‘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.’