“I suppose you didn’t tell Valls’s secretary that you’d found that book and were going to take it with you,” he pointed out at last.

“No. Only Vargas knows that I have it.”

“It would be best if things stopped there. Do you think you can convince him not to tell his superiors?”

“Yes. At least for a few days.”

Leandro sighed, slightly annoyed. He turned away from the window and returned unhurriedly to the armchair. He settled down, crossed his legs, and devoted a few moments to examining Alicia with forensic eyes. “I’d like Dr. Vallejo to see you.”

“We’ve already discussed this.”

“He’s the best specialist in the country.”

“No.”

“Let me make an appointment for you. Just a visit. You don’t need to commit to anything.”

“No.”

“If you’re going to continue speaking in monosyllables, then at least introduce a little variation.”

“OK.”

Leandro took the book from the table again and leafed through it, smiling to himself.

“You find it amusing?”

Leandro shook his head slowly. “No. In fact it makes my hair stand on end. I was just thinking that it seems to be tailor-made for you.” He ran his eyes over the pages, pausing here and there with a skeptical expression. Finally he returned the book to Alicia and gazed at her. He had a Jesuitical look, the sort that sniffs out sins before they are even formed in one’s mind and administers penitence with a mere blink.

“Your important dinner at the Palace must be getting cold,” said Alicia.

Leandro gave her his ecumenical assent. “Don’t get up. Rest. I’ve left ten one-hundred phials for you in the bathroom cabinet.”

Alicia pressed her lips angrily but kept silent. Leandro nodded and made his way to the door. Before leaving the room, he stopped and pointed his finger at her. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Alicia joined her hands as if in prayer and smiled.

17

Once free from Leandro’s presence, Alicia bolted the door, got under the shower, and abandoned herself to the steam and the needles of hot water for almost forty minutes. She didn’t bother to turn on the light, but stood in the faint glow that filtered through the bathroom window, letting the water rub the day off her. The Hispania boilers were probably buried in some part of hell, and the metallic rattle of water pipes behind the walls created a hypnotic music. When she thought her skin was about to peel off in shreds, she turned off the taps and stayed there a couple more minutes, listening to the drip of the shower and the murmur of the traffic on Gran Vía.

Later, wrapped in a towel and with a full glass of white wine for company, she lay on the bed with the dossier Gil de Partera had given them that morning and the folder of letters allegedly penned by Sebastián Salgado, or by the possibly deceased David Martín, addressed to Minister Valls.

She began with the dossier, comparing her findings so far with the official version from police headquarters. Like so many police reports, what mattered wasn’t what it included: the interesting part was what was left out. The report on the supposed attack against the minister in the Círculo de Bellas Artes formed a masterpiece in the genre of inconsistent and overblown conjecture. All it contained was an unverified refutation of Valls’s words, who argued that he’d seen somebody among the audience who intended to make an attempt on his life. The only colorful note was a reference to one of the alleged witnesses of the alleged plot in connection with a presumed individual who had allegedly been seen behind the scenes wearing a sort of mask, or something that covered part of his face.