11
That same night Fermín sat in the office waiting for Brians to return from his rounds of courts, offices, practices, prisons and the thousand and one audiences with the high and mighty he had to endure to obtain information. It was almost eleven when he heard the young lawyer’s footsteps approaching down the corridor. He opened the door for him and Brians came in dragging his feet and his soul, looking more crestfallen than ever. He collapsed in a corner and put his hands over his head.
‘What’s happened, Brians?’
‘I’ve just come from the castle.’
‘Bad news?’
‘Worse. Valls refused to see me. They made me wait for four hours and then they told me to leave. They’ve withdrawn my visitor’s licence and my permit for entering the premises.’
‘Did they let you see Martín?’
Brians shook his head.
‘He wasn’t there.’
Fermín looked at him without understanding. Brians didn’t speak for a few moments, searching for the right words.
‘When I was leaving Bebo followed me and told me what he knew. It happened two weeks ago. Martín had been writing like a man possessed, day and night, barely sleeping. Valls suspected something was up and instructed Bebo to confiscate the pages Martín had written so far. Three guards were needed to hold him down and pull the manuscript from him. He’d written over five hundred pages in under two months.
‘Bebo handed them to Valls, and when Valls started to read, it seems he flew into a rage.’
‘It wasn’t what he was expecting, I take it …’
Brians shook his head.
‘Valls spent all night reading and the following morning went up to the tower, escorted by four of his men. He had Martín shackled hand and foot and then stepped into the cell. Bebo was listening through a chink in the cell door and heard part of the conversation. Valls was furious. He told him he was very disappointed in him. He’d handed him the seeds of a masterpiece and Martín, ungratefully, instead of following his instructions, had embarked on that rubbish that made no sense whatsoever. “This isn’t the book I was expecting from you, Martín,” Valls kept repeating.’
‘And what did Martín say?’
‘Nothing. He ignored him. As if he weren’t there. Which made Valls all the more furious. Bebo heard Valls slap and punch Martín, but Martín didn’t utter a sound. When Valls grew tired of hitting and insulting him and getting no response at all, Bebo says that Valls pulled out a letter he had in his pocket, a letter Señor Sempere had written to Martín months before which had been confiscated. In this letter there was a note Isabella had written to Martín on her deathbed …’
‘Son-of-a-bitch …’
‘Valls left him there, locked up with that letter, because he knew that nothing would hurt him more than to know Isabella had died … Bebo says that when Valls left and Martín read the letter he started to scream, and he screamed all night, banging on the walls and the iron door with his hands and with his head …’
Brians looked up and Fermín knelt down in front of him and put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Are you all right, Brians?’
‘I’m his lawyer,’ he said in a shaky voice. ‘I’m supposed to protect him and get him out of there …’
‘You’ve done everything you could, Brians. And Martín knows that.’
Brians dissented, murmuring to himself.
‘And that’s not the end of it,’ he said. ‘Bebo told me that since Valls didn’t allow him any more paper, Martín started writing on the back of the pages the governor had thrown in his face. And as he had no ink, he would cut his hands and arms and use his own blood …
‘Bebo tried to talk to him, to calm him … He no longer accepted the cigarettes or the sugar lumps he liked so much … He didn’t even acknowledge Bebo’s presence. Bebo thinks that when he heard about Isabella’s death he lost his sanity altogether and moved into the hell he’d created in his mind … At night he shouted so loud everyone could hear him. Rumours began to circulate among visitors, prisoners and the prison staff. Valls was getting nervous. Finally, he ordered two of his gunmen to take Martín away one night …’
Fermín gulped.
‘Where to?’
‘Bebo isn’t sure. From what he was able to hear, he thinks he was taken to an old house next to Güell Park … it seems that during the war a number of men were killed in that place and then buried in the garden … When the gunmen returned they told Valls that everything had been taken care of, but Bebo told me that on that very night he heard them talking among themselves and they seemed rattled. Something had happened in the house. It seems there was someone else there.’
‘Someone?’