‘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 pensión, 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 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 woollen shawl and put it around her shoulders. I then 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.

The inspector stopped in front of the window.

‘In half an hour they’ll come for you and I’ll be taken off the case,’ he said. ‘You’ll be handed over to Sergeant Marcos, and I’ll no longer be able to help you. Have you anything else to tell me that might allow me to save your neck?’

‘No.’

‘Then grab that ridiculous revolver you’ve been hiding for hours in your coat and, taking great care not to shoot yourself in the foot, threaten that if I don’t hand you the key that opens this door, you’ll blow my head off.’

I turned towards the door.

‘In exchange I ask only that you tell me where Cristina Sagnier is, if she’s still alive, that is.’

I looked down. I couldn’t find my voice.

‘Did you kill her?’

I let a long silence go by.

‘I don’t know.’

Grandes came over and handed me the key to the door.

‘Get the hell out of here, Martín.’

I hesitated for a second before taking it.

‘Don’t use the main staircase. At the end of the corridor, to your left, there’s a blue door that only opens from the inside and will take you to the fire escape. The exit is on the back alley.’

‘How can I thank you?’

‘You can start by not wasting time. You have around thirty minutes before the whole department will be hot on your heels. Don’t waste them.’

I took the key and walked to the door. Before leaving I turned round briefly. Grandes had sat down at the table and was looking at me, his expression blank.

‘That brooch with the angel,’ he said, touching his lapel.

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve seen you wearing it on your lapel ever since I met you,’ he said.

The streets of the Raval quarter were tunnels of shadows dotted with flickering street lamps that barely grazed the darkness. It took me a little over the thirty minutes granted to me by Inspector Grandes to discover that there were two laundries in Calle Cadena. The first, scarcely a cave behind a flight of stairs that glistened with steam, employed only children with violet-stained hands and yellow eyes. The second was an emporium of filth that stank of bleach, and it was hard to believe that anything clean could ever emerge from there. It was run by a large woman who, at the sight of a few coins, wasted no time in admitting that María Antonia Sanahuja worked there six afternoons a week.

‘What has she done now?’ the matron asked.

‘It’s an inheritance. Tell me where I can find her and perhaps some of it will come your way.’

The matron laughed, but her eyes shone with greed.

‘As far as I know she lives in Pensión Santa Lucía, in Calle Marqués de Barberá. How much has she inherited?’

I dropped the coins on the counter and got out of that grimy hole without bothering to reply.

The pensión where Irene Sabino lived languished in a sombre building that looked as if it had been assembled with disinterred bones and stolen headstones. The metal plates on the letter boxes inside the entrance hall were covered in rust. There were no names on the ones for the first two floors. The third floor housed a dressmaking workshop pompously entitled the Mediterranean Textile Company. The fourth floor was occupied by Pensión Santa Lucía. A narrow staircase rose in the gloom, and the dampness from the sewers filtered through the walls, eating away at the paint like acid. After walking up four floors I reached a sloping landing with just one door. I banged on it with my fist. A few minutes later the door was opened by a tall, thin man, seemingly escaped from an El Greco nightmare.

‘I’m looking for María Antonia Sanahuja,’ I said.

‘Are you the doctor?’ he asked.

I pushed him to one side and went in. The apartment was a jumble of dark, narrow rooms clustered either side of a corridor that ended in a large window overlooking the inner courtyard. The air was rank with the stench rising from the drains. The man who had opened the door was still standing on the threshold, looking at me in confusion. I assumed he must be one of the residents.

‘Which is her room?’ I asked.

He gave me an impenetrable look. I pulled out the revolver and showed it to him. Without losing his calm, the man pointed to the last door in the passage. When I got there I realised that it was locked and began to struggle with the handle. The other residents had stepped out into the corridor, a chorus of forgotten souls who looked as if they hadn’t seen the sun for years. I recalled my miserable days in Doña Carmen’s pensión and it occurred to me that my old home looked like the new Ritz Hotel compared to this purgatory, which was only one of many in the maze of the Raval quarter.

‘Go back to your rooms,’ I said.

No one seemed to have heard me. I raised my hand, showing my weapon. They all darted back into their rooms like frightened rodents, except for the tall Knight of the Doleful Countenance. I concentrated on the door once again.

‘She’s locked the door from the inside,’ the resident explained. ‘She’s been there all afternoon.’

A smell that reminded me of bitter almonds seeped under the door. I knocked a few times, but got no reply.

‘The landlady has a master key,’ suggested the resident. ‘If you can wait… I don’t think she’ll be long.’

My only reply was to take a step back and hurl myself with all my might against the door. The lock gave way after the second charge. As soon as I found myself in the room, I was overwhelmed by that bitter, nauseating smell.

‘My God,’ mumbled the resident behind my back.

The ex-star of the Paralelo lay on a ramshackle bed, pale and covered in sweat. Her lips were black and when she saw me she smiled. Her hands clutched the bottle of poison; she had swallowed it down to the last drop. The stench from her breath filled the room. The resident covered his nose and mouth with his hand and went outside. I gazed at Irene Sabino writhing in pain while the poison ate away at her insides. Death was taking its time.

‘Where’s Marlasca?’

She looked at me through tears of agony.

‘He no longer needed me,’ she said. ‘He’s never loved me.’

Her voice was harsh and broken. A dry cough seized her, a piercing sound ripping from her chest, and a second later a dark liquid trickled through her teeth. Irene Sabino observed me as she clung to the last breath of life. She took my hand and pressed it hard.

‘You’re damned, like him.’

‘What can I do?’

She shook her head. A new coughing fit seized her. The capillaries in her eyes were breaking and a web of bleeding lines spread towards her pupils.