“You can count on me, sir.”
“Come on then, we come about in five minutes.”
Opening the telescope and attempting to compensate for the list of the deck, Pépé Lobo studies the enemy corsair. She has tacked slightly to windward. Her lateen sails mean that she can luff a little more, to come closer to the course that the cutter and the schooner will take when they come about. Through the spyglass, Lobo can clearly make out the two guns, one on each side, and the long bow chaser peeping through a gunport just to port of the horn bowsprit. A 6-pounder, maybe an 8-pounder. Nothing that should pose a serious threat, but you never know. To quote a saying he himself coined, at sea no precaution is needless: one reef more means one hitch less.
“Ready to come about!”
While the crew ready the braces and sheets, Lobo heads for the stern, passing the gunners bending over their cannons under the supervision of the lieutenant.
“Don’t show me up, lads,” he says. “We’re in full view of Cádiz!”
A chorus of laughter and cheers goes up. The men are keyed up because of the captured ship and the prospect of going ashore. Besides, they have enough training and experience to know that the enemy corsair is no match for an adversary of their size. Next to the launch stowed beneath the trysail boom, those crewmen who are not busy with the maneuver or manning the cannons are laying out weapons for fighting at close quarters, if it should come to that: rifles, pistols and brass pedreros that slot into the sockets on the gunwales, ready to be charged with small bags of grapeshot. Lobo surveys his crew, satisfied with himself. In the six months they have been plying the Straits together, the harbor scum he recruited in the sleaziest bars of Santa María, La Merced and El Boquete have proved themselves to be an able crew, both when a capture has called for skillful maneuvering, and in extremis—two boardings and four serious skirmishes to date—when it has required close combat and casualties. Aboard the Culebra, true to the contracts they signed, every man jack is prepared to do what is necessary—they always have one eye on the possible spoils, but not one of them balks at difficulty or danger. For as Pépé Lobo well knows, there are no heroes aboard the Culebra—nor cowards—only men doing their jobs: professionals resigned to the hard life aboard ship, scraping by on the meager salary of a corsair.
“Signal the schooner! Prepare to come about!”
A red pennant is quickly raised and lowered to the tip of the lower foretopsail yard on the starboard bow. In the stern, the Scotsman and the other helmsman hold the tiller firm on the appointed course. The captain is standing next to them on the lee, gripping the hatchway hood, looking along the gunwale at the line of cannons, muzzles peeping through the gunports. Brasero the bo’sun is standing at the foot of the mast among the crewmen, facing the stern, waiting for the order. Ricardo Maraña is standing next to the first port cannon, right hand clutching the lanyard that activates the gunlock, left hand raised to indicate he is ready. The other three gunners on the port bow do likewise.
“Bring the schooner about!”
A blue signal flag is hoisted to the yardarm and as it is, the Cristina Ricotti hauls the wind, its sails ashiver. Lobo takes one last glance at the enemy místico. It is less than three cable lengths away, almost within range, given that the broadside will be fired from the leeside, which is listing heavily.
“Ready about!” Lobo calls to the helmsmen.
They heave the tiller to port and the Culebra’s bowsprit veers from the cove at Rota until it is pointed toward the enemy fort at Santa Catalina. Braces and sheets quickly calm the slight fluttering of the canvas, now close-hauled. The místico is no longer directly off the port bow but more abeam, within the arc of fire of the guns.
“Hoist the colors!”
The merchant ensign is raised—two red and three yellow stripes with the central escutcheon affirming its condition as a corsair for the king of Spain—and flutters in the breeze. As soon as the flag reaches the peak of the mainsail, Lobo turns to his first officer.
“Over to you, pilot!” he yells.
Unhurried, peering through the cannon’s sights, calculating the angle of fire and the roll as he whispers orders to the gunners to adjust the piece using the chocks and handspikes, Maraña waits for a moment, holding the lanyard, then finally jerks it. With a boom and a cloud of cordite smoke, the cannon recoils, checked by the breeching ropes. Five seconds later the other three guns resound and the smoke is still clearing on the port quarter when Pépé Lobo gives the order to back the wind.
“Hard alee! Pay out the sheets!”
“God preserve us!” says the Scotsman, making the sign of the cross, and downs the helm.
The bowsprit sail flutters as the bow turns through the wind. Beneath the mast, Brasero’s men brace the topsail hard to haul to the wind on the new course.
“Trim sheets! Rudder amidships!”
Tacking to port now, the Culebra cleaves the water sailing parallel to the schooner, which has forged ahead a little, trysails and jib taut, making good speed. Ricardo Maraña is already back in the stern, hands in the pockets of his tight black jacket, sporting his usual blasé expression, as though he is just back from a leisurely stroll along the beach. Pépé Lobo opens the telescope and points it at the enemy místico, wind on her beam as she comes about. There is a tear in her foresail which the fresh nor’easter extends, ripping the canvas from top to bottom.
“Fuck them,” says Maraña apathetically.
THE GAME CONCLUDED fifteen minutes ago, but the pieces on the chessboard are still in place, indicating the final position: a white king pinned by a black rook and knight, and a lone white pawn at the far end of the battlefield, just one square away from being crowned a queen.
“Maybe sometime in the future, science will make it possible to determine such things,” says Hipólito Barrull, “but for the moment, it is difficult, almost impossible.”
Alongside the captured pieces lie a dirty ashtray, an empty coffee pot and two small cups with dregs at the bottom. It is late; aside from the two players, the Café del Correo is deserted. The silence is remarkable. Most of the lights on the terrace have been extinguished and for some time now the waiters have been stacking the chairs on top of the tables, emptying the brass spittoons, sweeping and mopping the floor. Only the corner where Barrull and the comisario are sitting has been left untouched, lit by a single lantern whose flame has all but guttered out. From time to time the manager, in shirtsleeves, pops his head out to see whether they are still here, but does not disturb them and discreetly retires. If the man breaking the municipal ordinance regarding café closing times is the Commissioner for Districts, Vagrants and Transients—who is famously hot-tempered besides—there is nothing to be said. After all, he makes the rules.
“Three traps, Professor, with a different bait each time … and so far, nothing.”
Barrull wipes his spectacles using a kerchief that is stained with snuff.
“But nor has he killed again, from what you’ve told me. Perhaps it was the shock of almost being caught … Perhaps he won’t kill again.”
“I doubt that. Someone who has gone so far is not likely to stop because of a minor shock. I am convinced he is simply waiting for the right moment.”
Barrull replaces his glasses. His chin, freshly shaved this morning, is already beginning to show signs of a gray beard.
“I am still flabbergasted about the little matter of the French artilleryman. Getting him to cooperate … It is truly astonishing. And I am grateful to you for telling me about it. It shows you trust me.”
“I need you, Professor, just as I need the French artilleryman.” Tizón picks up one of the black knights and twirls it between his fingers. “Each of you makes good something that I lack; helps me go further than I could alone. You with your knowledge and your intelligence, he with his bombs.”
“It’s incredible. If news of this were to get out …”
The policeman laughs quietly, confidently—scornful of what others migh
t know. “It will not get out.”
“And the French officer is still cooperating?”
“For the moment.”
“How the devil did you manage to persuade him?”
The policeman looks at him with jaded cynicism. “Thanks to my natural charisma.”
He sets the ebony chess piece back on the table with the others. Barrull is staring at Tizón curiously.
“What he told you about Laplace and probability theory is absolutely correct,” he says. “Another mathematician, a man named Condorcet, also studied this problem.”
“I’ve not heard of him.”
“It doesn’t matter. He published a book—one I’m afraid I cannot lend you, because I do not own a copy—entitled Thoughts on the method of determining the probability of future events … in French, obviously. In it, he poses questions such as, if an event has occurred a specific number of times in the past, and at other times has not occurred, what is the probability that it will occur again?”
The comisario takes a cigar from his leather case and leans across the table.
“ ‘The effects of Nature approach a constant when such effects are studied in large numbers …’ ” he says, or rather recites. “Would that be what you are getting at, Professor?”
“Well, well …” Barrull’s yellowish smile betrays admiration. “You truly are a rough diamond, Comisario.”
Tizón leans back in his chair and smiles too. “With work, even a fool can learn. Even a fool like me … Do you think I might be able to find this book in Cádiz?”
“You could look, but I suspect it would be difficult. I read it some years ago in Madrid. However, to talk about probabilities is one thing; certainties are a different matter. The gap between them is wide. And it can be dangerous to bridge that gap with imagination rather than reason.”
Barrull waves away the cigar case Tizón proffers, instead taking his snuffbox from his jacket pocket.
“Although I understand your enthusiasm,” he continues, “I am not entirely convinced that all this theorizing … I don’t know … It can be counterproductive. An excess of erudition can stifle ideas.”
He takes a pinch of snuff, brings it to his nostril, snorts deeply. He sneezes, blows his nose, then looks back at Tizón.
“It was a pity he escaped from you that time … Do you think he suspected it was a trap?”
The policeman shakes his head vigorously.
“I don’t think so. It could easily have been an accident. If a murderer kills in the street, it would hardly be surprising if, sooner or later, he is interrupted in his crime … It is simply a matter of time.”
“But since then, several bombs have fallen in other parts of the city. There have been victims.”
“That is none of my business. They are beyond my jurisdiction, so to speak.”
The professor looks at him again thoughtfully. Analytically, perhaps.
“Be that as it may, you are not completely innocent in this. Not anymore.”
“I trust you are not referring to the crimes.”
“Of course not. I am talking about this sense that you share with the murderer, this awareness. Your curious intimacy.”
“A criminal affinity?”
“Good Lord, Comisario. What a horrid thought.”
“But that is what you are thinking.”
Barrull considers this for a moment then shakes his head. No, he says—at least not in the sense Tizón intends. Barrull believes, because it has been scientifically proven, that there are links between living creatures, or between them and Nature, which cannot be explained by the rational mind. Notable experiments have been conducted using animals, and also human subjects. This may explain how the murderer’s crimes anticipate the bombs, and the comisario’s intuition about the murderer’s intentions and crime scenes.
“Do you mean thought transference? Mesmerism and such things?”
Barrull nods vigorously, shaking his mane of gray hair. “Something of that nature, yes.”
The café owner reappears on the terrace to see if they are still there.
“We should go,” says the professor, “before Celis takes his courage in both hands and throws us out. As commissioner of police, you should set an example …”
Reluctantly, Tizón gets to his feet, picks up his straw hat and his cane, and they head for the door as Barrull continues to expound his theory. He once knew two brothers, he explains, whose mutual sympathy was so intense that if one of them suffered an ache, the other displayed the same symptoms. He also recalls the case of a woman whose body developed open wounds identical to those suffered by one of her friends, on the same day at the same time, in an accident several leagues away. And he is sure that Tizón must have dreamed things which later came to pass, or experienced situations which he was convinced had happened before.
“There are dark corners of the mind,” he concludes, “upon which reason and science have yet to shed any light. Now, I am not saying that you have created a mental bridge with the mind of the murderer or that you know his intentions … All I am saying is that it is possible, for reasons I do not understand, that you have entered his territory. His sphere of consciousness. This might make it possible for you to perceive things we cannot see.”
They have walked slowly, as far as the Calle del Santo Cristo. Only the light of the moon illuminates the terraces and the towers soaring above their heads.
“If that were the case, Professor, if my senses had created such a bridge, then perhaps … I don’t know. Perhaps my nature is inclined toward such things.”
“Toward crime? I cannot believe it.”
Barrull walks a few paces in silence, seeming to brood on these words. At length he growls, dismissing the possibility—or eager to do so.
“Truthfully, I do not know. Perhaps it would be more exact to talk of a capacity for sensing horror, the dark chasms that reside within all human beings … Even me, for example. You yourself pointed out—and I entirely agree with you—that when playing chess I become a disagreeable soul, even cruel.”
“Inhuman, if you will forgive the word.”
Laughter in the darkness.
“I forgive you.”
They walk a little further, each caught up in his own thoughts.
“But all this is a long way from the issue of those girls being beaten to death,” Tizón says finally.
“Of course. Neither of us could do such a thing. But you have been obsessed with this case for more than a year. For professional reasons, of course. And personal reasons, too, I imagine, though they do not concern me.”
Unsettled, almost irritated, the policeman swings his cane.
“Perhaps someday I will tell you—”
“I don’t wish you to tell me anything,” Barrull interrupts him. “I know already. Every man is a slave to what he says, and master of what he leaves unsaid … For the rest, after so many years spent facing each other across the chessboard, I have come to know you just a little. What I wanted to say to you is that this lingering obsession might have produced certain …”
“Delusions?”
“Repercussions is the word. To my mind, a hunter is always marked by the hunt.”
They have walked down the Calle Comedias and arrived outside an inn called La Manzanilla. There is a chink of light beneath the closed door. Barrull gestures to the place.
“I know you are an abstemious man, Comisario, but I would gladly rinse my gums. All this hypothesizing has made me thirsty. Might you be persuaded to abuse your authority a little more, for my benefit?”
Tizón nods and knocks on the door with his cane until the innkeeper appears, drying his hands on his gray smock. He is a young man, and looks tired.
“I’m closing up, Señor Comisario.”
“That can wait another ten minutes, my friend. Give us two glasses of manzanilla.”
They prop themselves at the dark wood bar, staring at the huge barrels of old wines from Sanlúcar. In the rear, next to some hams a
nd barrels of herring, the innkeeper’s father is eating potato stew with cuttlefish and reading a newspaper by lamplight. Barrull raises his glass in a toast.
“To hunting.”
Tizón raises his glass in turn, though he barely wets his lips. The professor drinks in short sips while picking at the little plate of four olives the innkeeper has set out. Thinking about it, he continues, a hunter is not a bad analogy: someone who, having stalked an animal for a long time, will be familiar with its territory, its watering holes, the places where it sleeps and eats, its hiding places and its habits. After a while, the hunter will come to imitate the animal’s behavior, will come to see this space as something personal. He will adapt to the terrain, making it his own until finally he becomes one with the prey he is stalking.
“It’s not a bad example,” Tizón admits.
Barrull looks at the innkeeper washing glasses in the sink, then at the man’s father, still reading in his corner. When he speaks again, he lowers his voice.
“Previously, when we have spoken about this case, you used chess as an analogy. And perhaps you are right … the city is the battlefield. The chessboard. A field of play which, whether you like it or not, you share with the murderer. It is for this reason you see Cádiz in a way the rest of us cannot.”
He looks thoughtfully at the plate before him, then eats Tizón’s two olives.
“And even if it should end someday,” he continues, “your view of the city will never be the same again.”
He takes out his purse to pay for the manzanillas, but Tizón waves it aside and calls the innkeeper over. Put it on my slate, he says. The two men leave the bar and walk slowly toward the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, their footsteps echoing in the empty streets. The lantern on the corner of the Calle Juan de Andas lengthens their shadows across the cobbles in front of the closed dressmakers’ shops.
“What do you intend to do now, Comisario?”
“I intend to keep to my plan for as long as possible.”
“Vortices? Calculating probabilities?”
Barrull’s tone is gently mocking, but Tizón is not offended.