The Angel's Game (57 page)

“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 rickety, disheveled 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 of her 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 toward her pupils.

“Where is Ricardo Salvador? Is he in Marlasca’s grave, in the mausoleum?”

Irene Sabino shook her head. Her lips formed a soundless word:
Jaco.

“Where is Salvador, then?”

“He knows where you are. He can see you. He’ll come for you.”

I thought she was becoming delirious. Her grip weakened.

“I loved him,” she said. “He was a good man. A good man. He changed him. He was a good man …”

The terrible sound of disintegrating flesh emerged from her lips, and her body was racked by spasms. Irene Sabino died with her eyes fixed on mine, taking the secret of Diego Marlasca with her.

I covered her face with a sheet. In the doorway, the resident made the sign of the cross. I looked around me, trying to find something that might help, some clue to indicate what my next step should be. Irene Sabino had spent her last days in a four-by-two-meter cell. There were no windows. The metal bed on which her corpse lay, a wardrobe on the other side, and a small table against the wall were the only furniture. A suitcase sat under the bed, next to a chamber pot and a hatbox. On the table lay a plate with a few bread crumbs, a jug of water, and a pile of what looked like postcards but turned out to be images of saints and memorial cards given out at funerals. Folded in a white cloth was something shaped like a book. I unwrapped it and found the copy of
The Steps of Heaven
that I had dedicated to Señor Sempere. The compassion awoken in me by the woman’s suffering evaporated in an instant. This wretched woman had killed my good friend, and all because she wanted to take this lousy book from him. And yet, as Sempere told me, every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it. Sempere had died believing in those words and I could see that, in her own way, Irene Sabino had also believed in them.

I turned the pages and reread the dedication. I found the first mark on the seventh page. A brownish line, in the shape of a six-pointed star, identical to the one she had engraved on my chest with the razor edge some weeks earlier. I realized that the line had been drawn with blood. I went on turning the pages and finding new motifs. Lips. A hand. Eyes. Sempere had given his life for some paltry fortune-teller’s mumbo jumbo.

I put the book in the inside pocket of my coat and knelt down by the bed. I pulled out the suitcase and emptied its contents on the floor: nothing but old clothes and shoes. In the hatbox I found a leather case
containing the razor with which Irene Sabino had made the marks on my chest. Suddenly I noticed a shadow crossing the floor and I spun round, aiming the revolver. The tall, thin resident looked at me in surprise.

“I think you have company,” he said.

I went out of the room and headed for the front door. As I stepped onto the landing I heard footsteps climbing the stairs. A face appeared in the stairwell, squinting up, and I found myself looking straight into the eyes of Sergeant Marcos two floors down. He moved out of sight and his steps quickened. He was not alone. I closed the door and leaned against it, trying to think. My accomplice observed me expectantly.

“Is there any other way out of here?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“What about the roof terrace?”

He pointed to the door I had just shut. Three seconds later I felt the impact of Marcos and Castelo’s bodies as they tried to knock it down. I moved away, backing along the corridor with my gun pointed toward the door.

“I think I’ll go to my room,” the resident said. “It’s been a pleasure.”

“Same here.”

I fixed my eyes on the door, which was shuddering with every blow. The old wood around the hinges and the lock began to crack. By now I was at the end of the corridor and I opened the window overlooking the inner courtyard. A vertical shaft approximately one meter square plunged into the shadows below. The edge of the flat roof was just visible some three meters above the window. On the other side of the shaft a drainpipe was secured to the wall by means of round metal bands, all corroded by rust, with black tears of damp oozing down the spattered surface of the pipe. Behind me, Marcos and Castelo continued to thunder at the door. I turned round and saw that it was almost off its hinges. I reckoned I had only a few seconds left: there was no alternative but to climb onto the windowsill and jump.

I managed to grab hold of the drainpipe and rest a foot on one of the bands that supported it. I stretched up, reaching for the upper section
of the pipe, but as soon as I seized it, it came away in my hand and a whole meter of the pipe tumbled down the shaft. I almost fell with it, too, but managed to hold on to a piece of metal that attached one of the bands to the wall. The drainpipe on which I had hoped to climb up to the flat roof was now impassable. There were only two ways out of my current situation: to return to the corridor that Marcos and Castelo were about to enter at any moment or to descend into the black gorge. I heard the door being flung against the inside wall of the apartment and let myself begin to slide, holding on to the drainpipe as best I could, tearing off quite a bit of skin in the process. I had managed to descend about a meter and a half when I saw the shape of the two policemen in the beam of light cast by the window onto the darkness of the shaft. Marcos’s face was the first to appear as he leaned out. He smiled. I asked myself whether he was going shoot me right there and then. Castelo popped up next to him.

“Stay here. I’ll go down to the apartment below,” Marcos ordered.

Castelo nodded. They wanted me alive, at least for a few hours. I heard Marcos running away. It wouldn’t be long before I saw him looking out the window scarcely a meter below. I glanced down and saw that there was light at the windows of the second and first floors, but the third floor was in darkness. Carefully I lowered myself until I felt my foot touching the next band. The third-floor window was now in front of me, with an empty corridor leading from it toward the door at the far end. I could hear Marcos knocking. By that time of day the dressmakers had already closed and nobody was there. The knocking stopped and I realized that Marcos had gone down to the second floor to try his luck there. I looked up and saw that Castelo was still watching me, licking his lips like a cat.

“Don’t fall—we’re going to have some fun when we catch you,” he said.

I heard voices on the second floor and knew that Marcos had succeeded in getting into the apartment. Without thinking twice, I threw myself with all the strength I could muster against the window of the third floor. I smashed through the windowpane, keeping my face and neck covered
with my coat, and landed in a pool of broken glass. I hauled myself up and, as I did so, noticed a dark stain spreading across my left arm. A shard of glass, sharp as a dagger, protruded just above my elbow. I caught hold of it and pulled. The cold sensation gave way to a blaze of pain that made me fall to my knees. From the floor I saw that Castelo had started to climb down the drainpipe. Before I was able to pull out the gun, he leaped toward the window. I saw his hands grabbing hold of the outer frame. Instinctively, I jumped up and started hammering at the frame with all my might, putting the whole weight of my body behind every blow. I heard the bones in his fingers break with a dry, snapping sound, and Castelo howled in pain. I pulled out the gun and pointed it at his face, but his hands had already begun to slip. A second of terror in his eyes, and then he fell down the shaft, his body ricocheting against the walls, leaving a trail of blood in the patches of light that filtered through from the lower windows.

I dragged myself toward the front door. The wound on my arm was throbbing and I could feel a few cuts on my legs, but I kept moving. On either side of the passageway there were rooms in semidarkness full of sewing machines, bobbins of thread, and tables topped with large rolls of material. I reached the main door and took hold of the handle. A tenth of a second later I felt it turn. Marcos was on the other side, attempting to force the lock. I retreated a few steps. A huge roar suddenly shook the door and part of the lock shot out in a cloud of sparks and blue smoke. Marcos was going to blast the lock away. I took shelter in the nearest room, which was filled with motionless figures, some with arms or legs missing: shop-window mannequins all piled up together. I slipped in between the torsos just as I heard a second shot. The front door opened with a bang. A halo of gunpowder floated in the hazy yellow light that seeped in from the landing. I heard Marcos fumbling with the door, then the sound of his heavy footsteps in the hallway. Glued to the wall, hiding behind the dummies, I clutched the revolver in trembling hands.

“Martín, come out,” Marcos said calmly as he advanced. “I’m not going to hurt you. I have orders from Grandes to take you to the police station. We’ve found that man Marlasca. He’s confessed to everything.
You’re clean. Don’t go and do something stupid now. Come on, let’s talk about this at police headquarters.”

I saw him walk past the doorway of the room where I was hiding.

“Martín, listen to me. Grandes is on his way. We can clear this up without any need to complicate matters further.”

I cocked the hammer. Marcos’s footsteps came to a halt. There was a slight scraping sound on the tiles. He was on the other side of the wall. He knew perfectly well that I was in that room and that I couldn’t get out without going past him. I saw his profile slink through the doorway and melt into the liquid darkness of the room; the gleam of his eyes was the only trace of his presence. He was barely four meters from me. I began to slide down against the wall until I reached the floor. I could see Marcos’s shoes behind the legs of the dummies.

“I know you’re here, Martín. Stop being childish.”

He stopped and didn’t move. Then I saw him kneel and touch the trail of blood I had left. He brought a finger to his mouth. I imagined he was smiling.

“You’re bleeding a lot, Martín. You need a doctor. Come out and I’ll take you to a doctor.”

I kept quiet. Marcos stopped in front of a table and picked up a shining object that was lying among scraps of material. Large textile scissors.

“It’s up to you, Martín.”

I heard the shearing sound made by the edge of the scissor blades as he opened and closed them. A stab of pain gripped my arm and I bit my lip to stifle the groan. Marcos turned his face in my direction.

“Speaking of blood, you’ll be pleased to hear that we have your little whore, that Isabella girl. Before we start with you we’ll have some fun with her …”

I raised the weapon and pointed it at his face. The sheen of the metal gave me away. Marcos jumped at me, knocking down the dummies and dodging the shot. I felt his weight on my body and his breath on my face. The scissor blades closed only a centimeter from my left eye. I butted my forehead against his face with all my remaining strength
and he fell to one side. Then I lifted my gun and pointed it at him. Marcos, his lip split, sat up and fixed his eyes on mine.

“You don’t have the guts,” he whispered.

He placed his hand on the barrel and smiled at me. I pulled the trigger. The bullet blew off his hand, flinging his arm back. Marcos fell to the floor, holding his mutilated, smoking wrist, while his face, spattered with gunpowder burns, dissolved into a grimace of pain, a silent howl. I got up and left him there, bleeding to death in a pool of his own urine.

S
omehow I managed to crawl through the narrow streets of the Raval as far as the Paralelo, where a line of taxis had formed outside the Apolo theater. I slipped into the first one I could. When he heard the door, the driver turned round; he took one look at me and pulled a face. I fell onto the backseat, ignoring his protests.

“Listen, you’re not going to die on me back there, are you?”

“The sooner you take me where I want to go, the sooner you’ll get shot of me.”

The driver cursed under his breath and started the engine.

“Where do you want to go?”

I don’t know, I thought.

“Just drive and I’ll let you know.”

“Drive where?”

“Pedralbes.”

…

Twenty minutes later I glimpsed the lights of Villa Helius. I pointed them out to the driver, who couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. He left me at the entrance to the mansion and almost forgot to charge me the fare. I staggered up to the large front door and rang the bell, then collapsed on the steps and leaned my head against the wall. I heard footsteps approaching and at some point thought I saw the door open and
heard someone saying my name. I felt a hand on my forehead and I seemed to recognize Vidal’s eyes.