Chapter 7

Castel's apartment was not what Irene had imagined.

I expected something functional, almost anonymous, the kind of space inhabited by men who spend more time working than living. Instead, he found himself with a high floor, with generous ceilings, with bookshelves that took up an entire wall—books on criminology next to novels that didn't fit the image he had formed of him: poetry, essays, even an entire collection of Cortázar that seemed to have been read more than once, the spines worn out in a way that only genuine use does. not with decoration.

"I didn't expect this," she admitted, taking off her coat as Castel closed the door behind her, checking the bolt twice, a gesture that at this point no longer seemed paranoid but simply prudent.

"What did you expect?" A folding bed and a wall full of photographs of suspects connected with red thread?

"Something like that, yes.

Castel smiled, that brief gesture that completely transformed his face, and pointed to the open kitchen, where two glasses of wine were already served, as if he had anticipated that she would arrive and need exactly that.

Thirteen years seeing the worst of the human condition teaches us to value the opposite when we can. He handed her a glass, and for a moment his fingers brushed against each other longer than strictly necessary. If I surrounded myself with the same darkness at home as I did at work, I wouldn't have spent two years in Home Affairs.

Irene sat down on the sofa, an aged leather piece of furniture that seemed to have accompanied Castel through several moves, and let her gaze wander over the rest of the space: a work table by the window, covered with papers arranged with an almost obsessive precision; an upright piano in the corner, covered in a thin layer of dust that suggested that no one had touched it for a long time; photographs, few, framed without much care, of an older woman who could have been his mother and of a child who was probably himself, decades ago.

"Do you play?" He asked, pointing to the piano with the glass.

—It was time. Something in his voice closed slightly, a door that squinted without closing quite close. My mother insisted for years. I stopped doing it when I entered the police academy. There is not much time for Chopin when investigating homicides.

"And now?" Why didn't you touch it again?

Castel sat down next to her, leaving that same calculated distance of the night before, although this time, Irene noticed, a little shorter.

"Because when I play, I think too clearly. And there are certain things that I prefer not to think about so clearly.

The answer hung between them, charged with a meaning that Irene did not dare to investigate yet, aware that the night was just beginning and that there were more urgent questions to ask before she lost herself in the emotional layers of a man who, after all, was still almost a stranger.

"Tell me about the surveillance of Ivo," he said, deliberately changing the subject. How unofficial is "unofficial"?

Castel took a sip of wine, considering the question with the same care with which he considered everything.

"I have a contact in Homicide who owes me favors, someone who can monitor Sandoval's movements without it being registered in any official system. We start tonight. Discreet cameras near your building, tracking your phone if we get an out-of-court warrant, which is easier than people think when you know the right people.

"That sounds like you're willing to break quite a few rules in this case.

"I'm willing to break quite a few rules for you. He said it undramatically, as a simple statement of facts, which somehow made it more disturbing than if he had said it passionately. The case matters to me. But if I'm honest, from the first letter you received, this was no longer just a case for me.

Irene set the glass down on the coffee table, feeling her heartbeat with an intensity that had nothing to do with wine.

"Are you always so direct?"

"Never. Castel turned to her completely, and the distance between them, which had hitherto been carefully maintained, began to crumble. I am methodical, calculating, and generally avoid saying out loud what I think until I have analyzed it from all possible angles. But with you, that methodology has been deteriorating since the moment you walked into my office and lied about why you were there.

"I didn't lie at all. Miranda was my patient.

"You omitted that the sessions had ended eight months ago. That's also a form of lying, Dr. Voss. There was a hint of amusement in his voice, but also something more serious underneath, a veiled warning that he saw more than she realized. You're very good at reading people. But you're also very good at building the version of yourself that you want others to see.

"And what version do you see?"

Castel took his time to respond, his eyes sweeping over Irene's face with an attention that felt almost physical, as if he were touching her without reaching out.

"I see someone who has spent so much time studying the darkness of others that she has become adept at hiding her own. Someone who enjoys danger not because it is self-destructive, but because it is the only situation in which she allows herself to feel something without the clinical distance that applies to everything else. He came a little closer, his voice lowering, almost hoarse. And I see someone who right now is as scared of how she feels about me as she is of the letters she's been receiving, maybe even more so.

The precision of the diagnosis left her momentarily speechless, that kind of silence that only occurs when someone names a truth that one had refused to articulate oneself. Irene felt the urge to step back, to rebuild the professional distance she had been using all her life as a shield, but instead she found herself leaning forward, shortening the space Castel had so carefully maintained.