‘Fermín, you and I are beginning to look like a couple. Every time I turn around, there you are.’
‘I’m sorry, Señor Martín, it’s just that I’m intrigued about something.’
‘And what is it, exactly, that intrigues you so, pray tell?’
‘Well, to put it bluntly, I can’t for the life of me fathom how a decent fellow like you has consented to help that conceited, repugnant meatball of a governor in his rapacious attempts to pass himself off as chief literary lion.’
‘Direct, aren’t you? There don’t seem to be any secrets in this place.’
‘It’s just that I have a natural flair for the art of detection and the finer investigative pursuits.’
‘In which case you surely must also have surmised that I’m not a decent fellow, but a criminal.’
‘That seems to have been the judge’s estimation.’
‘Backed up by an army and a half of witnesses who testified under oath.’
‘Incidentally, all on a crook’s payroll and chronically constipated with envy and petty chicanery, if I may say so.’
‘You may, but it hardly changes anything. Tell me, Fermín, is there anything about me you don’t know?’
‘Heaps of things. But the one issue that really sticks in my gullet is why you are in business with that self-absorbed dunce. People like him are the gangrene of this country.’
‘There are people like him everywhere, Fermín. Nobody holds the patent.’
‘But only here do we take them seriously.’
‘Perhaps, but don’t judge him so hastily. In this whole farce, the governor is a far more complex character than it would appear. This self-absorbed dunce, as you so generously call him, is, for starters, a very powerful man.’
‘God, according to him.’
‘Within this particular purgatory, that may not be too far off the mark.’
Fermín screwed up his nose. He didn’t like what he was hearing. It almost sounded as if Martín had been sipping the wine of his own downfall.
‘Has he threatened you? Is that it? What more can he do to you?’
‘To me? Nothing, except make me laugh. But to others, outside this place, he can do a lot of harm.’
Fermín kept quiet for a long while.
‘You must forgive me, Señor Martín. I didn’t mean to offend you. I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘You don’t offend me, Fermín. On the contrary. I think you hold a far too generous view of my circumstances. Your trust says much more about yourself than about me.’
‘It’s that young miss, isn’t it? Isabella.’
‘It’s a missus.’
‘I didn’t know you were married.’
‘I’m not. Isabella isn’t my wife. Or my lover, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
Fermín kept silent. He didn’t want to doubt Martín’s words, but just hearing him talk about that girl – whether she was single or married – he was quite convinced that she was the person poor Martín loved most in the world, probably the only thing that kept him alive in that well of misery. And the saddest thing was that he didn’t even seem to realise it.
‘Isabella and her husband run a bookshop, a place that has always held a very special meaning for me, ever since I was a child. The governor told me that if I didn’t do what he was asking, he’d make sure they were accused of selling subversive material. They’d have their business seized and then they’d be sent to prison and their son, who isn’t even three years old, would be taken from them.’
‘That fucking son-of-a-bitch,’ Fermín muttered.