“Feed who?”

The old man shrugged.

“Valls?”

“I don’t know his name. They left this gun with me and ordered me to kill him and throw him into the well if they didn’t come back in three days’ time. But I’m not a murderer . . .”

“How long ago was this?”

“I don’t know. Days ago.”

“Who told you he would come back?”

“A police captain. He didn’t give me his name. He gave me money. It’s yours if you want it.”

Daniel shook his head. “Where’s that man? Valls.”

“Downstairs . . .” The old man pointed to the metal door at the far end of the kitchen.

“Give me the keys.”

“Have you come to kill him, then?”

“The keys.”

The old man looked in his pockets and handed him a bunch of keys.

“Are you with them? With the police? I’ve done everything I was told to do, but I couldn’t kill him . . .”

“What’s your name?”

“Manuel. Manuel Requejo.”

“Go home, Manuel.”

“I have no home. . . . I live in a shed, back there, in the woods.”

“Leave this place.”

The old man nodded. He got on his feet with some difficulty, holding on to the table to steady himself.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Daniel said. “I thought you were someone else.”

Avoiding his eyes, the man dragged himself toward the exit.

“You’re going to do him a favor,” he said.

5

Behind the metal door was a room in which a few shelves held cans of food. There was an opening on the wall at the far end, and beyond it Daniel thought he could make out a tunnel hollowed out in the stone, descending steeply. As soon as he stuck his head into the opening he was hit by an intense odor rising from underground, an animal stink of excrement, blood, and fear. Covering his face with his hand, he listened through the shadows. A flashlight was hanging on the wall. He switched it on, sending the beam of light into the tunnel. Steps carved out of the rock disappeared into a well of darkness.

He went down slowly. The walls oozed damp, and the ground was slippery. He reckoned he must have descended some ten meters by the time he saw the end of the stairs. There the tunnel widened and spread into a recess the size of a room. The stench was so powerful that it clouded the senses. As he swept through the darkness with the flashlight, he saw the bars separating the two halves of the chamber hollowed in the rock. Daniel shone the beam around the cell without understanding. It was empty. Until he heard the murmur of laborious breathing and noticed a corner with shadows that unfolded into a skeletal silhouette, he didn’t realize he’d been mistaken. There was something trapped in there, creeping toward the light, something he had trouble identifying as a man.

Eyes that were burned by the dark, eyes that seemed not to see, veiled by a layer of white. Those eyes were searching him. The silhouette, a tangle of rags covering a bag of bones that was swathed with dried blood, filth, and urine, grabbed one of the bars and tried to stand up. He only had one hand. Where the other one should have been, there was only a festering, burned stump. The creature remained close to the bars, as if he wanted to smell Daniel. Suddenly the creature smiled, and Daniel realized he’d seen the gun he was holding.