Delito

The first human being bursts against the asphalt at ten forty-two on the night of Sunday, June 2. A man walking across the square instinctively looks up. He gives him time to see several people - he couldn't say how many, he later tells the police - on the windowsills of a skyscraper. And suddenly, before he can even be shocked by what's happening, they all jump at once. They jump at the same time and explode against the ground almost at the same time. And, again, that indescribable noise. Although much more intense. That warm summer night in Madrid, ten people jump into the void from ten rooms on the seventh floor of the hotel that presides over the Plaza de España. None of them had checked in at reception. They do not carry anything to identify them. There is a young woman who will barely have turned thirty, but also someone over eighty. A corpse is wearing clothes worth more than six thousand euros. Another wears clothes that an NGO had given him. Their worlds have never crossed. They don't know each other. There is no guest or employee who remembers seeing them in the hotel, no personal item in the rooms from which they have jumped; although on the nightstand of number seven hundred and sixteen the investigators find a couple of lighted candles that seem to pray to a little virgin whom they gently illuminate. That's just the first of the surprises.