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On the strike of seven, Carlos rang the bell on the intercom. Somebody opened the door for him without even asking. As the lift was making its way up, he tried to relax, to no avail. This conversation with Daniel’s parents could well mean the end of his career. If anything about what he said to them upset them or struck them as strange and they decided to phone the station to protest, he could consider himself fired. He needed to tread very carefully with each one of his words.
When he came out of the lift, he met a couple waiting for him with the door open.
‘Good afternoon. Mr and Mrs Gómez?’ When they both nodded, Carlos took out his badge from his pocket and showed it to them. ‘ I’m Inspector Vega. As I said to you over the phone, I’d like to ask you some questions about the death of your son.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course,’ answered the woman. ‘Come in, please.’
Carlos followed them in to a modest living room. On top of a low table, they had placed a tray with pastries and three cups of coffee.
‘You’re both very kind,’ said Carlos as he took a seat. ‘The first thing I want to tell you is that I am so sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you so much,’ they both replied in unison, as if they had said it enough times over the recent weeks to have it perfectly down pat.
‘I imagine you will both be wondering why I’m here if the death of your son was due to a car accident,’ Carlos began to explain. ‘I want to tell you that my presence here does not remotely contradict the police report that was created about the case. I simply have a few questions, and I would like to be able to discuss them with you.’
‘I knew it,’ interrupted the woman. ‘My Daniel was not killed by a car. It was not an accident. I said so to the police, and nobody wanted to listen to me.’
‘Calm yourself down, woman,’ her husband reprimanded her. ‘Let the inspector talk.’
‘Don’t worry. What is it that doesn’t seem right to you, madam? Why do you think that Daniel’s death was not due to an accident?’
‘They say he lost control because he was drunk. My son didn’t drink: he detested alcohol. He never had a single glass in his life.’
Carlos gave her a timid smile and noted down her words in his notebook, although he did not believe they were going to be of any use to him. When he finished writing, he did a couple of little taps with the ballpoint pen on the pad, and decided to share his doubts with her.
‘Madam, I have no intention of offending you, but parents don’t know everything about their children. We always think they are perfect and that they would not do anything risky or stupid, but it could be that your son did drink, even if he never told either of you about it.’
‘No, that’s not it.’ The woman pursed her lips and gave him a cold look. ‘I know that my son was no angel. I know that he had a few vices, but alcohol was not one of them.’
‘What vices?’ asked Carlos, interested.
‘Do you not know how it was that David came to work for the Ertzaintza?’
‘By passing a public examination, I imagine...’
‘Well, no. My son was always good with computers. Too good...’ the father recounted, with his gaze lost on infinity. ‘When he was seventeen years old, the police turned up at our home to arrest him.’
‘What was he being accused of?’
‘Hacking large companies: insurance companies, banks, some official bodies... He never took anything. He could have stolen whatever he wanted, but he limited himself to entering, erasing a few files, putting in some virus... They were only pranks, a kind of challenge for him. He wasn’t looking for any gain apart from the adrenaline, of knowing that he was doing something forbidden, of proving that he was smarter... Until they caught him, of course.’
‘And what happened? Did he go to prison?’
‘No, he never came to set foot in prison. Before the judge, they offered us a deal. If Daniel agreed to work for the Ertzaintza, they would withdraw the charges. If he did not agree, he would risk going to prison, or an immense fine we’d never be able to pay in our lives.’
‘So he agreed?’
‘Yes, and he was very happy with his work,’ intervened the mother. ‘For a few years, we thought that he had learnt his lesson and that he had grown up... Until we found out about the other thing.’
‘What is the other thing?’ asked Carlos, interested.
‘Gambling...’ The woman hung her head, as if embarrassed for the sins of her son. ‘It started with sports betting. He said that he did not trust in chance; that he studied all of the variables; that his method was secure, but he began losing money and had to ask for loans from his friends, his family... Every time, he was betting more to try and recoup what he had lost. We had to tell him that the loans were over and that he had to seek help.’
‘And did he?’
‘Yes. We were seeing a psychologist who was an expert in addiction. He explained to us that the money was not important to him. He was seeking out the adrenaline, to prove that he was smarter than whoever he was against... Exactly the same as when he was seventeen years old and entertaining himself by going into other people’s computers. He had not changed one bit.’
‘And what happened? Did he manage to overcome the addiction?’
‘For a time we thought he had,’ intervened the father. ‘He no longer asked for money from family or friends, so we supposed he had put it behind him. What was actually happening was that he was asking for money from loan sharks and getting further and further into debt. I imagine you know the kinds of idiots. It’s not the same thing being late paying a friend as it is with those scumbags.’
‘Yes, they tend to have very little patience,’ remarked Carlos. ‘What happened?’
‘They gave him a beating that put him in hospital,’ the father continued to recount. ‘He had to confess to us what had happened.’
‘How much money did he owe?’
‘About six thousand euros,’ replied the mother, shaking her head in dejection. ‘He told us not to worry about anything; that he had found the way to pay back the money, and that he was totally confident, and somebody was going to pay him very well for a job.’
‘Did he mention to you who that person was, or what kind of job he had to do?’
‘No, we didn’t manage to get any more information out of him. Just that it was a colleague from the police station.’ The woman’s voice broke with the emotion. ‘We believed that everything would be fine. He worked for the police, for God’s sake. How could one of his colleagues get him in trouble?’
‘Calm down, Miren.’ The man placed an arm around his wife’s shoulders to comfort her. ‘We don’t know whether what he was doing for that colleague was illegal or not. Maybe he didn’t manage to gather the money together in time for his moneylender, and this time they decided that a beating wasn’t enough.’
‘Whatever it was, what I can guarantee is that Daniel did not drink and drive. My son did not drink, and he would never have done something stupid like that.’
‘Do you know the name of the loan shark?’ The couple shook their heads. ‘What about the place where he would go to make the bets?’
‘That, we do,’ replied the man. ‘If you’ll let me have your notepad, I’ll write down the address.’
Carlos did so, and waited for the man to finish writing. In the meantime, the woman kept her gaze fixated on him. Carlos did not know how to interpret what those eyes were expressing. Hope? Trust? This woman was thinking that he could do justice and find out what had really happened to her son. Without saying anything, Carlos smiled at her and nodded, signing a kind of contract that he intended to fulfil.
When he left their home, he looked at the address that Daniel’s father had written. It was a bar on Siete Calles, right in Casco Viejo, the historical centre of Bilbao. He thought about whether he ought to go over there. His hypotheses pointed towards it being that mysterious colleague who had ended David’s life, so it was very likely that his moneylender had not had anything to do with it. Those people wanted to collect their debts above all else. Putting a person in a car and sending them off down a ravine was not a good way of recouping the money.
He decided that, even so, he would call in there to ask some questions. Perhaps the loan shark could give him some interesting piece of information. He would have loved to bring Sebas along with him so that he could cover his back. It could be dangerous going into a place like that alone, but he did not want to get Sebas into any further mess. He had to try to get it so that, in the case that Aguirre did end up finding out about this, it was only his head that would fall.
*****
When Lorena came out the vestibule area of her building, his breath was momentarily taken away, like it was every time he saw her. She had a way of walking, and wiggling her hips, that drove him crazy. Her long blonde hair fluttered behind her as if the breeze blew for her alone. When she saw him, leaning against the car, smoking a cigarette whilst he waited for her, she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, coquettish, and smiled at him in the way that only she knew how to smile. Gus noticed that his heart was beating hard in his chest, and he had to contain a sigh so as not to come across as an enamoured idiot.
Lorena stopped in front of him, rested her hands against the car as if imprisoning him, and brought her mouth to his. She nibbled his lower lip, playfully, before forging her way with her tongue. Gus chucked the cigarette aside and pressed her hard against his body.
‘Where are we going today?’ she asked, once they separated.
‘I don’t know... Shall we go up to Artxanda?’ he suggested, feeling that the blood was not getting to his brain because it was highly busy in other areas of his body.
‘Let’s leave that for later.’ Lorena placed her index finger on Gus’s chest and slid it meanderingly down until it reached his belt. ‘All good things come to those who wait.’
‘Okay, whatever you say.’ Gus swallowed and tried to think about something that would make him forget about the pulsating throbbing coming from his crotch. ‘Do you want to go and have a coffee at some place on the beach?’
‘My friends are at the Fever. We could go there.’
‘Fever? Bloody hell, Lorena... I don’t remotely feel like going to a nightclub to listen to that shitty excuse for music and have them charge me even for just breathing. It’s the end of the month and I’m broke...’
‘Well next week we’ll have to put down the money for the Easter week holiday. I hope you’ll have been paid by then.’
‘What holiday? What money?’ asked Gus, confused.
‘Gus, sweetie, you don’t notice anything,’ she said, annoyed. ‘We were talking about it last Sunday in Puerto Viejo.’
Gus tried to jog his memory, but did not manage to recall a thing. He did not want to confess to Lorena that the conversations with her friends tended to bore him so much that he would off and start thinking about any other thing, whilst smiling and nodding to everything they said to him.
‘I’m sorry, I have a lot on my mind,’ he apologised. ‘Where are we supposed to be going?’
‘Skiing in Baqueira Beret.’
‘I’m not going to go skiing,’ protested Gus. ‘I don’t know how to ski, and I don’t have the equipment or the money to go to that place. I would suppose that on top of that we’d be going with your friends, right?’
‘Of course. Is it that you don’t like them, or something?’ Lorena seemed as horrified as if he had just confessed to her that he killed children for fun.
‘Let’s see... I don’t dislike them... Not completely... But imagining myself spending several days with them... I’d prefer to do something else, you and me alone.’
‘Something else like what?’ Lorena looked at him through half-closed eyes, whilst she shook her head.
‘I don’t know... Go to the cinema, walk through parks, go to the beach, have a coffee while we chat about stuff... What normal couples do.’
‘That’s boring, Gus. I’m going to go skiing with my friends like I do every year.’
‘Perfect. What does it matter what I want? I’m just the bloody wimp you go out with,’ said Gus under his breath.
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing, just that I’ll think about it.’ Gus opened the car door and got in. ‘Come on, we’re going to Fever.’
Lorena smiled, satisfied. Before she could get into the car, Gus set the music on at top volume. He did not feel like speaking with her at that moment. Nor did he feel like thinking. He knew that, if he applied himself to reflecting about their relationship, the night would end badly. He looked at Lorena in the rear-view mirror. Why did she have to be so pretty? Why did he have to like her so much? He knew that she was selfish, that she did not treat him well, that perhaps she did not make him entirely as happy as he deserved, but she made him happier than he would have ever imagined he could be. He would have to reluctantly accept that.