Читать книгу Crocodile Tears онлайн

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From inside you can barely hear the nervous echo of the outside world: the roar of the Old Town is muffled, wrapped in insulating material, the racket is scarcely audible and this silence accentuates the almost womblike atmosphere of the building in which she lives.

Every day for just over a month, Ursula López has followed a military routine: she sleeps, gets up at six, has a bath, eats breakfast, leaves the house, makes her way to the place where the woman lives, the other Ursula, and keeps watch until she sees her go out for a run. Sometimes she follows her, sometimes she just watches her disappear, sometimes she waits for her to return. All to a precise timetable that she implements every day, without fail. It is the timetable of her revenge.

Today she walks down Calle Sarandí, hurrying the short distance to Plaza Matriz among artisans and tourists, yuppies wearing clothes that scream lawyer, accountant, manager; among beggars with huge coats and misshapen caps, gay couples holding hands, diligent and carefully made-up bilingual secretaries, delivery boys, shivering prostitutes, uniformed teenagers. And as she walks among these people, she hears the cathedral bells tolling eight o’clock. Eight o’clock on the dot.