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Danube”: a white dress that for him was black and backstitched entirely in grey.
    â€œPark there,” he ordered the sergeant when they crossed Mayía Rodríguez, and he threw his cigarette end on the road. There on the opposite pavement, right on the corner, stood the two-storey house where the twins had lived, a spectacular house splendid with large swathes of dark glass and red brick and a wall around a professionally manicured garden at the right height not to hide the line of concrete sculptures that denoted the shaping hand of a Wifredo Lam.
    â€œThis is it,” exclaimed Manolo. “Whenever I drove by here I’d stare at that house and think how I’d like to have lived in a house like that. I even started to think there’d never be problems with the police in such a place and that I’d never get to see the inside.”
    â€œWell, it’s no house for policemen.”
    â€œIt was given to him, I suppose.”
    â€œNo, not this time. It belonged to his wife’s parents.”
    â€œWhat can life be like in this kind of house, Conde?”
    â€œDifferent . . . Hey, Manolo, wait a minute. There’s an idea I want to work on: the party on the thirty-first. Rafael Morín disappeared after going to that party. Something may have happened there that impacts on all this business, because I’m not into coincidences. I want to ask you a favour.”
    Manolo smiled and struck the steering wheel with both hands.
    â€œThe Count asking me for a favour? Of a personal or
work nature? Go ahead, I’ll be pleased to do anything for you.”
    â€œHey, shut that trap and let me interview Tamara. I’ve known her for some time, and I think I can handle her better like that. That’s the favour: not much to ask, is it? You can tell me later of any thoughts that may come to you. OK?”
    â€œOK, Conde, it’s not a problem,” the sergeant replied, preparing to make a sacrifice in order to be present at what he guessed would be a settling of accounts with the past. As he locked the car Manolo saw the Count cross the road and disappear between the box-hedges and the head of a terrified concrete horse that seemed more Picasso than Lam. At any rate, that house continued to be far beyond the reach of any policeman.
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    Her eyes were two classic almonds, polished and slightly moist. Just the minimum to suggest they really were two eyes that might even shed tears. A lock of her artificially curled hair twisted down over her forehead, almost engulfing her thick, very high eyebrows. Her mouth attempted to smile, in fact did so, and her dazzlingly white teeth, like a healthy animal’s, deserved the reward of a broad smile. She didn’t look thirtythree, he thought as he stood in front of his former schoolmate. Nobody would believe she’d given birth, could still perform ballet pirouettes, although she was now clearly more in control of her profound beauty: rounded, exuberant and provocative, and at the peak of her bodily charms. She could still get into her school tunic and tight-clinging blouse, he thought as he tightened the pistol in his belt and introduced Sergeant Manuel Palacios, whose eyes were bulging
out of their sockets. The Count wanted to leave as soon as he sat down on the sofa next to Tamara and she pointed Manolo to an armchair.
    She was wearing a gaudy yellow loose-fitting dress, and he noted she was not at all unnerved: even wrapped in that garish colour she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, and now he didn’t want to leave but to stretch an arm out when she stood up.
    â€œWell, life is full of surprises, isn’t it?” she remarked. “Wait a minute while I get you some coffee.”
    She walked towards the passage, and he observed the movement of her buttocks under the fine yellow material. He followed the faint outline of her knickers on her thighs and exchanged glances with an almost panting