The Hidden Assassins

15

Seville-Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 19.55 hrs

Before the three men left the bombsite for the night, Calderon gave an update on the deaths and injuries. Four children had died of head wounds and internal bleeding in the pre-school. Seven children had been seriously wounded-ranging from the loss of a leg below the knee to severe facial lacerations. Eighteen children had been lightly wounded, mainly cut by flying glass. Two men and a woman who had been passing by the building on Calle Los Romeros had been killed, either by flying debris or falling masonry. An elderly woman had died of a heart attack in an apartment across the road. There were thirty-two seriously injured people, who had been either inside, or around, buildings close to the stricken block and there were three hundred and forty-three lightly injured. From the rubble they had so far removed two men and two women who were dead and young Lourdes Alanis, who had survived. The list of missing in the mosque, including the Imam, numbered thirteen. Apart from them this gave a total so far of twelve dead, thirty-nine seriously injured and three hundred and sixty-one lightly injured.

The demolition crews were now removing the remaining slabs of concrete from what had been the fifth floor. The whole area was under floodlights as they prepared to work all night. An air-conditioned tent had been erected on some wasteground between the pre-school and another block of apartments to handle forensic evidence. Another tent was being erected to deal with the bodies and body parts, which would eventually be coming out of the crushed mosque. The judges, homicide squad, forensics and emergency services had worked out a duty roster, so that there would be someone on site all night from each group.

It was still light and very warm as Elvira, Falcon and Calderon left the pre-school just before 8 p.m. A group of people had gathered in a corner of the playground. Hundreds of candles flickered on the ground amidst bouquets of flowers. Banners and placards had been pinned up on the chain-link fencing-No mas muertes. Paz. Solo los inocentes han caido. Por el derecho de vivir sin violencia-No more death. Peace. Only the innocents have fallen. For the right to live without violence. But the largest banner of all was written in red against a white background-ODIO ETERNO AL TERRORISMO-Eternal Hate to Terrorism. In the bottom right-hand corner was written VOMIT. Falcon asked if anybody had seen the person who had unfurled this banner, but nobody had. It was this banner which had drawn people to that part of the playground and so it had become a natural place for the locals to pay tribute to the fallen.

They stood in the violet light of a sun that was beginning to set on this catastrophic day and, with the machinery inexorably clawing away at the piled rubble, their murmured prayers, guttering candles and the already wilting flowers were both pathetic and touching, as pitiful and moving as the futile deaths of all humans in the vast grotesqueness of war. As the lawmen backed away from the shrine, Elvira's mobile rang. He took the call and handed it to Falcon. It was Juan from the CNI, saying that they had to meet tonight. Falcon said he would be home in an hour. The hospital was calm after the frenetic activity of the day. In the emergency room they were still picking glass out of people's faces and suturing lacerations. There were patients in the waiting room, but there was no longer the horror of the triage nurse wading through the victims, skidding on blood, looking into the wide, dark eyes of the injured, silently pleading. Falcon showed his police ID and asked for Lourdes Alanis, who was in the intensive care unit on the first floor.

Through the glass panels of the intensive care unit Fernando was visible at his daughter's bedside, holding her hand. She was hooked up to machines but seemed to be breathing on her own. The doctor in the ICU said she was making good progress. She had sustained a broken arm and a crushed leg, but no spinal injuries. Their main concern had been her head injuries. She was still in a coma, but a scan had revealed no evidence of brain damage or haemorrhaging. As they talked, Fernando left the ICU to go to the toilet. Falcon gave him a few minutes and went in after him. He was washing his hands and face.

'Who are you?' he asked, looking at Falcon via the mirror, suspicious, knowing he wasn't a doctor.

'We met earlier today by your apartment block. My name is Javier Falcon. I'm the Inspector Jefe of the homicide squad.'

Fernando frowned, shook his head; he didn't remember.

'Does this mean that you've caught the people who destroyed my family?'

'No, we're still working on that.'

'You won't have to look very far. That rat hole is crawling with them.'

'With who?'

'Fucking Moroccans,' he said. 'Those fucking bastards. We've been looking at them all this time, ever since 11th March, and we've been thinking…when's the next time going to be. We always knew that there was going to be a next time.'

'Who is "we"?'

'Alright, me. That's what I've been thinking,' said Fernando. 'But I know I'm not alone.'

'I didn't think the relations between the communities were so bad,' said Falcon.

'That's because you don't live in "the communities",' said Fernando. 'I've seen the news, full of nice, comfortable people telling you that everything is all right, that Muslims and Catholics are communicating, that there's some kind of "healing process" going on. I can tell you, it's all bullshit. We live in a state of suspicion and fear.'

'Even though you know that very few members of the Muslim population are terrorists?'

'That's what we're told, but we don't know it,' said Fernando. 'And what's more, we have no idea who they are. They could be standing next to me in the bar, drinking beer and eating jamon. Yes, you see, some of them even do that. Eat pig and drink alcohol. But it seems that they're just as likely to blow themselves up as the one who spends his life with his nose to the floor in the mosque.'

'I didn't come here to make you angry,' said Falcon. 'You've got enough to think about without that.'

'You didn't make me angry. I am angry. I've been angry a long time. Two years and three months I've been angry,' said Fernando. 'Gloria, my wife…'

He stopped. His face came apart. His mouth thickened with saliva. He had to support himself against the basin as the physical pain worked its way through. It took some minutes for him to pull himself together.

'Gloria was a good person. She believed in the good that exists in everyone. But her belief didn't protect her, it didn't protect our son. The people she spoke up for killed her, in the same way that they killed the ones they hate, and who hate them. Anyway, that's enough. I must get back to my daughter. I know you didn't have to come and find me here. You've got a lot on your plate. So I thank you for that…for your concern. And I wish you well in your investigation. I hope you find the killers before I do.'

'I want you to call me,' said Falcon, giving him his card, 'at any time, day or night, for whatever reason. If you're angry, depressed, violent, lonely or even hungry, I want you to call me.'

'I didn't think you people were supposed to get personally involved.'

'I also want you to tell me if you're ever contacted by a group who call themselves VOMIT, so it's important on two levels that we keep in touch.'

They left the toilet and shook hands outside, where, on the other side of the glass, his daughter's life was readable in green on the screens. Fernando hesitated as he leaned against the door.

'Only one politician spoke to me today,' he said. 'I saw them all parading themselves before the cameras with the victims and their families. This was while they were operating on Lourdes' skull, so I had time to look at their ridiculous antics. Only one person found me.'

'Who was that?'

'Jesus Alarcon,' said Fernando. 'I'd never heard of him before. He's the new leader of Fuerza Andalucia.'

'What did he say to you?'

'He didn't say anything. He listened-and there wasn't a camera in sight.' The sky darkened to purple over the old city like the discoloration around a recent wound that had begun to hurt in earnest. Falcon drove on automatic, his mind buried deep in intractable problems: a bomb explodes, killing, maiming and destroying. What is left after the dust clears and the bodies are taken away is a horrendous social and political confusion, where emotions rise to the surface and, like wind on the susceptible grass of the plain, influence can blow people's minds this way and that, turn them from beer-sippers into chest-thumpers.

The three CNI men were waiting for him outside his house on Calle Bailen. He parked his car in front of the oak doors. They all shook hands and followed him through to the patio, which was looking a little dishevelled these days. Encarnacion, his housekeeper, wasn't as capable as she used to be and Falcon didn't have the money for the renovation required. And anyway, he'd grown to enjoy living in the encroaching shabbiness of his surroundings.

He dragged some chairs out around a marble-topped table on the patio and left the CNI men to listen to the water trickling in the fountain. He came back with cold beers, olives, capers, pickled garlic, crisps, bread, cheese and jamon. They ate and drank and talked about Spain's chances in the World Cup in Germany; always the same-a team full of genius and promise, which was never fulfilled.

'Do you have any idea why we want to talk to you?' asked Pablo, who was more relaxed now, less intensely observant.

'Something to do with my Moroccan connections, so I was told.'

'You're a very interesting man to us,' said Pablo. 'We don't want to hide the fact that we've been looking at you for some time now.'

'I'm not sure that I've got the right mentality for secret work any more. If you'd asked me five years ago, then you might have found the ideal candidate…'

'Who is the ideal candidate?' asked Juan.

'Someone who is already hiding a great deal from the world, from his family, from his wife, and from himself. A few state secrets on top wouldn't be such a burden.'

'We don't want you to be a spy,' said Juan.

'Do you want me to deceive?'

'No, we think deceiving would be a very bad idea under the circumstances.'

'You'll understand better what we want by answering a few questions,' said Pablo, wresting the interview back from his boss.

'Don't make them too difficult,' said Falcon. 'I've had a long day.'

'Tell us how you came to meet Yacoub Diouri.'

'That could take some time,' said Falcon.

'We're not in any hurry,' said Pablo.

And, as if at some prearranged signal, Juan and Gregorio sat back, took out cigarette packs and lit up. It was one of those occasions after a long day, with a little beer and food inside him, that made Falcon wish he was still a smoker.

'I think you probably know that just over five years ago, on 12th April 2001, I ran a murder investigation into the brutal killing of an entrepreneur turned restaurateur called Raul Jimenez.'

'You've got a policeman's memory for dates,' said Juan.

'You'll find that date written in scar tissue on my heart when I'm dead,' said Falcon. 'It's got nothing to do with being a policeman.'

'It had a big impact on your life?' said Pablo.

Falcon took another fortifying gulp of Cruzcampo.

'The whole of Spain knows this story. It was all over the newspapers for weeks,' said Falcon, a little irritated with the knowingness with which the questions had started coming at him.

'We weren't in Spain at the time,' said Juan. 'We've read the files, but it's not the same as hearing it for real.'

'My investigation into Raul Jimenez's past showed that he'd known my father, the artist Francisco Falcon. They'd started a smuggling business together in Tangier during and after the Second World War. It meant they could establish themselves and start families and Francisco Falcon could begin the process of turning himself into an artist.'

'And what about Raul Jimenez?' said Pablo. 'Didn't he meet his wife when she was very young?'

'Raul Jimenez had an unhealthy obsession with young girls,' said Falcon, taking a deep breath, knowing what they were after. 'It wasn't so unusual in those days in Tangier or Andalucia for a girl to get married at thirteen, but in fact her parents made Raul wait until she was seventeen. They had a couple of children, but they were difficult births and the doctor recommended that his wife didn't have any more.

'In the run-up to Moroccan independence in the 1950s, Raul became involved with a businessman called Abdullah Diouri who had a young daughter. Raul had sex with this girl and, I think, even got her pregnant. This would not have been a problem had he done the honourable thing and married the girl. In Muslim society he would have just taken a second wife and that would have been the end of it. As a Catholic, it was impossible. To complicate matters further, despite doctor's orders, his wife became pregnant with their third child.

'In the end Raul took the coward's way out and fled with his family. Abdullah Diouri was incensed when he discovered this and wrote a letter to Francisco Falcon in which he told him of Raul's betrayal and expressed his determination to be avenged, which he achieved five years later.

'The third child, a boy called Arturo, was kidnapped on his way back from school in southern Spain. Raul Jimenez's way of dealing with this terrible loss was to deny the boy's existence. It devastated the family. His wife committed suicide and the children were damaged, one of them beyond repair.'

'Was it that sad story that made you decide to try to find Arturo thirty-seven years after he had disappeared?' asked Pablo.

'As you know, I met Raul's second wife, Consuelo, while investigating his murder. About a year later we started a relationship and during that time we revealed to each other that the one thing that still haunted us about her husband's murder case, and all that surfaced with it, was the disappearance of Arturo. There was still a part of us that imagined the eternally lost six-year-old boy.'

'That was in July 2002,' said Pablo. 'When did you start looking for Arturo?'

'In September of that year,' said Falcon. 'Neither of us could believe that Abdullah Diouri would have killed the child. We thought he would have drawn him into his family in some way.'

'And what was driving you?' asked Juan. 'The lost boy…or something else?'

'I knew very well I was looking for a forty-three-year-old man.'

'Had something happened to your relationship with Consuelo Jimenez in the meantime?' asked Pablo.

'It finished almost as soon as it started, but I'm not going to discuss that with you.'

'Didn't Consuelo Jimenez break off the relationship?' asked Pablo.

'She broke it off,' said Falcon, throwing up his hands, realizing that the whole of the Jefatura knew what had happened. 'She didn't want to get involved.'

'And you were unhappy?'

'I was very unhappy about it.'

'So what was your motive in looking for Arturo?' asked Juan.

'Consuelo refused to see me or speak to me. She cut me out of her life.'

'Not unlike what Raul had tried to do with Arturo,' said Juan.

'If you like.'

Juan took a pickled garlic and bit into it with a light crunch.

'I realized that the only way I'd be able to see her again under the right circumstances, rather than as a mad stalker, was to do something extraordinary. I knew that if I found Arturo she would have to see me again. It was the way we had connected in the first place and I knew it would stir something in her.'

'And did it work?' asked Juan, fascinated by Falcon's torment.