Act Three - The Angel’s Game — Chapter 23

Leaving Villa Helius, David Martín notices Inspector Víctor Grandes tailing him without lights. Martín tries to lose him through the sparse evening traffic, threading Las Corts and heading toward Montjuïc. On the Miramar balustrades, Martín brakes and rams Grandes’s car, disabling it but also wrecking his own tyre, forcing him to abandon the vehicle and sprint for the last cable car of the night.

Martín boards with four priests just as the employee closes up. Grandes arrives injured but smiling, flashes his badge, and joins them with a gun. At the first tower stop, the priests disembark. Alone with Martín, Grandes discusses his daughter and reveals a 15,000-peseta bounty, claiming Martín will “do the killing” himself.

Grandes shoots the cable car’s door lock open and orders Martín to jump, insisting death will be instant. When Martín resists and asks if Grandes truly thinks him guilty, the inspector answers that he doesn’t care, then shoots Martín in the chest and begins pushing him out. As Martín starts to fall, he claws into Grandes’s neck, trapping him in the doorway. A wild struggle ensues; a shot grazes Martín and ricochets, wounding Grandes’s hand. Martín hauls himself back inside.

Martín discovers the bullet lodged through his coat and the novel The Steps of Heaven, which stopped it. While Grandes suffocates from his crushed windpipe, Martín takes the envelope of bounty money, kicks away the gun, and asks about Marlasca. Grandes only laughs. As the cabin enters the San Sebastián tower, Martín pushes Grandes out; the inspector plummets through the tower’s machinery to his death.