Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [212]
Paúl Santos leant out of the window. The year before, when he joined the station at around the same time, in the distance, beyond the swinging necks of the cranes, moored next to the yacht club, he could discern the solid presence of the Azor, Franco’s recreational boat. The Head of State would sometimes arrive on it at the end of a fishing trip in the Bay of Biscay. But more often than not the boat arrived first, while the dictator travelled from Madrid by road. In his studies of physiognomy, Santos found a total, excessive, even grotesque correspondence between the Caudillo and his boat. The yacht was snub-nosed, simple in profile and heavy to sail. Any bou heading out for the Great Sole was more elegant. The most complete picture he had of the Azor was on the day it appeared in the bay towing a cetacean that had been shot dead. In the shimmering sea, the hard colours of dusk, Santos observed a violent tension in language. The only verb he could use to describe that act was ‘gun down’. More than an aquatic machine, the Azor was a steamroller of water. As a boat, starting with the name, which meant goshawk, it was a paradox. An absurd reality. Santos knew this thought, even if it were never expressed, placed him on dangerous ground. The truth is the Azor was an imposing, intimidatory presence. That ugly, stunted boat dominated the port. Determined time. Altered measurements. And space.
Santos’ mind had undergone a similar process to when he learnt how to type without looking at the keys. One thought led to another and these two to a third, which to start with caused him anguish (a voice that said, ‘You’ll think the worst’), as when he got trapped around the waist on a potholing expedition down a little explored passageway in King Cintolo’s Cave, Mondoñedo. Having surmounted the difficulty, he found himself in a larger space. Which is what enabled him now to ignore the very idea of the Azor and observe the movement of the cranes loading logs on the Western Quay. Before entering the line of descent, they swung in the air. And he thought it was the stripped, shaken memory that caused the freshness.
No. The boat hadn’t arrived yet this year. Something was up, no one quite knew what. The city had witnessed that strange event, an incident on the evening of 18 July, in the presence of all the authorities and National Movement’s guests at a banquet to celebrate the mutiny that replaced the Republic with a dictatorship. Paúl Santos didn’t need to work it out. The war had started twenty-seven years earlier. He’d been born almost nine months after 18 July. The war of wars. Omnipresent war. A war that stuck like another component in the air, oblivious of time. He didn’t want to think about it. There it was, happy as Larry, thinking everyone’s thoughts.
He had to think about specific things. His job as a scientific policeman. An outstanding detective in Crime. With two important cases on his hands. Different in size, but both affecting the city’s very foundations. On the one hand, Manlle. Manlle’s organisation. He’d been lucky, made lots of progress, had almost all the evidence he needed to expose this criminal empire. And now a kind of gift. He had to find an upper-class lady, a beauty of exemplary conduct, who’d just abandoned her husband, a judge with a promising career in front of him, who was well connected, influential, and about whom it was repeatedly rumoured he’d soon move on to higher things. Come on, think, Paúl Santos. Why did Ricardo the judge call at your office? He could have summoned me to the courthouse and I’d have gone running. He could have done it differently. But no. He came here and denounced his wife for abandoning the conjugal home and, he had reason to believe, committing the crime of adultery.
It must have been the station chief who told him to do this. They were testing him, right? Come on, Santos, think. Be more specific.
Paúl Santos walked over to a shelf where he had his reference books. Carefully read the articles in the Penal