The bed was neatly made. Opposite it stood a chest of drawers with a number of framed photographs on it. In all of them, without exception, was a boy with fair hair and a cheerful expression. Ismael Marlasca. In some pictures he posed next to his mother or other children. There was no sign of Diego Marlasca in any of them.

The sound of a door banging in the corridor startled me again and I exited the bedroom, leaving the pictures as I’d found them. The door to the room at the end was still swinging back and forth. I walked up to it and stopped for a second before entering, taking a deep breath.

Inside, everything was white. The walls and the ceiling were painted an immaculate white. White silk curtains. A small bed covered with white sheets. A white carpet. White shelves and cupboards. After the darkness that had prevailed throughout the house, the contrast dazzled my vision for a few seconds. The room seemed to be straight out of a fairy tale. There were toys and storybooks on the shelves. A life-size china harlequin sat at a dressing table, looking at himself in the mirror. A mobile of white birds hung from the ceiling. At first sight it looked like the room of a spoilt child, Ismael Marlasca, but it had the oppressive air of a funeral chamber.

I sat on the bed and sighed. Only then did I notice that something in the room seemed out of place. Beginning with the smell. A sickly, sweet stench floated in the air. I stood up and looked around me. On a chest of drawers I saw a china plate with a black candle, its wax melted into a cluster of tears. I turned round. The smell seemed to be coming from the head of the bed. I opened the drawer of the bedside table and found a crucifix broken in three. The stench grew stronger. I walked around the room a few times but was unable to find the source. Then I saw it. There was something under the bed. A tin box, the sort that children use to hold their childhood treasures. I pulled out the box and placed it on the bed. The stench was now more powerful, and penetrating. I ignored my nausea and opened the box. Inside was a white dove, its heart pierced by a needle. I took a step back, covering my mouth and nose, and retreated to the corridor. The harlequin with its jackal smile observed me in the mirror. I ran back to the staircase and hurtled down the stairs, looking for the passage that led to the reading room and the door to the garden. At one point I thought I was lost and the house, like a creature capable of moving its passageways and rooms at will, was trying to prevent me from escaping. At last I sighted the conservatory and ran to the door. Only then, while I was struggling to release the bolt, did I hear malicious laughter behind me and know I was not alone in the house. I turned for an instant and saw a dark figure watching me from the end of the corridor, carrying a shining object in its hand. A knife.

The bolt yielded and I pushed open the door, falling headlong onto the marble tiles surrounding the swimming pool. My face was barely centimetres away from the surface and I could smell the stench of stagnant water. For a moment I peered into the shadows at the bottom of the pool. There was a short break in the clouds and a shaft of sunlight pierced the water, touching the floor with its loose fragments of mosaic. The vision was over in a second: the wheelchair, tilted forward, stranded on the pool floor. The sunlight continued its journey to the deep end and it was there that I saw her: lying against the wall was what looked like a body shrouded in a threadbare white dress. At first I thought it was a doll, with scarlet lips shrivelled by the water and eyes as bright as sapphires. Her red hair undulated gently in the rancid water and her skin was blue. It was Marlasca’s widow. A second later the gap in the clouds closed again and the water was once more a clouded mirror in which I could glimpse only my face and a form that appeared in the doorway of the conservatory behind me, holding a knife. I shot up and ran straight into the garden, crossing the grove, scratching my face and hands on the bushes, until I reached the iron door and was out in the alleyway. I didn’t stop running until I reached the main road. There I turned, out of breath, and saw that Casa Marlasca was once again hidden down its long alleyway, invisible to the world.

I returned home on the same tram, crossing a city that was growing darker by the minute. An icy wind lifted the fallen leaves from the streets. When I got out in Plaza Palacio I heard two sailors, who were walking up from the docks, talking about a storm that was approaching from the sea and would hit the town before nightfall. I looked up and saw a blanket of reddish clouds beginning to cover the sky, spreading over the sea like blood. In the streets surrounding the Borne Market people were rushing to secure doors and windows, shopkeepers were closing early and children came outside to play in the wind, lifting their arms and laughing at the distant roar of thunder. Street lamps flickered and a flash of lightning bathed the buildings in a sudden white light. I hurried to the door of the tower house and rushed up the steps. The rumble of the storm could be felt through the walls, getting closer.

It was so cold indoors that I could see my breath as I stepped into the corridor. I went straight to the room with an old charcoal stove that I had used only four or five times since I’d lived there, and lit it with a wad of old newspapers. I also lit the wood fire in the gallery and sat on the floor facing the flames. My hands were shaking, I didn’t know whether from cold or fear. I waited until I had warmed up, staring out at the web of white light traced by lightning across the sky.

The rain didn’t arrive until nightfall, and when it did, it plummeted in curtains of furious drops that quickly blinded the night and flooded rooftops and alleyways, hitting walls and windowpanes with tremendous force. Little by little, with the help of the stove and the fireplace, the house started to warm up, but I was still cold. I got up and went to the bedroom in search of blankets to wrap around myself. I opened the wardrobe and started to rummage in the two large drawers at the bottom. The case was still there, hidden at the back. I picked it up and placed it on the bed.

I opened the case and stared at my father’s old revolver, the only thing I had left of him. I held it, stroking the trigger with my thumb. I opened the drum and inserted six bullets from the ammunition box in the false bottom of the case. I left the box on the bedside table and took the gun and a blanket back to the gallery. Lying on the sofa wrapped in the blanket, with the gun against my chest, I abandoned myself to the storm behind the windowpanes. I could hear the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece but didn’t need to look at it to realise that there was barely half an hour to go before my meeting with the boss in the billiard room at the Equestrian Club.

I closed my eyes and imagined him travelling through the deserted streets of the city, sitting on the back seat of his car, his golden eyes shining in the dark, the silver angel on the hood of the Rolls-Royce plunging through the storm. I imagined him motionless, like a statue, not breathing or smiling, with no expression at all. I heard the crackle of burning wood and the sound of the rain on the windows; I fell asleep with the weapon in my hands and the certainty that I was not going to keep my appointment.

Shortly after midnight I opened my eyes. The fire was almost out and the gallery was submerged in the flickering half-light projected by the last blue flames in the embers. It continued to rain heavily. The revolver was still in my hands: it felt warm. I remained like that for a few seconds, barely blinking. I knew that there was someone at the door before I heard the knock.