The Ignoranceof Blood jf-4

by Robert Wilson

  32

  There was no lingering on that hot night in Fes.

  The women in the Diouri household did not seem unduly troubled by the death of Barakat's mother, they were far more concerned about the injury to Abdullah and confounded by the presence of a child and a small dog in the house. When Abdullah told them he'd been knifed by the mad woman, and they found the bloody blade still in the woman's hand, they were appalled. Falcon looked at the wound. It was a deep cut in the shoulder muscle and, although bloody, the blade had not severed anything serious. The women brought alcohol and bandages. He dressed the wound, but said it would need stitches. Given the circumstances, he told Abdullah, this would best be done in Ceuta. Yousra and Leila would stay in Fes.

  They were led to the car through the back streets of the medina. Consuelo would not let Falcon carry the boy. She was frightened by Dario's total lack of animation, but encouraged by the steadiness of his pulse. They left for Ceuta at 9.30 p.m. On the way Falcon called Alfonso, the concierge, at the Hotel Puerta de Africa and told him they would be arriving at about 1 a.m. Moroccan time at the border and would need help to get through. Abdullah had changed out of his bloody clothes and back into mourning. He had his ID card, but had left his passport in Rabat. Consuelo had had the foresight to bring Dario's documents. Falcon also told Alfonso they'd need a doctor on arrival at the hotel and a couple of rooms for what was left of the night.

  At the border they were walked through to the Spanish side, with no official inspection. A taxi was waiting. Dario had still not stirred. He had the distressing feel of a large ragdoll. The doctor was waiting at the hotel and they went straight up to the room. Abdullah insisted that Dario was seen to first. The doctor lifted Dario's eyelids, shone his torch into the pupils. He listened to the heart and lungs. He minutely inspected the boy's body and found needle punctures in the crooks of his elbows. He declared there was nothing wrong with him apart from having been heavily sedated.

  He took one look at Abdullah's wound and said he'd have to come with him to his surgery and have it properly cleaned and stitched. Falcon and Consuelo washed Dario in the bath and put him to bed. They slept with the boy in between them and were woken just before midday by his crying. He had no recollection of what had happened to him. Although he vaguely remembered being taken away from the Sevilla FC shop, he could not recollect how it had happened or who had done it.

  It was decided that Abdullah would travel with them and stay in Seville with Falcon until the Barakat murder and the death of the mother had been dealt with by the authorities. They took a cab to the hydrofoil and were across the straits by 3.30 p.m. They drove back to Seville, where Falcon left Consuelo and Dario in Santa Clara with her sister and the boys, Ricardo and Matias. He and Abdullah went to the Jefatura, where he gave Barakat's DNA swab to Jorge in the forensics lab and asked him to check it against samples on the Jefatura's database.

  'You know Comisario Elvira is looking for you,' said Jorge.

  'He's always looking for me. I'm going home to bed,' said Falcon. 'You haven't seen me.'

  He and Abdullah went home. Encarnacion fed them. Falcon turned off all his mobiles and disconnected his phone. He slept the rest of the afternoon and whole night without waking.

  In the morning he inspected Abdullah's wound and redressed it. He took a slow breakfast out in the patio, staring at the marble flagstones. At midday he called Jorge and asked if he'd run the DNA test.

  'There was a match to Raul Jimenez,' said Jorge. 'The DNA you gave me would probably have belonged to his son. Does that help you?'

  'Interesting.'

  'You might also be interested to know that your squad are on a high. Last night they arrested two building inspectors in Torremolinos, who they'd identified from those Lukyanov disks. They've already charged them with conspiring to cause an explosion,' said Jorge. 'This morning they picked up the owner of a small hotel in Almeria, who also happened to be an electrician and was trained by the army in the use of explosives. He'll be arriving in Seville this afternoon. Ramirez has been trying to call you and Comisario Elvira is still very eager to know where you are. I've said nothing.'

  Falcon hung up, called Consuelo. Dario was playing with his brothers and some friends in the pool.

  'He seems untouched by it all,' she said, amazed. 'I was going to get Alicia to talk to him, but I'm not sure whether it will just make him unhappy.'

  'See what Alicia says. You don't have to rush,' said Falcon.

  He told her about the DNA match from Barakat to Raul. Consuelo couldn't understand how Raul Jimenez, her ex-husband, came to be Mustafa Barakat's father.

  'The reason Raul suddenly had to leave Morocco back in the fifties was because he'd made the twelve-year-old daughter of Abdullah Diouri Senior pregnant. Diouri Senior had demanded that Raul marry the girl to preserve the family honour. Raul couldn't because he was already married, so he fled. Diouri took revenge by kidnapping Raul's youngest son, Arturo. And for whatever reason – guilt, or because he loved him – Diouri gave Arturo the same status as his own sons with his family name. So Arturo Jimenez became Yacoub Diouri.

  'But because Diouri's twelve-year-old daughter had brought shame on to the family, her son by Raul was not allowed to bear the family name. However Diouri Senior didn't totally reject him. The close ties between the Diouris and the Barakats meant that the boy was introduced into that family to become Mustafa Barakat.'

  'That sort of knowledge in the wrong mind could breed a special kind of hatred,' said Consuelo.

  'And how do you think Mustafa Barakat would feel about Yacoub Diouri?'

  'Imagine the bitterness that poor girl must have felt at her own rejection for being defiled by Raul, only to have to witness Yacoub's smooth integration into the Diouri family while her own son is kicked out.'

  'Profile of a terrorist?'

  Consuelo invited Javier to dinner that night, asked him to bring Abdullah. Falcon drove out to the prison in Alcala de Guadaira. He'd called ahead so Calderon was already waiting for him in a visiting room. He wasn't smoking. He had his hands clasped in front of him on the table to stop them from fidgeting. He still looked haggard, but not as reduced as he had been when Falcon had last seen him. The supreme self-confidence had not been recovered, but he seemed more solid.

  'You've heard,' said Falcon.

  'My lawyer came to see me yesterday,' said Calderon, nodding. 'I'm still going to face assault charges, but…'

  He trailed off, looked up at the high barred window.

  'You're going to get your life back.'

  'In the end,' he said. 'But it'll be a different one. I'm going to see to that.'

  'How's it been going with Alicia Aguado?'

  'Hard,' said Calderon, leaning back, hooking his hands around his knee. 'I spend a lot of my day thinking about myself, and not much of it is good. You know, Alicia told me in our last session that it was rare for a male patient to turn on himself as comprehensively as I'd done. I told her: "This last week has been the longest sustained period of facing the truth that I've ever been through in my life." A lawyer speaks, Javier.'

  They grunted laughter at each other.

  'I also spend a lot of my time thinking about you. I feel I owe you an explanation.'

  'It's not necessary, Esteban.'

  'I know, but you started me on this journey with Alicia, and we have this curious relationship that's entwined with both Ines and Marisa. So I want to clarify a few things, if you can bear to listen to me. It's not going to make me look very pretty, but then you're getting used to that.'

  They sat in silence for a moment while Calderon prepared himself.

  'As you know, four years ago I nearly lost my career. I needed all my family connections, and Ines's, to maintain a foothold in the Edificio de los Juzgados. Ines was fantastic throughout. She was strong. I was weak. And, as you know from your murder cases, Javier, the weak man is full of self-hatred and develops a bottomless pit of savagery, which by rights he should unleash against h
imself, but inevitably he turns on the person closest to him.'

  'Is that when it started?'

  'The beatings? No. The hatred, yes. When Ines became my wife and the balance of power shifted in my favour, I started breaking her down with my extravagant philandering,' said Calderon. 'By the time that bomb went off on 6th June we were both primed for violence. By that I mean: I was ready to give it and she was ready to receive it. I was feeling sufficiently strong and angry, and she was sufficiently fragile and humiliated. I'm not sure there wasn't something sadomasochistic in the state of our relationship. When I came back from Marisa's that morning we could have had just another row, but this time she wanted it to be taken further. She goaded me, and I, inexcusably, complied.'

  'She was goading you to violence?'

  'It probably wasn't as clear as that in her mind; we'd shouted and screamed, thrown things at each other, and I suppose it was the only possible next step. You know how important Ines's public image was to her, she couldn't walk away from a second failed marriage. And I would have found it hard to split from her. What she wanted was for me to hit her, then for me to be filled with remorse, and in that softening she would bring us back together. I surprised her and myself. I didn't know I had that pent-up rage inside me.'

  'Did you feel any remorse?'

  'At the time, no. I realize this sounds pathetic, but I felt immensely powerful,' said Calderon. 'To have beaten a fifty-kilo woman into terrified submission should have appalled me, but it didn't. Then, later, after Marisa told me about her confrontation with Ines in the Murillo Gardens, I became incensed once again and gave Ines an even worse beating. Still no remorse. Just madness and rage.'

  'What happened after that beating?'

  'I walked the streets telling myself it was all over. There could be no going back.'

  'But you already knew how difficult it would be for you to split from Ines,' said Falcon. 'So did it occur to you then… that little joke you had with Marisa about the "bourgeois solution" to complicated divorce?'

  'Yes, it did. Not quite in that way. I was in a rage. I just wanted to get rid of Ines.'

  'And what? Fall into the arms of Marisa?'

  'No,' he said, shaking his head.

  'Why did you give Ines the most savage beating of all for badmouthing a woman you didn't care about?'

  'In calling Marisa the whore with the cigar, Ines had pointed out to me what I thought of her,' said Calderon. 'Marisa was an artist, but that never interested me. Throughout our relationship I treated her like a whore. Much of our sex was like that. And Marisa despised me. In fact, looking back on it, she hated me. And, I have to admit, my behaviour was loathsome.'

  'So, what are you saying about Ines and Marisa now?'

  'You know when you came to see me last I told you that Alicia had accused me of hating women. Me? Esteban Calderon. The greatest lover of women in the Edificio de los Juzgados? Yes, well, that's what I found out: I treated Marisa like a whore and Ines worse than a dog. And that's what I've been finding hard to face up to.'

  Falcon nodded, stared at the floor.

  'The first real glimmer of the truth that I could remember, one that really shook me to the core, was when I regained consciousness after my faint to find Ines dead in the kitchen. That was when I saw the damage from my earlier beatings and it was what made me panic, because I knew my evident abuse of her would make me the prime suspect in her murder,' said Calderon. 'Whenever I'd recalled that night I'd always concentrated on my lack of intent to murder her.'

  'Because that would be your defence in court,' said Falcon.

  'Exactly, but what came back to me during my sessions with Alicia was, having come into the apartment, seen the light on in the kitchen and been annoyed at the possibility of another confrontation and wished her gone from my life, I then saw her lying there in that vast pool of her own blood. That was when it came to me that I might as well have killed her. To see her there, in such hideously bright light, was like being confronted with the image of my own guilt. I fainted at the thought and sight of it.' In the early evening Falcon went to the Jefatura. The whole squad was in the office. The atmosphere was upbeat. They'd had two very successful days. Serrano put a cold beer in his hand.

  'Guess what?' said Ramirez. 'Elvira wants to see you.'

  'You'd think this guy doesn't have my phone number,' said Falcon.

  'He's going to reinstate you.'

  'I doubt it.'

  'First of all, Spinola,' said Ramirez. 'Tell him, Emilio.'

  'We went through his apartment and found seventy-eight grams of cocaine, forty grams of heroin and a hundred and fifty grams of cannabis resin,' said Perez.

  'So he's a drug user,' said Falcon, shrugging.

  'And… copies of all the rival bids in the Isla de la Cartuja development.'

  'Which have also been found in the possession of Antonio Ramos, Horizonte's head of construction,' finished Ramirez.

  'That was lucky,' said Falcon, nodding, taking a pull of the beer.

  'The Juez Decano appointed the instructing judge, who was present throughout the search of the apartment, and he's totally accepted our findings.'

  'What about Margarita?' Falcon asked Ferrera.

  'She's in hospital in Malaga,' she said. 'She'd been given a very severe beating by one of Leonid Revnik's men when they found that Vasili Lukyanov had gone to Seville.'

  'Was she his girlfriend?'

  'Not exactly. She was special to him, that's all she would admit, but she was in very bad shape. They're going to call me when she's recovered enough to talk properly. Broken jaw, left arm and two cracked ribs.'

  'El Pulmon?'

  'He's identified Sokolov. We're in discussion over the knifing and the illegal firearm.'

  'And what are they going to do to Mark Flowers?'

  'They're not going to press charges for killing Yuri Donstov, but he's finished here in Seville,' said Ramirez. 'They're putting him on a plane back to the States, and he'll face a disciplinary hearing there.'

  'And the big question for me,' said Falcon. 'What about Cortland Fallenbach? Was he involved in the original conspiracy?'

  'They've taken away his passport,' said Ramirez, 'and he's got a team of lawyers fighting to get it back. I don't know. Without Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito around, that might be a difficult thing to prove.'

  The phone rang. Baena took it, held the phone to his chest.

  'Guess what?'

  'All right,' said Falcon. 'I'm going up there. Tell him I just wanted to see the most important people first. Great work everybody.'

  Comisario Elvira didn't keep him waiting. His secretary offered him coffee. This almost never happened.

  'I'm writing the press release,' said Elvira.

  'What's that for?'

  'The final charges have been made relating to the planting of the Seville bomb.'

  'The final charges?'

  'All right, the people who planted the device have been apprehended and they're going to face justice.'

  'What about the chain of command from the suspects we've had in custody since June, through to Horizonte and I4IT?'

  'We can't make any announcements relating to that.'

  'Are you going to work on it?'

  'We'll have to take a view on that,' said Elvira. 'Anyway, this evening there's going to be a televised press conference. The mayor and Comisario Lobo want you to be there to read out the statement that I'm preparing for you.'

  'I'm suspended from duty pending a full inquiry,' said Falcon.

  'You were reinstated last night when we determined Alejandro Spinola's involvement in leaking information about the Isla de la Cartuja development project.'

  'What about my unapproved improvisation in the Hotel La Berenjena?'

  'Look, Javier, I've really got to get down to these press releases and statements,' said Elvira. 'I'd like you to join me in my car in an hour's time to go to the state parliament.'

  Falcon nodded, left the room. The secre
tary brought the coffee. He drank it standing in front of her. He went back down to the Homicide office.

  'There's going to be a press conference in the state parliament in about an hour and a half's time,' said Falcon. 'I'd like you all to listen to that.'

  He went into his office and was about to close the door when he saw the wall chart. He lifted it off its hook and took it back into the outer office.

  'You can strip this down and file it,' he said. 'We're finished with it now.'

  The phone rang. It was the scrambled line used by the CNI. He went into his office, closed the door, answered it.

  'I got a full report from my agents in Fes,' said Pablo. 'And Alfonso has briefed me on the aftermath. You got the boy.'

  'He's in good shape, considering. Doesn't remember a thing about it… for the moment,' said Falcon. 'How have the Moroccans taken it?'

  'They got a call from the Saudis as well, so… they're philosophical. Oil has a very loud voice,' said Pablo. 'Still, all is not lost. The Germans have uncovered a network related to Barakat's export business there. The Moroccans are pursuing two very strong leads into the GICM from other connections they've made to Barakat. There was also an Algerian link. And MI5 are working on that cell the French told them about, which, it seems, was connected to Barakat's carpet business in London. So, although we didn't get the man…'

  'What about you?' asked Falcon. 'Did you get anything out of it?'

  'Yacoub had left all the details of the GICM logistics cell he was using on the Costa del Sol with the Saudis,' said Pablo. 'And two more he'd heard about in Madrid and Barcelona. We're all happy.'