Free The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

not I wanted any help. I soon discovered that the modus operandi of that commando of electrical experts consisted in first drilling holes right, left, and center and then asking. Three days after their deployment, the house did not have a single lightbulb that worked, but one would have thought that the place had been infested by a plague of woodworm that devoured plaster and the noblest of minerals.
    “Are you sure there isn’t a better way of fixing this?” I would ask the head of the battalion, who resolved everything with blows of the hammer.
    Otilio, as this talented man was called, would show me the building plans supplied by the property manager when I was handed the keys and argue that the problem lay with the house, which was badly built.
    “Look at this,” he would say. “I mean, when something is badly made, it’s badly made and there are no two ways about it. Here, for example. Here it says that you have a water tank on the terrace. Well, no, sir, you have a water tank in the backyard.”
    “What does it matter? The water tank has nothing to do with you, Otilio. Concentrate on the electrics. Light. Not taps, not water pipes. Light. I need light.”
    “But everything is connected. What do you think about the gallery?”
    “I think it has no light.”
    “According to the plans, this should be a supporting wall. Well, my mate Remigio here tapped it ever so slightly and half the wall came crashing down. And you should see the bedrooms. According to this plan, the size of the room at the end of the corridor should be almost forty square meters. Not in a million years! I’d be surprised if it measured twenty. There’s a wall where there shouldn’t be a wall. And as for the waste pipes, well, best not talk about them. Not one of them is where it’s supposed to be.”
    “Are you sure you know how to read the plans?”
    “Listen, I’m a professional. Mark my words: this house is a jigsaw puzzle. Everybody’s grandmother has poked their nose into this place.”
    “I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with what there is. Perform a few miracles or do whatever you want, but by Friday I want to see all the walls plastered and painted and the lights working.”
    “Don’t rush me, this is precision work. One has to act strategically.”
    “So what is your plan?”
    “For a start we’re off to have our breakfast.”
    “You got here only half an hour ago!”
    “Señor Martín, we’re not going to get anywhere with that attitude.”
    The ordeal of building work and botched jobs went on a week longer than expected, but even with the presence of Otilio and his squadron of geniuses making holes where they shouldn’t and enjoying two-and-a-half-hour breakfasts, the thrill of being able to live in that old rambling house, which I had dreamed about for so long, would have kept me going for years with candles and oil lamps if need be. I was lucky that the Ribera quarter was a spiritual home for all kinds of craftsmen: near my new home I found someone who could put in new locks that didn’t look as if they’d been stolen from the Bastille, as well as twentieth-century wall lights and taps. The idea of having a telephone line installed did not appeal to me and, judging by what I’d heard on Vidal’s wireless, these “intercommunicating systems,” as the press calledthem, were not aimed at people such as myself. I decided that my existence would be one of books and silence. All I took from the pension was a change of clothes and the case containing my father’s gun, his only memento. I distributed the rest of my clothes and personal belongings among the pension residents. Had I also been able to leave behind my memories, even my skin, I would have done so.
    …
    The day the first installment
of City of the Damned was
published, I spent my first official and electrified night in the tower house. The novel was an imaginary intrigue I had woven round the story of the fire in El Ensueño in 1903, about