I turned my head toward the door.
“There’s only one way of getting out of this room, Martín,” said the inspector, showing me a key.
Once again, I felt the weight of the gun in my coat pocket.
“Where would you like me to start?”
“You’re the narrator. All I ask of you is that you tell me the truth.”
“I don’t know what the truth is.”
“The truth is what hurts.”
…
For a little over two hours, Víctor Grandes didn’t once open his mouth. He listened attentively, nodding every now and then and jotting in his notebook. At first I looked at him, but soon I forgot he was there and realized that I was telling the story to myself. The words made me travel to a time I had thought lost, to the night when my father was murdered at the gates of the newspaper building. I remembered my days in the offices of The Voice of Industry, the years I’d survived by writing stories through the night, and that first letter signed by Andreas Corelli promising me great expectations. I remembered my first meeting with the boss in the water reservoir building and the days in which the certainty of imminent death was the only horizon before me. I spoke to him about Cristina, about Vidal, and about a story whose end anyone might have guessed but me. I spoke to him about the two books I had written, one under my own name and the other using Vidal’s, about the loss of those miserable expectations and about the afternoon when I saw my mother drop into a waste bin the one good thing I thought I’d done in my life. I wasn’t looking for pity or understanding from the inspector. It was enough for me to try to trace an imaginary map of the events that had led me to that room, to that moment of complete emptiness. I returned to the house next to Güell Park and the night when the boss had made me an offer I could not refuse. I confessed my first suspicions, my discoveries about the history of the tower house, the strange death of Diego Marlasca, and the web of deceit in which I’d become ensnared—or which I had chosen in order to satisfy my vanity, my greed, and my desire to live at any price. To live so that I could tell the story.
I left nothing out. Nothing except the most important part, the part I did not even dare tell myself. In the account I gave Grandes, I returned to the sanatorium to look for Cristina but all I found was a trail of footsteps lost in the snow. Perhaps, if I repeated those words over and over again, even I would end up believing that was what had happened. My story ended that very morning, when I returned from the Somorrostro shacks to discover that Diego Marlasca wanted to add my portrait to the lineup the inspector had placed on the table.
When I finished my tale I fell into a deep silence. I had never felt as tired in all my life. I wanted to go to sleep and never wake again. Grandes was observing me from the other side of the table. He seemed confused, sad, angry—and lost.
“Say something,” I said.
Grandes sighed. He got up from his chair and went over to the window, turning his back to me. I pictured myself pulling the gun out of my coat, shooting him in the neck, and getting out of there with the key he kept in his pocket. In sixty seconds I could be on the street again.
“The reason we’re talking is because a telegram arrived yesterday from the Civil Guard barracks in Puigcerdà, stating that Cristina Sagnier has disappeared from the sanatorium and you’re the main suspect. The doctor in charge of the center says that you’d wanted to take her away and that he’d refused to discharge her. I’m telling you all this so that you understand exactly why we’re here in this room, with hot coffee and cigarettes, talking like old friends. We’re here because the wife of one of the richest men in Barcelona has disappeared and you’re the only person who knows where she is. We’re here because the father of your friend Pedro Vidal, one of the most powerful men in this town, has taken a personal interest in the case. It appears that he’s an old acquaintance of yours and has politely asked my superiors that we obtain the information we need before laying a finger on you, leaving other considerations for later. Had it not been for that and for my insistence that I wanted to try to clarify the matter in my own way, right now you’d be in a cell in Campo de la Bota. And instead of speaking to me you’d be talking directly to Marcos and Castelo, who, for your information, think any course of action that doesn’t start with breaking your knees with a hammer is a waste of time and mi
ght put Señora de Vidal’s life in danger. This is an opinion that my superiors, who think I’m giving you too much leeway, are endorsing more heartily with every passing minute.”
Grandes turned and looked at me, restraining his anger.
“You haven’t listened to me,” I said. “You haven’t listened to anything I’ve said.”
“I’ve listened to you perfectly well, Martín. I’ve listened to how, when you were a desperate, dying man, you entered into a pact with a mysterious Parisian publisher whom nobody has ever heard of to invent, in your own words, a new religion in exchange for a hundred thousand French francs, only to discover that you had fallen into a sinister plot involving a lawyer, who faked his death twenty-five years ago to escape a destiny that is now your own, and this lawyer’s lover, a chorus girl who had known better days. I have listened to how this destiny led you into the trap of an accursed old house that had already trapped your predecessor, Diego Marlasca; and how you found proof in that house that somebody was following you and murdering anyone who might reveal the secret of a man who, judging from your own words, is almost as mad as you. The man in the shadows, who adopted the identity of a former policeman to hide the fact that he is alive, has been committing a number of crimes with the help of his lover, and those include provoking the death of Señor Sempere, for some strange motive that not even you are able to explain.”
“Irene Sabino killed Sempere when she was trying to steal a book from him. A book that she thought contained my soul.”
Grandes hit his forehead with the palm of his hand as if he’d just stumbled on the crux of the matter.
“Of course. How stupid of me. That explains it all. Like that business about the terrible secret revealed to you by a sorceress on Bogatell beach. The Witch of Somorrostro. I like that. Very typical of you. Let’s see whether I’ve understood this correctly. This Señor Marlasca has imprisoned a soul in order to mask his own soul and thus escape from some sort of curse. Tell me, did you get that out of City of the Damned or have you just invented it?”
“I haven’t invented anything.”
“Put yourself in my position and tell me whether you would have believed a single word you’ve said.”
“I suppose I wouldn’t. But I’ve told you everything I know.”
“Of course. You’ve given me information and specific details so that I can check the truth of your story, from your visit to Dr. Trías to your account at Banco Hispano Colonial, your own gravestone waiting for you in a Pueblo Nuevo workshop, and even a legal connection between the man you call ‘the boss’ and Valera’s law firm, not to mention many other clues that are not unworthy of your skill in spinning detective yarns. The only thing that you have not told me and that, in all frankness, for your good and mine, I was hoping to hear is where I can find Cristina Sagnier.”
I realized that all that could save me at that moment was a lie. The moment I told him the truth about Cristina, my hours were numbered.
“I don’t know where she is.”
“You’re lying.”
“I told you that telling you the truth wouldn’t be of any use,” I answered.
“Except to make me look like an idiot for wanting to help you.”