“Hurry!” Roberto urged Antía. “Let’s go after him!”
Ibaibarriaga hurtled down the hall, moving surprisingly quickly for a man of his size. Reaching Pazos’s room, he stopped dead in the doorway, confounded by the scene that presented itself.
Sitting at the foot of the bed, next to the unconscious body of Borja Pazos, Varatorta had opened out a cloth roll containing an array of scalpels, a small saw, and a number of long copper nails. He looked up at the intruder in surprise, which quickly turned to annoyance. Ibaibarriaga looked from Varatorta’s sinister set of instruments to his face.
“What the hell’s going on?” Ibaibarriaga cried. “What’s all that?”
Varatorta’s only answer was another of his freakish smiles. Then, at lightning speed, he grabbed one of the scalpels and leaped at Ibaibarriaga.
But Ibaibarriaga was not an easy man to knock down. When Varatorta crashed into him, the big man wrapped his huge arms around him, and the pair whirled like an enjoined spinning top in the small space of the room. They fell into the table in the corner, sending the record player and computer flying. With grunts and flailing fists, the two men were locked in what would clearly be a fight to the death.
Varatorta brought his elbow down on the nose of Ibaibarriaga, who let out a howl as blood cascaded from it. With a roar, he returned the favor with a brutal headbutt to his opponent’s forehead. A watery crack sounded, and as Varatorta staggered back, sight swimming, Ibaibarriaga took full advantage, going after Varatorta, getting him by the throat and, arms locked, beginning to throttle him. The pair fell to the ground, kicking and struggling, but Ibaibarriaga kept up the stranglehold, progressively squeezing tighter and tighter.
Varatorta’s thrashing soon grew weaker as he ran out of oxygen. His wild eyes spun, and for a second, they focused on Roberto and Antía watching in the doorway. He stretched out one of his hands to them, in a final, pleading gesture.
Antía tried to go in, but Roberto held her back.
“No,” he said. “He deserves it.”
“But . . .”
“Leave him.”
As Varatorta’s gaze clouded over, a final glimmer of understanding and rage shone through, before disappearing altogether as Ibaibarriagagave a last, brutal squeeze, bringing a dull crack. Varatorta’s legs kicked for a couple of seconds, and, finally, he was still.
For a moment there was absolute silence in the room, a second frozen in time.
“Goddamn ... goddamn bastard.” Ibaibarriaga, panting, lifted himself to standing. “He ... he tried to kill me. You saw! Oh, fuck!”
The big man doubled over in pain. His gaze came to rest on the handle of Varatorta’s scalpel, which was protruding from his groin. A bright red bloodstain was rapidly growing around it.
“Shit,” he muttered, his voice gummy. “Now I’m really screwed.”
And just at that moment, two gunshots echoed from the esplanade outside the lighthouse.
Osvaldo Salazar and his men had arrived.
48
Just in Time
Some people lose their temper when they are angry.
These people allow their anger to simply take over, and it begins making decisions on their behalf. That means they can be dangerous, even violent, but at the same time predictable and easy to manipulate.
Osvaldo Salazar was not that kind of person.
When he became angry, which happened only rarely, an icy calm would settle in his chest as on the surface of a frozen lake, giving him an extraordinary clarity of mind. This, of course, made him an even more dangerous adversary than usual.
And at that moment, Osvaldo Salazar was very angry.
Everything had seemed under control. The money had been in their hands, and they’d been well set to get away from the island—only for everything to flip in an instant. He’d been forced to leave the money behind and scuttle back to the beach with his tail between his legs, one of his men wounded, and his pride crushed. Only to learn that, although the sensible move, it had actually been totally unnecessary.
The two trembling teenagers now trailing along behind him had revealed the truth. It had been two men, three at most, who had put them to flight. A couple of nickel-and-dime lighthouse keepers armed with hunting rifles had made Osvaldo Salazar, the Scorpion of Calihimself, flee. If anyone ever found out about it, the stain on his honor would be irreparable. Fury and shame came flooding in, but he managed to keep them locked under the ice sheet.
To make things worse, Chuco, the skipper, had vanished along with the speedboat’s keys. All they’d found was a pile of trampled cigarette butts and a half-empty beer bottle. The ground of the island had seemingly opened up and swallowed him whole.
The gunmen behind Osvaldo maintained a wary silence. They knew not to bother him at such moments.
