“Look in his pockets,” ordered Alicia.
The boy went through the policeman’s coat and jacket. He found his wallet, a few coins, a piece of paper bearing a list of numbers, and a visiting card that read:
María Luisa Alcaine
Assistant Secretary
to the Head Office of Archives and Documentation
Civil Registry of Barcelona
He handed her what he’d found, and Alicia examined it. She kept the list and the card. The rest she returned to Fernandito, telling him to put it all back where he’d found it. Her eyes were riveted on Vargas’s body, its shape visible under the blanket.
Fernandito waited a couple of minutes before walking back to her side. “We can’t stay here,” he said at last.
Alicia looked at him as if she couldn’t understand him, or couldn’t hear him.
“Give me your hand,” he said.
She ignored him, trying to get up on her own. Seeing her wince in pain, Fernandito put his arms around her and helped her up.
Once she was on her feet, she took a few steps, trying to hide the fact that she was limping. “I’m OK on my own.” Her voice was icy, her eyes impenetrable, no longer betraying any emotion, not even when she turned to Vargas for the last time.
She’s closed and bolted all the doors, thought Fernandito.
“Let’s go,” she murmured, limping to the exit.
Fernandito held her arm and led her to the stairs.
* * *
They sat at a table in the far corner of the Gran Café. Fernandito asked for two large coffees with milk and a glass of brandy, poured the brandy into one of the cups, and handed it to Alicia. “Drink. It will warm you up.”
Alicia accepted the cup and sipped at the coffee slowly. The rain scratched the windowpanes and trickled down, masking the gray blanket that had fallen over Barcelona. Once Alicia had recovered her color, Fernandito told her the whole story.
“You shouldn’t have followed him to that place,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to let him get away.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?”
“I don’t know. I fired two or three shots with Captain Vargas’s gun. He couldn’t have been more than two meters away. It was very dark . . .”
Alicia put her hand on Fernandito’s and smiled weakly.
“I’m OK,” he lied.
“Do you still have the weapon?”
Fernandito shook his head. “It fell when I was running away. What are we going to do now?”
Alicia was quiet for a few moments, her gaze lost in the windowpane. She could feel the pain in her hip throbbing in time to her pulse.
“Shouldn’t you take one of those pills of yours?” asked Fernandito.
“Afterward.”
“After what?”
Alicia looked him in the eye. “I need you to do something else for me.”
Fernandito nodded. “Anything.”
She looked in her pockets and handed him a key. “It’s the key to my home. Take it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want you to go up to the apartment. Make sure there’s nobody there before you go in. If the door is open or the lock looks as if it’s been forced, start running and don’t stop until you get home.”
“You’re not coming with me?”
“Once you’re in the dining room, look under the sofa. You’ll find a box of documents and papers. Inside this box there’s an envelope with a notebook inside it. The envelope is marked ‘Isabella.’ Have you understood?”
He nodded. “Isabella.”
“I want you to take that box away with you. Hide it. Hide it where nobody can find it. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes. Don’t worry. But—”
“No buts. If anything should happen to me—”
“Don’t say that.”
“If anything should happen to me,” Alicia insisted, “you can’t even go to the police. If I don’t return to collect the documents, let a few days go by, then take them to the Sempere & Sons bookshop on Calle Santa Ana. The place where you picked those books up for me.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Before you go in, make sure nobody is watching the bookshop. If anything makes you the slightest bit suspicious, just walk past and wait for another moment. When you’re there, ask for Fermín Romero de Torres. Repeat the name.”
“Fermín Romero de Torres.”
“Don’t trust anyone else. You can’t trust anyone else.”
“You’re scaring me, Señorita Alicia.”
“If anything happens to me, give him the documents. Tell him I sent you. Tell him what happened. Explain that among these documents is the diary of Isabella Gispert, Daniel’s mother.”
“Who is Daniel?”
“Tell Fermín that he must read it and decide whether or not to give it to Daniel. He’ll be the judge.”
Fernandito nodded. Alicia smiled sadly. She held the boy’s hand and pressed it hard. He took her hand to his lips and kissed it.
“I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this, Fernandito. And that I’ve left you with that responsibility. . . . I had no right.”
“I’m glad you did. I won’t fail you.”
“I know. . . . One last thing. If I don’t return . . .”
“You’ll return.”
“If I don’t return, don’t ask after me in hospitals, or in police stations, or anywhere else. Imagine that you’ve never known me. Forget me.”
“I’m never going to forget you, Señorita Alicia. I’m that stupid . . . ”
She stood up. It was obvious that the pain was devouring her, but she smiled at Fernandito as if it was just a passing discomfort.
“You’re going to look for that man, aren’t you?” he said.
Alicia didn’t reply.
“Who is he?” asked Fernandito.
Alicia visualized the description Fernandito had given her of Vargas’s murderer. “He calls himself Rovira,” she said. “But I don’t know who he is.”
“Whoever he is, if he’s still alive, he’s very dangerous.” Fernandito stood up, ready to accompany her.
Alicia stopped him, shaking her head. “What I need is for you to go to my house and do as I asked.”
“But . . .”
“Don’t argue. And swear you’ll do exactly as I said.”
Fernandito sighed. “I swear.”
Alicia gave him one of her conquering smiles, the sort that had so often clouded what little sense God had given the boy, and limped away to the door. He watched her walk off in the rain, more fragile than ever, until he lost sight of her up the street. Then, after leaving a few coins on the table, he crossed the street to Alicia’s building. In the hallway he bumped into the caretaker, his aunt Jesusa, who was trying to mop up the rain flooding the floor with a rag wrapped around the end of a broom. When she saw him walk past with a key in his hand, Jesusa frowned disapprovingly. Fernandito realized that the caretaker, who had a sharp eye for gossip and a hawk’s eye for everything that didn’t concern her, must have witnessed the scene in the Gran Café on the other side of the street, hand-kissing included.
“Haven’t you learned your lesson yet, Fernandito?”
“It’s not what it looks like, Auntie.”
“I’d rather not say what it looks like, but as I’m your aunt, and the only member of the family who seems to have any common sense, I must tell you what I’ve told you a thousand times.”
“That Señorita Alicia is not the right woman for me,” Fernandito recited from memory.
“And that one day she’ll break your heart, as they say on the radio,” Jesusa completed.
That day had been left behind years ago, but Fernandito preferred not to stir things up. Jesusa went up to him and smiled tenderly, pinching his cheeks as if he were still ten years old. “I don’t want you to suffer, that’s all. Señorita Alicia—and you know how fond I am of her, as if she were family—she’s a ticking bomb waiting to go off: when w
e least expect it, she’ll explode and take everyone in her path with her, and may God forgive me for saying so.”
“I know, Auntie. I know. Don’t you worry, I know what I’m doing.”
“That’s what your uncle said the day he drowned.”
Fernandito stooped down to kiss her on her forehead and charged up the stairs. He walked into Alicia’s apartment, leaving the door ajar as he followed her instructions. The box she’d described was under the sitting-room sofa. He opened it, had a quick look at the pile of documents, and noticed, among them, the envelope marked “Isabella.” He didn’t dare open it.
He closed the box and wondered who this Fermín Romero de Torres was, who merited all Alicia’s confidence, the person to whom she entrusted herself as her last salvation. He supposed that, in the great scheme of things, there were many other characters in Alicia’s life about whom he knew nothing, and who played an infinitely more important role than his.
Perhaps you thought you were the only one . . .
He picked up the box and walked back to the door. Before stepping out and closing it, he took one last look at Alicia’s apartment, convinced that he would never again set foot in it. When he reached the entrance hall, he saw his aunt Jesusa, armed with her large broom, still trying to hold back the rain filtering in through the main door. He stopped for a moment.
“You coward,” he murmured to himself. “You shouldn’t have let her go.”
Jesusa interrupted her efforts and looked at him, intrigued. “What are you saying, sweetheart?”
Fernandito sighed. “Auntie, can I ask you a favor?”
“But of course.”
“I need you to hide this box where nobody can find it. It’s very important. Don’t tell anyone you’ve got it. Not even the police, if they come around asking. No one.”
Jesusa’s face darkened. The caretaker took a quick look at the box and made the sign of the cross. “Oh dear, oh dear . . . What mess have you two got yourselves in?”
“Nothing that can’t be fixed.”
“That’s what your uncle always said.”
“I know. Will you do me this favor? It’s very important.”
Jesusa nodded solemnly.
“I’ll be back soon.”
“Do you swear?”
“Of course.”
He went out into the rainy street, fleeing Jesusa’s anxious look. There was so much fear in his body that he barely noticed the cold that chilled him to the marrow. On his way to what might well be the last day in his short life, he told himself that, thanks to Alicia, he had at least learned two things that would serve him forever—if he lived to tell the story, that is. The first was how to lie. The second, and this he was still smarting from, was that promises were a bit like hearts: once the first was broken, breaking the rest was a piece of cake.
28
Alicia stopped on the corner of Calle Lancaster and observed the entrance to the old mannequin factory for a couple of minutes. The small door Fernandito had gone through was still ajar. The building that housed the workshop was nothing more than a two-story gap of dark stone with a bulging roof. The windows on the first floor were boarded up with wooden planks and a few filthy cobblestones. Stuck to the facade was a cracked box of wires, and a knot of telephone cables peeped out through two holes drilled in the stone. Apart from these details, the place looked abandoned, like most of the old industrial workshops remaining in that part of the Raval quarter.
Edging along the facade to avoid being seen from the entrance, Alicia approached the workshop. The downpour had left the streets deserted, and she didn’t hesitate to pull out her gun and point it straight into the doorway. Pushing the door wide open, she scanned the tunnel of light that shone into the hallway and then stepped in, holding her weapon in front of her with both hands. A slight draft came from inside, impregnated with the smell of old water pipes and what she guessed was kerosene or some other fuel.
The hallway opened into what must have once been the sales outlet for the workshop. A counter, a set of empty glass cabinets, and a couple of mannequins wrapped in something whitish and transparent presided over the room. Alicia walked around the counter toward the wooden beaded curtain that concealed the entrance to the back room. She was about to step through it when her foot knocked against a metal object. Without lowering her revolver, she glanced down briefly and saw Vargas’s weapon. She picked it up, slipping it into her jacket’s left-hand pocket, and drew aside the beaded curtain.
A corridor stretched out before her into the depths of the building. The smell of gunpowder still floated in the air. A chain of faint reflections swung from the ceiling. Alicia prodded the walls until she felt a round switch. She turned the peg, and a garland of low-voltage bulbs hanging from a cable lit up along the corridor. Their reddish half-light revealed a narrow passageway that sloped gently downward. A few meters from the entrance, the wall was spattered with dark stains, as if red paint had been sprayed over it. At least one of the bullets Fernandito had fired had struck its target. Perhaps more. The trail of blood continued along the floor and vanished down the passageway. A little farther on she found the knife with which Rovira had tried to attack Fernandito. The blade was bloodstained: Alicia realized it was Vargas’s blood. She continued onward and didn’t stop until she made out the halo of ghostly light shining through from the far end of the tunnel.
“Rovira?” she called.
A dance of shadows stirred at the bottom of the corridor, and she could hear the soft sound of something creeping slowly in the dark. Alicia tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. Since she’d stepped into that corridor, she hadn’t felt the pain in her hip or the chill of her drenched clothes. All she felt was fear.
She walked on to the end of the passage, ignoring the squeak of her soles as she stepped on the firm, damp, slimy floor.
“Rovira, I know you’re wounded. Come out and let’s talk.”
Her own voice sounded fragile and fearful, but the direction in which the echo traveled served her as a guide. When she reached the end of the tunnel, she stopped. A large hall with tall ceilings spread out before her. She viewed the remains of the worktables, the tools and machinery on either side of the plant. A frosted glass skylight at the far end of the workshop illuminated a pale phantasmagoria.
They dangled from the ceiling, held up by ropes that made them look like hanged corpses, suspended half a meter from the ground. Men, women, and children, dummies dressed in the finery of older times, swayed in the half-light like souls trapped in a secret purgatory. There were dozens of them. Some displayed smiling faces and glassy eyes, others were half finished. Alicia’s heart pounded in her throat. She took a deep breath and stepped into the pack of hanging figures. Arms and legs brushed gently against her hair and face, the figures swaying and stirring as she slowly advanced through them.
The echoing sound of the wooden bodies as they rubbed against each other spread through the plant. Beyond it she could hear a mechanical whir. The smell of kerosene intensified as she approached the far end of the workshop. Alicia left the forest of hanging bodies behind her and cast her eyes on a piece of industrial machinery that vibrated and gave off puffs of steam. A generator. A heap of discarded body parts lay on one side, dismembered heads, hands, and torsos tangled into a mass. It reminded her of the piles of bodies she’d seen in the streets during the war, after the air raids.
“Rovira?” she called again, more to hear her own voice than expecting a reply.
He was watching her from some dark corner, she was certain. She scanned the plant, trying to read the protruding shapes she could sense in the gloom. She didn’t detect any movement. Behind the pile of mannequin remains, she noticed a door with cables running under it that connected to the generator. A meager electric light outlined the doorframe. Alicia prayed that Rovira’s lifeless body was there, stretched out on the floor. She walked up to the door and kicked it open.
29
The room was rectangular, with black wall
s and no windows. It smelled damp and looked like a crypt. A row of naked bulbs ran across the ceiling, radiating a yellowish light and emitting a low, crackling buzz, as if a swarm of insects were creeping along the walls. Before she went in, Alicia scrutinized every centimeter of the room. There was no sign of Rovira.
A ramshackle bed, covered with a couple of old blankets, occupied one of the corners. A wooden box on one side acted as a bedside table. On the box was a black telephone, candles, and a glass jar full of coins. An old suitcase peeped out from under the mattress, together with a pair of shoes and a bucket. Next to the bed was a large wardrobe made of carved wood, the sort of antique piece one would expect to see in an elegant home, not in an industrial workshop. Its doors were almost shut tight, leaving a small opening. Alicia drew closer to the wardrobe, a step at a time, ready to empty her revolver. For a second she imagined Rovira inside, smiling and waiting for her to open the door.
She held the weapon firmly in both hands and gave one of the doors a kick. It opened slowly, bouncing off the frame. The wardrobe was empty. A bar held a dozen bare hangers. At the bottom of the wardrobe she found a cardboard box with just one word written on it:
SALGADO
She tugged at the box, and its contents scattered around her feet: jewels, watches, and other valuable objects. There were wads of notes that looked like they were no longer legal tender, tied up with strings. Gold ingots, melted down quickly and roughly. Alicia knelt down and stared at that loot, a small fortune. It must be the treasure that Sebastián Salgado, once a prisoner in Montjuïc, and the first suspect mentioned in the disappearance of Valls, had hidden in a locker of the Estación del Norte; the treasure he had dreamed of retrieving after the minister requested his pardon and set him free two decades later.
Salgado had never managed to recover the fruit of his crimes and pillage. When he opened that locker, all he found was an empty suitcase. He’d died knowing he was a thief beaten at his own game. Someone had gotten there ahead of him. Someone who knew about the loot and the plot involving the anonymous letters Valls had been receiving for years. Someone who had been pulling the strings of that whole business long before the minister disappeared.
The Labyrinth of the Spirits Page 55