Murder in Buenos Aires (3/9)

Read part one here, part two here

III  The Labyrinth

Propped up in her comfortable hotel bed wearing leopard-print lingerie and hair rollers, Christina watched the TV news with avid interest, absent-mindedly unwrapping an alfajor and popping it into her mouth.

The reporter was a well-groomed young woman with the kind of shark eyes and tense jaw that tended to communicate single-minded ambition. Her voice was a flat, harsh staccato:

“In recent weeks celebrity influencer Lola Graf had been publicizing the fact that she knew the names of high-profile Porteños involved in a pedophile ring. This morning she was found dead in the swimming pool of the luxury hotel resort Palacio Asti. It appears likely she may have suffered an overdose after a night of hard partying, but was her death the result of something more sinister? The Buenos Aires police seem to think so, judging by the presence of the celebrated Detective Inspector León Marconi.”

Christina saw León’s familiar face scowling in front of a microphone.  He looked even gawkier and heron-like than usual.

“Detective Inspector Marconi, can you tell us how Lola Graf died? Was it an assassination? Do you have a prime suspect?”

“We are simply gathering information, which is standard procedure with any unexpected death.“

“Why has homicide shown such interest? Were there threats?”

“No comment,” said Marconi.

“How about the black book Ms. Graf showed on her TikTok video hours before her death? Supposedly it contained the names of pedophiles. Is that now in police possession? Are you conducting an investigation into those allegations?”

“Again, no comment.”

Marconi turned on his heel and walked back into the hotel.

“Can you confirm that the billionaire Frank Giordano and the actress Kristin Ocampo are being held for questioning?” the reporter called after him.

He raised a dismissive arm and kept walking.

Christina turned the TV off and sat looking thoughtfully at a painting on the wall. It was a Berni print, Juanito dormido 1974, the one where a waif with an angelic face sleeps sitting with his head resting on a wooden box printed with the word KLEPPE. Surrounding him is a deathly grey pile of trash, above him a red sky. Christina licked the chocolate off of her fingers and took her phone from the bedside table and dialled León.

“Que tal?”

She heard him groan.

“Tengo una palma. If I don’t sleep I’ll collapse.”

“Got a moment to see me? It won’t take long, I promise.”

By the time he got to her room she’d put on her dressing gown, fluffy slippers and had fixed him a cup of herbal tea. She ushered him onto a chair and sat down on the other one. He looked at her impatiently.

“Isn’t this fantastic?” she asked, beaming, waving her hand around to indicate the room. “A chandelier! And those sheets! Egyptian cotton. Nine-hundred thread count. Do you know how much that costs?”

“Christina, I spent last night fishing a corpse out of a swimming pool and had to spend the day chatting to people who make Elon Musk look like a nice guy. I am very, very tired.”

“Yes, yes I know querido but I just thought of something.”

“What?”

“No, you go first! What’s new? I’m dying to know!”

León put a hand to one of his temples.

“Let’s see. The coroner just called me. Lola had consumed a very high level of opiates. There was no suicide note or indication that she intended to take her own life so manner of death is necessarily being treated as a homicide. Her stomach was empty except for a small amount of liquid.

“Meanwhile, I learned some interesting things from the interviews. Diego Sosa told me that Lola’s secret boyfriend—a priest—killed himself yesterday morning. Kristin Ocampo revealed not only that this priest was her brother but also that she blames Lola for his death. Frank Giordano and Juliet Harris are interested in pharmacology and Juliet used to be Sandra Lopez’s lover. Finally, Martín Gaviscon is very, very nervous.”

Christina whistled.

“That’s quite a tangle right there.”

Marconi nodded

“Meanwhile, I checked with her lawyer. According to her most recent will, everything she had goes to Diego Sosa.”

“Was she very rich?” Christina asked.

León shrugged.

“Not as far as I know. Definitely not compared to Sosa himself. She owned an apartment in Palermo and a property up in Bariloche but that’s it really.”

“Did you find the gift basket?”

“That basket again? So far no. Now, what is it you wanted to tell me?”

“Oh, I wanted to let you know that Lola killed Juliet Harris’s biological parents.”

“What? What are you talking about!”

“I wasn’t sure if you had time to watch the news tonight. Lola hit a couple while she was drunk-driving. She was about nineteen at the time. She went to jail but her sentence was extremely light. They were Juliet’s parents, from Guinea. The little orphan girl was adopted by a scientist couple in the UK. It’s actually not a secret—Juliet herself mentioned it in an interview last year.”

León shook his head.

“This is ridiculous. It’s starting to look like all six of these people had some motive for doing away with her.”

“I strongly suspect,” said Christina, “That that was deliberate.”

“You mean they’re all in on it?”

Christina shook her head.

“No. I mean that whoever planned this murder knew that there was very little love for Lola in this crowd.”

***

The next morning, a roly poly woman in a rose-pink cleaner’s uniform was pushing a cleaner’s cart along the gleaming corridors of Palacio Asti. She stopped outside of a door that had a ‘Please Do Not Disturb’ sign hanging from its handle. The sign quickly came off the handle and into her pocket. She knocked at the door. Silence. She produced a keycard from her apron pocket and went inside.

“Open Sesame,” she murmured and slipped inside the room carrying an armful of fresh towels.

The room was vast, bigger than Christina’s entire apartment. The large picture window looked out onto the lush garden and swimming pool.

The room oozed mid-twentieth-century masculinity with dark woods, a Persian carpet, leather-bound books and the faint smell of Old Spice aftershave. Giordano’s suitcase stood, locked, by the writing desk.

“Minimal,” Christina grimaced.

She set about cleaning the room, humming and making a mental note of anything unusual. In the end the most unusual thing was that she didn’t see anything remarkable. The room’s occupant hadn’t made any mess to speak of. The bathroom basin was pristine, the TV remote was unwrapped, nothing had ben taken from the minibar and there wasn’t even any sign that the shower had been used. He hadn’t even used the coffee cups. She found herself wondering if he was a robot. There was nothing in the wardrobe or the cupboards. Christina had just finished cleaning the bathroom when she heard voices in the corridor. She stuffed the bag into her apron pocket and emerged from the bathroom, brandishing a feather duster.

Frank Giordano walked in with an annoyed expression on his face. Behind him was a tall woman in a dark suit. She had nutmeg-colored skin and long black hair.

“Hey!” he barked. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you read? I don’t want cleaning today. There’s a sign on my door.”

“No cleaning?” Christina feigned surprise. “Excuse me sir, I no see a sign.”

He went to look at the door and couldn’t see the sign himself. This seemed to put him in an even worse mood.

“It was here when I left,” he looked at her suspiciously. “What’s your name? I’m going to call the manager. This is unacceptable.”

Christina fell to her knees.

“Please señor, I beg you, no call my manager. I no want lose my job! I make a mistake. Very sorry señor, really!”

Frank Giordano looked around the room as if for signs of tampering  and then looked at her.

“I don’t want to see you in here again, got it?”

“Yes, yes, got it señor,” Christina said, getting up onto her feet. “I so sorry.”

She hastily grabbed the used towels from the floor and bustled out. Giordano slammed the door behind her. She looked up and down the corridor to see if anyone was coming, then put her ear to the door.

“Can you believe that?” said Giordano. “That would never happen in a five-star hotel in the States. This is a backwards country.”

“Exactly Frank,” said a smooth, rich voice—British? With a hint of Ceylon. “And that’s to your advantage, remember? This is the line we’re going to take with that little detective.”

A door across the corridor from Christina opened suddenly. She bent down, pretending to tie her shoe and hoping she hadn’t been seen eavesdropping. A blonde woman emerged wearing sunglasses, swimsuit and a diaphanous overshirt. It looked as if Kristin Ocampo were going to the pool.

“Good morning ma’am,” said Christina. “Would you like your room cleaned this morning?”

“Good morning. Yes, please. I’ll leave the door open for you will I?”

Kristin Ocampo’s room was pleasantly disordered. There was a movie script open on the writing desk, with notes written in green ink on the margins. There were at least four used coffee cups left around the room. Kristin’s suitcase was lying open on the floor and the contents were messy and mixed up like those in a child’s dress-up box.

The bathroom counter was strewn with makeup tools and used cotton pads. Next to this was a small old-fashioned cigarette box that was half-open and full of white powder. Cocaine! It was amazing how casual people of this class were about hard drugs, even with police about. If it were a kid from Christina’s neighbourhood there’d be hell to pay.

The door to Kristin’s room being open, Christina could hear the voices of anyone walking down the corridor. A man and woman were having a conversation. Their voices were lowered but even so they carried easily in the otherwise silence passage. Peeking through the gap between the door and the doorjamb, Christina saw Sandra Lopez and Martín Gaviscon.

“I can’t take much more of this Sandra, honestly,” said Martín. “I’m this close to cracking up.”

“I know babe. Don’t worry. I have something that will help. And soon all this will be a distant memory. Don’t stress.”

“Can we go to your room now?” he asked. “I’d feel better if I had it on me, you know?”

“Of course darling. Here’s my room. Come on. Then I’ll see you at the pool in ten minutes?”

“Yes,” said Martín.

Christina busied herself with making Kristin’s bed for a couple of minutes, with one ear trained on the corridor. She heard a door softly close and looked out to see Gaviscon hurrying past. About five minutes later she heard the same door open and close and Sandra Lopez walked by wearing a kimono and floppy hat.

***

“Mr. Giordano, nice to see you again,” León said with more than a touch of irony. “That’s quite a shiner you have there. Do you need medical attention?”

“Detective Inspector, this is my lawyer Ms. Arulpragasam.”

“Delighted,” León shook her hand.

The three of them sat down.

“Well,” said León, “I’m sorry you had to come so far Ms. Arulpragasam because this will probably take no more than a few minutes. The fact is your client was present at the hotel when a homicide took place. I simply need to know where he was and what he was doing between 9pm Friday and Saturday 1am.”

“My client would prefer not answer that question.”

“OK. Well I guess we’ll be seeing your client at the inquest then.”

“My client will not be present at the inquest.”

“Is your client aware that it is a legal requirement?”

Mahdi Arulpragasam smiled condescendingly.

“Why should my client, as a citizen of the United States, be bound to observe the laws of Argentina when the police themselves fail to observe basic protocol?”

“Excuse me?” León shook his head as if trying to dislodge crazy dust.

She leaned forward. Her features, confusingly, were on a massive scale but delicate when considered in proportion to each other.

“We have made enquiries into your methods and have identified several irregularities. It seems you and your team have shown shocking disregard for police procedure.”

“Such as?” León was genuinely bewildered.

“Such as,” she put on a pair of reading glasses and consulted a piece of paper, “Contaminating the crime scene, planting evidence, torturing suspects.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Hardly very professional, beating my client up, is it Detective Inspector Marconi? I thought you’d had training to control your temper.” she removed her glasses, smiling.

Realization dawned slowly on León, a beat too late. He looked at Giordano’s black eye then at the lawyer.

“You pay her an extra fee for that?” He asked sarcastically.

“Please stop intimidating my client,” she drawled.

Marconi laughed.

“I’m sorry you think this is a joke,” she continued. “Your concerning behaviour will be reported to the appropriate authorities. I think you’ll find Mr. Giordano is not someone to be treated lightly.”

“I see,” said Marconi grimly. Anger started sprouting in his chest like mold spores in a warm closet. Keeping it under wraps took every ounce of his self control. But even behind the rage there was a question. Giordano was not even a real suspect. At first sight he had no discernible motive for harming an Argentine celebrity. So what was this about?

“So what is the angle here?” he asked. “Assuming you’re going to lie and buy yourself out of this anyway, what do you want from me?”

“You can try to reframe the question if you like,” said the lawyer primly, “But it won’t change the fact that this investigation is tainted.”

“Right,” said Marconi brusquely. He started to feel as if he might be about to suffocate. He had to get out and get some air. “Well, it seems that this interview is over.”

Marconi walked out of the room, blood thudding in his ears.

Mahdi and Frank looked at each other, grinning and exchanged a fist-bump of victory.

***

“I found them!” Christina said.

“What? The gift basket?”

“Yes, and the black book. Both.” Christina produced the book and a ziploc bag containing a foil packet.

“Where?”

“Shoved up on the top shelf of Martín Gaviscon’s wardrobe.”

“How did you find them?”

“I went into his room to clean and I could smell eucalyptus. I have a sensitive nose; eventually figured out it was coming from the wardrobe. This was the packet for the facemask that Lola used—I recognized it from the TikTok video.”

“So? Why have you been insisting that this is so important? Why would the murderer hide it?”

“Because, if my guess is right, it was the murder weapon,” Christina said.

“Mind explaining that?”

“I think it was a transdermal patch,” said Christina.

“How do you figure that?”

“It’s a hunch. I watched the video and the face mask looked very odd—medical somehow. Then I saw how small Lola’s pupils got, which can be a sign of opiate use. And then you told me about Juliet Harris doing research in pharmacokinetics. I looked up her venture with Frank Giordano and it turns out they’re particularly interested in delivering medications via patches.”

“You’re a dark horse, aren’t you!”

“Well, like I say it’s just a hunch. But you’ll be able to test it and see?”

He nodded.

“I’ll send it to the lab tonight. Time’s running out though,” he said grimly.

“Why?”

“Frank Giordano and his lawyer are working hard to get me kicked off the investigation. My guess is that once they get me suspended for police brutality they’ll pay someone off to declare Lola died by accidental overdose. That will be that.”

“But the coroner has already said it was likely homicide!”

“They don’t care. A billionaire can override any kind of expert. I’m afraid the only way we can bring the killer to justice is with a clear motive and overwhelming evidence, preferably videotape! As it stands, things are too mixed up. There’s very little evidence and motives that are all over the place.”

“OK,” said Christina, “Let’s take it step by step. We have six people. Let’s consider them each in turn. First there’s Kristin Ocampo.”

“OK. Well, her brother the priest died yesterday, apparently committing suicide after first leaving the Church for Lola Graf and then being dumped by her. Kristin has said she holds Lola responsible for his death and she came here intending to make her uncomfortable, though she denies killing her.”

“There’s something else,” said Christina. “She has quite a large amount of cocaine in her room.”

“Interesting,” said León, “Though not perhaps immediately germane. Then we have her friend Martín Gaviscon. Two incriminating items were found in his wardrobe: the black book containing names and (very likely) the murder weapon. Did he put them there, I wonder?”

“He’s also an addict. I found cocaine in his room too, and opiates.”

“What kind of opiates?”

“Oxycodone, but I happen to know that he got them from Sandra Lopez.”

“Speaking of, what do we know about her?” León asked.

“Well, she had the best opportunity of anyone. She organized the party in the first place, and she could easily have put that fake face mask in the basket. She has admitted to being in Lola’s room – she could have removed the book and the basket at that time.”

“The problem there is that she seemed to be the only one genuinely upset that Lola died. What would her motive be?” León wondered.

“That brings us to Diego Sosa,” said Christina. “He was the sole beneficiary of Lola’s will. As Sosa’s fiancée, Lopez would also conceivably be an indirect beneficiary.”

“Except that Lola Graf was not a particularly rich woman.”

“Then what about the possibility that Sosa wanted to shut her up? Can he have been implicated in the black book?” Christina asked.

“Theoretically, yes. But so could any of them. One thing we know about Sosa is that he was alone with Lola for much of the night. He might have had good opportunity to make sure she was dead and to clean out her room afterwards.”

“Then there’s Juliet Harris. Motive there could be revenge.”

“Which sounds a little far-fetched to my ears,” said Leon. “Why would a highly successful and well-adjusted young woman risk everything to exact a vendetta on a woman for the death of parents she never knew?”

“Yes,” Christina agreed, “It does seem melodramatic. But for that matter so does the idea of Kristin taking revenge for her brother’s death! There’s something very stagey about it all somehow.”

“Speaking of stagey,” Leon said, “Our last contender is Frank Giordano, who is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to derail the investigation.”

“Is it possible his name is in the black book?” Christina asked.

“There’s only one way to fnd out,” León said. “I think it’s time for us to look at the names.”

He opened the book and Christina leaned to look over his shoulder.