The Hidden Assassins

38

Seville-Friday, 9th June 2006, 08.17 hrs

'You didn't make it to our appointment last night,' said Alicia Aguado.

'I was in no condition,' said Consuelo. 'I left you, went to the pharmacy with the prescription you'd given me, bought the drugs and didn't take them. I went back to my sister's house. I spent most of the day in her spare room. Some of the time I was crying so hard I couldn't breathe.'

'When was the last time you cried?'

'I don't think I ever have…not properly. Not with grief,' said Consuelo. 'I don't even remember crying as a child, apart from when I hurt myself. My mother said I was a silent baby. I don't think I was the crying type.'

'And how do you feel now?'

'Can't you tell?' said Consuelo, twitching her wrist under Aguado's fingers.

'Tell me.'

'It's not an easy state to describe,' said Consuelo. 'I don't want to sound like some mushy fool.'

'Mushy fool is a good start.'

'I feel better now than I have done for a long time,' said Consuelo. 'I can't say that I feel good, but that terrifying sense of impending hideousness has gone. And the strange sexual urges have gone.'

'So, you don't think you're going mad any more?' said Aguado.

'I'm not sure about that,' said Consuelo. 'I've lost all sense of equilibrium. I can't seem to have just one feeling, I'm both extremes at once. I feel empty and full, courageous and afraid, angry and placid, happy and yet grief-stricken. I can't find any middle ground.'

'You can't expect your mind to recover in twentyfour hours of crying,' said Aguado. 'Do you think you could describe what happened yesterday morning? You came to some sort of realization which completely felled you. I'd like you to talk about that.'

'I'm not sure I can remember how it came about,' said Consuelo. 'It's like the bomb going off in Seville. So much has happened that it already feels like ten years ago.'

'I'll tell you how it came about afterwards,' said Aguado. 'Concentrate on what happened. Describe it as best you can.'

'It started off like a pressure, as if there was a membrane stretched across my mind, like an opaque latex sheet, against which someone, or something, was pressing. It's happened to me before. It makes me feel queasy, as if I'm at that crossover point between being merry and drunk. When it's happened in the past I'd make it go away by doing something like rummaging in my handbag. The physical action would help to reassert reality, but I'd be left with the sensation of the imminence of something that had not come to pass. The interesting thing was that I stopped getting these moments a few years ago.'

'Were they replaced by something else?'

'I didn't think so at the time. I was just glad to be rid of the sensation. But now I'm thinking that it was then that the sexual urges started,' said Consuelo. 'In the same way that the pressure started during a lull of brain activity, so the urges would come, sometimes in a meeting, or playing with the kids, or trying on a pair of shoes. It was disturbing to have no control over when they appeared, because they would be accompanied by graphic images which left me feeling disgusted with myself.'

'So what happened yesterday?' asked Aguado.

'The membrane came back,' said Consuelo, palms suddenly moist on the arms of the chair. 'There was the pressure, but it was much greater and it seemed to be expanding at an incredible rate, so that I thought my head would burst. In fact, there was a sensation of bursting, or rather splitting, which was accompanied by that feeling you get in dreams of endlessly falling. I thought this is it. I'm finished. The monster's come up from the deep and I'm going to go mad.'

'But that didn't happen, did it?'

'No. There was no monster.'

'Was there anything?'

'There was just me. A lonely young woman in a rain-filled street, full of grief, guilt and despair. I didn't know what to do with myself.'

'When this happened, we were talking about someone you knew,' said Aguado. 'The Madrid art dealer.'

'Ah, yes, him. Did I tell you that he'd killed a man?'

'Yes, but you told me about it in a certain way.'

'I remember now,' said Consuelo. 'I told you about it as if his crime was greater than my own.'

'What does that mean?'

'That I believed that I had committed a crime?' said Consuelo, questioning. 'Except that I knew what I'd done. I had always faced up to the fact that I'd had the abortions, even the appalling way I'd raised the money for the first one.'

'Which had resulted in some confusion in your mind,' said Aguado. 'The graphic sexual images?'

'I don't understand.'

'This pain you mentioned when you watched your children sleeping, especially the youngest child-what do you think that was?'

Consuelo gulped, as the saliva thickened in her mouth and tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her face.

'You told me before that it was the love that was hurting,' said Aguado. 'Do you still think it was love?'

'No,' said Consuelo, after some long minutes. 'It was guilt at what I had done, and grief at what could have been.'

'Go back to that time when you were standing in the rain-filled street. I think you told me earlier that you were looking at some smart people coming out of an art gallery. Do you remember what you were thinking, before you decided that you wanted to be like them, that you wanted to "reinvent" yourself?'

There was a long silence. Aguado didn't move. She stared straight ahead with her unseeing eyes and felt the pulse beneath her fingers, like string untangling itself.

'Regret,' said Consuelo. 'I wished I hadn't done it, and when I saw those people coming out into the street I thought that they were not the sort of people to get themselves into this state. It was then that I decided I wanted to leave this pathetic, lonely, pitiful person on this wet street and go and be someone else.'

'So, although you've always "faced up" to what you'd done, there was also something missing. What was that?'

'The person who'd done it,' said Consuelo. 'Me.' The search warrants for Eduardo Rivero's house, the premises of Fuerza Andalucia, Angel Zarrias's apartment and Agustin Cardenas's residence were issued at 7.30 a.m. By 8.15 the forensics had moved in, the computer hard disks had been copied and evidence was being gathered and gradually shipped back to the Jefatura. Comisario Elvira, all six members of the homicide squad and three members of the CGI antiterrorism squad convened for a strategy meeting in the Jefatura at 8.45. The idea was that the nine-man interrogation team would interview the three suspects, with a few breaks, for a total of thirteen and a half hours. To prevent the suspects developing relationships or getting used to a certain style, every member of the team would interview each suspect for an hour and a half. While the first three interviewers worked the next wave would watch, and the third wave would rest or discuss developments. Lunch would be taken at 3 p.m. and there would be another tactical discussion. The next session would run from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. and, if none of the suspects had cracked, there would be a break for dinner and a final ninety-minute session at midnight.

The point of the interviews was not to persuade the suspects to admit to the killing of Tateb Hassani, but to force them to reveal who had put Fuerza Andalucia in touch with him, why he was being employed, where the documents he'd prepared had been delivered, and who else had been at the dinner at which Tateb Hassani had been poisoned.

Exhaustion was the communal state. The meeting broke up with sighs, hands run through hair, jackets removed and shirt sleeves rolled up. It was agreed that Falcon would take Angel Zarrias first, Ramirez would handle Eduardo Rivero, and Barros would start on Agustin Cardenas. Once they were told that the suspects were in the interview rooms they went downstairs.

Ferrera was due to follow Falcon interviewing Angel Zarrias. They stood in front of the glass viewing panel, looking at him. He was sitting at the table, wearing a long-sleeved white shirt, hands clasped, eyes fixed on the door. He seemed calm. Falcon began to feel too tired for this confrontation.

'You're going to find out that Angel Zarrias is a very charming man,' said Falcon. 'He especially likes women. I don't know him very well because he's the sort of man who keeps you at a distance with his charm. But there has to be a real person underneath that. There has to be the fanatic that wanted to make this conspiracy work. That's the man we want to get to, and once we've got to him we want to keep him there, exposed, for as long as possible.'

'And how are you going to do that?' said Ferrera. 'He's practically your brother-in-law.'

'I've learnt a few things from Jose Luis,' said Falcon, nodding at Rivero's interview room, which Ramirez had just entered.

'Then I'll keep an eye on both of you,' said Ferrera.

Angel Zarrias's eyes flicked up as Falcon opened the door to the interview room. He smiled and stood up.

'I'm glad it's you, Javier,' he said. 'I'm so glad it's you. Have you spoken to Manuela?'

'I spoke to Manuela,' said Falcon, who sat down without turning on any of the recording equipment or following any of the normal introductory procedure. 'She's very angry.'

'Well, people react in different ways to having their partners arrested in the middle of the night on suspicion of murder,' said Zarrias. 'I can imagine some people might get angry. I don't know how I'd feel myself.'

'She wasn't angry about your arrest,' said Falcon.

'She was pretty fierce with your officers,' said Angel.

'It was after I'd spoken to her that she became…incandescent with rage,' said Falcon. 'I think that would be a fair description.'

'When did you speak to her?' he asked, unnerved, puzzled.

'At about two o'clock this morning,' said Falcon. 'She'd already left about fifty messages on my mobile by then.'

'Of course…she would.'

'As you know, she can be quite a daunting prospect when she's emotionally charged,' said Falcon. 'It wasn't possible for me to just say that you'd been arrested on suspicion of murder and leave it at that. She had to know who, where and why.'

'And what did you tell her?'

'I had to tell her by degrees because, of course, there are legal implications, but I can assure you I only told her the truth.'

'What was this "truth" that you told her?'

'That is what you are supposed to tell me, Angel. You are the perpetrator and I am the interrogator, and between us there is a truth. The idea is that we negotiate our way to the heart of it, but it's not up to me to tell you what I think you've done. That's your job.'

Silence. Zarrias looked at the dead recording equipment. Falcon was pleased to see him confused. He leaned over, turned on the recorder and made the introductions.

'Why did you kill Tateb Hassani?' asked Falcon, sitting back.

'And what if I tell you that I didn't kill him?'

'If you like, for the purposes of this interview, we won't draw a distinction between murder and conspiring to murder,' said Falcon. 'Does that make it easier for you?'

'What if I tell you I had nothing to do with the murder of Tateb Hassani?'

'You've already been implicated, along with Agustin Cardenas, by the host of Hassani's final and fatal dinner, Eduardo Rivero. You've also been identified as being present at the scene of the crime by an employee in his household,' said Falcon. 'So for you to say that you had nothing to do with Hassani's death would be a very difficult position to defend.'

Angel Zarrias looked deeply into Falcon's face. Falcon had been looked at like this before. His old technique, before his breakdown in 2001, was to meet it with the armour-plated stare. His new technique was to welcome them in, bring them to the lip of his deep well and dare them to look down. This was what he did to Angel Zarrias. But Angel wouldn't come. He looked hard but he never came to the edge. He backed off and glanced around the room.

'Let's not get bogged down in all the detail,' said Falcon. 'I'm not interested in who put the cyanide in what, or who was present when Agustin Cardenas did his gruesome work. Although I am interested to know whose idea it was to sew Tateb Hassani into a shroud. Did you come up with any suitable Islamic orisons for him? Did you wash him before you sewed him up? It was a bit tricky for us to tell once we'd discovered him, bloated and stinking, with the shroud torn off, on the rubbish dump outside Seville. But I thought that was a nice touch of respect from one religion to another. Was that your idea?'

Angel Zarrias had pushed his chair back and, in his agitation, had started to pace the room.

'You're not talking to me already, Angel, and we've only just started.'

'What the hell do you expect me to say?'

'All right. I know. It's difficult. You've always been a good Catholic, a man of great religious faith. You even managed to get Manuela to go to Mass, and she must have loved you to do that,' said Falcon. 'Guilt is a debilitating state for a good man, such as yourself. Living in mortal sin must be petrifying but, equally, it's a daunting task to bring yourself to the confessional for the greatest of human crimes. I'm going to make this easier for you. Let's forget about Tateb Hassani for the time being and move on to something you're more comfortable with, that you should be able to talk about, that should loosen your vocal cords so that you will, eventually, be able to come back to the more demanding revelations.'

Angel Zarrias stopped in his tracks and faced Falcon. His shoulders slumped, his chest looked like a cathedral roof on the brink of collapse.

'Go on then, ask your question.'

'Where were you on Wednesday, 7th June between 1.30 p.m. and 3 p.m.?'

'I can't recall. I was probably having lunch.'

'Sit down and think about it,' said Falcon. 'This is the day after the explosion. You would have received a phone call from someone who was desperate. I'm sure you'd remember that: a fellow human being in distress who needed to speak to you.'

'You know who it is, so you tell me,' said Angel, who'd started his agitated walking again.

'SIT DOWN, ANGEL!' roared Falcon.

Zarrias had never heard Falcon shout before. He was shocked at the anger simmering beneath the placid surface. He swerved towards the chair, sat down and stared into the table with his hands clasped tight.

'You were seen and identified by a security guard,' said Falcon.

'I went to the Archaeological Museum and met a man called Ricardo Gamero.'

'Are you aware of what happened to Ricardo Gamero about half an hour after you spoke to him?'

'He committed suicide.'

'You were the last person to speak to him, face to face. What did you talk about?'

'He told me he had developed feelings for another man. He was very ashamed and distressed about it.'

'You're lying to me, Angel. Why should a committed CGI agent leave his office during the most important antiterrorist investigation ever to happen in this city, to go and discuss his sexual angst with you?'

'You asked me a question and I replied,' said Zarrias, without taking his eyes off the table.

Falcon pummelled Zarrias with questions about Ricardo Gamero for three-quarters of an hour, but could not get him to budge from his story. He accused Zarrias of telling Marco Barreda from Informaticalidad to offer up the same lie. Zarrias didn't even give Falcon the satisfaction of a flicker of recognition at this new name. Falcon made a show of ordering Barreda to be brought down to the Jefatura for questioning. Zarrias hung on grimly, knowing that this was the difference between life and a living death.

It was well past 10 a.m. when Falcon returned to the murder of Tateb Hassani. Zarrias looked pale and sick from maintaining his wall of deceit. One eye was bloodshot and his lower lids were hanging down from his eyeballs to reveal raw, veined and shiny flesh.

'Let's talk about Tateb Hassani again,' said Falcon. 'An employee, Mario Gomez, saw you, Rivero and Hassani going upstairs to the Fuerza Andalucia offices in Rivero's house to dine on a buffet that he'd just laid out. The time was 9.45 p.m. Rivero has told us that Agustin Cardenas arrived a little later and parked his car underneath the arch of the entrance. Tell me what happened in the time between you going up the stairs and Tateb Hassani's body being brought down to be loaded into Agustin Cardenas's Mercedes E500.'

'We drank some chilled manzanilla, ate some olives. Agustin turned up a little after ten o'clock. We served ourselves from the buffet. Eduardo opened a special bottle of wine, one of his Vega Sicilias. We ate, we drank, we talked.'

'What time did Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito arrive?'

'They didn't. They weren't there.'

'Mario Gomez told us that there was enough food for eight people.'

'Eduardo has always been generous with his portions.'

'At what point did you administer the cyanide to Tateb Hassani?'

'You're not going to get me to incriminate myself,' said Angel. 'We'll leave that for the court to decide.'

'How was Tateb Hassani introduced to you?'

'We met at the Chamber of Commerce.'

'What did Tateb Hassani do for you?'

'He helped us formulate our immigration policy.'

'Jesus Alarcon says that was already in place months ago.'

'Tateb Hassani was very knowledgeable about North Africa. He'd read a lot of the UN reports about the mass assaults by illegal immigrants on the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. We were incorporating new ideas into our policy. We had no idea how well-timed his help would be in view of what happened on 6th June.'

Falcon announced the end of the interview and flicked off the recorder. It was more important now that he prepare Zarrias for the next interview. There was plenty of evidence of decrepitude in his face, but he had retreated into himself, concentrated his powers into a nucleus of defence. Falcon had only achieved some superficial damage. Now he had to make him vulnerable.

'I had to tell Manuela,' said Falcon. 'You know what she's like. I told her that you'd had to murder Tateb Hassani because he was the only element outside the conspiracy and, therefore, the only danger to it. If he was left alive it would render Fuerza Andalucia vulnerable. Manuela wasn't prepared to deal in those sorts of generalizations so I had to give her the detail; how you'd employed him and where evidence of his handwriting was found. She knows you, of course, Angel. She knows you very well. She hadn't quite realized how far your obsession had gone. She hadn't realized that you'd gone from being extreme to fanatical. And she admired you so much, Angel, you know that, don't you? You helped her a lot with your positive energy. You helped me, too. You saved my relationship with her, which was important to me. I believe that she could have forgiven you this misguided attempt to finally grab a workable power, even if she didn't hold with your extreme beliefs. She thought, at least, that you were honourable. But there was something that she could not forgive.'

At last Zarrias looked up, as if he'd just come to the surface of himself. The tired, bruised and sagging eyes were suddenly alive with interest. In that moment Falcon realized something he'd never quite been sure about: Angel loved Manuela. Falcon knew that his sister was attractive, plenty of people had told him that they found her funny and that she had a great zest for life, and he'd seen her affect men touchingly by playing the little girl as well as the grown woman. But Falcon knew her too well and it had always seemed unlikely to him that anybody not related to Manuela could love her absolutely, because she had too many faults and dislikeable traits constantly on display. Clearly, though, she'd given something to Angel that he'd missed from his previous marriage, because there was no mistaking his need to know why she hated him.

'I'm listening,' said Zarrias.

'She could not forgive the way you talked to her that morning, when you'd already planned for that bomb to explode and she hadn't sold her properties.'