“To?ino was like that all his life. He refused to study and he didn’t want to work. It wasn’t the first time I’d hired him to do odd jobs and repairs in the monastery. In a building as rambling as this one, there are always things that need attention, and instead of calling someone else I’d hire my nephew. No one can blame me for that. Last winter we had a problem with one of the roof gutters, and water leaked into a couple of the rooms; nothing serious, but it left stains on the ceiling. We waited all summer long to make sure they’d dried out completely, and it was just a matter of repainting the ceilings. He worked for three days. For once I thought things had changed for the better. He was engaged and responsive and seemed to enjoy the work.
“We were clearing out my office so he could paint it the next day.” He lifted a hand and pointed to a yellow stain on the ceiling, above the window. “But he didn’t come back. I have to admit I wasn’t surprised. He’d dropped out like that before. Before he left he’d told me he needed some money, and I advanced him part of his pay; when he didn’t turn up again I just thought he’d gone off on a binge. When he didn’t turn up, I called my sister. But she told me he wasn’t home. She was always making excuses for him, always covering up for him. I don’t even know if it was true that he wasn’t home.” He shrugged. “So I gave up. The brothers helped me put things back in place, and I told myself yet again I should never trust my nephew.
“When álvaro Mu?iz de Dávila suddenly turned up here, I began to have an idea of what had happened. I suppose that when the boy was moving my desk, the drawer must have come out. It was always a bit loose. And it seems that the folder where that document was kept probably fell out, and he got his hands on it. As soon as álvaro left, I went to my sister’s house to try to talk to my nephew, but it was no use. He wouldn’t even come to the door. I was returning to my car when I received an urgent call and drove back to the monastery.”
“You’re claiming that you returned to the monastery just like that, knowing full well what your nephew was up to, after you’d heard álvaro’s threats?”
“I swear to you—that’s exactly what I did.”
“You’d been taking all that trouble to conceal what happened here the night Verdaguer died, and for years you thought you had it all under control. But after I came here asking about álvaro, you forgot your duties in the monastery and ran off to talk to Ortu?o, the former monk, to warn him to keep his mouth shut. You’re claiming you didn’t try to shut the others up as well?”
The prior started to deny it, but Nogueira held up a hand to cut him off. “There’s too much at stake. The rapist is long dead, but the scandal can provoke real problems for the monastery. And you can wind up in prison for covering up Brother Verdaguer’s death with a fake suicide. Which makes you an accomplice to sexual abuse of a minor.”
The prior moaned, covered his face with the towel, and leaned forward. Nogueira regarded him without the least sympathy, reached out to grab one end of the towel, and yanked it out of his hands. The prior, startled, jerked back and put his hands before his face as if expecting a blow.
Nogueira gave him a look of infinite disgust. His mouth tightened into a line as sharp as the slash of a knife. “You’re right, you slimy piece of shit. I should break every bone in your body.” He spoke in a derisive whisper, addressing the man with utter contempt.
The prior began sobbing in fear and babbled something incoherent.
Nogueira took out a cigarette and lit it without asking permission. He took one of those deep drags of his. “I’m going to tell you what I think happened,” he said with glacial calm. “I think you waited for your nephew at the intersection in the Os Marti?os neighborhood, you followed him, and when you were in an unpopulated area, you waved him down, and he stopped beside you. You’re an old geezer, but you’re a hefty son of a bitch, and your nephew weighed only about 150 pounds. I think you beat the hell out of him, stabbed him, and then strung him up on the tree where they found him last night. That’s why you weren’t a goddamn bit surprised he’d disappeared. That’s why it didn’t worry you.”
As Nogueira told the story he was well aware of the viciousness required for such an explosion of violence. Ophelia was convinced that the individual who’d beaten To?ino wasn’t the same as the one who’d stabbed him. Nogueira knew from experience that she was very rarely mistaken. But putting pressure on this asshole was giving him real satisfaction. Of all the depraved monsters he’d seen, he hated none more than the child abusers and those who covered up for them. He was certain that if he frightened the man enough, he’d scare out of him whatever truth he’d been hiding.
The prior sobbed and denied it. He threw up his hands and protested his innocence. There were no marks on his knuckles, but so what? Several days had passed. It wouldn’t be difficult to find out whether he’d had any recently.
Nogueira resumed his story, watching the man like a hawk. “Then you met álvaro Mu?iz de Dávila somewhere along the highway to Chantada to tell him the danger was past, but he didn’t make it easy for you. I assume he wanted the document; that’s what I would have demanded to make sure this wouldn’t happen again. Or maybe he was just fed up with all this filth and had decided he was going to publish it anyway. That would be the best thing, and it’s probably going to happen.” The prior opened his eyes wide in fright. “Yes, indeed, I do believe that’s how it went down. You two argued, and you stabbed him. He must have been surprised to find a monk capable of such a thing. You gave him no warning. He was strong; he got into his car and drove away along the highway, but you had to make sure he wouldn’t talk, so you followed him in that white pickup you’re hiding in the monastery garage. You rammed his vehicle and drove it off the road. That’s why you haven’t taken it to be repaired. A scientific analysis confirmed that the pickup’s paint is identical to what was left on the rear bumper of álvaro’s car.”
That took the prior completely by surprise. He stopped his moaning. Gaping like a fish out of water, he rose to his feet and started pawing through a pile of documents in the in-box on his desk. “No, no, no, you’re wrong. I have evidence, I have proof.” He frantically searched through the papers. He picked each one up, checked the subject line and cast it aside. Most wound up on the floor. At last his face lit up. “You see? See this?” he insisted, shaking a paper so violently in front Nogueira that not a word was legible.
Nogueira snatched the document and recognized it immediately. It was the standard insurance form used by both parties to record the details of a traffic accident.
“álvaro came to see me. It’s true, he was very angry. He told me he wasn’t going to be blackmailed, that he didn’t care at all; as far as he was concerned everything might as well be published. He said I was the only one who had anything to fear, and if I agreed, he’d find some way to stop To?ino. He was leaving, but when he backed up he ran into the pickup we use for our shopping. It was in front of the garage. He was ready to settle the matter then and there. He filled out the forms with Brother Anselmo, who brought our copy to me for safekeeping. We’ve been expecting the insurance company to call, so that’s why we didn’t take the pickup to the garage.” His voice was shrill. “And now I suppose nobody’s going to cover the expenses!”
“Why were you hiding the vehicle?”
“I don’t know. We saw you snooping around; we didn’t know what you were looking for.”
Nogueira sighed as he sorted through all this. “You threatened your nephew. You told him things couldn’t remain this way, that he had no idea who he was playing with.”