This was the first logical chain of thought she'd managed since Dario had been snatched. It gave her strength, she felt her brain tightening around the problem.
So far I've done exactly what you expected me to do, she thought. You've sweated me for forty-eight hours until I was so desperate I'd do anything you asked. Now it's my turn to show you what sort of an opponent you've decided to take on. Comisarios Lobo and Elvira, Falcon's bosses. The odd couple. The Beast and the Accountant. The former, with his thin dark lips in a cumin complexion, looked as irritated as if he had sand in his teeth, while the latter restored even greater order to his already well-organized desk.
'What cases are you working on at the moment, Javier?' asked Elvira mildly, while Lobo stared on, leaning slightly forward as if it would take only the slightest provocation to make him violent.
'The murder of Marisa Moreno is my primary concern, as I believe it's linked to the two murders in Las Tres Mil.'
'You were seen recently in Madrid, where you spoke to Inspector Jefe Luis Zorrita about "digging around" in Esteban Calderon's case,' said Elvira. 'Which, as you know, comes up for trial here in Seville at the end of the month.'
'What's all that about, Javier?' asked Lobo, unable to restrain himself any longer.
'Politeness.'
'Politeness?' said Lobo. 'What the fuck has politeness got to do with anything?'
'I was telling Inspector Jefe Zorrita that I was going to look at Marisa Moreno. I'd read the case notes and listened to the Calderon interview, and there were some anomalies which merited attention. I was informing him because it might have an impact on his case, which as you've just…'
'And after the meeting with Zorrita, where did you go?' asked Elvira. 'The driver of the patrol car said you "hid" in the back seat.'
'I had some CNI business which I'm not able to discuss with you.'
'You are, and have been, under a great deal of strain,' said Elvira, wanting to move things along to the conclusion he already had in mind.
'We have an agreement with the CNI about your secondment to their duties,' said Lobo, who wanted to run this meeting without Elvira.
'If you do, I don't know what it is.'
'The essential element is that your work for them must not have a deleterious effect on your duties as the Inspector Jefe del Grupo de Homicidios,' said Elvira. 'If it does, then we have to decide where your resource would be better concentrated, so that you can be relieved of some of that pressure.'
'The CNI have made inquiries as to the work stress you're under here,' said Lobo.
'Have they? You mean Pablo has spoken to you?'
'Higher than Pablo,' said Lobo.
'As your commanding officer,' said Elvira, 'I am in possession of your career records, where it is clearly documented that you suffered a serious nervous breakdown in April 2001 and did not return to full duties until the summer of 2002.'
'Which was four years ago and I think you'll agree that, not only were the circumstances extremely unusual, but also that I've made a full recovery to the point of successfully conducting one of the most complex and demanding investigations in the history of the Seville Jefatura, that of the Seville bombing three months ago,' said Falcon. 'And, I might add, at the same time I made some very delicate interventions for the CNI, which resulted in the prevention of a major terrorist attack in London.'
'We also understand that your partner, Consuelo Jimenez, has seen her youngest child kidnapped two days ago,' said Elvira.
'Which reminds me: you can take the police guard off my house in Calle Bailen. I don't need protection,' said Falcon.
'It was a temporary measure,' said Elvira.
'Don't tell me, Javier, that all this isn't enough stress for even such a man as yourself to bear,' said Lobo. 'We all know the promise you made to the people of Seville on TV last June and, whilst we don't know the ins and outs of the CNI work, they have made inquiries to us about your mental reliability. Added to that, three murders for your department to investigate and the kidnapping of Dario Jimenez…'
'And what if I tell you that it's all connected?' said Falcon.
'The intelligence work as well?' asked Elvira.
'That is an inevitable development from the situation that occurred back in June,' said Falcon. 'Pressure is being applied in the most inventive way possible to get someone to do what is against their nature. I am responsible for that person being in that position. I cannot desert him.'
'But what has it got to do with what is happening here in Seville?' asked Lobo.
'I'm not sure, other than that the same situation exists here: pressure is being applied to all sorts of people to get them to perform,' said Falcon. 'And I include this meeting.'
Lobo and Elvira looked at each other and then at Falcon.
'This meeting?' said Lobo, with the threat level in his voice close to red.
'You're just transferring to me what's been applied to you,' said Falcon.
'If you mean by that that the CNI have been in touch with us…'
'Not just the CNI.'
'I don't understand why you're resurrecting the Calderon case,' said Elvira, his discomfiture making him testy. 'Is it because of your ex-wife?'
'It seems,' said Lobo, irritated by Elvira's departure from the script, 'that it's not just the CNI who are concerned about your mental state. I had a call from the Juez Decano complaining about your interruption of a press conference in the Andalucian parliament in order to question his son about how exactly he introduced Marisa Moreno to Esteban Calderon. He seems to think, and I agree, that it was unnecessary harassment.'
'My methods have been questioned before,' said Falcon, 'but never the results.'
'We think you're doing too much, Javier,' said Elvira.
'Two comments about your mental state from different sources on the same day,' said Lobo. 'That rings alarm bells with us, Javier.'
'Given your history,' added Elvira.
'What you mean is that the Juez Decano – who, by the way, I did not see – was persuaded by his son that my behaviour was unstable,' said Falcon. 'Do I appear mad to you? Have any members of my squad, who are the people closest to me and most able to observe any changes, expressed concern about my behaviour?'
'Even I can see you're tired,' said Elvira. 'Exhausted.'
'We're not taking any chances with you, Javier.'
'So what's the deal?'
'The deal?' said Lobo.
'Any further comment about concerns for your mental state and you'll be suspended from duty,' said Elvira.
'And for my part,' said Falcon, 'I promise not to talk to Alejandro Spinola on any matter relating to Marisa Moreno or Esteban Calderon.'
The two men looked at him, eyebrows arched.
'Wasn't that the purpose of this meeting?' asked Falcon. It was early evening and the temperature had just dropped below 40°C for the first time since 11 a.m. Inspector Jefe Tirado sat in Consuelo's living room, preparing to give her a short report on the developments in her son's kidnapping. He was disconcerted by her poise. Most women who'd been made to sweat for more than forty-eight hours without hearing a word from the kidnappers would be on the verge of a breakdown by now. Most mothers he'd dealt with had been reduced to a state of tearful exhaustion by the constant oscillation between hope and despair within the first twelve hours. They'd look at him with begging eyes, pleading with every cell in their bodies for the thinnest sliver of good news. Consuelo Jimenez sat before him dressed and made up, even with her toes and fingernails painted with red varnish. He had never encountered a woman under these circumstances who'd shown such total composure, even refusing support from family members. She made him nervous.
He talked her through the interview with Carlos Puerta, her stalker back in June.
'He said that?' said Consuelo, outraged but remembering her instability at that time. 'He put his hands up my skirt, stole the money from my handbag and then kicked it down the street. At the very least it was a mugging.'
<
br /> 'I found a shot of this man. I've been around the neighbourhood here, and nobody has seen him in Santa Clara, certainly not recently,' said Tirado. 'The Narcotics guys down in Las Tres Mil say he's been a permanent fixture down there for the last two months.'
'So you don't think he's involved in Dario's kidnapping?'
'He was also in very poor condition,' said Tirado, flipping through his notes. 'I understand from the sound engineer that there have been no communications here.' Consuelo shook her head. The strain of keeping what she knew from Tirado was making her absurdly conscious of the functioning vertebrae in her neck. She realized, in that instant, that the phone call she'd made to the kidnappers had transformed Tirado into someone she could no longer trust.
Tirado looked up when he heard no reply.
'No,' she said. 'Nothing.'
'I've also been to Dario's school,' said Tirado, 'and conducted a number of interviews with the teachers and children. I'm afraid I have nothing to report from there, although they asked me to give you this.'
He handed over an envelope. She opened it and drew out the handmade card. The drawing on the front in coloured crayons showed a boy with standing-up hair in the sunshine, with trees and a river behind. Inside it said: Dario is all right. We know he will come home again soon. It was signed by everyone in his class.
Only then did Tirado discover what was going on underneath. Consuelo closed her eyes, her mouth crumpled, and two silvery rivulets crept hesitatingly down her face.
17
Plaza Alfalfa, Seville – Monday, 18th September 2006, 18.00 hrs
La Galeria Zoca was owned by a venerable old gentleman for whom the word senorial had been invented. He had impeccable manners, superb conversational skills, perfect tailoring, precision coiffure and gold-rimmed half-moon spectacles which hung from his neck by a cord. You would be in no doubt, just from the look of him, that this man came from lengthy and outstanding lineage, but that he would be the last person in the world to tell you anything of the sort.
Although Falcon had known Jose Manuel Domecq for many years, he had not seen him this century. They sat in an office at the back of the gallery, where Domecq had led him after a genuinely warm welcome. Two small coffees were brought in. Domecq shook the sugar sachet empty over his and stirred it in for a length of time for which only an old man would have the patience.
'I know you don't have anything left of your father's to sell, Javier,' he said. 'I heard you burnt it all.'
'Under his orders.'
'Yes, yes, yes,' he said sadly. 'A travesty and a tragedy. So what brings you here?'
'I just wanted to know if you've ever seen this woman,' said Falcon, handing Domecq a photograph he'd printed off his computer after his meeting with Lobo and Elvira.
Domecq settled his specs on his nose and leaned forward to inspect.
'She's very lovely, Marisa, isn't she?' he said.
'Did you know her well?'
'She came in here asking me to represent her once, but, you know, wood carving, ethnic stuff, it's not really my thing,' he said. 'But she was very attractive so I asked her to some openings, and sometimes she came and lent a somewhat exotic atmosphere to the proceedings. A mango amongst the oranges, or rather, a leopard amongst the… er… reptiles might be a more accurate description of some of my collectors. They liked her, found her rather interesting.'
'About what?' asked Falcon, thinking some of those words and phrases had sounded very familiar.
'The work,' said Domecq. 'Although I didn't like her stuff, she knew how to talk about art.'
'When did you last see her?'
'Not for a while at an opening,' said Domecq. 'But she didn't live far from here, so she'd drop in every so often to say hello. I probably saw her three or four months ago.'
'That's very good, Jose Manuel. Thank you for that,' said Falcon, taking the photograph back.
Some minutes later Falcon walked back to the tree-lined, leafy square, got into his car and sat at the wheel with the photograph still in his hands. The Plaza Alfalfa was quiet, the heat too oppressive for anybody to be sitting outside the Bar Manolo. The captivating woman in the photo stared back at him with dark, wide eyes. Domecq was right, she was lovely; but it was a picture of the American actress Halle Berry he'd shown to the gallery owner, not Marisa Moreno.
It was clear that Alejandro Spinola had moved fast. First, getting his father to complain to Comisario Lobo, of all people. Changing the story only a little so that it had come out as Falcon 'interrupting a press conference' just to talk about Calderon's old girlfriend. That could be construed as 'unstable behaviour'. And now, here he was, covering his tracks at La Galeria Zoca. Domecq must have a need for Spinola's social and professional network to have to lie for him like that.
His mobile vibrated. Cristina Ferrera.
'Diga,' he said.
'My friend in the CGI just came back to me,' she said. 'I thought you might be interested to know that Charles Taggart is booked to fly into Madrid from Newark tonight. Antonio Ramos is flying in from Barcelona, also tonight. And, this is the interesting thing: I4IT has chartered a private jet to fly down to Seville tomorrow. The pilot has logged his flight plan with a take-off time of five p.m.'
'Are they staying the night or flying back?'
'The pilot's flight plan indicates a take-off time of eleven a.m. on Wednesday, 20th September, destination Malaga, which meant that my friend, being a very thorough person, checked all the upmarket hotels in and around Seville and found four suites booked in the company name of Horizonte at an exclusive country-house hotel called La Berenjena, which is just off the road to Huelva.'
'Four suites?'
'There must be someone else invited to the party.'
'That's a pretty good contact you've got at the CGI,' said Falcon. 'You might have to marry him for doing all that for you.'
'My friend is a "she",' said Ferrera. 'You don't think you'd get that kind of detail from a man, do you, Inspector Jefe?' There were too many people for the meeting to take place in the judge's offices, so they'd had to wait half an hour for the conference room in the Edificio de los Juzgados to come available. At the end of the table sat the instructing judge, Anibal Parrado. To his left were Sub-Inspector Emilio Perez, Vicente Cortes and Martin Diaz. Opposite them sat Falcon and Ramirez. Falcon introduced Cortes and Diaz, whom the judge hadn't met before. He then gave an introduction to the three murders they were about to discuss and sat down. Anibal Parrado asked for an update on developments in the Marisa Moreno case. Ramirez described the sighting of three men down Calle Bustos Tavera by the young female witness. His description of the third man as a bodybuilder earned an interruption from Cortes.
'You mean a weightlifter,' he said.
'You know someone built like that?' asked Falcon. 'Because I have a witness from Las Tres Mil, Carlos Puerta, who gave a similar description of the possible shooter in El Pulmon's apartment.'
'Nikita Sokolov,' said Cortes. 'Just missed out on a bronze medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, middleweight class, which means around seventy kilos, although he must be heavier than that by now, but certainly no taller, and he still trains. We haven't seen him in the Costa del Sol for a few months… not since May or June.'
'What did he do down there?'
'He was an enforcer. When the old Russian gang leader fled to Dubai after Operation Wasp, he carried on working for Leonid Revnik,' said Cortes. 'His job was to make people pay or perform and, if they didn't want to do either, he'd kill them. I'll get back to you with more information on him.'
'A photo would help,' said Juez Parrado. 'Only one witness in the Marisa Moreno investigation, Inspector Ramirez?'
'There's not much residential around there. The courtyard was closed off from the street. The chain saw was electric and therefore quiet. It was pure luck that we found this witness.'
'Forensic information?'
'We found two paper suits in some rubbish bins around the corner, just off Calle Gerona.
They were in a bin liner, which is what our witness described seeing in the hands of one of the three men she saw in Calle Bustos Tavera. The blood on the suits was matched to Marisa Moreno and some DNA has been derived from hairs found on the inside of one and from a semen deposit in the other. The data has been passed to CICO headquarters in Madrid to see if they can find a match on their database.'
'That could take some time,' said Diaz. 'Computer matches have to be confirmed by human inspection these days. We'll be lucky to have anything on that by tomorrow, if they exist in our database. If they don't, we have to pass the samples over to Interpol and that might take weeks.'
'So we have a sighting of three men, but DNA from only two,' said Parrado.
'Nikita Sokolov wouldn't do dirty work like that,' said Cortes. 'He'd shoot a guy, but he wouldn't get actively involved in cutting up a woman. He wouldn't lower himself to that.'
'Lower himself?' asked Parrado.
'These guys keep male company. Women, to them, are a lower form of life. They're good for preparing food, sex and beating. Sokolov is a real vor-v-zakone, which means "a thief with a code of honour". When he came back from the Olympics he served time in jail for murder. Most of the Russian mafia guys on the Costa del Sol these days have just bought the right to be vory-v-zakone, but Sokolov actually earned it in jail. He would have overseen Marisa's killing, but he wouldn't have done the work.'
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