Fernandito weighed his options. He couldn’t take that path without being seen, and the sight of the blood on Hendaya’s cuffs didn’t exactly encourage him to pull any heroic stunts. He took a few steps back and studied the wall surrounding the grounds. The street, a narrow road that snaked along the mountainside, was deserted. Fernandito walked along it until he caught sight of what looked like the back of the house. He climbed carefully up the wall and from there managed to grab a branch, lowering himself into the garden. It suddenly occurred to him that if there were dogs, they would detect his scent in a matter of seconds, but after a few moments he established something even more disquieting. There was no sound at all. Not a leaf shook among the trees, no murmur of birds or insects stirred the air. The place was dead.

The house’s elevated position on the top of a hill created the illusion that it was closer to the street than it actually was. Fernandito had to clamber up the slope between trees and paths overrun by bushes until he reached the paved lane that circled around from the main entrance. Once on the path, he followed it to the villa’s rear facade. All the windows were dark except for a couple of small casements in a corner hidden between the house and the top of the hill, which he guessed must be the kitchen window. Fernandito crept up to it and, keeping his face away from the dim light spreading out through the glass, peered inside.

He recognized her immediately: the woman he’d seen coming out of Sanchís’s house with the chauffeur. She lay slumped on a chair, strangely still, her face to one side, as if she were unconscious. Yet her eyes were open.

Only then did he notice that she was bound, hand and foot, to the chair. A shadow fell across her. Hendaya and the other policeman had come in. Hendaya pulled up a chair and sat facing the woman. He spoke to her for a couple of minutes, but Señora Sanchís showed no signs of hearing him. She looked away, as if Hendaya wasn’t there. After a while the policeman shrugged and placed his fingers gently on the banker’s wife’s chin, turning her face toward him. He’d begun speaking to her again when the woman spat in his face. Hendaya instantly slapped her so hard he knocked her onto the floor, where she remained, collapsed, tied to the chair. The officer with Hendaya, and another one Fernandito hadn’t noticed before—he must have been leaning against the wall under the window Fernandito was spying through—approached her and pulled the chair upright again.

Hendaya wiped the spit off his face with his hand and then smeared it on Señora Sanchís’s blouse.

At a signal from Hendaya, the two police officers left the kitchen. They returned shortly afterward, bringing in the chauffeur Fernandito had seen that morning, picking up the banker’s wife. He was handcuffed.