It took me fifteen minutes to get to the hotel. Although it can’t have been more than ten degrees Centigrade I was perspiring and short of breath. The doorman eyed me suspiciously, but he opened the door and allowed me in with the merest hint of a bow. The layout of the lobby puzzled me: it looked like the setting for a spy story or a decadent romantic saga. My limited experience of luxury hotels had not prepared me to work out what was what. I noticed a counter, behind which stood a conscientious receptionist observing me with a mixture of curiosity and alarm. I walked over to him with a smile that failed to impress him.
‘The restaurant, please?’
The receptionist examined me with polite scepticism.
‘Do you have a reservation, sir?’
‘I have a meeting with a hotel guest.’
The receptionist smiled coldly and nodded.
‘You’ll find the restaurant at the end of that corridor, sir.’
‘Much obliged.’
I made my way there with my heart in my mouth. I had no idea what I was going to say or do when I came face to face with Bea and that man. I was met by the head waiter who stopped me in my tracks. His expression, behind a stiff smile, betrayed scant approval of my attire.
‘Do you have a reservation, sir?’ he asked.
I shoved him aside and walked into the dining hall. Most tables were empty. An elderly couple with a mummified air and nineteenth-century manners interrupted their solemn soup-sipping to stare at me in disgust. A few more tables were occupied by what seemed to be dull businessmen accompanied by one or two incongruously attractive ladies, most likely to be billed as corporate expenses. There was no sign of Cascos or Bea.
The head waiter was approaching, flanked by two assistants. I turned round to face him and smiled politely.
‘Didn’t Señor Cascos Buendía have a reservation for two o’clock?’ I asked.
‘Señor Cascos asked to have his meal taken up to his suite,’ the head waiter informed me.
I checked my watch. It was twenty past two. I made my way to the corridor with the lifts. One of the doormen had his eye on me but before he could reach me I’d already slipped into one of the lifts. I pressed the button for one of the upper floors forgetting that I had no idea where the Continental Suite was.
‘Start at the top,’ I told myself.
I got out of the lift on the seventh floor and began to wander down grand corridors, all of them deserted. After a while I came across a door leading to the fire-escape stairs and walked down to the floor below. I went from door to door, looking unsuccessfully for the Continental Suite. It was two thirty by my watch. On the fifth floor I came across a maid dragging a trolley filled with feather dusters, bars of soap and towels and asked her where the suite was. She gave me a worried look, but I must have frightened her enough for her to point upwards.
‘Eighth floor.’
I preferred to avoid the lifts in case the hotel staff were looking for me. Three flights of stairs and a long corridor later I reached the doors of the Continental Suite dripping with sweat. I stood there for a second to catch my breath, trying to imagine what was going on behind the thick wooden door and wondering whether I still had enough common sense to walk away. I thought I could see someone observing me from the other end of the corridor and feared it might be one of the doormen, but when I looked closer the figure disappeared round the corner. It must have been another hotel guest, I imagined. Finally I rang the doorbell.
10
I heard footsteps. The image of Bea doing up her blouse flashed through my mind. A turn of the doorknob. I clenched my fists. A guy with slicked-back hair, wearing a white bathrobe and five-star hotel slippers, opened the door. Some years had passed, but one never forgets faces one wholeheartedly detests.
‘Sempere?’ he asked incredulously.
The punch landed between his upper lip and his nose. I felt his flesh and cartilage tearing under my fist. Cascos put his hands to his face and staggered, blood spouting through his fingers. I pushed him hard against the wall and stepped into the room. I heard Cascos tumble to the floor behind me. The bed was made and a steaming plate of food lay on a table facing the terrace with a privileged view of the Gran Vía. Only one place had been set. I turned and confronted Cascos, who was trying to get up by holding on to a chair.
‘Where is she?’
Cascos’s face was deformed with pain, blood dripping down on to his chest. I could see I’d cut his lip open and almost certainly broken his nose. I noticed a sharp burning sensation on my knuckles and when I looked at my hand I saw I’d grazed my skin when I smashed his face in. I felt no remorse whatsoever.
‘She didn’t come. Happy?’ spat Cascos.
‘Since when do you devote your time to writing to my wife?’
I thought he was laughing and before he could utter another word I hurled myself against him again and dealt him a second punch with all my pent-up anger. The blow loosened his teeth and left my hand feeling numb. Cascos groaned in agony and collapsed into the chair he had been leaning on. When he saw me bending over him he covered his face with his arms. I sank my hands into his neck and pressed my fingers into his flesh as if I were trying to rip out his throat.
‘What have you got to do with Valls?’
Cascos stared at me with a terrified expression, convinced that I was going to kill him then and there. He mumbled something unintelligible. Saliva and blood dripped from his mouth on to my hands.