After the shootout that killed Miquel Moliner, an unidentified van arrives to clean up the scene: two men remove the dead policemen and intimidate the bar’s manager into silence. Miquel’s body is later dumped in a Raval alley so his death cannot be linked to the officers’ deaths.

When Miquel reaches the morgue, he carries no personal papers except a damaged passport in Julián Carax’s name and a copy of The Shadow of the Wind. The police conclude the corpse is Carax and trace the address on the passport to the Fortunys’ apartment, bringing Mr. Fortuny to identify the body.

Inspector Fumero arrives and watches Fortuny panic and flee when he recognizes the dead man as the recent visitor who had asked after Carax. Fumero recognizes the corpse as Miquel, but he signs the report declaring it is Julián Carax and orders immediate burial in a common grave, effectively erasing Carax’s official existence and giving Fumero cover to keep hunting him off the record.

Nuria Monfort spends days in the apartment, spiraling with uncertainty, and then returns to work at the publishing firm under Álvaro Cabestany after Mr. Cabestany is hospitalized. An upright morgue employee, Manuel Gutiérrez Fonseca, phones Nuria to report that “Julián Carax” has arrived at the mortuary, and Nuria fears the call may be a trap.

Nuria leaves work and rushes home, trying not to draw attention, only to find the apartment lock forced and the door opening from inside. Julián Carax appears alive; Nuria embraces him with relief, then they lie together in exhausted silence amid distant gunfire. That night, grief and fear give way to intimacy, and Nuria is left anticipating the guilt and self-contempt that may follow at dawn.