloria and I were indeed alone with the priest, the altar boy and the gravedigger in the cemetery, but outside the camera lenses were trained relentlessly on us, kept at a distance by the police. It was as private as a television news bulletin. The only thing that spoiled the pictures for my colleagues was the pouring Madrid rain. Or maybe not. The brooding black clouds could have been designed as the stage setting for the final scene of a tragedy. The thunderstorm had gathered dramatically over the mountains and, as we stood next to the coffin, the skies opened. Huge bolts of lightning like blasts of flashbulbs could have symbolised the day ahead. I had been a paparazzo all my adult life. I hated the label, but I suppose it was fitting for my job, even though I had always referred to myself as a photojournalist. Now it was my turn to be hunted down by the paparazzi wherever I set foot.
It had begun on the morning of my release. In a live broadcast on the morning show, the television-watching population of Madrid had seen me flooring the reporter from
El Mundo
. My tear-stained face had been on the front page of all the tabloids and in a prominent position inside the more serious broadsheets. I had been stalked to Gloria and Oscar’s flat, to my interviews with the police, to restaurants, to the office. For a week I had the feeling that there was a camera trained on me constantly. That it was unpleasant goes without saying. Did I empathise more with my own victims? Not particularly. I had no feelings other than guilt, anger and grief, thinking only of myself. We hoped to be left in peace after the funeral, but even here, on the way to the cemetery near my father-in-law’s house, the pack was after me. Like shadows in Hades’ underworld, they followed me wherever I went. They pleaded for my understanding. Begged for my
cooperation. Promised me money for a one-to-one interview, and illustrated their broadcasts and articles with pictures of my distraught face in front of the scene of the fire, and the Minister kissing the Italian actress’s shapely toe. My own words, spoken to other celebrities, echoed in the cacophony of voices which buzzed around me now.
I can’t remember what the priest said. I can hardly remember the funeral at all. They were buried in a shared coffin, and I threw a flower down onto it and walked away arm in arm with Don Alfonzo. Neither of us had any tears. I can actually remember only the drumming of the rain on the white coffin and the priest standing under a black umbrella held by a young altar boy, while the words
earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust
were intoned in Latin. I didn’t believe it for a second. I was angry with God, so I must have believed in him, but everything was still dark and clouded, like the sky from which the rain was pouring down.
Afterwards all I really wanted to do was drink, but Gloria made me take a sleeping pill and tucked me up in bed like a little baby.
Now it was nearly two months later. A mild May had passed into a warm June and a hot July, and when the August sun made the city seethe it wouldn’t be long before Madrid closed down. I moved in with Don Alfonzo in the comfortable, roomy villa he owned in a little village outside Madrid. In the shadow of the mountains, he was spending his retirement reading about the Spanish Civil War and growing tomatoes, orchids and other flowers. After a while I couldn’t stand Gloria fussing around me any more, so I had gone out to my father-in-law who gave me a room in one of the gables of his house, with a view across the plain which was abruptly interrupted by the grey-green mountains in the distance, I sat staring at them for hours, while I thought about nothing and everything. He made sure that I got something to eat, but otherwise left me in peace.