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 Se?ora 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 Se?or 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 Se?or 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.’