Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [216]
Together they made for a kind of catlike, alternative creature. A fearful creature, thought Santos.
From the way he talked, Mancorvo sounded like the more intelligent. But Santos knew he had to treat such impressions with care. Like his character, Mancorvo’s intelligence was complementary. Dependent. Lacking in initiative. At the more difficult bits, he’d always seek the inspector’s approval. He then came across as an affected lackey next to a coarse foreman who would answer his questions with a slight grunt. From time to time, he’d come out with a refrain of nostalgic resentment:
‘So it was her. It had to be her!’
‘We suspected her briefly,’ said Mancorvo in his role as spokesman. ‘But she was the first one we rejected. We looked into it, but reached the conclusion the hypothesis was absurd. The same thing happened with other women in her position. We followed clues to places you wouldn’t imagine, where shit is gold. The higher you go, the more exciting is the darkness. There are classes in crime as well, why deny it? You’re better off higher up instead of dealing with wild cattle. But there was nothing about Judith. Nothing. After a while, we thought she didn’t really exist. She’d been invented by the enemy. That idea of an infiltrator, a perfect mole. A myth created in exile, both to feed the rebels and to waste our time and make us nervous.’
Mancorvo wasn’t improvising. He kept consulting notes, some of which had been typed on light blue quartos.
‘In 1936, she’s in France with a grant to study Fine Art. Unlike the other students, who decide to stay abroad and take part in Republican propaganda, she returns at the start of 1937. Disembarks here, in Coruña. Now we’ve reason to believe it was then she was trained and made a network of contacts. Judith was born back then. She was meant to last. Very cleverly thought out. Smart as a red squirrel. In 1939, after victory in April, she joins a group of Carlist women travelling with a Galician aristocrat to the welfare service in Barcelona.’
‘When did you start to suspect that Chelo Vidal, the woman who joined a Carlist trip to Barcelona, was Republican Judith?’
Ren cleared his throat. With his arms crossed, he leant on the table and hid Mancorvo from view. Stared at Santos. Seemingly surprised he’d used that professional tone with him here, in the police station.
‘Shortly afterwards,’ he replied. ‘In 1940, when I joined certain special services it’s not necessary to mention now. The war in Spain was over, but the Second World War had started. Officially we were no longer at war, but that was just an appearance. I don’t suppose I need to explain myself, right?’
He paused. Inhaled. Santos didn’t stop looking at him either. Seemed to be calculating the amount of air Ren consumed and pumped around his body.
‘I knew Ricardo Samos,’ continued Ren. ‘Till then, from the moment she came back from her travels, they were formally engaged, but she kept putting off the marriage. She was very young and what have you. Samos was included in a group that would go on a training course to Italy and Germany, stopping in Paris, which was occupied. These were good times for the Axis. She was the one who asked him then to get married. She wanted to go on this trip. It would be their honeymoon. I didn’t say anything to Samos, but I noted down that detail. In the end, women were ordered not to join the expedition.’
‘And you noted that down?’
‘In my head. You note these things down in your head.’
‘I see.’
‘The judge is taking it badly,’ said the station chief. ‘He’s completely beside himself.’
‘The judge is a fool!’ exclaimed Ren. There was unusual bitterness in the way he talked about Samos. Paúl Santos decided his hidden gland of resentment was working very well and may have made him more intelligent.
‘He was always a bit of a fool,’ continued Ren. ‘This is between us, right? I