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Marc left the café reading the message. It read: ‘Where are you? Are you coming or not? Give me three rings when you get here, alright?’ He didn’t answer. He erased the message, put the phone in his front pocket and, as he walked, could not avoid exclaiming out loud:
“What are you on this morning?!”
He approached his car at a good pace. Miguel had one big virtue: punctuality. And one defect: trying to impose it on the rest of the world via sermons. And today, Marc was in no mood to put up with any sermons.
When he drew level with his vehicle, he noticed that it was leaning slightly towards the driver’s side. He went around the back of the car, and from there could see that his front right tyre was flat, with the wheel rim resting on the tarmac. Goodbye speed and hello sermon, he thought at that moment. Although at the same time, he also thought it was always wise to be philosophical about such things.
He unlocked the car with the fob and, from inside, activated the switch to open the boot, leaving his jacket on the back seat. A few seconds later, he took out the spare tyre, which he rested against the vehicle, and he took out the jack, which he left on the ground, just to the side of the flat tyre. Then he lightly rolled up the sleeves to his t-shirt, bent down next to the flat tyre and loosened the bolts holding it in place. Once he had done this, he grabbed the jack, which he placed in the part of the chassis designed for such a thing, and starting to crank up the handle, the vehicle began to rise up immediately.
“It’s not a puncture,” he heard directly behind him.
Marc stopped. Standing next to him, speaking, all serious and with her irresistible intellectual appearance, was the enigmatic woman with whom he had tried to flirt barely a few minutes ago. Her image, which had appeared slight inside the café, seemed much larger now that he was bent over. For a moment, he was happy at having to change that wheel.
“Hey! And how would you know?” asked the young man, with a smile on his face.
“When I left the café, I was about to go into the post office, but I heard a noise. I approached, and saw a man letting down the tyre. That very one,” she affirmed, pointing to the one that Marc was about to change. “The man ran away as soon as he saw me.”
“Quite the heroine.”
“No, no,” the woman corrected, with conviction. “If I had been, I would have restrained him. But to do that, I would need to have your strength, and I don’t think I do,” she said, as she looked at Marc’s biceps.
“Well, at least you being here stopped him from damaging anything else. Thanks, really.”
“It’s nothing, I would have done it for anyone. Anyway, I didn’t know the car was yours.”
“Well yes, it is, as you can see. What a coincidence.”
“In any case, it’s clear to see that neither you nor your car are shrinking violets.”
Marc didn’t know how to take that statement, but he wanted to find out straight away, and decided to delve deeper into the topic.
“Surely, I must seem like an unusual type of guy to you, and you probably don’t know many like me. But I have to tell you that I like cars, the gym, and... women,” he wanted to stress that last word, pausing briefly before enunciating it. “And not necessarily in that order,” he concluded.
“Well I like literature, motorbikes and men,” replied the woman immediately. “I don’t know what mental image you’ve created of me, but I don’t think we’re all that different,” she added in a provocative tone.
A look of satisfaction suddenly appeared on Marc’s face. A satisfaction that the woman planned only on feeding:
“I bet that we can share many things together, and have an extraordinarily good time doing so,” she proceeded with her exposition. “But to do so, I think that above all it is imperative that you change that tyre first.”
The gym can wait. Miguel and his crazy sermons, even more, thought Marc in that instant. He tensed his trained muscles and set to work once more, cranking the lever to the jack with extraordinary exuberance. The woman remained unmoved by his side, watching him with a mixture of curiosity and naivety, giving her an appearance that was simultaneously intriguing and sensual.
“You said that you like motorbikes, but if you’ll allow me, I’ll tell you that a car is always a car,” commented Marc whilst the car was being elevated. “More so, if it’s anything like this one. They don’t make cars like this anymore: two hundred horsepower, turbo-charged, four-wheel drive, zero to a hundred in under seven seconds. A machine,” he concluded, giving it an affectionate pat on the bonnet. “And the most important thing right now: with a real spare tyre, not the ridiculous little inflatable rubber rings they have now in the latest generation cars.”
The woman did not seem to be all that interested in all of the details that the young man was spouting, but even so, she knew how not to appear rude:
“I bet it’s very heavy and stable.”
“Yes, it’s stable. And heavy: fifteen hundred kilos, straight out of the factory,” the guy also knew that figure. “A few more, with the extras I’ve put on it,” he added, pointing towards the spoiler.
“It’s incredible how such a small device is capable of withstanding the car’s weight all by itself,” the woman commented, looking at the jack, and smiling for the first time that whole morning.
“Well it obviously does,” replied Marc. “It’s made from a highly resistant alloy.”
Once he had raised the jack up to halfway, the car was balanced and the flat tyre was completely elevated off the ground. He finished extracting the bolts along with the wheel, leaving the wheel rim exposed. The woman bent down for a moment:
“And is it normal for a car like this to be leaking liquid from underneath?” she asked, unable to avoid accompanying the question with a slightly mocking tone.
In contrast, Marc became serious upon hearing this.
“No, of course not.”
He bent down the same way that the woman had just done and indeed ascertained that there was a sizeable puddle underneath his car.
“I’ve just had it serviced. It’s impossible for it to have a fault,” he said, getting back up.
“In this world, nothing’s impossible.”
The young man bent back down by the side of the car, parallel to it, pushed the two wheels aside to clear his line of vision, and tried to find out the origin of the leak.
“Maybe the guy who let down your wheel could have also had time to cause a leak,” she said helpfully.
“I don’t think so. It’s not easy to get to the car’s underside from the outside. Most of all because it has lowered suspension, and a man’s arm can hardly fit underneath. Clearly, I can’t see where the leak’s coming from either.”
“Perhaps if you raise it a little more...” she said to him, pointing to the jack.
Marc thought that seemed like a good idea. He reached out towards the lever, and in a few short seconds he raised it as far as it would go. The car was now elevated incredibly high on the one side. The young man did not say anything. As soon he finished, he got down flat on the ground, perpendicular to the car, and slid lightly underneath, just like an expert mechanic would. He certainly would not be able to avoid calling for a crane, but he was not disposed to let that leak ruin his plan without knowing at least where it came from.
“Do you see anything?” asked the woman.
“No. How weird, the car’s dry. There aren’t any leaks.”
“Have a good look. I wouldn’t like to get into the car only to find myself stranded God knows where.”
A small laugh was audible from underneath the vehicle:
“Ah, but, does that mean then that you’ve already been thinking about getting in with me?” said Marc, still not emerging from underneath. “It’s a bit strange, we’re making intimate plans and I still don’t know you’re name.”
The woman remained silent. The young man did not then want to insist on what seemed to be a promising opportunity to put his foot in it. And finding out her name was not something that he would be losing any sleep over at that moment.
Once he had checked that there was no leak anywhere, Marc called an end to his mechanical inspection. He moved lightly underneath the vehicle, and supported his hands on the ground to make his way out, trying to see the woman. Once he could see her, still not completely out from underneath, he noticed that the woman was gripping the lever to the jack. Firmly, and with both hands.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
The woman continued in silence. She simply pulled decisively outwards, causing the jack to abruptly leave its position. The discontinued automobile; the Opel Calibra Turbo, of more than one and a half metric tonnes, fell down in its entirety onto Marc’s head. The wheel did not reach the ground. Alternatively, there was a brief, hollow sound, as if a ripe fruit had fallen onto the ground and burst from its own weight. Nothing scandalous, nothing that would make anybody suspect what had taken place there, with the exception of the small stream of blood that trickled out from underneath the car.
“Emma, my name is Emma. Even though I imagine that you’ve never bothered to find out,” she said, with a certain level of anger in her voice.
Then, she leaned on the roof of the car and looked from one end of the street to the other, immobile. There were three people on the pavement, approaching, although they were still a considerable distance away. A few cars passed behind her at high speed down the neighbouring street. She observed her surroundings for a few seconds: not a single vehicle stopped, nobody on the pavement changed their course. Better this way, she thought. It would have been shameful to convince Marc’s family that she was his partner. Shameful, and not very believable either. And, above all, that version of events would require her to scream at that moment. But that was not the case. So she remained silent, took the golf ball out of her bag and left it on the windscreen, taking care for it to remain balanced. Once she had done this, she scrubbed the soles of her shoes against the tarmac on the street, so as not to leave a trail of blood behind her when she walked, and looked back at the pavement. The three people were becoming dangerously close, and walking at a decent pace.
Emma didn’t appear to be in a hurry. She smoothed her hair back down again, this time not in a flirtatious way, took off her glasses, put them in her bag, and walked down the pavement on the side that was free of pedestrians. Somebody would find the body soon, but by that time she would be far away. Far away enough so as to not arouse suspicion.