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-storey 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 draught 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 towards 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 downwards. A few metres 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 onwards 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 travelled 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 metre 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 meagre 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.