The Ignoranceof Blood

15

Outskirts of Seville – Monday, 18th September 2006, 13.30 hrs

On the way back from the prison, Falcon got the call.

'Two officers from the Narcotics squad in Las Tres Mil just called in a double murder in the apartment of a drug dealer called Roque Barba, also known as El Pulmon,' said the operator. 'A Cuban male called Miguel Estevez found in the living room, shot twice in the back and stabbed in the side, and a Spanish female, Julia Valdes, believed to be El Pulmon's girlfriend, found in the bedroom shot in the face.'

Falcon came off the motorway and on to the ring road. He took the exit before the golf club and joined the Carretera de Su Eminencia, a road he'd always thought ridiculously named, given that it enclosed one of the grimmest public housing projects in Seville.

In the 1960s and 70s the municipality had lured gypsies from the centre of town out to this development of residential blocks on the edge of civilization. Years of poverty, lack of community and self-respect had transformed a halfhearted attempt at social engineering into a neighbourhood of drugs, murder, theft and vandalism. This did not mean that the barrio was without soul. Some of the greatest flamenco voices came from here, and quite a few of them had done time in the prison he'd just come from. It was more that the soul was not evident from the bare, treeless landscape, the grimy concrete blocks, the cheap clothes hanging out to dry on metal bars over the windows and landings, the rubbish collecting in the basements and stairwells, the graffiti and the air of complete desolation that told anyone who was in any doubt that these were forgotten people in a place that had fallen off the back of the town hall's mind.

The operator in the Jefatura hadn't bothered with an address. It was just a question of cruising around, looking for the crowd of people, the collection of police cars and the green day-glo ambulances, which he soon found at the foot of an eight-storey block. The patrolmen were nervous. Some of the people gathered around the metal security cage at the entrance of the block looked more desperate than the usual citizens of Las Tres Mil. Some of them were crouched low on the grassless earth, arms wrapped round their shins, holding on to themselves and shaking. The name of El Pulmon reached his ears. These were his clients, and they'd just lost their supply.

A patrolman told him to watch his step going up. There were blood drips circled in yellow on a number of steps going up to the fourth floor. The stink of rubbish followed him. No lift. The apartment was full of the usual crime-scene personnel. The bodies were still in position. Falcon shook hands with the medico forense and the instructing judge, Anibal Parrado. Sub-Inspector Emilio Perez, with his dark good looks of a thirties matinee idol and total devotion to detail, was running the investigation. They talked Falcon through the scene.

'We're not sure of the sequence of events, but we're assuming that the gun found on the floor by the window was secured to the table by those screws. It has been fired only once and the blood spatter on the wall beneath the mirror would suggest that we're looking for a wounded man. There is no other firearm in the apartment. A hunting knife was found close to the Cuban's body, which had not been used. From the entry wounds, the ballistics guys think that the same gun that killed Miguel Estevez also killed Julia Valdes in the adjacent room. Obviously, given that two shots killed the victims, they were not killed by the gun found on the floor, which they think is of a different calibre anyway. They will confirm that when they get the bullets out of the two victims. An initial inspection of the gunshot wounds to Miguel Estevez suggests that he was shot by someone lying on the floor. The body seems to have fallen on to the shooter, which would suggest that someone was using him as a shield and pushed him back on to the killer. Judging by the blood drips on the threshold of the bedroom, it is believed that the girl was shot from there by the wounded man.'

Over the medico forense's shoulder Falcon could see the girl's ruined face. Her upper body was slumped against the wall, which was covered with blood and cerebral matter. Her neck was crooked over the low bed-head, while her left hand was flung out towards the window. Her other hand had come to rest between her splayed legs but, with the palm upwards, it indicated the awkwardness of sudden death rather than the demureness of a final modesty. She was naked, but with her right leg caught up in the twisted sheet. The cameo spoke of fear, panic, paralysis and, finally, violent death.

'The blood drips leave the apartment and go down the stairs to the pavement, where they disappear. We assume the shooter got into a car.'

'And the stab wound to Estevez?'

'The Narcs say that El Pulmon favoured a blade,' said Perez. 'And it looks as if he's taken it with him.'

Falcon inspected the gun on the floor, the screws in the table, the bullfight magazine on the floor in front of the mirror.

'There are clear prints on the gun,' said Jorge, appearing from under the table with his custom-made inspection glasses on.

'We've got El Pulmon's prints on file from previous drug arrests,' said Perez.

'We have to assume that this gun did not belong to the Cuban, Miguel Estevez. Two men with guns are no match for a single man with a blade. Which means,' said Falcon, 'that this was the gun secured to the table and that El Pulmon was expecting trouble.'

'He must have bought that gun recently,' said one of the Narcs. 'He was always a knife man before. You know he was an ex-bullfighter?'

'Have you seen this guy before?' Falcon asked the Narc, pointing at Estevez.

'No, but things have been changing around here. The product is different to what it was last year. We still haven't been able to work out where the packages are coming from.'

'Have you come across any Russians?'

He shook his head.

'Were you the one who found the bodies?' asked Falcon.

'Me and my partner,' said the Narc.

'Any idea what time this happened?'

'The guy upstairs said he heard the first gunshot at about one o'clock,' said the Narc.

'Did he call in the shooting?'

'Nobody calls in a shooting in Las Tres Mil,' said the Narc.

'What were you doing here?' asked Falcon. 'Did somebody send you?'

'At a quarter past one we got a call from Inspector Jefe Tirado asking us to find a junkie called Carlos Puerta, who he wanted to question. If we found him, we were to call Tirado and he'd come down here.'

'Did you find him?'

'He's downstairs with my partner, waiting for the Inspector Jefe.'

'Tell me when Tirado gets here.'

Two of Falcon's young detectives, Serrano and Baena, appeared, ready to do some door-to-door.

'I want you and your partner to work with my two detectives here,' said Falcon to the Narcotics agent. 'I want some ideas about where we're going to find El Pulmon… before somebody else gets to him.' Consuelo paced the long glass doors of her living room. The air-con was too chill to sit for long. A patrolman was slumped in the shade of the umbrella on the other side of the pool. She thought he might be sleeping under his mirrored sunglasses. His arm hung limply down by the side of his chair.

A sound technician who'd come in to set up some professional recording equipment, rather than the temporary stuff Inspector Jefe Tirado had left on Saturday evening, was sitting in the kitchen. He was talking to the family liaison officer. There was another patrolman at the front door. She'd told him to come in from the heat. He stared morosely out of the glass panel of the front door. She'd phoned her restaurant manager, told him to contact the estate agents she was currently dealing with to ask them not to call until further notice. She'd taken only one call, from Alicia Aguado. She'd yanked the wire out of her mobile, which was connected to the recording equipment, and taken the call upstairs in her bedroom.

Alicia wouldn't say it, but Consuelo knew that the only reason she could be calling was that she'd heard from Javier. The press and TV still had not been informed, and the radio stations, who'd been involved in the initial stages, had been asked to keep quiet for the moment. Inspector Jefe Tirado didn't want a media circus, or to have to deal with hoaxers, until there'd been contact from the kidnappers, or it became clear that there would be none.

Aguado's call had helped. Consuelo had started by venting her bile against Javier, and Aguado had heard her out to the bitter end before asking her what had actually happened. It was good for Consuelo to talk to someone who listened. It had calmed her down. She began to get some perspective on her anger. Blame and guilt were natural. Rage was inevitable. The call did not cure her of her animosity towards Falcon, or prevent her from replaying that moment when she'd lost sight of Dario over and over in her mind, but it had allowed some resolve to harden inside her. She felt stronger, less jittery. Her mood swings from despair to fury were not so violent. The tears still came, but with some warning.

After the call Consuelo had sent her other two sons away with her sister. She didn't want the boys caught up in such an oppressive and potentially volatile atmosphere, with everybody staring at the phone, willing it to ring. She didn't want them to see her hope and despair, the possible joy and the probable disappointment. Despite Alicia's call, she knew her emotions would be uncontrollable because she still felt exposed.

Upstairs she had a small study next to her bedroom – a chair, a desk, a laptop, nothing more. Alicia Aguado had encouraged her to pass the time writing her thoughts and feelings down, to get them out of herself where they could be seen. She closed the blinds and sat there in the dim light, tried to purge her brain of all the unimportant white noise. She booted up the computer and was automatically linked to the internet. She saw she had new mail. This address was different to the one in the restaurant and it was one only used by her family and close friends. There was one new message sent today at 14.00 entitled 'Dario'. Just seeing the name made her heart lift and her stomach cold. The sender was someone called Manolo Gordo. She knew no one of that name. Her hand trembled as she opened it. If you want to see your son again call 655147982. Do not tell the police. Do not try to record the call. Use your mobile outside the house. Delete this email – it will not help you find your son.

She read it over and over. Not many people knew this email address, but her sons did. It gave her hope. An excitement gripped her. Contact had been made. She looked over her shoulder as if she should be hiding this from someone. She put the email in her 'spam' folder, closed down the computer and thought about how she was going to make this call. 'Inspector Jefe Tirado is waiting for you outside,' said Baena.

Falcon trotted down the stairs, being careful to avoid the yellow-circled blood drips. There was no shade outside and they had to stand in the stink of piss and rubbish in the stairwell.

'Who's this guy Carlos Puerta?' asked Falcon.

'He's the one who assaulted Senora Jimenez near the Plaza del Pumarejo back in June and was seen later snooping around her house by Senora Jimenez's sister,' said Tirado. 'I spent the morning tracking him down. His friends in the Plaza del Pumarejo told me he was a junkie, so I asked the Narcs to help me out.'

'Do you mind if I listen in?'

'No problem,' said Tirado, who beckoned to the Narc. 'He doesn't look much now, does he? But he's got a good voice. As soon as I saw him I recognized him. Five years ago he cut an album, made some money, got fucked up, failed an audition with Eva Hierbabuena to go to London. And this is the state he's in now.'

The officer pushed Carlos Puerta towards the apartment block. He shuffled forward with little, jittery steps like a comic actor. His shoulder-length hair had seen neither water nor brush for a good six weeks. It was book-thick, matted and coated in dust from the wrecked building where he'd been found. He had a problem with his left arm, which looked wasted, the hand swollen. His T-shirt had white stencilling, which had faded into the oblivion of the background material. Falcon could just make out that it was from the Flamenco Biennale of 2004.

'He was with a woman,' said Tirado. 'She was so emaciated the Narcs called an ambulance for her.'

Tirado introduced himself and Falcon. Puerta's lean, pockmarked face was a mass of tics. He begged for a cigarette. They found him one, sat him down on a couple of breeze-blocks.

'You recognize this woman?' asked Tirado, holding a shot of Consuelo in front of his face.

Puerta peered from under black eyebrows angled sharply into his nose. An eyelid fluttered at the smoke trickling up his face. He shook his head.

'You know her name, Carlos.'

'I don't think so,' said Puerta, who touched his chest and wheezed a laugh. 'Not my type.'

'You also know where she lives.'

'All the people I know live in Las Tres Mil, and she doesn't look like any of them,' said Puerta. 'Not with those earrings, that necklace, that hair and make-up. If she appeared like that in my world, she'd get picked clean.'

'You met her in the Plaza del Pumarejo,' said Tirado. 'She runs a restaurant near there. You know it.'

'I don't eat in restaurants.'

'You also know about her husband, Raul Jimenez. He was murdered.'

'I know a few people who've been killed. Some more who've overdosed, but I can't remember their names. Did he run a record label?'

'We've got witnesses who said you assaulted Consuelo Jimenez one night last June in a street just off the Plaza del Pumarejo.'

'What sort of witnesses?' asked Puerta, dredging up some derision. 'If you're talking about those cretins in the Plaza, they'd tell you anything for a litre of Don Simon.'

'We've got another witness. Not a cretin. This woman's sister, who saw you snooping around Consuelo Jimenez's house in Santa Clara the day after you assaulted her,' said Tirado. 'If you can tell me what that was all about I won't take you down to the Jefatura and stick you in a cell until your last fix wears off.'

'I'm not sure what you mean,' he said, listening intently.

'Senora Jimenez doesn't want to press charges for the assault or for trespassing,' said Tirado. 'But if you've had anything to do with the abduction of her eight-year-old son…'

That got his full attention. His head started shaking, not in denial, but with some sort of heroin-induced tremor.

'I'm a junkie,' he said. 'So I recognize vulnerable people and I try to get money out of them. I knew that woman and her story. She's famous, been all over the news. I'd seen her around. I thought there was something unstable about her. Then she turned up in the Plaza del Pumarejo one night a bit dazed, possibly drunk, and I bummed some money off her.'

'What were you doing around her house the day after?'

'Looking for her again, see if I could get something more out of her,' said Puerta. 'That's what junkies are like. And I can tell you that I haven't seen her since.'

'Why didn't you keep after her?' asked Tirado.

'It's a long way out to Santa Clara and I found some money closer to home.'

Tirado and Falcon moved away from him to confer.

'I think he's telling the truth,' said Tirado. 'It fits with what I've heard from Senora Jimenez and her sister… more or less. She told me she was depressed at the time, and her sister said she started therapy soon after. And neither of them have seen him since. I'll get one of my guys to show his photo around Senora Jimenez's neighbours, just to make sure.'

'Do you mind if I talk to him now?' said Falcon. 'See what he knows about this killing upstairs?'

Tirado clapped him on the shoulder, went back to his car. Falcon found another cigarette and went back to Puerta, who smiled to reveal teeth with a brown scum line.

'Is El Pulmon your dealer?' asked Falcon, handing him the new cigarette.

'Yes, and my friend.'

'You know what happened up there?'

Puerta shook his head, pawed at a spasm in his cheek.

'Someone shot his girlfriend.'

'Julia?' said Puerta, who looked up with brilliant green eyes, gone weak as slime.

'Shot her in the face.'

Puerta seemed to have difficulty swallowing. The hand with the cigarette trembled to his mouth. He coughed. Smoke came out in rags. He hunched over, rested his forehead on his good hand and sobbed himself silent. Falcon patted him on the shoulder.

'Why don't you tell me what you saw,' he said, 'and then we can get the guy who shot Julia before he shoots your friend.' 'So now we're sure there's a Russian mafia ingredient,' said Anibal Parrado, the instructing judge, pacing the window in El Pulmon's apartment.

'But I've only got the word of a complete wreck of a junkie and not one bit of evidence,' said Falcon. 'Marisa Moreno didn't even tell us that the Russians were holding her sister; we've only surmised that from finding the disk in the possession of Vasili Lukyanov. The Narcs have never seen this Cuban before, don't know about any Russian involvement. I've got nothing to give you that you could use in court – unless we find El Pulmon.'

'So where are you going now?'

'There's nothing more for me to do here,' said Falcon. 'Detectives Serrano and Baena are going to work with Narcotics to find El Pulmon. Sub-Inspector Perez is going to run this investigation. Inspector Ramirez is looking after the Marisa Moreno murder. We should all meet up this evening and compare notes.'

'Where are you going now?'

'I'm looking for people who've had direct contact with the Russians,' said Falcon. 'Marisa Moreno is dead. It's going to take time to find El Pulmon. I've got one other candidate.'

Falcon sat in his car making calls, trying to find out where Alejandro Spinola would be at this time of the afternoon. He was in a press conference in the Andalucian parliament building. Falcon left Las Tres Mil, opted for the ring road rather than mess with the traffic through the centre.

Alejandro Spinola was as pretty as a man could get without slipping over the gender line. He liked to run his hand through his longish black hair with off-centre parting, and clench it in his fist at the back of his head. He had the athletic body of a professional tennis player gone slightly to seed. He wore a good suit with the cuffs of his white shirt shot beyond the sleeves and a light blue silk tie. He talked easily and kept the press amused while turning a gold ring on one of the fingers of his right hand. He didn't look like someone who had the intention of playing second fiddle to the mayor for the rest of his life. There was too much vanity streaming from every pore. He was a man who'd learnt not to blink in flash photography and tap-danced to the percussion of lens shutters.

The press were thick around Spinola, all looking for an off-the-record discussion. Falcon shouldered through them and showed Spinola his police ID card.

'Can't this wait?' he asked, careful not to use Falcon's rank in front of the political press corps.

'Probably not,' said Falcon.

Spinola took him by the arm and guided him out of the room, casting jokes and compliments as he went. They crossed the corridor; Spinola checked for an empty office, found one. He sat behind the desk, pulled out one of the side drawers and rested his expensive loafers on the edge. He sat back, comfortable, hands resting on his stomach, which proved to have its first gathering of middle-aged fat.

'What can I do for you, Inspector Jefe?' he asked, vaguely amused by it all.

'I want to talk to you about Marisa Moreno.'

'Esteban's girlfriend?' he said, frowning. 'I hardly know her.'

'But you met her first.'

'That's true. I met her at a gallery opening,' he said, nodding, looking out of the window. 'Over the past few years Esteban hasn't had much time for art. He used to go to openings all the time. He was always interested in paintings, literature, that kind of thing, much more so than me.'

'Then why did you go?'

'The people. A good art dealer can always bring together an interesting bunch of people. Collectors tend to have money and influence. And that's my job.'

'What is your job?'

'I work for the mayor.'

'That's what Esteban told me,' said Falcon. 'I'm sure you've got more to add?'

'I make sure the mayor is in touch with the right sort of people to achieve his aims,' said Spinola. 'Things don't happen on their own, Inspector Jefe. Whether you're building a mosque in Los Bermejales or pedestrianizing the Avenida de la Constitucion, or remodelling La Alameda or tunnelling a metro under the city, there are huge numbers of people to deal with. Angry residents, disgruntled religious groups, disappointed contractors, furious taxi drivers, to name but a few.'

'Presumably there are happy people as well.'

'Of course. My job is to help the mayor convert those unhappy people into… well, maybe not totally happy people, but at least quieter, more manageable people.'

'And how do you do that?'

'You must know my father, Inspector Jefe, he's a lawyer,' said Spinola. 'I never had the temperament for sitting down and learning lots of stuff from books, like Esteban did. But in my own way I'm like both of them. I'm a very persuasive guy.'

'So what happened with Marisa, then?' said Falcon, smiling.

'Oh, yes, right, exactly. What happened with Marisa…' said Spinola, giving him a delayed laugh. 'I met her at Galeria Zoca. Do you know it? Just off the Alfalfa. She wasn't showing. She's not a big enough name for that place. But she's very nice to look at, no? So, Jose Manuel Domecq, the owner, always invites her to, you know, prettify the usual assembly of toads and trout with their crocodile-skin handbags and wallets bulging with cash. I already knew everybody there, so I didn't have to work very hard, and we all went out to dinner and Marisa and I sat together and, you know, Inspector Jefe, we got along. We got along very well.'

'Did you sleep with her?'

Spinola initially narrowed his eyes, as if preparing to take affront, but in the end decided on a lightness of touch. He laughed, a little exaggeratedly.

'No, no, no, que no, Inspector Jefe. It wasn't like that.'

'I see,' said Falcon. 'Forgive my misunderstanding.'

'No. We exchanged numbers and I called her the following week to invite her to the garden party at the Duchess of Alba's house. It's an annual affair and I thought it would be… exotic to turn up with a beautiful black girl on my arm.'

As Spinola's eyes travelled from the window back across the room, they stopped for a beat to check how things were going down with Falcon, then carried on to the door. For a persuasive man, Spinola was weak on eye contact.

'So, how did your introduction of Marisa to your cousin come about?'

'Well, it wasn't so much an introduction as Esteban arriving on my shoulder within seconds of my arrival and introducing himself to Marisa.'

'I think you might have misremembered something.'

'I don't think so. I can see it now. Esteban cutting her away from me while I got drawn into the crowd. He hogged her the whole evening.'

'I think that's doubtful,' said Falcon, 'because Esteban was married to Ines and, at that point in their relationship, he was not in the habit of brazenly displaying his inclination for infidelity, especially in front of his and her parents and, of course, your father, the Juez Decano de Sevilla, who was his employer.'

A pause for thought. Some rearrangement of the details. Falcon could hear the brain furniture scraping around in Spinola's head. Then the mayor's fixer suddenly shrugged and threw his hand up in the air.

'These are just details, Inspector Jefe,' he said. 'Think of how many parties I go to, how many social situations I find myself in. How am I supposed to remember the finer points of every meeting and introduction?'

'Because, as you've just told me,' said Falcon, 'it's your job. Your job is to know what makes people tick. What they like and dislike. And people in social situations don't wear their needs and intentions on the outside, especially, I imagine, when you're around and they're very conscious of the impression they want to make on the mayor's office. Yes, I would have thought that, under those circumstances, it would all be in the detail. And your reading of that detail is what makes you so successful.'

Finally, the eye contact, very level and sustained. A mixture of respect and fear. Spinola now thinking: What does this man know?

'How does Esteban remember it?' he asked, in order to avoid another lie and to give himself a chance of building a different point of view on the rock of truth.

'He remembers you pulling him out of a family group. You were on your own at the time. You told him that he must meet this wonderful sculptress that you'd found at an opening the previous week. He says you took him into the house, to a room with some magnificent paintings where you'd left Marisa to wait alone. He remembers you introducing her and the next thing he knows you are no longer in the room. Does that refresh your memory?'

It did. Spinola's eyes drifted above Falcon's head as he tried to massage the facts he'd just heard into something perfectly comprehensible.

'How old are you, Senor Spinola?'

'Thirty-four,' he said.

'You're not married?'

'No.'

'Perhaps you could explain why you, a single man, would effect an introduction to a very attractive woman, also single, to your married cousin?'

Something like relief passed over Spinola's face and Falcon realized a strategy had occurred to him.

'I'm sorry to say this, Inspector Jefe, but Marisa would not be the first woman I'd ever introduced to my cousin.'

'What does that mean exactly?'

'It means what I've just said. I've introduced single women to Esteban before and he's had affairs with… some of them.'

'I was wondering if you meant that you had an arrangement, like some sort of informal pimping service,' said Falcon mildly, but with calculated aggression.

'I resent that, Inspector Jefe.'

'Then clarify the understanding you had with your cousin for me.'

'I'm younger than him. I'm not married. I meet young, available women…'

'But what is the understanding? Has anything ever been said between the two of you about what you're doing?'

'As you said yourself, Inspector Jefe, my job is to know what people like.'

'In that case, what was your purpose, Senor Spinola?'

'My purpose, Inspector Jefe, is to build up favours in all walks of life, so that in my own, or the mayor's, crucial moments I can call on people for support,' said Spinola. 'Local politics is only pretty on the surface, and the surface is very important. Nobody ever asks for a bribe. Nobody ever asks for a nice young chick to blow him under his desk. I have to know, and then I have to make it look as if I didn't, so that we can still look at each other at the next party.'

Spinola had taken the first round by a whisker. Falcon stood up. He went to the door, reached for the handle. Spinola lifted his feet off the drawer, shoved it in.

'You might not have heard, Senor Spinola,' said Falcon. 'Marisa Moreno was murdered last night. They used her own chain saw on her. Cut off her hand. Cut off her foot. Cut off her head.'

The small triumph disappeared from Spinola's face and what was left behind was not sorrow or horror but a very live kind of fear.