The Ignoranceof Blood

27

Hotel La Berenjena – Tuesday, 19th September 2006, 22.05 hrs

Alejandro Spinola was still lying on his side in the disabled toilet, shaking, the image of the accomplished networker from the mayor's office gone for good. His mouth was connected to the tiled floor by strings of bloody saliva. He was dry-retching and crying. Falcon knelt beside him, patted him on the shoulder.

'All right, Alejandro?' asked Falcon. 'Glad to see me this time?'

A nod, his fists jammed between his thighs, like a little boy who'd taken his first bullying on the playground.

'Good,' said Falcon. 'Let's get you cleaned up.'

Spinola stood at the sink, looked at himself in the mirror. His lips were cut up and swollen, and he'd lost one of his front teeth, an incisor. He buried his face in his arms and sobbed.

'Wash your face, Alejandro. Pull yourself together. We have to talk before this little event gets under way.'

Falcon helped Spinola out of his jacket. The shirt underneath was so drenched in sweat that the cotton was transparent. While he washed his face, Falcon asked the receptionist to bring a white shirt. Spinola lifted the tie over his head and unpicked the dense knot. He straightened the material with trembling fingers. A girl arrived with a shirt. He put it on, reconstructed the tie around his neck, combed his hair back into place and, staring into the mirror, touched his tender lips with the tips of his fingers.

'I'm finished,' he said, and his stomach started juddering with emotion.

'You're alive and Viktor Belenki is out of the game,' said Falcon, patting him on the shoulder. 'When did he first talk to you about his plans for Russian involvement in the Isla de la Cartuja construction projects?'

'In August,' said Spinola, thighs shivering uncontrollably. 'We met in Marbella.'

'What did he tell you?'

'That he had Valverde, Ramos and the American, Taggart, on film fucking whores and taking drugs,' said Spinola. 'All I had to do was line up the I4IT/Horizonte consortium to make sure it tendered the best possible bid, and he would sort out the rest.'

'Which meant that you leaked information about the other bids to whom?'

'Antonio Ramos, Horizonte's head of construction. He was the guy who was putting the building project together.'

'Couldn't they have sorted all this out before today?'

'Alfredo Manzanares has only been in charge of the bank for a fortnight. The whole financing of the Horizonte deal was being discussed with other parties from Dubai. Then the big boss in the US, Cortland Fallenbach, stepped in and said he wasn't going to have a project of this magnitude being financed, well, he said by the Middle East, but we all know he meant Muslims. You know how they feel about non-Christian religions in I4IT. He told Antonio Ramos that he was going to have to use the Banco Omni.'

'When was this?'

'The beginning of this month.'

'Were the Russians involved in the financing from Dubai?'

'I think they must have been, but I don't know,' said Spinola. 'They were furious when it was taken away from Dubai.'

'So the Russians lost their way into the building project through the financing, laundering their money in the process, and had to try a different tactic.'

'Alfredo Manzanares, as the financier, wanted all contractors on the job to have pristine track records. He's hardline Opus Dei and after the Seville bombing, with all its associations with Lucrecio Arenas and the Catholic Kings shit, he wasn't going to allow anything that had the faintest stink about it. So telling him he had to use Viktor Belenki's construction companies was never going to work. I don't know how Valverde and Ramos put it to him, but that, in effect, is what they would have been asking him to accept this evening.'

'All right, that gives us some vital background detail on tonight's event,' said Falcon. 'Now, I just want to clarify why you introduced Marisa Moreno to your cousin, Esteban Calderon, last year.'

'I was told to,' said Spinola. 'I didn't understand what it was all about at the time. I couldn't have known the implications.'

'Except that you knew you'd been asked by members of a criminal organization to introduce a woman to the leading instructing judge in Seville,' said Falcon. 'You might not have known about the intended bombing or Ines's murder, but you knew you were giving gangsters access to a very important person in the justice system. Why did you do it? Did they have you on film with your pants down? A single guy? No, I don't think so.'

He shook his head, sniffed. Falcon rummaged through Spinola's jacket, rammed his hands into his trouser pockets. Spinola put up no resistance. Found it. A sachet of white powder.

'Coke?'

Spinola nodded.

'Is that it?' said Falcon. 'You did all this for some coke?'

Spinola stared into the sink, choked up again. He blurted out a few more sobs as the sudden vision of his collapsed career and spoiled life came to him again.

'I don't get paid very much,' he said. 'What little I make, I gamble. You know what gambling is like, Inspector Jefe.'

'Anything else?' asked Falcon, sensing there was more. 'How do you feel about your cousin? The brilliant lawyer.'

Spinola doubled over as if in agony, rested his head on the edge of the sink.

'I've lived in that fucker's shadow all my life,' he said. 'Do you have any idea what it's like to have your father holding up this guy all the time as someone to aspire to, when you know that he's been a first-class bastard all his life?'

'OK,' said Falcon, calming him down. 'Let's think about tonight. You've done something illegal: leaking information on the construction tenders to the I4IT/Horizonte consortium is a criminal offence, and you're going to have to explain that to the mayor – unless he was in on this?'

'No, no, no, que no,' said Spinola emphatically. 'He knows nothing, nor do Agesa or the town planning office.'

'Right,' said Falcon. 'I'm going to take you to the security office, where you'll wait for a guard to take you to the mayor as soon as he arrives. Tonight's event cannot continue under these circumstances, and you've got to do the right thing.'

They looked at each other via the mirror. Spinola nodded. They went back to the office together. Falcon asked the screen supervisor if the mayor's delegation had arrived. No sign. Running late. Falcon needed to get into the Sanchez/Belenki suite and the head of security might be required for that. He got the screen supervisor to call him up and get another guard to take care of Spinola.

'Anybody else arrived yet?'

'Senor and Senora Cano.'

'Regular types?'

'A Spanish couple in their sixties.'

The head of security came back, they went to the Sanchez/Belenki suite, picked up Ferrera standing guard outside on the way. Falcon pressed the buzzer. No answer. Pressed it again. Nothing. The head of security opened the door.

As soon as the air in the room touched Falcon's face he knew they were in trouble. Blood does something to an atmosphere: electrifies it, so that other humans know to tread with care.

The living room was unlit and empty. The terrace doors were open. The night had moved in, moths fluttered and batted against the bedroom door, which showed a crack of low light. The television was on in the next room. Falcon drew his gun, took four paces across the floor, nudged the door open with his foot. A reading lamp was casting light on to Isabel Sanchez's body from the chest down. She was wearing bra and panties only. Perfect figure. Legs so long and slim they reminded him of a foal's. Her head was in darkness. He stepped fully into the room. She didn't move. He turned on the light. That was what was wrong. The vision of beauty they'd seen on the CCTV screens had gone. A hideous black hole where her nose and mouth should have been.

The light was on in the bathroom, too. The sound of the shower. Falcon stepped to his left, leaned in. There was a hole in the glass panel of the shower cabinet, which had several long hairline cracks in it. Beyond was a man slumped against the marble-tiled wall, blood still oozing from a hole in the back of his grey head. The water from the shower cleaned and re-cleaned the constant rivulets of blood that ran down his back.

'Who the fuck is that?' asked the head of security, on his shoulder.

'This is probably Leonid Revnik,' said Falcon.

'He must have been hidden in the back seat, or the boot, when they came in,' said the head of security.

'Cristina, ask one of the security guards to take you down to the lock-up and get Viktor Belenki to confirm who this is in his suite. Be careful. Have your weapon at the ready. There's a killer out there and, given the way he's shot Isabel Sanchez, I think it's Nikita Sokolov Bring Ramirez back with you. Meet in the security office.'

The head of security sent out an alert to all guards in the grounds. Falcon gave him a one-line description of Nikita Sokolov. Using some toilet paper, he turned off the shower over Revnik's inert body.

'He came in from the back terrace,' said the head of security, 'but can't have triggered the light sensor.'

Back in the security office they went straight into the screen room. The screens on the right were all dark. The supervisor had seen nothing.

'If you hug tight to the side of the building it's possible you wouldn't trigger the light sensor,' he said.

'Run the footage on suite number six,' said the head of security.

The supervisor took it back ten minutes. The outside light hadn't come on. They looked closely and could see only a vague dark movement, nothing more.

'Has the mayor's delegation arrived?' asked Falcon.

'Yes, they went straight into the cinema,' said the guard.

'What do you mean? Spinola was supposed to talk to the mayor as soon as he arrived,' said Falcon. 'And what's happened to the guard looking after him?'

'I don't know. I've been watching the screens,' said the supervisor. 'I can't…'

The head of security held up his hand, radioed the guard, asked the question, listened.

'He never showed up. He thought responding to my alert about the weightlifter was more important, and he's out in the grounds looking for him.'

'Find Spinola, you must have him on those screens somewhere. I can't believe you didn't see him leave this office,' said Falcon. 'Why didn't the mayor have drinks and canapes before the viewing?'

'They were running late,' said the supervisor. 'There's a dinner afterwards. All I know is that they were met in the reception area by the guests from the Horizonte/I4IT consortium and they went straight into the cinema.'

Ramirez and Ferrera came in panting and sweating.

'Belenki's confirmed it's Leonid Revnik,' said Ramirez.

'Is Belenki secure?' asked Falcon.

'I've handcuffed him to the bed, and the door to the staff quarters is locked. There's not much else I could do,' said Ramirez.

'We're going to the cinema now,' said Falcon. 'Tell us when you find Spinola.'

The cinema doors were shut. The faint sound of the film presentation came through the wooden soundproofed doors. The head of security tapped Falcon on the shoulder, pointed at the projection room. The lock had been shot out. They all took out their guns. Ramirez shoved against the door. It wouldn't open. There was something jammed up against it on the other side. Between them they forced it open. Apart from a dead body on the floor there was another man, sitting quite calmly with his legs crossed, by the projection equipment.

'Mark,' said Falcon, nodding.

Flowers said nothing, looked tired, bags heavy under his eyes. The dead man had fallen on his side, face turned to the corner of the room.

'Who's this?' asked Falcon.

'I don't know,' said Flowers, sighing, as if this killing had taken something out of him. Falcon knelt over the dead man, who had taken a bullet to the temple. Falcon fingered his hair, felt it was false. He eased up the hair piece, saw that the man had a head shaved down to the skin.

'What happened here, Mark?'

'The projectionist set the film running and I told her to get out. I locked the door after her. A couple of minutes later someone tried the door. There's no peep-hole, so I couldn't check who it was. I stood behind the door. He shot out the lock. The first thing that came in the room was a gun. I recognized it as a nine-millimetre Makarov. Given that sequence of events, I didn't bother to ask questions. As soon as his head appeared I shot him.'

Falcon pulled up the man's jacket, yanked his shirt out of his trousers and revealed his naked back, which was covered in tattoos: some Russian lettering, a crucifix and angel wings.

'This must be Yuri Donstov, also known as the Monk, judging by these tattoos,' said Falcon, checking the man's pockets, which were empty, not even a set of keys.

'I assumed from his weapon that he was Russian,' said Flowers, his exhaustion making him preternaturally calm. 'Those tattoos must make him mafia.'

'You're going to have to give me your gun, Mark,' said Falcon.

Flowers reached across to a low shelf under the projection equipment and handed over his silenced gun.

'Stand up,' said Falcon, handing the gun to Ferrera.

He searched Flowers, found a disk.

'Where did this come from?'

'I found it on our Russian friend,' said Flowers.

'You know what's on it?'

'I think it contains the material we talked about the other night.'

Falcon turned to the people behind him.

'Mount a guard on Viktor Belenki. Look out for the weightlifter, Nikita Sokolov. Find Spinola. Cristina, get some handcuffs and come back here. I'll talk to the mayor when we're ready.'

Everybody left. Falcon nudged the projection-room door to, moved in front of Flowers.

'What time is it, Mark?'

'You got me there, Javier.'

'You don't wear the Patek Philippe when you're working?'

'Breitling for ops,' said Flowers.

'And that was how you got paid by Cortland Fallenbach?'

'It was an opportunity,' said Flowers, shrugging. 'You know, we're public servants. We don't get paid very much and I have a number of ex-wives. I think I've spoken to you about them. American ex-wives are more demanding than European ones. And then there's the kids. That's a lot of outgoings. Why do you think I came out of retirement? You don't think I prefer fucking around with these shits to lying on a boat in the Florida Keys, do you, Javier?'

'What about Mrs Zimbrick?'

'I'm treating my girlfriend. There's no need to get ugly with her. She's a civilian. An English teacher.'

'This is hardly what you'd call soldiering, is it, Mark?'

'What can I say but, needs must, Javier?'

'You're here at Cortland Fallenbach's invitation?'

'I'm his security consultant. We got together after you asked me to research I4IT in June. I told him he was going to need help and he agreed.'

'What happened tonight?'

'He told me that under no circumstances was anybody to interrupt the showing of the I4IT/Horizonte presentation movie,' said Flowers. 'But he gave me no indication that it was going to come to this.'

'You were armed.'

'People calm down when you point a gun at them,' said Flowers. 'And if they've got one themselves, you're even.'

'We're going to have to put you in the cells until we can speak to the American consul.'

A knock on the door. Cristina came in, handcuffed Flowers to the projection equipment stand.

'Time for an announcement,' said Falcon.

'You must be a nice guy, Javier,' said Flowers. 'If it was me I'd play the DVD and listen to the bastards howl.'

Time had flown by and the film at that moment ended. Falcon raised the lights and shut Flowers in the projection room. The double doors to the cinema opened and the group filed out, led by the mayor, who was talking to the banker, Alfredo Manzanares. Falcon showed him his police ID card, tried to usher him into the conference room where they were supposed to have had their drinks earlier. Valverde and Ramos intervened, blocked the doorway, started some vociferous protesting.

'Open the projection-room door, Cristina,' said Falcon.

The woman from Agesa screamed at the sight of the dead body. Cortland Fallenbach saw Mark Flowers, turned to stone.

'I think you'll agree that this needs some explanation,' said Falcon. 'Close the door, Cristina. Take these people to the private room where they were supposed to be having dinner. Nobody is to leave that room under any circumstances. As you can see, there is a killer on the loose. Detective Ferrera is armed.'

The sight of a dead body had subdued the group completely and they went into the private room like a flock of sheep into a slaughterhouse holding pen.

Falcon took the mayor aside into the conference room and had just embarked on his devastating introduction to the evening's events when his mobile went off.

'Belenki's been shot,' said Ramirez. 'Shot dead.'

There was a hammering on the door. A security guard said he was needed up in the main office. Falcon took the mayor to join the others in the private room where Ferrera was standing guard.

'Lock the door. Let nobody in or out,' he said, and left.

In the security office the supervisor was tapping one of the screens showing the thick-set, stocky weightlifter, Nikita Sokolov, gun in hand, striding up to the main building.

'He doesn't care now,' said the supervisor. 'He's not hiding from the cameras any more.'

'He's heading towards the main building, so he's not bothered about getting away just yet,' said Falcon. 'He must have come back to meet up with his boss, Yuri Donstov. Keep the other guests in the restaurant, clear the reception area, turn the lights off inside, keep them on outside. Whatever happens, I do not want this man shot unless it's absolutely unavoidable. Where's Spinola?'

'He got out over the main gates,' said the supervisor. 'He's on the run and we don't have the manpower to go after him.'

Falcon called Detective Serrano, who was still waiting with Baena in the car in the petrol station nearby. He told him to find Spinola, who would be out on the main road somewhere.

'Be careful with him. He's in a state. You have to make sure he survives. No accidents.'

By the time Falcon got to the reception area the lights were out in the patio. The shops and art gallery were in darkness. Between him and the main door were two thick marble supporting pillars. Beyond the pillars were four panels of plate glass, two of which were double doors. The mayor's delegation Mercedes was parked outside. No driver. Falcon hid behind one of the pillars. He didn't have to wait long.

Nikita Sokolov came out of the night, his colossal quadriceps straining against the material of his trousers, biceps with a thick cord of vein bursting out of his polo shirt, which flapped at his waist. He had a thick, white bandage around his right forearm where El Pulmon's bullet had grazed him. The gun, silencer attached, was in that hand. He tried the door to the Mercedes. Locked. He looked through the driver's window, swapped his weapon to his left hand and dealt the glass a savage blow with the butt of his gun. It bounced off. Now that his work was done, Revnik and Belenki shot dead, his mission completed, he was thinking about escape. He checked the unlit main building. Didn't like it. He jogged off to his left. Disappeared back into the darkness.

Falcon told the head of security to stay in the reception area while he sprinted across the patio, down a corridor to the kitchens, which were totally silent on the outside and a cacophony of brutal swearing, hollered orders, clattering pans and sizzling fat on the inside. He ran down the corridors of stainless-steel work surfaces. Diminutive sous chefs with large knives, flaming pans, blow torches and cleavers, glanced over their shoulders as he tore past them. He asked after the mayor's driver, nobody answered. He found a plongeur, asked if there was a staff dining room. The man walked him past boiling cauldrons and flat metal griddles crackling and spitting with hot oil. He pointed him to a door with a porthole window at the end of a short corridor, said there was an outside entrance as well.

'What's out there?'

'The bins.'

Falcon looked through the porthole. The mayor's driver was sitting at the table in the empty room, eating. There was a window, barred on the outside, and a door, both to the driver's right. Falcon knelt down, crawled into the room. The driver's food stopped on its way to his mouth.

'Police,' said Falcon. 'Carry on eating. Don't look at me.'

He crawled under the window, was just about to get to his feet when the door out to the bins burst open and Sokolov came in. Blue polo shirt, hairy arm outstretched, white bandage, gun, safety off, finger on the trigger.

'Keys!' he roared.

He'd seen the driver on his own, eating. Wasn't prepared for Falcon coming up on his right side, who chopped down with his revolver on Sokolov's bandaged arm. A shot, a dull thud and a crack as the bullet went through the wooden table, before the silenced gun dropped from Sokolov's deadened hand. Falcon lost grip of his own weapon, which scuttled off into the corner. The Russian turned and crouched and Falcon found himself precisely where he didn't want to be: facing off against the former Olympic weightlifter.

Sokolov charged him, caught Falcon in the midriff with his shoulder, wrapped a steel-reinforced arm around his back and lifted him up as if he was nothing more than a cardboard cut-out.

'Hit him over the head, hard,' Falcon yelled at the driver.

Sokolov hefted him to shoulder height and slammed him down on the wooden table.

The mayor's driver jettisoned himself out of his seat, reached behind him, picked up the metal chair and brought it down so that the edge of the seat made horrific contact with the back of Sokolov's head. The noise it made was violently musical, a pianist's mad discord. Sokolov turned and the driver thought for a moment that he'd made a terrible mistake, but the light went out of the Russian's eyes and he crumpled to the tiled floor. Falcon, too, was on the floor, staring bug-eyed at the unconscious Russian, trying to remember how to breathe.

The porthole door opened and the plongeur charged in with a shining stainless-steel cleaver in one hand and a rolling pin in the other.

'Damn!' he said, as if he'd just missed out on the ultimate culinary experience. Alejandro Spinola was out on the Huelva road, running towards Seville, the velvet night air on his sweaty skin, the smell of hot, dry grasses in his nostrils. Occasionally he looked behind him, but each time he found he was only running away from the dark. He wasn't moving very quickly because he was in no condition to. His head was full of the junk of his life, the wreckage of tonight's events.

He couldn't have faced the mayor. He couldn't have faced approaching the mayor and the people from Agesa and the town planning office with his bruised lips and missing tooth, saying that he had to speak privately to the boss. He couldn't bear even the thought of the mayor's disappointment in him. Then there was his father. He'd have to face him, too. The whole messy business was going to come out, right down to what he'd done to his cousin, Esteban Calderon. It was going to be intolerable and he wasn't going to face it. He was going to run. He was going to run and run and not stop until…

Headlights came up slowly behind him, stopped. He looked back, couldn't see anything behind the blinding lights until a man stepped out from behind them, running after him. Who the fuck? He tried a sprint, but he had nothing in the tank, and slowed to a lolloping jog. The car started up again, pulled alongside him, the window down.

'Alejandro, we're the police,' said the driver. 'Come on now. Just stop and get in the car. No sense in this.'

He could hear the other man's footsteps behind him, it gave him a surge of panic. He saw headlights coming the other way. Something shrill and exciting rose in his throat. He thumped his foot down, stopped, turned back, ducked under the arms of the policeman following him, shoved past him, slipped round the back of the car and stood up straight between the oncoming headlights. The truck's horn blew the night open for three seconds, a white light covered Spinola from head to toe, and the black grille with thirty-five tons behind it gathered him in with a sickening crunch.