“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 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 toward 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 told 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 that 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 toward 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 toward 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 in his notebook. At first I looked at him, but soon I forgot he was there and realized 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, about the loss of those miserable expectations and about 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 ensnared—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 lineup 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 lost.
“Say something,” I said.
Grandes sighed. He got up from his chair and went over to the window, turning his back to me. I pictured myself pulling the gun out of my coat, shooting him in the neck, and getting out of there with the key he kept in his pocket. In sixty seconds I could be on the street again.
“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 center says 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 cell 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 mi
ght 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’ve 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 to invent, in your own words, a new religion in exchange for a hundred thousand French francs, only to discover that you had fallen into a sinister plot involving a lawyer, who faked his death twenty-five years ago to escape a destiny that is now your own, and this lawyer’s lover, a chorus girl who had known better days. I have listened to how this destiny led you into the trap of an accursed old house that 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 to hide the fact that he is alive, has been committing a number of crimes with the help of his lover, and those include 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 that she thought contained my soul.”
Grandes hit his forehead with the palm of his hand as if he’d just stumbled on the crux 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 Dr. Trías to your account at 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, not to mention many other clues that are not unworthy of your skill in spinning detective yarns. The only thing that you have not told me and that, in all frankness, for your good and mine, I was hoping to hear is where I can find Cristina Sagnier.”
I realized that all 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 after that 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 him ordering the man not to let anyone in under any circumstances. Five minutes after his departure I heard someone knocking and recognized 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 exhibit 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 to the wall. I fell asleep in less than a minute. When I woke up, the room was in darkness. Night had fallen and the streetlamps 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 a 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 practice 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 humor. 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 Dr. Trías’s office in Calle Muntaner. It was brief. Dr. Trías died twelve years ago and the office 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 Banco Hispano Colonial. Impressive décor and impeccable service. I felt like opening a savings account. There, I was able to find out that you’ve never had 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 has 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 Banco de Sabadell, from which you transferred two thousand pesetas to the lawyer’s 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 has 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 has 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 fruitful tour 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 pension 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 organized 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 kindhearted 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 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 night watchman 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?”