The Wind From the East by Almudena Grandes

hour. He came off the road, crashed through the barrier and slammed the Audi into the cliff face. Neither of them was wearing a seat belt.The police had to use a special crane to pry the car away from the rock—it was wedged so tightly into a fissure that they weren’t able to pull it out using the normal hooks and chains. Both of the passengers were killed instantly. Charo’s airbag inflated but a piece of the car’s bodywork, or maybe it was the barrier, sliced through her femoral artery. His airbag didn’t even inflate, the collision must have been too violent.The emergency services had a difficult job getting the bodies out and they’re in a pretty bad state, so I think it’s best if you don’t see her.” Nicanor stopped, lit a cigarette, and placed his left hand round his friend’s neck, as if this were the greatest show of tenderness he could allow himself. “I’m so sorry, Damián,” he murmured, “I’m sorry about everything, that Charo’s dead, that she died like this . . .”
     
    “Who was he?”
     
    “It doesn’t matter, Damián, don’t think about that now.”
     
    “But it does matter.” He looked at his friend in disbelief. “It matters to me.Who was he?”
     
    Nicanor flicked through his notebook again, clenching his jaws so tightly it looked almost painful.
     
    “José Ignacio Ruiz Perelló,” he said at last, after clearing his throat a couple of times.“Age forty-one, born in Valencia, living in Madrid, in the Parque del Conde de Orgaz. He was married to a woman from a very good family, with lots of money, and he was a civil engineer, with a post high up in the Ministry of Public Works and Town Planning.The people in the bar over there knew him. His wife’s got a swanky house a couple of kilometers away, one of those old holiday homes with a huge garden. Charo and he must have been on their way there when they had the accident. The wife had no idea, of course, she was stunned—Perelló had told her he was going to Lisbon for the opening of a joint Spanish-Portuguese dam on the river Tagus, or something like that. She got here before you did—she’s the woman in the mink coat over there, the one with the dyed blond hair.”
     
    There was a long deep silence, thick, loaded with bitter memories, which was interrupted only when Damián slammed his clenched fist on the roof of the car.
     
    “Whore!” he muttered, his fist raised. “Whore, whore!” he repeated, crashing his fist down again and again and shouting more loudly with every blow, before at last breaking down in tears. “Whore, whore, the fucking whore!”
     
    Juan flinched with every word. His brother’s raging pierced his mind like so many long sharp needles, until he felt he couldn’t bear another moment.
     
    “I’m going to see her,” he whispered to Nicanor, who nodded, smoking silently and not taking his eyes off Damián, ready to catch him when he fell.
     
    Juan walked away as quickly as he could. As he reached the place where the bodies were lying, a traffic policeman stepped in front of him.
     
    “Can I help you, sir?” Inside the uniform was a very young man, no more than twenty-three or twenty-four, with the look of a recently qualified cadet, still trying to follow the rules to the letter, but without much experience of imposing them on others.
     
    “I’d like to see the woman.”
     
    “Are you a relative?”
     
    “Yes, I’m her brother-in-law. My brother can’t see her. He’s completely devastated. He’s the one over there, the one pounding the car.”
     
    The policeman raised his eyebrows with a look that seemed almost comical.
     
    “I know she’s been identified, but I’d like to see her anyway.”
     
    “Right. But I have to warn you, the body is in a very bad state.”
     
    “I can imagine.”
     
    “Yes, but the thing is we couldn’t get her out . . . with her legs.”
     
    “I don’t care. I’m a doctor, I work in a hospital. I can assure you I’ve seen worse