Now almost frantic, the man denied it. “It was just a way of warning him. I mean, warning him about álvaro. I knew the boy intended to contact him; álvaro wanted to go confront him. I didn’t want to give him the address because I could see how furious he was. But he insisted and told me he wasn’t going to leave until I gave him the boy’s phone number. To?ino wasn’t evil; he was impulsive and not too bright, but he wasn’t a bad boy. I tried to make To?ino understand the seriousness of the situation, but he wouldn’t even come to the door. He hid behind my sister’s skirts.”
This contributed nothing new to their understanding of the case. They already knew that álvaro had telephoned To?ino that afternoon. The question was why, exactly, had he done so? To say he wasn’t going to pay, or to set up a meeting with the promise of payment and resolve the situation by killing the boy? That thought brought something else to Nogueira’s mind.
“You said that when you were at the door to your sister’s house, they called you about an emergency at the monastery.”
“Yes, I was going to explain that. Brother Nazario is one of the oldest of us; he’s ninety-three years old. He got giddy, nothing serious; it had to do with his blood pressure. But he fell and broke his nose. It wasn’t a bad injury, but he takes Sintrom, a blood thinner to prevent strokes, so his blood is slow to clot. He was bleeding heavily, and they had to call an ambulance. I spent the night with him at the emergency room, and they were finally able to stop the bleeding. Even then they had to give him a couple of transfusions. You can talk with him if you want. They released him three days ago.”
Nogueira looked over the accident report. It was properly filled out with the time of the accident and a detailed description. The handwriting and the signature looked like those of álvaro, and there was no reason to doubt their authenticity. “I’ll need a photocopy of this document.”
The prior nodded feverishly.
“And I’m going to verify what you said about the hospital. If you lied to me, I’ll see to it they lock you up for child abuse. You’ll see what kind of reception you get in prison.” He took grim pleasure seeing the prior shudder and quake.
His cell phone rang, and he took the call. Later, once he had the photocopy in hand, he left the place, but not before giving the man one last threatening look.
Though he didn’t relish the prospect, he drove toward the Os Marti?os neighborhood.
INSOMNIA
The next-door neighbor opened her door and greeted Nogueira before he got close enough to knock. “Good morning, Captain!”
He could easily imagine her lurking at the window waiting for something to happen. Like a big lazy cat.
“Lieutenant,” he corrected her.
“Lieutenant, captain, who knows the difference? Please excuse this poor widow’s unfamiliarity with military ranks,” she said and stood aside to invite him in.
He turned his face away so she wouldn’t catch his look of suspicion and disgust. Had he detected a flirtatious tone in the old hag’s voice? He assessed the situation. She’d called him more than an hour earlier, but she appeared to be wearing little more than a nightdress under her carelessly closed bathrobe. It left exposed a goodly expanse of a pale bosom mottled with age spots.
Nogueira took a deep breath to calm himself but immediately regretted doing so. The place had the same foul smell of untended cat litter he remembered from before.
He was determined to keep the visit as brief as possible. “So what was it?”
“You told me to telephone if I remembered something.”
“Right, you already said that. On the phone. And what was it you remembered?”
Instead of answering immediately, the woman stepped past him and took her seat on the sofa by the window. “First I have to give you some background, so you’ll understand why I didn’t remember it before. That way you’ll see I’m not making it up.” She patted the place next to her on the sofa.
Steeling himself, the lieutenant sat as instructed.
“I suffer from insomnia, Captain. I’m still young and active, and I have to take a pill to help me sleep, but sometimes I forget it. It’s always annoying when that happens, because I go to sleep right away, but without my pill I wake up less than an hour later. And if I don’t take it then, I’m up all night.”
Nogueira sat enduring this torture in the hope that something useful would come of it.
“Last night it happened again. I forgot my pill, I went to sleep, and at one in the morning, as usual, regular as clockwork, I was as wide awake as I am right now. I got up to look for my medicine. I keep it all up there in the dresser.” She pointed to a piece of furniture upon which the cat was dozing. “When I passed by the window I looked outside, and I remembered that on the Saturday To?ino disappeared, I’d also forgotten my pill. When I got up that night to fetch it, I saw To?ino’s car outside.”
Nogueira gave her a look. His interest was piqued. “Are you sure of that?”
She gave him that pout of pretended offense and nodded. “Absolutely sure. But I needed to put you in the picture, so you’d understand why I’d forgotten about it and then remembered it only yesterday. Because it was the same situation. I didn’t pay much attention to it then, because it wasn’t unusual to see his car there. I was half-asleep, but I know what I saw; and not just that. I took my pill and went back to bed, but it always takes me a while to get to sleep again. That’s when I heard the car engine start up. It went out of the drive toward the main road.”
“This is very important,” Nogueira said, fixing his eyes on hers. “Are you certain of the time?”
She flashed a proud smile. “Captain, it was one o’clock in the morning. I may not be as young as I once was, but when it comes to telling the time and other things, I’m as reliable as any watch.”
A FALSE BACK
Manuel leaned forward to peer up through the windshield. The sky was still as leaden as it had been at dawn, as if day were never going to break, but the stillness of the early hours was gone, broken now by gusts of swirling wind that sent flying the first leaves to detach themselves from the trees. The rain began as he was driving to the estate. The melancholy of the weather, the rhythmic thump of the windshield wipers, and the absence of Café from his side amounted to an unbearable combination. The image of Antía hugging the little dog rose uncalled to his mind.
He parked by the gate, in the same place as the first day. Santiago was still in the hospital, so Catarina was probably with him. Manuel had no desire to run into the Raven or even betray his presence to the dowager. He raised the hood of the heavy jacket. Threading his way through the gardenia bushes, he made his way to the kitchen.
The black cat was on lazy guard before the door. The upper panel was ajar. There was no trace of Herminia or Sarita, but he assumed they weren’t far away. Probably busy with housework, since the stove was hot and emitted the agreeable odor of burning wood. He stood there for a few seconds, considering whether to let them know of his arrival or simply to go look for the object he hoped to find. The door to the house stairs was open, so he went there.
He swiftly mounted the stairs, feeling like an intruder. Today, beneath the ashen sky, the central space wasn’t lit by the wide beams of light that had so fascinated him during the first visit. The sullen light filtering through the high windows gave the marble the dull look of pewter and intensified his feeling of being unwelcome.