69

ADRIANA

Thursday, November 1, 2012

The Day of the Dead

W e’re running out of time,” Kyra had said as soon as we landed in Santander, just after 6 p.m. “We’re not going to make it to the cemetery.”

“If you like, you can drop me and Héctor off, and you and Adriana go on,” Iago offered.

Then he bent over toward me and lowered his voice. “I’m really tired. You don’t mind, do you, Dana?”

I gave him my blessing without taking my eyes off my watch. There were only a couple of hours to go before the Ciriego cemetery closed, so I picked up my car from the airport parking lot and rushed off to the suburb of San Román, while Kyra took off in Iago’s 4x4, dropping off Héctor and Iago on the way. The weather was no better than what we had left behind in London—unpleasant, with a cold, bothersome wind. When I reached the cemetery gates I discovered that all of Santander had had the same idea as us. The road had been reduced in width by rows of cars squashed in tightly on either side, like shoppers on the day of a sale. So I left my Clio parked in the first available space and called Kyra to let her know where I was headed.

“I’m nearly there. By the way, Jairo’s right behind me,” she said.

And sure enough, the owner of Little Bastard parked next to his sister. Jairo, who was in the same burgundy velvet suit he was wearing the day I met him, got out holding several white chrysanthemums.

“It’s the flower of immortality in Asia,” he explained to me as he offered me one with the gesture of a Florentine gentleman. “I can’t allow you to buy one of those horrible prepackaged bunches they’re selling in the stalls at the entrance. They’re too vulgar as far as I’m concerned.”

“Jairo, what on earth are you doing here?” Kyra demanded.

“I’ll be honest with you: I’ve got nothing else to do, and I’d like to reinsert myself into family routines as quickly as I can. Later, you can have dinner at my villa. We have more than enough food.”

I glanced over at Kyra, whose shrug suggested a resigned surrender. Jairo gave a satisfied smile and escorted us to the cemetery gates, through which a swarm of Santanderinos were already leaving, deeming their Day of the Dead to be over. We managed to make headway against the current of serious faces, bored children, and wreaths. The graves looked radically different from their customary uninspiring gray granite. The flowers spread like an out-of-control rash, as if inhaling the scent of hothouse lilies would comfort the dead.

I wondered where Kyra’s husband was buried, although it wasn’t long before I came face-to-face with the answer. In front of us were three spotless graves, better maintained than those around them. Fénix was in the middle grave. On one side of him, Vega, in a smaller one of white marble. On the other, in an identical grave, Syrio. Kyra bent down and distributed her flowers equally among all three of them.

“They’re . . . your children?”

Kyra nodded.

“I thought you’d only lost your husband.”

“No. All three of them died in a stupid car crash. I know I’ve never mentioned them to you. I’m still incapable of saying their names out loud; I need more time. You can understand that, can’t you?”

I nodded my head, unable to find the right words.

“They were driving along the road from Santander to Somo, along that dangerous stretch. Fénix kept going straight ahead when he should have followed the bend.”

When I leaned forward to read the headstones, with Jairo and Kyra behind me, I felt a shock run down my spine like a flash of lightning, which left me rooted to the spot like a split tree. Something electric and devastating, which changes the very nature of the elements. The bronze lettering revealed the date of their deaths. It was the same date as my mother’s: December 8, 1997.

“What’s the matter, Adriana?” asked Kyra. “Your expression has changed.”

“It’s just a somewhat macabre coincidence. My mother died the same day as your family. Look,” I said, pointing to my mother’s niche, a few yards away in the next aisle. You could read the inscription from where we were.

Kyra looked astonished, and then she moved closer so that she could read the plaque more easily. Jairo and I moved, too.

“Your mother’s name was Sofía Almenara,” she asked, frowning.

“Yes, as you can see. Don’t tell me you knew her.”

“Was she a psychologist?” Kyra persisted, brushing her fringe away from her face.

I nodded.

“That’s strange. Your mother called me the day my family died. She was very nervous, and she’d barely identified herself and begun to talk to me when the line went dead. I didn’t have the faintest idea who she was and had no way of returning her call either, but I was completely intrigued for a few hours. Then the police rang to tell me about my family’s car crash, and I forgot about your mother. Until today.”

“My mother called you?” I asked, incredulous.

Shit, shit, shit.

But the Tetris pieces had already begun to fall into place inside my head, exactly like they do when you get to screen number twenty and they drop quickly, filling the rows, and you already have outlines showing you where to put them.

I turned toward Jairo, but he’d disappeared at some stage during our conversation. At precisely the moment when he’d put two and two together, earlier than me. Kyra turned around as well, searching for her brother, but still not making sense of it all.

“Where’s Jairo?”

I leaned against my mother’s faded photo, and she looked at me through the glass with a tense expression on her face. The chrysanthemum Jairo had given me for her fell to the ground.

“Tell me, did Jairo have a daughter who died round about that time?”

“Yes. Olbia died from cancer a year earlier.”

I banged my head against the niche.

“But isn’t Jairo sterile?” I asked harshly.

“Yes, but he went to an IVF clinic. He married one of his many potential candidates and played the role of devoted husband. Back then it was still difficult to make use of surrogate mothers and dispense with a wife altogether. In any event, Olbia was his first and last child because, after he lost her, he didn’t try to have any more. That’s why he came to us to start investigating how to have longevo offspring; he doesn’t want to go through that trauma again. Why the interrogation?”

“Let’s go!” I said, grabbing her by the arm and forcing her to follow me along the cemetery paths, dodging the people who were still praying to their loved ones.

But Kyra refused to keep moving, and I had to stop when I reached the main path as I watched Jairo weaving his way through the latecomers several yards in front of me.

“No, not until you tell me what’s going on,” she said with the hoarse voice she used whenever she became serious.

I looked over her shoulder, searching desperately for Jairo.

“Months before her death, my mother had a patient who came to see her because he’d lost his daughter to leukemia. The patient had outrageous ideas to do with killing some of his in-laws, and my mother was convinced he really intended to do it, even though the police didn’t believe her. I know she located someone from that family and intended to call that person to warn them. She made that call on the very day she died.”

Kyra’s features stiffened like a roll of parchment, and she ran toward the exit, where we could see Jairo leaping into his convertible and disappearing down the road.

“Where’s he going?” I asked Kyra as she climbed into Iago’s car and I pressed the remote control button on my car key.

“He’ll go to the MAC lab. If he’s come back because of our investigations, he’ll try to steal all the material he can before he disappears, but I have no intention of letting him do that,” she shouted, slamming the car door and starting the engine.

I tried to follow them in my car, but after I’d stopped at the first traffic light—which neither of them had done—I lost them. Nevertheless, I kept driving on the A-71 toward the museum as I punched in Iago’s phone number.

“Jairo’s heading for the MAC,” I said, spitting out the first thing that emerged from the swarm of ideas buzzing around in my head.

“And why are you calling to tell me that?” he answered, a note of concern in his voice.

Common sense told me I had to start from the beginning. “Do you remember the phone call my mother wanted to make to the family of that depressed patient? It was Kyra she called. Jairo was with me and Kyra in the cemetery just now, listening to our conversation, but he raced away before we could ask him any questions.”

Iago took a second to react; I heard something smashing into little pieces on the other end of the line. Maybe he’d been drinking a glass of water and the glass had fallen to the floor. Maybe he’d been eating his dinner and had thrown the plate against the wall. Who knows?

“Ahhh!” he moaned to my surprise. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this!”

“You knew?” I asked, my throat dry.

“I suspected it. Listen, Dana,” he said in a faltering voice, “I know you never pay any attention to me when I ask you to, but wait until I get there. I know how to put an end to this situation. I’m going to grab a cab and I’ll be at the MAC shortly, but please don’t confront Jairo on your own.”

“You suspected?” I yelled at him, resisting the impulse to throw my cell phone out of the window.

“I’ll tell you everything, I swear. But don’t intervene right n—”

“I have to know before he disappears again if he was the one who killed my mother,” I cut in.

“I know, I know, and you will talk to him, I swear. But wait until I’m there with you.”

“I can’t run the risk that he’ll leave.”

“You have to,” he begged me. “Otherwise, you’re risking your life. Listen, if I don’t get there in time, I promise I’ll find him. I know where he’ll be. I’ve always known how to find him.”

“And if this is one of your lies? You have to understand, Iago, I can’t take that risk. And by the way, you and I have a conversation pending.”

He stopped wasting his time when he realized he wasn’t going to convince me and hung up. The only thing on my mind right then was to get to the MAC before Jairo got away, so I also started running all the red lights I came across. When I reached the MAC parking lot, Jairo’s brilliant red car was clearly visible parked in front of Iago’s lavender bush, like a poisonous insect. A few yards farther on, Kyra had left the door of the 4x4 open, but there was no sign of either of them. The esplanade was deserted, because it was a holiday and the museum was closed to the public.

I ran to the main door of the building, which was ajar, and raced down the stairs to the Restoration Laboratory. I could see Kyra’s inert body lying on the floor at the entrance.