Sins As Scarlet by Nicolás Obregón

Author:Nicolás Obregón
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405926942
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-05-22T16:00:00+00:00

Part Two

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15. Clean Work

Detective Valentín distantly puffed out cigarette smoke and swallowed coffee, tasting neither. This was her last case. That had no taste either. She listened to the hot rain drumming on the roof of her car and looked down at Ciudad Cabral, a city put together like a child in hand-me-downs. It was home to one million souls, living either in elegant old colonias in the centre, or in the sundry slums shoved up against the surrounding mountains.

And it was to these slums that Valentín had been called so often down the years. People lived on top of each other, voices carried. The smell of cooking mixed in with dog shit, laughter with fucking, birdsong with the screams of women. It was a city within a city, all colourful breeze blocks, crooked satellites, simple dirt floors. Murders here were rarely planned, customarily a moment of male jealousy erupting, like oil spitting from a hot pan. Those cases were solved in a day. But Valentín knew already: today’s case would not be one of those.

As her eyes passed over the never-ending tin roofs tinkling in the morning rain, she realized she wouldn’t be coming back here again.

At the end of the street a child schlepped a massive bundle of recyclables on his back. Across from him a chubby woman was opening up her salon for the day. Reggaetón poured out of a bakery’s window. For Valentín, somehow seeing these little shacks for the last time was seeing them for the first time.

Today’s dawn was colourless. In the distance, by the highway leading out of the city, she could make out words on a billboard:

NOS GUSTA HACER TRABAJO LIMPIO

We like to do clean work

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