The Angst-Ridden Executive by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán Page A

in this particular detail. I had no choice but to explain, and unfortunately I had to bring you into it. In other words, the police now know that you’re making inquiries on behalf of Jauma’s widow.’
    ‘They know more than they ought to know.’
    ‘I had no choice. And now I must leave you, because I have people to see.’
    ‘Don’t hang up. Before you go, I need to arrange to meet you. It’s important that I get to talk with Jauma’s circle of friends.’
    ‘Wait a moment.’
    The emphatic voice turned silky smooth as he addressed an aside to his secretary, to ask how his diary looked for the following day.
    ‘Do you like sport?’
    ‘Only sports that involve the imagination. Eating and sex.’
    ‘There, I’m afraid, I cannot oblige. However I do have a free hour between one and two o’clock tomorrow. I was thinking of calling in at the Cambridge club for a game of squash, a sauna, and a massage. I can take guests, and I would be delighted if you could make it. We can talk there. I’m afraid I have to go now. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
    Carvalho had his doubts about the advisedness of this sporting rendezvous, but Fontanillas gave him no chance to reply. So he put the phone down and took a few deep breaths in a parody of something he had once been capable of. He flexed his knees and squatted on his haunches, laughing to himself for no apparent reason. This was the moment that Biscuter chose to come through the door, holding it open with one knee as he struggled through with his hands full of shopping.
    ‘You all right, boss?’
    ‘Sure. Squatting’s good for you.’
    ‘What’s it good for—the spine?’
    ‘Good for something. . . I can’t remember what, though.’
    ‘I’ve been to the Boqueria to buy a couple of lamb’s feet. I’m going to do them with peas and artichokes, because I know that’s the way you like them. The place needs a good clean-up too. It’s starting to smell.’
    He lifted himself off the floor and became aware of shooting pains in his legs.
    ‘We should go into training, Biscuter.’
    ‘Not me, boss. I do enough already. And when I don’t have anything else to do, I invent something. That’s what they taught me in the orphanage. Idleness is the mother of evil.’
    ‘Shut up, Biscuter. When you start moralizing you get on my nerves.’
    ‘Do you want a coffee, boss?’
    ‘No. A glass of orujo from the fridge. I’ve got to go out. I want you to phone all these people for me. Make me an appointment to see each of them. I want you to pack them in so that I can see them all in one day. Be careful, though—don’t book me in with two at the same time.’
    He added Gausachs’s name to the list that Nuñez had given him.
    ‘And, Biscuter, try to sound a bit respectable on the phone. I don’t want you screeching at them. You have to sound like a proper secretary.’
    As Biscuter settled himself down with the telephone, Carvalho tried to find his bearings in the Jauma case. He was up against a blank wall with not an opening in sight. It wasn’t even obvious which side of the wall he should start climbing. He’d taken a few steps, in a direction that might be right or wrong, based on the near-certainty that the motive had been falsified. All at once the disgust with which Carvalho customarily took on smaller cases—almost all a product of the moral pettiness of small-minded people—seemed preferable to the uneasiness he felt at finding himself involved in a case where he was probably out of his depth. What chance have I really got? I’ll stir up a few cans of worms, and maybe I’ll find the clue there. But what if I don’t? Señora Jauma, those knickers can be as new as you like, but your husband was killed in a fight. Perhaps instead of asking for the ones that the girl was wearing, he had stolen a pair of new ones from her wardrobe. Or maybe he’d come up showing her a pair of new knickers:
    ‘If you give me the knickers you’re wearing, señorita, I’ll give