She began to wander aimlessly around the room, struggling to stop herself from pressing that bell Leandro had left on the table in the lounge. At last, after exploring every corner of the suite, she returned to her bedroom, worn out. She smiled at herself.

“The truth,” she heard herself whisper.

5

Leandro studied the pale, sorrowful face on the other side of the mirror. Ariadna exuded the perfume of broken souls who have become lost along the way, though they think they’re moving forward. He had always been fascinated by the idea that if one knew how to read the language of looks and of time, one could guess, just by gazing at a face, what that face had looked like as a child, and relish the moment when the world had stuck its poisoned dart in it, and its spirit had begun to grow old. People were like puppets or clockwork toys. They all had a hidden mechanism that allowed one to pull their strings and make them run in whatever direction one wished them to run. The satisfaction he felt, or perhaps it was only a sustenance, came from that surrender, that confused desire to which sooner or later they succumbed to give themselves over to his wishes, to receive his blessing and offer him their soul in exchange for a smile of approval and a look that would make them believe.

Sitting next to him, Hendaya watched her suspiciously. “I think we’re wasting our time, sir,” he said. “If you give me an hour, I’ll get everything she knows out of her.”

“You’ve had more than enough hours already. Not everything is meat for slicing. You do your work, and I’ll do mine.”

“Yes, sir.”

Shortly afterward the doctor appeared on the scene. Leandro had selected him with great care. He had the good-natured look of a family doctor, a kindly, bespectacled sixty-year-old with the mustache of a judicious man, someone who could well have been a lovable uncle or grandfather; someone before whom not even the most sanctimonious woman would feel embarrassed to undress, but rather would let his tepid hands palpate her private parts while she looked up to heaven and murmured, “What hands you have, Doctor.”

He wasn’t a qualified doctor, but nobody would have said so when they saw him in his gray suit, with his doctor’s bag and his experienced older man’s limp. He was a chemist, in fact, and one of the best. Leandro watched him help Ariadna lie down on her bed, uncover her arm, and search her pulse. The syringe was small and the needle so fine that she didn’t seem to notice it. Leandro smiled to himself when he saw how Ariadna’s eyes glazed over and her body lost its rigidity. In a matter of seconds she had fallen into that chemically induced drowsiness that would keep her there for at least sixteen hours, possibly more, considering her fragile constitution. She would float in a dreamless calm, in a state of utter suspension and pleasure that would slowly dig its claws into her guts, veins, and brain. Day by day.