“Hello, Manuel, please have a seat.” She waved toward the table.
She didn’t ask but simply served coffee with milk in all three mugs. As they stirred sugar into them she placed before them a basket with aromatic slices of toasted Galician bread, dark and fragrant beneath a white cloth.
The three devoured this breakfast. Manuel assumed that the physician was politely abstaining from conversation until they’d finished. She spoke when they’d done so. “Everything indicates he may have been dead for thirteen days. Fourteen, if we accept the missing persons report from his aunt, though yesterday his uncle the prior said she’d probably gotten the day wrong, since he saw the boy in her house on Saturday. He claims he went there to have coffee with them.”
“What a bastard!” Nogueira exclaimed. “So he didn’t mention the argument, and I suppose he won’t have said anything about álvaro’s visit to the seminary or their discussion there. Now he admits he saw To?ino on Saturday. He’s covering himself, because things are getting serious now.”
“We can assume they’re both lying. The aunt, to call attention to her report of him as missing, and the prior, who seems to be the more accomplished liar. All he said was that they had coffee on Saturday at his sister’s, and he hadn’t seen the boy at all since then.” Ophelia seemed about to add something but stopped herself. She shook her head. “In fact he was wearing the same clothes his aunt described when she went to the police.” She turned to Manuel. “You need to understand that it’s too early just yet to determine the exact date of death. I’m waiting for the results of various tests, concerning the maturity of the insects and larvae, the aqueous humor drawn from the eye, and other samples. But if you were to push me, I’d say yes, fourteen days dead, the same as álvaro. The body is badly decomposed. We returned it to the morgue an hour ago in a sealed coffin. I don’t need to say more. It was exposed to the elements the whole time. There was a fair amount of rain, but many afternoons were very hot; and it’s an area with plenty of crows and magpies. Both are readily attracted to carrion, so you can take it as a given that the remains were in a deplorable state.”
Both men nodded.
“Once I had it on the examination table and could take a closer look, I was able to confirm what I’d guessed at the scene: the victim’s face had been badly battered. A cheekbone was fractured, a tooth knocked out, and the jaw was cracked in several places. And there was evidence of swelling of the anterior forearms.” She raised her arms as if she were shielding her own face. “Clear indications of an attempt at self-defense. He got a thorough beating, and all those blows came before he died. We know that because the blood around the injuries had clotted; in addition, in his car we found a packet of towelettes, more than a dozen of which he’d used to wipe away blood. All of which leads us to believe that he was beaten, he had time to try to clean himself up a bit, and then he was hanged.”
Manuel spoke up. “Could you tell what they used to hit him?”
“Yes, it was obvious: hands. Punches, blows delivered with fists.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I assume that the person who assaulted him would have marks on his knuckles. Isn’t that right?” Manuel remembered the throbbing pain of his own hand after the altercation the other night outside the Vulcan.
“Definitely. He was punched so hard that a tooth was knocked out. That would inevitably have produced a corresponding hand injury. The knuckles would be skinned and the finger joints would be swollen. And it might be possible to check the corpse for the attacker’s DNA.”
“I saw álvaro’s hands,” Manuel declared firmly, his voice betraying a certain sense of relief. “Well, one of them, that is, the right hand. Considering that álvaro was right-handed, he could be assumed to have fought with that hand. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes. I remember that as well. Both hands were clean and unmarked.”
“To?ino was a hustler, a male prostitute,” Nogueira interjected. “It wouldn’t be the first time a john beat him up. Plenty of those clients are seized by shame and regret after the act. The events could be completely unrelated. A client could have beaten him before he met up with álvaro.”
“Or the prior could have. You saw him some days after To?ino disappeared. Did he have any marks?”
“None that I could see. But if the boy died Saturday morning, a lot of time had passed; a good ointment could have helped heal such injuries.”
Ophelia nodded solemnly. “There’s plenty more. Though To?ino’s death was due to asphyxiation by hanging, the body also had eight puncture wounds in the lower abdomen. Eight deep wounds with narrow-entry openings. In álvaro’s case I used calipers to measure his wound, but I had no time to do more; for this case I was able to probe the wound. Though I certainly can’t be a hundred percent sure, I’d guess To?ino was stabbed with an object very similar to the one used to attack álvaro.”
“The same person could have attacked each of them?” Manuel said.
“I hate to be the devil’s advocate,” Nogueira said, “but the fight could have involved just the two of them. álvaro agrees to a meeting with the promise of payment, then when To?ino turns up, álvaro kills him. Or the other way around. álvaro refuses to pay him, To?ino attacks him, and stabs him a single time. álvaro, who’s much taller and stronger, disarms him and then stabs him several times.”
Manuel had closed his eyes as if unwilling to be a witness to that theory. “Has the weapon been found?”
Ophelia first served another round of coffee. “Not yet. It’s not in the car or anywhere in the vicinity.”
“Though if álvaro then took it, he could have gotten rid of it on the way, throwing it away along the road somewhere before his car left the pavement.”
Manuel gave the policeman a baleful glare.
“There’s one odd thing,” she said, paying no attention to the tension between the two men. “I noticed it with álvaro, and with To?ino too. There are more lacerations, so with To?ino it’s more obvious. The stabs were delivered along a trajectory from left to right.”
Nogueira’s eyebrows went up and he grinned.
“Which signifies what?” Manuel asked.
“The murderer could be left-handed,” Nogueira said.
“You can’t count on that,” Ophelia quickly cautioned them. “It’s just a hypothesis for now. Without proper measurements of álvaro’s injury we can’t even be sure they were wounded by the same object. And then other considerations enter into play, such as the position of the attacker at the moment of the assault. For example, if it occurred inside a vehicle, the attacker might have been forced to alter his posture. But the first suggestion, nevertheless, is that everything points to the assailant having been left-handed.”
“álvaro was right-handed,” Manuel declared firmly, staring defiantly at Nogueira. “And To?ino?”
The policeman checked his watch. “It’s early. I’ll call his aunt later to ask. I have doubts about the prior. He was brought up in times when left-handedness had to be corrected at any cost, so . . . he could be left-handed but not appear to be so.”