The Angel's Game (52 page)

“I know what you’ve done,” I said.

Corelli didn’t move a muscle. His figure remained motionless, like a spider waiting to jump. I took a step forward, pointing the gun at his face. I thought I heard a sigh in the dark and, for a moment, the reddish light caught his eyes and I was certain he was going to pounce on me. I fired. The weapon’s recoil hit my forearm like the blow of a hammer. A cloud of blue smoke rose from the gun. One of Corelli’s hands fell from the arm of the chair and swung, his fingernails grazing the floor. I fired again. The bullet hit him in the chest and opened a smoking hole in his clothes. I was left holding the revolver with both hands, not daring to take a single step, transfixed in front of the motionless shape in the armchair. The swaying of his arm gradually came to a halt and his body was still. There was no sound at all, no hint of movement, from the body that had just received two bullet wounds—one in the face, the other in the chest. I moved back a few steps toward the French window and kicked it open, not taking my eyes off the armchair where Corelli lay. A column of hazy light cut a passageway through the room from the balustrade outside to the corner, revealing the face and body of the boss. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry. The first shot had ripped open a hole between his eyes. The second had pierced his lapel. Yet there was not a single drop of blood. In its place a fine, shiny dust spilled out down his
clothes, like sand slipping through an hourglass. His eyes shone and his lips were frozen in a sarcastic smile. It was a dummy.

I lowered the revolver, my hands still shaking, and edged closer. I bent over the grotesque puppet and tentatively stretched my hand toward its face. For a moment I feared that those glass eyes would suddenly move or those hands with their long, polished fingernails would hurl themselves round my neck. I touched the cheek with my fingertips. Enameled wood. I couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh—one wouldn’t expect anything less from the boss. Once again I confronted that mocking grin and I hit the puppet so hard with the gun that it collapsed to the ground and I started kicking it. The wooden frame began to lose its shape until arms and legs were twisted together in an impossible position. I moved back a few steps and looked around me. The large canvas with the figure of the angel was still on the wall: I tore it down with one great tug. Behind the picture was the door that led into the basement—I remembered it from the night I’d fallen asleep there. I tried the handle. The door was open. I looked down the staircase, which led into a well of darkness, then went back to the sitting room, to the chest of drawers from which I’d seen Corelli take the hundred thousand francs during our first meeting in that house. In one of the drawers I found a tin with candles and matches. For a moment I wavered, wondering whether the boss had also left those things there on purpose, hoping I would find them just as I had found the dummy. I lit one of the candles and crossed the sitting room to the door. I glanced at the fallen doll one last time and, holding the candle up high, my right hand firmly gripping the revolver, I prepared to go down.

I descended carefully, stopping on each step to look back over my shoulder. When I reached the basement I held the candle as far away from me as I could and moved it around in a semicircle. Everything was still there: the operating table, the gas lamps, and the tray with surgical instruments. Everything covered with a patina of dust and cobwebs. But there was something else. Other dummies could be seen leaning against the wall, as immobile as the puppet of the boss. I left the candle on the operating table and walked over to the inert bodies. Among them, I recognized
the butler who had served us that night and the chauffeur who had driven me home after my dinner with Corelli in the garden. There were other figures I was unable to identify. One of them was turned against the wall, its face hidden. I poked it with the end of the gun, making it spin round, and a second later found myself staring at my own image. I felt a shiver down my spine. The doll that looked like me had only half a face. The other half was unfinished. I was about to crush it with my foot when I heard a child’s laughter coming from the top of the steps.

I held my breath. Then came a few dry, clicking sounds. I ran back up the stairs, and when I reached the sitting room the figure of the boss was no longer where I’d left it. Footprints trailed off toward the corridor that led to the exit. I cocked the gun and followed the tracks, pausing at the entrance to the corridor. The footprints stopped halfway down. I searched for the hidden shape of the boss among the shadows but saw no sign of him. At the end, the main door was still open. I advanced cautiously toward the point where the trail gave out. It took me a few seconds to notice that the gap I remembered between the portraits on the wall was no longer there. Instead there was a new frame, and in that frame, in a photograph that looked as if it had been taken with the same camera as the rest of the macabre collection, I saw Cristina dressed in white, her gaze lost in the eye of the lens. She was not alone. Two arms enveloped her, holding her up. They were the arms of a smiling man: Andreas Corelli.

I
set off down the hill toward the tangle of dark streets that formed the Gracia neighborhood. There I found a café in which a large group of locals had assembled and were angrily discussing politics or football—it was hard to tell which. I dodged in and out of the crowd, through a cloud of smoke and noise, until I reached the bar. The bartender gave me a vaguely hostile look with which I imagined he received all strangers—anyone living more than a couple of streets beyond his establishment, that is.

“I need to use a phone,” I said.

“The telephone is for customers only.”

“Then get me a brandy. And the telephone.”

The bartender picked up a glass and pointed toward a corridor on the other side of the room with a sign above it saying
TOILETS.
At the end of the passage, opposite the entrance to the toilets, I found what was trying to pass for a telephone booth, exposed to the intense stench of ammonia and the noise that filtered through from the café. I took the receiver off the hook and waited until I had a line. A few seconds later an operator from the exchange replied.

“I need to make a call to a law firm. The name of the lawyer is Valera, number 442 Avenida Diagonal.”

The operator took a couple of minutes to find the number and connect me. I waited, holding the receiver with one hand and blocking my
left ear with the other. Finally she confirmed that she was putting my call through and moments later I recognized the voice of Valera’s secretary.

“I’m sorry, but Señor Valera isn’t here right now.”

“It’s important. Tell him my name is Martín. David Martín. It’s a matter of life and death.”

“I know who you are, Señor Martín. I’m sorry, but I can’t put you through because he’s not here. It’s half past nine at night and he left the office a long time ago.”

“Then give me his home address.”

“I cannot give you that information, Señor Martín. I do apologize. If you wish, you can phone tomorrow morning and—”

I hung up and again waited for a line. This time I gave the operator the number Ricardo Salvador had given me. His neighbor answered the phone and told me he would go up to see whether the ex-policeman was in. Salvador was soon on the line.

“Martín? Are you all right? Are you in Barcelona?”

“I’ve just arrived.”

“You must be careful. The police are looking for you. They came round here asking questions about you and Alicia Marlasca.”

“Víctor Grandes?”

“I think so. He came with a couple of big guys I didn’t like the look of. I think he wants to pin the deaths of Roures and Marlasca’s widow on you. You’d better keep your eyes peeled—they’re probably watching you. If you like, you could come here.”

“Thanks, Señor Salvador. I’ll think about it. I don’t want to get you into any more trouble.”

“Whatever you do, watch out. I think you were right: Jaco is back. I don’t know why, but he’s back. Do you have a plan?”

“I’m going to try to find Valera, the lawyer. I think the publisher for whom Marlasca worked is at the heart of all this, and I think Valera is the only person who knows the truth.”

Salvador paused for a moment.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary. I’ll call you once I’ve spoken to Valera.”

“As you wish. Are you armed?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“Señor Salvador … Roures spoke to me about a woman in the Somorrostro area whom Marlasca had consulted. Someone he had met through Irene Sabino.”

“The Witch of Somorrostro.”

“What do you know about her?”

“There isn’t much to know. I don’t think she even exists, the same as this mysterious publisher. What you need to worry about is Jaco and the police.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Call me as soon as you know anything, will you?”

“I will. Thanks.”

I hung up and as I passed the bar I left a few coins to cover the calls and the glass of brandy, which was still there, untouched.

Twenty minutes later I was standing outside 442 Avenida Diagonal, looking up at the lights that were on in Valera’s office, at the top of the building. The porter’s lodge was closed, but I banged on the door until the porter peered out with a distinctly unfriendly expression on his face. As soon as he’d opened the door a little to get rid of me, I gave it a push and slipped into the hallway, ignoring his protests. I went straight to the lift. The porter tried to stop me by grabbing hold of my arm, but I threw him a look that quickly dissuaded him.

When Valera’s secretary opened the door, her expression rapidly changed from surprise to fear, especially when I stuck my foot in the gap to make sure she didn’t slam the door in my face and went in without being invited.

“Let the lawyer know I’m here,” I said. “Now.”

The secretary looked at me, her face completely white.

I took her by the elbow and pushed her into the lawyer’s office. The lights were on, but there was no trace of Valera. The terrified secretary
sobbed, and I realized that I was digging my fingers into her arm. I let go and she retreated a few steps. She was shaking. I sighed and tried to make some sort of calming gesture that only served to reveal the gun tucked into the waistband of my trousers.

“Please, Señor Martín. I swear that Señor Valera isn’t here.”

“I believe you. Calm down. I only want to talk to him. That’s all.”

The secretary nodded. I smiled at her.

“Please be so kind as to pick up the telephone and call him at home,” I said firmly.

The secretary lifted the receiver and murmured the lawyer’s number to the operator. When she got a reply she handed me the phone.

“Good evening,” I ventured.

“Martín, what an unfortunate surprise,” said Valera at the other end of the line. “May I know what you’re doing in my office at this time of night, aside from terrorizing my employees?”

“My apologies for any trouble I may be causing, Señor Valera, but I urgently need to locate your client Señor Andreas Corelli, and you’re the only person who can help me.”

A long silence.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Señor Martín. I cannot help you.”

“I was hoping to resolve this amicably, Señor Valera.”

“You don’t understand, Martín. I don’t know Señor Corelli.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve never seen him or spoken to him, and I certainly don’t know where to find him.”

“Let me remind you that he hired you to get me out of police headquarters.”

“A couple of weeks before that, we received a check with a letter explaining that you were an associate of his, that Inspector Grandes was harassing you, and that we should take care of your defense if it became necessary to do so. With the letter came the envelope that he asked us to hand to you personally. All I did was deposit the check and ask my contact at police headquarters to let me know if you were ever taken there.
That’s what happened, and you’ll remember that I got you out by threatening Grandes with a whole storm of trouble if he didn’t agree to expedite your release. I don’t think you can complain about our services.”

At that point the silence was mine.

“If you don’t believe me, ask Señorita Margarita to show you the letter,” Valera added.

“What about your father?” I asked.

“My father?”

“Your father and Marlasca had dealings with Corelli. He must have known something …”

“I can assure you that my father was never directly in touch with this Señor Corelli. All his correspondence, if indeed there was any—because there is absolutely nothing in the files at the office—was dealt with personally by the deceased Señor Marlasca. In fact, and since you ask, I can tell you that my father even doubted the existence of this Señor Corelli, especially during the final months of Señor Marlasca’s life, when he began to—how shall I say it—have contact with that woman.”

“What woman?”

“The chorus girl.”

“Irene Sabino?”

I heard him give an irritated sigh.

“Before he died, Señor Marlasca arranged a fund, administered and managed by our firm, from which a series of payments were to be made to an account in the name of some people called Juan Corbera and María Antonia Sanahuja.”

Jaco and Irene Sabino, I thought.

“What was the size of the fund?”

“It was a deposit in foreign currency. I seem to remember it was something like a hundred thousand French francs.”

“Did Marlasca say where he’d obtained that money?”

“We’re a law firm, not a detective agency. Our company merely followed the instructions stipulated in Señor Marlasca’s last wishes; we did not question them.”

“What other instructions did he leave?”

“Nothing special. Simple payments to third parties that had nothing to do with the office or with his family.”

“Do you remember any one in particular?”

“My father took charge of these matters himself, to avoid any of the office employees having access to information that might be, let us say, awkward.”