Barcelona Shadows by Marc Pastor Read Free Book Online Page B

everything they’re looking for and more, because it’s perfect for them to shut the case so quickly: knives of all sizes, a stinking, emaciated dog hanging in a kitchen cabinet and a couple of earthenware bowls filled with blood, half thick, half coagulated, under the bed, where there are also all kinds of bottles, some filled with bugs, another with worms, one further on with rats’ legs and who knows what else. Corvo finds a bodkinand he knows he can already go before the judge, that these three will sleep in prison and he’ll get another notch on his belt. Case closed, we can head to the whorehouse.
    “What evil creatures!” shouts Blackmouth, when he goes through the whole house, among lit candles and drawings and scribbles on the floor and walls. “See, I told you they were bad people!”
    One of the detained, who hadn’t received as many blows as his buddies, earns one to the back of his neck from Corvo when he looks at the lad, recognizes him, insults him and curses him.
    “Is something wrong?” asks a neighbour lady from the doorway.
    “Police, ma’am, you can go to sleep,” replies Malsano.
    The woman disappears behind the door across the hall and a few seconds later returns with a little cardigan on, it’s getting chilly. Two minutes have yet to pass and there are some thirty people on the landing, and it’s not until after ten that the night-watchman shows up.
    “Balondro!” Corvo gestures to him with one arm. “Go to Conde del Asalto and tell him to send a police van.”
    “You’re taking them to the station?”
    “No, I want to show off my wheels. You should already be on your way back!”
    The entire street is awake. Sometimes Corvo wonders if the people of Barcelona really sleep or just wait around for tragedy to strike. But when he shows up with two more policemen, who take the Guineans, he has his answer: people live for bad news. When he hears on the rebound someone linking these arrests with the disappeared children, his cheeks grow red and warm despite the freezing temperatures on the street. Without a good visual inspection of the flat of One Eye’s murderers and without confirming whether the blood in the bowls is human or animal,Corvo saw no indication that makes them think that any child was around… because they aren’t around.
    The night drags on, and all morning Corvo and Malsano are busy with red tape. Reports, bureaucracy and stamps. Half asleep, they wander through the station, where everyone seems busy. They go down to the lock-up to talk to the detainees, but they can’t get a single word out of them. At midday, Barcelona’s head police chief, José Millán Astray, appears in the office of the criminal-investigation brigade and finds them struggling to keep their eyes open. Their breath smells of coffee, but Millán Astray’s shaving lotion is so strong he doesn’t notice. He is a dry, lanky man, with a tough character and a soldier’s bearing. It’s unusual to see him speaking to officers, or even detectives, but he likes to make an appearance when a murder has been resolved, and in case there is a medal involved his chest is ready and waiting. No one can stand him, but he’s the boss, as Malsano says in his Catalan-inflected Spanish, and you have to put up with the boss, listen to him and forget him.
    “I would congratulate you, detectives,” begins Millán Astray, looking out on the horizon of a wall covered in papers, “but in the end you were doing your job, and I’m not one of those who congratulates people for doing what they’re supposed to.”
    Why the hell did he come, then? wonders Moisès Corvo.
    The chief continues: “The prompt resolution of this case is without a doubt a fortunate…”
    “I appreciate that you prepared a speech, boss,” Corvo sat down after realizing that standing at attention isn’t the best position for someone who’s been awake that many hours, “but what I want to hear is that we get the rest of the week