14
Se?or 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 Se?orita 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.
‘Se?or 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. Se?or 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.