The Ignorance of Blood (55 page)

‘Imagine the bitterness that poor girl must have felt at her own rejection for being defiled by Raúl, 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.

Falcón drove out to the prison in Alcalá de Guadaira. He'd called ahead so Calderón 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 Falcón had last seen him. The supreme self-confidence had not been recovered, but he seemed more solid.

‘You've heard,’ said Falcón.

‘My lawyer came to see me yesterday,’ said Calderón, 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 Calderón, 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 Inés 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 Calderón prepared himself.

‘As you know, four years ago I nearly lost my career. I needed all my family connections, and Inés's, to maintain a foothold in the Edificio de los Juzgados. Inés 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 himself, but inevitably he turns on the person closest to him.’

‘Is that when it started?’

‘The beatings? No. The hatred, yes. When Inés became my wife and the balance of power shifted in my favour, I started breaking her down with my extravagant philandering,’ said Calderón. ‘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 Inés'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 Calderón. ‘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 Inés in the Murillo Gardens, I became incensed once again and gave Inés 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 Inés,’ said Falcón. ‘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 Inés.’

‘And what? Fall into the arms of Marisa?’

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head.

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

‘In calling Marisa the whore with the cigar, Inés had pointed out to me what I thought of her,’ said Calderón. ‘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 Inés 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 Calderón. 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 Inés worse than a dog. And that's what I've been finding hard to face up to.’

Falcón 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 Inés 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 Calderón. ‘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 Falcón.

‘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 Falcón 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 Ramírez. ‘Elvira wants to see you.’

‘You'd think this guy doesn't have my phone number,’ said Falcón.

‘He's going to reinstate you.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘First of all, Spinola,’ said Ramírez. ‘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 Pérez.

‘So he's a drug user,’ said Falcón, 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 Ramírez.

‘That was lucky,’ said Falcón, 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?’ Falcón asked Ferrera.

‘She's in hospital in Málaga,’ 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 Pulmón?’

‘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 Ramírez. ‘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 Falcón. ‘What about Cortland Fallenbach? Was he involved in the original conspiracy?’

‘They've taken away his passport,’ said Ramírez, ‘and he's got a team of lawyers fighting to get it back. I don't know. Without Lucrecio Arenas and César 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 Falcón. ‘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 Falcón.

‘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.’

Falcón nodded, left the room. The secretary 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 Falcón. ‘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 Fès,’ 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 Falcón. ‘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 Falcón. ‘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.’

‘I'm glad.’

‘I wanted to ask you about Abdullah,’ said Pablo.

‘He had to have twelve stitches in his shoulder…’

‘Would he be interested in helping us?’

‘You? How could he help you? He's been exposed.’

‘Maybe and maybe not,’ said Pablo. ‘I just wanted to know how he'd feel about, you know, playing the game.’