Offering to the Storm. Dolores Redondo

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      ‘What do you make of that? And today he stayed longer than usual. Normally he can’t get away quick enough,’ he added, turning out the kitchen light, and leaving Amaia to make her way to the sitting room in semi-darkness. ‘This house gives him the creeps. And I don’t blame him, it’s like visiting a cemetery.’

      A sheet, two thick blankets and a pillow lay partially draped over the brown velvet sofa. Amaia assumed that Yáñez not only slept, but lived in this one room. Amid the gloom, she could see what looked like crumbs on the blankets and an orangish stain, possibly egg yolk. Amaia studied Yáñez as he sat down and leaned back against the pillow. A month had gone by since she’d interviewed him at the police station. He was awaiting trial under house arrest because of his age. He had lost weight, and his hard, suspicious expression had sharpened, giving him the air of an eccentric hermit. His hair was well kept, and he was clean-shaven, but Amaia wondered how long he’d been wearing the pyjama top showing beneath his sweater. The house was freezing, and clearly hadn’t been heated for days. Opposite the sofa, in front of the empty hearth, a flat-screen TV cast a cold, blue light over the room.

      ‘May I open the shutters?’ asked Amaia.

      ‘If you insist, but leave them as they were before you go.’

      She nodded, pushing open the wooden panels to allow the gloomy Baztán light to seep through. When she turned around, Yáñez was staring at the television.

      ‘Señor Yáñez.’

      The man continued gazing at the screen as if she wasn’t there.

      ‘Señor Yáñez …’

      He glanced at her, irritated.

      ‘I’d like to …’ she began, motioning towards the corridor. ‘I’d like to have a look round.’

      ‘Go ahead,’ he said, with a wave of his hand. ‘Look all you like, just don’t touch anything. After the police were here, the place was a mess. It took me ages to put everything back the way it was.’

      ‘Of course.’

      ‘I trust you’ll be as considerate as the officer who called yesterday.’

      ‘A police officer came here yesterday?’ she said, surprised.

      ‘Yes, a nice lad. He even made me a cup of coffee.’

      Besides the kitchen and sitting room, Yáñez’s bungalow boasted three bedrooms and a largish bathroom. Amaia opened the cupboards, checking the shelves, which were crowded with shaving things, toilet rolls and a few bottles of medicine. The double bed in the main bedroom looked as if it hadn’t been slept in recently. Draped over it was a floral bedspread that matched the curtains, bleached by years of sunlight. Judging by the vases of garish plastic flowers and the crocheted doilies adorning the chest of drawers and bedside tables, the room had been lovingly decorated in the seventies by Señora Yáñez, and preserved intact by her husband. It was like looking at a display in an ethnographic museum.

      The second bedroom was empty, save for an old sewing machine standing next to a wicker basket beneath the window. She remembered it from the inventory in the report. Even so, she removed the cover to examine the spools of cotton, recognising a less faded version of the curtain colour in the main bedroom. The third bedroom had been referred to in the inventory as ‘the boy’s room’, and it was exactly that: the bedroom of a ten- or eleven-year-old boy. The single bed with its pristine white bedspread; the shelves lined with children’s books, a series she recalled having read herself; toys, mostly model ships and aeroplanes, as well as a collection of toy cars, all carefully aligned, and without a speck of dust on them. On the back of the door was a poster of a classic vintage Ferrari, and on the desk some old school textbooks, and a bundle of football cards tied with a rubber band. As she picked them up, she saw that the degraded rubber had stuck to the faded cards. She put them back, mentally comparing the cold bedroom to Berasategui’s flat in Pamplona.

      There were two other rooms in the house, plus a small utility area and a well-stocked woodshed where Yáñez kept his gardening tools and some boxes of potatoes and onions. Over in a corner, Amaia noticed an unlit boiler.

      She picked up one of the dining chairs, and placed it between Yáñez and the television.

      ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions.’

      He used the remote beside him to switch off the TV. Then he stared at her in silence, waiting with that same look of anger and resentment he’d directed at Amaia the first time they met.

      ‘Tell me about your son.’

      The man shrugged.

      ‘What sort of relationship did you have?’

      ‘He’s a good son,’ Yáñez replied, too quickly. ‘He did everything you’d expect a good son to do.’

      ‘Such as?’

      This time Yáñez had to give it some thought.

      ‘Well, he gave me money … sometimes he did the shopping, bought me food – that sort of thing.’

      ‘That’s not what I’ve been hearing. People in the village say that after your wife died, you packed your son off to school abroad, and that he didn’t show his face around here for years.’

      ‘He was studying. He was a good student, he did two degrees, and a masters, he’s one of the top psychiatrists at his clinic …’

      ‘When did he start visiting you more frequently?’

      ‘I don’t know, about a year ago.’

      ‘Did he ever bring anything other than food? Something he kept here, or that he asked you to keep for him somewhere else?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I’ve looked over the house,’ she said, glancing about. ‘It’s spotless.’

      ‘I have to keep it clean.’

      I understand. You keep it clean for your son.’

      ‘No, for my wife. Everything is exactly the way it was when she left …’ Yáñez’s face twisted into a grimace of pain and grief. He remained that way for a few seconds, not making a sound. Amaia realised he was crying when she saw the tears roll down his cheeks.

      ‘That’s the least I could do; everything else I did was wrong.’

      Yáñez’s eyes danced from one object to another, as if he were searching for an answer hidden among the faded ornaments standing on doilies and side tables, until he met Amaia’s gaze. He grasped the edge of the blanket, lifting it in front of his face for a few seconds, then flinging it aside, as though disgusted with himself for having cried in front of her. Amaia felt certain the conversation would end there, but then Yáñez reached behind the pillow he was leaning against and pulled out a framed photograph. He gazed at the image as if spellbound, then passed it to her. Yáñez’s gesture took Amaia back to the previous year, when, in a different sitting room, a grieving father had handed her the portrait of his murdered daughter, which he also kept hidden under a cushion. СКАЧАТЬ