“How long are you going to keep me alive?”

The jailer straightens up and walks over to the cell door. Valls grabs his leg. A kick in the stomach winds him. He spends hours curled up into a ball, moaning with pain.

That night he dreams about his daughter Mercedes again, when she was just a little girl. They’re in their estate in Somosaguas, in the garden. Valls has been held up speaking to one of his servants, and loses sight of her. When he looks for her, he finds her footprints on the path leading to the dolls’ house. Valls steps into the dark building and calls his daughter. He finds her clothes and a trail of blood.

The dolls are licking their lips with feline glee. They have devoured her.

33

When Vargas opened his eyes again, the midday light was pouring through the windows. The hands of the grandfather clock, a nineteenth-century contraption Alicia must have picked up at some antiques bazaar, were nearing twelve o’clock.

He heard high heels tapping around the living room and rubbed his eyelids. “Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”

“I like to hear you snore. It’s like having a bear cub in the house.”

Vargas sat up and remained seated on the edge of the sofa. He put his hands on his lower back and rubbed it. He felt as if his backbone had been pushed through a candy-making machine. “If you want a bit of advice,” he said, “don’t grow old. It offers no advantages.”

“I thought so,” said Alicia.

The policeman got up, battling with cramp and creaking joints. Alicia stood in front of the sideboard mirror, carefully applying her lipstick. She was wearing a black wool coat with a belt around the waist, black seamed stockings, and vertigo-inducing high heels.

“Going somewhere?”

She turned around full circle, as if parading on the catwalk, and grinned at him. “Do I look good?”

“Who are you planning to kill?”

“I have an appointment with Sergio Vilajuana, the journalist from La Vanguardia. The one Barceló, the bookseller, told me about.”

“The expert on Víctor Mataix?”

“And on other things, I hope.”

“And may I ask how you got him involved?”

“I told him I had a Mataix book and wanted to show it to him.”

“Had is the correct tense. I might remind you, your book has been stolen, and you don’t have anything.”

“Technicalities. I haven’t lost the knack. And besides, I have myself.”

“God help us . . .”

Topping off Alicia’s attire was a hat with a net veil that covered half her face. She took a last glance in the mirror.

“Can you tell me what that outfit is supposed to be?”

“It’s a Balenciaga.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” she said on her way to the door. “I’ll be back soon.”

“May I use your bathroom?”

“As long as you don’t leave any hairs in the bath.”

* * *

Arranging the meeting with Vilajuana hadn’t been as easy as Alicia had implied. In fact, she’d first had to contend with a cagey secretary in the newsroom, who was eager to send her packing. A few maneuvers later, she managed to get Vilajuana on the line. Having listened to her initial pitch, he sounded less convinced than a mathematician at a bishops’ tea party.