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wasn’t welcome. Had Carlos Belda been?
    ‘My colleague, Señor Belda, is ill and that’s why…’
    Castro made a face that drew two wrinkles between his brows. It seemed that Carlos wasn’t received there with a warm round of applause either.
    ‘Do you have experience in violent cases, señorita?’
    His tone left no room for doubt:
Don’t lie to me, or
…
Or what?
Or our first conversation is over, and the whole case with it.
    ‘No,’ Ana replied.
    ‘Are you at all familiar with police work?’
    ‘Yes. From the newspaper.’
    If Castro didn’t ask her what her experience consisted of, she wouldn’t have to tell him that all she had done was write and correct countless crime articles for colleagues at the paper. She particularly didn’t want to have to tell him that she worked for the society pages at
La Vanguardia
and several women’s magazines, writing about debutante balls, receptions and weddings. If it hadn’t been her first day working with the inspector, she would have already known that merely thinking it and hoping he wouldn’t ask her awakened in him the hunting instinct of a natural-born interrogator. But that was their first conversation, and she was still unaware of Castro’s ability to hit on precisely what others didn’t want to reveal. As a result, he asked her, ‘What does your job entail?’
    And she, of course, told him the truth, adding at the end, ‘But I also have knowledge of criminology and police work…’
    ‘You do? And where did you learn it? Did you take a correspondence course from the CCC Academy?’
    Her pride wounded, she couldn’t keep from replying, ‘Reading. Did you know what Chandler said, for example? He said that the easiest murder case in the world is the one somebody tried to get cute with; the one that really bothers police is the murder somebody thought of only two minutes before he pulled it off.’
    ‘Very nice. Excuse me.’
    Castro stood, opened the door and shouted into the hallway, ‘Sevilla! Can you come here for a second?’
    Almost instantly the officer appeared, grumbling. He was about Ana’s age, thin, with pale white skin from his forehead to his nose and the rest of his face darkened by the shadow of an incipient beard that emerged just hours after he shaved.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘If I tell you that the easiest murder to solve is one where somebody tries to be too cute, and that what really bothers us is the murder that somebody thought up two minutes before doing it, what would you think?’
    ‘What would I think? Well, that’s stupid.’
    ‘You see? Señorita, don’t read so many foreign writers. We’re in Spain.’
    Ana couldn’t help but admire the inspector’s memory, seeing how he repeated her words almost like a tape recorder. Castro laughed half-heartedly, then waved the young officer away. Sevilla disappeared without another word. He seemed accustomed to jumping when his boss ordered him to.
    Once Sevilla was gone, Castro recovered his seriousness. He perfunctorily pulled some papers out of a file and, before even glancing at them, started to give her information about the case.
    ‘The victim was discovered dead this morning by her maid, Carmen Alonso, at her home on Tibidabo Avenue. The body was found in the office of her late husband, who had a private medical practice in the house. The maid was returning from Manresa, where, according to her statement, she had spent Sunday with relatives. The information was confirmed, although I haven’t personally verified it.’
    She didn’t understand what he meant by that last bit. Ana had pulled a notepad out of her bag and was taking notes on what Inspector Castro said, though avoiding the policeman’s abuse of the passive voice; like her father, she was a sworn enemy of the passive, that ‘barbaric Anglicism’.
    ‘The body of the victim was lying in a supine position with the head turned somewhat to the right. Like this.’
    A photo was placed between her eyes and her