20
The streets of the Raval quarter were tunnels of shadows dotted with flickering street lamps 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 Pensión 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 pensión where Irene Sabino lived languished in a sombre 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 Pensión 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 minutes later 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 realised 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 Do?a Carmen’s pensión and it occurred to me that my old home looked like the new Ritz Hotel compared to 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 ramshackle 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 breath of 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 towards 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 cell four metres deep by two wide. 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 breadcrumbs, 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 Se?or 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. Then I remembered what Sempere told me the very first time I went into his bookshop: that every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and 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 realised 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 heavy footsteps climbing the stairs. A face appeared in the stairwell, squinting up, and I found myself looking straight into the eyes of Sergeant Marcos 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 same 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 towards 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 metre square plunged into the shadows below. The edge of the flat roof was just visible some three metres 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.
I managed to grab hold of the drainpipe and rest a foot on one of the bands that supported it. I stretched up, reaching for the upper section of the pipe, but as soon as I seized it, it came away in my hand and a whole metre of the pipe tumbled down the shaft. I almost fell with it too, but managed to hold on to a piece of metal that attached one of the bands to the wall. The drainpipe on which I had hoped to climb up to the flat roof was now impassable. There were only two ways out of my current situation: to return to the corridor that Marcos and Castelo were about to enter at any moment, or to descend into the black gorge. I heard the door being flung against the inside wall of the apartment and let myself begin to slide, holding on to the drainpipe as best I could, tearing off quite a bit of skin in the process. I had managed to descend about a metre and a half when I saw the shape of the two policemen in the beam of light cast by the window onto the darkness of the shaft. Marcos’s face was the first to appear as he leaned out. He smiled. I asked myself whether he was going shoot me right there and then. Castelo popped up next to him.
‘Stay here. I’ll go down to the apartment below,’ Marcos ordered.
Castelo nodded. They wanted me alive, at least for a few hours. I heard Marcos running away. It wouldn’t be long before I saw him looking out of the window scarcely a metre below. I glanced down and saw that there was light at the windows of the second and first floors, but the third floor was in darkness. Carefully I lowered myself until I felt my foot touching the next band. The third-floor window was now in front of me, with an empty corridor leading from it towards the door at the far end. I could hear Marcos knocking. By that time of day the dressmakers had already closed and nobody was there. The knocking stopped and I realised that Marcos had gone down to the second floor to try his luck there. I looked up and saw that Castelo was still watching me, licking his lips like a cat.
‘Don’t fall - we’re going to have some fun when we catch you,’ he said.
I heard voices on the second floor and knew that Marcos had succeeded in getting into the apartment. Without thinking twice, I threw myself with all the strength I could muster against the window of the third floor. I smashed through the windowpane, keeping my face and neck covered with my coat, and landed in a pool of broken glass. I hauled myself up and, as I did so, noticed a dark stain spreading across my left arm. A shard of glass, sharp as a dagger, protruded just above my elbow. I caught hold of it and pulled. The cold sensation gave way to a blaze of pain that made me fall to my knees. From the floor I saw that Castelo had started to climb down the drainpipe. Before I was able to pull out the gun, he leaped towards the window. I saw his hands grabbing hold of the outer frame. Instinctively, I jumped up and started hammering at the frame with all my might, putting the whole weight of my body behind every blow. I heard the bones in his fingers break with a dry snapping sound, and Castelo howled in pain. I pulled out the gun and pointed it at his face, but his hands had already begun to slip. A second of terror in his eyes, and then he fell down the shaft, his body ricocheting against the walls, leaving a trail of blood in the patches of light that filtered through from the lower windows.
I dragged myself towards the front door. The wound on my arm was throbbing and I noticed that I also had a few cuts on my legs, but I kept moving. On either side of the passageway there were rooms in semi-darkness full of sewing machines, bobbins of thread and tables topped with large rolls of material. I reached the main door and took hold of the handle. A tenth of a second later I felt it turn. Marcos was on the other side, attempting to force the lock. I retreated a few steps. A huge roar suddenly shook the door and part of the lock shot out in a cloud of sparks and blue smoke. Marcos was going to blast the lock away. I took shelter in the nearest room, which was filled with motionless figures, some with arms or legs missing: shop-window mannequins all piled up together. I slipped in between the torsos just as I heard a second shot. The front door opened with a bang. A halo of gunpowder floated in the hazy yellow light that seeped in from the landing. I heard Marcos fumbling with the door, then the sound of his heavy footsteps in the hallway. Glued to the wall, hiding behind the dummies, I clutched the revolver in trembling hands.
‘Martín, come out,’ Marcos said calmly as he advanced. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I have orders from Grandes to take you to the police station. We’ve found that man Marlasca. He’s confessed to everything. You’re clean. Don’t go and do something stupid now. Come on, let’s talk about this at police headquarters.’
I saw him walk past the doorway of the room where I was hiding.
‘Martín, listen to me. Grandes is on his way. We can clear this up without any need to complicate matters further.’
I cocked the hammer. Marcos’s footsteps came to a halt. There was a slight scraping sound on the tiles. He was on the other side of the wall. He knew perfectly well that I was in that room, and that I couldn’t get out without going past him. I saw his profile slink through the doorway and melt into the liquid darkness of the room; the gleam of his eyes was the only trace of his presence. He was barely four metres away from me. I began to slide down against the wall until I reached the floor. I could see Marcos’s shoes behind the legs of the dummies.
‘I know you’re here, Martín. Stop being childish.’
He stopped and didn’t move. Then I saw him kneel down and touch the trail of blood I had left with his fingertips. He brought a finger to his mouth. I imagined he was smiling.
‘You’re bleeding a lot, Martín. You need a doctor. Come out and I’ll take you to a surgery.’
I kept quiet. Marcos stopped in front of a table and picked up a shining object that was lying among scraps of material. Large textile scissors.
‘It’s up to you, Martín.’
I heard the shearing sound made by the edge of the scissor blades as he opened and closed them. A stab of pain gripped my arm and I bit my lip to stifle the groan. Marcos turned his face in my direction.
‘Speaking of blood, you’ll be pleased to hear that we have your little whore, that Isabella girl. Before we start with you we’ll have some fun with her . . .’
I raised the weapon and pointed it at his face. The sheen of the metal gave me away. Marcos jumped at me, knocking down the dummies and dodging the shot. I felt his weight on my body and his breath on my face. The scissor blades closed only a centimetre from my left eye. I butted my forehead against his face with all the strength I could muster and he fell to one side. Then I lifted my gun and pointed it at him. Marcos, his lip split, sat up and fixed his eyes on mine.
‘You don’t have the guts,’ he whispered.
He placed his hand on the barrel and smiled at me. I pulled the trigger. The bullet blew off his hand, flinging his arm back. Marcos fell to the floor, holding his mutilated, smoking wrist, while his face, splattered with gunpowder burns, dissolved into a grimace of pain, a silent howl. I got up and left him there, bleeding to death in a pool of his own urine.