The Hidden Assassins

31

Seville-Thursday, 8th June 2006, 17.30 hrs

'It's taken me hours to get to speak to this person,' said Ferrera, 'but I think it's been worth it. I've got a…reliable witness to the dumping of the body which was later found on the rubbish dump outside Seville.'

'We now have a name for that body. He's called Tateb Hassani,' said Falcon. 'You didn't sound very sure of that word "reliable".'

'He drinks, which is never a good thing for a court to hear, and I'm not sure we could ever get him to court anyway.'

'Tell me what the guy saw and we'll worry about his credentials if it gets us anywhere.'

'He lives in an apartment at the end of a cul-de-sac just off Calle Boteros. His daughter owns the third and fourth floors of this building. She lives on the third and her father lives above. Both apartments have the perfect view of those bins on the corner of Calle Boteros.'

'I'm sure that's why the daughter bought them,' said Falcon. 'And what's this guy doing awake at three in the morning, looking out of his window?'

'He's an insomniac, or rather he can't sleep at night, only during the day,' she said. 'He sleeps from eight until four. The daughter wouldn't let me disturb him until she'd given him lunch. She knows that if she breaks his routine it'll be hell for her for a week.'

'He goes straight into lunch?' said Falcon. 'She doesn't give him breakfast?'

'He likes to drink wine, so she gives him something substantial to eat with it.'

'So, what's his problem exactly?'

'Quite unusual for a Sevillano: he's agoraphobic. He can't go outside and he can't bear more than two people in a room.'

'I see the problem with the court appearance now,' said Falcon. 'Anyway, he was awake at three in the morning, but not so drunk that he couldn't see what was going on by the bins.'

'He was drunk, but he says it doesn't affect his vision,' said Ferrera. 'Just after three o'clock on Sunday morning, he saw a large, dark estate car pull into the cul-de-sac and reverse back towards the bins. The driver and passenger got out of the front, both male, and a third man got out of the back. The driver stood in the middle of Calle Boteros, and looked up and down. The other men opened the boot. They checked the bins, which were empty at that time of night, tipped one of them on its side and leaned it against the rear of the car. They reached into the back and dragged something into the bin. They manoeuvred the bin, which now appeared heavy, back up to the pavement and returned to the rear of the car. They removed two black bin liners, which the witness described as bulky but light, and swung them into the bin on top of whatever they'd just put in there. They closed the bin. The driver slammed the boot shut. They got back into the car, reversed into Calle Boteros and headed off in the direction of the Alfalfa.'

'Could he give you anything on the three men?'

'He thought, from the way they moved, that the two guys who did the work were young-by that he meant around thirty. The driver was older, thicker around the waist. They were all dressed in dark clothes, but seemed to be wearing what looked like white gloves. I assume he means latex gloves. The driver and one of the younger men had dark hair and the third was either bald or had had his head shaved.'

'Not bad for an old drunk in an attic,' said Falcon.

'There's some street lighting on that corner,' said Ferrera. 'But, still…not bad for someone who his daughter says will drink until he falls over.'

'Just don't include that in his witness statement,' said Falcon. 'What about these two "bulky but light" bin liners they threw on top of the body?'

'He thought they probably contained something like gardening detritus-hedge clippings, that sort of thing.'

'Why?'

'He's seen that sort of stuff thrown in there before, but at the end of the afternoon, not at three in the morning.'

'Have you found any large houses in that area which might have that quantity of gardening detritus?' asked Falcon. 'It's mostly apartments around the Alfalfa.'

'They could have picked up a couple of bin liners of stuff from anywhere,' said Ferrera.

'If they'd done that, those bin liners would have come out first, whereas, according to your friend, they dealt with "something heavy" first.'

'I'll see what I can find.'

'Come to think of it, Felipe and Jorge said they had a bin liner of clippings that they'd picked up near the body on the rubbish dump,' said Falcon. 'I'll see if they've had time to have a look at it, yet.'

Ramirez called as Falcon was on his way out to the forensics' tent.

'The Imam's mobile phone records,' said Ramirez. 'The CNI have got them and they won't release them to me. Or rather, Pablo said he would look into it, but now he doesn't take or return my calls.'

'I'll see what I can do,' said Falcon.

The forensic tent was filled with more than twenty masked and boiler-suited individuals who were impossible to differentiate. Falcon called Felipe and told him to come outside. Felipe remembered the gardening detritus, which he'd also had a chance to look at.

'It was all from the same type of hedge,' he said. 'The kind they use in ornamental gardens. Box hedge. Small, shiny, dark green leaves.'

'How fresh was it?'

'It had been cut that weekend. Friday afternoon or Saturday.'

'Any idea how much hedge we'd be looking at?'

'Remember, that might have been just part of the clippings,' said Felipe. 'And I live in an apartment. Hedges are not my speciality.' Calderon was lying on the fold-down bed in his police cell. His head was resting on his hands, while his eyes stared at four squares of white sunlight high on the wall above the door. When he closed his eyes the four squares burned red on the inside of his eyelids. If he looked into the darkness of the cell they smouldered greenly. He was calm enough for this. He had been calm since the moment he'd been caught trying to get rid of Ines. Get rid of Ines? How had that phrase broken its way into his lexicon?

They'd brought him down to the Jefatura in the early-morning summer light. He was shirtless because the forensics had bagged that horrifically blood-stained garment. The cops had the air conditioning on even at that hour and his nipples were hard and he was shivering. As they crossed the river, two rowing eights, out for early training, slipped under the bridge and he had the sensation of an enormous weight coming off his shoulders. The relaxing of the muscles in his neck and between his scapulae was almost erotic. It was a powerful post-fear drug that his body chemistry had concocted, and it had the awkward result of arousing him.

He had gone through the process of incarceration dumbly, like an animal for slaughter, moving from transport, to pen, to holding cell with no idea of the implications. A DNA swab had been taken from the inside of his cheek, he'd been photographed and given an orange short-sleeve shirt. The relief of finally being left alone, with no possessions, his belt removed, and just a pack of cigarettes, was immense. His tiredness drew him to the bed. He kicked off his loafers and sank back on the hard bunk and fell into a dreamless sleep, until he was woken at three in the afternoon for lunch. He'd eaten and applied his ferocious intellect to what he was going to say in his interview with the detective before falling into this dazed state of looking at the squares of light on the wall. It was unexpectedly pleasant to be released from the oppression of time. At five o'clock the guard came to tell him that Inspector Jefe Luis Zorrita was ready to interview him.

'You are, of course, allowed to have your lawyer present,' said Zorrita, coming into the interview room.

'I am a lawyer,' said Calderon, still with all his precrime arrogance. 'Let's get on with it.'

Zorrita made the introductions to the tape and asked Calderon to confirm that he'd been given the opportunity to have a lawyer present, and had declined.

'I didn't want to talk to you until I'd had the full autopsy report from the Medico Forense,' said Zorrita. 'Now I've got that and had the opportunity to conduct my preliminary enquiries…'

'What sort of preliminary enquiries?' asked Calderon, just to show that he wasn't going to be passive.

'I've more or less established what you and your wife had been doing over the last twenty-four hours before her murder.'

'More or less?'

'There are still some details to fill in on what your wife was doing yesterday afternoon. That's all,' said Zorrita. 'So what I'd like you to do, Sr Calderon, is to tell me, in your own words, what happened last night.'

'From what time?'

'Well, let's start from the moment you left the Canal Sur studios and arrived at your lover's apartment,' said Zorrita. 'The time before that is well accounted for.'

'My lover?'

'That was the word Marisa Moreno used to describe your relationship,' said Zorrita, looking through his notes. 'She was firm about not wanting to be called your mistress.'

That admission from Marisa made him feel quite sentimental. How ridiculous it was that a police enquiry had drawn that from her. Having not thought about her very much since being arrested, he suddenly missed her.

'Is that a fair description?' asked Zorrita. 'From your point of view?'

'Yes, I would say that we were lovers. We'd known each other for nine months or so.'

'It would explain why she was doing her best to protect you.'

'Protect me?'

'She was trying to make out that you'd left her apartment later than you had, which would have made it more difficult for you to have murdered your wife…'

'I did not kill my wife,' said Calderon, summoning the full severity of his professional voice.

'…but she "forgot" that she'd called a taxi for you and that we can access all the phone records, as well as the cab company logs, and talk to the driver himself, of course. So her attempts to help you were, I'm afraid, quite futile.'

The interview was not following the pattern that Calderon had outlined to himself in his lawyer's mind while lying on his bunk. He'd witnessed only a few police interrogations in his time as a judge and so had little idea of the way in which they moved. It was for this reason that, barely a minute into his interview with Zorrita, he was in a quandary. Warmed by the thought that Marisa had called him her lover, but chilled by the idea that she believed he needed her help, which had ugly implications. The effect of these two extremes of temperature alive in his body was to undermine his equilibrium. His thoughts would not line up in their usual orderly fashion, but seemed to mill around, like shoals of children careering around the school playground.

'So, Sr Calderon, please tell me when you arrived at your lover's apartment.'

'It must have been about 12.45.'

'And what did you do?'

'We went out on to the balcony and made love.'

'Made love?' said Zorrita, deadpan. 'You didn't indulge in anal sex, by any chance?'

'Certainly not.'

'You seem very firm about that,' said Zorrita. 'And I only ask you such a personal question because the autopsy revealed that your wife seemed to be accustomed to being penetrated in this fashion.'

Panic rose in Calderon's chest. He had lost control of the interview in a matter of a few exchanges. His arrogance had cost him dear. His assumption that he could trounce Zorrita in any mind or word game had proved to be wide of the mark. This was a man who was used to the wiliness of criminals, and had come to the interview with a clear strategy, which made Calderon's analytical brain seem worthless.

'We made love,' said Calderon, unable to add anything more without making it sound like some biological transaction.

'Would you say that these two relationships generally worked in this fashion?' asked Zorrita. 'You treated your lover with respect and admiration, while abusing your wife as if she was some cheap whore.'

Outrage was the first emotion that leapt into Calderon's throat, but he was learning. He saw Zorrita's two interrogating weapons: emotional stabs, followed by logical bludgeon.

'I did not treat my wife like a cheap whore.'

'You're right, of course, because not even a cheap whore allows herself to be beaten up and sodomized for no money at all.'

Silence. Calderon gripped the edge of the table so hard his nails whitened with the pressure. Zorrita was unconcerned.

'At least you don't have the temerity to deny that you treated your wife in such shameful fashion,' said Zorrita. 'I presume your lover didn't know these two sides to your personality?'

'Who the fuck do you think you are, to presume to know anything about my relationship with my wife, or my lover?' said Calderon through lips gone bloodless with rage. 'Some fucking Inspector Jefe, come down from Madrid…'

'Now I can see why your wife would be terrified of you, Sr Calderon,' said Zorrita. 'Underneath that brilliant legal mind, you're a very angry man.'

'I am not fucking angry,' said Calderon, pounding the table hard enough to jog a hank of his hair loose. 'You are goading me, Inspector Jefe.'

'If I'm goading you, I'm not doing it by shouting at you or insulting you. I'm only doing it by asking you questions based on proven fact. The autopsy has revealed that you sodomized your wife and that you beat her up so badly that some of her vital organs were damaged. There's also a history of humiliation, which even extended to pursuing an affair with another woman on the same day that you announced your engagement to your wife.'

'Who've you been talking to?' asked Calderon, still unable to control his fury.

'As you know, I've only had today to work on this case, but I've managed to talk to your lover, which was a very interesting conversation, and a number of your colleagues and your wife's colleagues. I've also spoken to some of the secretaries in the Edificio de los Juzgados and the Palacio de Justicia, and the security guards, of course, who see everything. Of the twenty-odd interviews I've conducted so far, not one person has been prepared to defend your behaviour. The least emotional description of your activities was "an incorrigible womanizer".'

'What was so interesting about your conversation with Marisa?' asked Calderon, unable to resist the bait of that remark.

'She was telling me about a conversation you had about marriage. Do you remember that?' asked Zorrita.

Calderon blinked against the rush of memory; too much had happened in too short a time.

'The reason you married Ines…Maddy Krugman? How Ines represented stability after that…catastrophic affair?'

'What are you trying to do here, Inspector Jefe?'

'Jog your memory, Sr Calderon. You were there, I wasn't. I've only spoken to Marisa. You talked about "the bourgeois institution of marriage" and how she, Marisa, wasn't interested in it. You agreed with her, didn't you?'

'What do you mean?' asked Calderon.

'You weren't happy in your marriage, but you didn't want to get divorced. Why was that?' asked Zorrita.

Calderon couldn't believe it. He was in the elephant pit again. He pulled himself together this time.

'I believe that once you've made a commitment before God, in church, you should adhere to it,' he said.

'But that wasn't what you said to your lover, was it?'

'What did I say to her?'

'You said: "It's not so easy." What did you mean by that, Sr Calderon? It's not as if we're living in fear of excommunication any more. Breaking your vows wasn't your concern. So what were you worried about?'

Even Calderon's giant brain couldn't compute the numerous possible answers to this question in less than half a minute. Zorrita sat back and watched the judge agonize over everything except the truth of the matter.

'It's not that difficult a question,' said Zorrita, after a full minute's silence. 'Everybody knows what the repercussions of divorce are. If you want to extricate yourself from a legal commitment, you're going to lose out. What were you afraid of losing, Sr Calderon?'

Put like that, it didn't seem so bad. Yes, it was a common fear for men facing divorce. And he was no different.

'The usual things,' he said, finally. 'I was worried about my financial situation and my apartment. It was never a serious possibility. Ines was the only woman I'd ever…'

'Were you concerned, as well, that it might affect your social status, and perhaps your job?' asked Zorrita. 'I understand your wife had been very supportive of you after the Maddy Krugman debacle. Your colleagues said she helped you to get your career back on track.'

His colleagues had said that?

'There was never any serious threat to my career,' said Calderon. 'There was no question that I would be appointed as the Juez de Instruccion for something as important as the Seville bombing, for instance.'

'Your lover offered you a solution to the problem, though, didn't she?' said Zorrita.

'What problem?' said Calderon, confused. 'I just said there was no problem with my career, and Marisa-'

'The awkward problem of the divorce.'

Silence. Calderon's memory baffled around his head, like a moth seeking the light.

'"The bourgeois solution to the bourgeois problem",' said Zorrita.

'Oh, you mean that I could kill her,' said Calderon, snorting with derisive laughter. 'That was just a silly joke.'

'Yes, on her part,' said Zorrita. 'But how did it affect your mind? That's the question.'

'It was ridiculous. An absurdity. We both laughed at it.'

'That's what Marisa said, but how did it affect your mind?'

Silence.

'It never, for one moment, entered my mind to kill my wife,' said Calderon. 'And I didn't kill her.'

'When did you first beat your wife, Sr Calderon?'

This interview was like a steeplechase, with the fences getting higher as he progressed around the course. Zorrita watched the internal struggle that he'd seen so many times before: the unacceptable truth, followed by the necessary delusion, and the attempt to construct a lie from those two unreliable sources.

'Had you beaten her before the beginning of this week?' asked Zorrita.

'No,' he said firmly, but instantly realized that it implied some admission of guilt.

'That's cleared something up,' said Zorrita, making a note. 'It was difficult for the Medico Forense to establish the occurrence of the first beating you gave her because, well, as I understand it, old bruising isn't as easy to measure as say…body temperature. Dating old bruising is a difficult business…as is organ rupture and internal bleeding.'

'Look,' said Calderon, inwardly gasping at these shocking revelations, 'I know what you're trying to do.'

'I'd really like to establish a specific time when you first beat Ines. Was it Sunday night or Monday morning?'

'They weren't beatings, they were accidents,' said Calderon, aghast that he'd used the plural now. 'And, whatever the case, it does not mean that I murdered my wife…I didn't.'

'But did the first beating occur on Sunday or Monday?' asked Zorrita. 'Or was it Tuesday? Of course, you used the plural. So it was probably Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and then, finally and tragically, Wednesday, and we'll never be able to attribute what bruise to which day. What time did you get back on Tuesday morning, having spent the night with Marisa?'

'It was around 6.30 a.m.'

'Well, that squares with what Marisa said. And was Ines asleep?'

'I thought she was.'

'But she wasn't,' said Zorrita. 'She woke up, didn't she? And what did she do?'

'All right, she found my digital camera and started downloading the images I had on it. They included two shots of Marisa.'

'You must have been very angry when you found out. When you came across her in the act, caught her red-handed,' said Zorrita, not quite able to ease back on his relish. 'She was very fragile, your wife, wasn't she? The Medico Forense estimates her weight before the catastrophic blood loss as 47 kilos.'

'Look, we were in the kitchen, I just brushed her aside,' said Calderon. 'I didn't realize my own strength or her fragility. She fell awkwardly against the kitchen counter. It's made out of granite.'

'But that doesn't explain the fist mark on her abdomen, or the toe mark over her left kidney, or the amount of her hair we've found distributed around your apartment.'

Calderon sat back. His hands fell from the edge of the table. He was not a career criminal and he was finding resistance very hard work. The only time he could remember having to trump up such a quantity of lies was when he'd been a small boy.

'As I swept her aside I must have tapped her diaphragm. She hit the counter and came down on my foot.'

'The autopsy found a ruptured spleen and a bleeding kidney,' said Zorrita. 'I think it was less of a tap and more of a punch, wasn't it, Sr Calderon? The Medico Forense thinks from the shape of the bruise around her loin area and the darker red imprint of a toenail, that it was more of a kick with a bare foot than someone "falling" on to a foot, which would, of course, be flat on the floor.'

Silence.

'And all that took place on Tuesday morning?'

'Yes,' said Calderon.

'How long was that after your lover's little joke about solving the problem of your divorce?'

'Her joke had nothing to do with that.'

'All right, when was the next time you beat your wife?' asked Zorrita. 'Was it after you found out that your wife and lover had accidentally met in the Murillo Gardens?'

'How the fuck do you know that?' asked Calderon.

'I asked Marisa if she'd ever met your wife,' said Zorrita, 'and she started off by lying to me. Why did she do that, do you think?'

'I don't know.'

'She said she hadn't, but you know, I've been interviewing liars more than half my working life and after a while it's like dealing with children; you become so practised at reading the signs that their attempts become laughable. So why do you think she lied on your behalf?'

'On my behalf?' asked Calderon. 'She didn't do anything on my behalf.'

'Why didn't she want me to know that she had had this…vocal confrontation with your late wife?'

'I've no idea.'

'Because she was still angry about it, Sr Calderon, that's why,' said Zorrita. 'And if she was angry about being insulted by your wife, about being called a whore, in public, by your wife…I'm wondering how she made you feel about it…Well, she told me.'

'She told you?'

'Oh, she tried to protect you again, Sr Calderon. She tried to make it sound like nothing. She kept repeating: "Esteban's not a violent man," that you were just "annoyed", but I think she also realized just how very, very angry you were. What did you do on the night that Marisa told you Ines had called her a whore?'

More silence from Calderon. He'd never found it so difficult to articulate. He was too stoked up with emotion to find the right reply.

'Was that the night you came home and pummelled your wife's breasts and whipped her with your belt so that the buckle cut into her buttocks and thighs?'

He'd come into this interview with a sense of resistance as dense and powerful as a reinforced concrete dam, and within half an hour of questioning all that was left were some cracked and frayed bean canes. And then they caved in. He saw himself in front of a state prosecutor, facing these same questions, and he realized the hopelessness of his situation.

'Yes,' he said, on automatic, unable to find even the schoolboy creativity to invent the ridiculous lie to obscure his brutality. There was nothing ambiguous about the welt of a belt and the gouge of its buckle.

'Why don't you talk me through what happened on the last night of your wife's life,' said Zorrita. 'Earlier we'd reached the moment when you'd just made love to Marisa on the balcony.'

Calderon's eyes found a point midway between himself and Zorrita, which he examined with the unnerving intensity of a man spiralling down to the darker regions of himself. He'd never had these things said to him before. He'd never had these things revealed to him under such emotional circumstances. He was stunned by his brutality and he couldn't understand where, in all his urbanity, it came from. He even tried to imagine himself dealing out these beatings to Ines, but they wouldn't come to him. He did not see himself like that. He did not see Esteban Calderon's fists raining down on his fine-boned wife. It had been him, there was no doubt about that. He saw himself before and after the act. He remembered the anger building up to the beatings and it subsiding afterwards. It struck him that he had been in the grip of a blind savagery, a violence so intense that it had no place in his civilized frame. A terrifying doubt began to crowd his chest and affect the motor reflex of his breathing, so that he had to concentrate: in, out, in, out. And it was there, in the lowest and darkest circle of his spiralling thoughts, the completely lightless zone of his soul, that he realized that he could have murdered her. Javier Falcon had told him once that there was no greater denial than that of a man who had murdered his wife. The thought terrified him into a state of profound concentration. He'd never looked with such microscopic detail into his mind before. He began to talk, but as if he was describing a film, scene by horrible scene.

'He was exhausted. He had been completely drained by the experiences of the day. He stumbled into the bedroom, collapsed on to the bed and passed out immediately. He was aware only of pain. He lashed out wildly with his foot. He woke up with no idea where he was. She told him he had to get up. It was past three o'clock. He had to go home. He couldn't wear the same clothes as he had yesterday and appear on television. She called a taxi. She took him down in the lift. He wanted to sleep on her shoulder in the street. The cab arrived and she spoke to the driver. He fell into the back seat and his head rolled back. He was only vaguely aware of movement and of light flashing behind his eyelids. The door opened. Hands pulled at him. He gave the driver his house keys. The driver opened the door to the building. He slapped on the light. They walked up the stairs together. The driver opened the apartment door. Two turns of the lock. The driver went back down the stairs. The hall light went out. He went into the apartment and saw light coming from the kitchen. He was annoyed. He didn't want to see her. He didn't want to have to explain…again. He moved towards the light…'

Calderon paused, because he was suddenly unsure of what he was going to see.

'His foot crossed the edge of the shadow and stepped into the light. He turned into the frame.'

Calderon was blinking at the tears in his eyes. He was so relieved to see her standing there at the sink in her nightdress. She turned when she heard his footfall. He was going to skirt the table and pull her to him and squeeze his love into her, but he couldn't move because when she turned she didn't open her arms to him, she didn't smile, her dark eyes did not glisten with joy…they opened wide with abject terror.

'And what happened?' asked Zorrita.

'What?' asked Calderon, as if coming to.

'You turned into the kitchen doorway and what did you do?' asked Zorrita.

'I don't know,' said Calderon, surprised to find his cheeks wet. He wiped them with the flat of his palms and brushed them down his trousers.

'It's not unusual for people to have blank moments about terrible things that they have done,' said Zorrita. 'Tell me what you saw when you turned into the doorway of the kitchen.'

'She was standing at the kitchen sink,' he said. 'I was so happy to see her.'

'Happy?' said Zorrita. 'I thought you were annoyed.'

'No,' he said, holding his head in his hands. 'No, it was…I was lying on the floor.'

'You were lying on the floor?'

'Yes. I woke up on the floor in the corridor and I went back to the kitchen light and it was then that I saw Ines lying on the floor,' he said. 'There was a terrible quantity of blood and it was very, very red.'

'But how did she end up lying on the floor?' asked Zorrita. 'One moment she was standing and the next she's lying on the floor in a pool of blood. What did you do to her?'

'I don't know that she was standing,' said Calderon, searching his mind for that image to see if it really existed.

'Let me tell you a few facts about your wife's murder, Sr Calderon. As you said, the cab driver opened the door of the apartment for you, with two turns of the key in the lock. That means the door had been double locked from the inside. Your wife was the only person in the apartment.'

'Ye-e-e-s,' said Calderon, concentrating on Zorrita's every syllable, hoping they would give him the vital clue that would unlock his memory.

'When the Medico Forense took your wife's body temperature down by the river it was 36.1°C. She was still warm. The ambient temperature last night was 29°C. That means your wife had just been killed. The autopsy revealed that your wife's skull had been smashed at the back, that there had been a devastating cerebral haemorrhage and two neck vertebrae had been shattered. Examination of the crime scene has revealed blood and hair on the black granite work surface and a further large quantity of blood on the floor next to your wife's head which also contained bone fragments and cerebral matter. The DNA samples taken from your apartment belong only to you and to your wife. The shirt that was taken from you down by the river was covered in your wife's blood. Your wife's body showed indications of your DNA on her face, neck and lower limbs. The scene in the kitchen of your apartment was consistent with someone who had picked Ines up by the shoulders or neck and thrown her down on the granite work surface. Is that what you did, Sr Calderon?'

'I only wanted to embrace her,' said Calderon, whose face had broken up into the ugliness of his inner turmoil. 'I just wanted to hold her close.'