Free At Close Quarters by Eugenio Fuentes Page B

want to stick to the suicide version even if it weren’t true.’
    ‘And you don’t believe it is?’
    ‘No, I don’t. I spoke to my father that morning, before he went to the base. He stopped by my house, as he wanted me to sign some documents he needed to take to the bank; he was changing the account holder’s name. All seemed normal, like any other day. He wasn’t depressed or ill. I can’t imagine him putting a gun to his chest and pulling the trigger,’ she said in a broken voice. She searched through her bag and took out a tissue to wipe her eyes. On her left wrist a beautiful bracelet made of gold links shone for a moment.
    Cupido waited a few moments. He understood her reluctance to accept that version. He sometimes thought of assisted death and imagined himself in old age, alone and tormented by anincurable disease, asking someone to leave some painless poison at hand, maybe on his night table. But everything about suicide seemed more problematic. Suicide contaminates everyone close to the victim, family and friends, with a dose of remorse. It makes them ask themselves what they could have done to avoid the rope, or the gas, or the water, or the gunshot in the chest. And no one wants to take the blame: ‘Someone else killed him, I had nothing to do with his death, there was nothing I could have done to avoid it,’ were always the most comforting answers.
    ‘Had he received any threats?’
    ‘Not personally. He knew his work wasn’t to everyone’s liking, but he didn’t seem worried about that, he considered it a natural consequence of his profession. The only precaution he took … the only thing he was afraid of was an attack. Some time ago, his name had appeared on a terrorist organisation’s target list, and for that reason he always carried a gun. But personal enemies, no, he was not afraid of them. Or of any other kind of aggression. I mean, a soldier knows how to defend himself from a common thief. But there’s something else that’s not quite clear,’ she said, screwing her eyes.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘The weapon he … it wasn’t his regulation gun.’
    ‘Tell me slowly, from the beginning. Tell me all you can remember , in detail,’ he asked. He knew recollection could be capricious, and that memories don’t surface in the same way when one speaks of a recent event or of something that took place a while ago. With time details may be forgotten, but previously unnoticed patterns appear.
    Cupido picked up a pencil and opened a simple spiral notebook . He used a new one for every investigation. He jotted down the known events and whatever facts he came to find, and also all kinds of details and circumstances – weather, place and landscape, anecdotes, professions and so on – which didn’t immediately fit into the investigation. Yet he was very careful not to run ahead of himself with a hypothesis. He disliked rushing things, preferred ideas to settle bit by bit, so he could slowly interpret the meaningof every piece of information. By hurrying one risked overlooking what was important, or destroying evidence without finding anything useful, like the treasure hunter who, assuming the beeping of the metal detector signals gold, digs into the ground damaging valuable material, only to find a rusty horseshoe. From the moment an investigation started, patience was of the essence, patience to analyse what the victim was like, and who his enemies might be; to deduce at what moment the word ‘murder’ had rolled off someone’s tongue and in what way that person had savoured its bittersweet taste, their lips no longer refusing to utter it; to imagine the hand that later searched for the appropriate weapon, and held it, while a pair of eyes looked at the clock and measured time; to find the place where the murderer hid and retraced his steps as he fled the scene. Cupido saved a page for each of those involved, and slowly filled it with information about their personalities and emotions, the way