A ramshackle bed, covered with a couple of old blankets, occupied one of the corners. A wooden box on one side acted as a bedside table. On the box was a black telephone, candles, and a glass jar full of coins. An old suitcase peeped out from under the mattress, together with a pair of shoes and a bucket. Next to the bed was a large wardrobe made of carved wood, the sort of antique piece one would expect to see in an elegant home, not in an industrial workshop. Its doors were almost shut tight, leaving a small opening. Alicia drew closer to the wardrobe, a step at a time, ready to empty her revolver. For a second she imagined Rovira inside, smiling and waiting for her to open the door.

She held the weapon firmly in both hands and gave one of the doors a kick. It opened slowly, bouncing off the frame. The wardrobe was empty. A bar held a dozen bare hangers. At the bottom of the wardrobe she found a cardboard box with just one word written on it:

SALGADO

She tugged at the box, and its contents scattered around her feet: jewels, watches, and other valuable objects. There were wads of notes that looked like they were no longer legal tender, tied up with strings. Gold ingots, melted down quickly and roughly. Alicia knelt down and stared at that loot, a small fortune. It must be the treasure that Sebastián Salgado, once a prisoner in Montjuïc, and the first suspect mentioned in the disappearance of Valls, had hidden in a locker of the Estación del Norte; the treasure he had dreamed of retrieving after the minister requested his pardon and set him free two decades later.

Salgado had never managed to recover the fruit of his crimes and pillage. When he opened that locker, all he found was an empty suitcase. He’d died knowing he was a thief beaten at his own game. Someone had gotten there ahead of him. Someone who knew about the loot and the plot involving the anonymous letters Valls had been receiving for years. Someone who had been pulling the strings of that whole business long before the minister disappeared.

The lights flickered for a moment, and Alicia turned around, startled. And then she saw it. It covered an entire wall, from floor to ceiling. She approached it slowly, and when she realized what she was looking at, she felt her knees weaken and let her arms drop.

The mosaic was made up of dozens, even hundreds, of photographs, newspaper clippings, and notes. It had been put together with extraordinary precision and the diligence of a silversmith. All the pictures, without exception, were of Alicia. She recognized snapshots from her first days in the unit, next to old photographs in which she was barely a child, dating from her years at the orphanage. The collection included dozens of snapshots taken from a distance, showing her walking along streets in Madrid or Barcelona, by the entrance to the Gran Hotel Palace, sitting in a café with a book, walking down the stairs of the National Library, shopping in the capital, even strolling by the Crystal Palace in Retiro Park. One of the photographs showed the door to her room in the Hispania.