He’d been walking for some time when he realized something was wrong.
Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he glimpsed a human figure hiding in the thicket on the far side of the path. He stopped for a moment, pretending to tie his bootlaces, and took another discreet glance. Yes, there was definitely someone there.
Making a show of not having noticed, he continued along the path, before stopping just past the next bend. Removing his hood, he took a couple of silent steps in the direction of the ditch, pent-up anger roaring inside his chest. It was the same anger he’d felt when he arrived on the island and confronted Luis Docampo but this time multiplied by a thousand, bubbling up like lava.
He’d had enough. If someone was spying on him, there were going to be consequences—if he caught them off guard, all the better. Maybe it was one of the Docampos, making sure he didn’t stray from the cottage and start making trouble. Or it might be one of the lighthousekeepers, monitoring their get-rich ticket. It could even be one of the Freires. Or, he realized irately, it could be the mysteriousTangaraño.
He didn’t care. Whoever it was, he’d spotted them, and it was time to find out.
He retraced that stretch of the path, crouching to stay hidden behind the high vegetation. If his stalker broke cover, he’d have a perfect view of them, but if not, he’d soon be face-to-face with them. Either way, the spy would be revealed.
The person was still lurking. All he’d been able to see from the path had been a pair of maroon-colored pants, half hidden behind some dripping bracken. The rest of the figure was covered by the branches of the twisted oak tree beneath which it was sheltering.
Roberto crept through the bracken, trying not to make a noise as he approached the mysterious figure. Perhaps they’d fallen asleep, or been distracted somehow.
But all assumptions melted away as he dashed across the final few feet, squaring up to the figure with a growl ... and in an instant, his anger evaporated.
Roberto braced against the tree and vomited up every last bit of his lunch.
TheTangaraño, theTangaraño, the Tangaraño ...
His mind spinning, he was unable to get the horrifying thought out of his head.
What he had taken for maroon-colored pants were actually light-colored jeans, completely soaked in blood. The man—it was a man, that much was clear—had been nailed to the trunk of the oak: two long, rough-looking nails had been driven through his bare chest. There was a vertical slit from below the navel to the sternum, and the guts were hanging out.
But the most terrifying thing was that whoever had committed this heinous crime had expertly decapitated the victim and taken the head away.
Roberto had witnessed many terrible scenes in his past as a war reporter, but this gratuitous display, this rejoicing in the mutilation of a human body, was something he was still unprepared for. It hadn’t come about because of an explosion, a gun battle, or some uncontrollable surge of fury. It was the work of someone who, with incomprehensible levels of cruelty, had taken time over the torture.
It was one thing to decapitate a rabbit; quite another to take a human life in such ritual fashion.
The dead man’s kiss,old Elvira Couto had called it. The curse of the vengeful spirit of a sailor who had been dead for more than a century, as Varatorta had explained.
Real or not, everything had just taken on a totally different dimension. Unconsciously, he gripped the charm the old witch had given him.
He couldn’t just stay there. He had to find someone to tell.
Now, as if nature were toying with him, lightning flashed across the sky, followed by a prolonged thunderclap that he felt rumble in his chest. Briefly illuminated, the lifeless body seemed to be trying to move. Deeply shaken, Roberto turned and set off.
He rushed in the direction of the village. He ran headlong, barely breathing, with the mute expression of someone who has looked into the abyss and seen something unimaginable stirring in the darkness. He wanted to get away from that horror as fast as possible. When he reached the crossroads, he saw El Cucorno’s brightly lit windows at the top of the hill. He took it as a sign and, gasping for air, started up the slope.
The old manor house, with a huge stone granary on one side, was one of the few buildings on the island that had two stories. All the shutters on the first floor were closed, and they creaked as the gale picked up. The huge double door was painted green, peeling somewhat and in need of varnish. Roberto pounded on it and felt he could barely wait for it to open.
After a few interminable seconds, he heard the slide and rattle of locks and bolts. A Freire man—one of the two whom Pampín hadaccused of trespassing on his patch—looked at him with bleary, somewhat confused eyes.
“What can I do for you?”
“I need to talk to Antía,” he instantly blurted. “It’s urgent.”
“With Antía?” The man narrowed his eyes. “What about?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Roberto replied, and, ignoring the man’s cry of protest, he barged past him and went in.
The entrance hall had high wooden ceilings, and at the back was an imposing twin staircase leading up to a gallery that overlooked the entire room. The floor was covered with a Persian carpet, beautiful and yet badly frayed and scuffed in places. The general impression was of decline and bygone prosperity.
“Antía!” he shouted from the middle of the hall. “Antía!”
A door on the upper floor opened, and there came the sound of footsteps approaching.
