The Ignoranceof Blood

11

Nervion Plaza shopping centre, Seville – Saturday, 16th September 2006, 13.15 hrs

'I'm not going to talk to anybody except Javier,' said Consuelo, not loudly, but with such an edge to her voice that all the men stood back from her, as if she'd just unsheathed a sword.

They were in the office of the director of the Nervion Plaza shopping centre, which looked out through thin slatted blinds on to the broad avenue of Calle Luis de Morales. It was cold in the room. The sun was blinding and fierce outside. White bars of intense light, spectrum edged, laddered the far wall, on which hung a copy of a Joan Miro painting. Consuelo knew that this painting was called Dog Barking at the Moon and, indeed, it consisted of a small, colourful dog, a scimitar of white moon and an unforgiving black background, broken only by what looked like a railway track going to oblivion. It turned her stomach to look at Miro's intention; to show tiny forms in vast empty spaces. Where was Dario now? Normally he was a large presence in a small space, but now she could only think of his defenceless tininess in the larger outside world.

The thought of him came in waves; one moment she was tough and assertive, commanding respect from all the men in the room, and the next she had her face in her trembling hands, hiding that vulnerability, pressing the tears back into her eyes.

'This is not Javier's kind of work,' said Ramirez, the only one who knew her well enough to raise any sort of objection.

'I know it's not, Jose Luis,' said Consuelo, looking up from the sofa. 'Thank God for that. But I can't… I don't want to talk to anyone else. He knows me. He can get everything he needs out of me. We don't have to start from scratch.'

'You should talk to the officers from the Crimes Against Children squad,' said Ramirez. 'The GRUME have enormous experience with missing children. And it's important that we establish the possibilities and probabilities of what may have happened here immediately. Is this a case of a child having wandered off or has he been abducted and, if so, what could be the motives of…?'

'Abducted?' said Consuelo, her neck lengthening by ten centimetres.

'Don't alarm yourself, Consuelo,' said Ramirez.

'I'm not alarming myself, Jose Luis. You're alarming me.'

'This is what the GRUME do. They look at the background. They judge probabilities. Have you made enemies in business?'

'Who hasn't?'

'Have you noticed anyone hanging around your home?'

She didn't answer. That made her think. What about that guy last June? The gypsy-looking guy who'd muttered obscenities at her in the street, then she'd seen him again in the Plaza del Pumarejo, not far from her restaurant. She'd thought he was going to rape her down a back street. He'd known her name. He'd known all sorts of things. That her husband was dead. And, yes, her sister, later, had referred to him as the 'new pool guy' when she'd been looking after the kids and had seen him hanging around the house.

'You're thinking, Consuelo.'

'I am.'

'Will you talk to the GRUME officers now?'

'All right, I'll talk to them. But as soon as Javier is available…'

'We're trying to get a message to him now,' said Ramirez, patting her on the shoulder with one of his huge, steadying mahogany hands. He felt for her. He had his own kids. The abyss had opened up in him before now and changed him. They were angry with Falcon. Douglas Hamilton, who was on the brink of losing his usual calm, was jabbing him with irony. Rodney had already called him a cunt. Falcon knew from his English lessons that this was the worst thing you could say to someone in England, but to him, a Spaniard, the world's greatest insulters, it was water off a duck's back.

They were mildly irritated by the fact that the listening device they'd planted on him hadn't worked, but what was really incensing them was that Falcon wouldn't tell them anything juicy from his meeting with Yacoub.

'You can't tell us where he's been on the five occasions he's lost us. You can't tell us who trained him. You can't tell us why his son is with him in London…'

'That I don't know,' said Falcon, cutting in on the litany. 'He wouldn't tell me that.'

'Maybe we should just shoot the fucker anyway,' said Rodney.

'Who?' said Falcon.

Rodney shrugged as if it didn't matter.

'It won't come to that,' said Hamilton smoothly.

'He's in a very difficult position,' said Falcon.

'Oh, fuck right off,' said Rodney.

'Aren't we all?' said Hamilton. 'You're talking to people with two thousand suspected terrorists under constant watch. Can't you at least throw us a bone, Javier?'

'I can tell you about the Turkish businessman from Denizli.'

'Fuck that,' said Rodney.

'We're listening,' said Hamilton.

'They've signed a contract for the supply of denim to his factory in Sale,' said Falcon. 'The first shipment was received…'

'Bugger off,' said Rodney. 'You know what he's doing and you're not fucking telling us. We don't give a shit about the Turkish tosser.'

'Maybe you knew that Yacoub and the Turk had a genuine business relationship,' said Falcon, 'and you were just using their mildly suspicious backgrounds to make them appear more threatening.'

'We know about the Turk,' said Hamilton, holding up a calming hand. 'What else can you tell us?'

'Yacoub knows of no active GICM cell currently operating in the UK,' said Falcon. 'This doesn't mean there isn't one, it just means he has never been asked to make contact with it, and he's never heard any reference to one in any of his discussions with the military wing of the GICM.'

'Brilliant,' said Rodney.

'Let's at least get something straight,' said Hamilton. 'Do you know what he's been up to when he's lost the MI5 tails?'

'Not exactly. All I do know is that it's a private matter…'

'Which requires top-level spy craft?'

'In order to stay private… yes,' said Falcon.

'All right,' said Hamilton. 'The person or group that he's met on these occasions, you're saying they're not an active GICM cell.'

'I can confirm that,' said Falcon. 'I can also confirm that they are in no way your enemies.'

'Then why the fuck can't you tell us who they are?' said Rodney, in a crescendo.

'Because you'll start to make assumptions,' said Falcon. 'I'll tell you one thing and you'll put it together with other, perhaps unrelated, bits of information about Yacoub. You'll build a picture. The wrong one. Then you'll act in your own interests and not those of my agent, and that will more than likely put Yacoub and his son in serious danger.'

'What's Yacoub's interest?' asked Hamilton.

'That everybody close to him gets out alive… and he doesn't necessarily include himself in that number.'

'Fuck me, now he's giving you the sacrificial lamb shit,' said Rodney.

'Why does he think that we wouldn't help him?' asked Hamilton.

'Yacoub turned down approaches from both MI6 and the CIA,' said Falcon, 'because he had very good reasons for thinking that they would quite quickly find him expendable.'

'Let's just take him out,' said Rodney, bored by it all. 'Then we won't have to worry about him any more.'

Falcon had been waiting for this moment. He needed to create a little scene and Rodney had just given him the opportunity. He took three steps across the room, lifted Rodney out of his chair and slammed him up against the door.

'You're talking about my friend,' said Falcon, through gritted teeth. 'My friend who has given vital information at considerable risk to himself, which prevented an attack on a landmark building in the heart of the City of London containing thousands of people. If you want to put yourself in the way of more information like that, then you'll have to be patient with him. Yacoub, unlike you, is not in the business of endangering people's lives.'

'All right,' said Hamilton, grabbing Falcon's tensed bicep. 'Let's calm things down.'

'Then get this trigger-happy imbecile out of my sight,' said Falcon.

Rodney grinned and Falcon realized that the man had been playing a part all along, getting under his skin, trying to lever him open.

Falcon, still simmering, allowed himself to be guided back to his chair.

'Just give us something to go on, Javier,' said Hamilton, 'that's all we ask.'

'All right,' said Falcon, who'd been prepared by Yacoub for this free gift. 'A number of agencies, including the CNI, have been concerned by the appearance of a stranger in Yacoub's household.'

'In Rabat?'

'That's where he lives, Rodney.'

'What the fuck's that to us?'

'Then that probably concludes our business,' said Falcon coldly, preparing to leave.

'Take no notice of him,' said Hamilton. 'Tell us about the stranger.'

'He's a family friend. His name is Mustafa Barakat. He runs a number of tourist shops in Fes, which was where he was born in 1959 and has lived his entire life.'

'What's he doing in Yacoub's house?'

'He's a guest. It's not the first time, although it is probably the first time since foreign and Moroccan agencies have taken an interest in Yacoub's life.'

'We'll check him out,' said Rodney, as if that was a threat. 'She'll talk to you now,' said Ramirez, addressing the two officers from the Crimes Against Children squad, GRUME, who were standing in the corridor outside the director's office.

'What's her problem?' asked the younger one.

'She's been investigated by the police before,' said Ramirez. 'That's how we know her. We suspected her – or rather, I suspected her – of murdering her husband, Raul Jimenez.'

'And Falcon didn't?' asked Inspector Jefe Tirado, the older GRUME officer. 'Is that why she'll only talk to him?'

'They're close,' said Ramirez, and cut off that line of questioning with his hand.

'She didn't kill her husband, did she?' asked the younger officer, nervously.

'Just stick to the fucking point,' said Ramirez, ignoring him. 'Stay focused on her missing son, don't try to broaden things out too quickly. Concentrate on the immediate facts and then work back… slowly.'

'But that's not how we work,' said the young officer.

'I know. That's why I'm telling you,' said Ramirez. 'If you start rooting around in her private life, her business associates, her family album before you've gained her complete trust, then she'll clam up until Falcon gets here.'

'And when is that going to be?'

'I don't know. Maybe ten or eleven o'clock this evening.'

'I hear she lost sight of the boy when he went into the Sevilla Futbol Club shop,' said Tirado. 'You know they don't have CCTV out there. It's going to be hard going for us to establish whether he wandered off or was abducted. You got any feeling for what might have happened, Jose Luis?'

'I doubt the kid wandered off,' said Ramirez. 'You're going to find out that she's a complicated woman.'

'I don't even understand them when they're simple,' said the young officer, looking down the corridor.

Ramirez made a short mental appeal to the Holy Virgin.

'Stick to the facts. Broaden out slowly,' he repeated the mantra. 'We may have to wait for Falcon, anyway.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means Falcon's stirring a lot of pots at the same time and a fair few of them have shit at the bottom.'

They opened the door. Consuelo's voice barged out into the corridor.

'What do you mean, they don't have CCTV?' she asked. 'Why don't you have CCTV? In England I've heard they have CCTV everywhere… even on roundabouts in the middle of nowhere.'

'This isn't England,' said the director, feeling sorry for her but having to tamp down his irritation, too, as he was having to repeat himself again and again because not much was sticking in her mind.

'But there must be something.'

'Good afternoon, Senora Jimenez, my name is Inspector Jefe Tirado,' said the senior GRUME officer, as he entered the room. 'We are from the Crimes Against Children squad. There is, of course, plenty we can do. We're going to check all the footage of every camera in the Nervion Plaza, and that includes the internal shops' CCTV. As you know, there are cameras in the central area, too, and it's possible that we will get sufficient angle on some of them to include the Sevilla FC stadium and shop. There are already officers conducting interviews with people in and around the shop and stadium. I expect that we will find out very quickly what has happened to your son, Dario.'

Consuelo stood up and shook the man's hand. At 18.00 Falcon was on his way back to Heathrow. Douglas Hamilton had told him he'd make sure they held the flight, but Falcon wasn't sure the man liked him enough to actually do it. Despite the aggression from the two men, Falcon was relaxed. Yacoub had told him the truth. They were back on track and he didn't mind doing some blocking for him. There were still moments of panic when he thought about the ruthlessness of the GICM, but he calmed himself with the thought of Faisal's Saudi security detail.

He turned his mobile on without thinking. It exploded with messages and missed calls. He went into the inbox. Twelve messages from Consuelo. He leaned back in his seat. The Jaguar coasted along the raised section of the Great West Road, past empty high-rise office space. He allowed some exhaustion to creep into his neck and back as he savoured the weight of the unread messages. He smiled to himself, thinking: Javier Falcon, the romantic. He'd never have believed it. He shrugged and opened the first message.

'Dario missing. Help.'

He clicked through all twelve messages hoping that this was just the first panicked text and that by number twelve he'd get 'Dario found. See you tonight.' Instead he pieced together the chain of events and the last message read: 'WHERE ARE YOU? I NEED YOU HERE.' It was timed 17.08. His insides felt hideously cold, as ugly thoughts stirred at the back of his mind. Ramirez was still in the corridor outside the director's office waiting for news when he took Falcon's call. He gave him the update, told him that Consuelo was with the GRUME officers.

'I'm not going to get back until ten thirty tonight at the earliest,' said Falcon. 'Let me talk to her… in private.'

'Hold on a second, Javier.'

While listening to the extended muffled conversation at the other end, Falcon tried to think of consoling things to say to Consuelo, but he knew that no words of comfort ever worked in these situations.

'Cristina's found a couple living in an apartment block on Avenida de Eduardo Dato. They have a perfect view of the Sevilla FC stadium and the shop,' said Ramirez. 'They saw two people dressed in black jackets, black jeans and baseball caps with a small boy in between them, who was wearing a Sevilla FC scarf, but appeared to be struggling and not particularly happy. One of the adults was carrying a box. When they arrived at a car parked in front of the couple's block, one of the adults got in the back with the boy. The one carrying the box threw it on the ground, got in the driver's seat and drove off. They managed to see that it was a red Fiat Punto and had an old Seville number plate. Cristina's recovered the box, which contained a pair of football boots bought today from a shop called Decimas.'

'Take that news and the football boots in to Consuelo and the GRUME officers,' said Falcon, 'and let me speak to Cristina.'

Ferrera came on the line.

'Did you go and see Marisa?' asked Falcon.

'This morning, just after you left.'

'Every time I went to see Marisa I got a threatening phone call afterwards.'

'And you think they've taken their threat one step further.'

'I know they have,' said Falcon. 'I went to see Marisa late last night and I got a call just before I met Consuelo for dinner about ten minutes after midnight. The voice told me that something would happen and when it did I would know that it was my fault and I would recognize it. These people know me. They know my vulnerabilities. Whoever is coercing Marisa has kidnapped Dario. It's the next logical step.'

Falcon was talking to her in his usual measured way, but for the first time in four years working for him, she could hear a trembling at the edges of his voice that told her he was afraid. She knew he was close to the boy. He was always asking her questions about what her own son was like at eight years old; what he was interested in, what he liked to do. Her boss was learning how to be a father, and he'd just been thrown in the deep end.

'I'll go and see Marisa again,' she said.

'How was she the last time?'

'She was in a state. Drunk on rum. She was just opening up to me when she got a call. Then she fell to pieces, couldn't get rid of me quick enough.'

'Go and see her now, Cristina,' he said. 'As soon as possible. Get the pressure back on her. Tell her they've kidnapped a child. Work on her emotions. Make her… suffer. Do whatever you have to.'

'I'll do it. Don't worry,' she said. 'But what about the GRUME officers? Technically, it's their investigation. We're only involved because Consuelo called Ramirez when she was trying to find you.'

'We'd already started a line of inquiry with Marisa Moreno. She is a suspect in a conspiracy to murder case. GRUME will obviously have to be kept informed, but you are going to lose valuable time bringing them up to speed. So you go to see Marisa and I will explain our position to GRUME. Now let me speak to Consuelo while Ramirez is talking to GRUME about what you found out from that couple on Avenida de Eduardo Dato,' said Falcon. 'That was good, fast work, Cristina.'

Ferrera called Consuelo into the empty corridor, handed her the phone.

'Where are you?' she said, hugging the phone to her cheek.

'I can't tell you. It's not police business and I can't talk about it. All I can say is that I'm a flight away and I'm on the road to the airport. I'll be with you before midnight.'

'Cristina found witnesses who saw two people leading Dario away. I've seen the football boots. They're the ones I just bought for him,' she said, the emotion constricting her throat, having to squeeze the words past the barrier. 'They were leading Dario away, Javier.'

Consuelo was not prepared for this. Now that she was talking to him, all the powers that made her such a formidable person to deal with in business, that enabled her to run her complicated life, that made people sit up in the presence of her personality, deserted her. She found herself in the same state she'd been in with Alicia Aguado, holding her hand; the lost little girl, the troubled teenager, the adult gone awry, the mature woman on the edge of insanity.

Falcon, after that little logistical exchange, came to an unexpected halt in the face of his insurmountable guilt. All that cold, black hideousness that he'd felt on reading her messages rose in his chest. She was coming to him for help, for comfort, for solutions. And all he could think of was that he was the cause of her terrible predicament. He could feel her desperation, her need to melt into him, but, having wanted that more than anything else in his life this morning, he now found he was insoluble to her substance.

'This is what you have to do,' said Falcon, whose only recourse was to the professional in him. 'There's going to be CCTV footage of the two people…'

'The Nervion Plaza's CCTV doesn't go out that far.'

'Those two people will have had to come into the shopping centre to find you. They will have been looking at you for some time before they saw their opportunity. You have to look at all the available footage and find them. Then when you've found them you have to think where you've seen them before, because, Consuelo, those two people have been somewhere in your life. They might have been at the very periphery of it, but they have been there. Nobody can do what they've just done without any planning, without having watched you and Dario for some time.'

'But maybe somebody else did all that and these people just did the… the abducting.'

'That's possible, but at some stage those people will have had to see their target. You should talk to the school, take Inspector Jefe Tirado with you and talk to the teachers and other children, not just the ones in his class.'

'I need you here, Javier,' she said.

'And I'm going to be there, but in the meantime this is the most important moment. Remember that. The first hours are critical. You have to clear your mind of everything and concentrate only on what can help us find Dario.'

A deep breath from Consuelo.

'You're right,' she said.

'When you see those two people on the CCTV footage – and I promise you, they will be there – they might not be in their baseball caps, or they might be in reversible jackets, but they will be there, Consuelo. You will have seen them.'

'I've seen them,' she said.

'What do you mean?'

'I remember now. Two men. They looked straight at me when I was on the phone in Decimas, waiting to pay for the football boots. I noticed their look.'

'Think about them when you're looking at the CCTV footage. Ask the security people to play the footage from outside Decimas first and when you see those two men look at everything about them. The way they walk, their size, height, clothes, hands and feet, jewellery – anything that will give you a clue, that will jog your memory of where you have seen them before. That's all you do, Consuelo, think about that, answer the questions from Inspector Jefe Tirado and nothing else. I'll be back tonight and we'll find him.'

'Javier?'

'Yes.'

'I love you,' she said. 'You again,' said Marisa, face impassive, rubbery with alcohol, her eyes rheumy. 'Still haven't found anything better to do?'

She let the door fall back, revealed herself in bikini briefs again, a fat smouldering joint in her fingers. The smell of rum was strong, its sweetness mixed in with the hashish.

'Come in, little nun, come in. I'm not going to bite you.'

Marisa walked extravagantly to the work bench, swivelled and landed heavily on a stool. She swayed backwards and managed to sweep up a glass of Cuba libre and sipped it with distaste. It was warm and sticky. She licked her lips.

'What you looking at?' she asked, her face weak and evil by turns.

'You.'

Marisa posed with her legs spread, ran a finger under the waistband of her briefs.

'Fancy a bit of that?' she asked. 'Bet you had to do a bit of that in nun school, or whatever they call it.'

'Shut up, Marisa,' said Cristina. 'I'll make some coffee.'

'Your boss,' said Marisa, adopting a mock sexualized tone, 'the Inspector Jefe – he knows why he sent you here. He thinks I'm into that. Hates men, loves -'

Marisa stopped dead as Cristina lashed her across the face with her open palm. It knocked her off the stool. She dropped the joint, hunted for it among the wood shavings, replugged it into her mouth, got to her feet blinking, tears streaking her cheeks. Cristina made the coffee, forced her to drink water, got her into a T-shirt and a robe.

'No amount of alcohol or dope is going to stop you thinking about what you've got on your mind, Marisa.'

'How the fuck do you know what I've got on my mind?'

Cristina got up close, grabbed hold of Marisa's chin, made those lazy eyes pop open. She took the joint from her fingers, crushed it underfoot.

'Every time the Inspector Jefe has come to see you he's taken a threatening phone call afterwards from the same people holding Margarita,' she said. 'He got a call last night. They told him something bad was going to happen. And this morning the Inspector Jefe's partner is in the Nervion Plaza, and what happens, Marisa? Are you listening to me?'

She nodded, Cristina was hurting her.

'They kidnapped her son. Eight years old. They led him off, stuffed him in the back of a car,' said Cristina. 'So now, because you won't talk to us, an innocent child is suffering. And you know what these people are like, don't you, Marisa?'

Marisa jerked her head back, tore her chin out of Cristina's grip, paced the floor with her arms over her head, trying to close it all out.

'Eight-year-old little boy,' said Cristina. 'And you know what they said, Marisa? They said that we would never hear from them again. So, because you won't talk, the little boy's gone and we will never get him back. Not unless you -'

Marisa stamped her foot, clenched her fists, looked up to an unseen, uncaring God.

'That's the point, little nun,' she said. 'They'd do anything, these people. You know, they have guys who don't care one way or the other. A girl, a baby, an eight-year-old boy – it doesn't make any difference to them. And if I speak to you, if I say one word…'

'We can protect you. I can have a patrol car around here -'

'You can protect me,' said Marisa. 'You can put me in a concrete bunker for the rest of my life and that would give them pleasure because they would know that all I'd think about would be Margarita and the terrible things they would do to her. That is how these people operate. Why do you think they've got her anyway? An innocent teenager.'

'I'm listening, Marisa.'

'When my father died, he had a debt on his club in Gijon. My mother scraped together money from wherever she could to pay them. Then she got ill. They took Margarita to clear the debt,' said Marisa. 'But you see, we didn't really owe them money. They had my father's club. They had made money out of him all his life, even when he was on the Sugar Board in Cuba. But then they saw some helpless women and they invented a debt, an unrepayable debt. My sister will whore for them until she's finished. And when she's dried out and gaping from the drugs and the endless fucking, they'll kick her out on to the street and let her live in the gutter. To them, livestock has more value.'