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that they could take care of things. They offered me ten thousand pesetas in exchange for not reporting it. They would take care of everything.”
    María turned in her chair, shocked.
    “But why did they offer you money not to report it?”
    “It seems that the guy who tried to kill my husband is that first cop who came a few days earlier with the photo of the girl. I think he is a chief inspector of the information squad. He had my husband in a basement for several days, doing all sorts of nasty things to him.”
    In that moment María felt afraid. It was as if up to that point in the conversation she had been playing with a cylinder that seemed harmless and she had suddenly discovered that it was filled with nitroglycerine. She cautiously shifted her gaze toward Greta, who remained silent with her arms crossed over her chest.
    “And I guess you came to see me because you want to report that policeman?” asked María guardedly.
    Purificación looked at both lawyers with her little dead eyes, which suddenly took on an intense gleam.
    “What I want is to know if I can get more money out of them.”
    María and Greta exchanged a look somewhere between perplexed and embarrassed. Nonetheless, María immediately realized the importance of what was to come. Her reservations didn’t matter; who cares if what the woman was looking for was money or justice?
    “If we can put that chief inspector in prison, you’ll have all the money and fame you could ever want.”
    María accepted the case without thinking, thrilled. It was what she had been waiting for since she finished law school. Good-bye clerking, half-assed cases, crumbs. She had hit the mother lode, and she planned on taking full advantage of the opportunity.
    “I’ll need to talk to your husband.”
    “He’s in a coma.”
    María’s expression soured. That was the first obstacle. The victim couldn’t identify his aggressor.
    “I want to see him anyway.”
    *   *   *
     
    The only thing that María saw of that battered man was his swollen body on a stretcher in the emergency ward of the Francisco Franco Residence. She was taken aback by the deformity of his face, completely raw and ruined. And she was sure it would also impress the district attorney and the judge. As for his character, the way he thought and behaved, she only had Purificación’s story, and most of that information she would keep hidden to win the case.
    There were months of intense work. Looking for incriminating evidence, witnesses, the motive behind the aggression … It turned out to be surprisingly easy to find witnesses who would testify to the brutality of that inspector, whom María never saw until the trial started. When the hearing date had been set, she already had enough evidence to prove that Inspector César Alcalá was a corrupt cop who ran a ring of drugs and prostitution. Ramoneda, who worked as an informant for the inspector, was thinking of turning him in, so César Alcalá decided to murder him, but not before cruelly torturing him to find out what Ramoneda knew.
    “A clear-cut case,” said María, before her final summation.
    Greta, who had worked on the case as much as María had, frowned. Suddenly, there seemed to be too much incriminating evidence, too much testimony against him. And Ramoneda was still in a coma, unable to explain himself. Besides, there was something that no one had mentioned in the case.
    “Pura says that that policeman showed her a photo of a twelve-year-old girl. We haven’t even tried to find out who she is and why the inspector was looking for her.”
    “That’s not important to our case,” said María uncomfortably, settling the subject.
    *   *   *
     
    The whole country was watching her in a case that had gained importance and media attention as the months of the hearing went on, until it had become a real acid test for the justice system. In the bars, in the university classrooms, even in the workshops, people made their