Fic: The Catalan Opening, Part II (Fútbol, gen/various)
Title: The Catalan Opening, Part II
Fandom: Fútbol
Pairing: Puyol-centric gen with a large side of slash, featuring the Barça boys and their friends and rivals.
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~5000 this chapter (~9700 so far)
Summary: AU cop dramedy. Police Chief Carles Puyol hunts for a killer and, in the process of doing so, saves his own life. A very loose interpretation of the "Piqué cheers Puyi up" prompt on the football kink meme.
Disclaimer: Lies.
< Part I
Piqué's giant backpack was almost as tall as he was. It took up the entire left seat at the back, and smelled vaguely of laundromat but mostly of unwashed clothing. Victor, smug and relaxed in the front passenger seat, was clearly pleased about being as far away from it as possible, while Carles, hoist by his own petard, sat behind him and next to Piqué. The hitchhiker was squished in the centre with his knees practically up to his ears and his large feet stuck underneath the front seats on both sides. His right arm was wedged snugly against Carles's left side, and his elbow nudged Carles in the ribs every time they went over a bump in the road, which made him glance over instinctively to see what the man wanted, only to be given an inquiring look in return.
“What?” Piqué said, about the fifth or sixth time this occurred.
Carles thought about saying, “You keep elbowing me in the ribs.” But then Piqué would (presumably) try to shift away when there was nowhere to shift, and Victor would wake up just to glare at the poor kid in the rear-view mirror, as if a heart attack could be triggered by nudging. So instead he said, inanely, “Er, so, any plans for when you get back to Barcelona? Must be nice to go home after spending so long away.”
Villa snorted.
Fuck off, I'm just being polite, Carles thought. But Piqué's face lit up in an oversized grin. “Man, the first thing I'm gonna do has got to be dinner and beer at Tapaç 24. They have this Iberian ham bikini that's, like, nearly better than sex. You know Tapaç 24, right?”
“No,” Carles said.
“You don't know Tapaç 24,” Piqué repeated slowly, looking absolutely appalled. “I thought everyone knew it. Off the Passeig de Gràcia, near the big fountain? Man, I gotta take you some time.”
“No thanks, I'm on a diet.”
“Jamón ibérico and black truffles, man,” Piqué said, undeterred, “on cheesy, delicious, crispy white bread. Better than sex!”
“I'll take the sex, though,” Carles muttered. (“Hear, hear!” Villa said.)
Piqué laughed loudly, and then elbowed him, this time on purpose. “That can be arranged too!”
“Listen,” Piqué turned to him as they crossed the city limits, “I've been thinking. You know how on those cop shows they get an artist to draw a picture of what the suspect looks like?”
“A facial composite, yes,” Carles said warily. “We use Identi-kit these days, though. Computers.”
“Nice,” Piqué said. “I was thinking we could make one for the guy in Perpignan.”
“You said you didn't see him do anything.”
“No-oo,” Pique admitted, “but he did look pretty shifty.”
“We can't put an APB on someone for 'looking shifty',” Carles said, crossing his arms in exasperation and turning to stare out the window. The sky was pinking; Leo would be in bed before he got home. “If we arrested people for looking shifty we'd be out of cells in five minutes flat.”
“Oh right, right. Of course.”
But he sounded disappointed, so Carles said, as patiently as he could, “It's good of you to offer, though. And hey, if any evidence turns up that this guy you saw has something to do with the case, you can be sure we'll bring you in.”
“Or if no evidence turns up,” Villa put in sardonically. “Which, given our luck...”
It was fully dawn by the time they arrived in the parking lot of the Eixample comissaria. Most of the lights were out in the building - just the die-hard night owls and a couple of mossos stopping in for a coffee before heading out on morning patrol. Villa killed the engine and stretched out his spine with an alarming popping sound. Then he reached across the centre console and flicked his partner in the ear. “Wake up, you lazy bastard. We're here.”
The three passengers tumbled out onto the kerb, Piqué dragging his backpack behind him.
“I'm in no shape to drive,” Victor yawned. “Think I'm gonna crash in the office, or I won't make it in in the morning.”
“It is morning. Besides, the drug charges will hold them for now,” Carles reminded him. “Go home. Take a shower. Sleep. Then come back in the afternoon and we'll see where we're at.”
Victor looked mulish, but then shook his head and gave in. He ambled off in the direction of his vehicle, while Carles headed to the Reserved--Executive section of the parking lot for his distinctly un-executive '99 SEAT Ibiza.
He was halfway into the driver's seat before he realised he'd been followed.
“Er, hi,” said Piqué, with a sheepish little wave.
“Hello,” Carles said courteously. It was either that, or strangle himself with his hair. His mama would be proud.
“Right, so,” the man said, trotting around the front of the car and bending over so that his big, beseeching face was directly in Carles's line of sight. “It's like this. You know how I told my father I didn't need his money, and all that? So I can't go home, obviously, and I don't have the cash for a hotel. So I was thinking - could I sleep on your couch for the night?”
Carles put his head in his hands. He looked up. Took a breath. Imagined a firm, “No. Absolutely not. You're not a child, I'm not your guardian, there's no space in my flat, and I am off duty, off duty! Does that mean nothing to this universe?”
Then he dropped his head again. “Fine,” he sighed into the steering wheel.
“Aw, thanks, man!” Piqué exclaimed. There was a soft whump as the backpack was thrust onto the back seat, and then a second, longer whump as its owner compressed himself into the car.
“Okay, I'm all set,” his new houseguest announced. “Here we go!”
Carles's apartment was both spartan and messy, which, when he thought closely about it, was really quite a feat. They had not had a coat stand since the old one had been broken, so Piqué put his hat on the coffee table after relocating the remains of a kebab and three bottles of cola. The couch itself was devoid of cushions, and was covered instead with such diverse publications as Jaque and the World of Warcraft Revista Oficial, the latter of which featured a purple, large-breasted lady on the cover.
“Those must be Leo's,” Carles said faintly, too tired to be properly embarrassed. Leo was Agnès's step-kid from her first marriage. He'd stayed with Carles when she'd left him, and it wasn't like Carles could or even really wanted to kick him out. He was a good kid - a bit quiet, maybe - he slept most of the day and spent the nights squirrelled away in his room on the computer, doing god only knew what; it was just as well Carles wasn't a vice cop. But on the whole it was nice not to come home to an empty apartment, and Leo never made any trouble and or tried to smother him in sympathetic chit-chat.
Piqué lifted the magazines gingerly and stacked them neatly on a shelf by the window. Carles left him tidying and went to poke around in his closet, intending to find a spare blanket. There didn't appear to be one, though, and he didn't feel up to the effort of leaving his bedroom and apologising for this fact. He'd done more than enough, after all. Piqué would survive. With that charitable thought in mind, Carles flipped the lights, stripped down to his undershirt, and fell asleep on his face on the covers.
He woke at nine-thirty with the idea in his head that it was raining. It wasn't. The sun was glaring brightly in the sky, and had translated itself into a blaring headache by the time he'd mustered enough wherewithal to stumble out of bed. He looked longingly at the drawer with the painkillers, but it wasn't worth the risk. Instead he dragged himself out of the bedroom and into the shower, hoping the warm, comforting spray would dull the pain and wake him up.
The hot water ran out barely five minutes in.
The culprit was in the kitchen, with damningly damp hair and in a scandalously short pair of briefs. He had actual abs: an actual, honest-to-fucking-god six-pack. Carles forgot about the hot water, distracted by a familiar self-disgust at the comparative state of his own belly, and, oddly enough, by a wholly novel concern for Leo's virtue. Good thing the man would be gone before his sort-of-ward woke up.
“Morning!” Piqué greeted, oblivious to the unfriendly musings of his host. He thrust a colourful plate in Carles's direction, which the older man took reflexively. It was a hot breakfast of corn and diced tomatoes, with a small pile of almonds and a single peeled clementine on the side.
Carles stared at it.
“You have no food,” Piqué explained helpfully.
Carles refused to feel bad about this. “I don't usually do breakfast,” he said defensively. Which was true. He'd tried the whole oatmeal thing for a bit, but it had become too depressing. Leo survived mostly on pot noodles. “What are your plans for the day?” he deflected.
Piqué's cheerful grin wavered a little. “Oh, I don't really--” he began.
“You should cancel your credit cards and talk to your bank,” Carles told him firmly. “Grab your stuff and I'll give you a lift into town.”
The slight detour to the banking district meant that Carles reached the precinct at eleven. To his utter lack of surprise, Victor and Villa were already there. The latter had spent the morning running down the financial details of the Alcântaras' three-day Paris trip, and was reading them out in a voice slightly distorted by the pen dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“.. €250 at a club, €450 at another club, €800 at the Louis Vuitton store, and - here's the kicker,” he pulled out the pen and held it up dramatically, “- sixty-one euros and fifty cents at a brothel.”
“Sixty-one euros?” Victor repeated, scooting round on his swivel chair to peer at the printouts. “That's barely enough for the cover charge. Either something fishy's going on there, or this recession is worse than I thought.”
“So it's a distribution point?” Carles asked hopefully. “Or a processing house, maybe?”
“No, that's the odd thing,” Villa said. He handed Carles the file. Chez Denys, it read, founded in 2001 and operating out of an innocuous-looking building in the 8th Arrondissement. “The French have had it on their radar for awhile, but it's one of those discreet, high-end, arty-farty places - next door to a fucking patisserie, for fuck's sake. No drug links to speak of.”
“How can that be? Are you sure? What about all the clubs they were at?”
“No luck with those either. And yes I'm bloody sure, I asked like a dozen times.”
“Are you saying their story checks out, then?” Carles was incredulous. Who would frame drug traffickers for trafficking drugs? Although - “Hm. Piqué did say there was a guy in Perpignan. And he told me he thought Rafael had just been through a bad breakup. It might explain the brothel.”
“And the retail therapy,” Villa said thoughtfully, tapping the pen against his chin.
“So, what - they go on a sleazy French holiday and decide to mix business with pleasure?” Victor shook his head, frowning. “It still doesn't make sense, though; they've got mules for that kind of thing. Maybe this Piqué kid is involved somehow and he's trying to throw us off the scent."
"What scent?" Villa said, and "Can't be," Carles told him. "I had a word with his bank just this morning, and he really has been abroad since last year. Besides, his record's clean - not so much as a parking ticket, believe it or not. Oh, and did I tell you?” he asked, remembering. “He's Amador Bernabéu's grandson."
"Sweet,” Victor whistled. “Imagine that. Hey, d'you think he could score us some tickets?"
"As if we'd get time off to go," Villa snarked.
"Exactly," Carles said. He was only half joking - they were so understaffed it wasn't funny. "Now, what do we have on the powder itself?"
"Sent it down to the lab for the new mass spec analysis, but you know how it is," Victor shrugged. “Could be a few days before we get anything back.”
"Let's follow up on the breakup thing, then,” Carles decided with a reluctant grimace. “And I know it's a long shot, but maybe we ought to check out the Van Persie connection as well. Find out if there was a woman involved. Maybe there's some sort of link there.”
“You think he killed the Dutch boy over some mystery woman?” Victor looked sceptical. “And then got framed by a mystery man up in France?”
“You got any better ideas?” Carles asked, not rhetorically.
Victor ran his hands roughly over his scalp. "We know Van Persie was mixed up with the drug rings, and we know he had money trouble. We should be on their asses about that connection, not running around looking for some vanishing girlfriend we've never even heard of before.”
“They weren't talking then, and they're not talking now,” Carles folded his arms. “And neither is the Dutch consulate, unless you've thought up a new way of pissing them off.”
“He's right,” Villa agreed. “This is the first fresh lead we've had in months.”
"It's a wild goose chase!" Victor said heatedly. "Fuck it. Fuck it. Fine." He took a deep breath. "Sorry."
"It's fine, we're all frustrated," Villa said, giving him a tight smile and a cautious little pat on the shoulder. "And I'll give the consulate a ring, tell them we're getting a second shot at the case. Who knows, maybe this time they'll cooperate.”
Carles nodded. “Speaking of cooperate, have we heard from their lawyer yet?”
“He'll come in when they do,” Villa told him. “I talked to Silva this morning; the van should be in around noon.”
Victor smiled grimly. “I can't wait.”
The Alcântaras' lawyer was the spitting image of smarmy. Loose-limbed and roosterish, he had wavy dark hair that just brushed the collar of a topcoat in lustrous grey silk. His shoes were chestnut-shiny, and he strutted into the precinct as if he owned the place, rapping imperiously on the door of Xavi's office.
The little assistant pulled open the door. "Mr Ibrahimović," he greeted in a small but civil voice.
"I am Zlatan," the tall man confirmed, nodding regally. He swept a critical eye over the much shorter, fairer man, and then jerked a thumb towards him, turning to Xavi with a bored look. "Who the hell is that?"
"What, him?” Xavi frowned. “That's Andrés -- my assistant. You've met him before."
"Have I?"
"He's been with me for years!"
"Oh, has he?” Zlatan shrugged. He examined his nails. “I didn't notice."
Which did not endear him further to Carles and his crew.
“What a cunt,” Villa said appreciatively as the lawyers disappeared behind the door. “You think he does that on purpose?”
“What, rile up Xavi by picking on Andresito?” Victor considered it. “Probably. Can I slash his tires?”
“No,” Carles said.
The parliament of lawyers lasted all of five minutes. Zlatan insisted on being present for all further interrogations; Xavi agreed, on the condition that Zlatan make himself available at a moment's notice throughout the 72-hour window between the time of arrest and the deadline for formal charges to be brought. Zlatan demanded to meet privately with his clients; Xavi agreed, provided that he take less than fifteen minutes. Zlatan graciously consented, and then spent the next hour bitching about the lack of a sufficiently secure private conference room and claiming all kinds of absurd accommodations on account of Rafael's minor status. Lunchtime had come and gone by the time they'd sorted everything out, and Carles found himself in the viewing area again, trying to concentrate over the growling of his empty stomach.
"You seem to have quite a bad memory," Victor was saying, "so we're here to help you jog it a little."
"You don't have to say anything," Zlatan told the teenager.
“I haven't asked anything yet,” Victor bristled. He tossed a photograph onto the table. "So. Robin van Persie. You remember him." It was close-up of the body, pale and bloody. Rafael flinched. “Of course you do. Now here's my question: why did you kill him?”
“I didn't k-”
“You don't have to-”
“Paris,” said Victor sharply, cutting them both off. “That's the city of love, isn't it?”
Rafael's jaw loosened, and his eyes went wide. Bingo, Carles thought.
“And a good place to get over someone, too,” the detective continued. “Great night life, not-so-great brothels... So who was she, this woman that dumped you? Did she go for Van Persie instead? Is that why you wanted to get rid of him?”
Rafael just stared, so Victor pressed on. “Bullet to the back of the head, right through the skull at close range - you must have really hated him.”
"No,” Rafael blurted. “No, you're wrong! You don't understand! He was--”
“That's enough,” Zlatan cut in, rising smoothly to his feet. “You have no evidence, this is all speculation, and it's a waste of my client's time.”
“Your client will be wasting his time in prison if we don't get to the bottom of this,” Victor snarled.
“Doesn't look like you will, though, does it?” Zlatan said with a magnificent sneer that planted his large Roman nose directly in Victor's face. Carles wondered how many times it had been broken before, and hoped fervently that the day wouldn't end with n+1.
To his relief, Victor fisted his hands and bit his tongue and backed down, turning to the shaken-looking suspect instead. “If you've got something to say,” he told the boy tightly, “we can--”
“No, we're done here,” Zlatan shut his briefcase with an audible snap. “Don't be a fool, Rafael. Remember what your brother said.”
Xavi stormed up to Zlatan the second he stepped out of the room. "What did you think you were doing in there?" he fumed, almost jogging to keep pace with the other lawyer's long strides. "The boy wants to talk! He may have something to say that will clear him!"
"And you'd love that, wouldn't you?" Zlatan said sarcastically, tossing the end of his scarf carelessly over his shoulder. It nearly hit Xavi in the face.
"What I'd like," said the prosecutor, swivelling suddenly so that he was somehow between Zlatan and the door, "is for justice to be done, and for the murderer to be caught, whoever it turns out to be. If your client is as innocent as he claims-- why not let him speak?"
Zlatan paused. He looked loftily around the room, seeming to bask in the curious gazes of the dozen or so officers who had stopped to watch the confrontation. "The truth," he said grandly, "has many faces." And he swept out of the door, long grey coat billowing as he went.
"The fuck does that even mean?" Villa looked disgusted.
"It's 'fuck off' in lawyer-speak, I think you'll find," Victor said.
"That man is an insult to the legal profession," Xavi muttered, tugging angrily down on his sweater. "His job is to defend that boy, not to get in my way. The two are not necessarily the same thing." He pulled out his tobacco pouch and began rolling an aggressively neat cigarette.
“Should we go outdoors?” Andrés asked tactfully, with a timid glance at the month-old 'Thank You For Not Smoking' sign. Xavi looked at him like he'd gone crazy.
“Right,” Andrés conceded, and produced a lighter from nowhere. Xavi ducked his head to light up, sucking in a large, soothing lungful of smoke; and the mossos, apparently taking this as a sign that things were back to normal again, scattered like leaves in the wind.
Carles staggered home at a quarter to nine bone tired, starving, and irate at the world. The Dutch consulate had strung them along for hours, bouncing their calls from bureaucrat to bureaucrat before consigning them to voicemail, so Carles had waited till the embassy was closed for the day, and then waylaid the fresh-faced young aide who'd helped them out in the initial investigation.
The conversation had been trying, not only because the higher-ups had clearly warned the staff away from cops and reporters, but also because the kid's Spanish was still incomprehensible, and several quite complex concepts had had to be relayed via pantomime. In the end, though, it all turned out to be for nothing: Afellay claimed he had never seen Van Persie with a woman, and Carles found himself back to square one with less than 48 hours to spare.
As if the day hadn't been long enough, he'd got stuck in a pile-up on the Diagonal on the way home. The four rookie guàrdias who'd been on the scene had looked so overwhelmed that Carles had been obliged to pull over to direct traffic for nearly an hour, during which he'd absorbed the collective road rage of five hundred rabid culés desperate to get home to their TVs before the 8pm kickoff. By the time he reached home he was just about was ready to shoot someone, so when he stepped out of the lift to the sound of agonised screams coming from behind his own front door, there was nothing for it but to charge in with his gun, barrel up.
“Don't shoot!” someone squeaked, in a flurry of noise and hue and agitation.
Carles blinked. The image resolved itself slowly into slightly more intelligible components. Red and blue, because the intruder was dressed in blaugrana. A bright smudge of teal, which was Leo in unflattering pyjamas. Movement, because the intruder was Gerard Piqué, and he had scrambled gutlessly around the couch to use Leo as a tiny human shield. And finally yelling, in the room and on the TV, because the football was on, and Barcelona had just scored a goal.
“What in the fuck--” Carles said anyway, mostly for form's sake. He lowered the gun, heart still lurching a little from the adrenaline spike, and sank into the armchair by the door.
“You scared the crap out of me,” Piqué chided. He settled back down next to Leo on the sofa, smoothing down the throw pillows he'd displaced in his flight. They were plump and brocaded and expensive-looking, with twisty gold edges. Carles wondered where they'd come from. “I made dinner.”
“You made dinner,” Carles repeated. It didn't make any more sense the second time around.
“Yeah, crêpes,” Piqué said, as if it were obvious. “I'll get you a plate. It's nearly half-time anyway.” He got up again and wandered off into the kitchen.
Carles looked at Leo, who had not moved a muscle in the course of the entire commotion. He had his feet on the table and his head on the backrest, and was watching the replays in deepest silence.
Carles cleared his throat. “Uh. So...” he prompted.
“Hi,” Leo said.
Piqué had indeed made crêpes. They were disturbingly delicious - crisp and light and fluffy as newborn clouds - which Piqué attributed to three weeks of cooking school in Paris, “and then I went to London to see my buddy Cesc, and he hooked me up with a job at the Yoga Institute, which was nice, lots of hot women, did that for a bit and then went travelling again, but then I got stranded on the A1 just outside Stevenage, which looks all right in the day but gets seriously shady at night, but you're a cop, so I'm sure you know all about places like that.”
Carles hadn't watched football in years. He'd had no time for hobbies since joining homicide - everything seemed so frivolous next to death and dismemberment - and during his bed-rest-and-recovery phase he'd been too pissed off to have much fun anyway. But he sat and ate crêpes and followed the game, listening idly as Piqué explained about offsides to Leo and made sage pronouncements on the deplorable state of the defence. By the time the match was over he was full and relaxed and blissful enough that he felt guilty when Piqué got up to do the dishes. Hospitality was a bitch. With a sigh that was equal parts annoyance and satisfaction, Carles heaved himself out of his comfy chair and followed the younger man into the kitchen.
“What do we owe you for dinner?” he asked, just to be polite.
“Me? Nothing,” Piqué said as the sink filled up with soapy water. “Leo gave me the cash for the groceries. They didn't cost much anyway.”
“Leo?” Carles frowned. Leo, to his knowledge, was not and had never been employed. He'd never asked for an allowance, either, now that Carles thought about it.
“Yup,” Piqué said blithely. He reached out to grab the flowery apron that Agnès had used to wear when she cooked, and looped it around his waist without missing a beat. It clashed spectacularly with the striped jersey, but Piqué didn't seem to notice. He picked up a plate and started scrubbing enthusiastically. “So. How was your day?”
“Uh. Fine,” Carles replied, a little thrown by the question.
“Did you get the bad guys?”
“Well,” Carles hedged, “yes and no. We have them in custody, obviously, and there's the drug charges. But we haven't found anything new on the murder.”
“Murder?” said Piqué, glancing up in surprise. “Those two guys? The ones I was with?”
“We can't prove it yet, but yeah, it's very likely,” Carles sighed. “The Van Persie case, actually, if you recall-- but I guess you were out of town when it happened.”
“I guess,” Piqué agreed.
They lapsed into silence. Piqué kept going industriously at the dishes, his bushy brows furrowed in concentration, and Carles just stood there feeling awkward. He was looking for an excuse to leave when Piqué piped up again.
“It's weird - I mean - they seemed nice.” He hesitated, setting down the plate he was holding. “Thiago was really looking after the other one, you know? They took turns driving.”
"So?" Carles didn't follow.
"So, if they were really evil, the more evil one would make the less evil one drive the whole way. Obviously."
"Obviously," Carles echoed.
"Also, they bought me a panini," Piqué added, as if this sealed the deal.
"A panini."
"Yeah. And beer. And a croissant. I had no cash on me, so..." he shrugged. "They were nice."
("Flawless logic," Villa said when Carles related this the next morning. "A model of deductive reasoning. The kid's a genius. He should try his hand at profiling, the psych department would go crazy! What incredible insight! If only more civilians would-- ow, hey, watch the hair!" This last occurring when Carles decided he'd endured enough ribbing and thwacked him on the head.)
“Thiago Alcântara runs one of the oldest drug syndicates in Catalunya,” Carles told him at last. “Don't let his looks fool you, or his brother's either. They may look like kids, but I promise you they're more than capable of murder. Just count yourself lucky you didn't get on their ugly side.”
“Tch, everyone's capable of murder,” Piqué said dismissively. Which was true enough. “But it's innocent until proven guilty, right? And think about it: would they have given me a lift if they were really on a drug run? I don't think so. And why the glove compartment? It doesn't add up. The more I think about it the more I'm sure they were framed. That guy in Perpignan really did look like trouble.” He turned to face Carles fully, and put his still-soapy hands on his hips. “You should let me do the Identi-thing. Just to make sure. I mean, what harm can it do?”
Carles opened his mouth to inform him that Identi-kit was not a toy, that APBs were expensive and that they were already way over budget for the month, not to mention the damage it would do to their credibility if they hauled someone in and he turned out to be a perfectly innocent passer-by. But Piqué's expression was strangely earnest - all blue eyes and parted lips and suds dripping down his forearms and seeping into the sides of his jersey - and Carles found that his rebuttal was stuck in the back of his throat. Besides, the kid did have a point.
"All right," he mumbled finally. "We're all out of options, anyway. You can come in with me in the morning and we'll see what we can do.”
Piqué beamed at him hugely; and Carles, feeling foolish, eked out a smile back.
Part III >
Fandom: Fútbol
Pairing: Puyol-centric gen with a large side of slash, featuring the Barça boys and their friends and rivals.
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~5000 this chapter (~9700 so far)
Summary: AU cop dramedy. Police Chief Carles Puyol hunts for a killer and, in the process of doing so, saves his own life. A very loose interpretation of the "Piqué cheers Puyi up" prompt on the football kink meme.
Disclaimer: Lies.
< Part I
Piqué's giant backpack was almost as tall as he was. It took up the entire left seat at the back, and smelled vaguely of laundromat but mostly of unwashed clothing. Victor, smug and relaxed in the front passenger seat, was clearly pleased about being as far away from it as possible, while Carles, hoist by his own petard, sat behind him and next to Piqué. The hitchhiker was squished in the centre with his knees practically up to his ears and his large feet stuck underneath the front seats on both sides. His right arm was wedged snugly against Carles's left side, and his elbow nudged Carles in the ribs every time they went over a bump in the road, which made him glance over instinctively to see what the man wanted, only to be given an inquiring look in return.
“What?” Piqué said, about the fifth or sixth time this occurred.
Carles thought about saying, “You keep elbowing me in the ribs.” But then Piqué would (presumably) try to shift away when there was nowhere to shift, and Victor would wake up just to glare at the poor kid in the rear-view mirror, as if a heart attack could be triggered by nudging. So instead he said, inanely, “Er, so, any plans for when you get back to Barcelona? Must be nice to go home after spending so long away.”
Villa snorted.
Fuck off, I'm just being polite, Carles thought. But Piqué's face lit up in an oversized grin. “Man, the first thing I'm gonna do has got to be dinner and beer at Tapaç 24. They have this Iberian ham bikini that's, like, nearly better than sex. You know Tapaç 24, right?”
“No,” Carles said.
“You don't know Tapaç 24,” Piqué repeated slowly, looking absolutely appalled. “I thought everyone knew it. Off the Passeig de Gràcia, near the big fountain? Man, I gotta take you some time.”
“No thanks, I'm on a diet.”
“Jamón ibérico and black truffles, man,” Piqué said, undeterred, “on cheesy, delicious, crispy white bread. Better than sex!”
“I'll take the sex, though,” Carles muttered. (“Hear, hear!” Villa said.)
Piqué laughed loudly, and then elbowed him, this time on purpose. “That can be arranged too!”
“Listen,” Piqué turned to him as they crossed the city limits, “I've been thinking. You know how on those cop shows they get an artist to draw a picture of what the suspect looks like?”
“A facial composite, yes,” Carles said warily. “We use Identi-kit these days, though. Computers.”
“Nice,” Piqué said. “I was thinking we could make one for the guy in Perpignan.”
“You said you didn't see him do anything.”
“No-oo,” Pique admitted, “but he did look pretty shifty.”
“We can't put an APB on someone for 'looking shifty',” Carles said, crossing his arms in exasperation and turning to stare out the window. The sky was pinking; Leo would be in bed before he got home. “If we arrested people for looking shifty we'd be out of cells in five minutes flat.”
“Oh right, right. Of course.”
But he sounded disappointed, so Carles said, as patiently as he could, “It's good of you to offer, though. And hey, if any evidence turns up that this guy you saw has something to do with the case, you can be sure we'll bring you in.”
“Or if no evidence turns up,” Villa put in sardonically. “Which, given our luck...”
It was fully dawn by the time they arrived in the parking lot of the Eixample comissaria. Most of the lights were out in the building - just the die-hard night owls and a couple of mossos stopping in for a coffee before heading out on morning patrol. Villa killed the engine and stretched out his spine with an alarming popping sound. Then he reached across the centre console and flicked his partner in the ear. “Wake up, you lazy bastard. We're here.”
The three passengers tumbled out onto the kerb, Piqué dragging his backpack behind him.
“I'm in no shape to drive,” Victor yawned. “Think I'm gonna crash in the office, or I won't make it in in the morning.”
“It is morning. Besides, the drug charges will hold them for now,” Carles reminded him. “Go home. Take a shower. Sleep. Then come back in the afternoon and we'll see where we're at.”
Victor looked mulish, but then shook his head and gave in. He ambled off in the direction of his vehicle, while Carles headed to the Reserved--Executive section of the parking lot for his distinctly un-executive '99 SEAT Ibiza.
He was halfway into the driver's seat before he realised he'd been followed.
“Er, hi,” said Piqué, with a sheepish little wave.
“Hello,” Carles said courteously. It was either that, or strangle himself with his hair. His mama would be proud.
“Right, so,” the man said, trotting around the front of the car and bending over so that his big, beseeching face was directly in Carles's line of sight. “It's like this. You know how I told my father I didn't need his money, and all that? So I can't go home, obviously, and I don't have the cash for a hotel. So I was thinking - could I sleep on your couch for the night?”
Carles put his head in his hands. He looked up. Took a breath. Imagined a firm, “No. Absolutely not. You're not a child, I'm not your guardian, there's no space in my flat, and I am off duty, off duty! Does that mean nothing to this universe?”
Then he dropped his head again. “Fine,” he sighed into the steering wheel.
“Aw, thanks, man!” Piqué exclaimed. There was a soft whump as the backpack was thrust onto the back seat, and then a second, longer whump as its owner compressed himself into the car.
“Okay, I'm all set,” his new houseguest announced. “Here we go!”
Carles's apartment was both spartan and messy, which, when he thought closely about it, was really quite a feat. They had not had a coat stand since the old one had been broken, so Piqué put his hat on the coffee table after relocating the remains of a kebab and three bottles of cola. The couch itself was devoid of cushions, and was covered instead with such diverse publications as Jaque and the World of Warcraft Revista Oficial, the latter of which featured a purple, large-breasted lady on the cover.
“Those must be Leo's,” Carles said faintly, too tired to be properly embarrassed. Leo was Agnès's step-kid from her first marriage. He'd stayed with Carles when she'd left him, and it wasn't like Carles could or even really wanted to kick him out. He was a good kid - a bit quiet, maybe - he slept most of the day and spent the nights squirrelled away in his room on the computer, doing god only knew what; it was just as well Carles wasn't a vice cop. But on the whole it was nice not to come home to an empty apartment, and Leo never made any trouble and or tried to smother him in sympathetic chit-chat.
Piqué lifted the magazines gingerly and stacked them neatly on a shelf by the window. Carles left him tidying and went to poke around in his closet, intending to find a spare blanket. There didn't appear to be one, though, and he didn't feel up to the effort of leaving his bedroom and apologising for this fact. He'd done more than enough, after all. Piqué would survive. With that charitable thought in mind, Carles flipped the lights, stripped down to his undershirt, and fell asleep on his face on the covers.
He woke at nine-thirty with the idea in his head that it was raining. It wasn't. The sun was glaring brightly in the sky, and had translated itself into a blaring headache by the time he'd mustered enough wherewithal to stumble out of bed. He looked longingly at the drawer with the painkillers, but it wasn't worth the risk. Instead he dragged himself out of the bedroom and into the shower, hoping the warm, comforting spray would dull the pain and wake him up.
The hot water ran out barely five minutes in.
The culprit was in the kitchen, with damningly damp hair and in a scandalously short pair of briefs. He had actual abs: an actual, honest-to-fucking-god six-pack. Carles forgot about the hot water, distracted by a familiar self-disgust at the comparative state of his own belly, and, oddly enough, by a wholly novel concern for Leo's virtue. Good thing the man would be gone before his sort-of-ward woke up.
“Morning!” Piqué greeted, oblivious to the unfriendly musings of his host. He thrust a colourful plate in Carles's direction, which the older man took reflexively. It was a hot breakfast of corn and diced tomatoes, with a small pile of almonds and a single peeled clementine on the side.
Carles stared at it.
“You have no food,” Piqué explained helpfully.
Carles refused to feel bad about this. “I don't usually do breakfast,” he said defensively. Which was true. He'd tried the whole oatmeal thing for a bit, but it had become too depressing. Leo survived mostly on pot noodles. “What are your plans for the day?” he deflected.
Piqué's cheerful grin wavered a little. “Oh, I don't really--” he began.
“You should cancel your credit cards and talk to your bank,” Carles told him firmly. “Grab your stuff and I'll give you a lift into town.”
The slight detour to the banking district meant that Carles reached the precinct at eleven. To his utter lack of surprise, Victor and Villa were already there. The latter had spent the morning running down the financial details of the Alcântaras' three-day Paris trip, and was reading them out in a voice slightly distorted by the pen dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“.. €250 at a club, €450 at another club, €800 at the Louis Vuitton store, and - here's the kicker,” he pulled out the pen and held it up dramatically, “- sixty-one euros and fifty cents at a brothel.”
“Sixty-one euros?” Victor repeated, scooting round on his swivel chair to peer at the printouts. “That's barely enough for the cover charge. Either something fishy's going on there, or this recession is worse than I thought.”
“So it's a distribution point?” Carles asked hopefully. “Or a processing house, maybe?”
“No, that's the odd thing,” Villa said. He handed Carles the file. Chez Denys, it read, founded in 2001 and operating out of an innocuous-looking building in the 8th Arrondissement. “The French have had it on their radar for awhile, but it's one of those discreet, high-end, arty-farty places - next door to a fucking patisserie, for fuck's sake. No drug links to speak of.”
“How can that be? Are you sure? What about all the clubs they were at?”
“No luck with those either. And yes I'm bloody sure, I asked like a dozen times.”
“Are you saying their story checks out, then?” Carles was incredulous. Who would frame drug traffickers for trafficking drugs? Although - “Hm. Piqué did say there was a guy in Perpignan. And he told me he thought Rafael had just been through a bad breakup. It might explain the brothel.”
“And the retail therapy,” Villa said thoughtfully, tapping the pen against his chin.
“So, what - they go on a sleazy French holiday and decide to mix business with pleasure?” Victor shook his head, frowning. “It still doesn't make sense, though; they've got mules for that kind of thing. Maybe this Piqué kid is involved somehow and he's trying to throw us off the scent."
"What scent?" Villa said, and "Can't be," Carles told him. "I had a word with his bank just this morning, and he really has been abroad since last year. Besides, his record's clean - not so much as a parking ticket, believe it or not. Oh, and did I tell you?” he asked, remembering. “He's Amador Bernabéu's grandson."
"Sweet,” Victor whistled. “Imagine that. Hey, d'you think he could score us some tickets?"
"As if we'd get time off to go," Villa snarked.
"Exactly," Carles said. He was only half joking - they were so understaffed it wasn't funny. "Now, what do we have on the powder itself?"
"Sent it down to the lab for the new mass spec analysis, but you know how it is," Victor shrugged. “Could be a few days before we get anything back.”
"Let's follow up on the breakup thing, then,” Carles decided with a reluctant grimace. “And I know it's a long shot, but maybe we ought to check out the Van Persie connection as well. Find out if there was a woman involved. Maybe there's some sort of link there.”
“You think he killed the Dutch boy over some mystery woman?” Victor looked sceptical. “And then got framed by a mystery man up in France?”
“You got any better ideas?” Carles asked, not rhetorically.
Victor ran his hands roughly over his scalp. "We know Van Persie was mixed up with the drug rings, and we know he had money trouble. We should be on their asses about that connection, not running around looking for some vanishing girlfriend we've never even heard of before.”
“They weren't talking then, and they're not talking now,” Carles folded his arms. “And neither is the Dutch consulate, unless you've thought up a new way of pissing them off.”
“He's right,” Villa agreed. “This is the first fresh lead we've had in months.”
"It's a wild goose chase!" Victor said heatedly. "Fuck it. Fuck it. Fine." He took a deep breath. "Sorry."
"It's fine, we're all frustrated," Villa said, giving him a tight smile and a cautious little pat on the shoulder. "And I'll give the consulate a ring, tell them we're getting a second shot at the case. Who knows, maybe this time they'll cooperate.”
Carles nodded. “Speaking of cooperate, have we heard from their lawyer yet?”
“He'll come in when they do,” Villa told him. “I talked to Silva this morning; the van should be in around noon.”
Victor smiled grimly. “I can't wait.”
The Alcântaras' lawyer was the spitting image of smarmy. Loose-limbed and roosterish, he had wavy dark hair that just brushed the collar of a topcoat in lustrous grey silk. His shoes were chestnut-shiny, and he strutted into the precinct as if he owned the place, rapping imperiously on the door of Xavi's office.
The little assistant pulled open the door. "Mr Ibrahimović," he greeted in a small but civil voice.
"I am Zlatan," the tall man confirmed, nodding regally. He swept a critical eye over the much shorter, fairer man, and then jerked a thumb towards him, turning to Xavi with a bored look. "Who the hell is that?"
"What, him?” Xavi frowned. “That's Andrés -- my assistant. You've met him before."
"Have I?"
"He's been with me for years!"
"Oh, has he?” Zlatan shrugged. He examined his nails. “I didn't notice."
Which did not endear him further to Carles and his crew.
“What a cunt,” Villa said appreciatively as the lawyers disappeared behind the door. “You think he does that on purpose?”
“What, rile up Xavi by picking on Andresito?” Victor considered it. “Probably. Can I slash his tires?”
“No,” Carles said.
The parliament of lawyers lasted all of five minutes. Zlatan insisted on being present for all further interrogations; Xavi agreed, on the condition that Zlatan make himself available at a moment's notice throughout the 72-hour window between the time of arrest and the deadline for formal charges to be brought. Zlatan demanded to meet privately with his clients; Xavi agreed, provided that he take less than fifteen minutes. Zlatan graciously consented, and then spent the next hour bitching about the lack of a sufficiently secure private conference room and claiming all kinds of absurd accommodations on account of Rafael's minor status. Lunchtime had come and gone by the time they'd sorted everything out, and Carles found himself in the viewing area again, trying to concentrate over the growling of his empty stomach.
"You seem to have quite a bad memory," Victor was saying, "so we're here to help you jog it a little."
"You don't have to say anything," Zlatan told the teenager.
“I haven't asked anything yet,” Victor bristled. He tossed a photograph onto the table. "So. Robin van Persie. You remember him." It was close-up of the body, pale and bloody. Rafael flinched. “Of course you do. Now here's my question: why did you kill him?”
“I didn't k-”
“You don't have to-”
“Paris,” said Victor sharply, cutting them both off. “That's the city of love, isn't it?”
Rafael's jaw loosened, and his eyes went wide. Bingo, Carles thought.
“And a good place to get over someone, too,” the detective continued. “Great night life, not-so-great brothels... So who was she, this woman that dumped you? Did she go for Van Persie instead? Is that why you wanted to get rid of him?”
Rafael just stared, so Victor pressed on. “Bullet to the back of the head, right through the skull at close range - you must have really hated him.”
"No,” Rafael blurted. “No, you're wrong! You don't understand! He was--”
“That's enough,” Zlatan cut in, rising smoothly to his feet. “You have no evidence, this is all speculation, and it's a waste of my client's time.”
“Your client will be wasting his time in prison if we don't get to the bottom of this,” Victor snarled.
“Doesn't look like you will, though, does it?” Zlatan said with a magnificent sneer that planted his large Roman nose directly in Victor's face. Carles wondered how many times it had been broken before, and hoped fervently that the day wouldn't end with n+1.
To his relief, Victor fisted his hands and bit his tongue and backed down, turning to the shaken-looking suspect instead. “If you've got something to say,” he told the boy tightly, “we can--”
“No, we're done here,” Zlatan shut his briefcase with an audible snap. “Don't be a fool, Rafael. Remember what your brother said.”
Xavi stormed up to Zlatan the second he stepped out of the room. "What did you think you were doing in there?" he fumed, almost jogging to keep pace with the other lawyer's long strides. "The boy wants to talk! He may have something to say that will clear him!"
"And you'd love that, wouldn't you?" Zlatan said sarcastically, tossing the end of his scarf carelessly over his shoulder. It nearly hit Xavi in the face.
"What I'd like," said the prosecutor, swivelling suddenly so that he was somehow between Zlatan and the door, "is for justice to be done, and for the murderer to be caught, whoever it turns out to be. If your client is as innocent as he claims-- why not let him speak?"
Zlatan paused. He looked loftily around the room, seeming to bask in the curious gazes of the dozen or so officers who had stopped to watch the confrontation. "The truth," he said grandly, "has many faces." And he swept out of the door, long grey coat billowing as he went.
"The fuck does that even mean?" Villa looked disgusted.
"It's 'fuck off' in lawyer-speak, I think you'll find," Victor said.
"That man is an insult to the legal profession," Xavi muttered, tugging angrily down on his sweater. "His job is to defend that boy, not to get in my way. The two are not necessarily the same thing." He pulled out his tobacco pouch and began rolling an aggressively neat cigarette.
“Should we go outdoors?” Andrés asked tactfully, with a timid glance at the month-old 'Thank You For Not Smoking' sign. Xavi looked at him like he'd gone crazy.
“Right,” Andrés conceded, and produced a lighter from nowhere. Xavi ducked his head to light up, sucking in a large, soothing lungful of smoke; and the mossos, apparently taking this as a sign that things were back to normal again, scattered like leaves in the wind.
Carles staggered home at a quarter to nine bone tired, starving, and irate at the world. The Dutch consulate had strung them along for hours, bouncing their calls from bureaucrat to bureaucrat before consigning them to voicemail, so Carles had waited till the embassy was closed for the day, and then waylaid the fresh-faced young aide who'd helped them out in the initial investigation.
The conversation had been trying, not only because the higher-ups had clearly warned the staff away from cops and reporters, but also because the kid's Spanish was still incomprehensible, and several quite complex concepts had had to be relayed via pantomime. In the end, though, it all turned out to be for nothing: Afellay claimed he had never seen Van Persie with a woman, and Carles found himself back to square one with less than 48 hours to spare.
As if the day hadn't been long enough, he'd got stuck in a pile-up on the Diagonal on the way home. The four rookie guàrdias who'd been on the scene had looked so overwhelmed that Carles had been obliged to pull over to direct traffic for nearly an hour, during which he'd absorbed the collective road rage of five hundred rabid culés desperate to get home to their TVs before the 8pm kickoff. By the time he reached home he was just about was ready to shoot someone, so when he stepped out of the lift to the sound of agonised screams coming from behind his own front door, there was nothing for it but to charge in with his gun, barrel up.
“Don't shoot!” someone squeaked, in a flurry of noise and hue and agitation.
Carles blinked. The image resolved itself slowly into slightly more intelligible components. Red and blue, because the intruder was dressed in blaugrana. A bright smudge of teal, which was Leo in unflattering pyjamas. Movement, because the intruder was Gerard Piqué, and he had scrambled gutlessly around the couch to use Leo as a tiny human shield. And finally yelling, in the room and on the TV, because the football was on, and Barcelona had just scored a goal.
“What in the fuck--” Carles said anyway, mostly for form's sake. He lowered the gun, heart still lurching a little from the adrenaline spike, and sank into the armchair by the door.
“You scared the crap out of me,” Piqué chided. He settled back down next to Leo on the sofa, smoothing down the throw pillows he'd displaced in his flight. They were plump and brocaded and expensive-looking, with twisty gold edges. Carles wondered where they'd come from. “I made dinner.”
“You made dinner,” Carles repeated. It didn't make any more sense the second time around.
“Yeah, crêpes,” Piqué said, as if it were obvious. “I'll get you a plate. It's nearly half-time anyway.” He got up again and wandered off into the kitchen.
Carles looked at Leo, who had not moved a muscle in the course of the entire commotion. He had his feet on the table and his head on the backrest, and was watching the replays in deepest silence.
Carles cleared his throat. “Uh. So...” he prompted.
“Hi,” Leo said.
Piqué had indeed made crêpes. They were disturbingly delicious - crisp and light and fluffy as newborn clouds - which Piqué attributed to three weeks of cooking school in Paris, “and then I went to London to see my buddy Cesc, and he hooked me up with a job at the Yoga Institute, which was nice, lots of hot women, did that for a bit and then went travelling again, but then I got stranded on the A1 just outside Stevenage, which looks all right in the day but gets seriously shady at night, but you're a cop, so I'm sure you know all about places like that.”
Carles hadn't watched football in years. He'd had no time for hobbies since joining homicide - everything seemed so frivolous next to death and dismemberment - and during his bed-rest-and-recovery phase he'd been too pissed off to have much fun anyway. But he sat and ate crêpes and followed the game, listening idly as Piqué explained about offsides to Leo and made sage pronouncements on the deplorable state of the defence. By the time the match was over he was full and relaxed and blissful enough that he felt guilty when Piqué got up to do the dishes. Hospitality was a bitch. With a sigh that was equal parts annoyance and satisfaction, Carles heaved himself out of his comfy chair and followed the younger man into the kitchen.
“What do we owe you for dinner?” he asked, just to be polite.
“Me? Nothing,” Piqué said as the sink filled up with soapy water. “Leo gave me the cash for the groceries. They didn't cost much anyway.”
“Leo?” Carles frowned. Leo, to his knowledge, was not and had never been employed. He'd never asked for an allowance, either, now that Carles thought about it.
“Yup,” Piqué said blithely. He reached out to grab the flowery apron that Agnès had used to wear when she cooked, and looped it around his waist without missing a beat. It clashed spectacularly with the striped jersey, but Piqué didn't seem to notice. He picked up a plate and started scrubbing enthusiastically. “So. How was your day?”
“Uh. Fine,” Carles replied, a little thrown by the question.
“Did you get the bad guys?”
“Well,” Carles hedged, “yes and no. We have them in custody, obviously, and there's the drug charges. But we haven't found anything new on the murder.”
“Murder?” said Piqué, glancing up in surprise. “Those two guys? The ones I was with?”
“We can't prove it yet, but yeah, it's very likely,” Carles sighed. “The Van Persie case, actually, if you recall-- but I guess you were out of town when it happened.”
“I guess,” Piqué agreed.
They lapsed into silence. Piqué kept going industriously at the dishes, his bushy brows furrowed in concentration, and Carles just stood there feeling awkward. He was looking for an excuse to leave when Piqué piped up again.
“It's weird - I mean - they seemed nice.” He hesitated, setting down the plate he was holding. “Thiago was really looking after the other one, you know? They took turns driving.”
"So?" Carles didn't follow.
"So, if they were really evil, the more evil one would make the less evil one drive the whole way. Obviously."
"Obviously," Carles echoed.
"Also, they bought me a panini," Piqué added, as if this sealed the deal.
"A panini."
"Yeah. And beer. And a croissant. I had no cash on me, so..." he shrugged. "They were nice."
("Flawless logic," Villa said when Carles related this the next morning. "A model of deductive reasoning. The kid's a genius. He should try his hand at profiling, the psych department would go crazy! What incredible insight! If only more civilians would-- ow, hey, watch the hair!" This last occurring when Carles decided he'd endured enough ribbing and thwacked him on the head.)
“Thiago Alcântara runs one of the oldest drug syndicates in Catalunya,” Carles told him at last. “Don't let his looks fool you, or his brother's either. They may look like kids, but I promise you they're more than capable of murder. Just count yourself lucky you didn't get on their ugly side.”
“Tch, everyone's capable of murder,” Piqué said dismissively. Which was true enough. “But it's innocent until proven guilty, right? And think about it: would they have given me a lift if they were really on a drug run? I don't think so. And why the glove compartment? It doesn't add up. The more I think about it the more I'm sure they were framed. That guy in Perpignan really did look like trouble.” He turned to face Carles fully, and put his still-soapy hands on his hips. “You should let me do the Identi-thing. Just to make sure. I mean, what harm can it do?”
Carles opened his mouth to inform him that Identi-kit was not a toy, that APBs were expensive and that they were already way over budget for the month, not to mention the damage it would do to their credibility if they hauled someone in and he turned out to be a perfectly innocent passer-by. But Piqué's expression was strangely earnest - all blue eyes and parted lips and suds dripping down his forearms and seeping into the sides of his jersey - and Carles found that his rebuttal was stuck in the back of his throat. Besides, the kid did have a point.
"All right," he mumbled finally. "We're all out of options, anyway. You can come in with me in the morning and we'll see what we can do.”
Piqué beamed at him hugely; and Carles, feeling foolish, eked out a smile back.
Part III >