The Ignoranceof Blood jf-4

by Robert Wilson

  'That's true. I met her at a gallery opening,' he said, nodding, looking out of the window. 'Over the past few years Esteban hasn't had much time for art. He used to go to openings all the time. He was always interested in paintings, literature, that kind of thing, much more so than me.'

  'Then why did you go?'

  'The people. A good art dealer can always bring together an interesting bunch of people. Collectors tend to have money and influence. And that's my job.'

  'What is your job?'

  'I work for the mayor.'

  'That's what Esteban told me,' said Falcon. 'I'm sure you've got more to add?'

  'I make sure the mayor is in touch with the right sort of people to achieve his aims,' said Spinola. 'Things don't happen on their own, Inspector Jefe. Whether you're building a mosque in Los Bermejales or pedestrianizing the Avenida de la Constitucion, or remodelling La Alameda or tunnelling a metro under the city, there are huge numbers of people to deal with. Angry residents, disgruntled religious groups, disappointed contractors, furious taxi drivers, to name but a few.'

  'Presumably there are happy people as well.'

  'Of course. My job is to help the mayor convert those unhappy people into… well, maybe not totally happy people, but at least quieter, more manageable people.'

  'And how do you do that?'

  'You must know my father, Inspector Jefe, he's a lawyer,' said Spinola. 'I never had the temperament for sitting down and learning lots of stuff from books, like Esteban did. But in my own way I'm like both of them. I'm a very persuasive guy.'

  'So what happened with Marisa, then?' said Falcon, smiling.

  'Oh, yes, right, exactly. What happened with Marisa…' said Spinola, giving him a delayed laugh. 'I met her at Galeria Zoca. Do you know it? Just off the Alfalfa. She wasn't showing. She's not a big enough name for that place. But she's very nice to look at, no? So, Jose Manuel Domecq, the owner, always invites her to, you know, prettify the usual assembly of toads and trout with their crocodile-skin handbags and wallets bulging with cash. I already knew everybody there, so I didn't have to work very hard, and we all went out to dinner and Marisa and I sat together and, you know, Inspector Jefe, we got along. We got along very well.'

  'Did you sleep with her?'

  Spinola initially narrowed his eyes, as if preparing to take affront, but in the end decided on a lightness of touch. He laughed, a little exaggeratedly.

  'No, no, no, que no, Inspector Jefe. It wasn't like that.'

  'I see,' said Falcon. 'Forgive my misunderstanding.'

  'No. We exchanged numbers and I called her the following week to invite her to the garden party at the Duchess of Alba's house. It's an annual affair and I thought it would be… exotic to turn up with a beautiful black girl on my arm.'

  As Spinola's eyes travelled from the window back across the room, they stopped for a beat to check how things were going down with Falcon, then carried on to the door. For a persuasive man, Spinola was weak on eye contact.

  'So, how did your introduction of Marisa to your cousin come about?'

  'Well, it wasn't so much an introduction as Esteban arriving on my shoulder within seconds of my arrival and introducing himself to Marisa.'

  'I think you might have misremembered something.'

  'I don't think so. I can see it now. Esteban cutting her away from me while I got drawn into the crowd. He hogged her the whole evening.'

  'I think that's doubtful,' said Falcon, 'because Esteban was married to Ines and, at that point in their relationship, he was not in the habit of brazenly displaying his inclination for infidelity, especially in front of his and her parents and, of course, your father, the Juez Decano de Sevilla, who was his employer.'

  A pause for thought. Some rearrangement of the details. Falcon could hear the brain furniture scraping around in Spinola's head. Then the mayor's fixer suddenly shrugged and threw his hand up in the air.

  'These are just details, Inspector Jefe,' he said. 'Think of how many parties I go to, how many social situations I find myself in. How am I supposed to remember the finer points of every meeting and introduction?'

  'Because, as you've just told me,' said Falcon, 'it's your job. Your job is to know what makes people tick. What they like and dislike. And people in social situations don't wear their needs and intentions on the outside, especially, I imagine, when you're around and they're very conscious of the impression they want to make on the mayor's office. Yes, I would have thought that, under those circumstances, it would all be in the detail. And your reading of that detail is what makes you so successful.'

  Finally, the eye contact, very level and sustained. A mixture of respect and fear. Spinola now thinking: What does this man know?

  'How does Esteban remember it?' he asked, in order to avoid another lie and to give himself a chance of building a different point of view on the rock of truth.

  'He remembers you pulling him out of a family group. You were on your own at the time. You told him that he must meet this wonderful sculptress that you'd found at an opening the previous week. He says you took him into the house, to a room with some magnificent paintings where you'd left Marisa to wait alone. He remembers you introducing her and the next thing he knows you are no longer in the room. Does that refresh your memory?'

  It did. Spinola's eyes drifted above Falcon's head as he tried to massage the facts he'd just heard into something perfectly comprehensible.

  'How old are you, Senor Spinola?'

  'Thirty-four,' he said.

  'You're not married?'

  'No.'

  'Perhaps you could explain why you, a single man, would effect an introduction to a very attractive woman, also single, to your married cousin?'

  Something like relief passed over Spinola's face and Falcon realized a strategy had occurred to him.

  'I'm sorry to say this, Inspector Jefe, but Marisa would not be the first woman I'd ever introduced to my cousin.'

  'What does that mean exactly?'

  'It means what I've just said. I've introduced single women to Esteban before and he's had affairs with… some of them.'

  'I was wondering if you meant that you had an arrangement, like some sort of informal pimping service,' said Falcon mildly, but with calculated aggression.

  'I resent that, Inspector Jefe.'

  'Then clarify the understanding you had with your cousin for me.'

  'I'm younger than him. I'm not married. I meet young, available women…'

  'But what is the understanding? Has anything ever been said between the two of you about what you're doing?'

  'As you said yourself, Inspector Jefe, my job is to know what people like.'

  'In that case, what was your purpose, Senor Spinola?'

  'My purpose, Inspector Jefe, is to build up favours in all walks of life, so that in my own, or the mayor's, crucial moments I can call on people for support,' said Spinola. 'Local politics is only pretty on the surface, and the surface is very important. Nobody ever asks for a bribe. Nobody ever asks for a nice young chick to blow him under his desk. I have to know, and then I have to make it look as if I didn't, so that we can still look at each other at the next party.'

  Spinola had taken the first round by a whisker. Falcon stood up. He went to the door, reached for the handle. Spinola lifted his feet off the drawer, shoved it in.

  'You might not have heard, Senor Spinola,' said Falcon. 'Marisa Moreno was murdered last night. They used her own chain saw on her. Cut off her hand. Cut off her foot. Cut off her head.'

  The small triumph disappeared from Spinola's face and what was left behind was not sorrow or horror but a very live kind of fear.

  16

  Consuelo's house, Santa Clara, Seville – Monday, 18th September 2006, 16.15 hrs

  Consuelo had found an old mobile phone, but with a flat battery, which she was now recharging. She reckoned half an hour would give her enough juice. Voices reached her from downstairs. She was nervous about making the call in the house. If somethi
ng happened and she had an emotional reaction, they would hear her and that might affect Dario's safety.

  The patrolman at the front door did not move as she passed him. She saw that his head was resting on the wall. He was asleep. In the kitchen, the sound man and the family liaison officer were having one of those endless Sevillano conversations about everything that had ever happened to them and their families. Consuelo made some coffee, served them and took her own into the living room. She watched the second patrolman sitting by the pool. He was slumped in his chair. It was 40°C out there. He, too, must be asleep. Time leaked by until she could bear it no longer.

  Back upstairs. The phone had recharged enough. She entered the phone number from the email into the memory, not sure, in her emotional state, that she could rely on her brain to remember it. She called the service provider and set up a pay-as-you-go account for twenty-five euros. She changed into some flat pumps, slipped back downstairs, past the first patrolman, past the kitchen and out through the sliding doors. She walked the length of the pool. The patrolman didn't move. At the bottom of the garden there was a rough break in the hedge where a gate led to the adjoining property. It was rusted and had never been opened as far as she knew. She vaulted over it and found herself at the back of her neighbour's pool house.

  She called the number. It rang interminably. She breathed back her fear, apprehension and rampant agitation, but when the answer came it was still like cold steel in the stomach.

  'Diga.'

  Nothing came out of her paralysed throat.

  'Diga!'

  'My name is Consuelo Jimenez and I've been told to call this number. You're holding my -'

  ' Momentito.'

  There was muffled talk. The phone changed hands.

  'Listen to me, Senora Jimenez,' said a new voice. 'Do you understand why we have taken your son?'

  'I'm not sure who you are.'

  'But do you understand why your son has been taken from you?'

  Put like that she nearly broke down.

  'No, I don't,' she said.

  'Your friend, Javier Falcon, the inspector -'

  'He is not my friend,' she said, blurting it.

  'That's a pity.'

  She wasn't sure why he should have said that: sad because they'd split up, or a shame because he could be useful?

  'You need friends at a time like this,' said the voice.

  'Why do I need him?' she asked. 'He is the cause of all this.'

  'It's good that you understand that much.'

  'But I don't understand why you have taken my son because of his investigations.'

  'He was warned.'

  'But why my son?'

  'I am in no doubt that you are a good person, Senora Jimenez, but even you, in your business, must understand the nature of pressure.'

  'The nature of pressure,' she said, her mind blank.

  'Direct pressure is always met with resistance. However, indirect pressure is a much more complicated business.'

  Silence, until Consuelo realized that her response was required.

  'And you want me to apply… some indirect pressure. Is that it?'

  'There was a car accident on the motorway between Jerez and Seville a few days ago in which a Russian named Vasili Lukyanov was killed,' said the voice. 'Inspector Jefe Falcon was put in charge of this accident because there was a lot of money in the boot – eight million two hundred thousand euros – and a number of disks, which contain footage of men and women in compromising situations. We would like the money and the disks returned to us. If you are successful in persuading Inspector Jefe Falcon to act for you, then no harm will come to your son. He will be released, you have my word on that. If, however, you decide to involve other agencies, or your old friend calls on other resources, then your son will still come back to you, Senora Jimenez, but piece by piece.'

  The line went dead. Consuelo vomited a horrible bilious liquid that burned her throat and nostrils. She wheeled around under the big, white sky and fell back against the pool house, panting, sweat streaming down her face and neck. She wiped her nose, coughed, sniffed. Blurted out some more tears and frustration. Remembered the patrolman by the pool. Pulled herself together. She got back into her own garden. Slipped into the house. Up the stairs. She stripped and stood under the shower. The first solid thought to form in her mind was: had she just done something very stupid? 'Where are you?' asked Falcon.

  'I'm with Inspector Ramirez at the Jefatura,' said Cristina Ferrera. 'We're typing up the report on Marisa Moreno.'

  'Did you get anything apart from the paper suits?'

  'A witness. A twenty-three-year-old woman saw three men in Calle Bustos Tavera, but she's a bit hazy about the time. She thought it was around midnight, which probably sounds about right. She was going home early, felt sick in a club on La Alameda.'

  'Did she get a good look?'

  'She lost her nerve, didn't like the… not so much the look of them, because she couldn't see much down there at night. It's unlit. But she didn't like the feel of the situation. She made a detour to avoid them.'

  'Height, weight, frame?'

  'Two guys about the same height, one eight-five to one ninety metres, who looked around the hundred-kilo mark. The third guy was very short and stocky. She said he was noticeably wide and muscular. Thick neck. She thought he might have been a bodybuilder. One of the taller guys was carrying a full bin liner. The other thing was that, although she couldn't see their features, she knew they weren't Spanish. Something to do with their head shape.'

  'The description of that last guy is very interesting,' said Falcon. 'That squares with a witness description I've got to the double killing in Las Tres Mil.'

  'We picked that up on the police radio.'

  'Tell Ramirez that the two bodies in the drug dealer's apartment in Las Tres Mil are connected to what he's doing. Anibal Parrado is the instructing judge for both cases. We'll all meet within the Edificio de los Juzgados this evening, time to be arranged. What about those three businessmen's names I gave you to check out?'

  'Juan Valverde is in Madrid right now and Antonio Ramos is in Barcelona, but where they're going to be is a different matter. Their personal assistants have been told not to give out that kind of information,' said Ferrera. 'So I lifted all their data from their ID files and sent it to a friend of mine in the Comisaria General de Informacion, who works in counter terrorism. They've got access to airlines, trains, private jets, and can find out if these people are moving around at all in the next few days… assuming they've made bookings. They'll check out the American consultant, Charles Taggart, too. I got his data from the visa office. I couldn't find out where he is at the moment. He's not directly employed by I4IT Europe. All I can say is that he wasn't in their office in Madrid, nor in Horizonte's Barcelona office.'

  'I didn't really mean for you to go into that kind of detail,' said Falcon. 'We need to talk to those men face to face. I just didn't want to go to Madrid and find they were in Frankfurt.'

  'I thought it was more sinister than that,' said Ferrera. 'Still, my friend will get all the information and you can use it against them if they start getting difficult. Inspector Ramirez wants a word.'

  'Just to warn you, Javier,' said Ramirez, 'Comisario Elvira has been on the phone asking where you are. And I've just seen your friend and mine, the Jefe Superior Andres Lobo; after giving me one of those "fuck off" salutes of his, he also wanted to know where you were.'

  'Why don't they just call me?'

  'In my experience, they never do that when they're going to give you a kicking,' said Ramirez. 'Upset anyone recently?'

  'Have you heard of a guy called Alejandro Spinola?'

  'That smarmy fucker.'

  'So you've met him?'

  Pause.

  'No,' said Ramirez, as if that was obvious. 'I just know a smarmy fucker when I see one. And I know he works in the mayor's office and he's the Juez Decano's son… so I don't call him a tosser to his face.'

  'H
e introduced Marisa to Esteban Calderon.'

  'Aha!' said Ramirez, as if the whole case had fallen open into his lap. 'What the fuck does that mean?'

  'We had a very interesting little fencing match,' said Falcon. 'He's a bit of a maestro. I'm beginning to think it might mean that the June 6th conspiracy is still alive and moving on another front, or that perhaps it was attempting to develop two spheres of influence – parliament and the mayor's office.'

  'And they blew it with trying to control the regional politics so now they're trying to infiltrate the mayor's office?' said Ramirez. 'Don't you think you might be reading too much into very little, Javier?'

  'I can smell something on Spinola,' said Falcon. 'That guy is an operator and he's ambitious. I get the impression that in his family circle Esteban Calderon has been held up as the paragon of intelligence and capability. And Alejandro has spent his life trying to prove himself equal. He didn't have the brains to become a lawyer, but he's got other qualities.'

  'And he's used them to fuck up his cousin?'

  'It wouldn't surprise me.'

  'Hold on a sec,' said Ramirez. 'Cristina has just told me you've been given the summons. Elvira does want to see you, and it seems to be pressing.'

  'And that in itself is a symptom,' said Falcon. 'The forces are gathering. Tell the Comisario I'll be there as soon as I can.' Consuelo sat in a T-shirt and pants, hair wet, face lit by the computer screen. She had been stupid and impetuous; now she was going to slow down, consider her next move more carefully than her first. She had written down the dialogue from the phone call, as best she could remember it, on the computer. She read it over, made adjustments each time her memory flung up another half-remembered phrase.

  The work had a dampening effect on her hysteria. After her shower, she'd got dressed with the notion that she would call Javier, go straight out to meet him and confront him with the latest development. Only when she reached for the phone did she realize that this was what was expected of her. She'd stripped off, just in case the impetuosity struck again, and sat down to start doing some serious thinking.

  She began by answering the kidnapper's question: Why had Dario been taken? Because they didn't like the intrusion of Javier's investigations. In kidnapping Dario they knew that she would call directly on Javier's position and experience in criminal investigations. Perhaps they had expected that Javier would not give her the reason behind Dario's kidnap and would become directly involved in trying to find the boy. This would divert Javier's attention from his investigation that so concerned them. But Javier had insisted on the Crimes Against Children squad being involved in the kidnapping, which meant that the Russians' application of indirect pressure had not had the desired effect. Now she was being used as their agent to draw Javier into Dario's predicament. They wanted her to use her considerable influence with Javier, who would be feeling profoundly guilty, to induce him to corrupt himself by stealing back their money and the disks from the Jefatura. Their strict condition, that there should be no involvement of other agencies and resources or it would result in harm to Dario, might mean they had informers in the Jefatura. If Javier was caught stealing evidence he would be immediately suspended from duty, and that would be a good result for the Russians.