“You’re the one who doesn’t realize, Martín. The clock is ticking, and instead of telling me what you did with Cristina Sagnier, you persist in trying to convince me with a story that sounds like something from City of the Damned. There’s only one trap here: the one you’ve laid for yourself. And every moment that goes by without you telling me the truth makes it more difficult for me to get you out of it.”
Grandes waved his hand in front of my eyes a couple of times, as if he wanted to make sure that I could still see.
“No? Nothing? As you wish. Let me finish telling you what the day had to offer. After my visit to Irene Sabino I was beginning to feel rather tired, so I returned for a while to police headquarters, where I still found the time and the energy to call the Civil Guard barracks in Puigcerdà. They’ve confirmed that you were seen leaving Cristina Sagnier’s hospital room on the night she disappeared, that you never returned to your hotel to collect your baggage, and that the head of the sanatorium told them you’d cut the straps that held down the patient. I then called an old friend of yours, Pedro Vidal, who was kind enough to come over to police headquarters. The poor man is devastated. He told me that the last time you two met you hit him. Is that true?”
I nodded.
“I must tell you that he doesn’t hold it against you. In fact, he almost tried to persuade me to let you go. He says there must be an explanation for all this. That you’ve had a difficult life. That it was his fault you lost your father. That he feels responsible. All he wants is to recover his wife and he has no intention of retaliating against you in any way.”
“You’ve told Vidal the whole thing?”
“I had no option.”
I hid my face in my hands.
“What did he say?” I asked.
Grandes shrugged.
“He thinks you’ve lost your mind. He thinks you must be innocent and he doesn’t want anything to happen to you, whether you’re innocent or not. His family is another matter. I know for certain that Vidal’s father has secretly offered Marcos and Castelo a bonus if they extract a confession from you in less than twelve hours. They’ve assured him that in one morning they’ll get you to recite the entire Cartigó epic.”
“And what do you think?”
“The truth? The truth is that I’d like to believe Pedro Vidal is right and you’ve lost your mind.”
I didn’t tell him that at that very moment I was beginning to believe it too. Then I looked at Grandes and noticed something in his expression that didn’t add up.
“There’s something you haven’t told me,” I remarked.
“I’d say I’ve told you more than enough,” he retorted.
“What haven’t you told me?”
Grandes observed me attentively and then tried to hide his laughter.
“This morning you told me that the night Señor Sempere died he was overheard arguing with someone in the bookshop. You suspected that the person in question wanted to buy a book, a book of yours, and when Sempere refused to sell it, there was a fight and the bookseller suffered a heart attack. According to you, this item was almost unique, one of a handful of copies in existence. What was the book called?”
“The Steps of Heaven.”
“Exactly. That is the book which, according to you, was stolen the night Sempere died.”
I nodded. The inspector pulled a cigarette out of the packet and lit it. He took a couple of long drags, then put it out.
“This is my dilemma, Martín. On the one hand you’ve told me a pile of cock and bull stories that either you’ve invented, thinking I’m an idiot or—and I’m not sure if this is worse—you’ve started to believe yourself from repeating them so often. Everything points to you, and the easiest thing for me would be to wash my hands of all this and pass you over to Marcos and Castelo.”
“But—”
“But, and it’s a tiny, insignificant but, a but that my colleagues would have no problem at all dismissing altogether. And yet it bothers me like a speck of dust in my eye and makes me wonder whether, perhaps—and what I’m about to say contradicts everything I’ve learned in twenty years doing this job—what you’ve told me is not the truth but is not false either.”
“All I can say is that I’ve told you what I remember, Inspector. You may or may not believe me. The truth is that at times I don’t even believe myself. But it’s what I remember.”
Grandes stood up and began to walk around the table.
“This afternoon, when I was talking to María Antonia Sanahuja, or Irene Sabino, in her pension, I asked her if she knew who you were. She said she didn’t. I explained that you lived in the tower house where she and Marlasca spent a few months. I asked her again if she remembered you. She said she didn’t. A while later I told her that you’d visited the Marlasca family tomb and that you were sure you’d seen her there. For the third time that woman denied ever having seen you. And I believed her. I believed her until, as I was leaving, she told me she was feeling a bit cold and she opened her wardrobe to take out a wool shawl and put it around her shoulders. I noticed that there was a book on the table. It caught my eye because it was the only book in the room. While she had her back to me, I opened it and I read a handwritten inscription on the first page.”
“‘To Señor Sempere, the best friend a book could ever have: you opened the doors to the world for me and showed me how to go through them,’” I quoted from memory.
“Signed by David Martín,” Grandes completed.