A man in shirtsleeves with a lollipop stick coming from his lips and a generally satisfied and happy facial expression appears on the staircase that attaches the gym to the main house. Besides the gym, the other additions to the house include a solarium with pool on the former terrace, a game room in the basement and the Fishing Trophy Room on the second floor of the house's main building. With views of the breakwater. The Giraut family house in the Ampurdan is located in the middle of a horseshoe-shaped bay, with an enormous breakwater occupying the center of the bay and cliffs on either side. The guy in shirtsleeves takes the lollipop out of his mouth. A rolled-up automotive magazine sticks enigmatically out of one of his pants pockets.
“We really don't want to disturb you,” says the guy in shirtsleeves. Smiling. He points to the group made up of Fonseca and Fanny Giraut with his lollipop. “You go on with your work and we'll go on with ours. I'm Commissioner Farina, by the way. We've never met, but you could say I've been following your career. I'm a fan.” He makes a wide gesture around him. Toward the dozen men in suits with latex gloves that are going from one side of the gym to the other, emptying closets and moving furniture. “And I love your house, of course. Don't mind us. We'll be done soon, maybe.”
Fonseca takes another cigarette out of the pack he carries in his pocket and puts it between his lips and leaves it there. Without lighting it. Several of the men in suits seem to be sucking on candy or chewing gum. It isn't clear if this coincidence is the result of some sort of coordination.
“Listen, clown.” Fanny Giraut moves her head toward Commissioner Farina. Not the way people normally turn their faces, first moving their gaze and features and then adapting their posture. The way she moves her head is more like the rigid rotation of submarine periscopes or tanks' rotating turrets. “You're putting your job on the line. You might still manage to get sent to a desk job or wherever if you take all these lunatics and get out of here. You don't know who you're dealing with. All I have to do is this.” She snaps her fingers. “Fonseca, call Aguirre. Tell him what's going on here.”
There is a moment of silence. Commissioner Farina's expression of intense pleasure and satisfaction with life in general grows by the minute. His lollipop creates a vaguely spherical lump inside his cheek. From the other side of the staircase that connects the gym with the main building of the house comes the unmistakable sound of furniture being dragged. From the spot in the gym where Fonseca and Fanny Giraut are standing, looking away from the breakwater, over the heads and bodies of the men with latex gloves, the house's car entrance can be seen. With half a dozen patrol cars parked and another few unmarked cars that don't belong to any family member. Near the opposite corner of the gym, a guy in a suit with a spiral cable coming out of his ear is eating sunflower seeds and throwing the shells into the bougainvilleas.
“This is more complicated than it looks.” Fonseca lowers his voice, perhaps unconsciously. But not enough that Commissioner Farina can't hear him. “It seems that Judge Aguirre is the one who signed the search warrant. The search warrants. They've also sent officers to the apartment in Barcelona and to my law firm. We have to talk,” he adds in a pressing tone. “Now.”
Fonseca and Fanny Giraut go up the stairs that connect the gym to the main building of the house. The contingent of Philippine cooks and domestic servants is gathered in the entryway with collectively contrite expressions. With those contrite expressions often seen on the faces of people who live on the poverty line. Fonseca and Fanny Giraut go into Fanny's office on the first floor, and they find that it is also being searched by a group of men in suits with latex gloves. The desk and file cabinet drawers are laid out in neatly organized piles on top of the Persian rug. Each pile with a numbered label. The lamps dismantled on the rug. The vases emptied. One of the officers is emptying the shelves of books and placing the books in piles on the floor. After flipping through them with his latex gloves. With jaw movements that indicate he's chewing gum.
“Who the hell was it?” Fanny Giraut goes up the stairs to the second floor with vigorous strides. Followed closely by Fonseca. “Chicote? Have we talked to Chicote yet?”
Fanny Giraut opens the door to the second-floor study. A member of the forensic police with latex gloves and a fingerprint kit is dusting a fine white substance over the study's wooden surfaces. With a spherical lump in his cheek. Another man in a suit with latex gloves is putting the contents of the paper shredder's wastebasket into several Ziploc bags for evidence. Fanny Giraut and Fonseca go through the door that connects the study to the Fishing Trophy Room. Fanny Giraut's face doesn't look exactly like a skull, or like a mask. It's more like the faces of second-or third-degree burn victims who, after getting a series of skin grafts, are left with a face covered mostly by unnaturally smooth and shiny tissue that bears little in common with normal facial skin tissue. Fanny Giraut and Fonseca go across the Fishing Trophy Room, dodging officers in suits who are rolling up the rugs and examining the wooden floorboards. They take the hallway that leads to the bathrooms.
“Chicote's clean,” says Fonseca. “We've already talked to him. This comes from some other direction.”
Fanny opens the door to her private bathroom. She holds it open so Fonseca can enter and bolts it closed when they are both inside. She sits on the closed toilet and gestures for Fonseca to give her one of his cigarettes. Fanny Giraut's private bathroom is larger than a lot of apartments in Barcelona and has three different kinds of Chinese porcelain. A television with a plasma screen hangs on the wall in front of the bathtub.
“What the hell do you mean by some other direction?” she asks.
And suddenly it happens. Even before she can finish formulating the question. The perpetually frozen and surgically constructed expression on her face breaks down for the briefest fraction of a second before recomposing itself automatically. And what he sees instead of the mask for that fraction of a second doesn't make Fonseca instinctively back up a few paces, but it does make his entire body replicate the configuration of a scared body about to instinctively back up a few paces. Fanny Giraut's voice drops an octave. The hand with which she lights her cigarette becomes a tense claw.
“That bastard,” she says, exhaling a mouthful of smoke between two rows of gnashing teeth. “That little monster. I should have drowned him at birth. How the hell did he do it? What does he think he's trying to do?”
“He's got something.” Fonseca sits on the edge of the bathtub. “Something he thinks he can use against us. And he sent a blackmail note. Along with a page from a certain accounting ledger. It seems to be a ledger that belonged to your husband. And the note is signed by you.” He pauses, perhaps to verify the lack of expression on his main client's burn-victim face. “The note in and of itself can't hurt us. The forgery is good, but not good enough. The accounting ledger is more distressing. I can't figure out where Lucas could have found it. And that's not the worst of it.”
Fanny Giraut's private bathroom is not only much larger than many apartments in Barcelona and has three kinds of Chinese porcelain and more lines of cosmetics than many specialized stores. There are also three original prints by Mario Testino on the main wall that show models in their late teens dressed in almost invisible underwear. Fanny Giraut inhales an anxious mouthful of smoke. The way that her rage arouses a certain degree of fear isn't the way that classical goddesses aroused fear with their majestically haughty attitudes. It's closer to the way certain hybrid mythological creatures aroused fear. Women with snakes for hair. Men with a single eye. Beings with human torsos and octopus tentacles. Things with a lot of heads.