“What time is it?” Valls asks in a tiny voice.

Vicente doesn’t have time to reply. It all happens very fast. The bodyguard has just pulled the key out of the ignition when Valls notices a figure on the other side of the car window. He hasn’t seen it approach. Without a word, Vicente pushes Valls aside and shoots. The window shatters a few centimeters from Valls’s head. He feels a shower of glass shards lashing at his face. The roar of the shot deafens him, a piercing whistle stabbing his ears. Before the cloud of gunpowder floating inside the car has time to settle, the door on the driver’s side suddenly opens. Vicente turns, revolver in hand, but with no time to fire another shot because something has slit his throat. He clutches his neck with both hands. Dark blood runs through his fingers. For a brief moment their eyes meet, Vicente’s haunted by disbelief. A second later the bodyguard slumps over the steering wheel and sets off the horn. Valls tries to hold him, but Vicente leans to one side, and half his body is left hanging out of the car. Valls holds the revolver in both hands and points toward the blackness beyond the driver’s open door. Then he senses someone’s breath behind him, and when he turns to shoot, all he notices is a sharp, ice-cold blow on his hand. He feels the metal on the bone, and nausea clouds his vision. The revolver falls on his lap, and he sees blood flowing along his arm. The figure looms, holding the bloodstained knife in one hand, the blade dripping. Then the figure tries to open the car door, but the door is stuck. Two hands grab Valls by the neck and tug at him angrily. Valls feels himself being pulled out of the car through the gap in the window and being dragged up the gravel path to the broken marble steps. He hears soft footsteps approaching. The moon lights up what in his delirium he takes for an angel and then for an apparition of death. Valls faces those eyes and realizes his mistake.

“What are you laughing at, you son of a bitch?” the voice asks.

Valls smiles. “You look so much like her,” he murmurs.

Valls closes his eyes and waits for the coup de grâce. It doesn’t come. He feels his angel spitting on his face. The angel’s footsteps move away. God, or the devil, takes pity on him, and at some point he loses consciousness.

He can’t remember whether all that happened hours, days, or weeks ago. Time has ceased to exist in this cell. All is cold now, and pain and darkness. He feels a sudden spasm of rage. Dragging himself to the bars, he bangs on the cold metal until his skin smarts. He is still holding on to them when a band of light opens above, revealing a staircase that leads down to the cell. Valls hears footsteps and looks up hopefully. He stretches his hand beyond the bars, imploringly. His jailer gazes at him from the shadows, motionless. Something covers his face, reminding Valls of the frozen expression on a mannequin in one of Gran Vía’s shop windows.