TRUE TO HIS promise, Rovira was waiting in the street, trembling with cold and looking as if he cursed the day he’d been born and all the days that followed. The spook apprentice seemed to have shrunk noticeably overnight. His anxious grimace suggested the start of an ulcer.
Vargas spotted him before Alicia had pointed him out. “Is that the ace of spies?”
“That’s him.”
Rovira looked up when he heard approaching footsteps. He gulped when he saw Vargas and searched for his cigarettes with a shaking hand. Alicia and Vargas hemmed him in, one on either side.
“I thought you would come alone,” he mumbled, gazing at Alicia.
“You’re such a romantic, Rovira.”
He breathed out a sort of nervous laugh. Alicia pulled the cigarette from his mouth and threw it far away.
“Hey . . .” Rovira protested.
Vargas bent over him slightly, making him shrink, if that were possible, a bit more. “You only speak to the young lady when she asks you something. Is that clear?”
Rovira nodded.
“Rovira, this will be your lucky day,” said Alicia. “No more standing around in the cold. You’re off to the cinema. The Capitol matinees begin at ten, and they’re showing a cycle of films with Cheetah the monkey, which you’ll love.”
“Oscar winning,” Vargas corroborated.
“I’m sorry, Doña Alicia, but before your colleague breaks my neck, I’d like to ask you, if it’s not too much bother and thanking you in advance for your generosity, whether you could help me a little. I’m not asking for much. Don’t tell me to go to the cinema. I’d love to, but if they find out at headquarters, I’ll be in big trouble. Let me follow you. At a great distance. If you like, you could let me know where you’re going, and that way I’ll be out of your hair. I promise you won’t even see me. But at the end of the day I have to write a report about where I’ve been and what I’ve done, or they’ll boil me alive. You’ve no idea what these people are like. Your colleague can tell you . . .”
Vargas looked at the poor devil with some sympathy. There seemed to be a wimp like him in every police station, the doormat on which everyone cleaned the mud off their shoes.
“You tell me what places I can report on and what places I can’t. That way it’s a win-win situation for both. I beg you on my knees . . .”
Before Alicia could say a word, Vargas pointed at Rovira and took the floor. “Look here, son, you remind me of Charlie Chaplin, and you seem like a nice guy. This is what I propose: you follow us from afar, and I mean from very afar. Something like from the Pyrenees to the Rock of Gibraltar. If I as much as see you, smell you or even imagine you at less than two hundred metres, you and I will have a face-to-face, and I don’t suppose they’ll think much of you showing up at headquarters after I’ve beaten the shit out of you and they have to pull your head out of your ass.”
Rovira seemed unable to breathe for a few seconds.
“Is that understood, or would you like a free sample?” Vargas said.
“Two hundred metres. Done. Let’s call it two hundred and fifty, and the extra is on the house. Thank you so much for your generosity and understanding. You won’t be sorry. No one will be able to say that Rovira doesn’t keep his word—”
“Clear off. Just seeing you gets me going,” Vargas grunted in his most unpleasant voice.
Rovira gave him a quick bow and rushed off. Vargas smiled as he watched him slip away among the crowd.
“You’re such a softie,” murmured Alicia.
“And you’re a little angel. Let me call Linares to find out whether they’ll let us go and see the car this morning.”
“Who is Linares?”
“One of the real ones. We started out together, and he’s still a good friend. How many people can you say that about after twenty years in the Force?”
They went back into the café, and Miquel let them use the phone. Vargas called police headquarters on Vía Layetana and launched into a conversational two-step of male camaraderie, foul-mouthed jokes and studied tough-guy bonding with his pal Linares, eventually getting the go-ahead for checking out the car that was allegedly used by Valls and his driver, gunman and stooge to travel from Madrid to Barcelona. Alicia followed the conversation as if she were listening to a drawing-room play, enjoying Vargas’s knack of flattering his colleagues and coming up with grand statements that said nothing at all.
“All solved,” he concluded as he hung up.
“Are you sure? Haven’t you thought that perhaps this Linares would have liked to know that you’re with me?”
“Of course. That’s why I didn’t mention it.”
“And what will you say when they see me?”
“I’ll say we’re going out together. I don’t know, I’ll think of something.”
They took a taxi opposite the city hall, setting off just as the traffic on Vía Layetana was beginning to thicken in the tortuous early-morning rush hour. Vargas gazed thoughtfully at the parade of monumental buildings emerging like ships in the morning mist. The taxi driver cast occasional furtive glances in the mirror, probably speculating on the odd couple they made. But soon he was distracted by a sports programme on the radio, in which it was furiously debated whether the soccer league was already lost or, on the contrary, there were still reasons to go on living.