The Angel's Game

1

Night had fallen by the time we reached the bookshop. A golden glow broke through the blue of the night outside Sempere & Sons, where about a hundred people had gathered holding candles. Some cried quietly, others looked at each other, not knowing what to do. I recognised some of the faces – friends and customers of Sempere, people to whom the old bookseller had given books as presents, readers who had been initiated into the art of reading through him. As the news spread through the area, more readers and friends arrived, all finding it hard to believe that Señor Sempere had died.

The shop lights were on and I could see Don Gustavo Barceló inside, embracing a young man who could hardly stand. I didn’t realise it was Sempere’s son until Isabella pressed my hand and led me into the bookshop. When he saw me come in, Barceló looked up and smiled dolefully. The bookseller’s son was weeping in his arms and I didn’t have the courage to go and greet him. It was Isabella who went over and put her hand on his back. Sempere’s son turned round and I saw his distraught face. Isabella led him to a chair and helped him sit down; he collapsed like a rag doll and Isabella knelt down beside him and hugged him. I had never felt as proud of anyone as I was that day of Isabella. She no longer seemed a girl but a woman, stronger and wiser than any of the rest us.

Barceló came over and held out a trembling hand. I shook it.

‘It happened a couple of hours ago,’ he explained in a hoarse voice. ‘He’d been left alone in the bookshop for a moment and when his son returned… They say he was arguing with someone… I don’t know. The doctor said it was his heart.’

I swallowed hard.

‘Where is he?’

Barceló nodded towards the door of the back room. I walked over, but before going in I took a deep breath and clenched my fists. Then I walked through the doorway and saw him: he was lying on a table, his hands crossed over his belly. His skin was as white as paper and his features seemed to have sunk in on themselves. His eyes were still open. I found it hard to breathe and felt as if I’d been dealt a strong blow to the stomach. I leaned on the table and tried to steady myself. Then I bent over him and closed his eyelids. I stroked his cheek, which was cold, and looked around me at that world of pages and dreams he had created. I wanted to believe that Sempere was still there, among his books and his friends. I heard steps behind me and turned. Barceló was accompanied by two sombre-looking men, both dressed in black.

‘These gentlemen are from the undertaker’s,’ said Barceló.

They nodded with professional gravitas and went over to examine the body. One of them, who was tall and gaunt, took a brief measurement and said something to his colleague, who wrote down his instructions in a little notebook.

‘Unless there is any change, the funeral will be tomorrow afternoon, in the Pueblo Nuevo Cemetery,’ said Barceló. ‘I thought it best to take charge of the arrangements because his son is devastated, as you can see. And with these things, the sooner…’

‘Thank you, Don Gustavo.’

The bookseller glanced at his old friend and smiled tearfully.

‘What are we going to do now that the old man has left us?’ he said.

‘I don’t know…’

One of the undertakers discreetly cleared his throat.

‘If it’s all right with you, in a moment my colleague and I will go and fetch the coffin and-’

‘Do whatever you have to do,’ I cut in.

‘Any preferences regarding the ceremony?’

I stared at him, not understanding.

‘Was the deceased a believer?’

‘Señor Sempere believed in books,’ I said.

‘I see,’ he replied as he left the room.

I looked at Barceló, who shrugged his shoulders.

‘Let me ask his son,’ I added.

I went back to the front of the bookshop. Isabella glanced at me inquisitively and stood up. She left Sempere’s son and came over to me and I whispered the problem to her.

‘Señor Sempere was a good friend of the local parish priest – from the church of Santa Ana right next door. People say the bigwigs in the diocese have been wanting to get rid of the priest for years, because they consider him a rebel in the ranks, but he’s so old they decided to wait for him to die instead. He’s too tough a nut for them to crack.’

‘Then he’s the man we need,’ I said.

‘I’ll speak to him,’ said Isabella.

I pointed towards Sempere’s son.

‘How is he?’

Isabella met my gaze.

‘And how are you?’ she replied.

‘I’m fine,’ I lied. ‘Who’s going to stay with him tonight?’

‘I am,’ she said, without a moment’s hesitation.

I kissed her on the cheek and returned to the back room. Barceló was sitting in front of his old friend, and while the two undertakers took further measurements and debated about suits and shoes, he poured two glasses of brandy and offered one to me. I sat down next to him.

‘To the health of our friend Sempere, who taught us all how to read, and even how to live,’ he said.

We toasted and drank in silence. We remained there until the undertakers returned with the coffin and the clothes in which Sempere was going to be buried.

‘If it’s all right with you, we’ll take care of this,’ the one who seemed to be the brighter of the two suggested. I agreed. Before leaving the room and going back to the front of the shop I picked up the old copy of Great Expectations, which I’d never come back to collect, and put it in Sempere’s hands.

‘For the journey,’ I said.

A quarter of an hour later, the undertakers brought out the coffin and placed it on a large table that had been set up in the middle of the bookshop. A multitude had been gathering in the street, waiting in silence. I went over to the door and opened it. One by one, the friends of Sempere & Sons filed through. Some were unable to hold back the tears, and such were the scenes of grief that Isabella took the bookseller’s son by the hand and led him up to the apartment above the bookshop, where he had lived all his life with his father. Barceló and I stayed in the shop, keeping old Sempere company while people came in to say their farewells. Those closest to him stayed on.

The wake lasted the entire night. Barceló remained until five in the morning and I didn’t leave until Isabella came down to the shop shortly after dawn and ordered me to go home, if only to change my clothes and freshen up.

I looked at poor Sempere and smiled. I couldn’t believe I’d never see him again, standing behind the counter, when I came in through that door. I remembered the first time I’d visited the bookshop, when I was just a child, and the bookseller had seemed tall and strong. Indestructible. The wisest man in the world.

‘Go home, please,’ murmured Isabella.

‘What for?’

‘Please…’

She came out into the street with me and hugged me.

‘I know how fond you were of him and what he meant to you,’ she said.

Nobody knew, I thought. Nobody. But I nodded and, after kissing her on the cheek, I wandered off, walking through streets that seemed emptier than ever, thinking that if I didn’t stop, if I kept on walking, I wouldn’t notice that the world I thought I knew was no longer there.

2

The crowd had gathered by the cemetery gates to await the arrival of the hearse. Nobody dared speak. We could hear the murmur of the sea in the distance and the echo of a freight train rumbling towards the city of factories that spread out beyond the graveyard. It was cold and snowflakes drifted in the wind. Shortly after three o’clock in the afternoon, the hearse, pulled by a team of black horses, turned into Avenida de Icaria, which was lined with rows of cypress trees and old storehouses. Sempere’s son and Isabella travelled with it. Six colleagues from the Barcelona booksellers’ guild, Don Gustavo among them, lifted the coffin onto their shoulders and carried it into the cemetery. The crowd followed, forming a silent cortège that advanced through the streets and mausoleums of the cemetery beneath a blanket of low clouds that rippled like a sheet of mercury. I heard someone say that the bookseller’s son looked as if he’d aged fifteen years in one night. They referred to him as Señor Sempere, because he was now the person in charge of the bookshop; for four generations that enchanted bazaar in Calle Santa Ana had never changed its name and had always been managed by a Señor Sempere. Isabella held his arm – without her support he looked as if he might have collapsed like a puppet with no strings.

The parish priest of Santa Ana, a veteran the same age as the deceased, waited at the foot of the tomb, a sober slab of marble without decorative elements that could almost have gone unnoticed. The six booksellers who had carried the coffin left it resting beside the grave. Barceló noticed me and greeted me with a nod. I preferred to stay towards the rear of the crowd, I’m not sure whether out of cowardice or respect. From there I could see my father’s grave, some thirty metres away.

Once the congregation had spread out, the parish priest looked up and smiled.

‘Señor Sempere and I were friends for almost forty years, and in all that time we spoke about God and the mysteries of life on only one occasion. Almost nobody knows this, but Sempere had not set foot in a church since the funeral of his wife Diana, to whose side we bring him today so that they might lie next to one another forever. Perhaps for that reason people assumed he was an atheist, but he was truly a man of faith. He believed in his friends, in the truth of things and in something to which he didn’t dare put a name or a face because he said as priests that was our job. Señor Sempere believed we are all a part of something, and that when we leave this world our memories and our desires are not lost, but go on to become the memories and desires of those who take our place. He didn’t know whether we created God in our own image or whether God created us without quite knowing what he was doing. He believed that God, or whatever brought us here, lives in each of our deeds, in each of our words, and manifests himself in all those things that show us to be more than mere figures of clay. Señor Sempere believed that God lives, to a smaller or greater extent, in books, and that is why he devoted his life to sharing them, to protecting them and to making sure their pages, like our memories and our desires, are never lost. He believed, and he made me believe it too, that as long as there is one person left in the world who is capable of reading them and experiencing them, a small piece of God, or of life, will remain. I know that my friend would not have liked us to say our farewells to him with prayers and hymns. I know that it would have been enough for him to realise that his friends, many of whom have come here today to say goodbye, will never forget him. I have no doubt that the Lord, even though old Sempere was not expecting it, will receive our dear friend at his side, and I know that he will live forever in the hearts of all those who are here today, all those who have discovered the magic of books thanks to him, and all those who, without even knowing him, will one day go through the door of his little bookshop where, as he liked to say, the story has only just begun. May you rest in peace, Sempere, dear friend, and may God give us all the opportunity to honour your memory and feel grateful for the privilege of having known you.’

An endless silence fell over the graveyard when the priest finished speaking. He retreated a few steps, blessing the coffin, his eyes downcast. At a sign from the chief undertaker, the gravediggers moved forward and slowly lowered the coffin with ropes. I remember the sound as it touched the bottom and the stifled sobs among the crowd. I remember that I stood there, unable to move, watching the gravediggers cover the tomb with the large slab of marble on which a single word was written, ‘Sempere’, the tomb in which his wife Diana had lain buried for twenty-six years.

The congregation shuffled away towards the cemetery gates, where they separated into groups, not quite knowing where to go, because nobody wanted to leave the place and abandon poor Señor Sempere. Barceló and Isabella led the bookseller’s son away, one on each side of him. I stayed on until I thought everyone else had left; only then did I dare go up to Sempere’s grave. I knelt and put my hand on the marble.

‘See you soon,’ I murmured.

I heard him approaching and knew who it was before I saw him. I got up and turned round. Pedro Vidal offered me his hand and the saddest smile I have ever seen.

‘Aren’t you going to shake my hand?’ he asked.

I didn’t and a few seconds later Vidal nodded to himself and pulled his hand away.

‘What are you doing here?’ I spat out.

‘Sempere was my friend too,’ replied Vidal.

‘I see. And are you here alone?’

Vidal looked puzzled.

‘Where is she?’ I asked.

‘Who?’

I let out a bitter laugh. Barceló, who had noticed us, was coming over, looking concerned.

‘What did you promise her, to buy her back?’

Vidal’s eyes hardened.

‘You don’t know what you’re saying, David.’

I drew closer, until I could feel his breath on my face.

‘Where is she?’ I insisted.

‘I don’t know,’ said Vidal.

‘Of course,’ I said, looking away.

I was about to walk towards the exit when Vidal grabbed my arm and stopped me.

‘David, wait-’

Before I realised what I was doing, I turned and hit him as hard as I could. My fist crashed against his face and he fell backwards. I noticed that there was blood on my hand and heard steps hurrying towards me. Two arms caught hold of me and pulled me away from Vidal.

‘For God’s sake, Martín…’ said Barceló.

The bookseller knelt down next to Vidal, who was gasping as blood streamed from his mouth. Barceló cradled his head and threw me a furious look. I fled, passing some of the people who had been present at the graveside and who had stopped to watch the altercation. I didn’t have the courage to look them in the eye.

3

I didn’t leave the house for several days, sleeping at odd times and barely eating. At night I would sit in the gallery by the open fire and listen to the silence, hoping to hear footsteps outside the door, thinking that Cristina would return, that as soon as she heard about the death of Señor Sempere she’d come back to me, if only out of compassion, which by now would have been enough for me. When almost a week had gone by since the death of the bookseller and I realised that Cristina was not going to return, I began to visit the study again. I rescued the boss’s manuscript from the trunk and started to reread it, savouring every phrase, every paragraph. Reading it produced in me both nausea and a dark satisfaction. When I thought of the hundred thousand francs that at first had seemed so much, I smiled and reflected that I’d sold myself to that son-of-a-bitch too cheaply. Vanity papered over my bitterness, and pain closed the door of my conscience. In an act of pure arrogance, I reread my predecessor Diego Marlasca’s Lux Aeterna, and then threw it into the fire. Where he had failed, I would triumph. Where he had lost his way, I would find the path out of the labyrinth.

I went back to work on the seventh day. I waited until midnight and sat down at my desk. A clean sheet in the old Underwood typewriter and the city black behind the windowpanes. The words and images sprang forth from my hands as if they’d been waiting angrily in the prison of my soul. The pages flowed from me without thought or measure, with nothing more than the desire to bewitch, or poison, hearts and minds. I stopped thinking about the boss, about his reward or his demands. For the first time in my life I was writing for myself and nobody else. I was writing to set the world on fire and be consumed along with it. I worked every night until I collapsed from exhaustion. I banged the typewriter keys until my fingers bled and fever clouded my vision.

One morning in January, when I’d lost all notion of time, I heard someone knocking on the door. I was lying on my bed, my eyes lost in the old photograph of Cristina as a small child, walking hand in hand with a stranger along a jetty that reached out into a sea of light. That image seemed to be the only good thing I had left, the key to all mysteries. I ignored the knocking for a few minutes, until I heard her voice and knew she was not going to give up.

‘Open the door, damn you! I know you’re there and I’m not leaving until you open it or I knock it down.’

When she saw me Isabella stepped back and looked horrified.

‘It’s only me, Isabella.’

She pushed me aside and made straight for the gallery, where she flung open the windows. Then she went to the bathroom and started filling the tub. She took my arm and dragged me there, then made me sit on the edge of the bath and examined my eyes, lifting my eyelids with her fingertips and muttering to herself. Without saying a word she began to remove my shirt.

‘Isabella, I’m not in the mood.’

‘What are all these cuts? But… what have you done to yourself?’

‘They’re just scratches.’

‘I want a doctor to see you.’

‘No.

‘Don’t you dare say no to me,’ she replied harshly. ‘You’re getting into this bathtub right now; you’re going to wash yourself with soap and water and you’re going to have a shave. You have two options: either you do it, or I will. And don’t imagine for one second that I won’t.’

I smiled.

‘I know.’

‘Do as I say. In the meantime I’m going to find a doctor.’

I was about to reply, but she raised her hand to silence me.

‘Don’t say another word. If you think you’re the only person for whom life is painful, you’re wrong. And if you don’t mind letting yourself die like a dog, at least have the decency to remember that there are those of us who do care – although, to tell the truth, I don’t see why.’

‘Isabella…’

‘Into the water. And please remove your trousers and underpants.’

‘I know how to take a bath.’

‘I’d never have guessed.’

While Isabella went off in search of a doctor, I submitted to her orders and subjected myself to a baptism of cold water and soap. I hadn’t shaved since the funeral and when I looked in the mirror I was greeted by the face of a wolf. My eyes were bloodshot and my skin had an unhealthy pallor. I put on clean clothes and went to wait in the gallery. Isabella returned twenty minutes later with a physician I thought I’d seen in the area once or twice.

‘This is the patient. Pay no attention whatsoever to anything he says to you. He’s a liar,’ Isabella announced.

The doctor glanced at me, calibrating the extent of my hostility.

‘It’s over to you, doctor,’ I said. ‘Just imagine I’m not here.’

We went to my bedroom and he began the subtle rituals that form the basis of medical science: he took my blood pressure, listened to my chest, examined my pupils and my mouth, and asked me questions of a mysterious nature. When he inspected the razor cuts Irene Sabino had made on my chest, he raised an eyebrow.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s a long story, doctor.’

‘Did you do it to yourself?’

I shook my head.

‘I’m going to give you an ointment for the cuts, but I’m afraid you’ll be left with some scars.’

‘I think that was the idea.’

He continued with his examination and I submitted to everything obediently, my eye on Isabella, who was watching anxiously from the doorway. I understood then how much I had missed her and how much I appreciated her company.

‘What a fright you gave me,’ she mumbled with disapproval.

The doctor frowned when he saw the raw wounds on the tips of my fingers. He proceeded to bandage them one by one.

‘When did you last eat?’

I didn’t reply. The doctor exchanged glances with Isabella.

‘There is no cause for alarm, but I’d like to see him in my surgery tomorrow at the latest.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, doctor,’ I said.

‘He’ll be there,’ Isabella assured him.

‘In the meantime I recommend that he begins by eating something warm, first broth and then solids. A lot of water but no coffee or other stimulants, and above all he must get lots of rest. Let him go out for a little fresh air and sunshine, but he mustn’t overexert himself. He is showing the classic symptoms of exhaustion and dehydration and the beginnings of anaemia.’

Isabella sighed.

‘It’s nothing,’ I remarked.

The doctor looked at me, unconvinced, and stood up.

‘Tomorrow afternoon in my surgery, at four o’clock. I don’t have the correct instruments or environment for a proper examination here.’

He closed his bag and politely said goodbye. Isabella accompanied him to the door and I heard them murmuring on the landing for a few minutes. I got dressed again and waited, like a good patient, sitting on the bed. I heard the front door close and the doctor’s steps as he descended the stairs. I knew that Isabella was in the entrance hall, pausing before coming into the bedroom. When at last she did, I greeted her with a smile.

‘I’m going to prepare something for you to eat.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘I couldn’t care less. You’re going to eat and then we’re going to go out so that you get some fresh air. End of story.’

Isabella prepared a broth for me, to which I added morsels of bread. I then forced myself to swallow it with a cheerful face, although to me it tasted like grit. Eventually I cleaned my bowl and showed it to Isabella, who had been standing on guard duty while I ate. Next she took me to the bedroom, searched for a coat in the wardrobe, equipped me with gloves and a scarf, and pushed me towards the front door. When we stepped outside a cold wind was blowing, but the sky shone with an evening sun that turned the streets the colour of amber. She put her arm in mine and we set off.

‘As if we were engaged,’ I said.

‘Very funny.’

We walked to Ciudadela Park and into the gardens surrounding the Shade House. When we reached the pond by the large fountain we sat down on a bench.

‘Thank you,’ I murmured.

Isabella didn’t reply.

‘I haven’t asked you how you are,’ I volunteered.

‘That’s nothing new.’

‘So how are you?’

Isabella paused.

‘My parents are delighted that I’ve returned. They say you’ve been a good influence. If only they knew… The truth is, we do get on better than before. Not that I see that much of them. I spend most of my time in the bookshop.’

‘How’s Sempere? How is he taking his father’s death?’

‘Not very well.’

‘And how are you taking him?’

‘He’s a good man,’ she said.

Isabella fell silent and lowered her eyes.

‘He proposed to me,’ she said after a while. ‘A couple of days ago, in Els Quatre Gats.’

I contemplated her profile, serene and robbed of that youthful innocence I had wanted to see in her and which had probably never been there.

‘And?’ I finally asked.

‘I’ve told him I’ll think about it.’

‘And will you?’

Isabella’s gaze was lost in the fountain.

‘He told me he wanted to have a family, children… He said we’d live in the apartment above the bookshop, that somehow we’d make a go of it, despite Señor Sempere’s debts.’

‘Well, you’re still young…’

She tilted her head and looked me in the eye.

‘Do you love him?’ I asked.

She gave a smile that seemed endlessly sad.

‘How do I know? I think so, although not as much as he thinks he loves me.’

‘Sometimes, in difficult circumstances, one can confuse compassion with love,’ I said.

‘Don’t you worry about me.’

‘All I ask is that you give yourself some time.’

We looked at each other, bound by an infinite complicity that needed no words, and I hugged her.

‘Friends?’

‘Till death us do part.’

4

On our way home we stopped at a grocer’s in Calle Comercio to buy some milk and bread. Isabella told me she was going to ask her father to deliver an order of fine foods and I’d better eat everything up.

‘How are things in the bookshop?’ I asked.

‘The sales have gone right down. I think people feel sad about coming to the shop, because they remember poor Señor Sempere. As things stand, it’s not looking good.’

‘How are the accounts?’

‘Below the waterline. In the weeks I’ve been working there I’ve gone through the ledgers and realised that Señor Sempere, God rest his soul, was a disaster. He’d simply give books to people who couldn’t afford them. Or he’d lend them out and never get them back. He’d buy collections he knew he wouldn’t be able to sell just because the owners had threatened to burn them or throw them away. He supported a whole host of second-rate bards who didn’t have a penny to their name by giving them small sums of money. You can imagine the rest.’

‘Any creditors in sight?’

‘Two a day, not counting letters and final demands from the bank. The good news is that we’re not short of offers.’

‘To buy the place?’

‘A couple of sausage merchants from Vic are very interested in the premises.’

‘And what does Sempere’s son say?’

‘He just says that pork can be mightier than the sword. Realism isn’t his strong point. He says we’ll stay afloat and I should have faith.’

‘And do you?’

‘I have faith in arithmetic, and when I do the sums they tell me that in two months’ time the bookshop window will be full of chorizo and slabs of bacon.’

‘We’ll find a solution.’

Isabella smiled.

‘I was hoping you’d say that. And speaking of unfinished business, please tell me you’re no longer working for the boss.’

I showed her my hands were clean.

‘I’m a free agent once more.’

She accompanied me up the stairs and was about to say goodbye when she appeared to hesitate.

‘What?’ I asked her.

‘I’d decided not to tell you, but… I’d rather you heard it from me than from someone else. It’s about Señor Sempere.’

We went into the house and sat down in the gallery by the open fire, which Isabella revived by throwing on a couple of logs. The ashes of Marlasca’s Lux Aeterna were still visible and my former assistant threw me a glance I could have framed.

‘What were you going to tell me about Sempere?’

‘It’s something I heard from Don Anacleto, one of the neighbours in the building. He told me that on the afternoon Señor Sempere died he saw him arguing with someone in the shop. Don Anacleto was on his way back home and he said that their voices could be heard from the street.’

‘Who was he arguing with?’

‘It was a woman. Quite old. Don Anacleto didn’t think he’d ever seen her around there, though he did say she looked vaguely familiar – but you never know with Don Anacleto, he likes to chatter on more than he likes sugared almonds.’

‘Did he hear what they were arguing about?’

‘He thought they were talking about you.’

‘About me?’

Isabella nodded.

‘Sempere’s son had gone out for a moment to deliver an order in Calle Canuda. He wasn’t away for more than ten or fifteen minutes. When he got back he found his father lying on the floor, behind the counter. Señor Sempere was still breathing but he was cold. By the time the doctor arrived, it was too late…’

I felt the whole world collapsing on top of me.

‘I shouldn’t have told you…’ whispered Isabella.

‘No. You did the right thing. Did Don Anacleto say anything else about the woman?’

‘Only that he heard them arguing. He thought it was about a book. Something she wanted to buy and Señor Sempere didn’t want to sell to her.’

‘And why did he mention me? I don’t understand.’

‘Because it was your book. The Steps of Heaven. It was Señor Sempere’s only copy, in his personal collection, and was not for sale…’

I was filled with a dark certainty.

‘And the book…? ’ I began.

‘It’s no longer there. It disappeared,’ Isabella explained. ‘I checked the sales ledger, because Señor Sempere always made a note of every book he sold, with the date and the price, and this one wasn’t there.’

‘Does his son know?’

‘No. I haven’t told anybody except you. I’m still trying to understand what happened that afternoon in the bookshop. And why. I thought perhaps you might know…’

‘I suspect the woman tried to take the book by force, and in the quarrel Señor Sempere suffered a heart attack. That’s what happened,’ I said. ‘And all over a damned book of mine.’

I could feel my stomach churning.

‘There’s something else,’ said Isabella.

‘What?’

‘A few days later I bumped into Don Anacleto on the stairs and he told me he’d remembered how he knew that woman. He said that at first he couldn’t put his finger on it, but now he was sure he’d seen her, many years ago, in the theatre.’

‘In the theatre?’

Isabella nodded.

I was silent for a long while. Isabella watched me anxiously.

‘Now I’m not happy about leaving you here. I shouldn’t have told you.’

‘No, you did the right thing. I’m fine. Honestly.’

Isabella shook her head.

‘I’m staying with you tonight.’

‘What about your reputation?’

‘It’s your reputation that’s in danger. I’ll just go to my parents’ store to phone the bookshop and let him know.’

‘There’s no need, Isabella.’

‘There would be no need if you’d accepted that we live in the twentieth century and had installed a telephone in this mausoleum. I’ll be back in a quarter of an hour. No arguments.’

During Isabella’s absence, the death of my old friend Sempere began to weigh on my conscience. I recalled how the old bookseller had always told me that books have a soul, the soul of the person who has written them and of those who have read them and dreamed about them. I realised that until the very last moment he had fought to protect me, giving his own life for a bundle of paper and ink on which, he felt, my soul had been inscribed. When Isabella returned, carrying a bag of delicacies from her parents’ shop, she only needed to take one look at me.

‘You know that woman,’ she said. ‘The woman who killed Sempere…’

‘I think so. Irene Sabino.’

‘Isn’t she the one in the old photographs we found? The actress?’

I nodded.

‘Why would she want your book?’

‘I don’t know.’

Later, after sampling one or two treats from Can Gispert, we sat together in the large armchair in front of the hearth. We were both able to fit in, and Isabella leaned her head on my shoulder while we stared at the flames.

‘The other night I dreamed that I had a son,’ she said. ‘I dreamed that he was calling to me but I couldn’t reach him because I was trapped in a place that was very cold and I couldn’t move. He kept calling me and I couldn’t go to him.’

‘It was only a dream.’

‘It seemed real.’

‘Maybe you should write it as a story,’ I suggested.

Isabella shook her head.

‘I’ve been thinking about that. And I’ve decided that I’d rather live my life than write about it. Please don’t take it badly.’

‘I think it’s a wise decision.’

‘What about you? Are you going to live your life?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve already lived quite a lot of it.’

‘What about that woman? Cristina?’

I took a deep breath.

‘Cristina has left. She’s gone back to her husband. Another wise decision.’

Isabella pulled away and frowned at me.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘I think you’re mistaken.’

‘What about?’

‘The other day Gustavo Barceló came by and we talked about you. He told me he’d seen Cristina’s husband, what’s his name…’

‘Pedro Vidal.’

‘That’s the one. And Señor Vidal had told him that Cristina had gone off with you, that he hadn’t seen her or heard from her in over a month. As a matter of fact, I was surprised not to find her here, but I didn’t dare ask…’

‘Are you sure that’s what Barceló said?’

Isabella nodded.

‘Now what have I said?’ she asked in alarm.

‘Nothing.’

‘There’s something you’re not telling me…’

‘Cristina isn’t here. I haven’t seen her since the day Señor Sempere died.’

‘Where is she then?’

‘I don’t know.’

Little by little we grew silent, curled up in the armchair by the fire, and in the small hours Isabella fell asleep. I put my arm round her and closed my eyes, thinking about all the things she had said and trying to find some meaning. When the light of dawn appeared through the windowpanes of the gallery, I opened my eyes and saw that Isabella was already awake.

‘Good morning,’ I said.

‘I’ve been meditating,’ she declared.

‘And?’

‘I’m thinking about accepting Sempere’s proposal.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No.’ She laughed.

‘What will your parents say?’

‘They’ll be upset, I suppose, but they’ll get over it. They would prefer me to marry a prosperous merchant who sold sausages rather than books, but they’ll just have to put up with it.’

‘It could be worse,’ I remarked

Isabella agreed.

‘Yes. I could end up with a writer.’

We looked at one another for a long time, until she extracted herself from the armchair. She collected her coat and buttoned it up, her back turned to me.

‘I must go,’ she said.

‘Thanks for the company,’ I replied.

‘Don’t let her escape,’ said Isabella. ‘Search for her, wherever she may be, and tell her you love her, even if it’s a lie. We girls like to hear that kind of thing.’

She turned round and leaned over to brush my lips with hers. Then she squeezed my hand and left without saying goodbye.

5

I spent the rest of that week scouring Barcelona for anyone who might remember having seen Cristina over the last month. I visited the places I’d shared with her and traced Vidal’s favourite route through cafés, restaurants and elegant shops, all in vain. I showed everyone I met a photograph from the album Cristina had left in my house and asked whether they had seen her recently. Somewhere, I forget where, I came across a person who recognised her and remembered having seen her with Vidal some time or other. Other people even remembered her name, but nobody had seen her in weeks. On the fourth day, I began to suspect that Cristina had left the tower house that morning after I went to buy the train tickets, and had evaporated off the face of the earth.

Then I remembered that Vidal’s family kept a room permanently reserved at the Hotel España, on Calle Sant Pau, behind the Liceo theatre. It was used whenever a member of the family visited the opera and didn’t feel like returning to Pedralbes in the early hours. I knew that Vidal and his father had also used it – at least in their golden years – to enjoy the company of young ladies whose presence in their official residences in Pedralbes would have led to undesirable rumours – due either to the low or the high birth of the lady in question. More than once Vidal had offered the room to me when I still lived in Doña Carmen’s pensión in case, as he put it, I felt like undressing a damsel somewhere that wasn’t quite so alarming. I didn’t think Cristina would have chosen the hotel room as a refuge – if she knew of its existence, that is – but it was the only place left on my list and nowhere else had occurred to me.

It was getting dark when I arrived at the Hotel España and asked to speak to the manager, presenting myself as Señor Vidal’s friend. When I showed him Cristina’s photograph, the manager, a gentleman who mistook frostiness for discretion, smiled politely and told me that ‘other’ members of Vidal’s staff had already been there a few weeks earlier, asking after that same person, and he had told them what he was telling me now: he had never seen that lady in the hotel. I thanked him for his icy kindness and walked away in defeat.

As I passed the glass doors that led into the dining room, I thought I registered a familiar profile. The boss was sitting at one of the tables, the only guest there, eating what looked like lumps of sugar. I was about to make a quick getaway when he turned and waved at me, smiling. I cursed my luck and waved back. He signalled for me to join him. I walked through the dining-room door, dragging my feet.

‘What a lovely surprise to see you here, dear friend. I was just thinking about you,’ said Corelli.

I shook hands with him reluctantly.

‘I thought you were out of town,’ I said.

‘I came back sooner than planned. Would you care for a drink?’

I declined. He asked me to sit down at his table and I obeyed. The boss wore his usual three-piece suit of black wool and a red silk tie. As always, he was impeccably attired, but something didn’t quite add up. It took me a few seconds to notice what it was – the angel brooch was not in his lapel. Corelli followed the direction of my gaze.

‘Alas, I’ve lost it, and I don’t know where,’ he explained.

‘I hope it wasn’t too valuable.’

‘Its value was purely sentimental. But let’s talk about more important matters. How are you, my dear friend? I’ve missed our conversations enormously, despite our occasional disagreements. It’s difficult to find a good conversationalist.’

‘You overrate me, Señor Corelli.’

‘On the contrary.’

A brief silence followed, those bottomless eyes drilling into mine. I told myself that I preferred him when he embarked on his usual banal conversations – when he stopped speaking his face seemed to change and the air thickened around him.

‘Are you staying here?’ I asked to break the silence.

‘No, I’m still in the house by Güell Park. I had arranged to meet a friend here this afternoon, but he seems to be late. The manners of some people are deplorable.’

‘There can’t be many people who dare to stand you up, Señor Corelli.’

The boss looked me straight in the eye.

‘Not many. In fact, the only person I can think of is you.’

The boss took a sugar lump and dropped it into his cup. A second lump followed, and then a third. He tasted the coffee and added four more lumps. Then he picked up yet another and popped it in his mouth.

‘I love sugar,’ he said.

‘So I see.’

‘You haven’t told me anything about our project, Martín, dear friend,’ he cut in. ‘Is there a problem?’

I winced.

‘It’s almost finished,’ I said.

The boss’s face lit up with a smile I tried to ignore.

‘That is wonderful news. When will I be able to see it?’

‘In a couple of weeks. I need to do some revisions. Pruning and finishing touches more than anything else.’

‘Can we set a date?’

‘If you like…’

‘How about Friday? That’s the twenty-third. Will you accept an invitation to dine and celebrate the success of our venture?’

Friday 23 January was exactly two weeks away.

‘Fine,’ I agreed.

‘That’s confirmed, then.’

He raised his sugar-filled cup as if he were drinking a toast and downed the contents in one.

‘How about you?’ he asked casually. ‘What brings you here?’

‘I was looking for someone.’

‘Someone I know?’

‘No.’

‘And have you found the person?’

‘No.’

The boss savoured my silence.

‘I get the impression that I’m keeping you here against your will, dear friend.’

‘I’m just a little tired, that’s all.’

‘Then I won’t take up any more of your time. Sometimes I forget that although I enjoy your company, perhaps mine is not to your liking.’

I smiled meekly and took the opportunity to stand up. I saw myself reflected in his pupils, a pale doll trapped in a dark well.

‘Take care of yourself, Martín. Please.’

‘I will.’

I took my leave with a quick nod and headed for the exit. As I walked away I heard him putting another sugar lump in his mouth and crunching it between his teeth.

When I turned into the Ramblas I noticed that the canopies outside the Liceo were lit up and a long row of cars, guarded by a small regiment of chauffeurs in uniform, was waiting by the pavement. The posters announced Così fan tutte and I wondered if Vidal had felt like forsaking his castle to go along. I scanned the circle of drivers that had formed on the central pavement and soon spotted Pep among them. I beckoned him over.

‘What are you doing here, Señor Martín?’

‘Where is she?’

‘Señor Vidal is inside, watching the performance.’

‘Not “he”. “She”. Cristina. Señora de Vidal. Where is she?’

Poor Pep swallowed hard.

‘I don’t know. Nobody knows.’

He told me that Vidal had spent weeks attempting to find her and that his father, the patriarch of the clan, had even hired various members of the police force to try to discover where she was.

‘At first, Señor Vidal thought she was with you…’

‘Hasn’t she called, or sent a letter, a telegram…? ’

‘No, Señor Martín. I swear. We’re all very worried, and Señor Vidal, well… I’ve never seen him like this in all the years I’ve known him. This is the first time he’s gone out since Señorita Cristina, I mean Señora Cristina…’

‘Do you remember whether Cristina said something, anything, before she left Villa Helius?’

‘Well…’ said Pep, lowering his voice to a whisper. ‘You could hear her arguing with Señor Vidal. She seemed sad to me. She spent a lot of time by herself. She wrote letters and every day she went to the post office in Paseo Reina Elisenda to post them.’

‘Did you ever speak to her alone?’

‘One day, shortly before she left, Señor Vidal asked me to drive her to the doctor.’

‘Was she ill?’

‘She couldn’t sleep. The doctor prescribed laudanum.’

‘Did she say anything to you on the way there?’

Pep hesitated.

‘She asked after you, in case I’d heard from you or seen you.’

‘Is that all?’

‘She just seemed very sad. She started to cry, and when I asked her what was the matter she said she missed her father – Señor Manuel…’

I suddenly understood and cursed myself for not having thought of it sooner. Pep looked at me in surprise and asked me why I was smiling.

‘Do you know where she is?’ he asked.

‘I think so,’ I murmured.

I thought I could hear a voice calling from the other side of the street and glimpsed a familiar figure in the Liceo foyer. Vidal hadn’t even managed to last the first act. Pep turned to attend to his master’s call, and before he had time to tell me to hide, I had already disappeared into the night.

6

Even from afar it looked like bad news: the ember of a cigarette in the blue of the night, silhouettes leaning against a dark wall, the spiralling breath of three figures lying in wait by the main door of the tower house. Inspector Víctor Grandes, accompanied by his two guard dogs Marcos and Castelo, led the welcome committee. It wasn’t hard to work out that they’d found Alicia Marlasca’s body at the bottom of her pool in Sarriá and that my place on their blacklist had gone up a few points. The minute I caught sight of them I stopped and melted into the shadows, observing them for a few seconds to make sure they hadn’t noticed me – I was only some fifty metres away. I could distinguish Grandes’s profile in the thin light shed by the street lamp on the wall. Retreating into the darkness, I slipped into the first alleyway I could find, disappearing into the mass of passages and arches of the Ribera quarter.

Ten minutes later I reached the main entrance to the Estación de Francia. The ticket offices were closed, but I could still see a few trains lined up by the platforms under the large vault of glass and steel. I checked the timetables. Just as I had feared, there were no departures scheduled until the following day and I couldn’t risk returning home and bumping into Grandes and Co. Something told me that on this occasion my visit to police headquarters would include full board, and not even the good offices of the lawyer Señor Valera would get me out of there as easily as the last time.

I decided to spend the night in a cheap hotel opposite the old Stock Exchange, in Plaza Palacio. Legend had it that the building was inhabited by a number of walking cadavers, one-time speculators whose greed and poor arithmetic skills had exploded in their faces. I chose this dump because I imagined that not even the Fates would come looking for me there. I registered under the name of Antonio Miranda and paid for the room in advance. The receptionist, who looked like a mollusc, seemed to be embedded in his cubbyhole, which also served as a towel rack and souvenir shop. He handed me the key, a bar of El Cid soap that stank of bleach and looked as if it had already been used, and informed me that if I wanted female company he could send up a serving girl nicknamed Cock-Eye as soon as she returned from a home visit.

‘She’ll make you as good as new,’ he assured me.

I turned down the offer, claiming the onset of lumbago, and hurried up the stairs wishing him goodnight. The room had the appearance and shape of a sarcophagus. One quick look was enough to persuade me that I should lie on the old bed fully clothed rather than getting under the sheets to fraternise with whatever was growing there. I covered myself with a threadbare blanket I found in the wardrobe – which at least smelled of mothballs – and turned off the light, trying to imagine that I was actually in the sort of suite that someone with a hundred thousand francs in the bank could afford. I barely slept all night.

I left the hotel halfway through the morning and made my way to the station, where I bought a first-class ticket, hoping I’d be able to sleep on the train to make up for the dreadful night I’d spent in that dive. Seeing that there were still twenty minutes to go before the train’s departure, I went over to the row of public telephones. I gave the operator the number Ricardo Salvador had given me – that of his downstairs neighbour.

‘I’d like to speak to Don Emilio, please.’

‘Speaking.’

‘My name is David Martín. I’m a friend of Señor Ricardo Salvador. He told me I could call him at this number in an emergency.’

‘Let’s see… Can you wait a moment while we get him?’

I looked at the station clock.

‘Yes. I’ll wait. Thanks.’

More than three minutes went by before I heard the sound of footsteps and then Ricardo Salvador’s voice.

‘Martín? Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank goodness. I read about Roures in the newspaper and was very concerned about you. Where are you?’

‘Señor Salvador, I don’t have much time now. I need to leave Barcelona.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘Yes. Listen: Alicia Marlasca is dead.’

‘The widow? Dead?’

A long silence. I thought I could hear Salvador sobbing and cursed myself for having broken the news to him so bluntly.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes…’

‘I’m calling to warn you. You must be careful. Irene Sabino is alive and she’s been following me. There is someone with her. I think it’s Jaco.’

‘Jaco Corbera?’

‘I’m not sure it’s him. I think they know I’m on their trail and they’re trying to silence all the people I’ve been speaking to. I think you were right…’

‘Why would Jaco return now?’ Salvador asked. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘I don’t know. I have to go now. I just wanted to warn you.’

‘Don’t worry about me. If that bastard comes to visit me, I’ll be ready for him. I’ve been ready for twenty-five years.’

The stationmaster blew the whistle: the train was about to leave.

‘Don’t trust anyone. Do you hear me? I’ll call you as soon as I get back.’

‘Thanks for calling, Martín. Be careful.’

7

The train was beginning to glide past the platform as I took refuge in my compartment and collapsed on the seat. I abandoned myself to the flow of tepid air from the heating and the gentle rocking of the train. We left the city behind us, crossing the forest of factories and chimneys and escaping the shroud of scarlet light that covered it. Slowly the wasteland of railway depots and trains abandoned on sidings dissolved into an endless plain of fields, woodlands, rivers, and hills crowned with large, run-down houses and watchtowers. The occasional covered wagon or hamlet peered through a bank of mist. Small railway stations slipped by; bell towers and farmhouses appeared like mirages in the distance.

At some point in the journey I fell asleep, and when I woke again the landscape had changed dramatically. We were now passing through steep valleys with rocky crags rising between lakes and streams. The train skirted great forests that climbed the soaring mountains. After a while, the tangle of hills and tunnels cut into the rock gave way to a large open valley with never-ending pastures, where herds of wild horses galloped across the snow and small stone villages appeared in the distance. The peaks of the Pyrenees rose up on the other side, their snow-covered slopes set alight by the amber glow of evening. In front of us was a jumble of houses and buildings clustered around a hill. The ticket inspector put his head through the door of my compartment and smiled.

‘Next stop, Puigcerdà,’ he announced.

The train stopped and let out a blast of steam that inundated the platform. When I got out I was enveloped in a thick mist that smelled of static. Shortly afterwards, I heard the stationmaster’s bell and the train set off again. As the coaches filed past, the shape of the station began to emerge around me like an apparition. I was alone on the platform. A fine curtain of snow was falling, and to the west a red sun peeped below the vault of clouds, scattering the snow with tiny bright embers. I went over to the stationmaster’s office and knocked on the glass door. He looked up, opened the door and gazed at me distractedly.

‘Could you tell me how to find a place called Villa San Antonio?’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘The sanatorium?’

‘I think so.’

The stationmaster adopted the pensive air of someone trying to work out how best to offer directions to a stranger. Then, with the help of a whole catalogue of gestures and expressions, he came up with the following:

‘You have to walk right through the village, past the church square, until you reach the lake. On the other side of the lake there’s a long avenue with large houses on either side that leads to Paseo de la Rigolisa. There, on a corner, you’ll find a three-storey house surrounded by a garden. That’s the sanatorium.’

‘And do you know of anywhere I might find accommodation?’

‘On the way you’ll pass the Hotel del Lago. Tell them Sebas sent you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Good luck…’

I walked through the lonely streets of the village beneath the falling snow, looking for the outline of the church tower. On the way I passed a few locals, who bobbed their heads and looked at me suspiciously. When I reached the square, two men who were unloading coal from a cart pointed me in the right direction, and a couple of minutes later I found myself walking down a road that bordered a large, frozen lake surrounded by stately-looking mansions with pointed towers. The great expanse of white was studded with small rowing boats trapped in the ice, and around it, like a ribbon, ran a promenade punctuated by benches and trees. I walked over to the edge and gazed at the frozen lake spread out at my feet. The ice must have been almost twenty centimetres thick and in some places it shone like opaque glass, hinting at the current of black water that flowed under its shell.

The Hotel del Lago, a two-storey house painted dark red, stood at the end of the lake. Before continuing on my way, I stopped to book a room for two nights and paid in advance. The receptionist informed me that the hotel was almost empty and I could take my pick of rooms.

‘Room 101 has spectacular views of the sunrise over the lake,’ he suggested. ‘But if you prefer a room facing north I have-’

‘You choose,’ I cut in, indifferent to the majestic beauty of the landscape.

‘Then room 101 it is. In the summer, it’s the honeymooners’ favourite.’

He handed me the keys of the nuptial suite and informed me of the hours for dinner. I told him I’d return later and asked if Villa San Antonio was far from there. The receptionist adopted the same expression I had seen on the face of the stationmaster, first shaking his head, then giving me a friendly smile.

‘It’s quite near, about ten minutes’ walk. If you take the promenade at the end of this street, you’ll see it a short distance away. You can’t miss it.’

Ten minutes later I was standing by the gates of a large garden strewn with dead leaves half-buried in the snow. Beyond the garden, Villa San Antonio rose up like a sombre sentinel wrapped in a halo of golden light that radiated from the windows. As I crossed the garden my heart was pounding and my hands perspired despite the bitter cold. I walked up the stairs to the main door. The entrance hall was covered in black and white floor tiles like a chessboard and led to a staircase at the far end. There I saw a young girl in a nurse’s uniform holding the hand of a man who was trembling and seemed to be eternally suspended between two steps, as if his whole life had suddenly become trapped in that moment.

‘Good afternoon?’ said a voice to my right.

Her eyes were black and severe, her features sharp, without a trace of warmth, and she had the serious air of one who has learned not to expect anything but bad news. She must have been in her early fifties, and although she wore the same uniform as the young nurse, everything about her exuded authority and rank.

‘Good afternoon. I’m looking for someone called Cristina Sagnier. I have reason to believe she is staying here…’

The woman observed me without batting an eyelid.

‘Nobody stays here, sir. This place is not a hotel or a guest house.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ve just come on a long journey in search of this person…’

‘Don’t apologise,’ said the nurse. ‘May I ask you if you are family or a close friend?’

‘My name is David Martín. Is Cristina Sagnier here? Please…’

The nurse’s expression softened and there followed the hint of a smile. I took a deep breath.

‘I’m Teresa, the sister in charge of night duty. If you’d be so kind as to follow me, Señor Martín, I’ll take you to the office of Doctor Sanjuán.’

‘How is Señorita Sagnier? Can I see her?’

Another faint and impenetrable smile.

‘This way, please.’

The rectangular room had four blue walls but no windows and was lit by two lamps that hung from the ceiling, giving off a metallic light. The only three objects in the room were an empty table and two chairs. It was cold and the air smelled of disinfectant. The nurse had described the room as an office, but after ten minutes of waiting on my own, anchored to one of the chairs, all I could see was a cell. Even though the door was shut I could hear voices, sometimes isolated shouts, on the other side of the wall. I was beginning to lose all notion of how long I’d been there when the door opened and a man came in. He was in his mid-thirties and wore a white coat. His smile was as cold as the air that filled the room. Doctor Sanjuán, I imagined. He walked round the table and sat on the other chair, planting his hands on the desk and observing me with vague curiosity for a few moments.

‘I realise you must be tired after your journey but I’d like to know why Señor Pedro Vidal isn’t here,’ he said at last.

‘He wasn’t able to come.’

The doctor kept his gaze fixed on me, waiting. His eyes were cold and he seemed like the type of person who listens but does not hear.

‘Can I see her?’

‘You can’t see anyone unless you tell me the truth about why you’re here.’

I surrendered. I hadn’t travelled a hundred and fifty kilometres just to lie.

‘My name is Martín, David Martín. I’m a friend of Cristina Sagnier.’

‘Here we call her Señora de Vidal.’

‘I don’t care what you call her; I want to see her. Now.’

The doctor sighed.

‘Are you the writer?’

I stood up impatiently.

‘What sort of place is this? Why can’t I see her?’

‘Sit down, please. I beg you.’

He pointed to the chair and waited for me to sit down again.

‘May I ask when was the last time you saw her or spoke to her?’

‘Just over a month ago,’ I replied. ‘Why?’

‘Do you know anyone who might have seen or spoken to her since then?’

‘No… I don’t know. What’s going on?’

The doctor put his fingertips to his lips, measuring his words.

‘Señor Martín, I’m afraid I have bad news.’

I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach.

‘What’s wrong with her?’

The doctor did not reply, and for the first time I thought I glimpsed the shadow of a doubt in his eyes.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

We walked along a short corridor flanked by metal doors. Doctor Sanjuán went in front of me, holding a bunch of keys in his hands. As we passed I thought I could hear voices whispering, suppressed laughter and sobs. The room was at the end of the corridor. The doctor opened the door but stopped at the threshold, his expression unreadable.

‘Fifteen minutes,’ he said.

I went in and heard the doctor shut the door behind me. Before me lay a room with a high ceiling and white walls reflected in a floor of shining tiles. On one side stood a bed – a metallic frame surrounded by a white gauze curtain. It was empty. Large French windows looked out over the snowy garden, trees, and in the distance the outline of the lake. I didn’t notice her until I’d taken a few steps into the room.

She was sitting in an armchair by the window, wearing a white nightdress, her hair up in a plait. I went round in front of her and looked straight at her, but her eyes didn’t move. I knelt down next to her, but she didn’t even blink. I put my hand over hers, but she didn’t move a single muscle. Then I noticed the bandages covering her arms, from her wrists to her elbows, and the straps that tied her to the chair. I stroked her cheek, gathering a tear that trickled down her face.

‘Cristina,’ I whispered.

Her eyes were blank: she seemed completely unaware of my presence. I brought a chair over and sat opposite her.

‘It’s David,’ I murmured.

For a quarter of an hour we remained like that, not speaking, her hand in mine, her eyes lost and my questions unanswered. At some point I heard the door open again and felt someone taking me gently by the arm and pulling me away. It was Doctor Sanjuán. I let myself be led to the corridor without offering any resistance. The doctor shut the door and took me back to his freezing office. I collapsed into a chair, unable to utter a single word.

‘Would you like me to leave you alone for a few minutes?’ he asked.

I nodded. The doctor left the room, closing the door behind him. I stared at my right hand, which was shaking, and clenched my fist. I hardly felt the cold of that room, or heard the shouts and voices that filtered through the walls. I only knew that I needed some air and had to get out of that place.

8

Doctor Sanjuán found me in the hotel dining room, sitting by the fire next to a plate of food I hadn’t touched. There was nobody else there except for a maid who was going round the deserted tables, polishing the cutlery. Outside it had grown dark and the snow was still falling, like a dusting of powdered blue glass. The doctor walked over to my table and smiled at me.

‘I thought I’d find you here,’ he said. ‘All visitors end up in this hotel. It’s where I spent my first night in the village when I arrived ten years ago. What room were you given?’

‘It’s supposed to be the newly-weds’ favourite, with views over the lake.’

‘Don’t you believe it. That’s what they say about all the rooms.’

Away from the sanatorium and without his white coat, Doctor Sanjuán looked more relaxed, even friendly.

‘I hardly recognised you without your uniform,’ I remarked.

‘Medicine is like the army. The cowl maketh the monk,’ he replied. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘I see. I missed you earlier, when I went back to the office to look for you.’

‘I needed some air.’

‘I understand. I was hoping you wouldn’t be affected quite so much.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I need you. Or rather, Cristina needs you.’

I gave a deep sigh.

‘You must think I’m a coward,’ I said.

The doctor shook his head.

‘How long has she been like this?’

‘Weeks. Practically since she arrived here. And she’s getting steadily worse.’

‘Is she aware of where she is?’

‘It’s hard to tell,’ the doctor replied with a shrug.

‘What happened to her?’

Doctor Sanjuán exhaled.

‘She was found, four weeks ago, not far from here – in the village graveyard, lying on her father’s grave. She was delirious and suffering from hypothermia. They brought her to the sanatorium because one of the Civil Guards recognised her from last year, when she spent a few months here, because of her father. A lot of people in the village knew her. We admitted her and she was kept under observation for a night or two. She was dehydrated and had probably not slept in days. Every now and then she regained consciousness, and when she did, she spoke about you. She said you were in great danger. She made me swear I wouldn’t call anyone, not even her husband, until she was capable of doing so herself.’

‘Even so, why didn’t you let Vidal know what had happened?’

‘I would have but… You’ll think this is absurd.’

‘What?’

‘I was convinced that she was fleeing from something and thought it was my duty to help her.’

‘Fleeing from what?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he said with an ambiguous expression.

‘What is it you’re not telling me?’

‘I’m just a doctor. There are things I don’t understand.’

‘What things?’

Doctor Sanjuán smiled nervously.

‘Cristina thinks that something, or someone, has got inside her and wants to destroy her.’

‘Who?’

‘I only know that she thinks it has something to do with you, and that it frightens her. That’s why I think nobody else can help her. It’s also why I didn’t let Vidal know, as I ought to have done. Because I knew that sooner or later you would turn up here.’

He looked at me with a strange mixture of pity and despair.

‘I’m fond of her too, Señor Martín. The months Cristina spent visiting her father… we ended up being good friends. I don’t suppose she talked to you about me – there was no reason why she should. It was a very difficult time for her. She confided a lot of things in me, and I in her, things I’ve never told anyone else. In fact, I even proposed to her. So you see, even the doctors here are slightly nuts. Of course she refused me. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’

‘But she’ll be all right again, won’t she, doctor? She’ll recover…’

Doctor Sanjuán turned his head towards the fire.

‘I hope so,’ he replied.

‘I want to take her away from here.’

The doctor raised his eyebrows.

‘Take her away? Where to?’

‘Home.’

‘Señor Martín, let me be frank. Aside from the fact that you’re not a relative, nor, indeed, the patient’s husband – which is a legal requirement – Cristina is in no fit state to go anywhere.’

‘She’s better off here with you, locked up in a rambling old house, tied to a chair and full of drugs? Don’t tell me you’ve proposed to her again.’

The doctor observed me carefully, ignoring the offence my words had clearly caused him.

‘Señor Martín, I’m glad you’re here because I believe that together we can help Cristina. I think your presence will allow her to come out of the place into which she has retreated. I believe it, because the only word she has uttered in the last two weeks is your name. Whatever happened to her, I think it had something to do with you.’

The doctor was watching me as if he expected something from me, something that would answer all his questions.

‘I thought she had abandoned me,’ I began. ‘We were about to run away together, leaving everything behind. I had gone out for a moment to buy the train tickets and do an errand. I wasn’t away for more than ninety minutes but when I returned home, Cristina had left.’

‘Did anything happen before she left? Did you have an argument?’

I bit my lip.

‘I wouldn’t call it an argument.’

‘What would you call it?’

‘I caught her looking through some papers relating to my work and I think she was offended by what she must have taken as a lack of trust.’

‘Was it something important?’

‘No. Just a manuscript, a draft.’

‘May I ask what type of manuscript it was?’

I hesitated.

‘A fable.’

‘For children?’

‘Let’s say for a family audience.’

‘I see.’

‘No, I don’t think you do. There was no argument. Cristina was slightly annoyed because I wouldn’t let her have a look, but that was all. When I left, she was fine, packing a few things. That manuscript is not important.’

The doctor acquiesced, more out of courtesy than conviction.

‘Could it be that while you were out someone else visited her?’

‘I was the only one who knew she was there.’

‘Can you think of any reason why she would have decided to leave the house before you returned?’

‘No. Why?’

‘It’s only a question, Señor Martín. I’m trying to understand what happened between the moment you last saw her and her appearance here.’

‘Did she say what, or who, had got inside her?’

‘It’s just a manner of speaking, Señor Martín. Nothing has got inside Cristina. It’s not unusual for patients who have suffered a traumatic experience to feel the presence of dead relatives or imaginary people, or even to disappear into their own minds and close every door to the outside world. It’s an emotional response, a form of self-defence against feelings or emotions that seem unacceptable. But you mustn’t worry about that now. What matters and what’s going to help is that, if there is anyone who is important to her right now, that person is you. From what Cristina confided in me at the time, I know that she loves you, Señor Martín. She loves you as she’s never loved anyone else, and certainly as she’ll never love me. That’s why I’m asking you to help me. Don’t let yourself be blinded by fear or resentment. Help me, because we both want the same thing. We both want Cristina to be able to leave this place.’

I felt ashamed.

‘I’m sorry if-’

The doctor raised his hand to silence me. Then he stood up and put on his overcoat.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Thank you, doctor.’

‘Thank you. For coming here.’

The following morning I left the hotel just as the sun was beginning to rise over the frozen lake. A group of children was playing by the shore, throwing stones at the hull of a small boat wedged in the ice. It had stopped snowing and white mountains were visible in the distance. Large clouds paraded across the sky like monumental cities built of mist. I reached Villa San Antonio shortly before nine o’clock. Doctor Sanjuán was waiting for me in the garden with Cristina. They were sitting in the sun and the doctor held Cristina’s hand as he spoke to her. She barely glanced at him. When he saw me crossing the garden, he beckoned me over to join them. He had kept a chair for me opposite Cristina. I sat down and looked at her, her eyes on mine without seeing me.

‘Cristina, look who’s here,’ said the doctor.

I took Cristina’s hand and moved closer to her.

‘Speak to her,’ said the doctor.

I nodded, lost in her absent gaze, but could find no words. The doctor stood up and left us alone. I saw him disappear into the sanatorium, but not without first asking a nurse to keep a close eye on us. Ignoring the presence of the nurse, I pulled my chair even closer to Cristina’s. I brushed her hair from her forehead and she smiled.

‘Do you remember me?’ I asked.

I could see my reflection in her eyes, but didn’t know whether she could see me or hear my voice.

‘The doctor says you’ll get better soon and we’ll be able to go home. Or wherever you like. I’ll leave the tower house and we’ll go far away, just as you wanted. A place where nobody will know us and nobody will care who we are or where we’re from.’

Her hands were covered with long woollen gloves that masked the bandages on her arms. She had lost weight and there were deep lines on her skin; her lips were cracked and her eyes dull and lifeless. All I could do was smile and stroke her cheek and her forehead, talking non-stop, telling her how much I’d missed her and how I’d looked for her everywhere. We spent a couple of hours like that, until the doctor returned and Cristina was taken indoors. I stayed there, sitting in the garden, not knowing where else to go, until I saw Doctor Sanjuán reappear at the door. He came over and sat down beside me.

‘She didn’t say a word,’ I said. ‘I don’t think she was even aware that I was here…’

‘You’re wrong, my friend,’ he replied. ‘This is a long process, but I can assure you that your presence helps her – a lot.’

I accepted the doctor’s meagre reassurance and kind-hearted lie.

‘We’ll try again tomorrow,’ he said.

It was only midday.

‘And what am I going to do until tomorrow?’ I asked him.

‘Aren’t you a writer? Then write. Write something for her.’

9

I walked round the lake back to the hotel. The receptionist had told me where to find the only bookshop in the village, and I was able to buy some blank sheets of paper and a fountain pen that must have been there since time immemorial. Thus equipped, I locked myself in my room. I moved the table over to the window and asked for a flask of coffee. I spent almost an hour gazing at the lake and the mountains in the distance before writing a single word. I remembered the old photograph Cristina had given me, that image she had never been able to place, of a girl walking along a wooden jetty that stretched out to sea. I imagined myself walking down that pier, my steps following behind her, and slowly the words began to flow and the outline of a story emerged. I knew I was going to write the story that Cristina could never remember, the story that had led her, as a child, to walk over those shimmering waters holding on to a stranger’s hand. I would write the tale of a memory that never was, the memory of a stolen life. The images and the light that began to appear between sentences took me back to the old, shadowy Barcelona that had shaped us both. I wrote until the sun had set and there was not a drop of coffee left in the flask, until the frozen lake was lit up by a blue moon and my eyes and hands were aching. I let the pen drop and pushed aside the sheets of paper lying on the table. When the receptionist came to knock on my door to ask if I was coming down for dinner, I didn’t hear him. I had fallen fast asleep, for once dreaming and believing that words, even my own, had the power to heal.

Four days passed with the same rhythm. I rose at dawn and went out onto the balcony to watch the sun tint with scarlet the lake at my feet. I would arrive at the sanatorium around half past eight in the morning and usually found Doctor Sanjuán sitting on the entrance steps, gazing at the garden with a steaming cup of coffee in his hands.

‘Do you never sleep, doctor?’ I would ask.

‘No more than you,’ he replied.

Around nine o’clock the doctor would take me to Cristina’s room and open the door, then leave us. I always found her sitting in the same armchair facing the window. I would bring over a chair and take her hand. She was barely aware of my presence. Then I would read out the pages I’d written for her the night before. Every day I started again from the beginning. Sometimes, when I interrupted my reading and looked at her, I would be surprised to discover the hint of a smile on her lips. I spent the day with her until the doctor returned in the evening and asked me to leave. Then I would trudge back to the hotel through the snow, eat some dinner and go up to my room to continue writing until I was overcome by exhaustion. The days ceased to have a name.

When I went into Cristina’s room on the fifth day, as I did every morning, the armchair in which she was usually waiting for me was empty. I looked around anxiously and found her on the floor, curled up into a ball in a corner, clasping her knees, her face covered with tears. When she saw me she smiled, and I realised that she had recognised me. I knelt down next to her and hugged her. I don’t remember ever having been as happy as I was during those miserable seconds when I felt her breath on my face and saw that a glimmer of light had returned to her eyes.

‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

That afternoon Doctor Sanjuán gave me permission to take her out for an hour. We walked down to the lake and sat on a bench. She started to tell me a dream she’d had, about a child who lived in the dark maze of a town in which the streets and buildings were alive and fed on the souls of its inhabitants. In her dream, as in the story I had been reading to her, the girl managed to escape and came to a jetty that stretched out over an endless sea. She was holding the hand of the faceless stranger with no name who had saved her and who now went with her to the very end of the wooden platform, where someone was waiting for her, someone she would never see, because her dream, like the story I had been reading to her, was unfinished.

Cristina had a vague recollection of Villa San Antonio and Doctor Sanjuán. She blushed when she told me she thought he’d proposed to her a week ago. Time and space seemed to be confused in her mind. Sometimes she thought that her father had been admitted to one of the rooms and she’d come to visit him. A moment later she couldn’t remember how she’d got there and at times she ceased to care. She remembered that I’d gone out to buy the train tickets and referred to the morning in which she had disappeared as if it were just the previous day. Sometimes she confused me with Vidal and asked me to forgive her. At others, fear cast a shadow over her face and she began to tremble.

‘He’s getting closer,’ she would say. ‘I have to go. Before he sees you.’

Then she would sink into a deep silence, unaware of my presence, unaware of the world itself, as if something had dragged her to some remote and inaccessible place.

After a few days, the certainty that Cristina had lost her mind began to affect me deeply. My initial hope became tinged with bitterness, and on occasions, when I returned at night to my hotel cell, I felt that old pit of darkness and hatred, which I had thought forgotten, opening up inside me. Doctor Sanjuán, who watched over me with the same care and tenacity with which he treated his patients, had warned me that this would happen.

‘Don’t give up hope, my friend,’ he would say. ‘We’re making great progress. Have faith.’

I nodded meekly and returned day after day to the sanatorium to take Cristina out for a stroll as far as the lake and listen to the dreamed memories she’d already described dozens of times but which she discovered anew every day. Each day she would ask me where I’d been, why I hadn’t come back to fetch her, and why I’d left her alone. Each day she looked at me from her invisible cage and asked me to hold her tight. Each day, when I said goodbye to her, she asked me if I loved her and I always gave her the same reply.

‘I’ll always love you,’ I would say. ‘Always.’

One night I was woken by the sound of someone knocking on my door. It was three in the morning. I stumbled over, in a daze, and found one of the nurses from the sanatorium standing in the doorway.

‘Doctor Sanjuán has asked me to come and fetch you.’

‘What’s happened?’

Ten minutes later I was walking through the gates of Villa San Antonio. The screams could be heard from the garden. Cristina had apparently locked the door of her room from the inside. Doctor Sanjuán, who looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week, and two male nurses were trying to force the door open. Inside, Cristina could be heard shouting and banging on the walls, knocking down furniture as if she were destroying everything she could find.

‘Who is in there with her?’ I asked, petrified.

‘Nobody,’ replied the doctor.

‘But she’s speaking to someone…’ I protested.

‘She’s alone.’

An orderly rushed up, carrying a large crowbar.

‘It’s the only thing I could find,’ he said.

The doctor nodded and the orderly levered the crowbar between the door and the frame.

‘How was she able to lock herself in?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know…’

For the first time I thought I saw fear in the doctor’s face, and he avoided my eyes. The porter was about to force the door when suddenly there was silence on the other side.

‘Cristina?’ called the doctor.

There was no reply. The door finally gave way and flew open with a bang. I followed the doctor into the room. It was dark. The window was open and an icy wind was blowing. The chairs, tables and armchair had been knocked over and the walls were stained with an irregular line of what looked like black ink. It was blood. There was no trace of Cristina.

The male nurses ran out to the balcony and scanned the garden for footprints in the snow. The doctor looked right and left, searching for Cristina. Then we heard laughter coming from the bathroom. I went to the door and opened it. The floor was scattered with bits of glass. Cristina was sitting on the tiles, leaning against the metal bathtub like a broken doll. Her hands and feet were bleeding, covered in cuts and splinters of glass, and her blood still trickled down the cracks in the mirror she had destroyed with her fists. I put my arms around her and searched her eyes. She smiled.

‘I didn’t let him in,’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘He wanted me to forget, but I didn’t let him in,’ she repeated.

The doctor knelt down beside me and examined the wounds covering Cristina’s body.

‘Please,’ he murmured, pushing me aside. ‘Not now.’

One of the male nurses had rushed to fetch a stretcher. I helped him lift Cristina onto it and held her hand as they wheeled her to a treatment room. There, Doctor Sanjuán injected her with a sedative and in a matter of seconds her consciousness stole away. I stayed by her side, looking into her eyes until they became empty mirrors and one of the nurses led me gently from the room. I stood there, in the middle of a dark corridor that smelled of disinfectant, my hands and clothes stained with blood. I leaned against the wall and then slid to the floor.

Cristina woke up the following morning to find herself lying on a bed, bound with leather straps, locked up in a windowless room with no other light than the pale glow from a bulb on the ceiling. I had spent the night in a corner, sitting on a chair, observing her, with no notion of time passing. Suddenly she opened her eyes, and grimaced at the stabbing pain from the wounds that covered her arms.

‘David?’ she called out.

‘I’m here,’ I replied.

When I reached the bed I leaned over so that she could see my face and the anaemic smile I’d rehearsed for her.

‘I can’t move.’

‘They’ve strapped you down. It’s for your own good. As soon as the doctor comes he’ll take them off.’

‘You take them off.’

‘I can’t. It must be the doctor-’

‘Please,’ she begged.

‘Cristina, it’s better-’

‘Please.’

I saw pain and fear in her eyes, but above all a lucidity and a presence that had not been there in all the days I had visited her in that place. She was herself again. I untied the first two straps, which crossed over her shoulders and waist, and stroked her face. She was shaking.

‘Are you cold?’

She shook her head.

‘Do you want me to call the doctor?’

She shook her head again.

‘David, look at me.’

I sat on the edge of the bed and met her gaze.

‘You must destroy it,’ she said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You must destroy it.’

‘What must I destroy?’

‘The book.’

‘Cristina, I’d better call the doctor-’

‘No. Listen to me.’

She grabbed my hand.

‘The morning you went to buy the tickets, do you remember? I went up to your study again and opened the trunk.’

I took a breath.

‘I found the manuscript and began to read it.’

‘It’s just a fable, Cristina…’

‘Don’t lie to me. I’ve read it, David. At least enough to know that I had to destroy it…’

‘You don’t need to worry about that now. I told you: I’ve abandoned the manuscript.’

‘But it hasn’t abandoned you. I tried to burn it…’

For a moment I let go of her hand when I heard those words, repressing the surge of anger I felt when I remembered the burned matches I’d found on the floor of the study.

‘You tried to burn it?’

‘But I couldn’t,’ she muttered. ‘There was someone else in the house.’

‘There was no one in the house, Cristina. Nobody.’

‘As soon as I lit the match and held it close to the manuscript, I sensed him behind me. I felt a blow to the back of my neck and then I fell.’

‘Who hit you?’

‘It was all very dark, as if the daylight had suddenly vanished. I turned round but could only see his eyes. Like the eyes of a wolf.’

‘Cristina…’

‘He took the manuscript from my hands and put it back in the trunk.’

‘Cristina, you’re not well. Let me call the doctor…’

‘You’re not listening to me.’

I smiled at her and kissed her on the forehead.

‘Of course I’m listening to you. But there was no one else in the house.’

She closed her eyes and tilted her head, moaning as if my words were like daggers cutting her inside.

‘I’m going to call the doctor.’

I bent over to kiss her again and then stood up. I went towards the door, feeling her eyes on my back.

‘Coward,’ she said.

When I came back to the room with Doctor Sanjuán, Cristina had undone the last strap and was staggering round the room towards the door, leaving bloody footprints on the white tiles. We laid her back on the bed and held her down. Cristina shouted and fought with such anger it made my blood freeze. The noise alerted the other staff. An orderly helped us restrain her while the doctor tied the straps. Once she was immobilised, the doctor looked at me severely.

‘I’m going to sedate her again. Stay here and this time don’t even think of untying her straps.’

I was left alone with her for a moment but could not calm her. Cristina went on fighting to escape. I held her face and tried to catch her eye.

‘Cristina, please-’

She spat at me.

‘Go away.’

The doctor returned with a nurse who carried a metal tray with a syringe, dressings, and a glass bottle containing a yellowish solution.

‘Leave the room,’ he ordered.

I went to the doorway. The nurse held Cristina against the bed and the doctor injected the sedative into her arm. Cristina’s shrieks pierced the room. I covered my ears and went out into the corridor.

Coward, I told myself. Coward.

10

Beyond Villa San Antonio, a tree-lined path led out of the village, following an irrigation channel. The framed map in the hotel dining room bestowed on it the sugary name of Lovers’ Lane. That afternoon, after leaving the sanatorium, I ventured down the gloomy path, which was more suggestive of loneliness than romance. I walked for about half an hour without meeting a soul, leaving the village behind, until the sharp outline of Villa San Antonio and the large rambling houses that surrounded the lake were small cardboard cut-outs on the horizon. I sat on one of the benches dotted along the path and watched the sun setting at the other end of the Cerdanya valley. Some two hundred metres from where I sat, I could see the silhouette of a small, isolated country chapel in the middle of a snow-covered field. Without quite knowing why, I got up and made my way towards it. When I was about a dozen metres away, I noticed that the chapel had no door. The stone walls had been blackened by the flames that had devoured the building. I climbed the steps to what had once been the entrance and went in. The remains of burned pews and loose pieces of timber that had fallen from the ceiling were scattered among the ashes. Weeds had crept into the building and grown up around the former altar. The fading light shone through the narrow stone windows. I sat on what remained of a pew in front of the altar and heard the wind whispering through the cracks in the burned-out vault. I looked up and wished I had even a breath of the faith my old friend Sempere had possessed – his faith in God or in books – with which I could pray to God, or to hell, to give me another chance and let me take Cristina away from that place.

‘Please,’ I murmured, fighting back the tears.

I smiled bitterly, a defeated man pitifully begging a God in whom he had never trusted. I looked around at that holy site filled with nothing but ruins and ashes, emptiness and loneliness, and knew that I would go back to fetch her that very night, with no more miracle or blessing than my own determination to tear her away from the clutches of that faint-hearted, infatuated doctor who had decided to turn her into his own sleeping beauty. I would set fire to the sanatorium rather than allow anyone to touch her again. I would take her home and die by her side. Hatred and anger would light my way.

I left the old chapel at nightfall and crossed the silvery field, which glowed in the moonlight, returning to the tree-lined path. In the dark, I followed the trail of the irrigation channel until I glimpsed the lights of Villa San Antonio in the distance and the citadel of towers and attic windows surrounding the lake. When I reached the sanatorium I didn’t bother to ring the bell next to the wrought-iron gates. After jumping over the wall, I crept across the garden, then went round the building to one of the back entrances. It was locked from the inside but I didn’t hesitate for a moment before smashing the glass with my elbow and grabbing hold of the door handle. I went down the corridor, listening to the voices and whisperings, catching the aroma of broth that rose from the kitchen, until I reached the room at the end where the good doctor had imprisoned Cristina, his fantasy princess, lying forever in a limbo of drugs and straps.

I had expected to find the door locked, but the handle yielded beneath my hand. I pushed the door open and went into the room. The first thing I noticed was that I could see my own breath floating in front of my face. The second thing was that the white-tiled floor was stained with bloody footprints. The large window that overlooked the garden was open and the curtains fluttered in the wind. The bed was empty. I drew closer and picked up one of the leather straps with which the doctor and the orderly had tied Cristina down. They had all been cleanly cut, as if they were made of paper. I went out into the garden and saw a trail of red footprints across the snow. I followed it to the stone wall surrounding the grounds on which I found yet more blood. I climbed up and jumped over to the other side. The erratic footprints led off towards the village. I remember that I began to run.

I followed the tracks as far as the park that bordered the lake. A full moon burned over the large sheet of ice. That is when I saw her. She was limping over the frozen lake, a line of bloodstained footprints behind her, the nightdress covering her body trembling in the breeze. By the time I reached the shore, Cristina had walked about thirty metres towards the centre of the lake. I shouted her name and she stopped. Slowly she turned and I saw her smile as a cobweb of cracks began to weave itself beneath her feet. I jumped onto the ice, feeling the frozen surface buckle, and ran towards her. Cristina stood still, looking at me. The cracks under her feet were expanding into a mesh of black veins. The ice was giving way and I fell flat on my face.

‘I love you,’ I heard her say.

I crawled towards her, but the web of cracks was growing and now encircled her. Barely a few metres separated us when I heard the ice finally break. Black jaws snapped open and swallowed her up into a pool of tar. As soon as she disappeared under the surface, the plates of ice began to join up, sealing the opening through which Cristina had plunged.

Caught by the current, her body slid a couple of metres towards me under the ice. I managed to pull myself to the place where she had become trapped and I pounded the ice frantically. Cristina, her eyes open and her hair streaming out around her, watched me from the other side of the translucent sheet. I hammered at the ice until I’d shattered my hands, but in vain. Cristina never let her eyes stray from mine. She placed her hand on the ice and smiled. The last bubbles of air were escaping from her lips and her pupils dilated for the last time. A second later, she began to sink forever into the blackness.

11

I didn’t return to my room to collect my things. From where I was hiding among the trees by the lake, I saw the doctor and a couple of Civil Guards approach the hotel then spied them talking to the receptionist through the French windows. I crossed the village, stealing through the deserted streets, until I came to the station, which was buried in fog. Two gas lamps helped me distinguish the shape of a train waiting at the platform, its dark metal skeleton reflecting the red light of the stop signal at the end of the station. The locomotive had been shut down and tears of ice hung from its rails and levers. The carriages were in darkness, the windows veiled with frost. No light shone from the stationmaster’s office. The train was not scheduled to leave for several hours, and the station was empty.

I went over to one of the carriages and tried the door but it was bolted shut. I stepped down onto the track and walked round the train. Under cover of darkness I climbed onto the platform linking the guard’s van to the rear coach and tried my luck with the connecting door. It was open. I slipped into the coach and stumbled through the gloom until I reached one of the compartments. I went in and bolted the door. Trembling with cold, I collapsed onto the seat. I didn’t dare close my eyes, fearing I would see Cristina’s face again, looking at me from beneath the ice. Minutes went by, perhaps hours. At some point I asked myself why I was hiding and why I couldn’t feel anything.

I cocooned myself in that void and waited, squirrelled away like a fugitive, listening to a thousand groans of metal and wood as they contracted in the cold. I scanned the shadows beyond the windows until finally the beam of a lamp glanced across the walls of the coach and I heard voices on the platform. I cleared a spyhole with my fingers through the film of mist that coated the windowpane and saw the engine driver and a couple of railway workers making their way towards the front of the train. Some ten metres away, the stationmaster was talking to the two Civil Guards I’d seen with the doctor earlier. I saw him nod and extract a bunch of keys, then he walked towards the train followed by the two Guards. I pulled back from the window. A few seconds later I heard the click of the carriage door as it opened, then footsteps approaching. I unbolted the door, leaving the compartment open, and lay down on the floor under one of the rows of seats, pressing my body against the wall. I heard the Civil Guards drawing closer and saw the beam from their torches drawing needles of blue light through the compartment window. When the steps stopped by my compartment I held my breath. The voices subsided. I heard the door being opened and a pair of boots passed within centimetres of my face. The guard remained there for a few seconds, then left and closed the door.

I stayed where I was, motionless, as he moved away down the carriage. A couple of minutes later I heard a rattling and warm air breathed out through the radiator grille by my face. An hour later the first light of dawn crept slowly through the windows. I came out from my hiding place and looked outside. Travellers walked alone or in couples up the platform, dragging their suitcases and bundles. The rumble of the locomotive could be felt through the walls and floor of the coach. After a few minutes the travellers began to climb into the train and the ticket collector turned on the lights. I sat on the seat by the window and acknowledged some of the passengers who walked by my compartment. When the large clock in the station struck eight, the train began to move. Only then did I close my eyes and hear the church bells ringing in the distance, like the echo of a curse.

The return journey was plagued by delays. Some overhead power cables had fallen and we didn’t reach Barcelona until the afternoon of that Friday, 23 January. The city was buried under a crimson sky across which stretched a web of black smoke. It was hot, as if winter had suddenly departed, and a dirty, damp smell rose from the sewers. When I opened the front door of the tower house I found a white envelope on the ground. I recognised the wax seal and didn’t bother to pick it up because I knew exactly what it contained: a reminder of my meeting with the boss that very evening in his rambling old house by Güell Park, at which I was to hand over the manuscript. I climbed the stairs and opened the main door of the apartment. Without turning on the light I went straight up to the study, where I walked over to one of the windows and stared back at the room touched by the flames of that infernal sky. I imagined her there, just as she had described, kneeling by the trunk. Opening it and pulling out the folder with the manuscript. Reading those accursed pages with the certainty that she must destroy them. Lighting the matches and drawing the flame to the paper.

There was someone else in the house.

I went over to the trunk but stopped a few paces from it, as if I were standing behind her, spying on her. I leaned forward and opened it. The manuscript was still there, waiting for me. I stretched out my hand to touch the folder gently with my fingertips. Then I saw it. The silver shape shone at the bottom of the trunk like a pearl at the bottom of a lake. I picked it up between two fingers and examined it. The angel brooch.

‘Son-of-a-bitch,’ I heard myself say.

I pulled the box containing my father’s old revolver from the back of the wardrobe and opened the cylinder to make sure it was loaded. I put the remaining contents of the ammunition box in the left pocket of my coat, then wrapped the weapon in a cloth and put in into my right-hand pocket. Before leaving I stopped for a moment to gaze at the stranger who looked at me from the mirror in the entrance hall. I smiled, a calm hatred burning in my veins, and went out into the night.

12

Andreas Corelli’s house stood out on the hillside against the blanket of dark red clouds. Behind me, the forest of shadows of Güell Park gently swayed. A breeze stirred the branches, making the leaves hiss like snakes. I stopped by the entrance and looked up at the house. There was not a single light on in the whole building and the shutters on the French windows were closed. I could hear the panting of the dogs that prowled behind the walls of the park, following my scent. I pulled the revolver out of my pocket and turned back towards the park gates, where I could make out the shape of animals, liquid shadows watching me from the blackness.

I walked up to the main door of the house and gave three dry raps with the knocker. I didn’t wait for a reply. I would have blown it open with a shot, but it wasn’t necessary: the door was already open. I turned the bronze handle, releasing the bolt, and the oak door slowly swung inwards under its own weight. The long passage opened up before me, a sheet of dust covering the floor like fine sand. I took a few steps towards the staircase that rose up on one side of the entrance hall, disappearing in a spiral of shadows. Then I walked along the corridor that led to the sitting room. Dozens of eyes followed me from the gallery of old photographs covering the wall. The only sounds I could hear were my own footsteps and breathing. I reached the end of the corridor and stopped. The strange, reddish glow of the night filtered through the shutters in narrow blades of light. I raised the revolver and stepped into the sitting room, my eyes adjusting to the dark. The pieces of furniture were in the same places as before, but even in that faint light I noticed that they looked old and were covered in dust. Ruins. The curtains were frayed and the paint on the walls was peeling off in strips. I went over to one of the French windows to open the shutters and let in some light, but just before I reached it I realised I was not alone. I froze and then turned around slowly.

His silhouette, sitting in the usual armchair in the corner of the room, was unmistakable. The light that bled in through the shutters revealed his shiny shoes and the outline of his suit. His face was buried in shadows, but I knew he was looking at me. And I knew he was smiling. I raised the revolver and pointed it at him.

‘I know what you’ve done,’ I said.

Corelli didn’t move a muscle. His figure remained motionless, like a spider waiting to jump. I took a step forward, pointing the gun at his face. I thought I heard a sigh in the dark and, for a moment, the reddish light caught his eyes and I was certain he was going to pounce on me. I fired. The weapon’s recoil hit my forearm like the blow of a hammer. A cloud of blue smoke rose from the gun. One of Corelli’s hands fell from the arm of the chair and swung, his fingernails grazing the floor. I fired again. The bullet hit him in the chest and opened a smoking hole in his clothes. I was left holding the revolver with both hands, not daring to take a single step, transfixed in front of the motionless shape in the armchair. The swaying of his arm gradually came to a halt and the body was still, his nails, long and polished, scraping the oak floor. There was no sound at all, no hint of movement, from the body that had just received two bullet wounds – one in the face, the other in the chest. I moved back a few steps towards the French window and kicked it open, not taking my eyes off the armchair where Corelli lay. A column of hazy light cut a passageway through the room from the balustrade outside to the corner, revealing the face and body of the boss. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry. The first shot had ripped open a hole between his eyes. The second had pierced his lapel. Yet there was not a single drop of blood. In its place a fine, shiny dust spilled out down his clothes, like sand slipping through an hourglass. His eyes shone and his lips were frozen in a sarcastic smile. It was a dummy.

I lowered the revolver, my hands still shaking, and edged closer. I bent over the grotesque puppet and tentatively stretched my hand towards its face. For a moment I feared that those glass eyes would suddenly move or those hands with long fingernails would hurl themselves round my neck. I touched the cheek with my fingertips. Enamelled wood. I couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh – one wouldn’t expect anything less from the boss. Once again I confronted that mocking grin and I hit the puppet so hard with the gun that it collapsed to the ground and I started kicking it. The wooden frame began to lose its shape until arms and legs were twisted together in an impossible position. I moved back a few steps and looked around me. The large canvas with the figure of the angel was still on the wall: I tore it down with one great tug. Behind the picture was the door that led into the basement – I remembered it from the night I’d fallen asleep there. I tried the handle. It was open. I looked down the staircase, which led into a well of darkness, then went back to the sitting room, to the chest of drawers from which I’d seen Corelli take the hundred thousand francs during our first meeting in that house. In one of the drawers I found a tin with candles and matches. For a moment I wavered, wondering whether the boss had also left those things there on purpose, hoping I would find them just as I had found the dummy. I lit one of the candles and crossed the sitting room to the door. I glanced at the fallen doll one last time and, holding the candle up high, my right hand firmly gripping the revolver, I prepared to go down.

I descended step by step, stopping each time to look back over my shoulder. When I reached the basement I held the candle as far away from me as I could and moved it around in a semicircle. Everything was still there: the operating table, the gas lamps and the tray with surgical instruments. Everything covered with a patina of dust and cobwebs. But there was something else. Other dummies could be seen leaning against the wall, as immobile as the puppet of the boss. I left the candle on the operating table and walked over to the inert bodies. Among them, I recognised the butler who had served us that night and the chauffeur who had driven me home after my dinner with Corelli in the garden. There were other figures I was unable to identify. One of them was turned against the wall, its face hidden. I poked it with the end of the gun, making it spin round, and a second later found myself staring at my own image. I felt a shiver down my spine. The doll that looked like me had only half a face. The other half was unfinished. I was about to crush it with my foot when I heard a child’s laughter coming from the top of the steps.

I held my breath. Then came a few dry, clicking sounds. I ran back up the stairs, and when I reached the sitting room the figure of the boss was no longer where I’d left it. Footprints trailed off towards the corridor that led to the exit. I cocked the gun and followed the tracks, pausing at the entrance to the corridor. The footprints stopped halfway down. I searched for the hidden shape of the boss among the shadows, but saw no sign of him. At the end, the main door was still open. I advanced cautiously towards the point where the trail ran out. It took me a few seconds to notice that the gap I remembered between the portraits on the wall was no longer there. Instead there was a new frame, and in that frame, in a photograph that looked as if it had been taken with the same camera as the rest of the macabre collection, I saw Cristina dressed in white, her gaze lost in the eye of the lens. She was not alone. Two arms enveloped her, holding her up. Their owner smiled for the camera: Andreas Corelli.

13

I set off down the hill towards the tangle of dark streets that formed the Gracia district. There I found a café in which a large group of locals had assembled and were angrily discussing politics or football – it was hard to tell which. I dodged in and out of the crowd, through a cloud of smoke and noise, until I reached the bar. The bartender gave me a vaguely hostile look with which I imagined he received all strangers – anyone living more than a couple of streets beyond his establishment, that is.

‘I need to use a phone,’ I said.

‘The telephone is for customers only.’

‘Then get me a brandy. And the telephone.’

The bartender picked up a glass and pointed towards a corridor on the other side of the room with a notice above it saying TOILETS. At the end of the passage, opposite the entrance to the toilets, I found what was trying to pass for a telephone booth, exposed to the intense stench of ammonia and the noise that filtered through from the café. I took the receiver off the hook and waited until I had a line. A few seconds later an operator from the exchange replied.

‘I need to make a call to a law firm. The name of the lawyer is Valera, number 442, Avenida Diagonal.’

The operator took a couple of minutes to find the number and connect me. I waited, holding the receiver with one hand and blocking my left ear with the other. Finally she confirmed that she was putting my call through and moments later I recognised the voice of Valera’s secretary.

‘I’m sorry, but Señor Valera isn’t here right now.’

‘It’s important. Tell him my name is Martín. David Martín. It’s a matter of life and death.’

‘I know who you are, Señor Martín. I’m sorry, but I can’t put you through because he’s not here. It’s half past nine at night and he left the office a long time ago.’

‘Then give me his home address.’

‘I cannot give you that information, Señor Martín. I do apologise. If you wish, you can phone tomorrow morning and-’

I hung up and again waited for a line. This time I gave the operator the number Ricardo Salvador had given me. His neighbour answered the phone and told me he would go up to see whether the ex-policeman was in. Salvador was soon on the line.

‘Martín? Are you all right? Are you in Barcelona?’

‘I’ve just arrived.’

‘You must be careful. The police are looking for you. They came round here asking questions about you and Alicia Marlasca.’

‘Víctor Grandes?’

‘I think so. He came with a couple of big guys I didn’t like the look of. I think he wants to dump the deaths of Roures and Marlasca’s widow on you. You’d better keep your eyes peeled – they’re probably watching you. If you like, you could come here.’

‘Thanks, Señor Salvador. I’ll think about it. I don’t want to get you into any more trouble.’

‘Whatever you do, watch out. I think you were right: Jaco is back. I don’t know why, but he’s back. Do you have a plan?’

‘I’m going to try to find Valera, the lawyer. I think the publisher for whom Marlasca worked is at the heart of all this, and I think Valera is the only person who knows the truth.’

Salvador paused for a moment.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘I don’t think that will be necessary. I’ll call you once I’ve spoken to Valera.’

‘As you wish. Are you armed?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m glad to hear that.’

‘Señor Salvador… Roures spoke to me about a woman in the Somorrostro area whom Marlasca had consulted. Someone he had met through Irene Sabino.’

‘The Witch of Somorrostro.’

‘What do you know about her?’

‘There isn’t much to know. I don’t think she even exists, the same as this mysterious publisher. What you need to worry about is Jaco and the police.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

‘Call me as soon as you know anything, will you?’

‘I will. Thanks.’

I hung up and as I passed the bar I left a few coins to cover the calls and the glass of brandy, which was still there, untouched.

Twenty minutes later I was standing outside number 442, Avenida Diagonal, looking up at the lights that were on in Valera’s office, at the top of the building. The porter’s lodge was closed, but I banged on the door until the porter peered out and came over with a distinctly unfriendly expression on his face. As soon as he’d opened the door a little to get rid of me, I gave it a push and slipped into the hallway, ignoring his protests. I went straight to the lift. The porter tried to stop me by grabbing hold of my arm, but I threw him a poisonous look that quickly dissuaded him.

When Valera’s secretary opened the door, her expression rapidly changed from surprise to fear, especially when I stuck my foot in the gap to make sure she didn’t slam the door in my face and went in without being invited.

‘Let the lawyer know I’m here,’ I said. ‘Now.’

The secretary looked at me, her face completely white.

I took her by the elbow and pushed her into the lawyer’s office. The lights were on, but there was no trace of Valera. The terrified secretary sobbed, and I realised that I was digging my fingers into her arm. I let go and she retreated a few steps. She was shaking. I sighed and tried to make some sort of calming gesture that only served to reveal the gun tucked into the waistband of my trousers.

‘Please, Señor Martín… I swear that Señor Valera isn’t here.’

‘I believe you. Calm down. I only want to talk to him. That’s all.’

The secretary nodded. I smiled at her.

‘Please be so kind as to pick up the telephone and call him at home,’ I said firmly.

The secretary lifted the receiver and murmured the lawyer’s number to the operator. When she got a reply she handed me the phone.

‘Good evening,’ I ventured.

‘Martín, what an unfortunate surprise,’ said Valera at the other end of the line. ‘May I know what you’re doing in my office at this time of night, aside from terrorising my employees?’

‘My apologies for any trouble I may be causing, Señor Valera, but I urgently need to locate your client, Señor Andreas Corelli, and you’re the only person who can help me.’

A long silence.

‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Señor Martín. I cannot help you.’

‘I was hoping to resolve this amicably, Señor Valera.’

‘You don’t understand, Martín. I don’t know Señor Corelli.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I’ve never seen him or spoken to him, and I certainly don’t know where to find him.’

‘Let me remind you that he hired you to get me out of police headquarters.’

‘A couple of weeks before that, we received a cheque with a letter explaining that you were an associate of his, that Inspector Grandes was harassing you and that we should take care of your defence if it became necessary to do so. With the letter came the envelope that he asked us to hand to you personally. All I did was pay in the cheque and ask my contact at police headquarters to let me know if you were ever taken there. That’s what happened, and you’ll remember that I got you out by threatening Grandes with a whole storm of trouble if he didn’t agree to expedite your release. I don’t think you can complain about our services.’

At that point the silence was mine.

‘If you don’t believe me, ask Señorita Margarita to show you the letter,’ Valera added.

‘What about your father?’ I asked.

‘My father?’

‘Your father and Marlasca had dealings with Corelli. He must have known something…’

‘I can assure you that my father was never directly in touch with this Señor Corelli. All his correspondence, if indeed there was any – because there is absolutely nothing in the files at the office – was dealt with personally by the deceased Señor Marlasca. In fact, and since you ask, I can tell you that my father even doubted the existence of this Señor Corelli, especially during the final months of Señor Marlasca’s life, when he began to – how shall I say it – have contact with that woman.’

‘What woman?’

‘The chorus girl.’

‘Irene Sabino?’

I heard him give an irritated sigh.

‘Before he died, Señor Marlasca arranged a fund, administered and managed by our firm, from which a series of payments were to be made to an account in the names of Juan Corbera and María Antonia Sanahuja.’

Jaco and Irene Sabino, I thought.

‘What was the size of the fund?’

‘It was a deposit in foreign currency. I seem to remember it was something like a hundred thousand French francs.’

‘Did Marlasca say where he’d obtained that money?’

‘We’re a law firm, not a detective agency. Our company merely followed the instructions stipulated in Señor Marlasca’s last wishes, we did not question them.’

‘What other instructions did he leave?’

‘Nothing special. Simple payments to third parties that had nothing to do with the office or with his family.’

‘Do you remember any one in particular?’

‘My father took charge of these matters himself, to avoid any of the office employees having access to information that might be, let us say, awkward.’

‘And didn’t your father find it odd that his ex-partner should wish to hand over that sum of money to strangers?’

‘Of course he thought it was odd. A lot of things seemed odd to him.’

‘Do you remember where those payments were sent?’

‘How could I possibly remember? It must have been twenty-five years ago.’

‘Make an effort,’ I said. ‘For Señorita Margarita’s sake.’

The secretary gave me a terrified look, to which I responded with a wink.

‘Don’t you dare lay a finger on her,’ Valera threatened.

‘Don’t give me ideas,’ I cut in. ‘How’s your memory? Is it refreshed?’

‘I could have a look at my father’s private diaries.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Here, among his papers. But it will take a few hours…’

I put down the phone and looked at Valera’s secretary, who had burst into tears. I offered her a handkerchief and gave her a pat on the shoulder.

‘Come on now, don’t get all worked up. I’m leaving. See? I only wanted to talk to him.’

She nodded with a look of terror on her face, her eyes fixed on the revolver. I buttoned up my coat and smiled.

‘One last thing.’

She looked up, fearing the worst.

‘Write down the lawyer’s address for me. And don’t try to trick me, because if you lie I’ll come back and you can be quite sure that I’ll leave all my inherent good nature downstairs in the porter’s lodge.’

Before I left I asked Margarita to show me where the telephone cable was and I cut it, saving her from the temptation of warning Valera that I was on my way, or of calling the police to inform them about our small disagreement.

14

Señor Valera lived in a palatial building, situated on the corner of Calle Girona and Calle Ausiàs March, that seemed to have pretensions to being a Norman castle. I imagined he must have inherited the monstrosity from his father, together with the firm, and that every stone in its structure derived from the blood and sweat of entire generations of Barcelona’s inhabitants who could never have dreamed of even entering such a palace. I told the porter I was delivering some documents from the lawyer’s office on behalf of Señorita Margarita. After a moment’s hesitation, he allowed me to go up. I climbed the wide staircase at a leisurely pace, under the porter’s attentive gaze. The first-floor landing was larger than most of the homes I remembered from my childhood days in the old Ribera quarter, which was only a short distance away. The door knocker was shaped like a bronze fist. The moment I grasped it I realised that the door was already open. I pushed it gently and looked inside. The entrance hall led to a long passageway, about three metres wide, its walls lined with blue velvet and covered with pictures. I closed the door behind me and scanned the warm half-light that was coming from the other end. Faint music floated in the air, a piano lament in a melancholic and elegant style: Granados.

‘Señor Valera?’ I called out. ‘It’s Martín.’

As there was no reply, I ventured down the passage, following the trace of that sad music. I passed paintings and recesses containing statuettes of madonnas and saints and went through a series of arches, each one veiled by net curtains, until I came to the end of the corridor, where a large dark room spread out before me. The room was rectangular, its walls lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling. At the far end I could make out a half-open door and, through it, the flickering orange shadows of an open fire.

‘Valera?’ I called again, raising my voice.

A silhouette appeared in the light projected by the flames through the door. Two shining eyes examined me suspiciously. A dog that looked like an Alsatian but whose fur was white padded towards me. I stood still, unbuttoning my coat and looking for the revolver. The animal stopped at my feet and peered up at me, then let out a whine. I stroked its head and it licked my fingers. Then it turned, walked back to the doorway, stopped again and looked back at me. I followed it.

On the other side of the door I discovered a reading room presided over by a large fireplace. The only light came from the flames, casting a dance of flickering shadows over the walls and ceiling. In the middle of the room there was a table with a large gramophone from which the music emanated. Opposite the fire, with its back to the door, stood a large leather armchair. The dog went over to the chair and turned to look at me again. I went closer, close enough to see a hand resting on the arm of the chair. The hand held a burning cigar from which rose a plume of blue smoke.

‘Valera? It’s Martín. The door was open…’

The dog lay down at the foot of the armchair, never taking its eyes off me. Slowly, I walked round in front of the chair. Señor Valera was sitting there, facing the fire, his eyes open and a faint smile on his lips. He was wearing a three-piece suit and his other hand rested on a leather-bound notebook. I drew closer and searched his face. He didn’t blink. Then I noticed a red tear, a tear of blood, that was gliding down his cheek. I knelt down and removed the notebook from his hand. The dog gave me a distraught look. I stroked its head.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered.

The book seemed to be some sort of diary, with its entries, each handwritten and dated, separated by a short line. Valera had it open at the middle. The first entry on the page was dated 23 November 1904.

Payment note (356 on 23-11-04), 7,500 pesetas, from D.M. trust account. Sent with Marcel (in person) to the address supplied by D.M. Alleyway behind old cemetery – stonemason’s workshop Sanabre & Sons.

I reread that entry a few times, trying to scratch some meaning out of it. I knew the alleyway from my days at The Voice of Industry. It was a miserable, narrow street, sunk behind the walls of the Pueblo Nuevo Cemetery, with a jumble of workshops where headstones and memorials were produced. It ended by one of the riverbeds that crossed Bogatell beach and the citadel of shacks stretching down to the sea: the Somorrostro. For some reason, Marlasca had given instructions to pay a considerable amount of money to one of those workshops.

On the same page, under the same date, was another entry relating to Marlasca, showing the start of the payments to Jaco and Irene Sabino.

Bank transfer from D.M. trust to account in Banco Hispano Colonial (Calle Fernando branch) no. 008965-2564-1. Juan Corbera-Maria Antonia Sanahuja. First monthly payment of 7,000 pesetas. Establish payment plan.

I kept on leafing through the notebook. Most annotations concerned expenses and minor operations pertaining to the firm. I had to look over a number of pages full of cryptic reminders before I found another mention of Marlasca. Again, it referred to a cash payment made through a person called Marcel, who was probably one of the articled clerks in the office.

Payment note (279 on 29-12-04), 15,000 pesetas from D.M. trust account. Paid via Marcel. Bogatell beach, next to level crossing. 9 a.m. Contact will give name.

The Witch of Somorrostro, I thought. After his death, Diego Marlasca had been handing out large amounts of money through his partner. This contradicted Salvador’s suspicion that Jaco had fled with the money. Marlasca had ordered the payments to be made in person and had left the money in a trust, managed by the law firm. The other two payments suggested that shortly before dying Marlasca had been in touch with a stonemason’s workshop and with some murky character from the Somorrostro district, dealings that had translated into a large amount of money changing hands. I closed the notebook feeling more confused than ever.

As I turned to leave, I noticed that one of the walls of the reading room was covered with neatly framed portraits set against a wine-coloured velvet background. I went closer and recognised the dour and imposing face of Valera the elder, whose portrait still presided over his son’s office. In most of the pictures the lawyer appeared in the company of the great and the good of Barcelona, at what seemed to be different social occasions and civic events. It was enough to examine a dozen or so of those pictures and identify the array of celebrities who posed, smiling, next to the old lawyer, to understand that the firm of Valera, Marlasca & Sentís was a vital cog in the machinery of this city. Valera’s son, much younger but still recognisable, also appeared in some of the photographs, always in the background, always with his eyes buried in the shadow of the patriarch.

I sensed it before I saw him. In the photograph were both Valeras, father and son. The picture had been taken by the door of the law firm, at number 442, Avenida Diagonal. Next to them stood a tall, distinguished-looking man. His face had also been in many of the other photographs in the collection, always close to Valera. Diego Marlasca. I concentrated on those turbulent eyes, that sharp and serene profile staring at me from a picture taken twenty-five years ago. Just like the boss, he had not aged a single day. I smiled bitterly when I understood how easily he’d fooled me. That face was not the one that appeared in the photograph given to me by my friend the ex-policeman.

The man I knew as Ricardo Salvador was none other than Diego Marlasca.

15

The staircase was in darkness when I left the Valera family mansion. I groped my way towards the entrance and, as I opened the door, the street lamps cast a rectangle of blue light back across the hall, at the end of which I spotted the stern eyes of the porter. I hurried away towards Calle Trafalgar, where the tram set out on its journey down to the gates of Pueblo Nuevo Cemetery – the same tram I had taken so many times with my father when I accompanied him on his night shifts at The Voice of Industry.

The tram was almost empty and I sat at the front. As we approached Pueblo Nuevo we entered a network of shadowy streets covered in large puddles. There were hardly any street lamps and the tram’s headlights revealed the contours of the buildings like a torch shining through a tunnel. At last I sighted the gates of the cemetery, its crosses and sculptures set against an endless horizon of factories and chimneys injecting red and black into the vault of the sky. A group of emaciated dogs prowled around the foot of the two large angels guarding the graveyard. For a moment they stood still, staring into the lights of the tram, their eyes lit up like the eyes of jackals, before they scattered into the shadows.

I jumped from the tram while it was still moving and set off, skirting the walls of the cemetery. The tram sailed away like a ship in the fog and I quickened my pace. I could hear and smell the dogs following behind me in the dark. When I reached the back of the cemetery I stopped on the corner of the alley and blindly threw a stone at them. I heard a sharp yelp and then the sound of paws galloping away into the night. The alley was just a narrow walkway trapped between the wall and the row of stonemasons’ workshops, all jumbled together. The notice SANABRE & SONS swung in the dusty light of a street lamp that stood about thirty metres further on. I went to the door, just a grille secured with chains and a rusty lock, and blew it open with one shot.

The echo of the shot was swallowed by the wind as it gusted up the passageway, carrying salt from the breaking waves of the sea only a hundred metres away. I opened the grille and walked into the Sanabre & Sons workshop, drawing back the dark curtain that masked the interior so that the light from the street lamp could penetrate. Beyond was a deep, narrow nave, populated by marble figures seemingly frozen in the shadows, their faces only half-sculpted. I took a few steps past madonnas cradling infants in their arms, white women holding marble roses and looking heavenward, and blocks of stone on which I could just make out the beginnings of an expression. The scent of dust from the stone filled the air. There was nobody there except for these nameless effigies. I was about to retrace my steps when I saw it. The hand peeped out from behind a tableau of figures covered with a cloth at the back of the workshop. As I walked towards it, the shape gradually revealed itself to me. Finally I stood in front of it and gazed up at that great angel of light, the same angel the boss had worn on his lapel and I had found at the bottom of the trunk in the study. The figure must have been two and a half metres high, and when I looked at its face I recognised the features, especially the smile. At its feet was a gravestone, with an inscription:

DAVID MARTÍN

1900-1930

I smiled. One thing I had to admit about my good friend Diego Marlasca was that he had a sense of humour and a taste for the unexpected. It shouldn’t have surprised me, I told myself, that in his eagerness he’d got ahead of himself and prepared such a heartfelt send-off. I knelt down by the gravestone and stroked my name. Behind me I heard light footsteps. I turned and saw a familiar face. The boy wore the same black suit he had worn when he followed me weeks ago in Paseo del Borne.

‘The lady will see you now,’ he said.

I nodded and stood up. The boy offered me his hand, and I took it.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said, as he led me towards the exit.

‘I’m not,’ I whispered.

The boy took me to the end of the alleyway. From there I could make out the line of the beach, hidden behind a row of run-down warehouses and the remains of a cargo train abandoned on a weed-covered siding. Its coaches were eaten away by rust, and all that was left of the engine was a skeleton of boilers and metal struts waiting for the scrapyard.

Up above, the moon peeped through the gaps in a bank of leaden clouds. Out at sea, the blurred shapes of distant freighters appeared between the waves, and on the sands of Bogatell beach lay the skeletons of old fishing boats and coastal vessels, spewed up by storms. On the other side, like a mantle of rubbish stretching out from the great, dark fortress of industry, stood the shacks of the Somorrostro encampment. Waves broke only a few metres from the first row of huts made of cane and wood. Plumes of white smoke slithered among the roofs of the miserable hamlet growing between the city and the sea like an endless human dumping ground. The stench of burned rubbish floated in the air. We stepped into the streets of that forgotten city, passages that opened up between structures held together with stolen bricks, mud and driftwood. The boy led me on, unaware of the distrustful stares of the locals. Unemployed day labourers, Gypsies ousted from similar camps on the slopes of Montjuïc or opposite the communal graves of the Can Tunis Cemetery, homeless old men, women and children. They all observed me with suspicion. As we walked by, women of indeterminate age stood by fires outside their shacks, heating up water or food in tin canisters. We stopped in front of a whitish structure, at the door of which we saw a girl with the face of an old woman, limping on a leg withered by polio. She was dragging a bucket with something grey and slimy moving about inside it. Eels. The boy pointed to the door.

‘It’s here,’ he said.

I took a last look at the sky. The moon was hiding behind the clouds again and a veil of darkness advanced towards us from the sea.

I went in.

16

Her face was lined with memories and the look in her eyes could have been ten or a hundred years old. She was sitting by a small fire watching the dancing flames with the fascination of a child. Her hair was the colour of ash and she wore it tied up in a plait. She had a slim, austere figure; her movements were subtle and unhurried. She was dressed in white and wore a silk scarf knotted round her throat. She smiled warmly and offered me a chair next to her. I sat down. We spent a couple of minutes in silence, listening to the crackle of the embers and the murmur of the sea. In her presence time seemed to stop, and the urgency that had brought me to her door had strangely disappeared. Slowly, as I absorbed the heat from the fire, the cold that had gripped my bones melted away. Only then did she turn her eyes from the flames and, holding my hand, she opened her lips.

‘My mother lived in this house for forty-five years,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t even a house then, just a hut made of cane and old rubbish washed up by the sea. Even when she had earned herself a reputation and had the chance to get out of this place, she refused. She always said that the day she left the Somorrostro, she would die. She was born here, among the people of the beach, and she would remain here until her last day. Many things were said about her. Many people talked about her, but very few really knew her. Many feared and hated her. Even after her death. I’m telling you all this because I think it’s fair that you should know: I’m not the person you’re looking for, or you think you’re looking for. The one many called The Witch of Somorrostro was my mother.’

I looked at her in confusion.

‘When…?’

‘My mother died in 1905,’ she said. ‘She was killed a few metres away from here, by the sea; stabbed in the neck.’

‘I’m sorry. I thought that-’

‘A lot of people do. The wish to believe can even conquer death.’

‘Who killed her?’

‘You know who.’

It took me a few seconds to reply.

‘Diego Marlasca…’

She nodded.

‘Why?’

‘To silence her. To cover his tracks.’

‘I don’t understand. Your mother had helped him… He even gave her a large amount of money in exchange.’

‘That’s exactly why he wanted to kill her, so that she would take his secret to the grave.’

She watched me, a half-smile playing on her lips as if my confusion amused her and made her pity me at the same time.

‘My mother was an ordinary woman, Señor Martín. She grew up in poverty and the only power she possessed was her will to survive. She never learned to read or write, but she knew how to see inside people. She felt what they felt, knew their secrets and their longings. She could read it in their eyes, in their gestures, in their voices, in the way they walked or their mannerisms. She knew what they were going to say or do before they did. That’s why a lot of people called her a sorceress, because she was able to see in them what they refused to see themselves. She earned her living selling love potions and enchantments which she prepared with water from the riverbed, herbs and a few grains of sugar. She helped lost souls believe what they wanted to believe. When she gained a certain popularity, a lot of people from well-to-do families began to pay her visits and seek her favours. The rich wanted to become even richer. The powerful wanted more power. The mean wanted to feel like saints, and the pious wanted to be punished for sins they regretted not having had the courage to commit. My mother listened to them all and accepted their coin. With this money she sent me and my siblings to the same schools as the sons of her customers. She bought us another name and another life far from this place. My mother was a good person, Señor Martín. Don’t be fooled. She never took advantage of anyone, nor did she make them believe more than they needed to believe. Life had taught her that we all require big and small lies in order to survive, just as much as we need air. She used to say that if during one single day, from dawn to dusk, we could see the naked reality of the world, and of ourselves, we would either take our own lives or lose our minds.’

‘But-’

‘If you’ve come here in search of magic, I’m sorry to disappoint you. My mother told me there was no magic; she said there was no more good or evil in this world than we imagine there to be, either out of greed or innocence. Or sometimes madness.’

‘That’s not what she told Diego Marlasca when she accepted his money,’ I objected. ‘Seven thousand pesetas in those days must have bought quite a few years of a good name and good schools.’

‘Diego Marlasca needed to believe. My mother helped him to do so. That’s all.’

‘Believe in what?’

‘In his own salvation. He was convinced that he had betrayed himself and those he loved. He believed that he had placed his life on a path of evil and falsehood. My mother thought this didn’t make him any different from most men who at some point in their lives stop to look at themselves in the mirror. The most despicable humans are the ones who always feel virtuous and look down on the rest of the world. But Diego Marlasca was a man with a conscience, and he was not satisfied with what he saw. That’s why he went to my mother. Because he had lost all hope, and probably his mind.’

‘Did Marlasca say what he had done?’

‘He said he’d handed his life over to a shadow.’

‘A shadow?’

‘Those were his words. A shadow who followed him and possessed the same shape, face and voice as his own.’

‘What did that mean?’

‘Guilt and remorse have no meaning. They are feelings, emotions, not ideas.’

It occurred to me that not even the boss could have explained this more clearly.

‘And what was your mother able to do for him?’ I asked.

‘Only comfort him and help him find some peace. Diego Marlasca believed in magic and that’s why my mother thought she should convince him that his road to salvation passed through her. She spoke to him of an ancient spell, a fisherman’s legend she had heard as a child among the hovels by the sea. When a man lost his way in life and felt that death had put a price on his soul, the legend said that if he found a pure soul who would agree to be sacrificed in order to save him, he would be able to disguise his own black heart with it, and death, which cannot see, would pass him by.’

‘A pure soul?’

‘Free of sin.’

‘And how was this to be carried out?’

‘With pain, of course.’

‘What sort of pain?’

‘A blood sacrifice. One soul in exchange for another. Death in exchange for life.’

A long silence amid the whisper of the sea and the wind swirling among the shacks.

‘Irene would have pulled out her own eyes and heart for Marlasca. He was her reason for living. She loved him blindly and, like him, believed that his only salvation lay in magic. At first she wanted to take her own life, offering it to him as a sacrifice, but my mother dissuaded her. She told her what she already knew, that her soul was not free of sin and that her sacrifice would be in vain. She said that to save her. To save them both.’

‘From whom?’

‘From themselves.’

‘But she made a mistake…’

‘Even my mother couldn’t see everything.’

‘What did Marlasca do?’

‘My mother never wanted to tell me – she didn’t want me and my siblings to be a part of it. She separated us and sent each of us far away to different boarding schools so that we would forget where we came from and who we were. She said that now we were the ones who were cursed. She died shortly afterwards, alone. We didn’t find out until much later. When they discovered her body nobody dared touch it: they let the sea take it away. Nobody dared speak about her death either. But I knew who had killed her and why. Even today I believe my mother knew she was going to die soon and by whose hand. She knew and she did nothing about it because in the end she too believed. She believed because she was unable to accept what she’d done. She believed that by handing over her soul she would save ours, the soul of this place. That’s why she didn’t want to flee, because, as the legend says, the soul that sacrifices itself should always remain in the place where the treasonable act was committed, like a bandage over the eyes of death.’

‘And where is the soul that saved Diego Marlasca?’

The woman smiled.

‘There are no souls or salvations, Señor Martín. That’s just an old wives’ tale, gossip. Only ashes and memories remain, but if there are any they will be in the place where Marlasca committed his crime, the secret he has hidden all these years to mock his own destiny.’

‘The tower house… I’ve lived there for almost ten years and there’s nothing…’

She smiled again and, with her eyes fixed on mine, leaned towards me and kissed me on the cheek. Her lips were frozen, like the lips of a corpse, and her breath smelled of dead flowers.

‘Perhaps you haven’t been looking in the right place,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘Perhaps the trapped soul is your own.’

Then she untied the scarf she wore round her neck and revealed a large scar across her throat. This time her smile was malicious and her eyes shone with a cruel, defiant light.

‘Soon the sun will rise. Leave while you can,’ said the Witch of Somorrostro, turning her back to me and looking into the flames once more.

The boy in the black suit appeared in the doorway and offered me his hand, an indication that my time was up. I stood and followed him. When I turned I caught my reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall. In it I could see the profile of an old hag, dressed in rags, hunched over by the fire. Her dark, cruel laughter stayed with me until I was out of the door.

17

Dawn was breaking when I arrived at the tower house. The lock on the front door was broken. I pushed it open and stepped into the courtyard. The locking mechanism on the back of the door was smoking and gave off an acrid smell. Acid. I climbed the stairs slowly, convinced that I would find Marlasca waiting for me in the shadows of the landing, or that if I turned around he would be there, behind me, smiling. As I walked up the last flight of stairs I noticed that the keyhole on the apartment door also showed signs of acid. I put in the key and had to struggle with it for a couple of minutes; the lock was damaged but had apparently not yielded. Finally I succeeded and pulled out the key, which was slightly gnawed by the substance, and pushed open the door. I left it open behind me and headed down the corridor without taking off my coat. I pulled the revolver out of my pocket and unlocked the barrel, emptying the cartridges of the bullets I had fired and replacing them with new ones, just as I’d seen my father do so many times when he returned home at dawn.

‘Salvador?’ I called.

The echo of my voice spread through the house. I cocked the hammer and continued to advance until I reached the room at the end. The door was ajar.

‘Salvador?’ I asked.

I pointed my gun at the door and kicked it open. There was no trace of Marlasca inside, just the mountain of boxes and old objects piled up in a corner. Again I noticed the odd smell that seemed to filter through the walls. I went over to the wardrobe that covered the back wall and opened its doors wide, removing all the old clothes from the hangers. The cold, damp draught that came from the hole behind it caressed my face. Whatever it was that Marlasca had hidden in the house, it was on the other side of that wall.

I put the weapon in my pocket and removed my coat. Standing by a rear corner of the wardrobe, I put my arm into the space between the frame and the wall. I managed to grab the back of the wardrobe with my hand and I pulled it forward hard. The first pull allowed me to gain a few centimetres and secure my hold. I pulled it forward again. The wardrobe now moved almost a hand’s width. I kept on pulling the end of the wardrobe until the wall behind it became visible and there was enough room for me to slip in. Once I was behind the wardrobe I pushed it with my shoulder, moving it right away against the adjacent wall. I stopped to recover my breath and examine my work. The wall was painted an ochre colour, different from the rest of the room. Beneath the paint I could feel some sort of clay-like mass. I rapped on it with my knuckles. The echo left no room for doubt. This was not a supporting wall. There was something on the other side. I leaned my head against it and listened carefully. Then I heard a noise. Steps along the corridor, approaching… I moved away and stretched out my hand towards the coat I had left on a chair, in order to grab the gun. A shadow filled the doorway. I held my breath. It peered into the room.

‘Inspector…’ I whispered.

Víctor Grandes smiled at me coldly. I imagined he must have spent hours waiting for me, hiding in some doorway in the street.

‘Are you refurbishing the house, Martín?’

‘Just tidying up.’

The inspector looked at the pile of clothes and boxes thrown on the floor and the displaced wardrobe.

‘I’ve asked Marcos and Castelo to wait downstairs. I was going to knock, but the door was open so I took the liberty of coming straight in. I said to myself: this must mean that my friend Martín is expecting me.’

‘What can I do for you, inspector?’

‘Come along with me to the police station, if you’d be so kind.’

‘Am I being arrested?’

‘I’m afraid so. Are you going to make it easy for me or are we going to have to do this the hard way?’

‘No, I’ll come,’ I assured him.

‘I appreciate that.’

‘May I get my coat?’

Grandes stared straight at me for a moment. Then I picked up the coat and he helped me put it on. I felt the weight of the revolver against my thigh. Before leaving the room, the inspector cast a last glance at the wall that had been revealed. Then he told me to go on out into the corridor. Marcos and Castelo had come up to the landing and were waiting for me with triumphant smiles. Just as we were about to leave I stopped for a second to look back inside the house, which seemed to withdraw into a well of shadows. I wondered if I would ever see it again. Castelo pulled out some handcuffs, but Grandes stopped him.

‘That won’t be necessary, will it, Martín?’

I shook my head. Grandes closed the door and pushed me gently but firmly towards the stairs.

18

This time there were no dramatic effects, no sinister setting, no echoes of damp, dark dungeons. The room was large and full of light, with a high ceiling. It reminded me of a classroom in an exclusive religious school, crucifix on the wall included. It was on the first floor of police headquarters, with large French windows that offered views of people and trams beginning their morning procession along Vía Layetana. In the middle of the room were two chairs and a metal table that looked tiny stranded in such a large, empty space. Grandes led me to the table and ordered Marcos and Castelo to leave us. The two policemen took their time following the order. I could practically smell their anger in the air. Grandes waited for them to leave and then relaxed.

‘I thought you were going to throw me to the lions,’ I said.

‘Sit down.’

I did as I was told. Had it not been for the expression on the faces of Marcos and Castelo as they left, the metal door and the iron bars on the other side of the windowpanes, nobody would have guessed that my situation was grave. What finally convinced me was the Thermos flask of hot coffee and the packet of cigarettes that Grandes left on the table, but above all his warm, confident smile. This time the inspector was deadly serious.

He sat opposite me, opened a file, and produced a few photographs which he proceeded to place on the table, one next to the other. The first picture was of Valera, the lawyer, seated in the armchair in his sitting room. Next to that was a photograph of the dead body of Marlasca’s widow, or what remained of it, shortly after they pulled it out of the swimming pool at her house on Carretera de Vallvidrera. A third picture showed a little man, with his throat slit open, who looked like Damián Roures. The fourth picture was of Cristina Sagnier, taken on the day she married Pedro Vidal. The last two were studio portraits of my former publishers, Barrido and Escobillas. Once he had neatly lined up all six photographs, Grandes gave me an inscrutable look and let a couple of minutes go by, studying my reaction to the images, or the absence of one. Then he calmly poured two cups of coffee and pushed one towards me.

‘Before we begin I’d like to give you the opportunity to tell me the whole story, Martín. In your own way, and no rush,’ he said at last.

‘It won’t be any use,’ I replied. ‘It won’t change anything.’

‘Would you prefer us to interview the other people we think might be implicated? Your assistant, for example? What was her name? Isabella?’

‘Leave her alone. She doesn’t know anything.’

‘Convince me.’

I turned my head towards the door.

‘There’s only one way of getting out of this room, Martín,’ said the inspector, showing me a key.

Once again, I felt the weight of the gun in my coat pocket.

‘Where would you like me to start?’

‘You’re the narrator. All I ask of you is that you tell me the truth.’

‘I don’t know what the truth is.’

‘The truth is what hurts.’

For a little over two hours, Víctor Grandes didn’t once open his mouth. He listened attentively, nodding every now and then and jotting down words in his notebook. At first I looked at him, but soon I forgot he was there and realised that I was telling the story to myself. The words made me travel to a time I had thought lost, to the night when my father was murdered at the gates of the newspaper building. I remembered my days in the offices of The Voice of Industry, the years I’d survived by writing stories through the night and that first letter signed by Andreas Corelli promising me great expectations. I remembered my first meeting with the boss in the Water Reservoir building, and the days in which the certainty of imminent death was the only horizon before me. I spoke to him about Cristina, about Vidal and about a story whose end anyone might have guessed but me. I spoke to him about the two books I had written, one under my own name and the other using Vidal’s, of the loss of those miserable expectations and of the afternoon when I saw my mother drop into a waste bin the one good thing I thought I’d done in my life. I wasn’t looking for pity or understanding from the inspector. It was enough for me to try to trace an imaginary map of the events that had led me to that room, to that moment of complete emptiness. I returned to the house next to Güell Park and the night when the boss had made me an offer I could not refuse. I confessed my first suspicions, my discoveries about the history of the tower house, the strange death of Diego Marlasca and the web of deceit in which I’d become embroiled – or which I had chosen in order to satisfy my vanity, my greed, and my desire to live at any price. To live so that I could tell the story.

I left nothing out. Nothing except the most important part, the part I did not even dare tell myself. In the account I gave Grandes, I returned to the sanatorium to look for Cristina but all I found was a trail of footsteps lost in the snow. Perhaps, if I repeated those words over and over again, even I would end up believing that was what had happened. My story ended that very morning, when I returned from the Somorrostro shacks to discover that Diego Marlasca wanted to add my portrait to the line-up the inspector had placed on the table.

When I finished my tale I fell into a deep silence. I had never felt as tired in all my life. I wanted to go to sleep and never wake again. Grandes was observing me from the other side of the table. He seemed confused, sad, angry and above all lost.

‘Say something,’ I said.

Grandes sighed. He got up from his chair and went over to the window, turning his back on me. I pictured myself pulling the gun out of my coat, shooting him in the back of the neck and getting out of there with the key he kept in his pocket. In sixty seconds I could be back on the street.

‘The reason we’re talking is because a telegram arrived yesterday from the Civil Guard barracks in Puigcerdà, stating that Cristina Sagnier has disappeared from the sanatorium and you’re the main suspect. The doctor in charge of the centre said that you’d wanted to take her away and that he’d refused to discharge her. I’m telling you all this so that you understand exactly why we’re here, in this room, with hot coffee and cigarettes, talking like old friends. We’re here because the wife of one of the richest men in Barcelona has disappeared and you’re the only person who knows where she is. We’re here because the father of your friend Pedro Vidal, one of the most powerful men in this town, has taken a personal interest in the case. It appears that he’s an old acquaintance of yours and has politely asked my superiors that we obtain the information we need before laying a finger on you, leaving other considerations for later. Had it not been for that, and for my insistence that I wanted to try to clarify the matter in my own way, right now you’d be in a dungeon in Campo de la Bota. And instead of speaking to me you’d be talking directly to Marcos and Castelo, who, for your information, think any course of action that doesn’t start with breaking your knees with a hammer is a waste of time and might put Señora de Vidal’s life in danger. This is an opinion that my superiors, who think I’m giving you too much leeway, are endorsing more heartily with every passing minute.’

Grandes turned and looked at me, restraining his anger.

‘You haven’t listened to me,’ I said. ‘You haven’t listened to anything I said.’

‘I’ve listened to you perfectly well, Martín. I’ve listened to how, when you were a desperate, dying man, you entered into a pact with a mysterious Parisian publisher, whom nobody has ever heard of, in order to invent, in your own words, a new religion in exchange for a hundred thousand French francs, only to discover that in fact you had fallen into a sinister plot – involving a lawyer who faked his own death twenty-five years ago to escape a destiny which is now your own, and his lover, a chorus girl who had known better days. I have listened to how this destiny led you to fall into the trap of an accursed old house which had already trapped your predecessor, Diego Marlasca; and how you found proof in that house that somebody was following you and murdering anyone who might reveal the secret of a man who, judging from your own words, is almost as mad as you. The man in the shadows, who adopted the identity of a former policeman in order to hide the fact that he is alive, has been committing a number of crimes with the help of his lover, and that includes provoking the death of Señor Sempere, for some strange motive that not even you are able to explain.’

‘Irene Sabino killed Sempere when she was trying to steal a book from him. A book which she thought contained my soul.’

Grandes hit his forehead with the palm of his hand as if he’d just stumbled on the nub of the matter.

‘Of course. How stupid of me. That explains it all. Like that business about the terrible secret revealed to you by a sorceress on Bogatell beach. The Witch of Somorrostro. I like that. Very typical of you. Let’s see whether I’ve understood this correctly. This Señor Marlasca has imprisoned a soul in order to mask his own soul and thus escape from some sort of curse. Tell me, did you get that out of City of the Damned or have you just invented it?’

‘I haven’t invented anything.’

‘Put yourself in my position and tell me whether you would have believed a single word you’ve said.’

‘I suppose I wouldn’t. But I’ve told you everything I know.’

‘Of course. You’ve given me information and specific details so that I can check the truth of your story, from your visit to Doctor Trías, your account at the Banco Hispano Colonial, your own gravestone waiting for you in a Pueblo Nuevo workshop and even a legal connection between the man you call the boss and Valera’s law firm, together with many other clues that are not unworthy of your skill in creating detective novels. The only thing you have not told me and which, in all frankness, for your good and mine, I was hoping to hear, is where I can find Cristina Sagnier.’

I realised that the only thing that could save me at that moment was a lie. The moment I told him the truth about Cristina, my hours were numbered.

‘I don’t know where she is.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘I told you that telling you the truth wouldn’t be of any use,’ I answered.

‘Except to make me look like an idiot for wanting to help you.’

‘Is that what you’re trying to do, inspector? Help me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then check out everything I’ve said. Find Marlasca and Irene Sabino.’

‘My superiors have given me twenty-four hours to question you. If by then I don’t hand them Cristina Sagnier safe and sound, or at least alive, I’ll be removed from the case and it will be passed on to Marcos and Castelo, who have been looking forward to a chance to prove themselves and are certainly not going to waste it.’

‘Then don’t lose any time.’

Grandes snorted.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Martín.’

19

I worked out that it must have been nine o’clock in the morning when Inspector Víctor Grandes left me locked up in that room with no other company than a Thermos flask of cold coffee and his packet of cigarettes. He posted one of his men by the door and I heard the inspector ordering the man not to let anyone in under any circumstances. Five minutes after his departure I heard someone knocking and recognised Sergeant Marcos’s face through the glass. I couldn’t hear his words, but the movement of his lips made his meaning crystal clear:

Get ready, you bastard.

I spent the rest of the morning sitting on the windowsill watching people who thought themselves free walking past the iron bars, smoking, even eating sugar lumps with the same relish I’d seen the boss do on more than one occasion. Tiredness, or perhaps it was just the final wave of despair, hit me by noon and I lay down on the floor, my face towards the wall. I fell asleep in less than a minute. When I woke up, the room was in darkness. Night had fallen and the street lamps along Vía Layetana cast shadows of cars and trams on the ceiling. I stood up, feeling the cold of the floor in every muscle, and walked over to a radiator in one corner of the room. It was even icier than my hands.

At that moment, I heard the door open behind me and I turned to find the inspector watching me. At a signal from Grandes, one of his men turned on the light and closed the door. The harsh, metallic light blinded me for a moment. When I opened my eyes again, I saw that the inspector looked almost as bad as I did.

‘Do you need to go to the bathroom?’ he asked.

‘No. Taking advantage of the circumstances, I decided to wet myself and practise for when you send me off to the chamber of horrors with those inquisitors Marcos and Castelo.’

‘I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humour. You’re going to need it. Sit down.’

We resumed our earlier positions.

‘I’ve been checking the details of your story.’

‘And?’

‘Where would you like me to begin?’

‘You’re the policeman.’

‘My first visit was to Doctor Trías’s surgery in Calle Muntaner. It was brief. Doctor Trías died twelve years ago and the surgery has belonged to a dentist called Bernat Llofriu for eight. Needless to say, he’s never heard of you.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Wait, it gets better. On my way from there I went by the main offices of the Banco Hispano Colonial. Impressive decor and impeccable service. I felt like opening a savings account. There, I was able to find out that you’ve never held an account with that bank, that they’ve never heard of anyone called Andreas Corelli and that there is no customer who at this time holds a foreign currency account with them to the tune of one hundred thousand French francs. Shall I continue?’

I pressed my lips together, but let him go on.

‘My next stop was the law firm of the deceased, Señor Valera. There I discovered that you do have a bank account, not with the Hispano Colonial but with the Banco de Sabadell, from which you transferred two thousand pesetas to the lawyers’ account about six months ago.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Very simple. You hired Valera anonymously, or that’s what you thought, because banks have total recall and once they’ve seen a penny fly away they never forget it. I confess that, by this point, I was beginning to enjoy myself and decided to pay a visit to the stonemasons’ workshop, Sanabre & Sons.’

‘Don’t tell me you didn’t see the angel…’

‘I saw it. Impressive. Like the letter signed in your own handwriting, dated three months ago, when you commissioned the work, and the receipt for the advance payment which good old Sanabre had kept in his account books. A charming man, very proud of his work. He told me it was his masterpiece. He said he’d received divine inspiration.’

‘Didn’t you ask about the money Marlasca paid him twenty-five years ago?’

‘I did. He had also kept those receipts. They were for works to improve, maintain and alter the family mausoleum.’

‘Someone is buried in Marlasca’s tomb who isn’t Marlasca.’

‘That’s what you say. But if you want me to desecrate a grave, you must understand that you have to provide me with a more solid argument. Anyway, let me continue with my revision of your story.’

I swallowed.

‘Since I was there, I decided to walk over to Bogatell beach, where for one real I found at least ten people ready to reveal the huge secret of the Witch of Somorrostro. I didn’t tell you this morning when you were narrating your story so as not to ruin the drama, but in fact the big, stout woman who called herself by that name died years ago. The old woman I saw this morning doesn’t even frighten children, and is laid up in a chair. And there’s a detail you will love: she’s dumb.’

‘Inspector-’

‘I haven’t finished. You can’t say I don’t take my work seriously. So much so that from there I went to the large old mansion you described to me next to Güell Park, which has been abandoned for at least ten years and in which I’m sorry to say there were no pictures or prints or anything else but cat shit. What do think?’

I didn’t reply.

‘Tell me, Martín. Put yourself in my position. What would you have done?’

‘Given up, I suppose.’

‘Exactly. But I’m not you and, like an idiot, after such a worthwhile journey, I decided to follow your advice and look for the fearsome Irene Sabino.’

‘Did you find her?’

‘Give the police some credit, Martín. Of course we found her. A complete wreck in a miserable pensión in the Raval, where she’s lived for years.’

‘Did you speak to her?’

Grandes nodded.

‘At length.’

‘And?’

‘She hasn’t the faintest idea who you are.’

‘Is that what she told you?’

‘Among other things.’

‘What things?’

‘She told me that she met Diego Marlasca at a session organised by Roures in an apartment on Calle Elisabets, where a spiritualist group called the Afterlife Society held meetings in the year 1903. She told me she met a man who took refuge in her arms, a man who was destroyed by the loss of his son and trapped in a marriage that no longer made any sense. She told me that Marlasca was kind-hearted but disturbed. He believed that something had got inside him and was convinced that he was soon going to die. She told me that before he died he left some money in a trust, so that she and the man she had abandoned to be with Marlasca – Juan Corbera, aka Jaco – would receive something once he was gone. She told me that Marlasca took his own life because he couldn’t bear the pain that was consuming him. She told me that she and Juan Corbera had lived off Marlasca’s charity until the trust ran out, and soon afterwards the man you call Jaco dumped her. People say he died alone, an alcoholic, working as a nightwatchman in the Casaramona factory. She told me that she did take Marlasca to see the woman they called the Witch of Somorrostro, because she thought the woman might comfort him and make him believe he would be reunited with his son in the next life… Shall I continue?’

I unbuttoned my shirt and showed him the cuts Irene Sabino had engraved on my chest the night she and Marlasca had attacked me in the San Gervasio Cemetery.

‘A six-pointed star. Don’t make me laugh, Martín. You could have made those cuts yourself. Irene Sabino is just a poor woman who earns her living in a laundry in Calle Cadena, not a sorceress.’

‘And what about Ricardo Salvador?’

‘Ricardo Salvador was thrown out of the police force in 1906, after spending two years stirring up the case of Diego Marlasca’s death while having an illicit relationship with the widow of the deceased. The last thing anyone knew about him was that he’d decided to take a ship to the Americas and start a new life.’

I couldn’t help but burst out laughing at the enormity of the deceit.

‘Don’t you realise, inspector? Don’t you realise you’re falling into the same trap that was laid for me by Marlasca?’

Grandes looked at me with pity.

‘You’re the one who doesn’t realise, Martín. The clock is ticking, and instead of telling me what you did with Cristina Sagnier, you persist in trying to convince me with a story that sounds like something from City of the Damned. There’s only one trap here: the one you’ve laid for yourself. And every moment that goes by without you telling me the truth makes it more difficult for me to get you out of it.’

Grandes waved his hand in front of my eyes a couple of times, as if he wanted to make sure that I could still see.

‘No? Nothing? As you wish. Let me finish telling you what the day had to offer. After my visit to Irene Sabino I was beginning to feel rather tired, so I returned for a while to police headquarters, where I still found the time, and the energy, to call the Civil Guard barracks in Puigcerdà. They’ve confirmed that you were seen leaving Cristina Sagnier’s hospital room on the night she disappeared, that you never returned to your hotel to collect your baggage, and that the head of the sanatorium told them you’d cut the straps that held down the patient. I then called an old friend of yours, Pedro Vidal, who was kind enough to come over to police headquarters. The poor man is devastated. He told me that the last time you two met you hit him. Is that true?’

I nodded.

‘I must tell you that he doesn’t hold it against you. In fact, he almost tried to persuade me to let you go. He says there must be an explanation for all this. That you’ve had a difficult life. That it was his fault you lost your father. That he feels responsible. All he wants is to recover his wife and he has no intention of retaliating against you in any way.’

‘You’ve told Vidal the whole thing?’

‘I had no option.’

I hid my face in my hands.

‘What did he say?’ I asked.

Grandes shrugged.

‘He thinks you’ve lost your mind. He thinks you must be innocent and he doesn’t want anything to happen to you, whether you’re innocent or not. His family is another matter. I know for certain that Vidal’s father has secretly offered Marcos and Castelo a bonus if they extract a confession from you in less than twelve hours. They’ve assured him that in one morning they’ll get you to recite the entire Canigó epic.’

‘And what do you think?’

‘The truth? The truth is that I’d like to believe Pedro Vidal is right and you’ve lost your mind.’

I didn’t tell him that, at that very moment, I was beginning to believe it too. Then I looked at Grandes and noticed something in his expression that didn’t add up.

‘There’s something you haven’t told me,’ I remarked.

‘I’d say I’ve told you more than enough,’ he retorted.

‘What haven’t you told me?’

Grandes observed me attentively and then tried to hide his laughter.

‘This morning you told me that the night Señor Sempere died he was overheard arguing with someone in the bookshop. You suspected that the person in question wanted to buy a book, a book of yours, and when Sempere refused to sell it, there was a fight and the bookseller suffered a heart attack. According to you, this item was almost unique, one of a handful of copies in existence. What was the book called?’

‘The Steps of Heaven.’

‘Exactly. That is the book which, according to you, was stolen the night Sempere died.’

I nodded. The inspector pulled a cigarette out of the packet and lit it. He took a couple of long drags, then put it out.

‘This is my dilemma, Martín. On the one hand you’ve told me a pile of cock and bull stories that either you’ve invented, thinking I’m an idiot, or – and I’m not sure if this is worse – you’ve started to believe yourself from repeating them so often. Everything points to you, and the easiest thing for me would be to wash my hands of all this and pass you over to Marcos and Castelo.’

‘But-’

‘But, and it’s a tiny, insignificant but, a but that my colleagues would have no problem at all dismissing altogether. And yet it bothers me like a speck of dust in my eye and makes me wonder whether, perhaps – and what I’m about to say contradicts everything I’ve learned in twenty years doing this job – what you’ve told me is not the truth, but is not false either.’

‘All I can say is that I’ve told you what I remember, inspector. You may or may not believe me. The truth is that at times I don’t even believe myself. But it’s what I remember.’

Grandes stood up and began to walk around the table.

‘This afternoon, when I was talking to María Antonia Sanahuja, or Irene Sabino, in her pensión, I asked her if she knew who you were. She said she didn’t. I explained that you lived in the tower house where she and Marlasca spent a few months. I asked her again if she remembered you. She said she didn’t. A while later I told her you’d visited the Marlasca family tomb and that you were sure you’d seen her there. For the third time that woman denied ever having seen you. And I believed her. I believed her until, as I was leaving, she told me she was feeling a bit cold and she opened her wardrobe to take out a woollen shawl and put it around her shoulders. I then noticed that there was a book on the table. It caught my eye because it was the only book in the room. While she had her back to me, I opened it and I read a handwritten inscription on the first page.’

‘To Señor Sempere, the best friend a book could ever have: you opened the doors to the world for me and showed me how to go through them,’ I quoted from memory.

‘Signed by David Martín,’ Grandes completed.

The inspector stopped in front of the window.

‘In half an hour they’ll come for you and I’ll be taken off the case,’ he said. ‘You’ll be handed over to Sergeant Marcos, and I’ll no longer be able to help you. Have you anything else to tell me that might allow me to save your neck?’

‘No.’

‘Then grab that ridiculous revolver you’ve been hiding for hours in your coat and, taking great care not to shoot yourself in the foot, threaten that if I don’t hand you the key that opens this door, you’ll blow my head off.’

I turned towards the door.

‘In exchange I ask only that you tell me where Cristina Sagnier is, if she’s still alive, that is.’

I looked down. I couldn’t find my voice.

‘Did you kill her?’

I let a long silence go by.

‘I don’t know.’

Grandes came over and handed me the key to the door.

‘Get the hell out of here, Martín.’

I hesitated for a second before taking it.

‘Don’t use the main staircase. At the end of the corridor, to your left, there’s a blue door that only opens from the inside and will take you to the fire escape. The exit is on the back alley.’

‘How can I thank you?’

‘You can start by not wasting time. You have around thirty minutes before the whole department will be hot on your heels. Don’t waste them.’

I took the key and walked to the door. Before leaving I turned round briefly. Grandes had sat down at the table and was looking at me, his expression blank.

‘That brooch with the angel,’ he said, touching his lapel.

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve seen you wearing it on your lapel ever since I met you,’ he said.

20

The streets of the Raval quarter were tunnels of shadows dotted with flickering street lamps that barely grazed the darkness. It took me a little over the thirty minutes granted to me by Inspector Grandes to discover that there were two laundries in Calle Cadena. The first, scarcely a cave behind a flight of stairs that glistened with steam, employed only children with violet-stained hands and yellow eyes. The second was an emporium of filth that stank of bleach, and it was hard to believe that anything clean could ever emerge from there. It was run by a large woman who, at the sight of a few coins, wasted no time in admitting that María Antonia Sanahuja worked there six afternoons a week.

‘What has she done now?’ the matron asked.

‘It’s an inheritance. Tell me where I can find her and perhaps some of it will come your way.’

The matron laughed, but her eyes shone with greed.

‘As far as I know she lives in Pensión Santa Lucía, in Calle Marqués de Barberá. How much has she inherited?’

I dropped the coins on the counter and got out of that grimy hole without bothering to reply.

The pensión where Irene Sabino lived languished in a sombre building that looked as if it had been assembled with disinterred bones and stolen headstones. The metal plates on the letter boxes inside the entrance hall were covered in rust. There were no names on the ones for the first two floors. The third floor housed a dressmaking workshop pompously entitled the Mediterranean Textile Company. The fourth floor was occupied by Pensión Santa Lucía. A narrow staircase rose in the gloom, and the dampness from the sewers filtered through the walls, eating away at the paint like acid. After walking up four floors I reached a sloping landing with just one door. I banged on it with my fist. A few minutes later the door was opened by a tall, thin man, seemingly escaped from an El Greco nightmare.

‘I’m looking for María Antonia Sanahuja,’ I said.

‘Are you the doctor?’ he asked.

I pushed him to one side and went in. The apartment was a jumble of dark, narrow rooms clustered either side of a corridor that ended in a large window overlooking the inner courtyard. The air was rank with the stench rising from the drains. The man who had opened the door was still standing on the threshold, looking at me in confusion. I assumed he must be one of the residents.

‘Which is her room?’ I asked.

He gave me an impenetrable look. I pulled out the revolver and showed it to him. Without losing his calm, the man pointed to the last door in the passage. When I got there I realised that it was locked and began to struggle with the handle. The other residents had stepped out into the corridor, a chorus of forgotten souls who looked as if they hadn’t seen the sun for years. I recalled my miserable days in Doña Carmen’s pensión and it occurred to me that my old home looked like the new Ritz Hotel compared to this purgatory, which was only one of many in the maze of the Raval quarter.

‘Go back to your rooms,’ I said.

No one seemed to have heard me. I raised my hand, showing my weapon. They all darted back into their rooms like frightened rodents, except for the tall Knight of the Doleful Countenance. I concentrated on the door once again.

‘She’s locked the door from the inside,’ the resident explained. ‘She’s been there all afternoon.’

A smell that reminded me of bitter almonds seeped under the door. I knocked a few times, but got no reply.

‘The landlady has a master key,’ suggested the resident. ‘If you can wait… I don’t think she’ll be long.’

My only reply was to take a step back and hurl myself with all my might against the door. The lock gave way after the second charge. As soon as I found myself in the room, I was overwhelmed by that bitter, nauseating smell.

‘My God,’ mumbled the resident behind my back.

The ex-star of the Paralelo lay on a ramshackle bed, pale and covered in sweat. Her lips were black and when she saw me she smiled. Her hands clutched the bottle of poison; she had swallowed it down to the last drop. The stench from her breath filled the room. The resident covered his nose and mouth with his hand and went outside. I gazed at Irene Sabino writhing in pain while the poison ate away at her insides. Death was taking its time.

‘Where’s Marlasca?’

She looked at me through tears of agony.

‘He no longer needed me,’ she said. ‘He’s never loved me.’

Her voice was harsh and broken. A dry cough seized her, a piercing sound ripping from her chest, and a second later a dark liquid trickled through her teeth. Irene Sabino observed me as she clung to the last breath of life. She took my hand and pressed it hard.

‘You’re damned, like him.’

‘What can I do?’

She shook her head. A new coughing fit seized her. The capillaries in her eyes were breaking and a web of bleeding lines spread towards her pupils.

‘Where is Ricardo Salvador? Is he in Marlasca’s grave, in the mausoleum?’

Irene Sabino shook her head. Her lips formed a soundless word: Jaco.

‘Where is Salvador, then?’

‘He knows where you are. He can see you. He’ll come for you.’

I thought she was becoming delirious. Her grip weakened.

‘I loved him,’ she said. ‘He was a good man. A good man. He changed him. He was a good man…’

The terrible sound of disintegrating flesh emerged from her lips, and her body was racked by spasms. Irene Sabino died with her eyes fixed on mine, taking the secret of Diego Marlasca with her.

I covered her face with a sheet. In the doorway, the resident made the sign of the cross. I looked around me, trying to find something that might help, some clue to indicate what my next step should be. Irene Sabino had spent her last days in a cell four metres deep by two wide. There were no windows. The metal bed on which her corpse lay, a wardrobe on the other side and a small table against the wall were the only furniture. A suitcase sat under the bed, next to a chamber pot and a hatbox. On the table lay a plate with a few breadcrumbs, a jug of water and a pile of what looked like postcards but turned out to be images of saints and memorial cards given out at funerals. Folded in a white cloth was something shaped like a book. I unwrapped it and found the copy of The Steps of Heaven that I had dedicated to Señor Sempere. The compassion awoken in me by the woman’s suffering evaporated in an instant. This wretched woman had killed my good friend, and all because she wanted to take this lousy book from him. Then I remembered what Sempere told me the very first time I went into his bookshop: that every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and dream about it. Sempere had died believing in those words and I could see that, in her own way, Irene Sabino had also believed in them.

I turned the pages and reread the dedication. I found the first mark on the seventh page. A brownish line, in the shape of a six-pointed star, identical to the one she had engraved on my chest with the razor edge some weeks earlier. I realised that the line had been drawn with blood. I went on turning the pages and finding new motifs. Lips. A hand. Eyes. Sempere had given his life for some paltry fortune-teller’s mumbo-jumbo.

I put the book in the inside pocket of my coat and knelt down by the bed. I pulled out the suitcase and emptied its contents on the floor: nothing but old clothes and shoes. In the hatbox I found a leather case containing the razor with which Irene Sabino had made the marks on my chest. Suddenly I noticed a shadow crossing the floor and I spun round, aiming the revolver. The tall thin resident looked at me in surprise.

‘I think you have company,’ he said.

I went out of the room and headed for the front door. As I stepped onto the landing I heard heavy footsteps climbing the stairs. A face appeared in the stairwell, squinting up, and I found myself looking straight into the eyes of Sergeant Marcos two floors down. He moved out of sight and his steps quickened. He was not alone. I closed the door and leaned against it, trying to think. My accomplice observed me expectantly.

‘Is there any other way out of here?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

‘What about the roof terrace?’

He pointed to the same door I had just shut. Three seconds later I felt the impact of Marcos and Castelo’s bodies as they tried to knock it down. I moved away, backing along the corridor with my gun pointed towards the door.

‘I think I’ll go to my room,’ the resident said. ‘It’s been a pleasure.’

‘Same here.’

I fixed my eyes on the door, which was shuddering with every blow. The old wood around the hinges and the lock began to crack. By now I was at the end of the corridor and I opened the window overlooking the inner courtyard. A vertical shaft approximately one metre square plunged into the shadows below. The edge of the flat roof was just visible some three metres above the window. On the other side of the shaft a drainpipe was secured to the wall by means of round metal bands, all corroded by rust, with black tears of damp oozing down the spattered surface of the pipe. Behind me, Marcos and Castelo continued to thunder at the door. I turned round and saw that it was almost off its hinges. I reckoned I had only a few seconds left: there was no alternative but to climb onto the windowsill and jump.

I managed to grab hold of the drainpipe and rest a foot on one of the bands that supported it. I stretched up, reaching for the upper section of the pipe, but as soon as I seized it, it came away in my hand and a whole metre of the pipe tumbled down the shaft. I almost fell with it too, but managed to hold on to a piece of metal that attached one of the bands to the wall. The drainpipe on which I had hoped to climb up to the flat roof was now impassable. There were only two ways out of my current situation: to return to the corridor that Marcos and Castelo were about to enter at any moment, or to descend into the black gorge. I heard the door being flung against the inside wall of the apartment and let myself begin to slide, holding on to the drainpipe as best I could, tearing off quite a bit of skin in the process. I had managed to descend about a metre and a half when I saw the shape of the two policemen in the beam of light cast by the window onto the darkness of the shaft. Marcos’s face was the first to appear as he leaned out. He smiled. I asked myself whether he was going shoot me right there and then. Castelo popped up next to him.

‘Stay here. I’ll go down to the apartment below,’ Marcos ordered.

Castelo nodded. They wanted me alive, at least for a few hours. I heard Marcos running away. It wouldn’t be long before I saw him looking out of the window scarcely a metre below. I glanced down and saw that there was light at the windows of the second and first floors, but the third floor was in darkness. Carefully I lowered myself until I felt my foot touching the next band. The third-floor window was now in front of me, with an empty corridor leading from it towards the door at the far end. I could hear Marcos knocking. By that time of day the dressmakers had already closed and nobody was there. The knocking stopped and I realised that Marcos had gone down to the second floor to try his luck there. I looked up and saw that Castelo was still watching me, licking his lips like a cat.

‘Don’t fall – we’re going to have some fun when we catch you,’ he said.

I heard voices on the second floor and knew that Marcos had succeeded in getting into the apartment. Without thinking twice, I threw myself with all the strength I could muster against the window of the third floor. I smashed through the windowpane, keeping my face and neck covered with my coat, and landed in a pool of broken glass. I hauled myself up and, as I did so, noticed a dark stain spreading across my left arm. A shard of glass, sharp as a dagger, protruded just above my elbow. I caught hold of it and pulled. The cold sensation gave way to a blaze of pain that made me fall to my knees. From the floor I saw that Castelo had started to climb down the drainpipe. Before I was able to pull out the gun, he leaped towards the window. I saw his hands grabbing hold of the outer frame. Instinctively, I jumped up and started hammering at the frame with all my might, putting the whole weight of my body behind every blow. I heard the bones in his fingers break with a dry snapping sound, and Castelo howled in pain. I pulled out the gun and pointed it at his face, but his hands had already begun to slip. A second of terror in his eyes, and then he fell down the shaft, his body ricocheting against the walls, leaving a trail of blood in the patches of light that filtered through from the lower windows.

I dragged myself towards the front door. The wound on my arm was throbbing and I noticed that I also had a few cuts on my legs, but I kept moving. On either side of the passageway there were rooms in semi-darkness full of sewing machines, bobbins of thread and tables topped with large rolls of material. I reached the main door and took hold of the handle. A tenth of a second later I felt it turn. Marcos was on the other side, attempting to force the lock. I retreated a few steps. A huge roar suddenly shook the door and part of the lock shot out in a cloud of sparks and blue smoke. Marcos was going to blast the lock away. I took shelter in the nearest room, which was filled with motionless figures, some with arms or legs missing: shop-window mannequins all piled up together. I slipped in between the torsos just as I heard a second shot. The front door opened with a bang. A halo of gunpowder floated in the hazy yellow light that seeped in from the landing. I heard Marcos fumbling with the door, then the sound of his heavy footsteps in the hallway. Glued to the wall, hiding behind the dummies, I clutched the revolver in trembling hands.

‘Martín, come out,’ Marcos said calmly as he advanced. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I have orders from Grandes to take you to the police station. We’ve found that man Marlasca. He’s confessed to everything. You’re clean. Don’t go and do something stupid now. Come on, let’s talk about this at police headquarters.’

I saw him walk past the doorway of the room where I was hiding.

‘Martín, listen to me. Grandes is on his way. We can clear this up without any need to complicate matters further.’

I cocked the hammer. Marcos’s footsteps came to a halt. There was a slight scraping sound on the tiles. He was on the other side of the wall. He knew perfectly well that I was in that room, and that I couldn’t get out without going past him. I saw his profile slink through the doorway and melt into the liquid darkness of the room; the gleam of his eyes was the only trace of his presence. He was barely four metres away from me. I began to slide down against the wall until I reached the floor. I could see Marcos’s shoes behind the legs of the dummies.

‘I know you’re here, Martín. Stop being childish.’

He stopped and didn’t move. Then I saw him kneel down and touch the trail of blood I had left with his fingertips. He brought a finger to his mouth. I imagined he was smiling.

‘You’re bleeding a lot, Martín. You need a doctor. Come out and I’ll take you to a surgery.’

I kept quiet. Marcos stopped in front of a table and picked up a shining object that was lying among scraps of material. Large textile scissors.

‘It’s up to you, Martín.’

I heard the shearing sound made by the edge of the scissor blades as he opened and closed them. A stab of pain gripped my arm and I bit my lip to stifle the groan. Marcos turned his face in my direction.

‘Speaking of blood, you’ll be pleased to hear that we have your little whore, that Isabella girl. Before we start with you we’ll have some fun with her…’

I raised the weapon and pointed it at his face. The sheen of the metal gave me away. Marcos jumped at me, knocking down the dummies and dodging the shot. I felt his weight on my body and his breath on my face. The scissor blades closed only a centimetre from my left eye. I butted my forehead against his face with all the strength I could muster and he fell to one side. Then I lifted my gun and pointed it at him. Marcos, his lip split, sat up and fixed his eyes on mine.

‘You don’t have the guts,’ he whispered.

He placed his hand on the barrel and smiled at me. I pulled the trigger. The bullet blew off his hand, flinging his arm back. Marcos fell to the floor, holding his mutilated, smoking wrist, while his face, splattered with gunpowder burns, dissolved into a grimace of pain, a silent howl. I got up and left him there, bleeding to death in a pool of his own urine.

21

Somehow I managed to crawl through the narrow streets of the Raval as far as the Paralelo, where a row of taxis had formed outside the Apolo theatre. I slipped into the first one I could find. When he heard the door, the driver turned round; he took one look at me and pulled a face. I fell onto the back seat, ignoring his protests.

‘Listen, you’re not going to die on me back there, are you?’

‘The sooner you take me where I want to go, the sooner you’ll get shot of me.’

The driver cursed under his breath and started the engine.

‘Where do you want to go?’

I don’t know, I thought.

‘Just drive and I’ll let you know.’

‘Drive where?’

‘Pedralbes.’

Twenty minutes later I glimpsed the lights of Villa Helius. I pointed them out to the driver, who couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. He left me at the entrance to the mansion and almost forgot to charge me the fare. I staggered up to the large front door and rang the bell, then collapsed on the steps and leaned my head against the wall. I heard footsteps approaching and at some point thought I saw the door open and heard someone saying my name. I felt a hand on my forehead and I seemed to recognise Vidal’s eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Don Pedro,’ I begged. ‘I had nowhere else to go…’

I heard him call out and after a while I felt various hands taking my legs and arms and lifting me. When I opened my eyes again I was in Don Pedro’s bedroom, lying on the same bed he had shared with Cristina during the two short months of their marriage. I sighed. Vidal was watching me from the end of the bed.

‘Don’t speak now,’ he said. ‘The doctor is on his way.’

‘Don’t believe them, Don Pedro,’ I moaned. ‘Don’t believe them.’

‘Of course not.’

Vidal picked up a blanket and covered me with it.

‘I’ll go downstairs to wait for the doctor,’ he said. ‘Get some rest.’

After a while I heard footsteps and voices coming into the bedroom. I could feel my clothes being removed and glimpsed the dozens of cuts covering my body like bloodstained ivy. I felt tweezers poking into my wounds, pulling out needles of glass that brought with them bits of skin and flesh. I felt the heat of antiseptic and the pricks of the needle as the doctor sewed up my wounds. There was no longer any pain, only tiredness. Once I had been bandaged, sewn up and mended like a broken puppet, the doctor and Vidal covered me with a sheet and placed my head on the sweetest, softest pillow I had ever come across. I opened my eyes to see the doctor’s face, an aristocratic-looking gentleman with a reassuring smile. He was holding a hypodermic syringe.

‘You’ve been lucky, young man,’ he said as he plunged the needle into my arm.

‘What’s that?’ I mumbled.

Vidal’s face appeared next to the doctor’s.

‘It will help you rest.’

A cold mist spread up my arm and across my chest. I felt myself falling into a chasm of black velvet while Vidal and the doctor watched me from on high. Gradually, the world closed until it was reduced to a single drop of light that evaporated in my hands. I sank into that warm, chemical peace from which I would have preferred never to escape.

I remember a world of black water under the ice. Moonlight touched the frozen vault, breaking into thousands of dusty beams that swayed in the current as it pulled me away. The white mantle draped around her body undulated, the silhouette of her body just visible in the translucent waters. Cristina stretched out a hand towards me and I fought against that cold, heavy current. When our fingers were only a hair’s breadth apart, a sombre mass unfolded its wings behind her, enveloping her like an explosion of ink. Tentacles of black light surrounded her arms, her throat and her face, dragging her inexorably towards a dark void.

22

I awoke to hear Víctor Grandes saying my name. I sat bolt upright, not recognising where I was – if anything, the place looked like a suite in a luxury hotel. The shooting pain from the dozens of cuts that streaked my torso brought me back to reality. I was in Vidal’s bedroom in Villa Helius. Through the closed shutters, a hint of mid-afternoon light. A fire was blazing in the grate and the room was warm. The voices came from the floor below. Pedro Vidal and Víctor Grandes.

Ignoring the stinging of my skin, I got out of bed. My dirty, bloodstained clothes had been thrown onto an armchair. I looked for the coat. The gun was still in the pocket. I drew back the hammer and left the room, following the trail of voices as far as the stairs. I went down a few steps, keeping close to the wall.

‘I’m very sorry about your men, inspector,’ I heard Vidal saying. ‘Rest assured that if David gets in touch with me, or if I hear of his whereabouts, I’ll let you know immediately.’

‘I’m grateful for your help, Señor Vidal. I’m sorry to bother you in the circumstances, but the situation is extremely serious.’

‘I understand. Thank you for your visit.’

The sound of the front door closing. Vidal’s laboured breathing at the foot of the staircase. I went down a few more steps and found him leaning his forehead against the door. When he heard me he opened his eyes and turned round.

He didn’t say anything, just looked at the gun I held in my hands. I put it down on the small table at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Come on, let’s see if we can find you some clean clothes,’ he said.

I followed him to a huge dressing room that looked more like a costume museum. All the exquisite suits I remembered from Vidal’s years of glory were there. Dozens of ties, shoes, and cufflinks in red velvet boxes.

‘This is all from when I was young. It should fit you.’

Vidal chose for me. He handed me a shirt that was probably worth as much as a small plot of land, a three-piece suit made to measure in London and a pair of Italian shoes that would not have disgraced the boss’s wardrobe. I dressed in silence while Vidal observed me with a pensive look.

‘A bit wide on the shoulders, but you’ll have to make do,’ he said, handing me a pair of sapphire cufflinks.

‘What did the inspector tell you?’

‘Everything.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘What does it matter?’

‘It matters to me.’

Vidal sat on a stool by a wall that was covered in mirrors from ceiling to floor.

‘He says you know where Cristina is,’ he said.

I did not deny it.

‘Is she alive?’

I looked him in the eye and, very slowly, nodded my head. Vidal gave a weak smile, eluding my eyes. Then he burst into tears, emitting a deep groan that came from his very soul. I sat down next to him and hugged him.

‘Forgive me, Don Pedro, forgive me…’

Later, as the sun began to drop over the horizon, Vidal gathered my old clothes and threw them into the fire. Before he abandoned my coat to the flames he pulled out the copy of The Steps of Heaven and handed it to me.

‘Of the two books you wrote last year, this was the good one,’ he said.

I watched him poking my clothes about in the fire.

‘When did you realise?’

Vidal shrugged.

‘Even a conceited idiot can’t be fooled forever, David.’

I couldn’t make out whether there was resentment in his tone, or just sadness.

‘I did it because I thought I was helping you, Don Pedro.’

‘I know.’

He smiled.

‘Forgive me,’ I murmured.

‘You must leave the city. There’s a cargo ship moored in the San Sebastián dock that sets sail tonight. It’s all arranged. Ask for Captain Olmo. He’s expecting you. Take one of the cars from the garage. You can leave it at the port. Pep will fetch it tomorrow. Don’t speak to anyone. Don’t go back to your house. You’ll need money.’

‘I have enough money,’ I lied.

‘There’s never enough. When you disembark in Marseilles, Olmo will go with you to a bank and will give you fifty thousand francs.’

‘Don Pedro-’

‘Listen to me. Those two men that Grandes says you’ve killed…’

‘Marcos and Castelo. I think they worked for your father, Don Pedro.’

Vidal shook his head.

‘My father and his lawyers only ever deal with the top people, David. How do you think those two knew where to find you thirty minutes after you left the police station?’

A cold feeling of certainty washed over me.

‘Through my friend, Inspector Víctor Grandes.’

Vidal agreed.

‘Grandes let you go because he didn’t want to dirty his hands in the police station. As soon as he got you out of there, his two men were on your trail. Your death was to read like a telegram: escaping murder suspect dies while resisting arrest.’

‘Just like the old days on the news,’ I said.

‘Some things never change, David. You should know better than anyone.’

He opened his wardrobe and handed me a brand new coat. I accepted it and put the book in the inside pocket. Vidal smiled at me.

‘For once in your life you’re well dressed.’

‘It suited you better, Don Pedro.’

‘That goes without saying.’

‘Don Pedro, there are a lot of things-’

‘They don’t matter any more, David. You don’t owe me an explanation.’

‘I owe you much more than an explanation…’

‘Then tell me about her.’

Vidal looked at me with desperate eyes that begged me to lie to him. We sat in the sitting room, facing the French windows with their view over the whole of Barcelona, and I lied to him with all my heart. I told him that Cristina had rented a small attic in Rue de Soufflot, under the name of Madame Vidal, and had said that she’d wait for me every day, in the middle of the afternoon, by the fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens. I told him that she spoke about him constantly, that she would never forget him and that I knew that however many years I spent by her side I’d never be able to fill the void he had left. Don Pedro’s gaze was lost in the distance.

‘You must promise me you’ll look after her, David. That you’ll never leave her. Whatever happens, you’ll stay by her side.’

‘I promise, Don Pedro.’

In the pale light of evening all I could see was a defeated old man, sick with memories and guilt; a man who had never believed and whose only balm now was to believe.

‘I wish I’d been a better friend to you, David.’

‘You’ve been the best of friends, Don Pedro. You’ve been much more than that.’

Vidal stretched out his arm and took my hand. He was trembling.

‘Grandes spoke to me about that man, the one you call the boss… He says you are in debt to him and you think the only way of paying him back is by giving him a pure soul…’

‘That’s nonsense, Don Pedro. Don’t pay any attention.’

‘Would a dirty, tired soul like mine be of any use to you?’

‘I know of no purer soul than yours, Don Pedro.’

Vidal smiled.

‘If I could have changed places with your father, I would have, David.’

‘I know.’

He stood up and gazed at the evening swooping over the city.

‘You should be on your way,’ he said. ‘Go to the garage and take a car. Whichever you like. I’ll see if I have some cash.’

I picked up the coat, then went into the garden and walked over to the coach house. The Villa Helius garage was home to two automobiles that gleamed like royal carriages. I chose the smaller, more discreet car, a black Hispano-Suiza that looked as if it had not been used more than two or three times and still smelled new. I sat at the steering wheel and started the engine, then drove the car out of the garage and waited in the yard. A minute went by, and still Vidal hadn’t come out. I got out of the car, leaving the engine running. I went back into the house to say goodbye to him and tell him not to worry about the money, I would manage. As I walked across the entrance hall I remembered I’d left the gun on the table. When I went to pick it up it wasn’t there.

‘Don Pedro?’

The door to the sitting room was ajar. I looked in and could see him standing in the middle of the room. He raised my father’s revolver to his chest, placing the barrel at his heart. I rushed towards him but the roar of the shot drowned my shouts. The weapon fell from his hands. His body slumped over and he fell to the floor, leaving a scarlet trail on the marble tiles. I dropped to my knees beside him and supported him in my arms. Dark, thick blood gushed from the hole where the bullet had pierced his clothes. Don Pedro’s eyes locked on mine while his smile filled with blood, and his body stopped trembling, and he collapsed. The room was filled with the scent of gunpowder and misery.

23

I returned to the car and sat down, my bloodstained hands on the steering wheel. I could hardly breathe. I waited a minute and then released the handbrake. The lights of the city throbbed under the shroud of the evening sky. I set off down the street, leaving the silhouette of Villa Helius behind me. When I reached Avenida Pearson I stopped and looked through the rear-view mirror. A car had just turned into the street from a hidden alleyway and positioned itself some fifty metres behind me. Its lights were not on. Víctor Grandes.

I continued down Avenida de Pedralbes until I passed the large wrought-iron dragon guarding the entrance to Finca Güell. Inspector Grandes’s car was still following about a hundred metres behind. When I reached Avenida Diagonal I turned left towards the centre of town. There were barely any cars around so Grandes had no difficulty following me until I decided to turn right, hoping to lose him through the narrow streets of Las Corts. By then the inspector was aware that his presence was no secret and had turned on his headlights. For about twenty minutes we dodged through a knot of streets and trams. I slipped in between omnibuses and carts, with Grandes’s headlights relentlessly at my back. After a while the hill of Montjuïc rose before me. The large palace of the International Exhibition and the remains of the other pavilions had been closed for just two weeks, but in the twilight mist they looked like the ruins of some great, forgotten civilisation. I took the large avenue to the cascade of ghostly lights that illuminated the Exhibition fountains, accelerating as quickly as the engine would allow. As we ascended the road that snaked its way up the mountain towards the Great Stadium, Grandes was gaining ground until I could clearly distinguish his face in the rear-view mirror. For a moment I was tempted to take the road leading to the military fortress on the summit, but I knew that if there was one place with no way out, it was there. My only hope was to make it to the other side of the mountain, the side that looked down onto the sea, and disappear into one of the docks at the port. To do that I needed to put some time between us, but the inspector was now about fifteen metres behind me. The large balustrades of Miramar opened up before us, with the city spread out at our feet. I pulled at the handbrake with all my strength and let Grandes smash into the Hispano-Suiza. The impact pushed us both along almost twenty metres, raising a spray of sparks across the road. I let go of the brake and went forward a short distance while Grandes was still struggling to regain control, then I put my car into reverse and accelerated hard.

By the time Grandes realised what I was doing it was already too late. Thanks to one of the most select makes in town, I charged at him with the all the power of a bodywork and an engine that were far more robust than those protecting him. The force of the crash shook Grandes from his seat and his head banged against the windscreen, smashing it to smithereens. Steam surged from the bonnet of his car and the headlights went out. I put my car into gear and accelerated away, heading for the Miramar viewpoint. After a few seconds I realised that in the collision the back mudguard had been crushed against the tyre, which now rubbed on the metal as it turned. The smell of burning rubber filled the car. Twenty metres further on the tyre burst and the car began to zigzag until it came to a halt, wreathed in a cloud of black smoke. I abandoned the Hispano-Suiza and glanced back at where Grandes’s car still sat – the inspector was dragging himself out of the driver’s seat. I looked around me. The stop for the cable cars that crossed over the port and the town from Montjuïc to the tower of San Sebastián was about fifty metres away. I could make out the shape of the cars dangling from their wires as they slid through the dusk, and I ran towards them.

One of the staff was getting ready to close the doors to the building when he saw me hurrying up the road. He held the door open and pointed inside.

‘Last trip of the evening,’ he warned. ‘You’d better hurry.’

The ticket office was about to close but I scurried in, bought the last ticket on sale, and rushed over to join a group of four people waiting by the cabin. I didn’t notice their clothes until the employee opened the door. Priests.

‘The cable railway was built for the International Exhibition and is equipped with the latest technology. Its safety is guaranteed at all times. From the start of the journey this security door, which can only be opened from the outside, will remain locked to avoid accidents, or, heaven forbid, a suicide attempt. Of course, with Your Eminences on board, there is no danger of-’

‘Young man,’ I interrupted. ‘Can you speed up the ceremony? It’s getting late.’

The employee threw me a hostile glance. One of the priests noticed my bloodstained hands and crossed himself. The young man continued with his long-winded speech.

‘You’ll be travelling through the Barcelona sky at a height of some seventy metres above the waters of the port, enjoying spectacular views over the city until now only available to swallows, seagulls and other creatures endowed with feathers by the Almighty. The trip lasts ten minutes and makes two stops, the first at the central tower in the port, or as I like to call it Barcelona’s Eiffel Tower, or the tower of San Jaime, and the second and last at the tower of San Sebastián. Without further delay, I wish Your Eminences a happy journey, and on behalf of the company I hope we will see you again on board the Port of Barcelona Cable Railway in the not-too-distant future.’

I was the first person to enter the cable car. The employee held out his hand as the four priests went by, hoping for a tip that never graced his fingertips. Visibly disappointed, he slammed the door shut and turned round, ready to operate the lever. Inspector Víctor Grandes was waiting there for him, in a sorry state but smiling and holding out his badge. The employee opened the door and Grandes strode into the cable car, greeting the priests with a nod and winking at me. Seconds later we were floating out into the void.

The cabin lifted off from the terminal towards the mountain edge. The priests had all clustered on one side, ready to enjoy the evening views over Barcelona and ignore whatever murky business had brought Grandes and me together in that place. The inspector sidled over and showed me the gun he had in his hand. Large reddish clouds hung over the water of the port. The cable car sank into one of them and for a moment it felt as if we had plunged into a lake of fire.

‘Have you ever been on this before?’ Grandes asked.

I nodded.

‘My daughter loves it. Once a month she asks me to take her on a return trip. A bit expensive, but it’s worth it.’

‘With the amount of money old Señor Vidal is paying you for my head, I’m sure you’ll be able to bring your daughter here every day, if you feel like it. Simple curiosity: what price did he put on me?’

Grandes smiled. The cable car emerged from the crimson cloud and we found ourselves suspended over the port, with the lights of the city spilling over its dark waters.

‘Fifteen thousand pesetas,’ he replied, patting a white envelope that peeped out of his coat pocket.

‘I suppose I should feel flattered. Some people would kill for two duros. Does that include the price of betraying your two men?’

‘Let me remind you that the only person who has killed anyone here is you.’

By now the four priests were watching us, filled with shock and concern, oblivious to the delights of the vertiginous flight over the city. Grandes gave them a cursory look.

‘When we reach the first stop, if it’s not too much to ask, I’d be grateful if Your Eminences would get off and allow us to discuss a few mundane matters.’

The tower on the docks of Barcelona port rose before us like a cupola of steel with great metal threads wrenched from a mechanical cathedral. The cable car entered the dome and stopped by the platform. When the door opened, the four priests hastened out. Grandes, gun in hand, told me to go to the far end of the cabin. As he got out, one of the priests gave me an anxious look.

‘Don’t worry, young man, we’ll call the police,’ he said, just before the door closed.

‘Yes, please do!’ replied Grandes.

Once the door was locked, the cable car resumed its journey. We emerged from the tower and started on the last stage of the crossing. Grandes went over to the window and gazed at the view of the city, a fantasy of lights and mist, cathedrals and palaces, alleyways and wide avenues woven into a labyrinth of shadows.

‘The city of the damned,’ said Grandes. ‘The further away you are, the prettier it looks.’

‘Is that my epitaph?’

‘I’m not going to kill you, Martín. I don’t kill people. You’re going to do that for me. As a favour. For me and for yourself. You know I’m right.’

Saying no more, the inspector fired three shots at the locking mechanism of the door and kicked it open. The door was left hanging in the air and a blast of damp wind filled the cabin.

‘You won’t feel anything, Martín. Believe me. The impact will only take a tenth of a second. It’s instant. And then, peace.’

I gazed at the door. A fall of over seventy metres into the void opened up before me. I looked at the tower of San Sebastián and reckoned there were still a few minutes to go before we would arrive. Grandes read my thoughts.

‘Soon it will all be over, Martín. You should be grateful to me.’

‘Do you really think I killed all those people, inspector?’

Grandes raised his revolver and pointed it at my heart.

‘I don’t know, and I don’t care.’

‘I thought we were friends.’

He muttered in disagreement.

‘You don’t have any friends, Martín.’

I heard the roar of the shot and felt a blow to my chest, as if I’d been hit in the ribs with a jackhammer. I fell on my back, unable to breathe, a spasm of pain spreading through my body like petrol on fire. Grandes had grabbed my feet and was pulling me towards the door. The top of the tower of San Sebastián appeared between veils of cloud. Grandes stepped over my body and knelt down behind me, then started pushing me by my shoulders towards the door. I felt the cold air on my legs. Grandes gave another push and my waist slid over the edge. The pull of gravity was instant. I was beginning to fall.

I stretched out my arms towards the policeman and dug my fingers into his neck. Anchored by the weight of my body, the inspector was trapped and couldn’t move from the doorway. I pressed with all my might, pushing on his windpipe, squashing the arteries in his neck. He struggled to free himself from my grip with one hand while the other groped about for his gun. Finally his fingers found the trigger. The shot grazed my temple and hit the doorframe, but the bullet bounced back into the cabin and went clean through his hand. I sunk my nails further into his neck, feeling his skin yield. Grandes groaned. Using all the strength I had left, I managed to get more than half my body back inside the car. Once I was able to grab hold of the metal walls, I let go of Grandes and threw myself away from him.

I touched my chest and found the hole left by the inspector’s shot. I opened my coat and pulled out the copy of The Steps of Heaven. The bullet had pierced the front cover and the four hundred pages of the book, so that it peeped out, like the tip of a silver finger, through the back cover. Next to me, Grandes was writhing on the ground, grabbing at his neck with despair. His face was purple and the veins on his forehead and temples stood out like tensed cables. He looked at me, pleading. A cobweb of broken blood vessels spread across his eyes and I realised I had squashed his windpipe and that he was suffocating. I watched him as he lay shaking on the floor in agony. I pulled the white envelope from his pocket, opened it and counted fifteen thousand pesetas. The price of my life. I put the envelope in my pocket. Grandes was dragging himself across the floor towards the gun. I stood up and kicked it out of reach. He grabbed my ankle, begging for mercy.

‘Where’s Marlasca?’ I asked.

His throat emitted a dull moan. I fixed my eyes on his and realised that he was laughing. The cable car had already entered the tower of San Sebastián when I pushed him through the doorway and saw his body plunge eighty metres through a maze of rails, cables, cogwheels and steel bars that tore him to pieces as he fell.

24

The tower house was buried in darkness. I groped my way up the stone staircase until I reached the landing and found the front door ajar. I pushed it open and waited on the threshold, scanning the shadows that filled the long corridor. I took a few steps then stopped, not moving a muscle. I felt the wall until I found the light switch. I tried it four times but without success. The first door to the right, three metres away, led into the kitchen. I remembered that I kept an oil lamp in the larder and there I found it, among unopened coffee tins from the Can Gispert emporium. I put the lamp on the kitchen table and lit it. A faint amber light suffused the kitchen walls. I picked it up and stepped out into the corridor.

As I advanced, the flickering light held high, I expected to see something or someone emerge at any moment from one of the doors on either side. I knew I was not alone; I could smell it. A sour stench, of anger and hatred, floated in the air. I reached the end of the corridor and stopped in front of the last room. The lamp cast its soft glow over the wardrobe that had been pulled away from the wall and the clothes thrown on the floor – exactly as I had left them when Grandes had come to arrest me two nights ago. I continued towards the foot of the spiral staircase and warily mounted the stairs, peering behind my shoulder every two or three steps, until I reached the study. The ruby aura of twilight flooded in through the windows. I hurried across the room to the wall where the trunk stood and opened it. The folder with the boss’s manuscript had disappeared.

I crossed the room again, heading back to the stairs. As I walked past my desk I noticed that the keyboard of my old typewriter had been destroyed – as if someone had been punching it. Gingerly, I went down the steps, entered the corridor, and put my head round the entrance to the gallery. Even in the half-light I could see that all my books had been hurled onto the floor and the leather of the armchairs was in tatters. I turned round to examine the twenty metres of corridor that separated me from the front door. The light from the lamp only reached half that distance, beyond which the shadows rolled on like black water.

I remembered I’d left the door to the apartment open when I came in. Now it was closed. I walked on a couple of metres, but something stopped me as I passed the last room in the corridor. When I’d walked past it the first time I hadn’t noticed, because the door to that room opened to the left and I hadn’t looked in far enough to see. But now, as I drew closer, I saw it clearly. A white dove, its wings spread out like a cross, was nailed to the door. Drops of blood dripped down the wood. Fresh blood.

I entered the room. I looked behind the door, but there wasn’t anyone there. The wardrobe was still pulled to one side. The cold, damp air that emanated from the hole in the wall permeated the room. I left the lamp on the floor and placed my hands on the softened filler around the hole. I started to scratch with my nails and felt it crumble beneath my fingers. I looked around and found an old paperknife in a drawer of one of the small tables piled up in a corner. I dug the knife-edge into the filler. The plaster came away easily; it was only about three centimetres thick. On the other side I discovered wood.

A door.

I searched for the edges using the knife, and the shape of the door began to emerge. By then I’d already forgotten the close presence that was poisoning the house, lurking in the shadows. The door had no handle, just a lock that had rusted away from being covered by damp plaster for years. I plunged the paperknife into it and struggled in vain, then began to kick the lock until the filler that held it in place was slowly dislodged. I finished freeing it with the paperknife and, once it was loose, the door opened with a simple push.

A gust of putrid air burst from within, impregnating my clothes and my skin. I picked up the lamp and entered. The room was a rectangle about five or six metres deep. The walls were covered with pictures and inscriptions that looked as if they had been made with someone’s fingers. The lines were brownish and dark. Dried blood. The floor was covered with what at first I thought was dust, but when I lowered the lamp turned out to be the remains of small bones. Animal bones broken up into a layer of ash. Numerous objects hung from a piece of black string suspended from the ceiling. I recognised religious figures, images of saints, madonnas with their faces burned and their eyes pulled out, crucifixes knotted with barbed wire, and the remains of tin toys and dolls with glass eyes. The silhouette was at the far end, almost invisible.

A chair facing the corner. On the chair I saw a figure. It was dressed in black. A man. His hands were cuffed behind his back. Thick wire bound his arms and legs to the frame. An icy coldness took hold of me.

‘Salvador?’

I advanced slowly towards him. The figure did not move. I paused a step away and stretched out my hand. My fingers skimmed over the man’s hair and rested on his shoulder. I wanted to turn his body round, but felt something give way under my fingers. A second later I thought I heard a whisper and the corpse crumbled into dust that spilled through his clothes and the wire bonds, then rose in a dark cloud that remained suspended between the walls of the prison where for years this man’s body had remained hidden. I looked at the film of ash on my hands and brought them to my face, spreading the remains of Ricardo Salvador’s soul on my skin. When I opened my eyes I saw that Diego Marlasca, his jailer, was waiting in the doorway, with the boss’s manuscript in his hand and fire in his eyes.

‘I’ve been reading it while I waited for you, Martín,’ said Marlasca. ‘A masterpiece. The boss will know how to reward me when I give it to him on your behalf. I admit that I was never able to solve the puzzle. I fell by the wayside. I’m glad to see the boss found a more talented successor.’

He put the manuscript on the floor.

‘Get out of my way.’

‘I’m sorry, Martín. Believe me. I’m sorry. I was starting to like you,’ he said, pulling out what looked like an ivory handle from his pocket. ‘But I can’t let you out of this room. It’s time for you to take the place of poor Salvador.’

He pressed a button on the handle and a double-edged blade shone in the gloom.

He threw himself at me, shouting angrily. The blade sliced my cheek open and would have gouged out my left eye if I hadn’t jumped to one side. I fell backwards onto the bones and dust covering the floor. Marlasca grabbed the knife with both hands and crashed down on top of me, putting all his weight on the blade. The knifepoint stopped only centimetres from my chest, while my right hand held Marlasca’s throat.

He twisted to bite me on the wrist and I punched him hard in the face with my free hand. He seemed unperturbed, driven by an anger that went beyond reason and pain, and I knew he wouldn’t let me out of that cell alive. He charged at me with incredible strength. I felt the tip of the knife cut through my skin. I hit him again as hard as I could. My fist collided with his face and I heard the bones of his nose crack. Marlasca gave another shout, ignoring the pain, and plunged the knife a centimetre into my flesh. A sharp pain seared through my chest. I hit him once more, searching out his eye sockets with my fingertips, but Marlasca raised his chin and I could only dig my nails into his cheek. This time I felt his teeth on my fingers.

I plunged my fist into his mouth, splitting his lips and knocking out a few teeth. I heard him howl and then he hesitated for a second before coming at me again. I pushed him to one side and he fell to the floor, dropping the knife, his face a mask of blood. I stepped away from him, praying that he wouldn’t get up again. A moment later he had crawled over to the knife and was getting to his feet.

He grasped the blade and threw himself on me with a deafening shriek, but this time he didn’t catch me by surprise. I reached for the handle of the lamp and swung it at him with all my might. The lamp smashed against his face, spreading oil over his eyes, his lips, his throat and his chest. It caught fire immediately. In just a few seconds a blanket of flames covered his entire body. His hair shrivelled. I saw a look of hatred through the tongues of fire that were devouring his eyelids. I picked up the manuscript and fled.

Marlasca still held the knife in his hands as he tried to follow me out of that accursed room and fell face down on the pile of old clothes, which then burst into flames. The fire leaped at the wood of the wardrobe and the furniture that was piled up against the wall. I rushed towards the corridor but still he pursued me, arms outstretched, trying to catch me. As I reached the door I turned round and saw Diego Marlasca being consumed by the blaze, furiously punching the walls, which caught alight at his touch. The fire spread to the books scattered in the gallery and then the curtains. It writhed across the ceiling like bright orange snakes, licking the frames of doors and windows, creeping up the steps to the study. The last image I recall is of a doomed man falling to his knees at the end of the corridor, the vain hopes of his madness lost and his body reduced to a human torch by a storm of flames that spread relentlessly through the tower house. I opened the front door and ran down the stairs.

Some of the neighbours had assembled in the street when they saw the first flames in the windows of the tower. Nobody noticed me as I slipped away. Shortly afterwards, I heard the windowpanes in the study shatter. I turned to see the fire embracing the dragon-shaped weathervane. Soon I was making my way towards Paseo del Borne, walking against a tide of local residents who were all staring upwards, their eyes captivated by the brightness of the pyre that rose into the black sky.

25

That night I returned, for the last time, to the Sempere & Sons bookshop. The CLOSED sign was hanging on the door, but as I drew closer I noticed there was still a light on inside and that Isabella was standing behind the counter, alone, engrossed in a thick accounts ledger. Judging from the expression on her face, it predicted the end of the old bookshop’s days. But as I watched her nibbling the end of her pencil and scratching the tip of her nose with her forefinger, I was certain that as long as she was there the place would never disappear. Her presence would save it, as it had saved me. I didn’t dare break that moment so I stayed where I was, smiling to myself, watching her unawares. Suddenly, as if she’d read my thoughts, she looked up and saw me. I waved at her and saw that, despite herself, her eyes were filled with tears. She closed the book and came running out from behind the counter to open the door. She was staring at me as if she couldn’t quite believe I was there.

‘That man said you’d run away… He said we’d never see you again.’

I presumed Grandes had paid her a visit before he died.

‘I want you to know that I didn’t believe a word of what he told me,’ said Isabella. ‘Let me call-’

‘I don’t have much time, Isabella.’

She looked at me, crestfallen.

‘You’re leaving, aren’t you?’

I nodded. Isabella gulped nervously.

‘I told you I don’t like farewells.’

‘I like them even less. That’s why I haven’t come to say goodbye. I’ve come to return a couple of things that don’t belong to me.’

I pulled out the copy of The Steps of Heaven and handed it to her.

‘This should never have left the glass case containing Señor Sempere’s personal collection.’

Isabella took it and when she saw the bullet still trapped in its pages she looked at me in silence. I then pulled out the white envelope that held the fifteen thousand pesetas with which old Vidal had tried to buy my death, and left it on the counter.

‘And this goes towards all the books that Sempere gave me over the years.’

Isabella opened it and counted the money in astonishment.

‘I don’t know whether I can accept it…’

‘Consider it my wedding present, in advance.’

‘And there was I, still hoping you’d lead me to the altar one day, even if only to give me away.’

‘Nothing would have pleased me more.’

‘But you have to go.’

‘Yes.’

‘Forever.’

‘For a while.’

‘What if I come with you?’

I kissed her on the forehead, then hugged her.

‘Wherever I go, you’ll always be with me, Isabella. Always.’

‘I have no intention of missing you.’

‘I know.’

‘Can I at least come with you to the train or whatever?’

I hesitated too long to refuse those last few minutes of her company.

‘To make sure you’re really going, and I’ve finally got rid of you,’ she added.

‘It’s a deal.’

We strolled down the Ramblas, Isabella’s arm in mine. When we reached Calle Arco del Teatro, we crossed over towards the dark alleyway that ran deep into the Raval quarter.

‘Isabella, you mustn’t tell anyone what you’re about to see tonight.’

‘Not even Sempere junior?’

I sighed.

‘Of course you can tell him. You can tell him everything. We can hardly keep any secrets from him.’

When the doors opened, Isaac, the keeper, smiled at us and stepped aside.

‘It’s about time we had an important visit,’ he said, bowing to Isabella. ‘Am I right in supposing you’d rather be the guide, Martín?’

‘If you don’t mind…’

Isaac stretched out his hand and I shook it.

‘Good luck,’ he said.

The keeper withdrew into the shadows, leaving me alone with Isabella. My ex-assistant – now the new manager of Sempere & Sons – observed everything with a mixture of astonishment and apprehension.

‘What sort of a place is this?’ she asked.

I took her hand and led her the remaining distance to the large hall that housed the entrance.

‘Welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, Isabella.’

Isabella looked up towards the glass dome and became lost in that impossible vision of white rays of light that criss-crossed a babel of tunnels, footbridges and bridges, all leading into a cathedral made of books.

‘This place is a mystery. A sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader’s hands, a new spirit…’

Later I left Isabella waiting by the entrance to the labyrinth and set off alone through the tunnels, clutching that accursed manuscript I had not had the courage to destroy. I hoped my feet would guide me to the place where I was to bury it forever. I turned a thousand corners until I thought I was lost. Then, when I was convinced I’d followed the same path a dozen times, I discovered I was standing at the entrance to the small chamber where I’d seen my own reflection in the mirror in which the eyes of the man in black were ever-present. I found a gap between two spines of black leather and there, without thinking twice, I buried the boss’s folder. I was about to leave the chamber when I turned and went back to the shelf. I picked up the volume next to the slot in which I had confined the manuscript and opened it. I’d only read a couple of sentences when I heard that dark laughter again behind me. I returned the book to its place and picked another at random, flicking through the pages. I took another, then another, and went on in this way until I had examined dozens of the volumes that populated the room. I realised that they all contained different arrangements of the same words, that the same images darkened their pages and the same fable was repeated in them like a pas de deux in an infinite hall of mirrors. Lux Aeterna.

When I emerged from the labyrinth Isabella was waiting for me, sitting on some steps, holding the book she had chosen. I sat down next to her and she leaned her head on my shoulder.

‘Thank you for bringing me here,’ she said.

I suddenly understood that I would never see that place again, that I was condemned to dream about it and to sculpt what I remembered of it into my memory, considering myself lucky to have been able to walk through its passages and touch its secrets. I closed my eyes for a moment so that the image might become engraved in my mind. Then, without daring to look back, I took Isabella’s hand and made my way towards the exit, leaving the Cemetery of Forgotten Books behind me forever.

Isabella came with me to the dock, where the ship was waiting to take me far away from that city, from everything I knew.

‘What did you say the captain was called?’

‘Charon.’

‘I don’t think that’s funny.’

I hugged her for the last time and looked into her eyes. On the way we had agreed there would be no farewells, no solemn words, no promises to fulfil. When the midnight bells rang in Santa María del Mar, I went on board. Captain Olmo greeted me and offered to take me to my cabin. I said I would rather wait. The crew cast off and gradually the hull moved away from the dock. I positioned myself at the stern, watching the city fade in a tide of lights. Isabella remained there, motionless, her eyes fixed on mine, until the dock was lost in the night and the great mirage of Barcelona sank into the black waters. One by one the lights of the city went out, and I realised that I had already begun to remember.