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notepad. It showed Mariona Sobrerroca on the floor, wrapped in what could be a nightgown or a sheer dress. It wasn’t the first time she’d been shown an image of a murder victim, but it was the first time she’d seen one of someone she had met. Her habit of always focusing on people’s hands and feet was a big help. She saw that one foot wore a high-heeled shoe. So the garment wrapped around the right leg had to be a dress.
    ‘And the other shoe?’
    ‘We found it on the other side of the desk.’
    ‘So there was a struggle?’
    ‘Señorita Martí, don’t get ahead of yourself. I’ll give you the information.’
    ‘Of course.’
    The tone with which she said those words didn’t entirely match their deferential content. Castro noticed because he gave her a severe look before continuing.
    ‘The messy room and the loss of one shoe reveal that the victim fought with her aggressor or aggressors. We are conjecturing that she surprised someone who had entered her house to burgle it.’
    Ana’s hand holding her pencil came to a stop. She wanted to ask if they knew how many people it could have been, but she didn’t dare, at least not so soon. Castro, although he had perhaps guessed her unspoken question, didn’t reply to it. Instead he answered one she hadn’t yet formulated.
    ‘The white ball is an eyeball.’
    He had put the photo so close to her that she hadn’t realised it was an eye until he’d said it.
    ‘It belonged to a skull that decorated, shall we say, the office of the victim’s husband, Dr Jerónimo Garmendia, who died more than two years ago, in January 1950.’
    She already knew that. Dr Garmendia had been the preferred doctor of a certain class of Barcelonian. He had died in a car accident on the Garraf coast. Ana remembered it well. His car had skidded on a curve and plunged into a rocky cove. She wasn’t yet writing for
La Vanguardia
then. She had only recently started publishing brief, uncredited articles and writing photo captions for women’s magazines.
    ‘According to the forensic assessment, her death was caused by manual strangulation, but first the victim was persistently beaten on both the face and body.’
    Another photo.
    Mariona Sobrerroca’s plump, cherubic face showed several haematomas, her lower lip was swollen and darkened by blood and her right earlobe was split. Ana pointed to it with her pencil and looked at the inspector. This time he was willing to respond.
    ‘Probably the victim’s earring got caught on something in the struggle and tore her ear.’
    Ana tempted fate with another question: ‘Did they find the lost earring?’
    Castro looked at her condescendingly. He responded as he showed her another image, ‘Yes, with a piece of the ear.’
    Another photo. She glanced away, but only for a second. She forced herself to look at the small strip of flesh with irregular edges that hung from the golden clasp of a bunch of small white and black pearls.
    She started to take notes again. Castro stopped her in her tracks.
    ‘Don’t bother with so many notes, señorita, we’ll give you everything in writing.’
    He hadn’t sunk her with that comment, but he’d left her clinging to the lifeboat.
    ‘To avoid unwanted errors and speculation,’ added Castro. ‘What you need to do is to pretty it all up.’
    ‘Then what you want is for me to take the official communiqué, fix a couple of commas, smooth out a few passives and decorate it with adjectives?’
    ‘The improvements in style are up to you.’
    That would be like taking dictation. She’d be better off writing her articles for the society pages.
    ‘No,’ she heard herself say before thinking of the consequences.
    ‘No, what?’
    ‘No, I’m not going to do that. You can find yourself a copy editor. I’m a journalist.’
    They were both silent, regarding each other carefully. Ana was already saying goodbye to the case, to
La Vanguardia
and to a career in journalism that was over before it had even begun.