The Good Suicides Read Online Free Page A

just looked away. “Or do you want me to tell him?”
    The little brother let out a snort.
    “Fuck, I saw it on the platform. Before the doors opened. The metro braked suddenly, without coming right into the station, and then I noticed that there was something on the ground. I grabbed it without anyone seeing.”
    “What was it?”
    “It was a cell phone, Inspector,” answered Roger Fort, who had joined them after carrying out his orders. “A pretty new iPhone. This.”
    Jorge looked at the bag Fort was holding with a mixture of frustration and longing.
    “You made your brother come and bring it back?” It was obvious that it was so, but the question came out without thinking.
    “We Riberas don’t steal,” answered Nelson, serious. “Also, there are things it’s better not to see.”
    The little one rolled his eyes, like someone sick of hearing nonsense. Héctor noticed, and after winking at the elder brother he turned to Jorge with a very severe tone.
    “Okay, kid. You and I are going to the station. Agent Fort, bring him.”
    “Hey, I haven’t done anything! You can’t—”
    “Theft, tampering with a crime scene. Resisting arrest, which is something I’m adding because you are going to resist for sure. And … how old are you? Thirteen? I’m sure the minors’ judge won’t like a kid your age going out ‘partying,’ as you say, in the early hours of the morning at all.”
    The kid looked so terrified that Héctor held back.
    “If it weren’t … if it weren’t for your brother, who seems a sensible guy, assuring me that he’ll take care of you. And you promise me you’ll listen to him.”
    Jorge nodded, with the same fervor as a young shepherd to whom the Virgin appears. Nelson put his arm around his shoulders and, without his brother seeing, returned the inspector’s wink.
    “I’ll take care of him, sir.”
    The station was almost deserted; only Salgado and Fort remained, along with two cleaners, who, after crossing themselves, got to work and rapidly forgot that the station had been the setting for a violent death. The world must keep turning, thought Héctor, unintentionally falling into cliché. Nonetheless, it was almost horrifying that everything could continue in such a normal way. In a few hours the line would reopen,the platform would fill with people. And only scattered pieces would remain of that woman, kept in black plastic bags.
    “We’ve found the bag, Inspector,” said Fort. “The woman was called Sara Mahler.”
    “Was she foreign?”
    “Born in Austria, according to her passport. But she lived here, she wasn’t a tourist. There’s also a clock-in card in her wallet. She worked in a laboratory. ‘Alemany Cosmetics,’ ” he read.
    “The family will have to be contacted, although that can wait until morning. Go back to the station, file the report and start tracking down the relatives. And don’t call them until daytime. We’ll let them have one more night’s sleep.”
    Héctor was exhausted. His eyelids were heavy from pure tiredness, and he didn’t even have the energy to tell Fort off for making him come. He wanted to go home, lie down and sleep with no nightmares. He would try those damn sleeping pills, even though the word, mixed with what he’d seen there, made him think of a painless death, but death all the same.
    “There is something else I want to show you, sir.”
    “Do it. I’ll give you five minutes.” Then he remembered that in barely a few hours he was going on holiday with his son, and thought the sleeping pills would have to wait for another occasion. “Not one more.”
    Héctor let himself fall onto the bench and took out a cigarette.
    “Don’t tell anyone I smoked here or I’ll plaster you.”
    The agent didn’t even respond. He handed the mobile to his superior as he said, “This is the only message. It’s strange—the diary is empty and there are no calls. Therefore, this is what she was reading on the platform,