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down on the ground, was handcuffed and taken to the local police station. ‘According to Madrid’s chief of police’ – these or similar words appeared in all the newspapers – ‘the alleged murderer was brought before a court, but refused to make a statement.’
    Luis Felipe Vázquez Canella had been living for some time in thearea in an abandoned car, and here again the testimony of neighbours differed, as always happens when one asks or tells a story to more than one person. For some, he was a very calm, polite individual who never caused any trouble: he spent his time earning a little money by looking for parking spaces and guiding drivers to them with the usual imperious, obliging gestures that go with the job – his services were sometimes unnecessary or unwanted, but that is how all gorrillas work. He would arrive at about midday, leave his two blue rucksacks at the foot of a tree, and set about his intermittent task. Other residents, however, said that they had become fed up with ‘his violent outbursts and evident insanity’, and had often tried to get him thrown out of his static mobile home and have him removed from the neighbourhood, but without success. Although Vázquez Canella had no previous police record, Deverne’s chauffeur had been the victim of one of his outbursts only a month before. The beggar had addressed him very rudely and, taking advantage of the fact that the chauffeur had his window wound down, had punched him in the face. The police were duly informed and arrested him briefly for assault, but, in the end, the chauffeur, although ‘injured’, had taken pity on the man and decided not to make a formal complaint. And on the eve of Desvern’s death, victim and executioner had had their first argument. The gorrilla had made his usual wild allegations. According to one of the more talkative concierges in the street where the stabbing took place, ‘He talked about his daughters and about his money, saying that “they” wanted to take his money away from him.’ Another version described how: ‘The victim explained to him that he had got the wrong person and that he had nothing to do with his affairs. The bewildered beggar then wandered off, muttering to himself.’ Somewhat embellishing the narrative and taking a few liberties with the people actually involved, it added: ‘Miguel could never have imaginedthat, twenty-four hours later, Luis Felipe’s delusions would cost him his life. The script written for him had begun to take shape a month earlier’ – this was a reference to the incident with the chauffeur, who some neighbours saw as the real object of the beggar’s rage: ‘Who knows, perhaps he had it in for the chauffeur,’ one of them was reported to have said, ‘and got him mixed up with his boss.’ It was suggested that the gorrilla had been in a foul mood for a month or more, because, with the installation of parking meters in the area, he could no longer earn any money with his already sporadic work. One of the newspapers mentioned in passing a disconcerting fact that none of the others had picked up: ‘The alleged murderer refused to make a statement, and so we have been unable to confirm whether or not he and his victim were related by marriage, as some people in the neighbourhood believed.’
    An ambulance had sped to the scene of the crime. The ambulance men had given Desvern first aid, but because he was so gravely injured, all they could do was ‘stabilize’ him and drive him immediately to the Hospital de La Luz – or, according to a couple of newspapers, to the Hospital de La Princesa; they couldn’t even agree on that – where he was rushed into the operating room with cardiac arrest and in a critical condition. He hovered on the brink of life and death for five hours, during which time he never recovered consciousness; he finally ‘succumbed late that evening, with the doctors unable to do anything more to save him’.
    All this information was