Barcelona 03 - The Sound of One Hand Killing by Teresa Solana, Peter Bush Read Free Book Online

business and concentrate on the Teresa Solana investigation.”
    â€œOur next move being…”
    â€œTo ring Mariona. She will know which door we should be knocking on.”
    Mariona Castany was undoubtedly our shortest route to finding a centre to fit our client’s needs, even though I felt it unlikely my brother’s friend would be a fan of alternative therapies and esoteric medication. Mariona was more one for martinis, antidepressants and plastic surgeons – in that order, I think – although she didn’t have much use for the last one. Unlike many of her friends, who looked like failedexperiments performed by Dr Frankenstein’s most inept apprentice, Mariona had yet to have recourse to Botox or silicone lips, even if everyone knew that her adolescent breasts were the fruit of the endeavours of the city’s most prestigious plastic surgeon.
    Borja phoned Mariona from the San Marcos to tell her we needed her help and suggest meeting up.
    â€œAh, this morning is rather difficult,” she replied. “I’m just leaving the house. And this afternoon I have to visit a friend.”
    â€œDon’t you worry,” said Borja. “Whenever it suits you. You choose a day.”
    â€œMy friend lives on Santaló. We could meet there today in the Gimlet for drinks before dinner.”
    â€œEight o’clock, usual table?”
    â€œPerfect. See you soon, dear.”
    â€œGoodbye, my lovely.”
    Mariona is one of the richest, most illustrious women in Barcelona. She is sixty-seven, the age our mother would be if she were still with us, though you would never have guessed. When Borja discovered she’d attended a school in Santander as a child, he immediately used the information to tell her she and his imaginary mother, a Sáez de Astorga, had studied together in the same boarding school and had even been friends. Mariona swallowed that and took Borja under her wing, or rather, the character he had invented for himself: the heir with aristocratic names who’d lost his inheritance because of foul play by the Revenue. I sometimes think Mariona must know the truth by now because she is nobody’s fool, but I have the impression she finds his little game amusing and laps up all his extravagant tales. Borja, on the other hand, behaves towards her with the exquisite manners of a nephew out of a Victorian novel,and Mariona, a widow with two daughters she can’t stand and no nephew fawning on her, lets my brother benefit from all her contacts.
    Borja announced he had business to see to (that is, Merche) and had to be off. I went home and, on the way, stopped at the supermarket to buy powder for the washing machine, which we’d run out of. When I reached our flat, my mother-in-law was in the kitchen, at the ready in her apron, but, as she’d not started cooking lunch, I told her not to bother because Montse and I would have lunch out. My wife and I were worried, because we’d received a letter from Arnau’s school saying he was having “problems”.
    Gràcia is full of small restaurants that offer decent, cheap set lunches. Even so, the crisis meant that lots of people had renewed the tradition of going home for lunch or taking sandwiches to work, and most places were empty. The spectacle of empty tables and idle waiters was depressing, and in the end we chose a restaurant on Verdi that had a couple of customers and a spark of life. Even so, the waiters were on the slow side and we had to rush off without eating our puddings so as not to be late for our meeting.
    We were breathless and panting when we reached the school at one minute to three. We hardly had time to gather ourselves together, because Arnau’s teacher arrived punctually on the hour, gave each of us a couple of kisses and asked us to accompany her to the staffroom.
    â€œI’m very worried about Arnau,” she declared in the tone of voice that a doctor who has