Had he been able to, Fernandito would have swallowed ages ago, but his mouth was like sandpaper. He sat down again without waiting to be told.

“Why am I here?” he demanded. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Hendaya smiled calmly, as if the boy’s state of nerves had touched him. “Nobody is saying you’ve done anything wrong, Alberto. Are you sure you don’t want a coffee? Water?”

“What I want is to go home.”

“Of course. Right away.”

Hendaya picked up a phone that was on his desk and pushed it toward Fernandito. He took the receiver off the hook and handed it to him.

“Go on, Alberto, call your father. Ask him to bring your ID card and come here to fetch you. I’m sure your family must be worried about you.”

12

A ring of clouds was sliding down the hillside. The taxi’s headlights revealed the outlines of grand mansions peeking through the trees along the road up to Vallvidrera.

“I can’t go into Carretera de las Aguas,” said the taxi driver. “Since last year access has been restricted to residents and municipal vehicles. You just have to stick your nose in, and one of them ticket fairies hidden between those bushes will jump out with his notebook and hand you a prescription. But I can leave you at the entrance . . .”

Vargas showed him a fifty-peseta note. The taxi driver’s eyes rested on the vision like flies on honey. “Listen, I don’t have change for that . . .”

“If you wait for us, we won’t need it. And the city council can go suck themselves.”

The taxi driver grumbled but concurred with the monetary logic. “I guess I see your point,” he concluded.

When they reached the entrance to the road—just a narrow unpaved ribbon that bordered the amphitheatre of hills guarding Barcelona—the taxi driver drove on with care. “Are you sure it’s this way?”

“Just keep going a bit further.”

The old house of the Mataixes stood about three hundred meters from the start of the Carretera de las Aguas. Soon the taxi’s headlights fell on a half-open spiked gate on one side of the dirt road. Farther in, one could just about make out the jagged outline of dormer windows and towers peering through the ruins of a garden that had been abandoned for far too long.

“It’s here,” said Alicia.

The taxi driver glanced quickly at the place and then looked at them unenthusiastically in the rearview mirror. “You sure this is the place? Looks abandoned to me . . .”

Alicia ignored his words and got out of the car.

“You wouldn’t have a flashlight on you, by any chance?” asked Vargas.

“Extras aren’t included in the initial fare. Are we still talking ten duros?”

Vargas pulled out the fifty-peseta note again and showed it to him. “What’s your name?”

The hypnotic effect of the dough in all its glory dazzled the taxi driver. “Cipriano Ridruejo Cabezas, at your service.”

“Cipriano, this is your lucky night. Could we find a flashlight for the young lady? We wouldn’t want her to trip over and twist her ankle.”