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and in the dark could just barely make out its filthy water and the sadness of the façades overlooking the river, covered in clothes hung out to dry; then we wandered through the old city and walked the Rambla from bottom to top and crossed the Plaza de Cataluña and, when we were about to give up and say to hell with it all and go to bed on empty stomachs after that depressing stroll and that exhausting trip, we came across a place that was open very close to the hotel. It was the Rhin Bar. There, after haggling with the owner, who was closing and didn’t want to serve us, we drank a glass of milk. So I managed to go to bed that night not completely starving, and as I did so I thought I’d made a mistake and that as soon as I could I’d request a transfer and leave that godforsaken city.
    ‘I never did: I didn’t request a transfer or return to Cáceres or ever leave this city. Now it’s my city. My wife’s from here, my children are from here, my father and mother are buried here, and I love it and hate it more or less the way a person loves and hates what matters most to him. Although, on reflection, it’s not true: the truth is that I love this city a lot more than I hate it; how do you think I’ve put up with it for so long? Sometimes I even feel proud of it, because I’ve done as much as the next guy to make it what it is today; and believe me: it’s a lot better than it was when I got here . . . Back then, as I’ve already told you, it was a horrible city, but still, I soon got used to it. I lived with my five friends in a rented flat on Montseny Street, in the Santa Eugènia neighbourhood, and I worked at the station on Jaume I, near Sant Agustí Plaza. Gerona has always been as calm as a millpond, but it was even more so back then, when Franco hadn’t yet died, so as I’d expected, my work was much easier and less dangerous than what I’d done during my practical training. I was under the command of the deputy superintendent in charge of the Criminal Investigation Squad (Deputy Superintendent Martínez) and a veteran inspector in charge of one of the two groups the squad was divided into (Police Inspector Vives). Martínez was a good person and a good cop, but I soon discovered that Vives, who could be a lot of fun, deep down was a brainless thug. Why should I lie to you: there were lots of cops like that then. But luckily none of the guys with whom I had to share the flat and the squad, because I was living with them all hours of the day: we spent our mornings at the station, had lunch at Can Lloret, Can Barnet or El Ánfora, in the afternoons we walked our beats, at night we slept under the same roof and on our days off we tried to amuse ourselves together, something that in the Gerona of those days was almost more difficult than doing a good job. It’s true that the resources the Squad had at its disposal were very sparse (we only had, for example, two undercover cars, which everyone recognized anyway because they were always parked in front of the station), but we didn’t really need that much more either, because there was very little crime in the city and it was all concentrated in the red-light district, and that made it pretty easy to keep it under surveillance: all the crooks congregated in the district, all the jobs were cooked up in the district, and in the district, sooner or later, everyone knew everything about everyone. So all we needed to do was pass through the red-light district every evening and every night to control most of what went on in the city without too much difficulty.’
    ‘And that’s where you met El Zarco?’
    ‘Exactly: that’s where I met him.’

Chapter 3
    ‘As I told you before: at the age of sixteen I’d heard of the red-light district, although the only thing I knew about it was that it was not a highly recommended place and was on the other side of the river, in the old part of the city. In spite of my ignorance, the first time I went to La Font I