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 realize, Inspector? Don’t you realize 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 realize, 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 Cartigó 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 pension, 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 that 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 wool shawl and put it around her shoulders. I 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 toward 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 opens only 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 streetlamps 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 Pension 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 pension where Irene Sabino lived languished in a somber 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 Pension 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 moments went by until 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 realized 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 pension and it occurred to me that my old home looked like the new Ritz Hotel compared with 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 rickety, disheveled 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 of her 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 toward 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 four-by-two-meter cell. 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 bread crumbs, 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. And yet, as Sempere told me, every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul 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 realized 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 footsteps climbing the stairs. A face appeared in the stairwell, squinting up, and I found myself looking straight into the eyes of Sergeant Marc
os 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 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 toward 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 meter square plunged into the shadows below. The edge of the flat roof was just visible some three meters 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.