“Yes.”

“What did he say to you?”

“I can’t remember.”

“I know it’s difficult, Ariadna. Make an effort.”

“I want the medicine.”

“First tell me what Martín said to you.”

“He would talk about my father. About the time they’d spent together in prison. My father had spoken to him about us. About what had happened. I think they’d made some sort of pact. The first one who managed to get out of there would help the family of the other.”

“But David Martín didn’t have a family.”

“He had people he loved.”

“Did he tell you how he managed to escape from the castle?”

“Valls had ordered two of his men to take him to an old house next to Güell Park and murder him. They used to kill a lot of people there, and they buried them in the garden.”

“And what happened?”

“David said there was someone else there, in the house, who helped him escape.”

“An accomplice?”

“He called him the boss.”

“The boss?”

“He had a foreign name. Italian. I remember because it was the same as that of a famous composer my parents liked a lot.”

“Can you remember the name?”

“Corelli. He was called Andreas Corelli.”

“That name doesn’t appear in any of my reports.”

“Because he didn’t exist.”

“I don’t understand.”

“David wasn’t well. He imagined things. People.”

“Do you mean to say that David Martín had imagined that Andreas Corelli person?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know. David had lost his mind, or what little mind he had left, in prison. He was very ill, and he didn’t realize.”

“You always call him David.”

“We were friends.”

“Lovers?”

“Friends.”

“What did he say to you on that day?”

“That he’d spent three years trying to get access to Mauricio Valls.”

“To take revenge on him?”

“Valls had murdered someone he loved very much.”

“Isabella.”

“Yes. Isabella.”

“Did he tell you how he thought Valls had murdered her?”

“He’d poisoned her.”

“And why did he come to look for you?”

“To keep the promise he’d made to my father.”

“Is that all?”

“And because he thought that if I could provide him with access to my parents’ house, sooner or later Mauricio Valls would turn up there, and he’d be able to kill him. Valls often visited Ubach. They had some businesses together. Financial interests. Otherwise it was impossible to get to Valls, because he always had his bodyguards with him or was protected somehow.”

“But that never happened.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I told him that if he tried to do it, they’d kill him.”

“He must have imagined that already. There must have been something else.”

“Something else?”

“Something else you said to him to make him change his plans.”

“I need my medicine. Please.”

“Tell me what you told David Martín that made him change his mind, so that he abandoned the plan that had brought him to Madrid to take his revenge on Valls and instead decided to help you escape.”