“It’s the gangrene,” says a voice in the dark.

His heart misses a beat, and he turns to discover his jailer sitting at the bottom of the stairs, watching him.

“How long have you been there?” Valls asks.

“You’re going to lose that hand. Or your life. It’s up to you.”

“Help me, please. I’ll give you whatever you want.”

The jailer stares at him impassively.

“How long have I been here?”

“Not long.”

“Do you work for Martín? Where is he? Why doesn’t he come to see me?”

The jailer stands up. The meager light that filters down from the top of the stairs touches his face. Valls can now see the mask clearly, a piece of flesh-colored porcelain covering half the man’s face. The eye behind it doesn’t blink.

The jailer approaches the metal bars so Valls can look at him closely. “You don’t remember, do you?”

Valls shakes his head slowly.

“You’ll remember. There’s time enough.”

He turns and is about to start up the stairs again when Valls stretches out his left hand through the bars beseechingly. The jailer stops.

“Please,” Valls implores. “I need a doctor.”

The jailer pulls a packet wrapped in brown paper out of his coat pocket and throws it into the cell.

“You decide whether you want to live or whether you want to rot away slowly, the way you’ve allowed so many innocents to do.”

Before he leaves, he lights a candle and leaves it in a small niche dug into the wall.

“Please, don’t go . . .”

Valls hears the footsteps fade and the door close. Then he kneels down to pick up the parcel. He opens it with his left hand. At first he can’t make out what he is seeing. Only when he takes the object and looks at it in the light of the candle does he realize.

A carpenter’s saw.

16

In the darkest corner of her heart, Barcelona, mother of labyrinths, holds a mesh of narrow streets knotted together to form a reef of present and future ruins. Intrepid travelers and all manner of lost souls lie forever trapped in this district named the Raval, once the outskirts of the medieval city. When Alicia and Vargas stepped out of Casa Leopoldo, a network of alleyways greeted the couple in all its sinister splendor, populated by dives, brothels, and a whole arsenal of bazaars peddling wares and services away from the eye of the law.

The lavish meal had left Vargas suffering from a light hiccup, which he tried to get rid of by taking deep breaths and tapping his chest with his knuckles.

“This happens because you’re a glutton,” Alicia decreed.

“You’ve got some nerve. First you stuff me, then you make fun of me.”

A young streetwalker displaying rotund charms observed them with strictly commercial interest. She was standing in a doorway behind which a transistor radio was blaring out a Catalan rumba in all its crossbred glory. “How about a little twosome siesta with your skinny-ribs and a real woman, my love?” the lady of the evening invited.