“The only demon? Were there more?”

Vilajuana shrugged. “I wouldn’t know how to explain it to you without making you laugh.”

“Try me.”

“Well, the thing is this: Mataix once told me that David Martín thought he’d signed a contract with a mysterious publisher to write some sort of sacred text, a kind of bible for a new religion. Don’t look at me like that. According to Mataix, he used to meet up every so often with this character, someone called Andreas Corelli, to receive instructions from beyond the grave, or something like that.”

“And Mataix naturally doubted Corelli’s existence.”

“‘Doubted’ is putting it mildly. He had him well placed on his list of improbable figures, somewhere between Spring-Heeled Jack and the Tooth Fairy. Mataix asked me to make inquiries in publishing circles to see if we could find the alleged publisher. I did make inquiries. I left no stone unturned.”

“And?”

“The only Corelli I found was a Baroque composer called Arcangelo Corelli. You could call him the Vivaldi’s Vivaldi.”

“So who was the Corelli that Martín was working for, or imagined he was working for?”

“Martín thought he was some other sort of arcangelo, a fallen one.”

The journalist placed two fingers on his forehead like horns and smiled mockingly.

“The devil?”

“With tail and hoofs. A Mephistopheles with a Savile Row tailor who had arrived from hell and drawn Martín into a Faustian pact to create an accursed book, the foundation of a new religion that would set fire to the world. As I was saying, mad as a hatter. And that’s how he ended.”

“You mean in Montjuïc Prison?”

“That was a bit later. At the start of the thirties David Martín, as a result of his delusions and that strange alliance with his tormentor, had to get the hell out of Barcelona when the police accused him of a series of crimes that were never solved. Apparently he managed to escape by the skin of his teeth. But imagine how mad he must have been that he could think of nothing better to do but return to Spain during the war. They arrested him in Puigcerdá, shortly after he’d crossed the Pyrenees, and he ended up in Montjuïc Castle. Like so many others. And like Mataix himself a bit later. That’s where they met up again after not having seen each other for years . . . a sad end if ever there was one.”

“Do you know why he returned? Even if Martín wasn’t altogether sane, he must have realized that if he went back to Barcelona, he’d be arrested sooner or later . . .”

Vilajuana shrugged. “Why do we make such stupid mistakes in life?”

“For love, for money, out of spite . . .”

“Deep down you’re a romantic, I knew it.”

“For love, then?”

“Who knows. I don’t know what else he was hoping to find in a place where half the country was murdering the other half in the name of some colored rags.”