The Angst-Ridden Executive Read Online Free PDF Page A

the case within sixty days.’
    ‘When can you start?’
    ‘Here and now. With you. Tell me honestly—was your husband involved in a romantic liaison that might have made him a target for revenge?’
    ‘People don’t believe this, but we women are always the last to know. Antonio was very much a ladies’ man. They tell me he used to devour them with his eyes. But when it came to the real thing—absolutely nothing. He spent himself in words. People saw him as a womanizer because he was always talking about women, and with women, in a particular sort of way—”I want you. . .”, “Don’t play hard to get. . .”, “Go to the dentist and get him to take your front teeth out. . .” etc, etc. I’m sure you know the sort. He was so predictable. He never talked of anything else. But words are one thing, action another.’
    ‘When you said that you didn’t believe the business about the women’s perfume, what did the police have to say?’
    ‘I’d rather not go into that. It wasn’t exactly nice.’
    ‘Please. I need to know.’
    ‘It was disgusting: “People like your husband, if you don’t mind my saying so, get up to all kinds of kinky things. Some of them like to be beaten. . . some like, well . . . to be urinated on. So why shouldn’t your husband like sousing himself in toilet water?’”
    ‘According to the forensic examination, had he had sex that night?’
    ‘There were signs of ejaculation, but they can’t say whether this was due to sexual excitation or whether he’d actually had intercourse. The fact that he was not wearing underpants is more of a mystery.’
    ‘And the knickers?’
    ‘What about them?’
    ‘How were they?’
    ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask. They just told me that they were women’s knickers, that’s all.’
    ‘I need to know more about them.’
    ‘I don’t know what you mean. You want the brand name?’
    ‘No. I particularly need to know whether they’d been worn or not—in other words, when he put them, or when they were put, in his pocket had they just been used? Or had they been washed? Or were they new and not yet worn?’
    ‘And how am I supposed to find that out?’
    ‘Via his lawyer. Or your father. Or our friend here.’
    Marcos Nuñez seemed to have lost interest in the business, and was sniffing around the books on the shelves. A dining-room-cum-living-room which would have held twenty rock and rollers and their partners with ease. A series of original paintings by artists who hadn’t yet made it—Artigau, Llimos, Jove, Viladecans, and one who was on the point of making it—an eight-hundred-thousand peseta Guinovart. Classical style for the seating and avant garde for the light fittings. A small stuffed crocodile and op art mobiles, and not a speck of dust in sight. From the living room you could hear the sound of a servant assiduously polishing the oak parquet. The widow Jauma was trying to imagine a pair of women’s knickers that were not her own. Carvalho was trying to imagine them placed on the more precise geography of some woman’s body.
    Charo opened her eyes, the only part of her that was covered.
    ‘This is no time to be sleeping.’
    In a reflex action, the girl pulled the sheet over her head, but Carvalho had already flung the curtains wide open, and the room was flooded with April light.
    ‘Pig! That’s hurting my eyes!’
    Charo leapt out of bed. She rushed to the bathroom, but not before giving Carvalho a punch in the stomach.
    ‘I can’t wait till you’ve finished in there.’
    ‘I’ll be out in a second.’
    ‘I know you better than that. . . I’m leaving a photo of a man on your dressing table. I want you to try and remember if he was ever a client of yours. Maybe you could ask around among your fellow workers. Only people you know, though.’
    ‘What do you take me for, Pepito, darling?’
    Carvalho leaned over to the talking door, gave it a playful tap, and replied:
    ‘An expensive call-girl.’
    ‘Thank you,