The Labyrinth of the Spirits

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

  “I don’t know what . . . shares you’re talking about,” stammered Sanchís.

  “Stop sniveling, for fuck’s sake. Can’t you see what an uncomfortable position you’re putting me in? I must leave this room with results. It’s that simple. You understand that. Basically, it’s very straightforward. When life gives it to you up the ass, it’s best to pretend you’re a faggot. And life is about to fuck you in the backside big-time, my friend. Don’t make things difficult for yourself. Men a hundred times tougher than you have sat in this chair and only lasted a quarter of an hour. You’re a bit high and mighty. Don’t force me to do what I don’t want to do. For the last time: tell me where you’ve got him, and all will be forgotten. You’ll be back with your wife tonight, unhurt.”

  “Please,” Sanchís begged, “don’t do anything to her. . . . She’s not well.”

  Hendaya sighed and slowly drew closer to Sanchís, until his face was just a few centimeters away. “Look here, you bastard,” he said, his tone infinitely colder. “If you don’t tell me where Valls is, I’m going to fry your balls until you crap on your mother’s memory, and then I’m going to get that little wife of yours and peel the flesh off her bones with a pair of hot pliers, slowly, so she knows that the crybaby she married is to blame for what’s happening to her.”

  Sanchís closed his eyes and whimpered.

  Hendaya shrugged and walked over to the generator. “It’s your party.”

  The banker smelled that metallic odor again and felt the vibration on the floor under the soles of his feet. The lightbulb flickered a couple of times. Afterward, all was fire.

  4

  Leandro was holding the receiver and nodding. He’d been on the phone for forty-five minutes. Vargas and Alicia were watching him. Between them they’d polished off the bottle of wine. When Alicia got up to look for a new one, Vargas held her back, muttering “No” under his breath. She threw herself into chain-smoking, her eyes glued on Leandro, who listened and nodded slowly.

  “I understand. No, of course not. I realize. Yes, sir. I’ll tell them. You too.”

  Leandro put down the phone and gave them a languid look, exuding relief and concern in equal measure.

  “That was Gil de Partera,” he said at last. “Sanchís has confessed.”

  “Confessed? To what?” asked Alicia.

  “All the pieces are beginning to fall into place. It’s been confirmed that the story goes back a long way. It seems that Valls and Miguel Ángel Ubach, the financier, met shortly after the war. At the time Valls was a rising star in the regime, having proved his loyalty and reliability while running Montjuïc Prison, not exactly a pleasant job. Apparently, through a consortium set up to reward individuals who had made an outstanding contribution to the national cause, Ubach handed Valls a package of shares from the reconstituted Banco Hipotecario, which grouped together various financial institutions that had been dissolved after the war.”

  “You’re talking about the looting and dividing up of the booty,” Alicia cut in.

  Leandro gave a patient sigh. “Be careful, Alicia. Not everyone is as broad-minded and tolerant as me.”

  Alicia bit her tongue. Leandro waited to catch her submissive look before he continued. “In January 1949 Valls was due to receive another package of shares. That had been the arrangement, made verbally. But because Ubach had died unexpectedly in an accident the year before—”

  “What accident?” interrupted Alicia.

  “A fire in his home, in which he and his wife died while they slept. Don’t interrupt me, Alicia, please. As I said, when Ubach died, certain discrepancies arose concerning his will, which apparently didn’t mention those arrangements. The matter became complicated because the executor named by Ubach was a young lawyer who worked in the practice that represented him.”

  “Ignacio Sanchís,” said Alicia.

  Leandro threw her a warning look. “Yes, Ignacio Sanchís. As his executor, Sanchís also became the legal guardian of Victoria Ubach, the couple’s daughter, until she came of age. And yes, before you interrupt me yet again, when Victoria was nineteen he married her, which provoked much gossip and a bit of a scandal. Rumor had it that Victoria and her future husband already had an illicit relationship when she was in her teens. People also said that Ignacio Sanchís was just an ambitious upstart, since the will left most of the Ubachs’ estate to Victoria, and there was a considerable age gap between them. Besides, Victoria Ubach had a history of emotional instability. They say that when she was still very young, she ran away from home and disappeared for six months. But that’s just gossip. What really matters in all this is that when Sanchís took over the running of the Banca Ubach on behalf of the shareholders, he refused to give Valls what he claimed was owed to him, promised by the deceased. At that moment Valls had to sheathe his sword, as they say, and keep his mouth shut. It wasn’t until years later, when he’d been made a minister and acquired a considerable amount of power, that he decided to force Sanchís to hand over what he considered his, and more. He threatened to accuse Sanchís of having been involved in Victoria’s ‘disappearance’ in 1948 to hide the pregnancy of a minor, and of having kept her hidden in a private clinic on the Costa Brava—near San Feliu de Guíxols, I believe—where the Civil Guard found her about four months later, wandering along the beach, confused and showing signs of malnutrition. Everything seems to point to the fact that Sanchís gave in. Through a number of illegal operations, Sanchís gave Valls a very large sum in shares and negotiable notes from the Banco Hipotecario. A large amount of Valls’s estate came from there, and not from his father-in-law, as had sometimes been suggested. But Valls wanted more. He kept putting pressure on Sanchís, who never forgave him for having involved his wife Victoria, making use of her reputation and her adolescent escapade to get what he wanted. Sanchís tried to protest and approached different bodies, but everyone closed the door on him, saying Valls was too powerful, too close to the top of the regime to touch. Besides, to do so would have implied stirring up the matter of the rewards distributed at the end of the war, something nobody wished to do. Sanchís was warned very seriously to forget all about it.”

  “Which he didn’t do.”

  “Evidently not. Not only did he not forget, but he decided to take revenge. And that’s where he made a real mistake. He hired investigators to poke around into Valls’s past. That’s how they came across Sebastián Salgado, a rogue who was still rotting away in Montjuïc Prison, and also discovered a series of shady incidents and abuses Valls committed against a number of inmates and their families during his years as prison governor. There turned out to be a long list of possible candidates to take the lead in a supposed revenge against Valls. The only thing missing was a convincing narrative. So Sanchís devised a plot to avenge himself on the minister, by manufacturing what would look like a political or personal vendetta stemming from the minister’s dark past. He began to send threatening letters through Salgado, whom he had offered a sum of money for acting, so to speak, as bait—money he would receive after obtaining the pardon that was being processed for him. Sanchís knew the letters would be tracked, and that the tracking would lead to Salgado. He also hired a former Montjuïc prisoner, someone called Valentín Morgado, who had more than enough reasons not to feel the slightest affection for Valls. Morgado had been released in 1945, but he blamed Valls for his wife’s death from an illness while he’d been imprisoned. Morgado was hired as a chauffeur for the family. It was Morgado—with the help of an old prison guard, a guy called Bebo, who received a considerable amount of money from Sanchís, as well as a low-rent flat in Pueblo Seco, owned by Metrobarna—who supplied his benefactor with information concerning the prisoners most severely punished by Valls during his years in Montjuïc. One of them, David Martín, a writer with serious mental problems known to the other inmates as the Prisoner of Heaven, turned out to be the ideal candidate for Sanchís’s plot. It seems that Martín had disappeared under strange circumstances after Valls ordered two of h
is men to take him to a large house near Güell Park and murder him. Martín, who had lost his mind completely while in solitary confinement in one of the towers of the castle, managed to escape, and Valls always feared that one day he would return to take his revenge, because he blamed Valls for the murder of a woman called Isabella Gispert. Are you following me?”

  Alicia nodded.

  “Sanchís planned to convince Valls of the existence of a conspiracy to make public his abuses and crimes against prisoners under his governorship. The hidden hand behind it all would be Martín’s, and that of other former prisoners. They wanted to make him nervous, force him to come out of the cocoon of protection his position afforded and confront them in person. The only way he could silence them would be to destroy them before they destroyed him.”

  “But it was all just a trap,” Alicia pointed out.

  “A perfect trap, because when the police investigated, they would discover the components of personal revenge and financial chicanery that Valls himself had taken care to cover up. And Salgado was the perfect bait. He could be easily linked to other prisoners, and in particular to David Martín, the supposed hidden hand in the shadows. Even so, Valls kept his sangfroid for years. But after the alleged 1956 attempt perpetrated by Morgado in the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Valls began to lose his cool. He arranged for Salgado to be released so he could follow him, hoping he’d lead him to Martín; but Salgado was eliminated—the ex-prisoner died just when he thought he was about to recover some old booty he’d left hidden in one of the lockers of the Estación del Norte, shortly before being arrested in 1939. Salgado was no longer useful, and silencing him would leave a dead trail.

  “Valls also committed a number of important slips that created false trails. He forced Pablo Cascos, an employee in one of his companies, Editorial Ariadna, to contact a member of the Sempere family with whom Cascos had had a relationship, namely Beatriz Aguilar. The Semperes are the owners of a secondhand bookshop that Valls thought Martín may have been using as a shelter. They may even have been Martín’s accomplices, since Martín had had some sort of relationship with Isabella Gispert, the late wife of the bookshop’s owner and mother of Daniel Sempere, the present manager and Beatriz’s husband. And yes, now you can interrupt me again, before you have a fit.”

  “What about Mataix’s books? How do you explain the presence of the book I found hidden in Valls’s desk—which, as his daughter Mercedes said, was the last thing he consulted before disappearing?”

  “As part of the same strategy. Mataix had been a friend and colleague of Martin’s, and a prisoner in Montjuïc. Bit by bit the pressure, the threats, and his imaginings of a conspiracy in the shadows got the better of Valls. He decided to go in person to Barcelona, together with his trusted man Vicente, to confront the man he believed to be his nemesis, David Martín. The police suppose—and I agree with them—that Valls thought he was going to a clandestine meeting with Martín, where he could get rid of him once and for all.”

  “But Martín had been dead for years, like Mataix.”

  “Exactly. The people waiting for him were, in fact, Sanchís and Morgado.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier for Valls to let the police take charge of David Martín, if he thought Martín was alive?”

  “Yes, but Martín might reveal information on the death of Isabella Gispert, among other things, destroying Valls’s reputation.”

  “That makes sense, I suppose. And then?”

  “Once they’d caught him, Sanchís and Morgado moved Valls to the old Castells factory in Pueblo Nuevo, which has been closed for years but belongs to the property consortium of Metrobarna. Sanchís has confessed that they tortured him for hours and then got rid of his body in one of the factory ovens. While I was talking to Gil de Partera, he received confirmation that the police had found remains of bones that they think could belong to Valls. They’ve requested Valls’s dental X-rays, to check whether the remains are in fact those of the minister. I imagine we’ll know either tonight or tomorrow morning.”

  “So the case is closed?”

  Leandro nodded. “The part that concerns us, at least. It still remains to be seen whether there were other accomplices, and how far-reaching the implications of Ignacio Sanchís’s plot were.”

  “And will this be reported to the press?”

  Leandro smiled. “Of course not. At this very moment there’s a meeting in the Ministry of the Interior to determine what will be announced and how. I don’t know any more details.”

  A long silence ensued, barely interrupted by the sound of Leandro as he sipped his tea, his eyes fixed on Alicia’s.

  “All this is a mistake,” she murmured at last.

  Leandro shrugged. “Perhaps. But it’s no longer in our hands. The task that was required of us—to track down Valls’s whereabouts—has been accomplished. And it has produced results.”

  “That’s not true,” protested Alicia.

  “That’s how it is perceived by voices with more authority than mine and, needless to say, than yours, Alicia. We have to know when to let go of things. All we need do now is remain discreet and let matters take their natural course.”

  “Señor Montalvo is right, Alicia,” said Vargas. “There’s nothing more we can do.”

  “It seems like we’ve done enough already,” said Alicia coldly.

  Leandro shook his head disapprovingly. “Captain, would you mind giving us a couple of minutes?”

  Vargas stood up. “Of course. In fact, I’m going to go over to my rooms on the other side of the street to call police headquarters and get my orders.”

  “I think that’s an excellent idea.”

  Vargas avoided Alicia’s eyes as he walked past her. He held out his hand to Leandro, who shook it amiably.

  “Thanks so much for your help, Captain. And for taking such good care of my Alicia. I am greatly indebted to you. Don’t hesitate to knock on my door if you ever need my help with anything.”

  Vargas nodded and left discreetly. Once they were alone, Leandro beckoned Alicia to come and sit next to him on the sofa. She obeyed reluctantly.

  “A great man, Vargas,” he said.

  “And with an even greater mouth.”

  “Don’t be unfair. He’s proved he’s a good policeman. I like him.”

  “I think he’s single.”

  “Alicia, Alicia . . .” Leandro put a fatherly arm around her shoulders, with a hint of an embrace. “Go on, let it out before you explode. Get it out of your system.”

  “All this is a pile of shit.”

  Affectionately, Leandro drew her toward him. “I agree. It’s a botched job. It’s not the way you and I do things, but in the ministry they were getting very nervous. And El Pardo sent the message that enough is enough. It’s better this way. I wouldn’t have liked it if they’d started to think or say that we were the ones who weren’t getting results.”

  “What about Lomana? Has he reappeared?”

  “Not for the moment, no.”

  “It’s odd.”

  “It is. But it’s one of the loose ends that is sure to be resolved in the next few days.”

  “There are lots of loose ends,” Alicia pointed out.

  “Not that many. The Sanchís bit is pretty solid. A well-documented matter involving a lot of money and a personal betrayal. We have a confession and proof to support it. It all adds up.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Gil de Partera, the minister of the interior, and El Pardo all think the case has been resolved.”

  Alicia opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again.

  “This is what you wanted, Alicia. Don’t you see?”

  “What I wanted?”

  Leandro looked at her sadly. “Your freedom. To get rid of me, of the wicked Leandro, forever. To disappear.”

  “Do you mean it?”

  “I gave you my word. That was the deal. One last case. And then your freedom. Why do you think I’ve come to Barcelona? Al
l this could have been settled over the phone without leaving the Gran Hotel Palace. You know how much I dislike traveling.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “To tell you face-to-face. And to say that I’m your friend, and always will be.” Leandro took her hand and smiled. “You’re free, Alicia. Free forever.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. Despite herself, she hugged Leandro.

  “Whatever happens,” said her mentor, “whatever you do, I want you to know that I’ll always be there. For whatever you may need. No obligations or commitments. The ministry has authorized me to transfer one hundred and fifty thousand pesetas, which will be in your account by the end of this week. I know you’re not going to need me or miss me, but if it’s not too much to ask, call me every now and then, even if it’s only at Christmas. Will you do that?”

  Alicia nodded. Leandro kissed her on the forehead and stood up.

  “My train leaves in an hour. I’d better make a start for the station. Don’t come to see me off. I won’t hear of it. I don’t like scenes, as you know.”

  She walked with him to the door. Just as he was leaving, Leandro turned. For the first time in her life, she thought he suddenly looked shy and embarrassed.

  “I’ve never told you what I’m about to say, because I didn’t know whether I had a right to do so, but I think I can now. I have loved you and I love you like a daughter, Alicia. Perhaps I haven’t known how to be the best of fathers, but you’ve been the greatest happiness in my life. I want you to be happy. And that, truly, is my last order.”

  5

  She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe him with the yearning that comes with the suspicion that truth hurts, and that cowards live longer and better, even if they do so in the prison of their own lies.

  She looked out the window to watch Leandro walk over to the car waiting for him on the corner. A driver with dark glasses held the door open for him. It was one of those huge black cars, tanks with tinted windows and a cryptic license plate that were sometimes seen plowing though the traffic like hearses; the sort everyone moved out of the way to avoid because they knew, without having to ask, that they didn’t carry normal people, and the best thing was to step aside. Before he got into the car, Leandro turned around for a second, looked up toward her window, and waved. When Alicia tried to swallow, she found that her mouth was dry. She wanted to believe him.