The Prisoner of Heaven (The Cemetery of Forgotten 3)

‘You heard it. Good old Salgado, still convalescing from his most recent session of medieval amputation, decides to celebrate being back on his feet by exploring that long-underrated area of human anatomy where Mother Nature has decreed the sun doesn’t shine. I can’t believe my eyes and don’t even dare breathe. A minute goes by and Salgado looks as if he has two or three fingers, all the ones he has left, stuck in there in search of the philosopher’s stone or some very deep piles. All of which is accompanied by a low, hushed moaning which I’m not going to bother to reproduce.’

‘I’m dumbfounded,’ said Martín.

‘Then brace yourself for the grand finale. After a minute or two of prospective digging, he lets out a Saint John of the Cross-type sigh and the miracle happens. When he removes his fingers from anal territory he pulls out something shiny that even from the corner where I’m lying I can certify is no standard faecal arrangement, pardon my French.’

‘So what was it, then?’

‘A key. Not a spanner, just one of those small keys, the sort used for briefcases or a locker in the gym.’

‘What then?’

‘Then he takes the key, polishes it with a bit of spit – because I imagine it must have smelled of roses – and then goes over to the wall where, after making sure I’m still asleep, a fact that I confirm through finely rendered snores, like those of a Saint Bernard puppy, he proceeds to hide the key by inserting it in a crack between stones which he then covers with filth and, I dare say, some collateral resulting from his explorations in his nether parts.’

For a while Martín and Fermín looked at one another without speaking.

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ asked Fermín.

Martín nodded.

‘How much do you reckon the old crap shooter must have hidden in his little nest of greed?’ asked Fermín.

‘Enough to believe that it’s worth his while to lose fingers, hands, part of his testicular mass and God knows what else to keep its whereabouts secret,’ Martín guessed.

‘And what do I do now? Before I let a snake like the governor snatch Salgado’s little treasure – to fund hardback editions of his collected works and buy himself a seat in the Royal Academy of Language – I’d rather swallow that key, or, if necessary, even introduce it into the ignoble part of my own digestive tract.’

‘Don’t do anything for the time being,’ Martín advised. ‘Make sure the key is still there and await my instructions. I’m putting the finishing touches to your escape.’

‘No offence, Señor Martín, since I’m extremely grateful for your counsel and moral support, but you’re getting me to put my head and some other esteemed appendages on the block with this idea of yours, and considering the general consensus that you’re as mad as a hatter, it troubles me to think I’m placing my life in your hands.’

‘None taken, but, if you don’t trust a novelist, who are you going to trust??

??

Fermín watched Martín walk off down the yard wrapped in his portable cloud of cigarette-stub smoke.

‘Holy mother of God,’ he murmured to the wind.

13

The macabre betting syndicate organised by Number 17 continued to thrive for a few more days during which Salgado sometimes looked as if he were about to expire and then, just as suddenly, would get up, drag himself to the bars of the cell and declaim at the top of his voice the stanza: ‘You-fucking-bastards-you’re-not-getting-a-penny-out-of-me-you-fucking-sons-of-bitches’ and variations on the theme, until he screamed himself hoarse and collapsed exhausted on the floor, from where Fermín had to lift him and take him back to the bed.

‘Is old Cockroach succumbing, Fermín?’ asked Number 17 every time he heard him slump to the floor.

Fermín no longer bothered giving medical updates on his cellmate. If it happened, they’d soon see the canvas sack passing by.

‘Look here, Salgado, if you’re going to die, do so once and for all, and if you plan to live, I beg you to do it silently because I’m fed up to the back teeth with your foaming-at-the-mouth recitals,’ Fermín told him, tucking him up with a piece of dirty canvas. In Bebo’s absence, he’d managed to obtain it from one of the jailers after winning him over with a foolproof strategy for seducing young girls – by overcoming their resistance with carefully measured doses of whipped cream and sponge fingers.

‘Don’t give me that charitable crap. I know what you’re up to. You’re no better than this pack of vultures willing to bet their underpants that I’m going to croak,’ Salgado replied. He seemed ready to keep up his foul mood to the very end.

‘I’m not one to argue with a man in his death throes but I’m letting you know that I haven’t bet a single real in this gambling den, and if I ever wanted to give myself over to vice it wouldn’t be betting on the life of a human being. Although you’re as much a human being as I’m a glow-worm,’ Fermín pronounced.

‘Don’t think for a minute that all that talk of yours is going to distract me,’ Salgado snapped back maliciously. ‘I know perfectly well what you and your bosom friend Martín are plotting with all that Count of Monte Cristo business.’

‘I don’t know what you’re babbling about, Salgado. Sleep for a bit, or for a year, since nobody’s going to miss you anyhow.’

‘If you think you’re getting out of this place you’re as mad as he is.’

Fermín felt a cold sweat on his back. Salgado bared his smashed teeth in a smile.