“What other surprises do you have in store for me, aside from housebreaking?”

“Technically speaking, it’s a warehouse. I don’t think it’s a home for anything but rats and spiders.”

“How could I refuse, then? What else are you turning over in that devilish head of yours?”

“I was thinking about that cretin you went to see, Cascos—Valls’s employee in Editorial Ariadna.”

“The spurned lover.”

“Pablo Cascos Buendía,” Alicia recited. “Beatriz Aguilar’s ex-fiancé. I can’t get him out of my head. Don’t you find it odd?”

“What isn’t odd in this whole affair?”

“The almighty minister secretly poking around in the family history of some humble Barcelona booksellers . . .”

“We’d decided that he suspected they might know something about David Martín, whom he also suspected of being behind the threats and attacks against him.”

“Yes, but what does David Martín have to do with the Semperes? And what have they got to do with this whole story?” Alicia remained pensive for a while before going on. “There’s something there. In that place. In that family.”

“Is that why you’ve decided to make home visits to Sempere & Sons without warning me?”

“I needed something new to read.”

“You should have bought yourself a comic book. To approach the Semperes too soon could be dangerous.”

“Are you afraid of a family of booksellers?”

“I’m afraid of letting the cat out of the bag before we know what we’re treading on.”

“I think it’s worth the risk.”

“Something you’ve decided unilaterally.”

“Beatriz Aguilar and I got along very well,” said Alicia. “She’s such a delightful girl. You’d fall in love with her at first sight.”

“Alicia . . .”

She smiled mischievously.

The beers and the plate of bombas arrived just in time to interrupt the conversation. Vargas eyed that curious invention, a sort of large ball of breaded potato filled with spicy meat. “So how does one eat this?”

Alicia skewered a bomba with her fork and sank her teeth in it. Outside, the storm pounded the street savagely, and the waiter had gone over to the door to watch the downpour.

Vargas observed Alicia as she devoured the feast. There was something about her that he hadn’t noticed before. “When dusk falls,” he said, “you seem to revive . . .”

She took a sip of beer and looked him in the eyes. “I’m a night creature.”

“No need to convince me.”

30

The storm had left a mist in its wake that swept through the streets of La Barceloneta and glistened in the glow of the streetlamps. Just a few isolated drops were falling when they stepped outside, as the echoes of the tempest disappeared in the distance.

The address Alicia had extracted that morning from Fernando Brians’s storage boxes—a warehouse where the lawyer was to stow his furniture, filing cabinets, and all the surplus junk accumulated over decades—was on the grounds of Vapor Barcino, an old locomotive and boiler factory abandoned during the civil war. After barely two minutes’ walk through deserted, icy-cold alleyways, they came to the entrance of the old factory. An ancient railway track, partly buried under their feet, made its way into the factory grounds. A large stone portal bearing the words vapor barcino presided over the entrance. Beyond it was a wasteland of run-down warehouses and workshops, a graveyard for the wonders of the age of steam.