“I don’t know. But we can’t run any risks.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked Brians.

“No meetings with Morgado and no calls until further notice,” Sanchís ordered. “I’ll contact you if necessary. Go back to the office and act as if nothing had happened. If I were you, I’d leave the city for a while.”

The banker put down the phone. He walked past the bar, pale-faced.

“Your cortado, boss,” said the waiter.

Sanchís looked at him as if he didn’t know what he was doing there, and left the café.

25

Mauricio Valls has seen too many people die to believe there is anything beyond death. Coming back to life from the purgatory of antibiotics, narcotics, and hopeless nightmares, he opens his eyes to the wretchedness of his cell. The clothes he was wearing have disappeared. He’s naked and wrapped in a blanket. He lifts the hand he does not have to his face and discovers the stump, cauterized with tar. He stares at it for a long time, as if trying to find out who is the owner of the body in which he has awakened. Bit by bit, his memory returns, dripping images and sounds. After a while he remembers everything except the pain. Perhaps there is a merciful God after all, he tells himself.

“What are you laughing at?” asks a voice. The woman who, in his delirium, he had taken to be an angel, is staring at him from behind the iron bars. There is no compassion or emotion in her eyes.

“Why didn’t you let me die?”

“Death is too good for you.”

Valls nods. He’s not sure who he is speaking to, although something about this woman seems extremely familiar.

“Where is Martín? Why hasn’t he come?”

The woman looks at him with a suggestion of scorn and sadness. “David Martín is waiting for you.”

“Where?”

“In hell.”

“I don’t believe in hell.”

“Have patience. You’ll believe.” The woman withdraws into the shadows and begins to climb the stairs.

“Wait. Don’t leave. Please.”

She stops.

“Don’t go. Don’t leave me here alone again.”

“There are some clean clothes there. Get dressed,” she says before disappearing up the stairs.

Valls hears a metal door closing. He finds the clothes in a bag, in a corner of the cell. They’re old clothes that are too large for him, but they’re moderately clean, even though they smell of dust. He throws off the blanket and eyes his naked body in the half-light. He can make out bones and tendons under the skin where once there was a thick layer of fat. He gets dressed. It’s not easy to dress with only one hand, or do up trousers or a shirt with only five fingers. What he is most grateful for is a pair of socks and shoes with which he can hide his feet from the cold. At the bottom of the bag there’s something else. A book. He instantly recognizes the black leather binding and the outline of a scarlet spiral staircase engraved on the cover. He rests the book on his lap and opens it.