* * *

Hiding in the garden on the other side of the window, Alicia watched the policeman roam around the kitchen area, check the entrance to the tunnel, and then, inexplicably, rub out the footprints she’d left behind her. The policeman took one last look and then went back to the door. Making the most of the fact that the rain was still bucketing down, and not knowing for certain whether the officer would tell his superiors what he had discovered, Alicia decided to risk crossing the garden very quickly, going down the hillside and climbing over the wall. For the sixty seconds this took, she kept expecting a shot between her shoulder blades that never came.

After jumping down into the street, she ran back to the square, where the blue tram was starting its descent in the storm, and hopped onto the moving carriage. Ignoring the conductor’s disapproving look, she collapsed onto a seat, soaking wet and trembling either from cold or relief—she wasn’t sure which.

* * *

She found him sitting in the rain, huddled on the doorstep. Alicia walked through the puddles flooding Calle Aviñón and stopped in front of Fernandito. He raised his head and looked at her with tears in his eyes.

She knew even before he spoke. “Where’s Vargas?” she asked.

Fernandito lowered his head. “Don’t go up,” he whispered.

Alicia went up, two steps at a time, ignoring the pain that drilled through her hip and fired up her side. When she reached the fourth-floor landing, she stopped in front of the half-open door to Vargas’s rooms. A sickly-sweet smell floated in the air. She pushed the door inward and saw the body, lying over a shiny, dark sheet. A sudden chill took her breath away, and she held on to the doorframe. Her legs shook as she drew closer to the corpse.

Vargas’s eyes were open. His face was a wax mask, so brutally beaten up she hardly recognized him. She knelt down beside him and stroked his cheek. He was cold. Angry tears clouded her eyes, and she stifled a moan.

Next to the body was a fallen chair. Alicia picked it up and sat down to gaze in silence at the corpse. The searing pain in her hip was raging through her bones. She struck her old wound hard, fist clenched. For a few seconds the pain blinded her, and she almost fell on the floor. She kept on hitting herself until Fernandito, who had been witnessing the scene from the doorway, held her arms and stopped her. He embraced her until he’d steadied her, then let her howl with pain until she could hardly breathe.

“It’s not your fault,” he said, over and over again.

When Alicia had stopped shaking, Fernandito covered the body with a blanket he found on an armchair.

“Look in his pockets,” ordered Alicia.

The boy went through the policeman’s coat and jacket. He found his wallet, a few coins, a piece of paper bearing a list of numbers, and a visiting card that read: