“How’d it go with our friend the prior?”
“Well and not so well,” he replied, with a smile and the ambiguous taciturnity more typical of Nogueira. “The prior wasn’t there. Their story is that he had to travel for personal reasons. I’d rather give a full report when we see Lucas, because I think he can offer us some insights about what I found. But in the meantime, this is for you.” He held out a plastic bag with the roll of adhesive tape he’d used to collect the paint samples. “I suspect this and the samples of the paint left on álvaro’s car will give the lab enough to determine if they’re identical.”
Nogueira nodded appreciatively as he peered at the sample in the clear plastic bag. “Keep this up and you’ll wind up as a detective someday. Going back to the monastery tomorrow?”
“I don’t think I should,” Manuel said with a shrug. “I’m afraid I screwed up my chances by asking about To?ino. I realized it immediately and tried to cover it, but chances are the brother-librarian will mention it to the prior.”
Lucas was waiting by the fireplace when they got there. The splendid cloudless day meant that unfortunately the countryside cooled off fast in early evening. The restaurant parking lot was about a hundred yards from the entrance, and Manuel had put on álvaro’s heavy jacket to walk that distance. He’d kept it in his car since Daniel had given it to him.
Manuel saw the priest start in surprise at the sight of him but let it pass without comment. He was intent on filling them in on the results of his seminary visit and couldn’t hold it until after dinner. “The prior wasn’t there. They said he’d been called away on personal business. I met Brother Julián instead, a young monk who’s been working full-time for the last two years on organizing and digitizing the archives. Just as we hoped, they gave me the full tour and offered to assist me in any way they could. At first I expected it’d be difficult to get away and sniff around, but once he’d explained the library setup and the digital archives, he set me loose on his computer. I found school records for álvaro and his brother. And yours, too, Lucas,” he added with a grin. “You were a very handsome little boy.”
Lucas smiled but disagreed. “Afraid not; neither handsome nor little.”
“álvaro’s permanent record runs to December 13, 1984, and ends with the note that he transferred to another school. But get this: I did a word search for departures, and I found Brother Verdaguer’s death certificate. The cause of death is very clearly specified as suicide, contrary to what we thought.”
“So they didn’t try to cover it up after all,” Lucas said. “Maybe the story about him dying in his sleep was something they just made up to shield the boys.”
“I remember you said yesterday that álvaro spent several hours in the infirmary after he found Brother Verdaguer.”
“That’s right. It seems he discovered the body that night, they took him to the infirmary, and they didn’t tell his father until the next day.”
The host arrived with several platters of meat, potatoes, and salads and spread them about the table, but for the moment none of them touched the food.
Manuel used his cell phone to display the photo he’d taken in the monastery library. “If I’d asked him to print this for me, that would have been a dead giveaway.” He pointed to the document with those ominous black lines smeared across it. “This is the report the infirmary director wrote that night. The only uncensored parts are the name, the time, and the first words of the report: The child shows evidence of significant . . . and a few irrelevant phrases that throw no light whatever on the state the child showed ‘evidence’ of.”
The expressions on the other two men’s faces had changed. The officer took the phone and enlarged the photo to study the details. He was astonished. “This has been completely blacked out!”
“What do you think was in this report?” Manuel asked. “What could have been so horrible? Do you really think that the child’s condition, no matter how scared he was, required a whole page to describe it?”
“A fine bunch of schemers!” Nogueira muttered under his breath without looking up from the screen.
Lucas’s face had gone pale. He seemed to want to say something, but he managed only to shake his head and utter a choked “My God!”
“And here’s something a good deal more suggestive,” Manuel continued. “That same day, December 13, Brother Mario Ortu?o, who had been in charge of the infirmary up till then, renounced his vows and left the monastery. The prior’s report recorded it as a crisis of faith.”
“Lucas, do you remember him?” Nogueira asked. “Brother Ortu?o?”
“Yes,” the priest replied in a low voice, searching his memory. “He wasn’t a teacher. It’s true, he left the school, but back then I didn’t connect it with álvaro’s departure. I assumed he’d been transferred. That’s not unusual in the monastic orders.”
“Did you see what time álvaro was admitted to the infirmary? Four o’clock in the morning! Doesn’t it seem strange for a child to be up at that time of night? I don’t know about you, but when I was twelve I went to bed so tired I slept like a log.” He turned to Lucas. “You told me álvaro was dedicated to sports, so he was one of those kids who couldn’t stand still. You’d think he’d be dead to the world at that hour.”
Lucas agreed, obviously baffled.
“What was álvaro doing in that monk’s cell in the middle of the night?”
It was a question without an answer. The three men exchanged glances, keenly aware of the foreboding implications.
“And then there’s the question of Brother Verdaguer,” Manuel added. “At the monastery they make no effort to hide the fact that he took his own life. That’s what the death certificate shows. When I mentioned it today to Brother Matías, one of the oldest monks there, he said all of the monks agreed Brother Verdaguer should be laid to rest in the monastery cemetery despite the circumstances of his death. He said Verdaguer had gone through a lengthy illness, he’d refused treatment, and the pain had become unbearable. He made his choice. They didn’t agree, but they didn’t judge him. They left that to God.”
“Along the lines of what I told you yesterday,” said Lucas.
“Yes, but something doesn’t fit, it seems to me,” Manuel replied. He took from his jacket pocket half a dozen of the photos Brother Julián had printed for him that morning.
Brother Verdaguer appeared in each of them, playing games or practicing sports or posing with teams and their trophies. The most striking was the one that showed him playing Basque handball with his habit hitched up.
Manuel pointed to it. “The camera imprint shows this one was taken December 11, just two days before he took his own life because of the terrible pain he was supposedly suffering. I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t look to me like a man suffering a long and devastating illness.” He tapped the photo with his index finger. “He’s the picture of health.”
Nogueira was the one to put into words what all three were thinking. “I don’t want to jump to the conclusion that someone was abusing the boy, even though these signs are consistent with all the cases of abuse I saw in my career. We need to consider the alternative: maybe the boy saw something he shouldn’t have. Hanging is the method most often used to conceal a murder by faking a suicide. The claim the brother monk refused all treatment might be their way of explaining the absence of any medical records of an illness.”