traces, part nine.
Title: Traces
Part: 9 of 10
Characters: David Beckham, Martín Cáceres, Fabio Cannavaro, Iker Casillas, Royston Drenthe, Julien Faubert, Fernando Gago, Raúl González, Pep Guardiola, Thierry Henry, Guti Hernández, Xavi Hernández, Gonzalo Higuaín, Andrés Iniesta, Bojan Krkić, Lionel Messi, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Gerard Piqué, Carles Puyol, Sergio Ramos, Rubén de la Red, Michel Salgado, Miguel Torres. Not all characters appear in every chapter or in equal measure. Some characters' ages have been altered for the sake of coherence.
Genre: AU; murder mystery.
Rating: R
Warnings: Language, sex, drug use, and possibly distressing themes.
Summary: When corruption no longer shocks, drugs no longer numb, and darkness no longer soothes, men become desperate, reckless extremes of themselves. The secrets behind one man's life falling into another man's hands are revealed, exploited, and overlapped, and it falls to DCI Raúl González to trace the threads.
Disclaimer: One hundred percent fiction.
Notes: Endless apologies for the wait; exams and other such monsters are keeping me busy. But here it is, the second-last chapter.
Feedback > life. Constructive criticism and questions are very welcome.
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 |
Part Nine
A long day and unruly sleeping patterns see Raúl's eyes flitting hazily over the seven-thirty that his watch reads up at him. Guti buzzes with muted excitement beside him, looking as though he wants to sprint to the interview room but for having to keep pace with Raúl's languid stroll. The fluorescent lights cast a cold, clinical luminescence over the tiles that crack loudly with each of the officers' steps, and though the hallways are bare, distant rooms hum with unfamiliar night-time activity, junior constables up far past their bedtimes to rein in the rapidly spiralling web that is the Beckham case.
Having just left Xavi's office, it is the coroner's revelations that form the centrepiece of the officers' conversation.
"So, Henry hasn't touched his own gun in weeks," Raúl muses. "Makes sense. If you've got someone else's gun on you and you're about to shoot a man in the heart, why use your own?"
"But how did he get Casillas' gun?" Guti asks animatedly. "I mean, I know we're looking at a man who has no alibi, but Casillas doesn't either, and -"
"It doesn't matter how Henry got the gun - the whole point is that he had it in the first place. And keep it down," Raúl adds, more out of weariness than prudence.
"We can't just assume that Henry did this. There's still the small matter of a motive."
"I'm not assuming anything, thank you very much," Raúl says, throwing a sharp, defensive look in Guti's direction.
"You're acting like Henry is public enemy number one, completely forgetting that it's Casillas' gun that's missing the bullets found in Beckham's body, that Casillas is the one who owns the frickin' murder weapon -"
"You know, just because I didn't nod and say 'uh-huh' every time Xavi took a breath - desperately annoying, by the way - it does not mean that I wasn't paying attention," Raúl says coldly. "Did you listen to what he said about the prints on that gun?"
"Yes," Guti pouts. "What of it?"
"The fact that the prints were smudged, almost rubbed off on parts of the grip, suggests what, Guti?"
"That the gun was held by a gloved hand," Guti responds instantly. "But that's nothing new."
"Of course not," Raúl agrees. "No killer wants to leave their prints on the murder weapon. But the other reason why you'd wear a glove would be to -"
"Make sure the owner's prints aren't rubbed off," Guti finishes for him, frowning. "To make sure that Casillas' prints were left behind."
"Exactly," Raúl says in a perfunctory sort of way, jabbing his finger into mid-air as if to punctuate his point. "Which ties into what Xavi said about the glove being touched to the gun as little as possible - that the gun was held by a thumb and a couple of fingers at most. If Henry was the one holding it, he tried his hardest to make sure Casillas' fingerprints were identifiable."
"Well, this is all great," Guti says, looking wary, "but why would Henry want to frame Casillas?" He looks over at Raúl, who knows that the absence of any sort of theory relating to a motive is showing itself in the form of an unbecoming, stumped facial expression.
"I don't know," Raúl mumbles, frustrated. "But I think we should focus on what we know for sure, which is that Henry was in possession of the murder weapon and has no alibi." When Guti continues to hesitate, Raúl sighs. "Look, I've sent a couple of junior officers to bring Casillas in - I'm not leaving our bases uncovered. But right now, we're dealing with Henry. Don't forget what our boys found on him."
The key to Beckham's house that two constables had found buried in Thierry's trouser pocket upon his arrest - and about which Gonzalo had rather animatedly phoned Raúl a few minutes later - forms the focus of Raúl's thoughts, and Guti's too, he suspects, as he opens the door to the small interview room that they have finally reached.
Thierry's fingers tapping on the surface of the desk seem to leave a mark of ownership, of authority, as he speaks; they bear the kind of patronising impatience that ill befits a man whose left hand is cuffed to the table leg, whose freedom is tied up alongside it. To add insult to what already begins as an unfittingly uncomfortable, searching interview, Raúl's spirits snap in half when, face to face with the man whose arrest he has been hoping will mark the end of this messy case, Thierry calmly spills his airtight alibi.
"There was a Brass meeting that night," Thierry says, his voice soft and smooth. "Not many people showed up - it's as if they knew something more exciting was going down elsewhere." He smiles gently. "It was mainly the regulars - myself, Puyol, Torres, Guardiola. And -" His eyes flick across to Raúl's right-hand side. "Hernández here." He looks back at Raúl. "Last Monday night was his initiation. Gunless, yes, and missing a few witnesses, but the purpose of the meeting was met, and here we are, two Brass peas in a pod. Or we would be, if it had been a real initiation."
Raúl grudgingly glances over to his right to see Guti's cheeks darkening and his eyes glowering. "Is this true?"
Guti's nod is short and jerking. "I was told that there was a place opening up for me," he says more to the desk than to either of the other people in the room. "It was only the day after, when I was assigned to this case, that I realised it was because Beckham was about to be killed." He looks up at Raúl, whose fingers twitch as though they can sense the possibility of revelation dancing before them.
"Well, who told you that a place was opening up for you?" Raúl asks insistently.
Guti's blushes deeper, and he looks away again, his childlike shame reminiscent of that which he'd worn when he'd realised that he'd been robbed of a gun. "Union meetings are always announced by..."
"Anonymous notes," Thierry finishes for him, surveying him with interest. "Safe and convenient for everybody. Except you, I suppose," he says, looking at Raúl with a cruel sort of bemusement. "Now, do you have any other questions for me? Because the way I see it, you've run out of gas. I've got a very comfortable-looking inch-thick mattress waiting for me in that holding cell, and Lord knows I'm tired."
"Did Krkić keep you up last night?" Guti fires at him scornfully.
Thierry raises his eyebrows, amused. "I'm sure he's given you all the impression that he holds a lot of power over me."
"He's the reason why you're sitting here," Raúl says.
"No, the reason why I'm here is because of the dickhead who put Casillas' gun next to mine," Thierry counters firmly. "Just a tip, but if you've got fingerprints, a motive and no alibi, you've generally got your culprit. Or has Casillas won you over with his charm and chiselled features?"
"The likelihood that I'm going to believe any of your accusations is very slim," Raúl says, his tone just as hard. "Now, you'll cooperate with me, because what I believe is what counts. You obviously held a lot of sway over the Krkić boy. I want to know who else you've got under your thumb, and what you stand to gain from their submission."
Thierry laughs. "Maybe lesser folk succumb to your no-holes-barred interrogation technique, but it won't work on me," His smile quickly disappears and is replaced by a snarl. "Go on. Try to fire your questions at me."
"Let me guess," Raúl snaps, "you're saying nothing until your lawyer is present?"
Thierry scoffs. "That'd be Miguel Torres. I'd rather sit here alone than have that walking perma-tan representing me right now." Raúl feels Guti stiffen beside him, and Thierry smiles again. "Besides - I don't need some half-baked lawyer. My alibi's right here, after all," he says, his tone lilting, his eyes dancing over Guti's.
"What are you doing with Beckham's house key?" Raúl shoots back at him.
Thierry pauses for a moment, still looking at Guti, seemingly surprised. "Well, when someone leaves the Union before their time is up, we take necessary precautions - one of those precautions being a house key. As you well know, Hernández," he adds with a dangerous smile.
Guti turns to Raúl, fuming. "I think we're done here," he says, his voice low and shaking.
"Ooh," Thierry says, relishing every moment. "Did I touch a nerve?"
* * * * *
Miguel had contemplated making the short trip to Pep's office to do it face-to-face. But like countless times before, his courage had faltered and he now finds himself typing a gutless and unapologetic message into his phone.
'I'm out. You can do it yourself.'
Having kicked off his shoes, his socked feet twitch restlessly on his office floor beneath his desk, and he pours himself a drink to still his tension. He knows that he should be thinking about the Brass, about Beckham, about the role he has to play in keeping all of this hushed up. But the romantic in him is silenced by his disillusioned pragmatism, and he knows that it's too late now for all of these men to play innocent. He knows that anything he can do in the name of the Brass is futile, as the cracks in the flawless polish are beginning to show.
He thinks, instead, about the idea of a face-off between Iker and Guti in the police station. He thinks about Guti trying to undo Thierry. And as he feels his liquor leaving a familiar burn as it slides down the back of his throat, he thanks whoever there is to thank that it's not him wearing his poker face across the table from the man who once knew him inside out. He knows he wouldn't stand a chance.
He has braced himself for Pep to call him back, furiously spitting through the phone, demanding that Miguel keep his word. But the call never comes. He supposes that it doesn't make much of a difference whether Pep does it on his own from here on out; he knows everything that Miguel knows now.
Miguel downs the rest of his glass and pours another, having decided somewhat subconsiously that he's going to finish the whole bottle. His thoughts flick through memory books until they reach the weeks after he had taken Guti's gun and taken Guti's place, and he recalls himself sitting just here, just like this, clinging to Jack Daniels to drown the self-loathing and guilt that the blonde, like no other, had managed to incite in him. It's a sickening familiarity, and he selfishly wonders whether tomorrow morning it will all have disappeared - whether Guti's cold frame lying on his kitchen floor will take his face from Miguel's mind, will ease his regrets away. By the time the bottle is empty and his office is reduced to warm cream and brown blurs in the haze of his vision, he is hoping desperately that the morning will bring that salvation.
He tells himself that it's not a case of taking Guti away from the world that took him away first. But when the sun rises, he'll quietly admit that, really, it is.
* * * * *
Iker, who had been unsurprised to see the police show up at the door to his office, had come quietly. Julien had watched helplessly as Iker calmly allowed his wrists to sit in the constable's cuffs, and had given him some mundane instructions: turn off the lights, cancel his nine o'clock, make sure security get their cheques this week.
He is keenly aware of Raúl watching him quite carefully now, and of Guti watching Raúl, a triangle that remains open as Iker looks blankly down at the table, saying nothing out of turn. His mind wanders down brief paths, spending a few moments each wondering whether Fabio is somewhere safe, what David would make of all this, whether the officers have managed to get even a fragment of real, unconditional information out of Thierry. His wanderings don't linger too long, though, his mind too numb and framed by an uncharacteristic apathy. He dully supposes that the inside of a six-by-four cell would probably look no different to the cold emptiness of his apartment, his office, his life. It doesn't really matter now.
"Did you kill him?" Raúl's voice is too soft to jerk Iker's muddied thoughts from their maze, too smooth to elicit anything more than routine.
"No," Iker answers swiftly. "My gun has been missing for a while. For months now. I never really noticed until..." The picture of David's death hangs in the air as the three men in the room sit in silence for a few moments more.
"Why did you lie when I asked you about the Union?"
"That's what we do," Iker says, not really noticing himself shrug. "We lie about who we are, about what we do, about each other."
"Why wasn't your gun better protected?" Raúl asks, evidently striking items off his list of curiosities. "Shouldn't you have kept it in a safe? It's a valuable item, and damning to boot."
"I supposed I'd always figured that I didn't have to bother. I didn't ever think it'd get me into trouble. I just..." His voice trails away as Fabio crosses his thoughts again. "I trusted that nobody would be after it."
"You're assuming that I think somebody took it and planted it," Raúl points out. "Right now, all the road signs are pointing to you. You've got the motive, and the murder weapon has been confirmed to be yours. Add that to a nonexistent alibi..."
"I know," Iker says heavily. He raises his head to glance at Raúl shortly. "Listen, I'm innocent. I know things look bad for me right now, but I swear, I didn't do it. I - I loved David. I still do."
His words linger and his thoughts return to Fabio, who could never have had all of him but who had given himself up, so completely, always with the right intentions. Or perhaps they'd been the wrong intentions: to please Iker, to make Iker feel wanted and special again. Perhaps they'd cradled Iker in a false sense of comfort, in a security that he didn't deserve, making him feel invincible and protected from the realities of arrest warrants and meals of bread and water, and from the aftermath of the world he once shared with David, before the latter's world ended and Iker ended up alone.
He can't quite bear it anymore, being inside his own head like this, so he looks up and is surprised to see a trepidatious warmth in the way Raúl is looking at him - a reluctant, foolish kind of trust, a curiosity lined with some sort of inexplicable hope. As though he's able to read Iker's thoughts, he says, "I want to know if you ever lived with Beckham."
Iker raises his eyebrows. "We lived together for years, yes."
"Did you leave anything at his house?" Raúl asks the question with almost a hint of encouragement.
Iker frowns at him, confused, until he understands what Raúl understands, and, in the furthest distance of his consciousness, he feels his face whiten. "My gun."
* * * * *
The carpark is unusually crowded for the hour, parallel lines hidden by out-of-place cars whose owners fluster over paperwork under the station's roof. The chaos is almost reflected in the weather, stuffy and oppressive, and Raúl is relieved to slide into his car's driver's seat for the final time today, and turn on the humming air-conditioning that cools him, soothing and constant, in a bubble, away from the tangles and knots of the web of which he can't find the centre just yet.
He has sat, eyes-closed, head back, for a good minute, soaking up the steady calm that slowly reminds him of his fatigue and promises him a bed at home, when there is a tapping at his window. He doesn't jump; he isn't surprised by it after a day of shocks dragged out from behind Oxley's wooden doors and the cold plastic of interview room desks. He looks up to see Guti gazing down at him apologetically, and he winds down his window somewhat numbly.
"I don't have a ride home," Guti explains, the moonlight kissing his blonde and making Raúl look back down quickly. "I left my car at Oxley, and I've been driving around with you all day."
Raúl sighs and reaches for his seatbelt, pulling it over his body with tired fingers. "Say no more." He doesn't notice Guti's relieved smile as he straightens and makes his way over to the other side of the car.
They have barely made it to the end of the street, trees and buildings crawling past them as Raúl doesn't trust himself to drive too quickly at this time of night and with this man in his car, when Guti, restless in the passenger seat, can't keep it in any longer and gives in to the compulsion to speak.
"There are so many things that don't add up, huh? I mean, one suspect with an alibi, no motive, but a seriously fishy history."
"I meant it when I said 'say no more', you know," Raúl says, only half-seriously.
"Another suspect with no alibi, a clinical motive, but a mysterious hold over the detective investigating his backstory." Guti says, and Raúl can hear the grin in his voice.
"Do you not need sleep?"
"Speak for yourself," Guti replies. "You were a damn cold bitch with Henry in there. How is it that you're deadly when you should be yawning?"
Raúl rolls his eyes. "Flattery will get you nowhere."
"It got me here."
"Seriously, Guti," Raúl says, sharply now, "do not speak. Besides, I didn't get what I wanted out of Henry, anyway."
"How is that you know my address?"
Raúl throws him a look. "You'd think they'd have gotten me a brighter sergeant."
"Ah, Gonzalo and the spying, of course," Guti nods, before twisting in his seat to face Raúl more directly, a physical eagerness that hardens Raúl's frown. "I admit, I'm too exhausted to talk about that."
"Thank the Lord."
"I didn't pick you for a religious man," Guti says lightly. "But, in all seriousness, there's so much to discuss about this case. You can't possibly tell me that you've got this all figured out."
Raúl exhales heavily. "If I had it all figured out, I'd be signing forms right now and you wouldn't be in my car."
"Okay, so let's figure it out," Guti says insistently.
"No," Raúl says firmly as he makes a turn, and the craning of his head to check for oncoming traffic forces him to glance at Guti. "We're going to leave the case alone for the moment. You want to talk? Fine. Let's talk about you."
"Oh, shit," Guti mutters.
"You have no idea," Raúl says darkly. "I've been under the impression that you joined the Union to help us out, to help you with this case. To bring it down from the inside, etcetera, etcetera. And then," Raúl says loudly with a humourless laugh, "Thierry Henry, of all people, informs me that no, you'd decided to polish up your Brass before you even knew whose spot you'd be filling!"
"Well, I think we've established that Henry has a talent for striking people's Achilles heels at exactly the most inconvenient moment," Guti says dully, as Raúl slides the car to a stop before a red light.
"Why did you come back?"
"I can't -" Guti hesitates, clearly flustered as Raúl watches him with narrowed eyes. "It wasn't one reason that brought me back. There's no 'why' to it, you know?"
"I'm quite sure I don't."
"That light sure stays red for a long time," Guti says, squirming a little.
"There must have been something pulling you back," Raúl persists. "Just tell me. Look, you don't have any reason to hide this kind of thing from me anymore. You have an alibi."
"Oh, so you only trust me now?"
The light flashes green and Raúl hits the accelerator. "I know an incredibly scenic route to your place," he says casually. "I have ways of making this car-ride last hours."
"'Ve haff vays of makink you talk'," Guti sighs. "Well, it's what you just said," he says at last. "It pulled me back. There's something about it, about the Brass, that just, kind of... sucks you in." He inhales deeply. "I was always a huge sucker for the Brass," he says with a rush of breath, as though the words are relieved to be able to tumble out. "When I was at school, I was so bitter than I wasn't a part of it. I went around talking shit about it, saying it was because I didn't like what it stood for, but it was really just..."
"Envy," Raúl offers.
Guti sighs again. "And then - I got in. And the perks - oh, God, Raúl, the perks. You can't imagine how delicious it is to be one of them," he says with a feverish kind of breathlessness. "When I was a boy, it was all about money. About being able to afford shiny watches and shiny cars. But when we hit our final year of school, we realised that it was so much bigger than that. We could get into any college we wanted. We could do anything, be anything. Cannavaro slid into politics, Casillas into journalism - I mean, the most difficult paths became so easy. We didn't have to work for it like every other kid did. I can't even remember how many exams I flunked. And it -" He licks his lips. "It killed me a little, because I knew that I was smart and that I could do better. But - fuck, when you're seventeen and you're offered the life you want without having to lift a finger - I mean, wouldn't you take it?"
"I wouldn't know," Raúl says coldly. "I went to a public school with the commoners." He turns to smile sarcastically at Guti. "We didn't have a secret society to get us into university."
Guti blushes. "Well - that's how it should have been, I realised. The friends I'd had before I joined were all working their asses off and there I was, getting fucked and getting high, and getting a free ride. I felt like a dick. I couldn't look at people like that anymore, I couldn't look them in the eye."
"Torres."
"Torres." Guti is silent for a few moments as Raúl turns into the quieter streets of suburbia. "But look at him - he got sucked in, too. It's just human nature, I think. Dangle a carrot for long enough - or dangle a long enough carrot - and it's going to get devoured."
"Lovely imagery," Raúl says, wrinkling his nose. "So, that's your answer? You were simply 'sucked in' by the Union, to the point where, six long years after you abandoned them, they still had a hold over you?"
"I - I can't explain it," Guti says, sounding weary for the first time, matched by the darkening outdoors as the street lights begin to disappear behind dense trees. "The kind of money, power, influence that the Brass offers... I could either have been coming back to a cockroach-infested shoebox and struggling to pay off my motorbike, or I'd could have - this."
Raúl stops the car and turns off the engine, outside a handsome apartment block with a well-lit - and well-secured - entrance. "A doorman," he says incredulously. "You have a doorman."
"I told you," Guti mumbles, shrugging. "Perks."
"You joined the Union to have a doorman?"
"I joined the Union to have a better life, a life that was just waiting for me to claim it, without my having to really work for it," Guti counters. "To have the ability to buy what I wanted, live where I wanted, how I wanted. To have - freedom." He smiles. "And there's no need to point out the irony in that."
"You had people following you, turning up in your apartment when you were out, and you still wanted in? You saw Beckham die, and you didn't think to run? Your first instinct was 'Well, thank fuck I'm Brass'?"
"But that's exactly it!" Guti says earnestly. "All that shit happened because I left. Beckham was killed after he left. Card-carrying Brass members are safe, they're protected. Nothing happens to them, because they control everything. It's Brass members who set up the city's biggest security companies twenty years ago. It's Brass who controls elections, determines what people know and who they trust - and who they don't." He pauses for a while, and when he continues speaking again, it's softer, and slower. "You can see why, once you've tasted it, you can't really live any other way. The people who are in it will never give it up, not really. To choose not to be Brass is choosing to be powerless. And, let's be honest - what's more seductive than power? After all, maybe I wouldn't be so attracted to you if you weren't my senior," he adds.
Raúl is silent for a long while before he at last ventures to speak. "You should go."
"You should come," Guti smiles. His hand slides over to Raúl's side of the car and his fingers find Raúl's on his thigh. It's innocent enough, but Raúl flinches, and shifts his hand away by the tiniest fraction. "I'm sorry," Guti says, and Raúl glances up to see him blushing again. "I'm sorry," he repeats. "I shouldn't..."
"No, you shouldn't," Raúl says firmly but quietly.
"What I should do is leave," Guti says, a light self-deprecation finding its way into his voice again.
"I'd say so."
In the silence that follows, Raúl can't help but look up at Guti, who is staring back at him - not pushing his luck, and without determination, but with the kind of regret that Raúl supposes is his apology. "You know, I'm probably not going to get any sleep tonight," Guti says.
"Me neither," Raúl replies honestly, looking ahead through the windscreen again. "But of all the ideas you've ever had, the one in your head right now is probably your worst yet."
Guti's laugh is so gentle as to be little more than a breath. "I'll go."
And he slowly unbuckles his seatbelt, opens the passenger-side door, and gets out of the car. Raúl doesn't watch him cross the road and open the door to the entrance. He sits still for a while, hating himself for trying to remember what it felt like to have Guti's hand on his, before he decides to head home.
* * * * *
"I figured a morning without coffee is a morning better slept through," Gonzalo says with a shrug after Raúl has walked in and raised his eyebrows at the sight of a extra large cup on his desk.
"Did you get any rest last night?" Raúl asks, flicking through files on the end of his desk, none of which have anything to do with the three men who slept at the station overnight in holding cells, and therefore none of which interest him in the least.
"Not a lot," Gonzalo admits, though he looks bright enough. "But I figured you'd get this all sorted by this evening, and until then, there's caffeine."
Raúl purses his lips upon hearing of Gonzalo's faith in him. By this evening? Raúl thinks dully. I'd take solving it by the end of the year.
"Listen, find the address of a Martín Cáceres for me, will you? I'm going to take another trip up to the school and he'll probably be there, but just in case..."
"No problem, sir, I'll look it up and send you a message once I've got it."
Raúl nods his thanks. "Is Guti here yet?"
"It's seven in the morning," Gonzalo replies. "Of course he isn't." He hesitates before smiling. "I thought he'd be with you, though. I saw him getting into your car last night."
Raúl is spared having to respond when Gonzalo's phone rings, and the constable picks it up reluctantly. Raúl watches as his face makes the familiar transition into surprise and then a faint, shy excitement, and Gonzalo hangs up and says, "Ruud van Nistelrooy is awake."
Raúl almost forgets to grab his coffee as he hurriedly whisks himself out of the station and into his car, but as he recalls it at the last second, he catches Gonzalo's smile.
His drive to the hospital is quick and he catches himself sailing past it, having missed the turn-off for the parking lot in his rush. After a gruelling twenty-minute search for a parking spot ("Jesus, this is a hospital; people are dying in there, get a fucking move on!"), he at last enters, speaks a little too waspishly to the lady at the front desk, and finds himself looking down at a Ruud van Nistelrooy far paler and far weaker-looking that the one who had claimed to be 'just a friend' of Beckham's when Raúl had first met him, and when Guti had claimed that this was his first encounter with him, too. Ruud looks up at him, his spit-soaked lips trembling a little with the effort of speaking, his eyes circled, and his speech interrupted by sudden and violent coughs, retching between rasping breaths.
* * * * *
Ruud's first instinct had been to call someone - anyone. Thierry had immediately sprung to mind, but the thought of even mentioning this to him had made him shudder somewhat. He had, instead, called David back, begging him to reconsider. David, as expected, had been cold and detached over the phone. Something like "it's for your own good" distantly resonated in Ruud's frantic mind before he gave up and put the phone down, panicking, seconds away from reaching for a syringe.
He supposed that David had been doing his duty by giving him money - his duty as a friend, as Brass, by giving him a few grand a month to pay for water, gas, a basic standard of living. But his care and attention had stopped there, hovering comfortably over the layer of superficiality that seemed to be David's limit. It was like prison wardens giving out three scrappy meals a day to the inmates; ticking boxes, keeping themselves absolved.
David had seen Ruud's hands shaking. He could see his stamina falling away, his muscle mass fading into jutting bones and sallow skin. He'd watched him destroy himself, and he helped him do it, from a distance and with clouds of responsibility skipping past him. A monthly cheque in Ruud's mailbox, right in front of an overgrown lawn and lights that gave out every few months, as Ruud neglected his electricity bills, was all that Ruud got from him. But, as far as David had been concerned, he was giving Ruud the means to straighten out his life. It was Ruud's fault that he'd fucked it up instead.
As he lay on his bed, his head slipping off his pillow as his satiated body sucked up relief, Ruud supposed that at least David hadn't given up on him. He was merely holding back. It had turned into a cheque every three months, which was better than nothing, but worse than what Ruud had come to rely upon. To begin with, Ruud took it gladly, greedily and gratefully. But then it hit March, and he began to starve.
He found himself with nothing left, and he was craving. And it hit a point where, as soon as that cheque appeared in the box that, for weeks, he tetchily watched from the hidden side of his curtains, he dived overboard. A few months later, and a particularly desperate wait met by gluttonous consolation saw him sprawled on his floor, the darkness of outside shadowing his failing body as his old friend Andrés stood over him and shakily dialed for an ambulance. It was then that David had decided to cut him off altogether, decided that Ruud was a lost cause. And, still shaking from stomach-pumping and needles, he finally dialed Thierry's number.
A part of him suspected that Thierry enjoyed watching his downfall, watching him sink further and further into slovenly mediocrity, the potential of his adolescence fading into a pathetic adulthood that hid him away from his friends, family - anyone who would judge him. The only place that coerced his presence was the hidden bowels of Oxley, where the Brass promised him security, and where Thierry promised him money. That was enough for Ruud. What Thierry was doing to get that money was of no concern to him. He didn't notice the way in which Fabio shirked Thierry's presence, the way Gerard balked at the mention of his name. He had his salvation, and far be it for him to question its intentions.
When he woke up this morning, a year later, in a similarly green-hued, plastic-smelling room with empty shelves that, laughably, expected flowers, Ruud's first thought was of David, and what David would do if he was alive to see him like this. He imagined a detached stare, swimming with a mix of vague pity and a lack of surprise, and probably relief at the fact that he, at least, couldn't be held accountable for what Ruud has become, and failed to become. And Ruud decided that the time had come to spare himself the same burden of responsibility, and go to sleep tonight with a clear conscience, his regrets and self-loathing poured out in a confession that Raúl could use, and that has had Ruud locked up for far too long.
* * * * *
The sun is high, godlike, bringing forth beads of sweat on the back of Raúl's neck as he gratefully climbs into his car. As he'd walked back to the carpark from the hospital building, he had tried - twice - to call Guti, to no avail. The man wasn't picking up his phone. After reasurring Gonzalo that yes, he had gotten his message and no, he wasn't about to tell him off, he asked the junior constable whether Guti had yet turned up to the office. That the answer had been no, and that midday is now about to tick over, sees Raúl driving back over to Guti's apartment with a rather uncharacteristic disregard for the speed limits, a disparaging lecture being rehearsed in his head.
In that same conversation, he had told Gonzalo to make sure as many men as possible were on the lookout for Fabio Cannavaro, who can't have gone too far with an election just around the corner. The callous, unthinking way in which Ruud had mentioned him had been a mention all the same, and Raúl, perhaps in his naïve will to believe in Iker, is determined to keep hold of the thread that could link Fabio to that gun, which surely could only have made its way from David's house to Thierry's apartment without Iker knowing if those closest to Iker had had something to do with it. And Fabio is the starting point - though, given how intertwined everything is coming to be, Raúl finds himself in the quite foreign state of self-doubt.
Thierry, sat in his tiny cell at the police station, is most probably wearing that unwavering smugness that makes it feel more as though everyone in a uniform is being held prisoner by his power, by his unwillingness to relinquish what he knows and holds safe. He seems to be the centre of all of this - or perhaps its just his sublime confidence and sense of control that is leading Raúl to think so. But there is no dictator without followers, and where the other Union members fit onto the map that spins around Thierry is what Raúl needs to think about. He needs to think about Fabio, and Pep, and probably about Miguel and Carles Puyol and Sergio Ramos. But he pulls up outside Guti's apartment building and is only thinking about him.
In a way, he's unsurprised that Guti would flake out on him. In a way, he expects to open the door and see empty drawers and cupboards, and only the whiff of wheeled-out suitcases left behind. His distrust lies open and exposed and for a few, hot-blooded moments, he feels foolish and betrayed, but he pushes it aside and wills himself to assume the best, to give Guti the benefit of the doubt. After last night, surely Guti wouldn't abandon him now. Surely he was telling the truth.
Raúl realises how silly his motherly cajoling sounds in his head when he turns the doorknob after his knocks go unanswered and the door is unlocked, and he sees all of Guti's things in place on shelves and on tables, and his surging anger comes back in full-force.
"Guti!" he hollers, heading first to what looks like the bedroom, where he expects to find Guti sleeping through his alarm clock and being generally useless at the time when Raúl needs him the most. He isn't there, and Raúl keeps calling his name. It's only when he stops and slams his hand onto the kitchen counter that he sees an open bottle of milk and a smashed glass on the tiles, and he falls into a shocked silence to hear Guti's very soft voice calling at him from somewhere near the back of the apartment.
He suspects that hands and knees had shaken against the floor as Guti had thrown up into the toilet bowl as the blonde, shirtless, now lies somewhat slumped against the wall, looking as though he has just woken up.
"Fuck, I'm glad you're here," he smiles weakly up at Raúl. "As soon as I felt my body giving out, I thought I might not get up again."
"What are you talking about?" Raúl frowns, scrunching up his nose at the lingering smell of vomit in the air. "What happened? Have you been drinking?"
"Ha," Guti chuckles, shakily using an arm to lever himself up to a more dignified position - one in which his legs are no longer sprawled, exposing unbecoming stains on his navy pyjama bottoms. "You could say that. Uh - give me a hand?"
Raúl grudgingly reaches out and pulls Guti up, glaring at him with as much ferocity as he can muster, though he's surprised to feel that Guti's hand is weak, shaking and clammy, and as Guti's smile disappears, he very faintly regrets not exposing even a fraction of his concern. "What happened? I've been calling you, I went to see van Nistelrooy and we're supposed to be on our way to the school but you haven't been -"
"Someone got in here," Guti interrupts, looking lightheaded and throwing an arm out to the wall so that he can steady himself once more, Raúl having let go as soon as he was vertical.
The way in which Guti sways as he speaks, swallowing dryly and trying hard to focus his eyes as he looks at Raúl, makes Raúl's pulse trip over itself a little. "Wh-what do you mean?"
"They - they put some kind of drug, a sedative or something, in my -"
"In your?" Raúl asks urgently.
"In the milk," Guti mumbles, his eyes dropping. "It was Miguel," he adds softly. He looks up again, and the self-deprecation has been joined by the childlike shame that Raúl will only silently admit that he's seen too much of lately. "He's the only one who knows that..." He takes a deep breath, and the small, wry smile returns. "Ever since I was a kid, I've drunk a glass of milk every morning. Without fail. And he's the only one who could have known that, and thought to go straight for the milk."
He pauses, and Raúl doesn't quite know what combination of hard disapproval and forgiving compassion he should wear given that the former is probably - possibly - no longer warranted. But the fact that he's hesitating at all stops him before he lets his guard all the way down, visibly down, and he says nothing, not sure what he's hearing or believing.
"I felt my whole body burning," Guti continues, his weak voice bouncing off the bathroom's tiles. "That same feeling you get when you've drunk too much and you start to tip over the edge, and you know it's just a matter of minutes before you start throwing up?" Raúl reluctantly nods. "And I ran to the bathroom and downed a capful of mouthwash to bring it all up, and, God, I just hoped my liver and kidneys and shit would be okay when I woke up. I just hoped I'd wake up."
Raúl looks at him quite hard for a while, not really knowing whether he's sizing Guti up or just taking it all in. "We have a lot of work to do today," he hears himself say clinically. "Have a shower and meet me at the station in an hour. Get some food on your way in - don't eat anything from your kitchen."
"I don't plan to," Guti says with a humourless laugh.
"Get a cab. I don't think you're okay to drive, but I -" He hesitates. "If you want, I can do it alone." When Guti frowns at him, he feels his cheeks redden. "I don't know, you might need the hospital. No, you should go to the hospital, you don't know what kind of -"
"I'm fine," Guti says firmly, though his dark circles and shaking fingers betray him. "I'll see you in an hour."
Raúl shrugs and quickly turns away. He stops just after he leaves the bathroom. "I'll take the milk bottle and get it tested at the lab."
"Raúl -" Before Raúl has time to twitch away instinctively, Guti's hand is on his arm. "I'm really sorry. I know - I know you didn't want me to jeopardise the case, and I swear, if I'd known -"
Raúl shakes his head. "I'm just sorry that you're caught up in all this." He catches himself just as Guti's expression begins to wear a little too much gratitude. "It makes this investigation a lot more time-consuming."
* * * * *
Guti's mind has been ticking over since Raúl left his apartment. He could see the doubt that Raúl wears like a shield, and he needs to wear it down again - that is if he'd ever managed to get past it in the first place. He's sure that he's caught glimmers of trust, of warmth, in his curtness, in his hardness. He's convinced himself that it's that faint degree of affection that dragged Raúl to his apartment this morning; surely anger and impatience would have seen him go straight to the school, probably with a phonecall to Gonzalo to make sure Guti was taken off the case?
The remnants of the drug swirl around with the adrenaline that keeps Guti hyper-focused on his theories, compounding with each blurry memory of the night before and swelling in intricacy as his head races forward to meet the day ahead before it unfolds. He figures that they should go after Fabio, given that Iker's gun can't have traveled to Thierry's kitchen cabinet of its own accord - though Guti refuses to let go of his reservations where Iker is concerned.
But while he's glad to see Iker in a cell for the time being, Guti's relief multiplies at the thought of Thierry being behind bars. As he races toward the station, a picture forms in his head of the threads that fan out from Thierry at their centre, and something - instinct, maybe - tells him that those are the ones to trace. He's seen the way that the Brass look at Thierry, how they act around him - there's a fear there that didn't exist ten years ago, that suggests that the innocence he's professed isn't quite so pure. Guti remembers him as a harmless, somewhat gormless teenager, but the icy confidence and self-satisfaction in those eyes last night didn't belong to someone who had accidentally stumbled across the murder weapon in his tea cupboard.
Guti locks his car and almost sprints through the front doors of the station. Raúl is nodding as he holds his desk phone to his ear, and pulls a face after taking a sip of his coffee. He mutters something about 'being there soon' and 'keeping him there' before he hangs up, and the first words Guti says to him are "I think we should go and talk to Bojan Krkić about Henry, about everything that Henry might know. I still think he's the one we should be focusing on. I mean, the murder weapon was in his possession, after all, along with a key to - well, you know all this."
Raúl merely raises his eyebrows, still looking at the papers in his hand. "I do indeed. I've already arranged a meeting with the boy at the school in an hour's time for that very purpose," he says in his usual drawl. "We're going to talk to Martín Cáceres and Fernando Gago to see what they've found out about the Union from Ramos. Should have done that yesterday, but alas, guns in Henry's apartment and whatnot," he shrugs lazily. "I've also had a couple of men go and round up Miguel Torres for questioning, as it's been confirmed that a very high concentration of flunitrazepam, or rohypnol, was found in that milk bottle of yours. Had you drunk more than a sip, you'd definitely be in hospital." He finally looks up, and frowns as he does so, his expression now wholly and mercilessly cold. "You don't look great, though. Did you eat?"
And just like that, Raúl has made Guti feel small again.
"You make sure to get your car from Oxley once we're done there," Raúl orders as they make their way back to the parking lot and he reaches for his car keys. "Though maybe we should find you another one," he adds as an afterthought. "Someone might have cut your brakes or something. But Lord knows I'm sick of you being in my car."
"Oh, nice." Guti rolls his eyes and sighs as he climbs into the passenger seat of Raúl's car. "It's always lose-lose with you, isn't it?"
"There's nothing to be won here," Raúl says smugly back.
Guti despises the silence that fills the car on the way to Oxley, as they pass the lunchtime bustle of the white-collar world, their caffeinated chatter seeming so warm and proactive relative to the cold war between the officers. He supposes he should be glad that he's in the car at all, but as the minutes clock over and his characteristic impatience grows, he wonders why he's bothering being so damn timid when the only mistake he's made was not to go thirsty this morning. But he glances over at Raúl and remembers yesterday morning, when Raúl yelled through his humiliation about all the secrets Guti has been keeping, and he remains quiet.
But when Raúl turns into the centre of the city and the domineering presence of the High Court makes its way into their line of sight, he says something unexpected.
"Hang on," he says. "Messi's place is here."
Guti turns to look at him for a split-second. "You want to talk to him?"
"Indeed I do," Raúl affirms, unbuckling his seatbelt.
"Wait - why?" Guti glances at the clock in the car.
"Because," Raúl turns and smiles, "I want to."
Guti frowns, and for a brief moment, the question of whether all the rohypnol has exited his system crosses his mind. "Raúl," he says, trying to sound like the one in control. "There's less than a couple of hours before school ends - can we do this later?"
"No, we can't. I have a feeling we're going to find something useful here. He knows a lot more than you gave him credit for a week ago." Raúl purses his lips and his eyes flicker toward the right-hand side of the street that houses the bar. "He told me about the guns, you know."
"The guns?"
"After we saw Xavi the first time, and he told us what kind of gun we were after, I came here and spoke to Messi," Raúl explains. "And he told me what you didn't tell me about the guns - about the Union having guns."
"He knows about the guns?"
"He knows about the fucking guns."
Guti is flummoxed for a moment and Raúl takes the opportunity to parallel-park the car and get out, Guti following suit behind him while muttering, under his breath, about everybody taking him for a damn fool.
"What are you even planning on asking him?" Guti asks, flustered, once he's caught up to Raúl. "Do you even have a plan? I don't like this rushing-into-things-without-a-plan nonsense. It doesn't seem very..."
"Planned?" Raúl sighs and turns to look at Guti once they've hit the shady part of the sidewalk. "Look, this isn't how I like to do things, either. I like my work to be structured and clean. I like my discoveries documentable and linear, one thing leading to another. I don't like this mess. I don't like this whole fucking hurrah, but when you're dealing with a motherfucking secret society - emphasis on the word 'secret' - you're generally not going to get a nice and easy -"
"I know, I know this," Guti interrupts in a groaning sort of a way. "I just - surely we should be up at the school, talking to people whom we know have something to do with the guys we've locked up. Because if we've arrested the wrong people, turning up here and ringing everybody's alarm bells isn't going to get us any closer to finding out who did this."
"Look, I'm in charge here," Raúl says, "and my experience has taught me that -"
"Oh, come on," Guti can't help but scoff. "Don't play that card on me. I'm the one who got fucking poisoned this morning, and it's because you didn't fucking listen to me yesterday because you think you're the man in charge -"
"Yesterday? What the hell are you on about, how is any of this my fault?" Raúl glares at him.
"I told you not to mention the Union to Pep, but you did, you revealed what I'd been telling you, and lo and behold, I find myself downing a glassful of roofies twenty hours later -"
"And so the fact that I didn't obey you is the reason why you -" Raúl stops, still staring daggers at Guti. "You're the one who chose to get caught up in this mess. You're the one who's jeopardised this case and your own damn life. You're the one who wanted your brass badge back, you're the one who hid everything from me. I'm not about to change how I'm doing things because you've got shit you want to keep secret. You're lucky I even -"
"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" Guti interrupts before Raúl can say what he really doesn't want to hear. "Or are you just following hunches? 'Oh, I think we should go to Messi's. Oh, I think someone was framing Casillas.' Raúl, I know these men better than you do, and I'm telling you, we shouldn't be here chasing shadows. We should be up at the school getting a hold of Pep and that kid and finding out, once and for all, what Henry has been up to. Or we should be going after Cannavaro, or -"
"I've already told you that we're going to do all of this," Raúl says, rolling his eyes. "But right now, I'm going to speak to Messi. If you're so devoutly against it, you can wait in the car."
Guti feels himself redden, Raúl having again made him feel like a child, so effortlessly as to be enraging more than merely humiliating. "I just question your priorities, that's all," he snaps. "Fine, let's do this, and do it quickly."
"We'd be doing it a lot quicker if you'd just shut up and followed me in the first place," Raúl fires back, tilting his head to survey the doors they're walking past.
"What are you planning on asking him?" Guti asks petulantly as Raúl looks up at the number over a dark wooden door and pushes it open.
"That's for me to know," Raúl replies, frustratingly. "You just keep quiet and try not to say anything counter-productive."
"Oh my God," Guti says, shaking his head in disbelief. "You don't actually know, do you? You don't have a clue what you're -"
The frown is wiped off of Guti's face as Raúl holds an arm out to silence him, and they find themselves staring at Fernando Gago wide eyes from where he's sitting by the bar, the rest of the room empty. Lionel, evidently surprised by Fernando's apparently sudden halt in conversation, turns around to look at him curiously, but his eyes meet those of the officers, his expression, inexplicably, relaxes.
"Shouldn't you be at school?" Raúl says. Guti is too surprised to notice his smile.
"Shouldn't you be looking for the killer?" Fernando replies smoothly, his cockiness returning swiftly. "Or have you already arrested Henry?" Raúl says nothing, and Fernando smiles. "That's why he wasn't at school yesterday, right? I heard talk. Something about a gun..." His smile disappears for the briefest of moments as he appears to be recollecting something. "I repeat; what are you doing here?" he throws back at Raúl.
"My job," Raúl replies, Guti only now noticing that he looks rather bemused. "Shouldn't you be doing yours?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Fernando shrugs. "Oxley was never my calling."
"No, no," Lionel pipes up, "he's either talking about Ramos or Rubén." His helpfulness is forced and mocking, and Fernando narrows his eyes at his facetiousness.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he spits at him, though he is quick to snap his head around in the officers' direction and maintain his smile.
"Getting you out of this mess," Lionel replies simply. "Don't worry, I have the detective's word that nothing will happen to you," he adds, looking at Raúl as though for confirmation. "Nothing much, anyway."
Guti looks over at Raúl, whose astonishing calm contrasts bluntly with Guti's own utter lack of comprehension. "What the fuck is going on?"
Raúl raises his eyebrows at Lionel. "Upstairs, did you say?" Lionel nods. "Guti, go upstairs and find a small room housing Rubén de la Red."
"What?" Guti gapes, completely taken aback. "What do you -"
"What are you doing?" Fernando exclaims at Lionel. "You call me over here, saying you want some kind of a truce, and this is what you -"
"Don't take it so personally, Fernando," Lionel says somewhat disparagingly. "This isn't about you."
"No? Then what are you playing at?"
"Guti, go," Raúl says.
"I'm not going anywhere until I find out what's going on," Guti says stubbornly, crossing his arms as though to indicate his refusal to move, his eyes darting from Raúl to Fernando to Lionel, trying desperately to understand what they do. "I want an -"
He is interrupted by Fernando, who goes flying off his bar stool and tries to run past the officers out of the pub, but Guti is too quick for him and throws out an arm to block his path. After a couple of seconds of clumsy wrestling from which Fernando was never going to emerge victorious, Guti holds his arms behind his back, panting a little, but throwing a look of deep incredulosity and anger in Raúl's direction. "What the fuck, seriously?" he gasps, his eyes wide as he looks at Raúl.
"Lionel here is immeasurably vested in the Union's destruction," Raúl replies, looking at Lionel as he talks. The boy smiles back, pleased with himself, as everyone in the room tries to figure him out, Raúl a little way ahead of the rest. "I got a call from him about twenty minutes ago, telling me that he had some very useful information for me. And that he had Fernando Gago."
"You dick," Fernando spits at Lionel, squirming a little in Guti's grasp. "What do you think you're doing?"
"What should have been done a long time ago - what Sergeant Hernández tried - and failed - to do," Lionel smiles. "Bringing that motherfucking Union down."
"What do I have to do with -"
"I told you, this isn't about you," Lionel says with some impatience. He looks at Raúl again. "I've got to say, I was disappointed that you didn't get all the hints I dropped. I thought you were supposed to be good at your job?" He shrugs. "I was the one who made the anonymous call, telling you to go to Ramos' house, telling you that he'd been keeping Rubén there. I told you that Cannavaro and Salgado were Brass. I told you that Henry was Brass - the biggest fucking clue of all!"
"Get to your point and get to it fast," Guti snaps.
"I'm in the wrong line of work," Lionel grins. "I'd be much better at your job than you are. Did you ever find out why Fernando here was suspended from school?" The officers say nothing, remembering Sergio telling them that Fernando had been caught trying to steal a car. "Some bullshit about a car, right? Wrong. He was caught in Henry's apartment, by the man himself. Stupid kid, didn't give himself enough time."
"Enough time for what?" Raúl asks shortly.
"You haven't figured it out yet?" Lionel tuts. "You should talk to Rubén. He might... illuminate things for you."
"What were you doing in Henry's apartment?" Guti hisses into Fernando's ear.
"I'm not saying anything," Fernando replies icily. "Why don't you tell them, though, Leo? They might offer you a job."
Lionel shrugs. "Well, luckily for you, I don't know the details. But I do know that you were there, and I know that one and one make two." He looks back at Raúl. "How's your math, officer? Because Rubén's got a problem, and I think you can solve it."
* * * * *
There was no wind, no rain, no footsteps trailing through the corridor to inject even the tiniest comfort into the echoed silence. Grunts were interspersed with gasps, pleasure and pain slicing the quiet with the kind of ugly gruffness that Rubén would forever come to associate with his first experience of sex.
His arms pinned by hands that refused to let go, Rubén could only cry out as he body was ripped apart, ripped open, sweat crawling down his back and down his forehead onto the worn Oxley carpet. He bit his lip, not knowing if it was bleeding, not knowing if he was bleeding elsewhere. There was only pain, which got sharper and sharper until he couldn't feel it anymore, and all that was left was a stretched numbness punctuated by a longing for tomorrow and the stabbing reminders of today that came with each of those grunts and gasps.
He closed his wet eyes, and felt his shuddering breath jerked out of him with each thrust, each push, each little tear of his spirit. He willed himself to sleep through it, to just hold out until the morning, to cling to that rapidly weakening promise of the morning. When he was pushed to his limit and it was all over, he was roughly turned over and a sob escaped his mouth as lips met his neck, and teeth ravaged skin. The last of his tears slid toward his hairline and the pain came back, dully but quickly.
He lay there as he felt the burning again, and he lowered a hand only to raise it and see his fingertips stained with a mix of blood and semen. Clothes were pulled on and threats were dripped out, sickly and arrogant, but Rubén barely heard it. What struck him was the overwhelming silence that enveloped them, the absence of wind, rain, footsteps. He heard only two voices, one silky and one crying.
The ceiling seemed to spin above him. He closed his eyes and trailed his sticky fingertips over his stomach, which trembled and crawled with a shamed, humiliated heat. He didn't watch as Thierry left the room. He could still smell him on his skin weeks later.
| Part 10 |
Part: 9 of 10
Characters: David Beckham, Martín Cáceres, Fabio Cannavaro, Iker Casillas, Royston Drenthe, Julien Faubert, Fernando Gago, Raúl González, Pep Guardiola, Thierry Henry, Guti Hernández, Xavi Hernández, Gonzalo Higuaín, Andrés Iniesta, Bojan Krkić, Lionel Messi, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Gerard Piqué, Carles Puyol, Sergio Ramos, Rubén de la Red, Michel Salgado, Miguel Torres. Not all characters appear in every chapter or in equal measure. Some characters' ages have been altered for the sake of coherence.
Genre: AU; murder mystery.
Rating: R
Warnings: Language, sex, drug use, and possibly distressing themes.
Summary: When corruption no longer shocks, drugs no longer numb, and darkness no longer soothes, men become desperate, reckless extremes of themselves. The secrets behind one man's life falling into another man's hands are revealed, exploited, and overlapped, and it falls to DCI Raúl González to trace the threads.
Disclaimer: One hundred percent fiction.
Notes: Endless apologies for the wait; exams and other such monsters are keeping me busy. But here it is, the second-last chapter.
Feedback > life. Constructive criticism and questions are very welcome.
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 |
Part Nine
A long day and unruly sleeping patterns see Raúl's eyes flitting hazily over the seven-thirty that his watch reads up at him. Guti buzzes with muted excitement beside him, looking as though he wants to sprint to the interview room but for having to keep pace with Raúl's languid stroll. The fluorescent lights cast a cold, clinical luminescence over the tiles that crack loudly with each of the officers' steps, and though the hallways are bare, distant rooms hum with unfamiliar night-time activity, junior constables up far past their bedtimes to rein in the rapidly spiralling web that is the Beckham case.
Having just left Xavi's office, it is the coroner's revelations that form the centrepiece of the officers' conversation.
"So, Henry hasn't touched his own gun in weeks," Raúl muses. "Makes sense. If you've got someone else's gun on you and you're about to shoot a man in the heart, why use your own?"
"But how did he get Casillas' gun?" Guti asks animatedly. "I mean, I know we're looking at a man who has no alibi, but Casillas doesn't either, and -"
"It doesn't matter how Henry got the gun - the whole point is that he had it in the first place. And keep it down," Raúl adds, more out of weariness than prudence.
"We can't just assume that Henry did this. There's still the small matter of a motive."
"I'm not assuming anything, thank you very much," Raúl says, throwing a sharp, defensive look in Guti's direction.
"You're acting like Henry is public enemy number one, completely forgetting that it's Casillas' gun that's missing the bullets found in Beckham's body, that Casillas is the one who owns the frickin' murder weapon -"
"You know, just because I didn't nod and say 'uh-huh' every time Xavi took a breath - desperately annoying, by the way - it does not mean that I wasn't paying attention," Raúl says coldly. "Did you listen to what he said about the prints on that gun?"
"Yes," Guti pouts. "What of it?"
"The fact that the prints were smudged, almost rubbed off on parts of the grip, suggests what, Guti?"
"That the gun was held by a gloved hand," Guti responds instantly. "But that's nothing new."
"Of course not," Raúl agrees. "No killer wants to leave their prints on the murder weapon. But the other reason why you'd wear a glove would be to -"
"Make sure the owner's prints aren't rubbed off," Guti finishes for him, frowning. "To make sure that Casillas' prints were left behind."
"Exactly," Raúl says in a perfunctory sort of way, jabbing his finger into mid-air as if to punctuate his point. "Which ties into what Xavi said about the glove being touched to the gun as little as possible - that the gun was held by a thumb and a couple of fingers at most. If Henry was the one holding it, he tried his hardest to make sure Casillas' fingerprints were identifiable."
"Well, this is all great," Guti says, looking wary, "but why would Henry want to frame Casillas?" He looks over at Raúl, who knows that the absence of any sort of theory relating to a motive is showing itself in the form of an unbecoming, stumped facial expression.
"I don't know," Raúl mumbles, frustrated. "But I think we should focus on what we know for sure, which is that Henry was in possession of the murder weapon and has no alibi." When Guti continues to hesitate, Raúl sighs. "Look, I've sent a couple of junior officers to bring Casillas in - I'm not leaving our bases uncovered. But right now, we're dealing with Henry. Don't forget what our boys found on him."
The key to Beckham's house that two constables had found buried in Thierry's trouser pocket upon his arrest - and about which Gonzalo had rather animatedly phoned Raúl a few minutes later - forms the focus of Raúl's thoughts, and Guti's too, he suspects, as he opens the door to the small interview room that they have finally reached.
Thierry's fingers tapping on the surface of the desk seem to leave a mark of ownership, of authority, as he speaks; they bear the kind of patronising impatience that ill befits a man whose left hand is cuffed to the table leg, whose freedom is tied up alongside it. To add insult to what already begins as an unfittingly uncomfortable, searching interview, Raúl's spirits snap in half when, face to face with the man whose arrest he has been hoping will mark the end of this messy case, Thierry calmly spills his airtight alibi.
"There was a Brass meeting that night," Thierry says, his voice soft and smooth. "Not many people showed up - it's as if they knew something more exciting was going down elsewhere." He smiles gently. "It was mainly the regulars - myself, Puyol, Torres, Guardiola. And -" His eyes flick across to Raúl's right-hand side. "Hernández here." He looks back at Raúl. "Last Monday night was his initiation. Gunless, yes, and missing a few witnesses, but the purpose of the meeting was met, and here we are, two Brass peas in a pod. Or we would be, if it had been a real initiation."
Raúl grudgingly glances over to his right to see Guti's cheeks darkening and his eyes glowering. "Is this true?"
Guti's nod is short and jerking. "I was told that there was a place opening up for me," he says more to the desk than to either of the other people in the room. "It was only the day after, when I was assigned to this case, that I realised it was because Beckham was about to be killed." He looks up at Raúl, whose fingers twitch as though they can sense the possibility of revelation dancing before them.
"Well, who told you that a place was opening up for you?" Raúl asks insistently.
Guti's blushes deeper, and he looks away again, his childlike shame reminiscent of that which he'd worn when he'd realised that he'd been robbed of a gun. "Union meetings are always announced by..."
"Anonymous notes," Thierry finishes for him, surveying him with interest. "Safe and convenient for everybody. Except you, I suppose," he says, looking at Raúl with a cruel sort of bemusement. "Now, do you have any other questions for me? Because the way I see it, you've run out of gas. I've got a very comfortable-looking inch-thick mattress waiting for me in that holding cell, and Lord knows I'm tired."
"Did Krkić keep you up last night?" Guti fires at him scornfully.
Thierry raises his eyebrows, amused. "I'm sure he's given you all the impression that he holds a lot of power over me."
"He's the reason why you're sitting here," Raúl says.
"No, the reason why I'm here is because of the dickhead who put Casillas' gun next to mine," Thierry counters firmly. "Just a tip, but if you've got fingerprints, a motive and no alibi, you've generally got your culprit. Or has Casillas won you over with his charm and chiselled features?"
"The likelihood that I'm going to believe any of your accusations is very slim," Raúl says, his tone just as hard. "Now, you'll cooperate with me, because what I believe is what counts. You obviously held a lot of sway over the Krkić boy. I want to know who else you've got under your thumb, and what you stand to gain from their submission."
Thierry laughs. "Maybe lesser folk succumb to your no-holes-barred interrogation technique, but it won't work on me," His smile quickly disappears and is replaced by a snarl. "Go on. Try to fire your questions at me."
"Let me guess," Raúl snaps, "you're saying nothing until your lawyer is present?"
Thierry scoffs. "That'd be Miguel Torres. I'd rather sit here alone than have that walking perma-tan representing me right now." Raúl feels Guti stiffen beside him, and Thierry smiles again. "Besides - I don't need some half-baked lawyer. My alibi's right here, after all," he says, his tone lilting, his eyes dancing over Guti's.
"What are you doing with Beckham's house key?" Raúl shoots back at him.
Thierry pauses for a moment, still looking at Guti, seemingly surprised. "Well, when someone leaves the Union before their time is up, we take necessary precautions - one of those precautions being a house key. As you well know, Hernández," he adds with a dangerous smile.
Guti turns to Raúl, fuming. "I think we're done here," he says, his voice low and shaking.
"Ooh," Thierry says, relishing every moment. "Did I touch a nerve?"
* * * * *
Miguel had contemplated making the short trip to Pep's office to do it face-to-face. But like countless times before, his courage had faltered and he now finds himself typing a gutless and unapologetic message into his phone.
'I'm out. You can do it yourself.'
Having kicked off his shoes, his socked feet twitch restlessly on his office floor beneath his desk, and he pours himself a drink to still his tension. He knows that he should be thinking about the Brass, about Beckham, about the role he has to play in keeping all of this hushed up. But the romantic in him is silenced by his disillusioned pragmatism, and he knows that it's too late now for all of these men to play innocent. He knows that anything he can do in the name of the Brass is futile, as the cracks in the flawless polish are beginning to show.
He thinks, instead, about the idea of a face-off between Iker and Guti in the police station. He thinks about Guti trying to undo Thierry. And as he feels his liquor leaving a familiar burn as it slides down the back of his throat, he thanks whoever there is to thank that it's not him wearing his poker face across the table from the man who once knew him inside out. He knows he wouldn't stand a chance.
He has braced himself for Pep to call him back, furiously spitting through the phone, demanding that Miguel keep his word. But the call never comes. He supposes that it doesn't make much of a difference whether Pep does it on his own from here on out; he knows everything that Miguel knows now.
Miguel downs the rest of his glass and pours another, having decided somewhat subconsiously that he's going to finish the whole bottle. His thoughts flick through memory books until they reach the weeks after he had taken Guti's gun and taken Guti's place, and he recalls himself sitting just here, just like this, clinging to Jack Daniels to drown the self-loathing and guilt that the blonde, like no other, had managed to incite in him. It's a sickening familiarity, and he selfishly wonders whether tomorrow morning it will all have disappeared - whether Guti's cold frame lying on his kitchen floor will take his face from Miguel's mind, will ease his regrets away. By the time the bottle is empty and his office is reduced to warm cream and brown blurs in the haze of his vision, he is hoping desperately that the morning will bring that salvation.
He tells himself that it's not a case of taking Guti away from the world that took him away first. But when the sun rises, he'll quietly admit that, really, it is.
* * * * *
Iker, who had been unsurprised to see the police show up at the door to his office, had come quietly. Julien had watched helplessly as Iker calmly allowed his wrists to sit in the constable's cuffs, and had given him some mundane instructions: turn off the lights, cancel his nine o'clock, make sure security get their cheques this week.
He is keenly aware of Raúl watching him quite carefully now, and of Guti watching Raúl, a triangle that remains open as Iker looks blankly down at the table, saying nothing out of turn. His mind wanders down brief paths, spending a few moments each wondering whether Fabio is somewhere safe, what David would make of all this, whether the officers have managed to get even a fragment of real, unconditional information out of Thierry. His wanderings don't linger too long, though, his mind too numb and framed by an uncharacteristic apathy. He dully supposes that the inside of a six-by-four cell would probably look no different to the cold emptiness of his apartment, his office, his life. It doesn't really matter now.
"Did you kill him?" Raúl's voice is too soft to jerk Iker's muddied thoughts from their maze, too smooth to elicit anything more than routine.
"No," Iker answers swiftly. "My gun has been missing for a while. For months now. I never really noticed until..." The picture of David's death hangs in the air as the three men in the room sit in silence for a few moments more.
"Why did you lie when I asked you about the Union?"
"That's what we do," Iker says, not really noticing himself shrug. "We lie about who we are, about what we do, about each other."
"Why wasn't your gun better protected?" Raúl asks, evidently striking items off his list of curiosities. "Shouldn't you have kept it in a safe? It's a valuable item, and damning to boot."
"I supposed I'd always figured that I didn't have to bother. I didn't ever think it'd get me into trouble. I just..." His voice trails away as Fabio crosses his thoughts again. "I trusted that nobody would be after it."
"You're assuming that I think somebody took it and planted it," Raúl points out. "Right now, all the road signs are pointing to you. You've got the motive, and the murder weapon has been confirmed to be yours. Add that to a nonexistent alibi..."
"I know," Iker says heavily. He raises his head to glance at Raúl shortly. "Listen, I'm innocent. I know things look bad for me right now, but I swear, I didn't do it. I - I loved David. I still do."
His words linger and his thoughts return to Fabio, who could never have had all of him but who had given himself up, so completely, always with the right intentions. Or perhaps they'd been the wrong intentions: to please Iker, to make Iker feel wanted and special again. Perhaps they'd cradled Iker in a false sense of comfort, in a security that he didn't deserve, making him feel invincible and protected from the realities of arrest warrants and meals of bread and water, and from the aftermath of the world he once shared with David, before the latter's world ended and Iker ended up alone.
He can't quite bear it anymore, being inside his own head like this, so he looks up and is surprised to see a trepidatious warmth in the way Raúl is looking at him - a reluctant, foolish kind of trust, a curiosity lined with some sort of inexplicable hope. As though he's able to read Iker's thoughts, he says, "I want to know if you ever lived with Beckham."
Iker raises his eyebrows. "We lived together for years, yes."
"Did you leave anything at his house?" Raúl asks the question with almost a hint of encouragement.
Iker frowns at him, confused, until he understands what Raúl understands, and, in the furthest distance of his consciousness, he feels his face whiten. "My gun."
* * * * *
The carpark is unusually crowded for the hour, parallel lines hidden by out-of-place cars whose owners fluster over paperwork under the station's roof. The chaos is almost reflected in the weather, stuffy and oppressive, and Raúl is relieved to slide into his car's driver's seat for the final time today, and turn on the humming air-conditioning that cools him, soothing and constant, in a bubble, away from the tangles and knots of the web of which he can't find the centre just yet.
He has sat, eyes-closed, head back, for a good minute, soaking up the steady calm that slowly reminds him of his fatigue and promises him a bed at home, when there is a tapping at his window. He doesn't jump; he isn't surprised by it after a day of shocks dragged out from behind Oxley's wooden doors and the cold plastic of interview room desks. He looks up to see Guti gazing down at him apologetically, and he winds down his window somewhat numbly.
"I don't have a ride home," Guti explains, the moonlight kissing his blonde and making Raúl look back down quickly. "I left my car at Oxley, and I've been driving around with you all day."
Raúl sighs and reaches for his seatbelt, pulling it over his body with tired fingers. "Say no more." He doesn't notice Guti's relieved smile as he straightens and makes his way over to the other side of the car.
They have barely made it to the end of the street, trees and buildings crawling past them as Raúl doesn't trust himself to drive too quickly at this time of night and with this man in his car, when Guti, restless in the passenger seat, can't keep it in any longer and gives in to the compulsion to speak.
"There are so many things that don't add up, huh? I mean, one suspect with an alibi, no motive, but a seriously fishy history."
"I meant it when I said 'say no more', you know," Raúl says, only half-seriously.
"Another suspect with no alibi, a clinical motive, but a mysterious hold over the detective investigating his backstory." Guti says, and Raúl can hear the grin in his voice.
"Do you not need sleep?"
"Speak for yourself," Guti replies. "You were a damn cold bitch with Henry in there. How is it that you're deadly when you should be yawning?"
Raúl rolls his eyes. "Flattery will get you nowhere."
"It got me here."
"Seriously, Guti," Raúl says, sharply now, "do not speak. Besides, I didn't get what I wanted out of Henry, anyway."
"How is that you know my address?"
Raúl throws him a look. "You'd think they'd have gotten me a brighter sergeant."
"Ah, Gonzalo and the spying, of course," Guti nods, before twisting in his seat to face Raúl more directly, a physical eagerness that hardens Raúl's frown. "I admit, I'm too exhausted to talk about that."
"Thank the Lord."
"I didn't pick you for a religious man," Guti says lightly. "But, in all seriousness, there's so much to discuss about this case. You can't possibly tell me that you've got this all figured out."
Raúl exhales heavily. "If I had it all figured out, I'd be signing forms right now and you wouldn't be in my car."
"Okay, so let's figure it out," Guti says insistently.
"No," Raúl says firmly as he makes a turn, and the craning of his head to check for oncoming traffic forces him to glance at Guti. "We're going to leave the case alone for the moment. You want to talk? Fine. Let's talk about you."
"Oh, shit," Guti mutters.
"You have no idea," Raúl says darkly. "I've been under the impression that you joined the Union to help us out, to help you with this case. To bring it down from the inside, etcetera, etcetera. And then," Raúl says loudly with a humourless laugh, "Thierry Henry, of all people, informs me that no, you'd decided to polish up your Brass before you even knew whose spot you'd be filling!"
"Well, I think we've established that Henry has a talent for striking people's Achilles heels at exactly the most inconvenient moment," Guti says dully, as Raúl slides the car to a stop before a red light.
"Why did you come back?"
"I can't -" Guti hesitates, clearly flustered as Raúl watches him with narrowed eyes. "It wasn't one reason that brought me back. There's no 'why' to it, you know?"
"I'm quite sure I don't."
"That light sure stays red for a long time," Guti says, squirming a little.
"There must have been something pulling you back," Raúl persists. "Just tell me. Look, you don't have any reason to hide this kind of thing from me anymore. You have an alibi."
"Oh, so you only trust me now?"
The light flashes green and Raúl hits the accelerator. "I know an incredibly scenic route to your place," he says casually. "I have ways of making this car-ride last hours."
"'Ve haff vays of makink you talk'," Guti sighs. "Well, it's what you just said," he says at last. "It pulled me back. There's something about it, about the Brass, that just, kind of... sucks you in." He inhales deeply. "I was always a huge sucker for the Brass," he says with a rush of breath, as though the words are relieved to be able to tumble out. "When I was at school, I was so bitter than I wasn't a part of it. I went around talking shit about it, saying it was because I didn't like what it stood for, but it was really just..."
"Envy," Raúl offers.
Guti sighs again. "And then - I got in. And the perks - oh, God, Raúl, the perks. You can't imagine how delicious it is to be one of them," he says with a feverish kind of breathlessness. "When I was a boy, it was all about money. About being able to afford shiny watches and shiny cars. But when we hit our final year of school, we realised that it was so much bigger than that. We could get into any college we wanted. We could do anything, be anything. Cannavaro slid into politics, Casillas into journalism - I mean, the most difficult paths became so easy. We didn't have to work for it like every other kid did. I can't even remember how many exams I flunked. And it -" He licks his lips. "It killed me a little, because I knew that I was smart and that I could do better. But - fuck, when you're seventeen and you're offered the life you want without having to lift a finger - I mean, wouldn't you take it?"
"I wouldn't know," Raúl says coldly. "I went to a public school with the commoners." He turns to smile sarcastically at Guti. "We didn't have a secret society to get us into university."
Guti blushes. "Well - that's how it should have been, I realised. The friends I'd had before I joined were all working their asses off and there I was, getting fucked and getting high, and getting a free ride. I felt like a dick. I couldn't look at people like that anymore, I couldn't look them in the eye."
"Torres."
"Torres." Guti is silent for a few moments as Raúl turns into the quieter streets of suburbia. "But look at him - he got sucked in, too. It's just human nature, I think. Dangle a carrot for long enough - or dangle a long enough carrot - and it's going to get devoured."
"Lovely imagery," Raúl says, wrinkling his nose. "So, that's your answer? You were simply 'sucked in' by the Union, to the point where, six long years after you abandoned them, they still had a hold over you?"
"I - I can't explain it," Guti says, sounding weary for the first time, matched by the darkening outdoors as the street lights begin to disappear behind dense trees. "The kind of money, power, influence that the Brass offers... I could either have been coming back to a cockroach-infested shoebox and struggling to pay off my motorbike, or I'd could have - this."
Raúl stops the car and turns off the engine, outside a handsome apartment block with a well-lit - and well-secured - entrance. "A doorman," he says incredulously. "You have a doorman."
"I told you," Guti mumbles, shrugging. "Perks."
"You joined the Union to have a doorman?"
"I joined the Union to have a better life, a life that was just waiting for me to claim it, without my having to really work for it," Guti counters. "To have the ability to buy what I wanted, live where I wanted, how I wanted. To have - freedom." He smiles. "And there's no need to point out the irony in that."
"You had people following you, turning up in your apartment when you were out, and you still wanted in? You saw Beckham die, and you didn't think to run? Your first instinct was 'Well, thank fuck I'm Brass'?"
"But that's exactly it!" Guti says earnestly. "All that shit happened because I left. Beckham was killed after he left. Card-carrying Brass members are safe, they're protected. Nothing happens to them, because they control everything. It's Brass members who set up the city's biggest security companies twenty years ago. It's Brass who controls elections, determines what people know and who they trust - and who they don't." He pauses for a while, and when he continues speaking again, it's softer, and slower. "You can see why, once you've tasted it, you can't really live any other way. The people who are in it will never give it up, not really. To choose not to be Brass is choosing to be powerless. And, let's be honest - what's more seductive than power? After all, maybe I wouldn't be so attracted to you if you weren't my senior," he adds.
Raúl is silent for a long while before he at last ventures to speak. "You should go."
"You should come," Guti smiles. His hand slides over to Raúl's side of the car and his fingers find Raúl's on his thigh. It's innocent enough, but Raúl flinches, and shifts his hand away by the tiniest fraction. "I'm sorry," Guti says, and Raúl glances up to see him blushing again. "I'm sorry," he repeats. "I shouldn't..."
"No, you shouldn't," Raúl says firmly but quietly.
"What I should do is leave," Guti says, a light self-deprecation finding its way into his voice again.
"I'd say so."
In the silence that follows, Raúl can't help but look up at Guti, who is staring back at him - not pushing his luck, and without determination, but with the kind of regret that Raúl supposes is his apology. "You know, I'm probably not going to get any sleep tonight," Guti says.
"Me neither," Raúl replies honestly, looking ahead through the windscreen again. "But of all the ideas you've ever had, the one in your head right now is probably your worst yet."
Guti's laugh is so gentle as to be little more than a breath. "I'll go."
And he slowly unbuckles his seatbelt, opens the passenger-side door, and gets out of the car. Raúl doesn't watch him cross the road and open the door to the entrance. He sits still for a while, hating himself for trying to remember what it felt like to have Guti's hand on his, before he decides to head home.
* * * * *
"I figured a morning without coffee is a morning better slept through," Gonzalo says with a shrug after Raúl has walked in and raised his eyebrows at the sight of a extra large cup on his desk.
"Did you get any rest last night?" Raúl asks, flicking through files on the end of his desk, none of which have anything to do with the three men who slept at the station overnight in holding cells, and therefore none of which interest him in the least.
"Not a lot," Gonzalo admits, though he looks bright enough. "But I figured you'd get this all sorted by this evening, and until then, there's caffeine."
Raúl purses his lips upon hearing of Gonzalo's faith in him. By this evening? Raúl thinks dully. I'd take solving it by the end of the year.
"Listen, find the address of a Martín Cáceres for me, will you? I'm going to take another trip up to the school and he'll probably be there, but just in case..."
"No problem, sir, I'll look it up and send you a message once I've got it."
Raúl nods his thanks. "Is Guti here yet?"
"It's seven in the morning," Gonzalo replies. "Of course he isn't." He hesitates before smiling. "I thought he'd be with you, though. I saw him getting into your car last night."
Raúl is spared having to respond when Gonzalo's phone rings, and the constable picks it up reluctantly. Raúl watches as his face makes the familiar transition into surprise and then a faint, shy excitement, and Gonzalo hangs up and says, "Ruud van Nistelrooy is awake."
Raúl almost forgets to grab his coffee as he hurriedly whisks himself out of the station and into his car, but as he recalls it at the last second, he catches Gonzalo's smile.
His drive to the hospital is quick and he catches himself sailing past it, having missed the turn-off for the parking lot in his rush. After a gruelling twenty-minute search for a parking spot ("Jesus, this is a hospital; people are dying in there, get a fucking move on!"), he at last enters, speaks a little too waspishly to the lady at the front desk, and finds himself looking down at a Ruud van Nistelrooy far paler and far weaker-looking that the one who had claimed to be 'just a friend' of Beckham's when Raúl had first met him, and when Guti had claimed that this was his first encounter with him, too. Ruud looks up at him, his spit-soaked lips trembling a little with the effort of speaking, his eyes circled, and his speech interrupted by sudden and violent coughs, retching between rasping breaths.
* * * * *
Ruud's first instinct had been to call someone - anyone. Thierry had immediately sprung to mind, but the thought of even mentioning this to him had made him shudder somewhat. He had, instead, called David back, begging him to reconsider. David, as expected, had been cold and detached over the phone. Something like "it's for your own good" distantly resonated in Ruud's frantic mind before he gave up and put the phone down, panicking, seconds away from reaching for a syringe.
He supposed that David had been doing his duty by giving him money - his duty as a friend, as Brass, by giving him a few grand a month to pay for water, gas, a basic standard of living. But his care and attention had stopped there, hovering comfortably over the layer of superficiality that seemed to be David's limit. It was like prison wardens giving out three scrappy meals a day to the inmates; ticking boxes, keeping themselves absolved.
David had seen Ruud's hands shaking. He could see his stamina falling away, his muscle mass fading into jutting bones and sallow skin. He'd watched him destroy himself, and he helped him do it, from a distance and with clouds of responsibility skipping past him. A monthly cheque in Ruud's mailbox, right in front of an overgrown lawn and lights that gave out every few months, as Ruud neglected his electricity bills, was all that Ruud got from him. But, as far as David had been concerned, he was giving Ruud the means to straighten out his life. It was Ruud's fault that he'd fucked it up instead.
As he lay on his bed, his head slipping off his pillow as his satiated body sucked up relief, Ruud supposed that at least David hadn't given up on him. He was merely holding back. It had turned into a cheque every three months, which was better than nothing, but worse than what Ruud had come to rely upon. To begin with, Ruud took it gladly, greedily and gratefully. But then it hit March, and he began to starve.
He found himself with nothing left, and he was craving. And it hit a point where, as soon as that cheque appeared in the box that, for weeks, he tetchily watched from the hidden side of his curtains, he dived overboard. A few months later, and a particularly desperate wait met by gluttonous consolation saw him sprawled on his floor, the darkness of outside shadowing his failing body as his old friend Andrés stood over him and shakily dialed for an ambulance. It was then that David had decided to cut him off altogether, decided that Ruud was a lost cause. And, still shaking from stomach-pumping and needles, he finally dialed Thierry's number.
A part of him suspected that Thierry enjoyed watching his downfall, watching him sink further and further into slovenly mediocrity, the potential of his adolescence fading into a pathetic adulthood that hid him away from his friends, family - anyone who would judge him. The only place that coerced his presence was the hidden bowels of Oxley, where the Brass promised him security, and where Thierry promised him money. That was enough for Ruud. What Thierry was doing to get that money was of no concern to him. He didn't notice the way in which Fabio shirked Thierry's presence, the way Gerard balked at the mention of his name. He had his salvation, and far be it for him to question its intentions.
When he woke up this morning, a year later, in a similarly green-hued, plastic-smelling room with empty shelves that, laughably, expected flowers, Ruud's first thought was of David, and what David would do if he was alive to see him like this. He imagined a detached stare, swimming with a mix of vague pity and a lack of surprise, and probably relief at the fact that he, at least, couldn't be held accountable for what Ruud has become, and failed to become. And Ruud decided that the time had come to spare himself the same burden of responsibility, and go to sleep tonight with a clear conscience, his regrets and self-loathing poured out in a confession that Raúl could use, and that has had Ruud locked up for far too long.
* * * * *
The sun is high, godlike, bringing forth beads of sweat on the back of Raúl's neck as he gratefully climbs into his car. As he'd walked back to the carpark from the hospital building, he had tried - twice - to call Guti, to no avail. The man wasn't picking up his phone. After reasurring Gonzalo that yes, he had gotten his message and no, he wasn't about to tell him off, he asked the junior constable whether Guti had yet turned up to the office. That the answer had been no, and that midday is now about to tick over, sees Raúl driving back over to Guti's apartment with a rather uncharacteristic disregard for the speed limits, a disparaging lecture being rehearsed in his head.
In that same conversation, he had told Gonzalo to make sure as many men as possible were on the lookout for Fabio Cannavaro, who can't have gone too far with an election just around the corner. The callous, unthinking way in which Ruud had mentioned him had been a mention all the same, and Raúl, perhaps in his naïve will to believe in Iker, is determined to keep hold of the thread that could link Fabio to that gun, which surely could only have made its way from David's house to Thierry's apartment without Iker knowing if those closest to Iker had had something to do with it. And Fabio is the starting point - though, given how intertwined everything is coming to be, Raúl finds himself in the quite foreign state of self-doubt.
Thierry, sat in his tiny cell at the police station, is most probably wearing that unwavering smugness that makes it feel more as though everyone in a uniform is being held prisoner by his power, by his unwillingness to relinquish what he knows and holds safe. He seems to be the centre of all of this - or perhaps its just his sublime confidence and sense of control that is leading Raúl to think so. But there is no dictator without followers, and where the other Union members fit onto the map that spins around Thierry is what Raúl needs to think about. He needs to think about Fabio, and Pep, and probably about Miguel and Carles Puyol and Sergio Ramos. But he pulls up outside Guti's apartment building and is only thinking about him.
In a way, he's unsurprised that Guti would flake out on him. In a way, he expects to open the door and see empty drawers and cupboards, and only the whiff of wheeled-out suitcases left behind. His distrust lies open and exposed and for a few, hot-blooded moments, he feels foolish and betrayed, but he pushes it aside and wills himself to assume the best, to give Guti the benefit of the doubt. After last night, surely Guti wouldn't abandon him now. Surely he was telling the truth.
Raúl realises how silly his motherly cajoling sounds in his head when he turns the doorknob after his knocks go unanswered and the door is unlocked, and he sees all of Guti's things in place on shelves and on tables, and his surging anger comes back in full-force.
"Guti!" he hollers, heading first to what looks like the bedroom, where he expects to find Guti sleeping through his alarm clock and being generally useless at the time when Raúl needs him the most. He isn't there, and Raúl keeps calling his name. It's only when he stops and slams his hand onto the kitchen counter that he sees an open bottle of milk and a smashed glass on the tiles, and he falls into a shocked silence to hear Guti's very soft voice calling at him from somewhere near the back of the apartment.
He suspects that hands and knees had shaken against the floor as Guti had thrown up into the toilet bowl as the blonde, shirtless, now lies somewhat slumped against the wall, looking as though he has just woken up.
"Fuck, I'm glad you're here," he smiles weakly up at Raúl. "As soon as I felt my body giving out, I thought I might not get up again."
"What are you talking about?" Raúl frowns, scrunching up his nose at the lingering smell of vomit in the air. "What happened? Have you been drinking?"
"Ha," Guti chuckles, shakily using an arm to lever himself up to a more dignified position - one in which his legs are no longer sprawled, exposing unbecoming stains on his navy pyjama bottoms. "You could say that. Uh - give me a hand?"
Raúl grudgingly reaches out and pulls Guti up, glaring at him with as much ferocity as he can muster, though he's surprised to feel that Guti's hand is weak, shaking and clammy, and as Guti's smile disappears, he very faintly regrets not exposing even a fraction of his concern. "What happened? I've been calling you, I went to see van Nistelrooy and we're supposed to be on our way to the school but you haven't been -"
"Someone got in here," Guti interrupts, looking lightheaded and throwing an arm out to the wall so that he can steady himself once more, Raúl having let go as soon as he was vertical.
The way in which Guti sways as he speaks, swallowing dryly and trying hard to focus his eyes as he looks at Raúl, makes Raúl's pulse trip over itself a little. "Wh-what do you mean?"
"They - they put some kind of drug, a sedative or something, in my -"
"In your?" Raúl asks urgently.
"In the milk," Guti mumbles, his eyes dropping. "It was Miguel," he adds softly. He looks up again, and the self-deprecation has been joined by the childlike shame that Raúl will only silently admit that he's seen too much of lately. "He's the only one who knows that..." He takes a deep breath, and the small, wry smile returns. "Ever since I was a kid, I've drunk a glass of milk every morning. Without fail. And he's the only one who could have known that, and thought to go straight for the milk."
He pauses, and Raúl doesn't quite know what combination of hard disapproval and forgiving compassion he should wear given that the former is probably - possibly - no longer warranted. But the fact that he's hesitating at all stops him before he lets his guard all the way down, visibly down, and he says nothing, not sure what he's hearing or believing.
"I felt my whole body burning," Guti continues, his weak voice bouncing off the bathroom's tiles. "That same feeling you get when you've drunk too much and you start to tip over the edge, and you know it's just a matter of minutes before you start throwing up?" Raúl reluctantly nods. "And I ran to the bathroom and downed a capful of mouthwash to bring it all up, and, God, I just hoped my liver and kidneys and shit would be okay when I woke up. I just hoped I'd wake up."
Raúl looks at him quite hard for a while, not really knowing whether he's sizing Guti up or just taking it all in. "We have a lot of work to do today," he hears himself say clinically. "Have a shower and meet me at the station in an hour. Get some food on your way in - don't eat anything from your kitchen."
"I don't plan to," Guti says with a humourless laugh.
"Get a cab. I don't think you're okay to drive, but I -" He hesitates. "If you want, I can do it alone." When Guti frowns at him, he feels his cheeks redden. "I don't know, you might need the hospital. No, you should go to the hospital, you don't know what kind of -"
"I'm fine," Guti says firmly, though his dark circles and shaking fingers betray him. "I'll see you in an hour."
Raúl shrugs and quickly turns away. He stops just after he leaves the bathroom. "I'll take the milk bottle and get it tested at the lab."
"Raúl -" Before Raúl has time to twitch away instinctively, Guti's hand is on his arm. "I'm really sorry. I know - I know you didn't want me to jeopardise the case, and I swear, if I'd known -"
Raúl shakes his head. "I'm just sorry that you're caught up in all this." He catches himself just as Guti's expression begins to wear a little too much gratitude. "It makes this investigation a lot more time-consuming."
* * * * *
Guti's mind has been ticking over since Raúl left his apartment. He could see the doubt that Raúl wears like a shield, and he needs to wear it down again - that is if he'd ever managed to get past it in the first place. He's sure that he's caught glimmers of trust, of warmth, in his curtness, in his hardness. He's convinced himself that it's that faint degree of affection that dragged Raúl to his apartment this morning; surely anger and impatience would have seen him go straight to the school, probably with a phonecall to Gonzalo to make sure Guti was taken off the case?
The remnants of the drug swirl around with the adrenaline that keeps Guti hyper-focused on his theories, compounding with each blurry memory of the night before and swelling in intricacy as his head races forward to meet the day ahead before it unfolds. He figures that they should go after Fabio, given that Iker's gun can't have traveled to Thierry's kitchen cabinet of its own accord - though Guti refuses to let go of his reservations where Iker is concerned.
But while he's glad to see Iker in a cell for the time being, Guti's relief multiplies at the thought of Thierry being behind bars. As he races toward the station, a picture forms in his head of the threads that fan out from Thierry at their centre, and something - instinct, maybe - tells him that those are the ones to trace. He's seen the way that the Brass look at Thierry, how they act around him - there's a fear there that didn't exist ten years ago, that suggests that the innocence he's professed isn't quite so pure. Guti remembers him as a harmless, somewhat gormless teenager, but the icy confidence and self-satisfaction in those eyes last night didn't belong to someone who had accidentally stumbled across the murder weapon in his tea cupboard.
Guti locks his car and almost sprints through the front doors of the station. Raúl is nodding as he holds his desk phone to his ear, and pulls a face after taking a sip of his coffee. He mutters something about 'being there soon' and 'keeping him there' before he hangs up, and the first words Guti says to him are "I think we should go and talk to Bojan Krkić about Henry, about everything that Henry might know. I still think he's the one we should be focusing on. I mean, the murder weapon was in his possession, after all, along with a key to - well, you know all this."
Raúl merely raises his eyebrows, still looking at the papers in his hand. "I do indeed. I've already arranged a meeting with the boy at the school in an hour's time for that very purpose," he says in his usual drawl. "We're going to talk to Martín Cáceres and Fernando Gago to see what they've found out about the Union from Ramos. Should have done that yesterday, but alas, guns in Henry's apartment and whatnot," he shrugs lazily. "I've also had a couple of men go and round up Miguel Torres for questioning, as it's been confirmed that a very high concentration of flunitrazepam, or rohypnol, was found in that milk bottle of yours. Had you drunk more than a sip, you'd definitely be in hospital." He finally looks up, and frowns as he does so, his expression now wholly and mercilessly cold. "You don't look great, though. Did you eat?"
And just like that, Raúl has made Guti feel small again.
"You make sure to get your car from Oxley once we're done there," Raúl orders as they make their way back to the parking lot and he reaches for his car keys. "Though maybe we should find you another one," he adds as an afterthought. "Someone might have cut your brakes or something. But Lord knows I'm sick of you being in my car."
"Oh, nice." Guti rolls his eyes and sighs as he climbs into the passenger seat of Raúl's car. "It's always lose-lose with you, isn't it?"
"There's nothing to be won here," Raúl says smugly back.
Guti despises the silence that fills the car on the way to Oxley, as they pass the lunchtime bustle of the white-collar world, their caffeinated chatter seeming so warm and proactive relative to the cold war between the officers. He supposes he should be glad that he's in the car at all, but as the minutes clock over and his characteristic impatience grows, he wonders why he's bothering being so damn timid when the only mistake he's made was not to go thirsty this morning. But he glances over at Raúl and remembers yesterday morning, when Raúl yelled through his humiliation about all the secrets Guti has been keeping, and he remains quiet.
But when Raúl turns into the centre of the city and the domineering presence of the High Court makes its way into their line of sight, he says something unexpected.
"Hang on," he says. "Messi's place is here."
Guti turns to look at him for a split-second. "You want to talk to him?"
"Indeed I do," Raúl affirms, unbuckling his seatbelt.
"Wait - why?" Guti glances at the clock in the car.
"Because," Raúl turns and smiles, "I want to."
Guti frowns, and for a brief moment, the question of whether all the rohypnol has exited his system crosses his mind. "Raúl," he says, trying to sound like the one in control. "There's less than a couple of hours before school ends - can we do this later?"
"No, we can't. I have a feeling we're going to find something useful here. He knows a lot more than you gave him credit for a week ago." Raúl purses his lips and his eyes flicker toward the right-hand side of the street that houses the bar. "He told me about the guns, you know."
"The guns?"
"After we saw Xavi the first time, and he told us what kind of gun we were after, I came here and spoke to Messi," Raúl explains. "And he told me what you didn't tell me about the guns - about the Union having guns."
"He knows about the guns?"
"He knows about the fucking guns."
Guti is flummoxed for a moment and Raúl takes the opportunity to parallel-park the car and get out, Guti following suit behind him while muttering, under his breath, about everybody taking him for a damn fool.
"What are you even planning on asking him?" Guti asks, flustered, once he's caught up to Raúl. "Do you even have a plan? I don't like this rushing-into-things-without-a-plan nonsense. It doesn't seem very..."
"Planned?" Raúl sighs and turns to look at Guti once they've hit the shady part of the sidewalk. "Look, this isn't how I like to do things, either. I like my work to be structured and clean. I like my discoveries documentable and linear, one thing leading to another. I don't like this mess. I don't like this whole fucking hurrah, but when you're dealing with a motherfucking secret society - emphasis on the word 'secret' - you're generally not going to get a nice and easy -"
"I know, I know this," Guti interrupts in a groaning sort of a way. "I just - surely we should be up at the school, talking to people whom we know have something to do with the guys we've locked up. Because if we've arrested the wrong people, turning up here and ringing everybody's alarm bells isn't going to get us any closer to finding out who did this."
"Look, I'm in charge here," Raúl says, "and my experience has taught me that -"
"Oh, come on," Guti can't help but scoff. "Don't play that card on me. I'm the one who got fucking poisoned this morning, and it's because you didn't fucking listen to me yesterday because you think you're the man in charge -"
"Yesterday? What the hell are you on about, how is any of this my fault?" Raúl glares at him.
"I told you not to mention the Union to Pep, but you did, you revealed what I'd been telling you, and lo and behold, I find myself downing a glassful of roofies twenty hours later -"
"And so the fact that I didn't obey you is the reason why you -" Raúl stops, still staring daggers at Guti. "You're the one who chose to get caught up in this mess. You're the one who's jeopardised this case and your own damn life. You're the one who wanted your brass badge back, you're the one who hid everything from me. I'm not about to change how I'm doing things because you've got shit you want to keep secret. You're lucky I even -"
"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" Guti interrupts before Raúl can say what he really doesn't want to hear. "Or are you just following hunches? 'Oh, I think we should go to Messi's. Oh, I think someone was framing Casillas.' Raúl, I know these men better than you do, and I'm telling you, we shouldn't be here chasing shadows. We should be up at the school getting a hold of Pep and that kid and finding out, once and for all, what Henry has been up to. Or we should be going after Cannavaro, or -"
"I've already told you that we're going to do all of this," Raúl says, rolling his eyes. "But right now, I'm going to speak to Messi. If you're so devoutly against it, you can wait in the car."
Guti feels himself redden, Raúl having again made him feel like a child, so effortlessly as to be enraging more than merely humiliating. "I just question your priorities, that's all," he snaps. "Fine, let's do this, and do it quickly."
"We'd be doing it a lot quicker if you'd just shut up and followed me in the first place," Raúl fires back, tilting his head to survey the doors they're walking past.
"What are you planning on asking him?" Guti asks petulantly as Raúl looks up at the number over a dark wooden door and pushes it open.
"That's for me to know," Raúl replies, frustratingly. "You just keep quiet and try not to say anything counter-productive."
"Oh my God," Guti says, shaking his head in disbelief. "You don't actually know, do you? You don't have a clue what you're -"
The frown is wiped off of Guti's face as Raúl holds an arm out to silence him, and they find themselves staring at Fernando Gago wide eyes from where he's sitting by the bar, the rest of the room empty. Lionel, evidently surprised by Fernando's apparently sudden halt in conversation, turns around to look at him curiously, but his eyes meet those of the officers, his expression, inexplicably, relaxes.
"Shouldn't you be at school?" Raúl says. Guti is too surprised to notice his smile.
"Shouldn't you be looking for the killer?" Fernando replies smoothly, his cockiness returning swiftly. "Or have you already arrested Henry?" Raúl says nothing, and Fernando smiles. "That's why he wasn't at school yesterday, right? I heard talk. Something about a gun..." His smile disappears for the briefest of moments as he appears to be recollecting something. "I repeat; what are you doing here?" he throws back at Raúl.
"My job," Raúl replies, Guti only now noticing that he looks rather bemused. "Shouldn't you be doing yours?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Fernando shrugs. "Oxley was never my calling."
"No, no," Lionel pipes up, "he's either talking about Ramos or Rubén." His helpfulness is forced and mocking, and Fernando narrows his eyes at his facetiousness.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he spits at him, though he is quick to snap his head around in the officers' direction and maintain his smile.
"Getting you out of this mess," Lionel replies simply. "Don't worry, I have the detective's word that nothing will happen to you," he adds, looking at Raúl as though for confirmation. "Nothing much, anyway."
Guti looks over at Raúl, whose astonishing calm contrasts bluntly with Guti's own utter lack of comprehension. "What the fuck is going on?"
Raúl raises his eyebrows at Lionel. "Upstairs, did you say?" Lionel nods. "Guti, go upstairs and find a small room housing Rubén de la Red."
"What?" Guti gapes, completely taken aback. "What do you -"
"What are you doing?" Fernando exclaims at Lionel. "You call me over here, saying you want some kind of a truce, and this is what you -"
"Don't take it so personally, Fernando," Lionel says somewhat disparagingly. "This isn't about you."
"No? Then what are you playing at?"
"Guti, go," Raúl says.
"I'm not going anywhere until I find out what's going on," Guti says stubbornly, crossing his arms as though to indicate his refusal to move, his eyes darting from Raúl to Fernando to Lionel, trying desperately to understand what they do. "I want an -"
He is interrupted by Fernando, who goes flying off his bar stool and tries to run past the officers out of the pub, but Guti is too quick for him and throws out an arm to block his path. After a couple of seconds of clumsy wrestling from which Fernando was never going to emerge victorious, Guti holds his arms behind his back, panting a little, but throwing a look of deep incredulosity and anger in Raúl's direction. "What the fuck, seriously?" he gasps, his eyes wide as he looks at Raúl.
"Lionel here is immeasurably vested in the Union's destruction," Raúl replies, looking at Lionel as he talks. The boy smiles back, pleased with himself, as everyone in the room tries to figure him out, Raúl a little way ahead of the rest. "I got a call from him about twenty minutes ago, telling me that he had some very useful information for me. And that he had Fernando Gago."
"You dick," Fernando spits at Lionel, squirming a little in Guti's grasp. "What do you think you're doing?"
"What should have been done a long time ago - what Sergeant Hernández tried - and failed - to do," Lionel smiles. "Bringing that motherfucking Union down."
"What do I have to do with -"
"I told you, this isn't about you," Lionel says with some impatience. He looks at Raúl again. "I've got to say, I was disappointed that you didn't get all the hints I dropped. I thought you were supposed to be good at your job?" He shrugs. "I was the one who made the anonymous call, telling you to go to Ramos' house, telling you that he'd been keeping Rubén there. I told you that Cannavaro and Salgado were Brass. I told you that Henry was Brass - the biggest fucking clue of all!"
"Get to your point and get to it fast," Guti snaps.
"I'm in the wrong line of work," Lionel grins. "I'd be much better at your job than you are. Did you ever find out why Fernando here was suspended from school?" The officers say nothing, remembering Sergio telling them that Fernando had been caught trying to steal a car. "Some bullshit about a car, right? Wrong. He was caught in Henry's apartment, by the man himself. Stupid kid, didn't give himself enough time."
"Enough time for what?" Raúl asks shortly.
"You haven't figured it out yet?" Lionel tuts. "You should talk to Rubén. He might... illuminate things for you."
"What were you doing in Henry's apartment?" Guti hisses into Fernando's ear.
"I'm not saying anything," Fernando replies icily. "Why don't you tell them, though, Leo? They might offer you a job."
Lionel shrugs. "Well, luckily for you, I don't know the details. But I do know that you were there, and I know that one and one make two." He looks back at Raúl. "How's your math, officer? Because Rubén's got a problem, and I think you can solve it."
* * * * *
There was no wind, no rain, no footsteps trailing through the corridor to inject even the tiniest comfort into the echoed silence. Grunts were interspersed with gasps, pleasure and pain slicing the quiet with the kind of ugly gruffness that Rubén would forever come to associate with his first experience of sex.
His arms pinned by hands that refused to let go, Rubén could only cry out as he body was ripped apart, ripped open, sweat crawling down his back and down his forehead onto the worn Oxley carpet. He bit his lip, not knowing if it was bleeding, not knowing if he was bleeding elsewhere. There was only pain, which got sharper and sharper until he couldn't feel it anymore, and all that was left was a stretched numbness punctuated by a longing for tomorrow and the stabbing reminders of today that came with each of those grunts and gasps.
He closed his wet eyes, and felt his shuddering breath jerked out of him with each thrust, each push, each little tear of his spirit. He willed himself to sleep through it, to just hold out until the morning, to cling to that rapidly weakening promise of the morning. When he was pushed to his limit and it was all over, he was roughly turned over and a sob escaped his mouth as lips met his neck, and teeth ravaged skin. The last of his tears slid toward his hairline and the pain came back, dully but quickly.
He lay there as he felt the burning again, and he lowered a hand only to raise it and see his fingertips stained with a mix of blood and semen. Clothes were pulled on and threats were dripped out, sickly and arrogant, but Rubén barely heard it. What struck him was the overwhelming silence that enveloped them, the absence of wind, rain, footsteps. He heard only two voices, one silky and one crying.
The ceiling seemed to spin above him. He closed his eyes and trailed his sticky fingertips over his stomach, which trembled and crawled with a shamed, humiliated heat. He didn't watch as Thierry left the room. He could still smell him on his skin weeks later.
| Part 10 |