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did everything demanded of her and did it well. I think she’s one of the few young people to come to us with a real vocation to be a teacher. She liked her work and was always coming up with ideas to motivate her pupils. She could just as easily go camping with them as help them revise at night, or she’d do PE with her group, because she played volleyball very well and I think her pupils really liked her. I have always been of the opinion that there should be a degree of distance between teachers and pupils, and that distance is created by respect, not by fear or age: respect for knowledge and responsibility. But I also think each teacher has his or her approach and if she felt all right always being with her pupils and results in class were good, who was I to object? Last year her three classes all passed chemistry, with an average of ninety per cent, and not everybody can manage that, I told myself: if they’re the results she gets, then let her get on with it! That might sound like Machiavelli but it’s not Machiavellian. I did talk to her one day about the over-familiarity, but she just said she felt better that way and we never brought it up again. It’s a pity this has happened, and yesterday we had attendance problems in the afternoon because very many pupils went to the vigil and cemetery, but we decided to turn a blind eye to their absence . . . And as an individual? I’m not sure. I didn’t know that side of her so well. She’d a boyfriend who’d come to pick her up on his motorbike, but that
was last year, although at the vigil Mrs Dagmar said she’d seen him waiting outside for her for three days. You know, Dagmar can tell you about her, she was her head of department and I think her best friend at Pre-Uni, but she’s not in today as she’s been really hit by what happened to Lissette . . . Yes, that’s true, she dressed very well, but I’d understood her stepfather and mother frequently go abroad and it is quite natural they’d bring her a few things back, isn’t it? Just remember she was also very young, this same generation . . . What a great pity, and she being so pretty . . .”
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    The bell brought an end to his oration: the previous gentle hum turned into the raucous shouting of an overflowing stadium and, youths rushed down corridors in search of the cafeteria, their boy or girlfriends and the lavatories where they’d inevitably indulge in a spot of clandestine smoking. While Manolo jotted down some details from the murdered woman’s work-record, and the address of the teacher by the name of Dagmar, Conde went out into the playground longing to smoke a cigarette and inhale the ambience from his memories. He found the corridors packed with white and mustard coloured uniforms, and smiled liked someone cursed. He was going to kill a friendly ghost, by lighting up right there, in the most forbidden place, in the middle of the playground, on the compass of winds that marked the
heart of the school. But he held back at the last moment. Downstairs or up on the first floor? He hesitated for a moment about where to do it. I preferred upstairs, he concluded, and went up to the male lavatories on the top floor. The smoke escaping through the door was like a signal from the Sioux: he could read “here we smoke pipe of peace” in the air. He entered and caused an inevitable stir among the clandestine smokers; cigarettes disappeared and everyone suddenly had an urgent need to pee. The Count quickly raised his arms and said: “Hey, I’m not a teacher. I’ve come for a smoke too,” and tried to look relaxed as he finally lit up, the focus of the youths’ suspicious gazes. To compensate those who’d been cut short by his appearance he passed round his packet of cigarettes, although only three took up his offer. The Count kept staring at them, as if wanting to see himself and his friends in those students and