“You could get rid of the leech.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Someone is. One of yours.”

Linares fixed his gaze on Vargas, his smile leaving him. “I have no one following you.”

“It must have been someone from the top, then.”

Linares shook his head. “If there was anyone doing that, I’d know. Mine or not mine.”

“It’s a young guy, quite bad. Smallish. A novice. His name’s Rovira.”

“The only Rovira in headquarters is in the archives. He’s sixty and has enough shrapnel in his legs to open a hardware store. The poor man couldn’t follow his own shadow if you paid him.”

Vargas frowned.

Linares’s face oozed disappointment. “I may be a lot of things, Vargas, but not someone who stabs his friends in the back.”

Vargas was about to reply, but Linares raised a hand to silence him. The harm was done.

“You have until mid-morning,” Linares said. “After that, I must file a report. This will have its consequences, as you know.” He moved toward the exit. “Good night, Doctor.”

* * *

Anchored in the shadows of the narrow street bordering the morgue, Braulio watched the figure of Linares disappear into the night. “I’ll get you, you bastard,” he said to himself. Sooner or later, every one of these cocky pricks who loved nothing more than disrespecting him would end up like all the rest, a piece of swollen meat laid out on a marble slab at the mercy of a well-sharpened blade and whoever knew how to handle it. And he was there to give them the farewell they deserved. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. Those who thought death was the final indignity life gave you were wrong. An extensive catalog of mockery and humiliations awaited backstage once the curtain had fallen, and good old Braulio was always there to collect a memento or two for his trophy case and make sure that they all stepped into eternity with their fair reward. He’d had his eye on Linares for some time. And he hadn’t forgotten his buddy Vargas, either. Nothing keeps memory more alive than resentment.

“I’m going to bone you like a piece of ham and make myself a key ring with your nuts, you jerk,” he murmured. “Before you know it.”

Accustomed to listening to himself but never bored of it, Braulio smiled with satisfaction. He decided to celebrate the good fortune of his clever thoughts with a cigarette, to help fight off the cold permeating the streets at that late hour. He felt the outside pockets of his coat, which he’d inherited from a deceased with subversive leanings who had come to pay his dues a few weeks earlier, in conditions that proved there were still real experts with balls on the police payroll. The packet of Celtas was empty. Braulio buried his hands in his pockets and watched his breath forming spirals in the air. With what Hendaya would pay him when he told him what he’d just seen, he’d be able to buy a few cartons of Celtas and even a tub of fine Vaseline, the perfumed sort they sold at the rubber shop of Genaro the Chinaman. Some customers had to be treated with class.