13

Back in Madrid.

Eduardo opened his eyes slowly. He’d have preferred not to have to wake up, preferred to stay in bed, just waiting for the minutes to tick by, stalking the shadows that the passage of time would project onto his apartment walls. But whoever had been banging on his door for the past ten minutes didn’t seem inclined to leave him in peace. He dragged himself out of bed, his mouth thick, bones aching. He smelled sour and, for a minute — when he stood up and realised he was woozy — he cursed himself for so readily seeking solace in a bottle of vodka. The last track of a record he’d forgotten to take off crackled on the turntable: Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. Looking through the peephole, all he could see was a blue shirt, buttons undone.

‘Open up, I know you’re standing right there.’ The commanding, omnipresent voice of Ibrahim.

Eduardo massaged his temples; his head was about to explode. He had no idea what time it was, what day it was. And his growling stomach and weak muscles made him realise that he had no idea when he’d last eaten anything solid. He opened the door without removing the chain, just enough to see Ibrahim’s disfigured face appear in the crack.

‘What do you want? I’m feeling under the weather.’

On the other side of the door, Ibrahim wrinkled his nose.

‘Judging by the stench, I’d say that’s obvious. You smell like you’re decomposing. Open the door or I’ll kick it down. We need to talk.’

Eduardo opened the door reluctantly, allowing Ibrahim entry. The man gave him a severe look and then glanced with displeasure around the filthy, untidy apartment.

‘There’s more methane in here than at a nuclear power plant. We better open the window or the whole place is going to blow.’ He drew back the curtains and opened the window. It must have been late: the raucous sounds of children on their way home from school were filtering in from the park, and a grainy light seeped through the curtains. Ibrahim snatched up one of the open pill bottles on the table and read the label, and then nosed through the fridge, which was nearly empty.

‘What are you doing here?’ Eduardo asked, struggling to articulate his words; it was as though a wasp had stung his tongue, making it swell up.

Ibrahim stroked his hair mechanically. Before replying he stationed himself at the window and gazed across the street.

‘Arthur hasn’t heard a word from you for over a week, and neither have I,’ he said, once he’d gotten his fill of whatever it was he was watching outside.

So it had been a week, Eduardo calculated, since he’d returned from Barcelona. Thinking about that revived the heartache he’d felt.

He went to the tap to drink a glass of water, and the chlorine aftertaste made him spit it into the sink. He began searching for his cigarettes but couldn’t find them, so he stuck a wrinkled butt into his mouth and lit that instead, squinting. After days spent lost in a drunken stupor, his eyes felt different, distorted, as if they belonged to someone else.

‘I went to Olga’s and asked about you; she told me you hadn’t shown up for days and weren’t answering your phone, so I came here. Graciela is worried about you and Sara’s spent two whole nights like a puppy dog stationed by your door. I couldn’t convince her that you’re not worth that kind of loyalty. You should show a little concern for that girl. She might be the only person who actually thinks highly of you.’

So this stranger was on familiar terms with his acquaintances, had become a household presence, Eduardo realised. It bothered him to the point of real vexation, that invasion of his privacy, his realm. Maybe it was just a nebulous, childish, perverse form of jealousy.

‘Thanks for the tip, I’ll keep it in mind, especially coming from someone like you, who must have a very rich social life,’ he replied sarcastically.

‘Get dressed. We’re going out. You need some fresh air and so do I. Someone is going to have to come disinfect this place.’

Eduardo obeyed. He didn’t feel like arguing. And Ibrahim’s attitude made it clear that he wasn’t about to take no for an answer.

They went out and walked to the plaza outside the Reina Sofía Museum. It was a nice day, and the steps leading to the entrance had been taken over by skaters, and performers with flea-ridden dogs and questionable juggling skills. The outdoor tables at the surrounding bars and cafés were quickly filling up with tourists. Behind Atocha train station, the horizon was alive with intense colours. Life was flowing by, and Eduardo felt out-of-place there in the middle of it all.

Ibrahim traversed the plaza in a few long, determined strides and used his hefty presence to occupy a table that had just been vacated, causing a group of hovering Japanese tourists to withdraw, intimidated. He ordered an espresso. Eduardo asked for vodka — a double, neat. As the waiter was about to walk away, Ibrahim stopped him.

‘Make it a sandwich, and forget the vodka.’ The waiter glanced at Eduardo questioningly and he gave a resigned nod. Ibrahim didn’t ask, didn’t make requests. He simply forced whatever he said to be accepted, just like that.

‘Why are you looking at me like that? Do you find me pitiful?’ The way Ibrahim was examining him annoyed Eduardo. They weren’t friends, he had no right to feel sorry for him.

‘I like you,’ was all Ibrahim said after the waiter had served them. He ripped the sugar packet open with his horrible teeth and stirred it into his coffee. The way he said it, almost in passing, was simply offhand; it wasn’t intended to mean anything. He’d killed men he was a lot fonder of than Eduardo. As he stirred the sugar, spoon tinkling against his cup, he glanced over Eduardo’s shoulder, eyeing the plaza and its surroundings.

‘Kill someone? You’re so tense you look like a cat about to pounce,’ Eduardo spat, irritated. His chorizo sandwich sat untouched on its plate. Each time he looked at it, he felt a wave of nausea.

Ibrahim shot him a furtive glance and for the first time gave a little smile, flashing his gnarled teeth.

‘Stupid question, don’t you think?’

Indeed, it was.

Eduardo examined Ibrahim’s pupils. The man’s expression, he now realised, was mournful, always; the emptiness was something Eduardo himself knew, too. He’d experienced it; it had taken root inside him. It was a look that bore no pity, nor condescension, nor even a hint of phony friendship. All it revealed was a truism that they both recognised: people sometimes betray one another. It’s part of being human, something to be accepted. But nothing hurts more than malice on the part of those we took to be on our side unconditionally.

‘Have you killed many people?’

Ibrahim listened with his eyes, lips pursed and fingers gripping the table tightly.

‘What kind of question is that?’

‘I was just wondering if the dead weigh on you, that’s all.’

Ibrahim looked away and murmured something in Arabic. He was recalling the voice of an imam reverberating through his adolescent heart, standing before the deep dark grave that held his father’s enshrouded body. Recalling the words spoken by the man of God — the virulence and hatred of his fatwa against the French and their descendants — as other men nodded and whispered verses of mercy and piety, their heads lowered, weapons hidden in their clothes. They weren’t killers, they were patriots, holy men, the imam told them, spewing vitriol as he spoke, his saliva landing on Ibrahim’s not-yet disfigured face. Killing does not make us killers, the holy man repeated, his ire contained in a trembling hand. Not when it’s for Algeria, for the FLN, for God. Recalling those words, Ibrahim gazed at his own hands, now old, the blood of the men he’d killed still staining them like a tattoo, mixing with his own in an invisible flow that bound him to his victims forever. One death is no different from another; they all weigh upon you the same when night falls.

‘I know killers who’ve never laid a hand on anyone, who live among us, who are fathers and mothers, siblings and children; people who seem kind, good people who go to work, are respected, loved, and even admired. But I can tell a jackal when I see one, hiding in their eyes; all it takes is the right time, place, and circumstance to unleash their instincts.’

‘I’m a killer,’ Eduardo said, his voice hoarse.

Ibrahim gave him a look of commiseration. A poor dog licking his pitiful wounds.

‘You, friend, are nothing but a gravedigger. Killing a man doesn’t make you a killer.’

Just a week ago he’d used the same argument at his psychologist’s office in his own defence. But now he wasn’t so sure.

Without realising it, he’d pushed the barely touched sandwich to one side and was gazing absently at the crumbs on the table.

‘So what about Arthur, then? You know him better than I do; you’re his friend. Would you say he’s a killer?’

Ibrahim was unperturbed by Eduardo’s sarcastic dig. It didn’t even ruffle his feathers. But he saw that the little man with his tatty old shirt had his own kind of dignity, one that he himself lacked. He stood and dropped a twenty on the table.

‘Ask him yourself. You’ve still got a portrait to paint. Make good on your promise, and then you can go back to your hole and lick your wounds. You might even cure them.’

Eduardo observed Ibrahim carefully. There was something there that didn’t quite fit, but he couldn’t put a finger on it.

‘It seems strange to me that a man like you is so loyal to someone like Arthur.’

Ibrahim shot him a murderous look.

‘The only loyalty I have is to myself.’

‘But you protect him.’

Ibrahim let out a chilling little laugh.

‘You’re pretty blind for an artist, friend. What is it you think you know? Appearances are but obstacles, there to fool the fools … Now, run back to your hole, little mouse.’

Eduardo watched him amble off, leaving the plaza at the far end, until his shirt and cheap trousers could no longer be seen among the throng of people wandering up and down.

‘Want me to cast a spell on you, handsome?’ A gypsy in mourning, a branch of rosemary in one hand and fake gold teeth, addressed him. There were three of them, combing the tables like a military squadron on combat orders. Eduardo didn’t even bother to be polite. The woman’s sweet talk made him sick. He got up angrily.

‘There’s no magic spell that can save me,’ he murmured, pushing her brusquely out of his way.

‘I’ll put the evil eye on you, you wretch! You’ll be a wretched man for the rest of your life, I swear upon my dead!’

Eduardo couldn’t suppress an irate cackle that made passers-by turn and stare, as if he were insane.

The café where Arthur had arranged to meet him was at the bottom of Calle Fuencarral. Just on the other side of Gran Vía, two prostitutes stood by a photo booth smoking, offering themselves. One winked a lifeless eye at him, her heavy fake lashes like the rise and fall of a tragic theatre curtain. Eduardo picked up the pace. Sometimes something as simple as a crosswalk acts as an invisible border. You get to the other side and think you’re safe, in a world somehow more tolerable.

He saw Arthur sitting in a corner, talking to someone. Eduardo recognised the guy. It was the journalist from Allegro he’d seen in Gloria’s dressing room a few weeks earlier. What was he doing talking to Arthur? Eduardo got a bad feeling.

Arthur was listening to Guzmán, engrossed, deep in silence. He was staring at the wall as though something only he could see were behind it, something horrible judging by the way he was involuntarily tensing every muscle in his face.

‘Are you absolutely sure?’

‘Positive. It was him. The painter. He was with her in Barcelona; they had dinner in a restaurant. I waited for them to leave before going in. On top of the table was a sheet of paper, ripped in half. Guess whose face was on it when I put them together? That’s right; yours. Then they went up to Gloria’s room. I can’t say for certain what they were doing for an hour and a half, but I can guess.’ He said it with a mix of interest and disgust, as though he’d witnessed something that went against nature, something that should never have happened. It was clear that even for someone like Guzmán, Eduardo didn’t deserve the attentions of a woman like Gloria.

Arthur dug his fingers into his hair and clasped his forehead, trying to make sense of this unexpected turn of events. Eduardo and Gloria? It made no sense. Suddenly, he shot Guzmán a look of mistrust.

‘What were you doing in Barcelona?’

Guzmán stroked the rough ridges of his singed hand and smiled. He pulled out an envelope and laid it on the table.

‘What’s this?’

‘From what I understand, in the winter of 1990 you had Aroha enrolled in a special boarding school in Geneva, isn’t that so?’

Arthur nodded.

‘This is the clinical file on Gloria Tagger’s son. Curiously, when your daughter was admitted, this kid was there too. So it’s more than likely they knew each other.’ Guzmán scrutinised Arthur’s face. ‘Were you unaware of that?’

Arthur skimmed through the file quickly. It was just a page but more than enough to make him go pale. When he finished, he raised his head and saw the mockery in Guzmán’s eyes, as he sat blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. Arthur remembered Diana’s warning: Guzmán is not a door that can be easily closed once you decide to open it. Arthur could no longer stop what he himself had set in motion; he realised that when he saw the man’s hard little brown eyes glinting like a predator.

‘I had no idea. Must be a coincidence.’

Guzmán stood and straightened his jacket. He was looking at the door, and on seeing Eduardo, he smiled.

‘Let’s just say that there’s something about this whole story of your daughter’s disappearance that doesn’t add up: a rebellious girl who runs away a lot, a violinist with a backstory out of a novel and a son you accidentally ran over, an antique dealer, a financial shark … Well, maybe coincidences do exist, but when they’re this close together they stop being coincidences and become patterns, don’t you think? One door leads to another. And my job is to walk through them all.’

Guzmán passed Eduardo at the door and gave the painter a military salute.

Seeing Eduardo, Arthur leapt up from the sofa, grabbed his jacket and gave him a cloudy, absent look.

‘I need to go for a walk. I’m suffocating in here. Let’s go.’

‘I know that man,’ Eduardo said as they stepped out onto the street.

Arthur gazed up at the heavens, as though aware of how far they were from the ground.

‘There are some people it’s better not to know,’ was all he said in reply.

Arthur was taking quick anxious steps, heading for the Malasaña quarter, and Eduardo was having a hard time keeping up.

‘Where have you been all this time? I thought we had a portrait to do, you and me.’

Eduardo felt a stabbing pain in his bad knee. He couldn’t keep Arthur’s pace, and what’s more, he sensed that something terrible had happened. He leaned against the corner of a building and massaged his knee.

‘I’m calling it quits, Arthur. Actually, I think it was a bad idea from the start.’

Arthur stopped short and gave him a sinister look. That was the word. The man’s face became sinister whenever something seemed to make him uncomfortable. It was his way of drawing an invisible line that was not to be crossed.

‘Señora Tagger no longer requires your services?’

So that was it. He knew.

‘So, she’s your lover. Why didn’t you tell me?’

Eduardo faltered, averting his gaze, eyes darting from one side of the street to the other like a cornered animal. Ibrahim had called him a little mouse, and that’s exactly what he was.

‘I’m not her lover; just a tool.’

In an alleyway off Calle Espíritu Santo, one beggar was cursing another, squawking like a crow and shuffling around the other, gesticulating anxiously. They were fighting over the rotten fruit in a dumpster. Their argument grew louder as they became more riled.

Arthur couldn’t take his eyes off them.

‘Poor Gloria, the devastated mother … I’m sure it wasn’t hard for her to seduce a poor fool like you. I bet you’re in love with her. All men fall in love with Gloria A. Tagger.’

The skirmish between the two beggars was escalating. They were now embroiled in a slow-motion, clumsy, vicious brawl, reminiscent of Goya’s Duel with Cudgels. Two tattered men bludgeoning one another in some godforsaken place, up to their knees in muck. No honour at all, just brute strength, biting, scratching, vicious kicks aimed at testicles. They were literally killing each other over a rotten apple and a carton of sour milk. And neither of them would stop until they had achieved their objective. But the object itself — food — was lost in the fray. The scraps on the ground no longer mattered. What drove them to beat one another so savagely was welled-up rage, a hatred so intense and so profound there was no way to shout it out. They wanted to kill each other, kill themselves, their life stories, their past, their demons, wanted to murder their present and seal their future. Perhaps they were secretly hoping someone would come and intercede, call off the fight, declare it a tie. But no one did.

Eduardo looked on absently.

Arthur and Gloria, Gloria and Arthur. They thought they could do anything they wanted, toy with anyone at will, maybe keep hurting the other, poison their miserable lives as though their venom were the blood that no longer coursed through their veins.

‘You lost a daughter and you’re looking for her. Gloria lost a son and, in some sense, she’s still looking for him, too. And I feel trapped in a downward spiral, tossed from side to side with no will of my own. Enough — I’ve had it.’

Arthur contemplated Eduardo coldly, without a hint of sorrow, or understanding, or affection.

‘You feel like the victim in all this. But you’re not innocent, that’s for sure. Your hands are as dirty as ours. What about the man you killed? And his wife, who you left crippled in a wheelchair … Do you think she’s been able to just let it go? You think she doesn’t hate you with all her might?’

The arabesque was perfect, displayed in a sequence of four positions on the wall, one after the other, just above the mannequin draped with tulle and gauze from her old outfits and a pair of slippers whose reinforced toes were completely worn out. From her wheelchair, Maribel extended her right arm gracefully, until its shadow projected on the wall as a perfectly straight line, fingers together, index finger raised slightly, pinky slightly down, like a soft waterfall. In a flawlessly choreographed move, she next bent her torso sideways and did exactly the same with her left arm. Gazing at the shadows, you could easily picture a pair of wings flapping gently. With her eyes resting shut, concentrating on her breathing, on getting just the right intake of air, she pretended her wheelchair didn’t exist. Executing the move properly required the body’s weight to rest on one leg, demi-plié over and over, again and again, until the thigh no longer felt the body’s pressure, the other leg fully extended from the hip like an elegant tail. Arm and leg created one long stylised line. It was the closest thing to flying that a human could aspire to without wings, and Maribel had felt that freedom, that impossible combination of gravity-defying lines and contours, hundreds if not thousands of times.

She opened her eyes slowly and once more felt the heavy sombreness of the room, her catheter and urine bag, the rough feel of the plastic, the atrophy of her leg muscles, useless now after having supported her for so many years. She gazed at the sequence of exercises immortalised in the four framed photos. They were taken during a demonstration by the dance school, on tour in Barcelona. Standing before her three best students, Maribel executed the moves, wearing a very tight, very black outfit that left only her shoulders, arms, and the tips of her pointe shoes exposed. The real challenge, however, had been that she was executing the moves on a beach, a damp irregular surface, the shore seen in the distance. It must have been very painful in those circumstances, must have required incredible balance, poise, strength and obstinacy. Yet Maribel’s face, like that of her students, betrayed not the slightest doubt. Tall, with straight black hair down to her chest, she gazed confidently into space as though somewhere there were an invisible barre holding her up. She radiated determination.

As she nearly always did when looking at those photos, hung in a place that made it impossible not to see them when she went into her old bedroom, Maribel stroked her skin. The images forced her to remember what she’d never again be: young, light, ethereal, beautiful and free.

At sixty, she shouldn’t feel old; women her age still took care of themselves, used all sorts of creams, often had no compunction about getting a little plastic surgery if that meant they could keep living a virtual youth that even they themselves knew, deep in their hearts, no longer went with their bodies. But Maribel felt ancient. Her skin had become scaly for lack of fresh air, her bones frail from lack of exercise, and her muscles were so wasted they had practically turned to mush, held together by a sack of skin. She wondered what Teo, her husband, would think if he could see her in such a sorry state of neglect. He’d worked long and hard to conquer her and she hadn’t made it easy, teasing him over and over before finally giving herself to him, feigning indifference to his love and complete dedication to her one true passion — dance.

Teo had been a patient man, not much of a talker, and could even appear cold and distant, but he had had the perseverance befitting his stubborn meticulous character; it made him a great coin collector and dealer. Those two qualities — patience and perseverance — finally created a chink in Maribel’s armour, and once he’d achieved that, he eventually made it all the way, through sheer determination. She’d always assumed that they would grow old together, that their mutual decline would be gradual — he with his coins and she with her books on dance technique, using theory to keep teaching what exhaustion and the laws of gravity meant she could no longer demonstrate herself.

Sometimes, when she entered her bedroom, she still thought it might be possible. She was afraid that she’d lose his smells if she let in any contaminated outside air. Not even her son was allowed to enter. It was her sanctuary, the one place she could still be the woman she’d been before that degenerate took away the two things that meant the most to her — her ability to fly, and the only man she’d ever loved.

She opened the armoire where Teo’s shirts and suits hung. Every so often she would take them to the same drycleaners she had always used, and they’d return them freshly pressed. When his smell started to fade, she would bring out the aftershave Teo had used and lightly sprinkle the collars, cuffs, and sleeves so that when she opened the armoire it was as if her husband were coming out to greet her. She’d inhale the smell of his shirts and then exhale slowly, and her heart was thankful for that dance of the senses. Though never an elegant man, Teo was always meticulous and austere, almost English in his dress and footwear. He kept each pair of Italian loafers with its corresponding brush and polish.

She still had a watch case with a few of his watches — none of them valuable or aesthetically striking — that matched his plain ties, scarves and handkerchiefs. It was all kept in perfect order — folded, unfolded and refolded. Maribel could while away many hours each morning absorbed in the task, but she didn’t mind. She had nothing to do but remember, fold and unfold, and pine.

In the back of the armoire was a dark plastic bag that Maribel rarely dared to pull out, despite being unable to make herself get rid of its contents. It held the clothes her husband had been wearing the day his soulless killer had blown his brains out. The police had handed it over after the autopsy, and she’d refused to burn it or throw it away, unlike the coat she herself had been wearing that morning, which ended up with a hole shot through it and a black trail of gunpowder, but almost no blood. In the bag, she kept the pale blue shirt that he’d liked to wear on Sundays, when he went to the numismatic association. The collar was a bit thin, worn with use, and they’d often argued because it drove her to distraction to see him put it on. But Teo never wanted to get rid of it because ever since he acquired an aureus of Emperor Alejandro Severo coined in 223AD, it had become his lucky shirt. Embedded in it, like scars in the weave, were blood spatters, shards of his skull, particles of scalp and brain matter that had exploded with devastating violence when the shot was fired into his head.

She’d also kept his corduroy jacket, its elbows worn thin, and his dark chinos. His clothes hadn’t even matched, the day that lunatic killed him. And that absurd thought had festered in Maribel’s brain, all those years. Like a stuck cog, her brain obsessed over it every time she decided, for whatever reason, to get out the bag and spread its contents on the bed.

You didn’t even match, but you refused to listen to me. You’d become so irritable and distracted by your coins and things that you wouldn’t even let me pick out your clothes.

Nearly fourteen years later, she still didn’t understand why some so-called happy people are punished in such unexpected, horrific ways. Who decided their destiny? God? Fate? And why her? Why her and not some other woman? She’d struggled all her life; she understood that life was a question of sacrifice, dedication, effort and tenacity, that it was rife with failures. Classical dance had made her suitably disciplined, but it had also taught her to expect some reward for all that discipline. And she’d hardly had time to enjoy it, just a few short years — ‘the most beautiful years’, said her romantic, optimist friends; ‘the most unrealistic years’, said those not carried away by facile emotion. They couldn’t even have the child that she had so yearned for, and Teo also dreamed of. In the end, they’d adopted their son, and although Maribel had thrown herself body and soul into loving him, deep down it hurt her to know that her husband had never felt the boy was fully his.

‘I wish you could see him. He’s become a handsome young man, hardworking, smart, and so sensitive, but now he needs a father to help him through this confusing time.’

Maribel didn’t feel she had the strength to battle the inevitable. Children grow up, they learn things about themselves, some of them erroneous, and then they leave — whether physically or not, they stop belonging to their parents. Children are temporary, they’re given only on loan, and sooner or later they have to be returned, given back to life itself. Lately, when Mr Who looked at her, she felt a strange trepidation, as though her son were hoping for something from her, a sign, as though he wanted to tell her something but didn’t know how. And when she asked him, he’d put on a mask, act like the angel he’d always been, kiss her on the forehead and then leave, burdened by his sadness and his demons.

It took her a moment to hear the doorbell. When she finally did, she looked at the time, surprised. It was too early for her son to be coming home, and besides, he had his own keys and never rang the bell. Maybe it was those two old ladies again, the Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to see her every afternoon, with their pamphlets and their proselytising spirit, commendable but hopeless in her case. She pushed her wheelchair down the hall to the door, trying to think up an excuse that wouldn’t be offensive, so as to get them out of her hair as soon as possible.

But when she opened the door she saw not the old ladies with their pious faces, not her son. The sorrowful man who stood looking at her from the hall was a ghost from the past. The face that had filled her nightmares for the past fourteen years.

‘Good morning, Señora. I’m Eduardo Quintana.’

Soon it would be spring; you could feel it in the night air and see it the treetops, where early buds, still too weak to survive a late frost, were beginning to bloom. They were like Mei, a new bud that might not be able to bear another frost, thought Mr Who.

In the alley that led to the back of the building where he lived, a prostitute was working a john. She was one of Chang’s girls. They exchanged a look of recognition. Neither merited the other’s sympathy; each of them simply trafficked in other people’s sorrows, made them easier to bear, and carried on their way. That was the sort of people they were, he and the hooker. Lusterless shadows. The john was franticly groping her buttocks, shoving his tongue in her ear. The girl was still looking at Who. Come now, she seemed to be saying, don’t get sentimental. You’ve got your tragedy and I’ve got mine. It’s not like we’re in love. There are those who say hookers are just after easy money. Fools. They have no idea what they’re talking about, he thought. Imagining that that was the destiny Chang had written for Mei was driving him out of his mind.

He walked into the house and took off his shoes in order not to make any noise. He saw the light on in Maribel’s room and went to see if she needed anything, but stopped halfway there, hearing her crying. Maribel always cried alone, and never in the dark. Mr Who had grown up with that sadness since the time he was a child. He’d also learned that it was better to leave her alone.

So he retraced his steps and went to his room.

He took off his jacket and left it on the unmade bed. Then he sat down at the computer and opened the folder with the scanned photos he’d compiled of the one and only vacation the three of them had taken together — a surprise trip in the summer of 1991; he, Maribel and Teo had gone to Menorca. He’d planned to use the pictures to make a slideshow and set it to music. Maribel would be touched by his thoughtfulness.

The trip had been unexpected. Teo never wanted to leave Madrid; at most he’d occasionally go to Toledo or Cáceres, never any farther than that. And yet he was the one who turned up one morning with the plane tickets.

He remembered a ferry that had brought them to some of the island’s coves only accessible by sea. In the photos, his father’s glasses went over his eyebrows. He was half-smiling, twirling his moustache like a matinee idol. Maribel stood beside him. Between them, pressing up against their legs, a boy whose face was pale from the rocking of the boat. The sea frightened him. Leaning against the rail on the observation deck, he watched flocks of seagulls soaring over the frenzied crests of waves that kept crashing in the distance with a dull roar, one after the other.

He must have been happy that summer, although that wasn’t exactly what he remembered. What he did remember were the days when he’d hear them arguing and catch them in the kitchen, composing their expressions with the speed of those trained to conceal shortcomings.

Four months later, Teo was dead and Maribel lay in the hospital with a broken spinal column.

Mr Who let his gaze drift, but suddenly his eyes froze on a spot behind the computer. Behind the wood-panelled wall was where Who kept his secrets hidden. And someone had moved a slat.

Maribel was in her wheelchair beside the bed, stroking one of her tulle dance outfits — the last one she’d worn before her vertebrae had been broken. She stared at Who and her eyes were like glass, unbearably certain. She straightened in her wheelchair and, with a casual gesture, dropped the sheet from Eduardo’s file onto the bed, the one Who had stolen from Martina. On it was the photograph of his father’s killer, the man who had destroyed their lives for no reason.

‘How could you hide something like this from me?’

Mr Who tried to calm her, but Maribel rebuffed his attempts to take her hand, as though he were a leper. Her lips were trembling, and although she seemed to implore him with her gaze, her expression was hard.

‘I didn’t want to reopen old wounds.’

‘How long have you had this?’

‘The first time I saw him was by chance, in Parque de El Retiro. He was sketching a woman. I recognised him by the photos you keep, the newspaper clippings from what happened. But I wasn’t sure, so I went back the next day, hoping I’d find him again so I could be positive. He was sitting on the same bench, like he was waiting for someone who never came. For weeks I went back to the same place and followed him. I watched him, tried to imagine what kind of man he was. There was no reason to do it, I didn’t have a plan, didn’t know what I’d do when the time came to confront him. One day I approached him in the metro. I sat beside him on the platform, watched him from up close, saw the scars on his wrists, the wrinkles on his skin, the grey in his hair. I smelled his body and heard his voice. I spoke to him, goaded him — provoked him, really. I wanted to see if he remembered me, if he remembered us, but he didn’t react. I’d pictured the scene so many times before — what I’d do, what I’d say. When the train came, I thought I’d shove him, push him under the tracks, and watch the wheels crush him. But the train pulled in and I stopped; I couldn’t do it. A few weeks later, I happened to meet a person. By chance, I found that piece of paper from his file: it explains everything.’

Maribel threw her head back, as though an invisible hand were pulling her hair, and let out an unbearable wail.

‘Why?’ she managed to ask, gazing at Who with a mixture of incredulity and shock.

Mr Who sat down on the foot of the bed.

‘Because I need to understand the man who killed us.’

He used ‘us’ because that’s how he felt it. Teo was not the only one who died that day; he might even have been the luckiest of the three because he’d died on the spot. But the two of them had had to keep dying a little more each day. From the time he was nine, there was no playing in the house, no laughter, no fresh air. Maribel withdrew from him; she did it gently, slowly, in the same way she withdrew from everything, turning her whole life into darkness — the same permanent darkness she kept in her bedroom. Love, true love, had ended before it began. Mr Who had learned to take care of her in his own way. He smiled, and his smile was different from hers, because when his mother smiled it was nothing but a painted-on expression, while his was a smile of yearning. He longed to win her back, to regain her affection, the devotion he’d hardly had time to experience. But he never again felt her warmth, and little by little he’d descended into his own quiet world, tiptoeing around the house so as not to disturb her. Mr Who stopped being a child, a teenager, lost his youth and became his invalid mother’s shadow.

Maribel lifted his chin with her finger, forcing him to look into her eyes. Mr Who averted his gaze, didn’t want to connect to the reality of that inquisitive look.

‘He was here. This morning.’

Mr Who’s face contorted completely.

He wasn’t expecting that. He felt his throat go dry, the rage boiling up in his stomach. He pictured his mother for a moment, defenceless in her wheelchair, powerless in the presence of that man.

‘Here?’ he asked, as if it would have made a difference had she met him in the supermarket, or turning a corner. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing. He told me his name. We looked at each other for a while, and I closed the door on him. He didn’t knock again, but I know he stood there on the other side of the door for a long time. I could hear him. Then he left.’

Maribel gazed around her bedroom. The bed, the armoire, the dresser, the display case with Teo’s coins, the calm air, the pretence that nothing had changed.

‘I want you to put an end to this, son. I don’t want to know that that man is still breathing the same air as us. I don’t want to know that he might come near me.’

Mr Who stood.

‘He won’t. I promise you.’