...A few hours later, at the entrance to the courthouse, Javier Ponce runs into Inspector Quintillas, who is laden with documents:

“What a pile of papers you’ve got me here, you’ll have to tell me where I’m supposed to put all this, given how tight we’re on space!”

“Give them to me, I’ll keep them for you!” suggests his colleague, the court clerk in charge of the deceased’s case.

“No, not yet! I want to look at all the photos first!... By the way, I’ve taken the ones that were on top of the chest of drawers and brought them along too. Looks like the old lady was a cabaret singer.”

“How do you know?” asks Ponce, surprised; he doesn’t understand how he’s come to that conclusion.

“Look!” He pulls a photo from the pile, taking care not to let the rest of the papers fall. “See her?” holding it out for him to take, whereupon Javier grabs the photo and instantly recognises the deceased woman, who appears practically naked; the snapshot captures her in a pose typical of a performance, and at her feet lie the garments the artist has shed, as is customary during a ‘striptease’.

“Let me keep it!” Ponce asks the inspector.

“No way! Come back in a few days… and as far as I’m concerned, you can have them all, but I’m telling you, I want to see them first… for my report.”

Ponce doesn’t understand Quintillas’ insistence, as he is the one who first sees and examines all the photographs collected from the flat; what he is asking for is perfectly normal, and he knows that one more or less photo is unlikely to make much difference to his report. But as he is running late for a meeting he had scheduled days earlier, he doesn’t argue with the inspector and takes his leave:

“As you wish, Quintillas…! We’ll talk later!”

“Take it easy, mate! I don’t want you to get angry!” exclaims the policeman, realising that his refusal regarding the photo hasn’t gone down well with Ponce; and he continues: “I’ve already told you, I’ll just have a quick look at it... I’ll give it to you, and you can do whatever the hell you like with it and all the others! Blimey…! You’re a real suspicious lot, Ponce…!" And with that apology, that’s how it stands. We’ll have to wait and see!

…After roughly twenty-four hours, Ponce finds himself in a small building, next to a block of burial niches, inside the city cemetery; specifically, he is in the place that houses the ‘Mortuary’.

"Hello Melchor! Is Dr Miret here?"

"Come on, Javier! Yes, he’s in his office! But hang on, stay with me for a bit, for God’s sake!" The two have known each other for years.

"I’m in a right hurry!" trying to fob him off.

"When are the civil service exams?" insists his friend Melchor.

"Well, they haven’t announced them yet, but they’ll almost certainly be in October, like every year." Without stopping as he walks towards Miret’s office.

"Right, Javier, thanks! But don’t forget to let me know..."

TOC... TOC...!" As he opens the door:

"Hello, Miret! How are you?"

“Come in, Javier… sit down!” his manner this time is much friendlier than the last time they met. “What…? I suppose you’ve come to collect the autopsy report… the one on the woman who died in the flat?”

“Yes, that’s exactly why I’m here!”

"But what do you think, that I can have it done in such a short time?! With the amount of work I’ve got and being as lonely as a dog?! And I bet you still think it’s a transvestite! That’s what’s got you all worked up and titillated!"

After the dressing-down he receives from the coroner, the only thing Ponce can think of is not to rile him up any further and to tell him his true intentions and motivations:

"Well, yes, it really turns me on… and look, more and more so! Yesterday, Quintillas showed me a photo of her doing a ‘striptease’ in a cabaret show."

“You don’t have a photo of her showing her bits, do you?”

“No, Miret! She’s practically naked, but you can’t see down below.”

“Look! As I told you when we found the body, and now I’ve been able to confirm it, she shows no signs of having been assaulted or abused; she almost certainly died of a heroin overdose.”

Anyway, I’m going to send some samples and some of the photographs you gave me to which I’ll add some of the ones Quintillas has to the ‘Institute of Forensic Anatomy’ to carry out comparative tests with the woman’s head.

We’ll have to wait at least a month to be certain of how she died."

"And do you think those people at the ‘Anatomic’ will be able to sort it out, given the advanced state of decomposition of the body?"

"I’m sure they will, Javier! It takes them quite a while because they’re so busy, but they have good equipment and use very modern techniques. They’ll even send us a photofit reconstruction of her face."

"Will we then find out if she was a transvestite?"

 "Yes...! We’ll also find out exactly what their sex was, though I can tell you now that you’re right and it was probably a man who’d had a sex change; I can tell from the hip bones. But as I said, I haven’t finished the report yet and, besides, I’m not going to commit myself until I’m absolutely sure, it might be a ‘hermaphrodite’… So what…! Have you tracked down the groom yet?"

"No way! If we have to rely on Quintillas, we’re in for a rough ride!"

"Oh, Quintillas! What a bloody idiot he looks" confirming with these words that he doesn’t think much of him either, and adding a question. "Has he been in the ‘Judicial Brigade’ for long?"

"Not long, a year or so."

"Right, Javier! Stop nagging me and get lost, I’ve got loads of work to do."

"Right, Miret! See you later, and don’t forget about me, I’m really curious."

…Back at the courthouse, Ponce heads for the room provisionally set up by the ‘Judicial Brigade’ on the second floor.

Once there, he approaches a glass door at the far end of the right-hand corridor and notices the light inside the room. And, as is his custom, he resolutely opens the door.

At the table on the left, there is a man who, taken aback by Ponce’s unexpected presence, stops writing in a magazine and asks him:

"Who the hell are you?" with a Basque accent.

"I’m Javier Ponce, a clerk at ‘Investigating Court Five’! Is Quintillas here?"

"No! Quintillas is on holiday! What do you want from him?"

Ponce replies in a softer tone, avoiding letting ‘the Basque’ rub off on him with the loud, harsh tone he uses:

"But I saw him just yesterday and he didn’t say anything to me."

"Well, I’m telling you, he’s on holiday and will be for at least a month! What else do you want, for fuck’s sake?"

"Don’t you know where he’s kept the file on the woman we found dead yesterday? In a flat on Calle San Bernardo?"

"I don’t know anything about a woman, but look on that desk, it’s his! And who’s asking for the file?"

"Judge Aguilera ordered it!” replies Ponce emphatically, and approaches the spot on Quintillas’s desk he’s been told to look at.

Once at the desk pointed out by the Basque, Ponce opens the top drawer on his right.

"Here it is! This is what I was looking for!"

As he pulls the pile of papers Quintillas took yesterday out of the drawer.

"Hey you! You’ve found it, haven’t you? If you want to take it, you’ll have to give me a piece of paper, a receipt… or something."

With this request, the Basque man manages to infuriate Ponce completely, who can no longer contain his tone or his words:

“What the hell sort of receipt do you want me to give you! The judge wants these papers and that’s it! If you want a receipt, come with me now and ask the judge yourself!”

"Come on, leave it! Take your papers and go; if Quintillas gets angry, I’ll send it to you!"

Loaded down with the papers, Ponce leaves the room and goes up to the next floor, where his desk is.

Once there and having unloaded the heavy load, he begins to sort all the documentation into two piles. In one pile he places all the photographs, without looking at them closely at this first ‘glance’.

And in the other, all the other papers. Just as he is about to put down the last of the papers, someone knocks at his door:

"TOC... TOC...!" At the same time as he opens it from the outside.

"Yes... come in!" thus allowing the visitor to enter.

Through the door appears a burly man, with little hair on his head, practically bald; Ponce recognises the man:

“Well, Benito! What are you doing round here?”

“Well, look! I’ve come for a trial and I remembered you; I said to myself: ‘I’m going to see how life is treating my friend Javier Ponce!’”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it. Sit down! How’s the security firm going?”

“Fine! Little by little. I’ve got thirty men working for me now; I’m not complaining.”

“Blimey! Thirty men is a lot. Where do you have them all?”

"I’m in charge of security at Bartolomé Colón’s nightclub, and that alone takes up four men on shifts. I’ve also got a few stationed at some brothels that pretend to be hostess clubs. The rest are on security duty on Calle San Bernardo, mainly the first section of the street, which is where most of the shops are. Interestingly, I read earlier in *El Primero del Día* that you found a woman’s body in a building on that very street. Tell me, how did it happen?"

"The woman had been dead for over six months, and I can’t tell you much more than that."

"The newspaper says the apparent cause of death was an overdose. Was she a ‘drug addict’?"

Ponce is puzzled by Benito Bestard’s unusual interest in this case, and his initially affable manner changes:

"It’s possible… though to be honest, it’s all conjecture at the moment; we’ll have to wait for the autopsy results."

"Apparently… you found a syringe, which confirms she was a drug user."2

"How do you know about the syringe?" Ponce’s intuition confirms that there is more to this on Benito’s part: first, his exaggerated interest in the body; and now his knowledge that there was a syringe, coupled with his hesitation and delay in answering the question:

"‘EL PRIMERO’ says so!" It’s his final answer, which doesn’t convince Ponce. As far as he can recall, when he read the newspaper this morning, it didn’t mention the syringe, or perhaps it did...?

“Look, Benito! Come back another day and I’ll tell you the latest developments, but you’ll have to leave me to it now, I’m really swamped!” In this polite manner, he tries to get rid of him; he decides not to “snub him”, as they’ve been friends for many years.

"All right. But don’t you have even a minute to have a coffee with me?"

"No, Benito! We’ll have one another day."

At that, Benito gets up and leaves the room, after which Ponce relaxes; he stretches out in his chair and starts thinking about Benito’s visit: ‘What a pain this bloke has become… I’m off for a beer! But first I’ll pop some of these photos into Miret’s locker (he’s got one in a hall on the ground floor of the courthouse, near the duty prosecutor’s office); if he has to wait for Quintillas to get them for him, our friend Miret will certainly find that out!’ He takes the photos the coroner needs to complete the dispatch to the ‘Anatomic’; and puts them in an envelope. With it in his hand and before stepping through the door, in a sort of reflex action, he takes another photo from that pile, which turns out to be the signed photograph, the one he’d already spotted on the floor and which is now out of its frame; and he slips it into his pocket.

 Now he does leave his room, closing the door behind him, as has been his habit ever since the theft of files from the courthouse, and heads for the coroner’s locker, which has in fact been replaced by a locked and reinforced postbox, also due to the thefts that have taken place.

Luis and Miguel's Bar, near the Courthouse

…Not far from that building, a few streets back, Luis and Miguel had used their unemployment benefit payments, received in advance, to set up a small bar that had become famous for its tapas. Ponce used to go there first thing in the morning for breakfast, and also at midday for a beer and a ‘tapita’. Just as he is doing on this occasion.

“Hello Luis, pour me a pint, I’m parched!”

“Hello, Javier! Fancy a slice of tortilla?”

“Sure, bring it on! And come over here, I want you to look at a photo.”

From his pocket, Ponce pulls out the signed photo he’d picked from the pile and shows it to Luis, placing it on the bar.

“Look at this photo! And… see if you can spot anything odd?”

"Let’s see, bring it over!" After looking at it, photo in hand. "…Well, nothing, I don’t see anything odd; it’s a photo of a couple!"

"A normal couple?" asks Ponce, seeking a more detailed explanation of his answer.

"What a stupid question! To me, they’re a normal couple; to those dirty-minded blokes, they’ll seem like a strange couple just because they’re two men."

"What do you mean, two men? Is there a blonde and a bloke in the photo?"

"This blonde, who’s really pretty, if I may say so…, but she’s a transvestite! Just look at her facial features, her Adam’s apple… I’m telling you, this woman is a transvestite! Wait...! We’ll show it to Miguel and you’ll see he’ll say the same as me… Come on Miguel, look at this photo! Isn’t the blonde a transvestite?"

"Let’s see… bring it here! Well, of course! You can see it straight away… and by the way, who is she?"

"It’s a photo of a dead woman we found in a flat." Ponce blurts out without mincing his words. "When we found her, she wasn’t as pretty as in the photo; she’d been dead for over six months, or perhaps, a dead man!"

"Good heavens!" Pushing the photograph aside. "And what did she die of?"

"We don’t know for sure, but everything points to an overdose."

"Well, what a shame! Because the girl was very pretty… and the bloke with her isn’t half bad either… Is he dead too?"

"No! We don’t know anything about him at the moment, only that from the dedication on the photo, his name is Manolo,” says the officer.

"Sorry, Javierito! But as I read the dedication, Manolo could also be the girl’s name." Miguel points out.

“Well, now that you mention it, you’re right! It could be!” he says, grateful for the comment. “Right, give me back the photo so I can get back to work!” And with one gulp: “GLUP… GLUP… CLUP…!” Ponce finishes his beer and leaves the little bar. “Write it down for me, I’ll be back later!”

“Right, sorted! You’re in quite a rush, aren’t you...”

Back at the courthouse, just a few steps from the door to his small office, Ponce notices it’s open. He quickly covers the distance and enters the room.

"“Bloody hell! What’s happened here!”

The papers are on the floor, as if they’d been knocked over; he can’t see the pile of photographs he’d placed there earlier, it’s gone… «Bloody hell! Who on earth was the bastard who got in here!?». He rushes out of his room and heads for Judge Aguilera’s office. Without knocking, he opens the door and goes in: “Judge Aguilera, I need to show you something. Please come with me!”

The judge, surprised by Ponce’s unexpected presence, gets up and follows him without saying a word; for once, he doesn’t give him one of his usual retorts.

“Look! While I was out getting a sandwich, some bastard has got in and made a right mess of the place! What’s more, the photos of that transvestite from the other day have gone! I can’t see them! There are only the bloody papers left!”

"Calm down, Javier! It must have been one of your colleagues, someone from the office who was curious to see them; they’ll turn up! Besides, I told you he wasn’t a transvestite!"

"No, Aguilera, something strange is going on here! Between Quintillas going on holiday and now this, it doesn’t add up!"

"What’s happening here is that you’re very nervous. You’ve been working too many shifts lately. Come on, pick up the papers off the floor and then go home; you’re taking the day off today! Do you hear me!?"

"Well, whatever you say!"

"I’m not just telling you...! I’m ordering you to do it, after all, I am the Judge!"

Given his categorical order, Aguilera withdraws. Ponce bends down and picks up the papers, piling them all back up again; ignoring the judge’s order, he sits down in his chair and begins to look through them one by one. After going through several of them, one document catches his eye in particular and he reads to himself:

«This is a birth certificate for… MANUEL GOMEZ CORTES, born in Barcelona on… Based on the date of birth, this man must be 33 years old…».

“Bloody hell, that’s it! This is the transvestite’s birth certificate.”

Recalling that these were the surnames listed in the eviction file for the ‘IVONNE’.

He stands up and walks over to the bookcase opposite; from the shelf at chest height, he takes a folder, it’s in the first pile on the right. To any outsider, the whole court is a chaotic jumble of papers, but not so for officials like Ponce, who instinctively retain the location of almost every file in their memory.

«"That’s it!” Seeing the defendant’s name… "IVONNE GOMEZ CORTES, just as I said…!"».

Now more relaxed, having confirmed his theory, Ponce continues to look through the rest of the papers; most are handwritten letters dated well before the present day, and practically all begin with this greeting: ‘My dear Manolo…’.

Javier takes the signed photo out of his pocket—the only one he has of the couple, and checks the handwriting; it’s the same, so he deduces that the letters were written by the boy in the photo.

He looks at the end of the letter and reads the name Ernesto in the author’s signature; there’s no surname, nor any address, and he hasn’t found any envelopes amongst the papers either.

Returning his attention to the photo in question, he takes a huge magnifying glass out of his drawer, with which he examines every detail, looking at it over and over again. His attention is drawn to a figure standing behind the bar, the one appearing in the background behind the couple...:

«“That face looks familiar to me… and the decor too,” he continues to think to himself. ‘I’d say it’s 'La Tarantula', for sure! This photo was taken at the 'La Tarantula' nightclub. I knew it looked familiar…!"».

The ‘enigma’ or ‘puzzle’ of ‘Ivonne’ is gradually becoming clearer. His obsession with the deceased, his tenacity and something else… it seems to be starting to bear fruit...

END OF CHAPTER II