A Shortcut to Paradise Page 2

  He had to wait until the evening to implement his plan. He had twelve long hours ahead and felt uneasy. He switched on the television in search of distraction, but it didn’t help. Nor could he get any shut-eye or concentrate on the novel he’d just begun. By midday he’d made himself a sandwich, more to while the time away than because he was really hungry, and ate while glancing at the newspaper. At half-past four, feeling rather sorry for himself, he went out again, this time to collect the boys from school.

  It was a quarter to nine when his wife arrived home, weary and distraught. The Metro was down yet again due to construction work for the high-speed train. The boys were asleep and she didn’t dare go in and give them a kiss in case they woke up, even though it was Saturday tomorrow and they didn’t have to wake up early. Carmen wasn’t hungry and her back was hurting. She felt guilty, particularly because of Oriol, who was still only small and missed her. Rather than playing with her son, as her mother had with her when she was young, Carmen was forced to spend eight hours a day trapped in a windowless office for a derisory wage, doing a job that brought her nil professional satisfaction or social life. But they needed her income, and that was why they’d parked Oriol at a nursery at the age of three and why she and Ernest could only devote what remained of the weekends to their sons once they’d done the shopping and cleaned the house while their kids gawped at those cartoon series they’d sworn they’d never let them watch. While Carmen thought about all that and wept her heart out in the shower, Ernest cooked an omelette and set the table.

  He put on a cheerful front during supper and told her he’d arranged to have a drink with an old friend she didn’t know. He’d bumped into him quite by chance in the street when he went to buy the paper, and they’d agreed to meet up that night. He sensed that his friend had money, so he was intending to see if he could extract a little cash from him that would ensure their life didn’t go to the dogs.

  “I haven’t seen him for a hell of a long time,” said Ernest apologetically. “What’s more, he’s divorced and childless, so it will probably spin out and I’ll get back late…” he added, expecting his wife to react.

  Carmen was usually quick to complain when he spent an evening out with his translator friends lamenting the sorry state of the profession, but she didn’t moan and even told him not to worry. She simply asked him to wake her up when he came back and tell her how it had gone. She too was very worried by the disastrous state of their finances. Carmen realized their economic situation was bad, even though her man had generously spared her explanations of just how bad.

  At around eleven, when Carmen was in bed, Ernest left home wearing old jeans, a white shirt and the brown jacket where he’d hidden the toy pistol. His cheap brand of sunglasses and beige cloth cap were also in one pocket. He stopped the first taxi that passed by the corner near their house, heart racing but mind made up, as there was everything to play for, and once inside he stammered: “To Up & Down, please.”

  There isn’t a taxi driver in the whole of Barcelona who doesn’t know where Up & Down is, particularly if they’re on the night shift. North of the Diagonal, the disco had known better times, before other night spots, strategically placed in the Port Olímpic, usurped the top places in the glamour listings. Long gone were the days when it was de rigueur to wear a tie and sport shoes were banned; nevertheless, a selection process still existed that went from dress code to the size of one’s wallet. Like most fashionable discos, Up & Down favoured an easygoing style that encompassed rough-cut designer jeans and top brands of sweatshirts, and the casual uniform of Conservative Party youth, sleek hair and boat shoes included. The eagle-eyed doormen would have been loath to allow someone as drab as Ernest to pass through the gates to that temple to bourgeois recreation, but he wasn’t in fact intending to go in. He was going to stay outside and hover like a vulture waiting for an easy prey. Although he’d never crossed that threshold, it was common knowledge that Up & Down was one of the favourite haunts for the wealthy of Barcelona.

  Ernest had finally decided on an easy enough solution to get hold of the two grand they desperately needed: he would steal it at pistol-point. Once he’d come to this decision, his ethical beliefs and strict scale of values forced him to limit his possible field to the rich. He didn’t want to risk holding up someone as povertystricken as himself, although that wouldn’t have been difficult. So after he’d chewed over his plan of action, he’d worked out that his best option was to travel to where the well-off lived and partied. On a Friday night, in a plush disco like that, he’d find the filthy rich thick on the ground. He was quite right. What’s more, the place had the added bonus of being surrounded by badly lit boulevards with few passers-by.

  The moral dilemma of the theft didn’t bother him in the slightest at that point in time. It was one thing to steal in order to avoid work, he thought, and quite another to enter St Dismas’s fraternity of thieves as a last resort. He wasn’t out to steal to put food on their table, but worse still, to continue having a dining room to put a table where he could put their Spanish omelettes. Of course, he was a total novice and anguished about picking the right victim, and about ending up in the police station and becoming part of the problem rather than the solution.

  When he reached the disco at around half-past eleven, Ernest realized it had only just opened its doors and that the restaurant next door was full of people dining out. The façade was a hundred per cent glass, as required by the canons of the ersatz modernity Barcelona now aped, which meant too many witnesses and casual onlookers. Three extremely young men, all in black, with small gadgets attached to their ears, were inspecting the people entering Up & Down, and allowing them in or turning them away. Ernest became rather anxious and kept his distance, trying to keep outside their line of vision. He was planning to accost someone who staggered out drunk and then lead him to a cash point, so he was probably in for a wait. It might be hours before he found the right victim for his toy pistol, so he decided to take it easy and go for a drink in an Irish pub on the other side of the road.

  The pub was packed and filled with a smoky haze. The lights were dimmed and a Premier League match was being shown on the screen which some foreigners were enthusiastically watching. Fortunately, his presence went totally unnoticed. Ernest sat at the bar, pretended to watch the football and ordered a beer. He went to the lavatory a couple of times to pee, more a question of nerves than an ailing prostate, and at one thirty exited the pub, thinking he’d snoop discreetly around the disco. He made good use of the darkness and the darkorange low-consumption streetlights installed courtesy of the mayor, as he lurked in the shadows trying not to attract attention while he made sure the place wasn’t bristling with bodyguards or bouncers.

  That beer and the couple of whiskies he’d downed while killing time had been a good idea, like the supply of nicotine in his pocket. It was just what he needed to bring on the Dutch courage required by that turning point in his life. He noted how every muscle in his neck was taut and how his heart had begun to race and thud. If he’d been a hunter, he’d have recognized that silent injection of adrenaline coursing through his veins, but as he wasn’t, he had a panic attack, thinking it might be a heart attack in the making. He had to calm down, so he took several long, deep breaths as he’d been instructed in the hospital. That night Ernest Fabià, translator of English literature and specialist in the mating rituals of the Tupi-Guarani Indians, was about to become a thief. What he couldn’t imagine, however, was that he was also about to become the alibi for a man who’d be accused of murder the morning after.

  3

  As she went up in the lift to her bedroom at the Ritz, Marina Dolç looked into the mirror and sighed. She was ageing. She was surely the only person who could see in that face, now the wrong side of fifty, the shy but determined little twenty-something hungry for new experiences and ready to take on the world she had once been. Though the image in the mirror became increasingly unpleasant by the day, she still believed she had a lif
etime ahead of her, as if the now half-visible horizon of old age and death was a distant nightmare that didn’t become either her or the array of projects still bubbling in her head. Marina usually tried to avoid thinking of such things, but mirrors didn’t lie and the years passed relentlessly by, and even more so now. However reluctantly, she had to accept she was mature and menopausal, and that time was taking its toll. And tonight she was exhausted. It was what she most hated about the cruel process of growing old. Not the wrinkles, not the way the years slowly and implacably aged her body, but the exhaustion she’d suddenly feel that prevented her from reliving the razzamatazz twenties she still mentally inhabited. For some time she’d felt her body clock saying enough is enough and she’d tamely become resigned to taking herself early to bed.

  She stepped out of the lift and rummaged in her bag until she found the key to no. 507, her room. Whenever she came to Barcelona, Marina stayed at the Ritz and in this bedroom. It wasn’t particularly spacious, but it looked out on the Gran Via and Marina liked to gaze at the city’s thoroughfares and terraces from that vantage point. The bath and its large mosaic surround of pink and white tiles was inspired by designs from ancient Rome and the whole ostentatious decor verged on the baroque. The friezes and mouldings on the ceiling and walls were painted a tawny gold and matched the tapestry of gilded flowers on the wall, the counterpane and curtains. It wasn’t the most expensive suite she could have afforded, but she preferred it for sentimental reasons. Room 507 was the first one she stayed in when she could allow herself the luxury of residing at the Ritz, and over the years that room had become familiar territory and part of her life-story. She liked the feeling of returning, of knowing she was surrounded by objects and furniture she already knew, like the two bronze naked athletes locked in a struggle in front of the fireplace who always made her smile. They reminded her of the palazzo she owned in Tuscany, where she felt so much at home. Marina Dolç had turned Italy into her second birthplace and had spent long periods there for years. As everyone remarked, friends and enemies alike, she was an eccentric, wealthy Catalan sybarite who’d chosen to live between the landscape of pines and holm oaks of her modernist house in the Vallès and the vines and olive trees around her Renaissance palace in Tuscany. The novelist hoarded within its walls paintings and sculptures of a value and beauty that sent a shiver down the spine.

  She switched the light on and took her shoes off. It was a coolish fourteen degrees inside and she decided a hot shower was in order before going to bed. She was worn out, even though it was only a few minutes past two. She’d drunk and smoked far too much and was dying to unzip her tight-fitting silk dress and feel the warm water massaging her back .

  She’d not even begun to undress when there was a knock at the door. She glanced at the clock and heaved a second deep sigh of resignation as she stifled her annoyance at that untimely visit. She struggled to squeeze her swollen feet back into her high-heeled sandals, tucked her belly in and walked over to the door, ready to put a pleasant face on it. It was not the moment to display a fit of bad temper, she told herself, repressing a yawn. Perhaps she’d left something in the bar, or her mobile was switched off and it was something urgent related to the prize. She’d find out soon enough. Her first interview was at ten, and if she didn’t go to bed now, she’d wake up with bags under her eyes and a face out of sorts. She always stocked her suitcase with up-market lotions when travelling, but was well aware make-up and creams couldn’t work miracles, whatever the advertisements claimed. Tonight prudence counselled Marina to get between those sheets as soon as she could.

  She breezily opened the door and was amazed to discover who was knocking at that late hour. Nonetheless she invited her visitor in, the last person she’d been expecting to see, and found herself unable to suppress a smile. Perhaps the idea was to apologize or attempt to ruin her big night. She’d soon know. Marina might be tired, but she felt strong enough to put on an affable, even accommodating front.

  “Would you like a drink? I expect there’s whisky?” she asked, stooping to inspect the little bottles in the minibar.

  Those were her last words. A sharp stab of pain in the parietal area of her skull, total darkness she experienced for the briefest couple of moments, and it was all over. The other four, five or six blows didn’t hurt. She had ceased to exist. Flecked with heavy, whitish brain matter, her dark, almost black blood began to seep onto the carpet, which absorbed it like blotting paper and framed her shattered head in a large purple halo. Within seconds, the rusty iron stench of blood began to meld with the other smells floating in the bedroom that had unexpectedly transmuted into a mortuary chamber. The chemical fragrance from the red roses her publishers had sent hours before. Her own expensive floral scent, a musk-based perfume. And the icy breath from the familiar face that had ended her life so unexpectedly.

  She had been hit with the base of the heavy bronze statuette she’d only just received as the winner of the Sixth Edition of the Golden Apple Fiction Prize: a misshapen fruit with a bite taken out, clutched by a hand attached to a square of Thassos marble that served as a pedestal. A few strands of hair were stuck to the bloodstained edge.

  The killer put the statuette down next to the body and, taking care not to step in the blood slowly spreading all around, fingered the writer’s wrist, looking for her diamond-encrusted white-gold watch. The murderer moved the minute-hand twenty minutes on and picked up the statuette again and struck the watch-face, using enough force to break but not smash it, so as not to destroy the hands and the time they were recording. He then placed the statuette back beside the motionless body and bent over Marina Dolç. The writer was face down, eyes open, hair bloodied. She breathed no more.

  The assassin spent a few seconds checking that everything was in order, walked towards the door, and left the room after making sure nobody was in the corridor; he silently closed the door, and took the lift to the bar in the basement under the entrance lobby. The killer entered the bar and mingled unobtrusively with the other guests while reclaiming a previously abandoned gin-and-tonic. Less than a quarter of an hour had passed, but the ice had melted. Heart beating normally and hands steady, the murderer asked the barman what the time was, and repeated his answer loudly, thanked him and ordered another gin-and-tonic. Everybody was chatting excitedly, louder than necessary, under the euphoric influence of alcohol. No one had noticed the absence of the killer, who had discreetly rejoined a little group that was now pontificating on the subject of the evils endemic to contemporary literature, and nobody noticed that the killer’s eyes were decanting an icy cold that could have frozen the drinks the guests were still raising in toasts.

  4

  Amadeu Cabestany arrived at the Up & Down club at around half-past one. Bad-tempered and slightly tipsy, he’d left some time before the end of the big literary party being held at the Ritz, a traditional, luxury hotel on the right side of the Eixample in Barcelona that had changed owners and name and was now the Palace Hotel. But Amadeu Cabestany wasn’t just irritated. He was also fed up. Everyone must have noticed the filthy mood he got into when he discovered he was runner-up for a prize that had been snatched from his grasp, as he’d put it. He felt humiliated, ridiculous and betrayed, and hadn’t acted at all tactfully. However, nobody had batted an eyelid.

  He stoically stood at the bar in the Ritz with the winner and the rest of those invited, until around one. Then he decided he’d had enough and it was time to leave. He bade goodbye, not entirely gracefully, to a few people, including Marina Dolç, and went up to his room, hovering between despondency and rage. He knew nobody would miss him, except perhaps his agent, Clàudia, with whom he occasionally shared a bed. However, that possibility was no consolation. Depressed and disappointed, Amadeu Cabestany simply felt like wallowing in self-pity, and who could deny he was a past master at that?

  Back in his bedroom, he decided he hadn’t the energy to talk to anyone, least of all his wife, and switched his mobile off. He also realized he’d never
get to sleep, however hard he tried. And not because the din from the party reached his room in that five-star hotel, which it didn’t, but because down in the bar a select band of literati who hadn’t the slightest literary taste were euphorically celebrating with Marina Dolç the prize that had just been snatched from him. To rub salt into his wounds, Amadeu remembered that the undeserving winner was lodged in the room next to his, an absurd coincidence that meant his mood, stoked by envy and whisky, turned even darker.

  He’d still not taken his jacket off when he had a sudden change of mind. Rather than trying to sleep or drink himself silly on the contents of the minibar, he decided to go out. The receptionist was the only person left in the lobby, but he could hear the racket the party-goers were creating in the bar downstairs. Unconsciously he scowled contemptuously in their direction, though nobody noticed, and muttered “bastards” under his breath, though nobody heard him. He thrust his hands into his pockets and strode out of the hotel, determined to salvage a scrap of pride, confront that fresh defeat and seek out a bar where he could lick his wounds in style with a proper dose of alcohol.

  As he lived in Vic and was unfamiliar with the nightlife in Barcelona of more recent years, he’d no idea where to go. After meandering in the vicinity of the hotel, he decided to take a taxi and ask the driver to drop him somewhere peaceful where he could have a quiet drink. The driver hesitated at first, but when he realized that the customer in the back seat wasn’t from Barcelona and was elegantly dressed if slightly plastered and didn’t look the type to go to strip clubs, he opted to take him to the Up & Down club via the longest route he could think of: along Gran Via to Plaça Tetuan, and then up and down the Passeig de Sant Joan to Diagonal before heading to Numància. It was almost one thirty when he dropped Amadeu outside one of the city’s sassiest, most famous discos.