“Did Sanchís know? Did he know Ubach was his real father?”

“Of course.”

“Is that why he married you?”

“He married me to protect me. He was my only friend. He was an honest and decent man.”

“So it was a sham marriage?”

“It was the most real marriage I’ve ever seen, but if you’re referring to that, no, he never laid a finger on me.”

“When did you start planning your revenge?”

“Because he had access to all the Ubach documentation, Ignacio put two and two together regarding Valls. It was his idea. By going through the story of my real father, Víctor Mataix, we found out about some of his prison companions, from David Martín to Sebastián Salgado, and Morgado, whom he hired as a chauffeur and bodyguard. But we’ve already talked about that . . . no?”

“It doesn’t matter. Was it also your idea to use David Martín’s ghost to frighten Valls?”

“It was my idea.”

“Who wrote the letters that you sent Valls?”

“I did.”

“What happened in November 1956 in the Círculo de Bellas Artes, here in Madrid?”

“The letters were not achieving what we had hoped for. The idea had been to instill an increasing fear in Valls and make him believe there was a plot, orchestrated by David Martín, to take revenge on him and reveal the truth about his past.”

“To what end?”

“To get him to make a false move and return to Barcelona to confront Martín.”

“Which you achieved.”

“Yes, but we were forced to apply more pressure.”

“And that was the murder attempt in 1956?”

“Among other things.”

“Who perpetrated it?”

“Morgado. He wasn’t supposed to kill Valls, just scare him and convince him he wasn’t safe even in his own bunker, and never would be until he came in person to Barcelona to silence David Martín once and for all.”

“But he would never be able to find him, because he was dead.”

“Exactly.”

“What other things, as you were saying, did you do to apply pressure?”

“Ignacio paid a member of his house staff to leave one of my father’s books, Ariadna and the Scarlet Prince, in Valls’s office in Villa Mercedes. It was the night of the masked ball. There was a note in the book, and the list with the numbers of the forged documents we’d discovered until then. It was the last note he received. After that he couldn’t take it any longer.”

“Why did you never go to the police or the press?”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“I’d like to go back to the matter of the list.”

“I’ve already told you everything I know. Why is that list so important to you?”

“It’s a question of getting to the bottom of this business. So we can see justice is done. To find the real architect of this nightmare that you and so many others have lived through.”

“Valls’s partner?”

“Yes. That’s why I have to insist.”

“What do you want to know?”