1 A BODY
Jon Gutiérrez doesn’t like bodies in Madrid’s river Manzanares.
It’s not a question of aesthetics. This particular body is very unpleasant (apparently having spent a long time in the water), its bluish skin covered in violet blotches, its hands almost severed at the wrist. But this is no time to be finicky.
The night is unusually dark, and the streetlights illuminating the world of the living seven meters above him only make the shadows denser. The wind is producing strange rustling noises in the reeds, and the river water is decidedly on the chilly side. After all, this is the Manzanares, it’s eleven o’clock at night, and February is already sliding its gray paw under the door.
None of this is what upsets Jon about bodies in the river, because he’s used to freezing water (he’s from Bilbao), to whispers in the dark (he’s gay), and to lifeless bodies (he’s a police inspector).
What Jon Gutiérrez can’t stand about bodies in the river Manzanares is having to pull them out with his bare hands.
I must be an idiot, thinks Jon. This is rookie work. But obviously, these three Madrid losers can’t even find their own dicks.
It’s not that Jon is fat. But like it or not, half a lifetime of being the biggest guy in the room creates habits. A penchant for helping. Which becomes overwhelming when you see three clowns fresh out of the police academy splashing about in the reeds, trying to extricate a body from the water. And only managing to nearly drown themselves instead.
So Jon struggles into the white plastic suit, pulls on the rubber boots, and wades into the two feet of water with a fuckyou,motherfuckers that leaves the greenhorns’ cheeks as red as if they’d been slapped.
Inspector Gutiérrez sloshes toward the corpse, displacing both water and rookies before reaching the clump of vegetation on which the body has snagged. It is caught in some roots, and is mostly submerged. Only the pallid face and one arm are floating on the surface. Stirred by the current, it’s as if the victim were trying to swim away to escape the inevitable.
Jon crosses himself mentally and plunges his arms beneath the cadaver. It’s soft to the touch, the subcutaneous fat jiggling under the skin like toothpaste in a balloon. He steadies his legs and prepares to yank with all his might like an harrijasotzaile, a Basque rock lifter who on a good day can hoist three hundred kilos.
This’ll show those rookies.
His bulging arms tense, and two things occur simultaneously.
The second of them: the body doesn’t move an inch.
The first: the sandy riverbed sucks in the inspector’s right foot, landing him flat on his ass in the river.
Jon isn’t a guy prone to tears or bellyaching. But neither the noise of the current, the rustle of the wind in the reeds, nor his own curses can drown out the rookies’ laughter. So, with water up to his shoulders and his pride dented, Jon allows himself an all-too-human moment of self-pity and blames someone else for his predicament.
Where the hell are you, Antonia?
2 A CABLE
“You won’t get it out like that, Inspector,” a woman’s voice says next to his ear.
Jon grabs hold of Dr. Aguado’s forearm, and she helps him back to his feet. Normally, any pathologist’s hand gives Jon the heebie-jeebies, but when your ass is stuck on a sandy riverbed, you cling on to whatever is offered.
“I thought dead bodies floated. But this one seems determined to sink.”
Aguado smiles. She must be around forty years old. Long eyelashes, faded makeup, a piercing in her nose, and a sly languor in her eyes. Nowadays with an added happy spark. According to gossip, she’s found a girlfriend.
“The human body is more than sixty percent water. Water doesn’t float, so first of all, the body sinks. At the right temperature, bacteria start to decompose the body in a matter of hours. Right now, it’s four degrees Celsius outside, and the water is around six degrees, so it’ll be more like days. The stomach and intestines fill with gas, and then—pop!—up she comes again.”
Aguado bends her knees, steadying the body with one hand while she pokes around under it with the other.
“Can I help, Doctor?”
“Don’t worry. I just need to find what’s keeping her down.”
Jon glances at the shapeless, swollen mass floating facedown, naked. Short hair of indistinct color. Jon is wondering how the hell the pathologist knew it was a woman.
“How the hell did you know it was a woman?”
“Several reasons, Inspector,” replies Aguado. “The angle of the clavicle, the lack of any occipital protuberance, and, although you can’t see it, right now I’m touching what in all probability is the victim’s left breast.”
The forensic pathologist straightens up and hands him a small powerful flashlight. Jon shines it on her as Aguado takes a pair of blunt-tipped scissors out of the waterproof bag hanging around her neck. Leaning down again, she struggles with something under the body. Suddenly, the corpse comes free and floats to the surface.
“The murderer tied a cable to her thigh,” says Aguado, pointing to an indentation at the back of the leg. “Probably with a weight attached. Help me turn her over.”
The body is weightless now, and flipping it over requires no more effort than flipping a page, the final one. The eyes are gone, eaten by the fish. The face looks like a mask looking for Carnival but finding only misfortune.
Before he came to Madrid, when he was still patrolling the mean streets of Bilbao, Jon considered himself tougher. In the Otxarkoaga neighborhood, it was all broken glass and bad apples contaminating all the rest. Back then when he saw a dead body, Jon didn’t feel a pang of discouragement or wonder, What happened to you, who did this to you?
He just felt he was doing his job.
Here he feels responsible.
That damn Antonia.
* * *
Tugging the body along under the shoulders, Jon pushes his way through the reeds and drags it to the dry part of the small island.
“No cause of death for the moment,” says Aguado, talking to herself. She pauses, as if listening to something. “Elevated levels of adipocere. In the water for at least a week.”
“Adipocere?”
The pathologist points to the bumps and bulges under the cadaver’s bluish skin.
“Adipocere is produced when a dead body is submerged in water. The microorganisms change the subcutaneous fat into a kind of soap. I’ll tell you more tomorrow: I have to get to work now before contact with the air spoils the evidence,” she says, pointing to the riverbank.
Jon knows when he’s being thrown out. He waves, and the three rookies come over carrying a stretcher and big transparent plastic bags. The cadaver is too far gone to put into an ordinary body bag. The inspector leaves the dirty work to them—Go on, you can do it. He wades back through the water to the retaining wall. There are no steps, but the police have installed a rope ladder, and Jon hauls his 110 kilos back up to street level.
The street is deserted, apart from a man leaning against a patrol car. Dark, receding hair, pencil mustache, and doll’s eyes that look more painted on than real. An expensive short camel overcoat.
“It seems to be growing colder,” says Mentor, blowing out a mouthful of smoke.
Jon’s dented pride mends a little. No better cure for one’s own humiliation than seeing someone else make a fool of himself. Mentor is vaping.
“What’s this?” asks Jon, pointing to the gadget.
Mentor pushes the mouthpiece between his thin, almost invisible lips, inhales and then exhales again. The wind blows a mandarin-flavored cloud in Jon’s direction.
“I was smoking three packs a day. Last week I even lit one in the shower. So I thought: Why not give it a try?”
“Does it work?”
“What can I say? I take in twice the amount of nicotine as before, and have three times the urge to smoke. Has Aguado come up with anything yet?”
“Only that the victim is a woman. Murdered. In the water for a week or more. And she wants to be left in peace.”
“That’s pretty communicative for Aguado. Have you noticed she’s a lot happier recently?”
“I hear she’s found a girlfriend,” says Jon.
He starts to remove his plastic suit but waves away the blanket Mentor is offering.
“I hope you didn’t get wet, Inspector. This part of the river isn’t exactly recommended for your health.”
“Meaning?”
Mentor waits for him to recover his coat and shoes, then leads him over to the riverbank.
“In 1970, a pipe from a secret experimental center ruptured near here. Apparently, Franco was determined to possess the atomic bomb, whatever it took, and had a number of scientists running experiments with plutonium. It wasn’t made public until 1994, but more than a hundred liters of radioactive material ended up spilling into the Manzanares through that drain.” Mentor points somewhere in the darkness. “A few hundred cancer cases here and there, nothing serious. But it’s not a place where I’d choose to go swimming.”
Jon doesn’t react. Of course, he feels his skin itching all over and his reddish beard starting to fall out. But there’s no way he’s going to open his mouth. If he did, his teeth might drop out.
Mentor looks at his watch, a serious expression on his face.
“Where’s Scott?”
“I called her more than three hours ago,” replies Jon after realizing that the radiation poison hasn’t yet affected him.
“Not that it’s essential she comes. We’ve only dismissed the police authorities and mobilized the Red Queen unit in the middle of the night just for her.”
“That’s not fair,” Jon protests. “She could be…”
This vehemence is mostly pure show. Deep down, Jon feels doubt peeping out from behind the curtains.
* * *
It’s been seven months since Antonia and Jon rescued Carla Ortiz. The case made headlines around the world, first when the heiress mysteriously disappeared, and later because of what ensued between her and her father. But there wasn’t a word about Antonia Scott or the Red Queen project. Nor about Jon. Emerging from the sewers with Carla, he had shielded his face from the photographers’ flashes. A blurred photo, like a flower with no scent.
There are no prizes in the Red Queen project, only anonymity. A life without a name, but loads of excitement. And that was prize enough.
Copyright © 2019 by Juan Gómez-Jurado
Translation copyright © 2024 by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia
