“Watch out, or you’ll never get rid of him,” warned the waiter.

Vargas exchanged another glance with his new best friend. He gave him the rest of the croissant, and Chusco swallowed it in one gulp. In this dog-eat-dog world, he thought, when you get old and even common sense hurts, a crumb of kindness or pity is a dish fit for the gods.

The ninety minutes promised by Linares turned into two long hours. When Vargas saw the headlights of the police car and the morgue van cutting through the mist as they came up the road, he paid for his coffees, adding a generous tip, and went out into the street to wait, cigarette in hand. Linares didn’t get out. He rolled down the window and signaled to Vargas to get into the car and sit next to him in the back seat. One of his men was driving. A chubby individual wrapped in a coat and bearing a sullen expression sat in the passenger seat.

“Your Honor,” Vargas greeted him.

The judge didn’t bother to reply or acknowledge his presence. Linares threw him a sharp glance and smiled, shrugging. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“Close by. On Carretera de las Aguas.”

While they drove down toward the entrance to the road, Vargas looked at his old colleague out of the corner of his eye. Twenty years in the force had taken their toll, and more. “You’re looking well,” he lied.

Linares chuckled. Vargas met the judge’s look in the rearview mirror.

“Old friends?” asked the judge.

“Vargas doesn’t have friends,” said Linares.

“Wise man.”

Vargas guided the driver through the dark track described by the road until the headlights outlined the iron gates of the Mataixes’ house. The van from the morgue followed close behind. They got out of the car, and the judge took a few steps forward to look at the outline of the house through the trees.

“The body is in the basement,” Vargas explained. “In a swimming pool. It’s probably been there two or three weeks.”

“No shit,” said one of the assistants from the mortuary, who looked like a beginner.

The judge drew up to Vargas and looked him in the eye. “Linares says you discovered it during the course of an investigation?”

“That’s right, Your Honor.”

“And you haven’t been able to identify it?”

“No, Your Honor.”

The judge turned to look at Linares, who was rubbing his hands together to keep warm.

The second mortuary assistant, older and with an impenetrable expression, walked over to the group and tried to catch Vargas’s eye. “One or several pieces?”

“Excuse me?”

“The deceased.”

“One. I believe.”

The man nodded. “Manolo, the large bag, the boat hook, and a couple of shovels,” he said to his apprentice.

* * *

Half an hour later, while the morgue men were loading the corpse into the van and the judge was filling out forms on the police car’s hood under the beam of a flashlight held by Linares’s subordinate, Vargas noticed his old colleague standing next to him. Together, they silently watched the men struggle to lift the corpse, which was heavier than they’d expected, into the van. As they got on with the job, they bashed what must have been the corpse’s head a couple of times, quarreling among themselves and swearing under their breath.