Even the Darkest Night: A Terra Alta Novel - Hardcover

Buch 1 von 3: A Terra Alta Investigation

Cercas, Javier

 
9780593318805: Even the Darkest Night: A Terra Alta Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593318803 ISBN 13: 9780593318805
Verlag: Knopf Publishing Group, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

INTERNATIONAL BEST SELLER • WINNER OF SPAIN’S BIGGEST LITERARY PRIZE • Barcelona detective Melchor Marín is sent to the countryside to investigate a horrific double murder. Before long, it becomes clear that nothing about the case is quite as it seems in this “sweeping romantic novel in the form of a police procedural” (Wall Street Journal).

The first book in the internationally acclaimed series: Melchor, the son of a prostitute, went to prison as a teenager, convicted of working for a Colombian drug cartel. Behind bars, he read a book that changed his life: Les Misérables. Then his mother was murdered. He decided to become a cop.
 
This new case, in Terra Alta, a remote region of rural Catalonia—the murder of a wealthy local man and his wife—will turn Melchor’s life upside down yet again.
 
Even the Darkest Night is a thought-provoking, elegantly constructed thriller about justice, revenge, and, above all, the struggles of a righteous man trying to find his place in a corrupt world.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JAVIER CERCAS was born in Spain in 1962. He is a novelist and columnist, and he has received numerous international awards. His books include Soldiers of Salamis (which has sold more than a million copies worldwide), The Anatomy of a Moment, The Tenant and The Motive, The Speed of Light, and The Impostor. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Barcelona.
 
Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

Melchor is still in his office, simmering on the low flame of his own impatience waiting for the night shift to end, when the phone rings. It’s the duty officer at the front desk. Two dead at the Adell country house, he announces.

“The printing company Adells?” Melchor says.

“That’s right,” the officer says. “Do you know where they live?”

“Out on the Vilalba dels Arcs Road, no?”

“Exactly.”

“Have we got anyone there?”

“Ruiz and Mayol. They just phoned in.”

“I’m on my way.”

Until that moment, the night had been as calm as usual. In the hours before dawn there is hardly anyone left in the station and, as Melchor turns off the lights, closes his office door and runs down the deserted stairs, pulling on his jacket as he goes, the silence is so intense that it reminds him of those first days in Terra Alta, when he was still addicted to the roar of the city and the silence of the countryside kept him awake, condemning him to sleepless nights he fought with novels and sleeping pills. That memory brings back the forgotten image of the man he was four years earlier, when he arrived in Terra Alta; it also brings back an obvious fact: that he and that individual are two different people, as distinct as a criminal and a law-abiding man, as Jean Valjean and Monsieur Madeleine, the split and contradictory protagonist of Les Misérables, his favourite novel.

When he reaches the ground floor, Melchor checks out his Walther P99 and a box of ammunition from the armoury, telling himself it’s been too long since he last read Les Misérables and that he’ll have to resign himself to missing breakfast with his wife and daughter that morning.

He gets into his Opel Corsa and, while he pulls out of the station garage, he phones Sergeant Blai.

“You better pray that whatever you have to tell me is important, españolazo,” the sergeant grunts, his voice still drenched in sleep. “Or I’ll string you up by your balls.”

“There are two dead at the Adells’ house,” Melchor says.

“The Adells? Which Adells?”

“The printing Adells.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not joking,” Melchor says. “A patrol car just called it in. Ruiz and Mayol are already there. I’m on my way.”

Suddenly awake, Blai begins to give him instructions.

“Don’t tell me what I have to do,” Melchor interrupts him. “Just one thing: should I call Salom and the forensics team?”

“No, I’ll make the calls,” Blai says. “We’ve got to tell everyone and their dog. You take care of preserving the scene, sealing off the house—”

“Don’t worry, Sergeant,” Melchor cuts him off again. “I’ll be there in five.”

“Give me half an hour,” Blai says and, as if no longer talking to Melchor but to himself, grumbles: “The Adells, for Christ’s sake. What a shitstorm this is going to be.”

Without turning on the siren or his flashing lights, Melchor drives full speed through the streets of Gandesa, which at that hour are almost as deserted as the stairs and corridors of the police station. Occasionally he passes a cyclist in cycling gear, or a runner in running gear, or a car that might be returning from a long Saturday night or just beginning a long Sunday. Dawn is breaking in Terra Alta. An ashen sky heralds a morning without sun and, when he reaches the Piqué Hotel, Melchor turns left and leaves Gandesa on the road to Vilalba dels Arcs. He accelerates there, and a few minutes later turns off, taking a hundred-metre-long dirt track that leads to a country house. It is surrounded by a high stone wall crowned with broken glass and almost completely covered in ivy. The brown metal gate is open and, parked in front of it is a patrol car, its blue lights blinking in the dawn; beside it, Ruiz seems to be consoling a middle-aged woman, who sits on a stone bench, crying.

Melchor gets out of his car and says: “What’s happened here?”

“I don’t know,” the patrolman says, pointing to the woman. “This lady is the cook here. She’s the one who phoned. She says there are two dead people inside.”

The woman is trembling from head to foot, sobbing and wringing her hands, her face bathed in tears. Melchor tries to calm her and asks her the same question he asked Ruiz, but the only response he gets is a look of terror and an unintelligible stammer.

“And Mayol?” Melchor says.

“Inside,” Ruiz says.

Melchor tells him to tape off the entrance and stay with the woman until the others arrive. Under the gaze of two closed-circuit cameras, he goes through the gate and walks briskly along a path through a well-tended garden—past mulberry and cherry trees that dot the lush lawns, and beds of geraniums, peonies, lilies and roses, jasmine climbing the walls—until around a corner the facade of the old three-storey farmhouse you can see from the crossroads appears in front of him, with its big wooden door, its trellised balconies and open attic windows. Mayol is leaning against one of the door jambs, with his legs slightly bent and both hands holding his pistol. The dark blue of his uniform stands out starkly against the dark ochre of the facade. When he sees Melchor he beckons him over.

Melchor pulls out his pistol while he studies the baroque pattern of a tire track in the earthen drive that widens out into a parking area in front of the half-open front door.

“Have you been in?” he asks Mayol.

“No,” Mayol says.

“Is there anyone inside?”

“I don’t know.”

Melchor notices that the lock on the door is undamaged. Then he sees that Mayol is pouring with sweat and has fear written all over his face.

“Stay behind me,” he tells him.

Melchor kicks open the big door and enters the house, followed by Mayol. Cautiously, he inspects the ground floor, which is in semi-darkness: a front hall with a coat stand, a large chest, armchairs and glass cases of books, an elevator, a bathroom, two bedrooms with wardrobes, made-up beds and ceramic water jugs, a well-stocked larder. Then he goes up to the first floor by a stone staircase that leads to a large living room lit only by a ceiling lamp. What he sees there plunges him, for long drawn-out seconds, into an overwhelming sense of unreality, which he is only yanked out of by Mayol’s agonised groan as he throws up on the floor.

“My God!” the patrolman splutters as he spits out a disgusting mush of bile and bits of food. “What’s happened here?”

It is the first murder scene Melchor has encountered since he arrived in Terra Alta, but he saw many before that and he doesn’t remember anything like this.

Two bloody masses of red and violet flesh face each other on a sofa and armchair soaked in a lumpy liquid—a mixture of blood, entrails, cartilage and skin—which has spattered the walls, the floor and even as far as the fireplace. Floating in the air is a violent smell of blood, of tormented flesh, of supplication, and a strange sensation, as if those four walls had preserved the howls of agony they’d witnessed; at the same time, Melchor believes he senses in the room—and this is perhaps what disturbs him most—a certain aroma of exultation or euphoria, something he doesn’t have words to define but that, if he did have them, he might describe as the festive...

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Verlag
Knopf Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593318803
ISBN 13 
9780593318805
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
339
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchpark GmbH
gpsr@buchpark.de

Krügerweg 1
Trebbin
Brandenburg
14959
Deutschland

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