The Hidden Assassins

40

Seville-Friday, 9th June 2006, 17.45 hrs

On the way back down to the interview rooms Falcon ran into Elvira and del Rey in the corridor. They'd been looking for him. The forensics computer specialists had hacked into the Fuerza Andalucia hard disks. From the articles and photographs found on one of the computers they could tell that the user was compiling the raw material to be transformed into the web pages that would appear on the VOMIT website. From other material on the same hard disk, the user was evidently Angel Zarrias. Elvira seemed annoyed that this news didn't impress Falcon, whose mind was still reeling from the exchange with Yacoub.

'It's more leverage,' said Elvira. 'It places Zarrias and Fuerza Andalucia closer to the heart of the conspiracy.'

Falcon had no ready opinion about that.

'I'm not sure that it does,' said del Rey. 'It could be construed as a separate entity. Zarrias can defend it as a personal campaign. All he's done is use a Fuerza Andalucia computer to draft the articles, which he's downloaded on to a CD and given to some geek, to anonymously slap them up on the VOMIT website. I can't see the leverage we can extract from that.'

Falcon looked from one man to the other, still with no comment. Elvira took a call on his mobile. Falcon started to move away.

'That was Comisario Lobo,' said Elvira. 'The media pressure is at breaking point.'

'What has the media been told so far about these men being held?' asked Falcon, coming back down the corridor to Elvira.

'Suspicion of murder and conspiring to murder,' said Elvira.

'Has Tateb Hassani been named?'

'Not yet. Naming him would involve revealing too much about the nature of our enquiry at the moment,' said Elvira. 'We're still sensitive to the expectations of the people.'

'I'd better get back to work. I'm due to start on Eduardo Rivero in a few minutes,' said Falcon, looking at his watch. 'Tell me, have the forensics found any blood traces in the Fuerza Andalucia offices, yet? Especially in the bathroom?'

'I haven't heard anything on that,' said Elvira, moving off with del Rey. All the interrogators were in the corridor outside the interview rooms. A paramedic in fluorescent green was talking to Ramirez, who caught sight of Falcon over his shoulder.

'Rivero's collapsed,' he said. 'He started gasping for air, getting disorientated, and then fell off his chair.'

Rivero was lying on the floor between two paramedics who were giving him oxygen.

'What's the problem?' asked Falcon.

'Heart arrhythmia and high blood pressure,' said the paramedic. 'We're going to take him to hospital, keep him under observation. His heart rate is up around 160 and completely irregular. If we don't bring it down there's a danger that the blood will pool and clot in the heart, and if a clot gets loose he might have a stroke.'

'Shit,' said Ramirez from the corridor. 'God knows how this is going to play out in the media. They'll tell the world we're running Abu Ghraib down here.'

All the interrogators thought that Rivero, of all the suspects, had been the least attached to the central conspiracy. He had only been important as the leader of the party and, given that the intention was to wrest that from him in order to install Jesus Alarcon, it would stand to reason that he would be kept the least informed. His collapse had occurred under persistent questioning from Inspector Jefe Ramon Barros about the real reason for his relinquishing of the leadership. The pressure of sticking to his story about old age, while the truth worked away at the flaws in his mind, had proved too much.

Just after 7 p.m. Marco Barreda, the Informaticalidad sales manager, was brought in. He'd been met at the airport having flown in from Barcelona. His mobile phone records were accessed but none of the numbers called corresponded to any of those owned by Angel Zarrias. Falcon made sure that Zarrias knew about Barreda's appearance in the Jefatura. Zarrias was unperturbed. Barreda was questioned for an hour and a half about his relationship with Ricardo Gamero. He didn't deviate from his original story. They released him at 8.30 p.m. and went back to Zarrias and lied to him about Barreda, saying he'd admitted that Gamero had said nothing about being in love with him and wasn't even a homosexual. Zarrias didn't buy any of it.

By 9 p.m. Falcon couldn't take any more. He went outside to breathe some fresh air, but found it hot and suffocating after the chill of the Jefatura. He drank a coffee in the cafe across the street. His mind was confused with too much going on between Yacoub and the interrogation of the three suspects. He drank some water to wash out the bitterness of the coffee, and Zorrita's words from last night came back to him.

In the Jefatura he went down to the cells where he asked the officer on duty if he could speak to Esteban Calderon, who was in the last cell, lying on his back, staring at the back of his hands held above him. The guard locked Falcon in. He took a stool and leaned back against the wall. Calderon sat up on his bunk.

'I didn't think you were going to come,' he said.

'I didn't think there was much point in coming,' said Falcon. 'I can't help you or discuss your case with you. I'm here out of curiosity only.'

'I've been thinking about denial,' said Calderon.

Falcon nodded.

'I know you've come across a lot of it in your work.'

'There's no greater guilt than that of a murderer,' said Falcon, 'and denial is the human mind's greatest defence.'

'Talk me through the process?' said Calderon. 'The theory's always different to the reality.'

'Only in the aftermath of a serious crime, such as murder, does the motive for taking such disastrous measures suddenly seem ridiculously disproportionate,' said Falcon. 'So, to kill someone for, say, the paltry reason of jealousy seems like madness, an affront to the intellect. The easiest and quickest way to deal with the aberration is to deny it ever happened. Once that denial is in place, it doesn't take long for the mind to create its own version of events which the brain comes to believe with absolute certainty.'

'I'm trying to be as careful as I can,' said Calderon.

'Sometimes care is not enough to defeat a deepseated desire,' said Falcon.

'That scares me, Javier,' said Calderon. 'I don't understand how the brain can be at the mercy of the mind. I don't understand how information, facts, things we've seen and heard can be so easily transformed, reordered and manipulated…by what? What is it? What is the mind?'

'Maybe it's not such a good idea to lie in a prison cell, torturing yourself with unanswerable questions,' said Falcon.

'There's nothing else to do,' said Calderon. 'I can't stop my brain from working. It asks me these questions.'

'Wish fulfilment is a powerful human need, on both a personal and a collective level.'

'I know, which is why I'm being so careful in examining myself,' said Calderon. 'I've started at the beginning and I've been admitting some difficult things.'

'I'm neither your confessor, nor your psychologist, Esteban.'

'But, apart from Ines, you are the person I have most wronged in my life.'

'You haven't wronged me, Esteban, and if you have I don't need to know.'

'But I need you to know.'

'I can't absolve you,' said Falcon. 'I'm not qualified for that.'

'I just need you to know the care with which I am conducting my self-examination.'

Falcon had to admit to himself that he was interested. He leaned back against the wall and shrugged. Calderon took some moments to prepare his words.

'I seduced Ines,' he said. 'I set out to seduce her, not because of her beauty, her intelligence or because of the woman she was. I set out to seduce her because of her relationship with you.'

'Me?'

'Not because of who you were, the son of the famous Francisco Falcon, which was what had made you interesting to Ines. It was more to do with…I don't know how to put this: your difference. You were not well liked in those days. Most people thought you cold and unapproachable, and therefore arrogant and patronizing. I saw something I didn't understand. So, the first way, the most natural way for me to understand you was to seduce your wife. What did this beautiful, muchadmired woman see in you, that I didn't have myself? That's why I seduced her. And the irony of it was, she gave me no insight at all. But before I knew it, it was no longer just an affair as I'd intended; we became an open secret. She was always way ahead of me in public relations. She could manipulate people and situations with consummate ease. So, we became the golden couple and you were the cuckold, who people enjoyed laughing about behind your back. And I admit it now, Javier, just so that you know what I'm like: I enjoyed that situation because, although I didn't understand you, which made me feel weak, I had inadvertently got one up on you, and that made me feel strong.'

'Are you sure you want to tell me this?' said Falcon.

'The next item isn't so personal to you,' said Calderon, batting him down with his hands, as if Falcon was thinking of leaving. 'It's important that you know me for the…I was going to say "man" but I'm not sure that's appropriate now. Remember Maddy Krugman?'

'I didn't like her,' said Falcon. 'I thought she was sinister.'

'She's probably the most beautiful woman I never went to bed with.'

'You didn't sleep with her?'

'She wasn't interested in me,' said Calderon. 'Beauty-I mean, great beauty-for a woman is both her good fortune and her greatest curse. Everybody is attracted to them. It's difficult for normal people to understand that pressure. Everybody wants to please a beautiful woman. They spark something in everybody, not just men; and because the pressure is so constant, they have no idea who has good intentions, who they should choose. Of course, they recognize the poor, slack-jawed fools who drool on to their lapels, but then there are the others, the hundreds and thousands with money, charm, brilliance and charisma. Maddy liked you because you brushed aside her beauty…'

'I don't think that was true. I was as much affected by her beauty as everybody else.'

'But you didn't let it affect your vision, Javier. And Maddy saw that and liked it. She was obsessed with you,' said Calderon. 'Of course, I had to have her. She teased me. She played with me. I amused her. That was about it. And the worst of it was that we had to talk about you. I couldn't bear it. I think you knew that it was eating me up inside.'

Falcon nodded.

'So when we got into that final and fatal scenario with Maddy and her husband…I had to lie about it afterwards,' said Calderon. 'I perjured myself, because I couldn't bear your fearlessness. I couldn't stand the poise with which you handled that situation.'

'I can tell you that I didn't feel fearless.'

'Then I couldn't stand the way you overcame your fear and I was left sitting on the sofa, paralysed,' said Calderon.

'I've been trained for those situations. I've been in them before,' said Falcon. 'Your reaction was completely natural and understandable.'

'But it was not how I saw myself,' said Calderon.

'Then your standards are very high,' said Falcon.

'Ines was marvellous to me after the Maddy Krugman affair,' said Calderon. 'You couldn't have wished for a better reaction from a fiancee. I'd humiliated her by announcing our engagement and on the same day, I think it was, I ran off with Maddy Krugman. And yet she stuck by me. She picked up the pieces of my career and self-esteem and…I hated her for it.

'I stored up all her kindnesses to me and mixed them with my own bitterness into a rancorous stew of deep resentment. I punished her by having affairs. I even fucked her best friend during a weekend at Ines's parents' finca. And I didn't stop at affairs. I refused to look for a house. I made her sell her own apartment, but I wouldn't let her buy the sort of house she desperately wanted. I wouldn't let her change my apartment to suit her. When I started hitting her-and that was only four days ago-it was just the physical expression of what I'd been doing to her mentally for years. What made it worse was, that the more I abused her, the tighter she clung to me. Now there's a story of denial for you, Javier. Ines was a great prosecutor. She could persuade anybody. And she persuaded herself, totally.'

'You should have left her.'

'It was too late by then,' said Calderon. 'We were already locked in our fatal embrace. We couldn't bear to be together, we couldn't wrench ourselves apart.'

The key rattled in the door. The guard put his head in.

'Comisario Elvira wants to see you in his office. He said it's urgent.'

Falcon stood. Calderon raised himself with effort, as if he was stiff or under a great weight.

'One last thing, Javier. I know it will seem incredible after what I've just told you,' said Calderon, 'and I'm quite prepared to face the punishment handed down to me for her murder, because I deserve it. But I need you to know that I did not kill her. You might have spoken to that Inspector Jefe from Madrid, and he might have told you that I gave a very confused account of what happened that night. I have been in a fairly wild state…'

'So who did kill her?'

'I don't know. I don't know what their motive could have possibly been. I don't know anything, other than that I did not kill Ines.' The Comisario was not alone in his office. His secretary nodded Falcon in. Pablo and Gregorio were there, along with the chief forensic pathologist. They all sat wherever they could except for the pathologist, who remained standing by the window. Elvira introduced him and asked him to give his report.

'The mosque is now empty of all rubble, detritus, clothes and body parts. We have conducted DNA testing on all body parts, fluids and blood that we've been able to find. That means we have tested every square centimetre of the available area in the mosque. We have all the results of these tests, except for the final two square metres closest to the entrance, which was the area containing the least DNA material and was the last batch to be sent off. We have been able to find matches to all DNA samples supplied by the families of all the men believed to have been in the mosque. We have also matched a DNA sample retrieved from the Imam's apartment with some in the mosque. However, we have been unable to match DNA samples taken from the Madrid apartment belonging to Djamal Hammad and Smail Saoudi with any found in the mosque. Our conclusion is that neither of those two men were in the mosque at the time of the explosion.'