The Angst-Ridden Executive by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán Read Free Book Online Page A

with rhythmic rolling waves which the arrival of spring would convert into mobile tracks for surfboarders. The beauty of the scenery was also an obstacle to an imaginative transfer to the Mediterranean. Beautiful sands, with not a scrap of litter in sight; beautiful gardens, watered daily; beautiful Anglo-Saxons, white as the sand on the seashore, and always casually dressed, as if life for them was always casual.
    The outcome of the phone call to San Francisco was that Carvalho opened the fridge in his office and downed a glass of chilled orujo .
    ‘Rhomberg doesn’t live here any more.’
    ‘Since last night?’
    ‘Not for several months.’
    ‘I rang last night and someone told me that he’d gone out, but that he’d be back to sleep.’
    ‘Error. He left for an unknown destination.’
    ‘Are we talking about the same person? Dieter Rhomberg. He works for Petnay as an inspector.’
    ‘ Used to work. He stopped working for Petnay as of two months ago and left for an unknown destination.’
    ‘Didn’t he leave a forwarding address?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Who are you? Who am I talking with?’
    ‘That is none of your business, sir.’
    And she hung up on him. The woman’s voice was different to the one that had spoken to him the night before. Dieter Rhomberg had disappeared in the space of twenty-four hours, which had now turned into two months. Another glass of orujo made it clear that he should not venture a third. Concha Hijar was quite surprised to hear of Dieter Rhomberg’s sudden disappearance.
    ‘The two months business is impossible. He rang from San Francisco, not even two weeks ago, inquiring after me and the children.’
    Jauma’s widow sounded genuinely surprised.
    ‘Do you have an address for him in Germany?’
    ‘When he’s not been on his round-the-world inspection trips he’s lived in San Francisco. Especially since his wife died. When she was alive, they used to have an apartment in Bonn. I don’t know for sure whether he kept it on, but I believe he did. He had a son who went to live with his sister, and he would go to visit them every once in a while. The sister lives in Berlin.’
    One hour later Carvalho knew that Rhomberg’s Bonn apartment had been empty for several weeks and that, according to his sister, he had left on a drying-out trip. Dieter had left his job profoundly depressed with his work, and had sent his sister a postcard saying that he was off on a trip round Africa ‘in search of the source, not of the Nile, but more of myself’. At the risk of appearing like a TV detective, Carvalho asked Rhomberg’s sister if she was sure that the card was from Dieter. The card had been typed, but the style and the signature were Dieter’s, she said. At this rate the facts were mounting up, but with no obvious trail in sight. The first phone call had said that he’d popped out and would be back shortly. The second call had said that the German had been touring the world for the past two months. And according to his own sister, the Petnay inspector had sent her a card two or three weeks ago.
    ‘When was that, exactly?’
    ‘I don’t have it with me. I gave it to the boy. He keeps all the cards his father sends. I can’t ask him for it at the moment, because he’s at school.’
    It made little difference whether it was two weeks or three. Either the second San Francisco voice was lying, or the whole scenario had a logic which just didn’t fit. A senior Petnay executive seems to quit two months previously, remains undecided for a month and a half, writes to his sister, and only finally decides to leave—abruptly—the day after Carvalho’s phone call. Carvalho was suspicious as much by nature as by his profession. Rhomberg was obviously very worried about something, he thought, as the morning clouds lifted from his stomach and made way for a sizable hunger. He couldn’t decide whether to ask Biscuter to improvise a meal, or whether to walk up the Ramblas in search of a suitable