The Book of Murder - By Guillermo Martinez & Sonia Soto Page 0,66

once was seeing everything from another perspective.

“Why not?” she said again, but now she seemed strangely detached, indifferent, as if nothing could touch her any more. Or perhaps (but I only realised this later) she suddenly had a new plan, one in which she no longer needed me, and her sudden acceptance, the unexpected meekness, was her way of setting it in motion. “We can face each other again. Like civilised people. I suppose I’m curious to find out how he convinced you.”

“It would only take a moment. And afterwards I’ll go and sort out the coffin.”

“You’ll sort it out? You’d do that for me?” Her tone suddenly switched to gratitude, so that she sounded like a little girl thankful for a huge, unexpected favour.

“Of course I would. You need to rest.”

“To rest,” she said longingly. “Yes. I’m so tired.” She seemed to drift for a moment, lost in her dark thoughts. “But there’s Valentina. It’s too dangerous for me to go back to sleep—I have to protect Valentina. I’m the only one who can protect her.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to Valentina,” I said, aware of the dishonesty and weakness of the attempt to reassure her. Too much had happened since the last time I’d said something similar.

“I don’t want him to see her,” she whispered. “I don’t want her to see him again.”

“I’ll be there,” I said. “And there’s no reason for him to see her.”

“I know what he wants. I know why he’s coming here,” she said, madness in her voice again. “But I want Valentina to be saved, at least.”

“I’ve got to go now,” I said, keen to end the conversation. I was afraid she’d change her mind. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I hung up and signalled to Kloster that she had agreed. He leaned his cue carefully against the wall and followed me to the stairs without a word.

Twelve

I now come to the most difficult part of my story. I’ve tried many times since to return in memory to those moments, beginning when Kloster and I left the club. I’ve gone over the scenes many times, as if they were stills from a movie, searching for something that might have foretold what I failed to see until it was too late. But though I later examined them from all angles, those few, fatal events didn’t yield any clues. Kloster was plunged in hostile silence, as if he were being forced against his will to perform an unpleasant duty. We got into a taxi with a loud radio and I gave the driver Luciana’s address. The man warned he’d have to take a roundabout route as some streets were blocked off because of the fires. Although neither of us had asked, he told us the Chinese man had been caught, in a raid in the Bajo Flores district, and that a map marked with the locations of over a hundred more furniture stores had been found in his house. Despite this, he said, there had been more fires that night. Bored thugs, pyromaniacs, rival shop owners taking advantage of the chaos to settle scores, who could tell? He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, head turned slightly, appearing to address Kloster rather than me. But Kloster gave no sign that he was listening. At the first intersection there were barriers and a policeman was diverting traffic. The taxi driver pointed out the fire engines further down the street and the blackened facade of a building from which dark smoke billowed in the light of the street lamps. I asked if anyone else had died in the fires and he shook his head. The only dead were the residents of the old people’s home. Some of them were strapped to their beds, he added, so they hadn’t been able to get out. Nearly all of them had died: that was the real tragedy. I glanced at Kloster, but he remained expressionless, as if he hadn’t heard a word. He was tapping his foot impatiently on the taxi’s rubber mat. I detected no emotion in his face, but maybe he was just absorbed in his own thoughts. Every so often he looked out of the window at the street names, as if looking for a sign that the journey would soon be over.

At last we drew up outside Luciana’s building. Kloster got out of the taxi first and walked hesitantly to the entrance. I followed and rang the bell for the top floor flat. In the