The boy shook his head. Hendaya smiled amicably, and Fernandito remembered how he’d seen him blow the chauffeur’s knees off with his gun a couple of hours earlier. The dark stain on the shirt collar was still there.

“I’m not hiding anything, sir.”

“So . . . ?” Hendaya pushed the phone toward him. “One call, and you’ll be free.”

Fernandito swallowed hard. “I’d like to ask you not to force me to make this call. For a good reason.”

“A good reason? And what is that, dear friend Alberto?”

“It’s because of my father, who is ill.”

“Ah, is he now?”

“It’s his heart. He had a heart attack a couple of months ago, and he spent six weeks at the Clínico. Now he’s home, recovering, but he’s very weak.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“My father is a good man, sir. A war hero.”

“War hero?”

“He entered Barcelona with the Nacionales. There’s a photograph of him, parading along Avenida Diagonal, on the cover of La Vanguardia. We have it framed in our dining room. He’s the third on the right. You should see it. They allowed him to march in the front row because of his bravery in the battle of the Ebro. He was a sergeant.”

“You must all be very proud of him.”

“We are, but the poor man hasn’t really been himself after what happened to my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“She died four years ago.”

“My condolences.”

“Thank you, sir. Do you know what the last thing my mother said to me before dying was?”

“No.”

“Promise me you’ll look after your father, and you won’t upset him.”

“And have you lived up to that promise?”

Fernandito lowered his eyes and looked contrite. He shook his head. “The truth is, I haven’t been the son my mother raised, or the one my father deserves. Believe it or not, I’m a good-for-nothing.”

“And there was I thinking you were a good kid.”

“Not at all. A lost cause, that’s me. All I do is give my poor father grief, as if he didn’t have enough to cope with already. One day I’m chucked out of my job, the next I forget my ID card. See for yourself. A war-hero father and a useless idiot of a son.”

Hendaya studied him cautiously. “Am I to understand from all this that if you call your father and tell him you’ve been held in the police station because you didn’t have your ID on you, you’ll upset him again?”

“That would finish him off, I’m sure. If a neighbor has to bring him here to fetch me in his wheelchair, I think he’d die of shame and grief to see what a disastrous son he’s got.”

Hendaya thought about the matter. “I understand, Alberto, but you must understand me too. You put me in a difficult position.”

“Yes, sir, and you’ve already been very patient with me. I really don’t deserve it. If it depended on me, I’d ask you to throw me in jail with all the worst scum, just to teach me a lesson. But I beg you to reconsider on account of my poor father. I’ll write down my name, surnames, and address, and tomorrow you can come and ask any of our neighbors—if possible in the morning, as that’s when my father is asleep, because of his medication.”