ISAAC SAW HER come out of the labyrinth. She limped slightly and held a gun in her hand in such a natural way, it made his blood run cold. He watched her approach the place where Hendaya’s body had crashed against the marble floor. She was barefoot, but didn’t hesitate before stepping through the pool of blood that spread around the corpse. Leaning over Hendaya’s body, she looked through his pockets and pulled out a wallet. She examined it, keeping a wad of notes and discarding the rest. Then she felt his jacket pockets and drew out a set of keys, which she also kept. After glancing dispassionately at the dead body for a few moments, Alicia grabbed something sticking out of Hendaya’s face and pulled hard. Isaac recognized the pen he’d given her barely an hour earlier.
Slowly, Alicia walked over to Isaac. She knelt down beside him and unlocked his handcuffs. Isaac, trembling, not realizing that his own eyes were brimming with tears, searched hers. Alicia gazed back at him impassively, as if she were trying to make clear to that poor old man that she was not a reincarnation of his lost daughter.
She wiped the pen on her nightdress skirt and handed it to him. “I could never be like her, Isaac.”
The keeper dried his tears but said nothing. Alicia offered him her hand and helped him get up. Then she walked over to the little bathroom next to the keeper’s room. Isaac heard the water run.
After a while Dr. Soldevila staggered in. Isaac waved at him, and he came over.
“What happened? Who was that man?”
Isaac pointed his head towards the knot of limbs embedded on the floor, some twenty metres away.
“Good God . . .” murmured the doctor. “And the young lady?”
*
Alicia emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and went into Isaac’s room. The doctor looked inquisitively at Isaac, who shrugged. Soldevila walked over to Isaac’s door and peered around. Alicia was putting on some of Nuria Montfort’s clothes.
“Are you all right?” asked the doctor.
“I’m fine,” replied Alicia, not taking her eyes off the mirror.
Dr. Soldevila shelved his amazement, sat down on a chair, and gazed at her in silence while she explored a toilet bag that had belonged to Isaac’s daughter and chose a few cosmetics. She put on her make-up conscientiously, outlining her lips and eyes with precision as, once again, she built a character that fitted in much better with the scene of her actions than did the weakened body the doctor had become accustomed to caring for during the past few weeks. When his eyes met hers in the mirror, Alicia winked at him.
“As soon as I’ve left,” she said, “you’re going to have to get in touch with Fermín. Tell him the body needs to disappear. Tell him to go see the taxidermist in Plaza Real, and say I sent him. He has the necessary chemical products.”
Alicia stood up, swirled around once to check herself in the mirror, and, after putting the gun and the money she had taken from Hendaya’s body into a black bag, headed for the door.
“Who are you?” asked Dr. Soldevila as she walked past.
“The devil,” Alicia replied.