Water-Blue Eyes by Domingo Villar Page A

bald?’
    ‘Pardon?’ asked the officer.
    ‘You can call me by my first name, young man. I may be ugly, but I’m not that old. See?’ he said, opening his mouth wide. ‘I still have all my teeth on this side.’
    ‘There’s no use trying, Ramón,’ put in Caldas.
    ‘As you like, but one starts with all that sir-business and ends up genuflecting, as we used to do at school.’
    Ramón started walking along the corridor that abutted at the hall.
    ‘Come this way, we’ll carry on talking at the tennis court.’
    Estévez stood bolted to his place, looking at the inspector in bewilderment.
    ‘Where?’
    ‘His office,’ replied Leo Caldas, following Ríos.

    Ramón Ríos had a huge office with walnut wood panelling. A Persian carpet covered nearly all the floor. On one side, in an area reserved for meetings, eight leather chairs surrounded a large conference table with a state-of-the-art telephone on its centre. On the other, by the window, an antique piece of furniture served as a desk. There was a sports newspaper open on it.
    ‘Crikey, for someone who doesn’t do any work here, it’s not bad,’ joked Caldas on coming in.
    ‘I know,’ admitted Ramón Ríos, taking a look around.
    On several occasions Leo Caldas had witnessed how envious his schoolmates were of Ramón Ríos’s way of casually talking about his opulent life. But Leo had never harboured such feelings himself; on the contrary, he valued Ríos’s generous and faithful friendship. If there was something he would have wished for himself, it was Ríos’s impetuous self-confidence, a far cry from his own natural shyness.
    ‘Do sit down and tell me what miracle brings you gentlemen here,’ said Ramón Ríos.
    The policemen chose two of the chairs around the table and waited in silence for Ramón Ríos to take another one.
    ‘Formaldehyde,’ said Caldas tersely.
    ‘Formaldehyde, how do you mean, formaldehyde?’ asked Ríos. ‘What can you possibly mean, Leo?’
    ‘Formaldehyde is one of Riofarma’s products and we’d like to know the names of your clients in the city.’
    Ramón looked at Caldas as if he’d spoken in a foreign tongue.
    ‘Well, we’ll need to check that,’ he replied at last, when he realised that his former schoolmate was being serious, and that formaldehyde really was the reason for his visit.
    ‘By the way, Leo, how’s your father these days?’ he asked, pulling the cord of the telephone and dragging it towards himself.
    ‘As always. A bit in his own world. We’re having lunch tomorrow, but we haven’t seen a lot of each other lately. Tomorrow we’re meeting up because he must come to Vigo on some errand, but if it was up to him he’d never leave the vineyard.’
    ‘I don’t blame him. What’s the wine like this year?’
    ‘It seems to be top-notch in quality, but the old man complains that production has dropped. Apparently it rained at the wrong time. I don’t know what the hell he means by the wrong time, but that’s what he says. I think he actually likes to complain – but we’re only in May and he’s already sold half of this year’s lot.’
    ‘He sells it too well,’ assured Ramón Ríos. ‘Last year, when I wanted to order a few boxes, he was already out. And the year before that I couldn’t taste it either.’
    ‘Well, you know, it sells out in no time,’ said Caldas, as if excusing his father.
    Ríos nodded, and then said: ‘When you see him tell him I’d like to sample a few bottles. Tell him to put aside as many as he can. Remind him I’m solvent if needs be.’
    Leo smiled and pointed to the phone.
    ‘I’ll take care of the wine, you make that call.’
    Ríos pressed one of the buttons of the fancy telephone, activating the loudspeaker so that all three could hear the conversation. The dialling tone rang clearly in the room.
    He had to make several calls. First to ascertain that, as Caldas claimed, the laboratory owned by his family did produce formaldehyde. Then to find out