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  The visitor wasn’t a man who lost patience easily, but he had no great pedagogic vocation either, so he pursued his explanation no further and waited for Carvalho to take the conversational initiative.

  ‘Why would they want to kill a centre forward who cost such a lot of money? Competition?’

  ‘I don’t imagine that anyone’s actually planning to kill our centre forward. He’s probably got something else in mind which he hasn’t yet communicated to us. Maybe we’re just dealing with the kind of person who’s got a thing about famous people. Like the man who killed John Lennon.’

  ‘But I presume that you get hundreds of letters like this, and just ignore them. So why have you decided to take this one seriously?’

  ‘The first thing we did was to notify the police. We asked them to be very discreet, because of the possible knock-on effect that something like this could have on a club with more than a hundred thousand members and a social expectation involving millions. The police moved behind the scenes, and they told us that it was worth taking this letter seriously. They’d had word from their informants that something was afoot. The police are continuing their inquiries, but they’re having to move very carefully. The club has decided that you should also be brought onto the case, in parallel with the police. You’ll be able to move less conspicuously than the police.’

  ‘Your club’s very much in the news. You’ve got a hundred journalists at the gates every day waiting for scraps of news. How are you going to hide the fact that I’m involved?’

  ‘I’m glad you asked that.’

  ‘I’m glad too, and I’m glad that you’re glad.’

  Something approaching a melancholic smile blurred the seriousness on the face of this fastidious messenger.

  ‘We’ll have to collaborate very closely. We could end up being friends.’

  If he’d had anything in his mouth, Carvalho would have choked on it. But he had nothing, so he choked on nothing. He fell silent and looked bemused.

  ‘I’ll be acting as your go-between. It wouldn’t do for the journalists to see you having a direct relationship with the club’s board. We’ll need to find some kind of pretext for you to be moving around the club.’

  ‘Are you a footballing PR man by vocation?’

  ‘If you’re going to use the word “vocation” in its proper meaning, you should only apply it to jobs where God is involved. Priests, for example. Or monks. The gods send out a call, and the person in question feels that he has a vocation. Are you a private detective by vocation?’

  ‘I’ll need some kind of card or document, something to authorize me to move around on the club’s premises.’

  ‘Are you interested in psychology?’

  ‘I find all branches of human knowledge interesting. Take grammar, for example …’

  ‘Do you think you can pass for a psychologist?’

  ‘Absolutely the best profession for passing yourself off as something.’

  He tossed an envelope onto the desk and waited while Carvalho opened it, took out a sheet of the club’s headed notepaper and read what was on it.

  ‘So I’m now authorized to conduct a study on “The Application of Group Psychology in Sporting Organizations”.’

  ‘That piece of paper will enable you to talk to anyone connected with our club without raising suspicion.’

  This elegant man seemed to take pleasure from leaving things on Carvalho’s desk, and this time it was a visiting card which he produced from a very expensive leather wallet like a priest taking the host from the chalice. ‘Alfons Camps O’Shea, Public Relations’. Carvalho read the card, and then took another look at its bearer. There was a pleasing correlation between the name and the physical appearance of this young man who was in the process of rearranging his legs and regaining the vertical. He was evidently about to leave.

  ‘Have a think about it. We know your rates, and we have no problems from that point of view.’

  ‘Who says you know my rates? I don’t have fixed rates. How about you pay me what you pay your centre forward?’

  ‘Are you a centre forward?’

  ‘As good as. I’m the “Golden Boot” of my profession.’

  Camps O’Shea took in the entire contents of the office with one glance, which he then transferred to Carvalho as if to say that he had completed his inventory.

  ‘It doesn’t look that way.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. The rest of the world doesn’t need to know. We’ll keep it between you and me. I’ll draw up a pro forma and a plan of action.’

  The man buttoned his alpaca jacket and adjusted it around his anatomy with the same suaveness that characterized his discourse and probably his entire life. He had an air of luxury about him. As he reached the door he was checked momentarily by Carvalho inquiring: ‘I imagine you must be pretty keen on football?’

  The PR man turned round and calculated the effect that his answer might provoke.

  ‘As a sport, I find it rather stupid and ordinary. But as a sociological phenomenon I find it fascinating.’

  So saying, he left, without giving himself time to hear Carvalho muttering to himself: ‘A sociologist. That’s all we need.’

  Carvalho brooded over the questions that he should have asked and hadn’t, but his musings were interrupted by the arrival of Biscuter, laden down with every kind of shopping imaginable. He was panting and puffing and each puff ruffled the few long red hairs remaining on his balding head.

  ‘That staircase is going to be the death of me, boss.’

  ‘You look like you’ve bought up half the market.’

  ‘The fridge was empty, boss, and I prefer to do it all in one trip … Those stairs’ll be the death of me … I’ve bought some cap-i-pota, and I’m going to make you some farcellets of cap-i-pota with truffles and prawns. Don’t worry, though, I’ll make it nice and light. Not too greasy. Mind you, I reckon the human body needs a bit of grease every once in a while. Otherwise it starts squeaking like a rusty hinge. Then I’ll do you some figs à la Syrienne. Stuffed with nuts and cooked in orange juice. Low calorie. Instead of sugar I’ll use honey.’

  ‘You’re reading too much, Biscuter.’

  ‘You should take a look at the Enciclopaedia Gastronomica. I’ve been buying it in instalments. It’s incredible, the things that people dream up. Who do you reckon it was who first thought of stuffing figs with nuts and cooking them in orange juice?’

  ‘A Syrian, I suppose.’

  As the video came to an end the lights came on. There was a buzz of comment and small-talk, and the darkness gave way to a fervour of words and gestures. Behind the presidential table sat the club’s directors, headed by the chairman, Basté de Linyola, and in the centre, illuminated like a particularly pampered pet, sat Jack Mortimer, the golden-haired golden boy, with a face that was all smiles and freckles. The proceedings were opened by the club’s PR chief, Camps O’Shea, who reminded the journalists of the reasons for the press conference. He blinked slightly under the harsh lights of the various TV channels which were there to record the moment of the public presentation of a newly signed footballer. Camps O’Shea then informed them that he would be translating for Mortimer.

  ‘He’s been doing a crash course in Spanish, but he’s a bit shy about his conversational abilities, particularly when he’s in the lion’s den with the likes of you, gentlemen.’

  His attempt to break the ice was rewarded with a ripple of appreciative laughter, and from within the ripple the first questions began to emerge.

  ‘Will he be learning Catalan as well?’

  ‘Of course! També! També!’

  Mortimer contrived to answer partly in Catalan when the question was translated to him, and thereby won himself another ripple of laughter and a round of applause.

  ‘How do you feel about signing for such a powerful club?’

  ‘What do you make of the fact that English footballers have never been a great success in Europe?’

  ‘Are you awar
e of the social and symbolic importance of the club that you have signed for?’

  ‘Do you expect to maintain your English average of thirty goals a year?’

  ‘Do you prefer to wait for the ball to come to you, or do you prefer to go out and get it?’

  ‘Mortimer, you were married a short while ago, and now you’re expecting a baby. Will you call it Jordi if it’s a boy? Or Núria if it’s a girl?’

  This time Camps did not translate the question, but offered the reply himself.

  ‘Señor Mortimer may well decide to choose a Catalan name, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be Núria or Jordi. There are other names.’

  ‘Such as …?’

  ‘Montserrat and Dídac, for example.’

  ‘All right, then. Will you call the child Dídac or Montserrat?’

  ‘I said that they could be called Montserrat or Dídac, but they could equally well be called Núria and Jordi, or Pepet and Maria Salud, or Xifré, or Mercè …’

  Some of the journalists were beginning to show impatience with this process of onomastic accretion, and Mortimer sat by, puzzled but none the less smiling, as they proceeded to choose names for children that he didn’t even have yet.

  ‘Señor Mortimer, have you tried pan con tomate?’

  Camps O’Shea patiently described to Mortimer the composition of pan con tomate alla catalana: bread, oil, tomato and salt.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes, that’s all.’

  Mortimer gave the matter some thought, and announced without great enthusiasm that he would make sure to incorporate pan con tomate into his diet at the earliest opportunity. Then he added, with the ponderous determination of a novice linguist: ‘Me gusta mucho la paella.’

  ‘Do you prefer Catalan paella, or Valencian paella?’

  Camps O’Shea asked the journalist to explain the difference between Catalan paella and Valencian paella, and the journalist said that it had been a joke. Camps gave him a poker-faced look and continued: ‘Are there any more questions?’

  ‘Mortimer, are you one of those centre forwards who go out looking for the ball, or do you prefer to stay in your area?’

  When this had been translated, Mortimer pondered for a moment and replied: ‘A good centre forward should almost never come out of his area.’

  Camps O’Shea got up, to indicate that the press conference was at an end. The press photographers flashed away as if their lives depended on it. Camps ushered Mortimer into another room, followed by the club’s directors, with the club chairman, Basté de Linyola, at their head. Once the photographers and the journalists were gone, Mortimer lost his aura as the god of the stadium. Now he looked like a young lad who had ended up in the wrong room by mistake. Especially when you put him next to Basté de Linyola, a businessman and ex-politician who had transformed the club’s presidency into a position of ultimate social significance. He had been on the point of becoming, variously, a minister in the Spanish government, a councillor in the autonomous government of Catalonia, and mayor of Barcelona. At sixty years of age he had suddenly discovered tiredness, and a fear that this tiredness would cause him to disappear from the public stage that he had occupied continuously ever since he had become the great white hope of the progressive business community under Franco. The chairmanship of this football club was his last position before retiring, but he had converted it into a hot seat, and he was a man who loved power as the only antidote to his own self-destruction. By the age of sixty, either you have power or you commit suicide — this was what he told himself every morning as he stood in front of the mirror which reflected back unpityingly the tired face of that other being who was growing inside him, and who would eventually turn into his worst enemy. The idea of taking up this presidency after a long period in which the club had been run by uncouth and uncultivated businessmen had struck him as a worthwhile task, to which he brought his qualifications as an engineer and a master in fine arts at the University of Boston, a cultural schizophrenia which had provided him with a few entries for his CV.

  ‘Now that we’re here, this club is coming home,’ he had said in his first address as club chairman. And the sentiment was well received, as was his observation that the club was not just a club but was the symbolic army of Catalonia.

  Now he permitted himself a closer look at Mortimer. He felt both curiosity and a certain populist tenderness towards him. The lad could have been one of his factory workers in Valles, one of those young workers who excited his poetic sense of himself as an enlightened businessman, and who stirred in him the envy that every cultured rich man feels in the face of young men with promise. His English was better than Mortimer’s, a provocation that would have enraged the learned professor of Shaw’s Pygmalion, and as the golden boy of European football became aware of this fact, he suddenly became reticent, as if he was speaking with some superior being who stood for the bosses and all they represented. Basté de Linyola passed him a box and told him to open it. In the box were the keys of three-hundred square metres of apartment located in a residential area of the city close to the club’s ground, where Mortimer would be able to house and raise his family during the four years of his contract with the club. Thereupon the club’s vice-chairman, the young banker Riutort who had connections with Arab investors and Japanese microchip manufacturers, handed him another box, in which there shone with almost indecent brightness the keys of the Porsche that Mortimer had requested as one of the terms of his contract. The entire board broke into applause, and Basté de Linyola decided that it was the responsibility of his PR man to utter the banalities which the act required. Camps O’Shea spoke up accordingly: ‘Mortimer, may we welcome you as one more citizen of our city of Barcelona.’

  The young footballer was happy, and caressed the car keys as if somehow expecting the vehicle to appear miraculously in the room. Somebody opened a bottle of cava, and a waiter dutifully poured it. This gave Basté de Linyola his cue for a toast. He had a complete mental collection of toasts which he had tried for size that morning before leaving home. He was particularly proud of the one which he had pronounced on the occasion of the homage which Barcelona’s up-and-coming entrepreneurs had offered to Juan Carlos when he was still a princeling in the shadow of General Franco.

  ‘Your Highness, in these bubbles you see the impatience of a people waiting to make the leap to modernity.’

  The toast that he’d made to the president of the reconstituted Generalitat wasn’t bad either, on the occasion of his elevation to the post of president of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce.

  ‘Sir, cava is our symbol. It has been necessary to give it a new name, but for us it is still what it always was.’

  Basté de Linyola’s toasts were much appreciated among the so-called political classes, and there were some who suggested that they might reflect the presence of a certain well-known writer as a regular guest on his yacht. Basté de Linyola was aware of this calumny, and cultivated it, in the same way that he secretly wrote pieces for the theatre and composed small items of classical music which he would play in the loneliness of his study, with the voluptuousness of a person buried alive, who knows the hour and the day of his resurrection. But this time he sensed that a simpler toast was required — not least when he looked at Mortimer’s smiling, freckled face, poised and eager to absorb the strange sounds that were about to fall from the lips of his club’s chairman.

  ‘Mortimer, we hope you’re going to score many goals. Behind every goal you score stands a whole city’s desire for victory.’

  Camps O’Shea took advantage of the ensuing applause to lean in Mortimer’s direction and translate what the chairman had said. The footballer nodded with a determined affirmation that some might have found excessive, and his enthusiasm was slightly at odds with the rest of the hall, because by now people were inventing excuses for having to leave. Basté de Linyola himself was the first to move, having first instructed his PR man to be sure not to abandon their new purchase.

&
nbsp; ‘The first few days are important, Camps. Until his wife arrives, you’re even going to have to make his bed for him.’

  The chairman glanced momentarily at a silent man with a drink in one hand, leaning against a wall poster depicting some important moment in the club’s history, and then redirected his gaze to Camps O’Shea.

  ‘Is that him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit risky having him here?’

  ‘Nobody seems bothered by him. He’s our psychologist.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope we never need a psychiatrist!’

  Camps watched as the chairman left, accompanied by the two remaining directors; then he took Mortimer by the arm.

  ‘I know a place where they do an excellent paella. I’ve reserved a table.’

  ‘Can we go in the Porsche?’

  ‘Of course. And a friend of mine will be coming too.’

  Carvalho abandoned his stance of drooping weariness and fell in behind the footballer and the PR man. He mentally cursed himself for having accepted the job. The prospect of having to share a paella with a spoilt kid and a naive freckled Englishman filled him with foreboding.

  No. She hadn’t left a forwarding address.

  A fleeting narrowing of the eyes betrayed the man’s irritation, and disarmed the porter’s reluctance to continue a conversation which he had accepted unwillingly in the first place. At first he had decided that he was a sales rep, but when he registered that he wasn’t carrying anything with him he had listened more or less inattentively to his questions regarding Inma Sánchez, the tenant on the second floor, and her son. The man had to drag the negatives out of him one by one. She wasn’t living there any more. No, she hadn’t left on her own. She could hardly have gone off on her own, seeing that she didn’t live alone. The boy had gone with them too.

  ‘No. She didn’t leave a forwarding address.’

  The conversation was at an end, but since he sensed a great sadness weighing on the shoulders of the man before him, he lowered his guard and momentarily abandoned his role as porter in a semi-de-luxe house in a semi-high-class part of town, halfway between Ensanche and the slopes of Tibidabo, with a service lift for flats that had no servants, and parking places for tenants who couldn’t necessarily afford cars.