A SHROUD OF clouds was quickly spreading up from the sea, blanketing Barcelona. Sitting at the bar, Alicia turned when she heard the first clap of thunder. She gazed at the line of shadows crawling inexorably over the city. An electric spasm lit up the curtain of cloud, and shortly afterwards the first drops of rain hit the windowpanes. In a couple of minutes the skies splintered, and the world plunged into dense grey darkness.
The roar of the storm accompanied her as she left the restaurant and made her way back to the stone wall surrounding the property of El Pinar. The curtain of water blurred all outlines a few metres away and provided cover for her movements. When she passed the garden entrance for a second time, she noticed that from there she could barely make out the front of the house. She walked around the property again and climbed up the wall at the point she had selected earlier. From there she jumped over to the other side, landing on a thick layer of dead leaves that softened her fall. Hiding among the trees, she made her way across the garden until she gained the main path, then followed it to the back of the large, sprawling house, where she found the kitchen windows Fernandito had mentioned in his account. Rain lashed furiously, running down the facade. Alicia drew close to one of the windows and peered inside. She recognized the wooden table, covered in dark stains, where Fernandito had seen Valentín Morgado die. There was nobody in view. Claps of thunder shook the building.
Alicia hit the windowpane with the butt of her revolver. The glass shattered. A second later she was inside.
*
Fernandito followed the stranger closely. He walked at a leisurely pace, as if he had only gone out for a stroll, not just killed a man in cold blood. The first flash of lightning lit up the streets, and people ran to take shelter from the rain beneath the arches of Plaza Real.
The murderer didn’t quicken his step or give the slightest indication that he was looking for cover. He went on walking slowly towards the Ramblas. When he got there, he stopped on the pavement’s edge. Coming closer, Fernandito could see that his clothes were sodden. For a moment he felt the urge to pull out Vargas’s revolver, which he carried in his pocket, and fire a shot in his back. The murderer remained there, unmoving, as if he could feel Fernandito’s presence and was waiting for him. Then, without any warning, he set off again, crossing the Ramblas into Calle Conde del Asalto, and headed towards the heart of the Raval quarter.
Fernandito hung back a bit until the stranger turned left at the corner of Calle Lancaster. Then he ran after the little man, rounding the corner just in time to see him disappear behind a door halfway along the block. He waited a few seconds and then slowly approached the door, keeping close to the wall. Dirty water poured down from the cornices, splashing his face and trickling under his coat collar. Opposite the spot where he’d seen the murderer enter, he stopped.
From afar the doorway had looked like the entrance to a residential property, but once closer Fernandito realized that it in fact led to the ground floor of some business. A rusty roll-up door sealed the front. A smaller door, cut into the metal, was slightly ajar. Over the lintel, a faded notice announced:
MANNEQUIN FACTORY
CORTÉS BROTHERS
TAILORING ACCESSORIES & WORKSHOP
ESTABLISHED 1909
The workshop looked abandoned, and had clearly been closed for years. Fernandito wavered. Everything seemed to be screaming at him to get away from that place and go in search of help. He’d retreated as far as the corner when the image of Vargas’s crushed body and face stopped him. He turned around and went back to the workshop. Sticking his fingers over the edge of the small door, he opened it a fraction.
*
It was pitch-dark inside. He pulled the door right back and let the faint light filtering through the rain sketch a doorway into darkness. He stared at the outline of what appeared to be a shop like the ones he remembered from his childhood days – wooden counters, glass cabinets, and a few tumbled-down chairs. Everything was covered with what at first looked like sheets of transparent silk. Only after a few bewildered seconds did he realize they were cobwebs. A couple of naked dummies stood in a corner, wrapped in an embrace of webs, as if some giant spider had dragged them there to devour them.
A metallic echo was coming from somewhere deep within the premises. Fernandito narrowed his eyes and noticed that behind the dust-covered counter, a curtain led to a back room. It still swayed gently. He walked over and, almost unable to breathe, gently drew the curtain aside. A long corridor stretched before him. Suddenly the brightness behind him dimmed. He turned just in time to see that the wind, or perhaps someone’s hand, had pushed the small entrance door, and it was slowly closing.
*
Alicia advanced through the kitchen, her eyes fixed on a door behind which voices echoed, muffled by the hammering of the rain. She heard footsteps on the other side, and the sudden bang of a heavy door closing. She stopped and, while she waited, examined the layout of the kitchen. The stoves, ovens and grills looked as if they hadn’t been used for a long time. Frying pans, pots, knives and other utensils still hung from rails on the wall. The metal had turned a darker shade. A large marble sink was full of rubble. The centre of the room was taken up by the wooden table, chains and straps tied to its legs and dry blood covering its top. She wondered what they had done with the body of Sanchís’s chauffeur, and whether Victoria was still alive.
She walked over to the door and put her ear to it. The voices seemed to come from a nearby room. She was about to open the door a fraction to have a look when once more she heard what at first she’d thought was the sound of rain striking the windowpanes, a metallic drumming that seemed to come from deep down in the house. She held her breath and heard it again. Something or someone was banging a wall or a water pipe. She went over to listen by the well of a dumbwaiter. There she could hear it better, and tell that it came from below. There was something under the kitchen.
Alicia walked slowly around the room, rapping on the walls with her knuckles, but they seemed solid. A metal door was just visible in a corner. She unlocked the lever and opened it. On the other side she found a room, about six metres square, its walls covered in dusty shelving: perhaps an old pantry. The metal drumming could be heard more clearly here. She took a few more steps into the room and felt the vibration beneath her feet. Then she noticed it: a dark line that looked like a vertical crack in the wall at the far end. She drew closer and felt the wall. When she pushed it with both hands, the wall gave way. A strong animal stench of rot and excrement rose from inside. Nauseated, she covered her face with her hand.
A tunnel opened up before her, drilled through the stone, descending at an angle of forty-five degrees. A staircase of irregular steps ran down into the darkness.
Suddenly the drumming stopped. Alicia took one step down and listened. She thought she could hear a faint sound of someone breathing. Pointing her revolver forward, she descended another step.
On one side, hanging from a metal hook on the wall, was a long object. A torch. Alicia took it and, turning the handle, switched it on. A beam of white light penetrated the thick, damp darkness rising from the well.
“Hendaya? Is that you? Don’t leave me here . . .” The voice came from the end of the tunnel, broken, barely human.
Alicia stepped down slowly until she glimpsed the metal bars. Raising the torch, she swept the inside of the cell with its beam. When she realized what she was seeing, her blood froze.
He looked like a wounded animal, covered in filth and rags. Wisps of grimy hair and a thick beard hid a yellow face with scratches all over it. The creature crawled up to the bars and stretched out a pleading hand. Alicia lowered her weapon and looked at the prisoner in astonishment. He placed his other arm between the metal bars, and she noticed that his hand was missing. It had been brutally amputated at the wrist, and the stump was covered with dry tar. The skin on that arm had a purplish tone.
Struggling to hold back her nausea, Alicia went over to the metal bars. “Valls?” she asked in astonishment. “Are you Mauricio Valls?”
The prisoner opened his mouth as if he were trying to form a word, but the only thing that came out of his lips was a harrowing groan. Alicia examined the cell’s lock. A wrought-iron padlock sealed a chain looped around the bars.
She could hear the sound of footsteps through the walls. She didn’t have much time. On the other side of the bars, Valls looked at her with eyes that were drowning in despair. She knew she couldn’t get him out of there. Even supposing she could blow open the padlock with her gun, she assumed that Hendaya must have left at least two or three men in the house. She was going to have to leave Valls in his cell and go in search of Vargas.
The prisoner seemed to read her thoughts. He put his hand out and tried to grab her, but he barely had any strength left.
“Don’t leave me here,” he said, his tone somewhere between a plea and an order.
“I’ll come back with help,” whispered Alicia.
“No!”
She took his hand, ignoring the revulsion produced by the contact with that bag of bones someone had decided should rot to death in that hole. “I need you not to tell anyone I’ve been here.”
“If you try to leave, I’ll shout, you fucking whore, and they’ll stick you in here with me.”
Alicia looked him in the eye. For a moment she thought she could see the real Valls, or what little was left of him, in that living corpse. “If you do that, you’ll never see your daughter again.”
Valls’s face fell apart, all the fury and despair dissolved in a second.
“I promised Mercedes I would find you,” said Alicia.
“Is she alive?”
She nodded.
Valls leaned his forehead against the bars and wept. “Don’t let them find her and hurt her,” he begged.
“Who? Who would want to hurt Mercedes?”
“Please . . .”
Alicia heard footsteps again above that cavity. She stood up.
Valls gave her one last look, full of resignation and hope.
“Run,” he moaned.