“What has he done? Why are you looking for him?”
Fumero turned his back on me and went up to the two policemen, who, at a signal from him, let go of my father.
“You’re going to remember this,” spit my father.
Fumero’s eyes rested on his. Instinctively, my father took a step back. I feared that Inspector Fumero’s visit had only just begun, but suddenly the man shook his head, laughing under his breath, and left the apartment. Lerma followed him. The third policeman, my perpetual sentinel, paused for a moment in the doorway. He looked silently at me, as if he wanted to say something.
“Palacios!” yelled Fumero, his voice fading into the echo of the stairwell.
Palacios lowered his eyes and disappeared around the door. I went out to the landing. I could see blades of light emerging from the half-open doors of the neighbors, their frightened faces peeping out into the dark. The three shadowy shapes of the policemen vanished down the stairs, and the angry sound of their footsteps receded like a poisoned tide, leaving behind it a residue of fear.
It was about midnight when we heard more bangs on the door, this time weaker, almost fearful. My father, who was dabbing iodine on the bruise left on my cheek by Fumero’s gun, suddenly froze. Our eyes met. There were three more knocks.
For a moment I thought it was Fermín, who had perhaps witnessed the whole incident hidden in some dark corner of the staircase.
“Who’s there?” asked my father.
“Don Anacleto, Mr. Sempere.”
My father gave out a sigh. We opened the door to find the teacher, looking paler than ever.
“Don Anacleto, what’s the matter? Are you all right?” my father asked, letting him in.
The teacher was holding a folded newspaper. He handed it to us with a horrified look. The paper was still warm, the ink still damp.
“It’s tomorrow’s edition,” murmured Don Anacleto. “Page six.”
What first caught my eye were the two photographs under the heading. The first was a picture of Fermín, with a fuller figure and more hair, perhaps fifteen or twenty years younger. The second showed the face of a woman with her eyes closed and skin like marble. It took me a few seconds to recognize her, because I’d got used to seeing her in the half-light.
TRAMP MURDERS WOMAN
IN BROAD DAYLIGHT
BARCELONA/PRESS AGENCY
Police are looking for the tramp who stabbed a woman to death this afternoon. Her name was Nuria Monfort Masdedeu, and she lived in Barcelona.
The crime took place in midafternoon in the neighborhood of San Gervasio, where the victim was assaulted by the tramp with no apparent motive. According to the Central Police Headquarters, it would appear that the tramp had been following her for reasons that have not yet been made clear.
It seems that the murderer, fifty-five-year-old Antonio José Gutiérrez Alcayete, from Villa Inmunda in the province of Cáceres, is a well-known criminal with a long record of mental illness, who escaped from La Modelo Prison six years ago and has managed to elude the authorities by assuming different identities. At the moment of the crime, he was dressed in a cassock. He is armed, and the police describe him as highly dangerous. It is not yet known whether the victim and her murderer knew each other, although sources from Police Headquarters indicate that everything points toward that hypothesis; nor is it known what may have been the motive behind the crime. The victim was stabbed six times in her stomach, chest, and throat. The attack, which took place close to a school, was witnessed by a number of pupils, who alerted the teachers. These in turn called the police and an ambulance. According to the police report, death was caused by multiple wounds. The victim was pronounced dead on arrival at the Hospital Clínico of Barcelona, at 6: 15 PM.
·41·
WE HAD NO NEWS FROM FERMÍN ALL DAY. MY FATHER INSISTED on opening the bookshop as usual to offer a show of normality and innocence. The police had posted an officer by the door to our stairs, and another watched over Plaza de Santa Ana, sheltering beneath the church door like the effigy of a saint. We could see them shivering under the intense rain that had arrived with the dawn, the steam from their breath becoming less visible as the day wore on, their hands buried in the pockets of their raincoats. A few neighbors walked straight past, with a quick glance through the shop window, but not a single buyer ventured in.
“The rumor must have spread,” I said.
My father only nodded. He’d spent all morning without speaking to me, expressing himself only with gestures. The page with the news of Nuria Monfort’s murder lay on the counter. Every twenty minutes he would wander over and reread it with an inscrutable expression. All day long he had been bottling up his anger, letting it accumulate inside him.
“However many times you read the article, it’s not going to be true,” I said.
My father raised his head and looked at me severely. “Did you know this person? Nuria Monfort?”
“I’d spoken to her a couple of times.”
Nuria Monfort’s face took over my thoughts. My lack of honesty was nauseating. I was still haunted by her smell and the touch of her lips, the image of that desk so impeccably tidy and her sad, wise eyes. “A couple of times.”
“Why did you have to speak to her? What did she have to do with you?”