The Ignoranceof Blood

8

Consuelo's house, Santa Clara, Seville – Saturday, 16th September 2006, 07.45 hrs

Morning began with football. Falcon in goal. He had a spring in his legs so that he had to remind himself not to save everything. He let Dario send him the wrong way a few times and watched on his knees as the boy ran around the garden with his Sevilla FC shirt over his head, flying. Consuelo looked out from the sitting room in her dressing gown. She was in a strange mood, as if last night's admissions had made her cautious. She knew she loved Javier, especially when she saw his mock dismay as another of Dario's penalties rifled past him and sizzled down the back of the nylon net. There was something boyish about her cop and it made her ache as much as seeing her own son lying on his back, arms open to receive the embraces of his imaginary fellow players. She knocked on the window as if checking the scene for reality and they came in for breakfast.

Falcon sat in the front of the cab on the way back to his house and chatted cheerfully with the driver about Sevilla FC's chances in the UEFA cup. He knew it all from Dario. He picked up his car. The morning traffic on the other side of the Plaza de Cuba, screwed up by the ongoing metro construction, today posed no problems for him. He felt completely mended. Obsession had been cleared from his mind. A crescendo of the fullness of life expanded his chest. His paranoia seemed absurd. Decisions were easy. He knew now that he was going to have to talk to Pablo of the CNI about Yacoub's situation. That was something he wasn't going to attempt to manage on his own. It had come to him with clarity and accompanied by the words of Mark Flowers, the CIA agent, who doubled as a 'Communications Officer', attached to the US Consulate in Seville: 'Don't try to understand the whole picture… there's nobody in the world who does.' Just realizing the thinness of the slice of the world he saw was enough to persuade him that he needed another point of view.

Nobody from the Homicide squad was in yet. He closed the door to his office and picked up the phone with the scrambled line, which would connect him directly to Pablo in the CNI's offices in Madrid. It was a Saturday and early but Pablo was the new section head since Juan had left and Falcon knew he'd be there. It took half an hour to talk Pablo through what had happened in the apartment in La Latina yesterday afternoon and another fifteen minutes for Pablo to ask all his questions, the last of which was:

'Where did he say he was going and when?'

'Rabat. This morning. The GICM high command were going to give him their decision.'

Long silence.

'Are you still there, Pablo?'

'I'm still here,' he said. 'I'm wondering if there's anything that needs to be done immediately.'

'What do you mean?'

'Yacoub is not in Rabat.'

'He's flying there from Madrid this morning.'

'That's the interesting thing,' said Pablo. 'He flew into Heathrow last night. It might not mean anything. It might just be an omission on his part, but we still haven't found a flight into Casablanca with his name on the manifest.'

Falcon felt that metallic coldness in his stomach again.

'This is the problem I had yesterday,' he said. 'I think I'm losing him.'

'Trust is a strange thing in this game,' said Pablo. 'It's more fluid than in the real world. You can't expect someone who's constantly dissimulating to be as reliable as yourself. Look what happens to married people when they have affairs. The first few lies are OK. Then, as time goes on and the subterfuge builds, the lying becomes an all-consuming activity. Yacoub is now having to pretend to be someone else almost twenty-four hours a day. The GICM have racked up the pressure by invading his domestic situation, which means that Yacoub now has one less rock to stand on to remind himself of who he really is.'

'And I'm his last remaining rock.'

'Without you, he's in danger of losing that vital sense of self,' said Pablo. 'Part of your job is to shore him up. Let him know that you are dependable, that you can be trusted in every situation.'

'He told me not to talk to you,' said Falcon. 'He was obsessed with losing control to others. He's trying to control me and yet he's putting himself beyond my control. I'm not sure where I stand any more. All I know is that it will be below his son, Abdullah.'

'You have to rebuild that trust. He must feel that it's you and him against the GICM. You have to anchor him,' said Pablo. 'I'm going to get more information on what he's doing.'

'Whatever you do now will expose me. He'll know that I've talked to you.'

'This fluidity of trust is a two-way thing,' said Pablo. 'He hasn't gone straight to Rabat as he told you. You've come to me for some advice on how to proceed. Nobody's been hurt. Just leave it with me for a while. Don't go anywhere else for advice, especially not to that "friend" of yours, Mark Flowers.'

He hung up. Pablo didn't like Falcon's relationship with Mark Flowers, which had started four years ago when Falcon had earned the CIA agent's respect during one of his investigations. Since that time they'd exchanged information, Falcon letting him know what was happening in his police work and Flowers helping out with specialist knowledge and FBI contacts. Cristina Ferrera knocked and came into Falcon's office as he put the phone down.

'What's happening?' he asked.

'We've gone through all the disks in the Russian's briefcase and we've singled out sixty-four individuals, fifty-five men and nine women. All of them have been caught on camera with their pants down, using drugs, receiving money and/or "presents".'

'And how are you getting on with identifying these people?'

'Vicente Cortes from GRECO and Martin Diaz from CICO have managed to identify all of the mafia guys and all but three of the so-called "victims" in the footage.'

'What are we talking about?'

'The usual local council people: mayors, town planners, building inspectors, health and safety, utilities, some local businessmen and estate agents, Guardia Civil. Cortes and Diaz weren't surprised by any of it… not even the child sex footage or the women with big black guys.'

'You look around at all these people you're supposed to be protecting,' said Falcon, eyes drifting to the window, 'and you find they're in it up to their necks.'

'I've isolated a still from one bit of footage that I want you to look at. You'll have to come next door to see it because Inspector Ramirez is making sure everything is confined to one computer. We don't even want the stills on a LAN in case they find their way out to our "friends" in the press.'

Falcon followed her out. Ferrera's fingers rapped the keys as she sat at the desk. An image came up on the screen of two people: a man kneeling behind a woman whose bottom was raised, face and shoulders on the bed. The girl was looking directly into the camera. Ferrera tapped the screen.

'I'm absolutely certain,' she said, 'that this woman is Marisa Moreno's sister. I even went back to the police station and found the picture which had been supplied by Marisa to her "missing" file. She's only seventeen in the old shot but… what do you think?'

Ferrera's photo was of a girl with her hair unplaited, Afro style. The eyes were innocent and wide, her mouth closed tight with bee-stung lips. The woman on the screen was in her mid-twenties, which would have been Margarita Moreno's age now. Her hair was plaited, which wasn't the only difference. The eyes weren't innocent any more but glazed, unfocused, out of it.

Falcon held the photo Marisa had given him yesterday up to the screen. Margarita's hair was plaited in the shot.

'You're right, Cristina. Good work,' he said. 'Now we're getting to it, Marisa, aren't we?'

'Getting to what?' asked Ferrera.

'Another version of Marisa's story,' said Falcon. 'The reason why she was having an affair with Esteban Calderon, why that affair included more than just sexual duties, and, perhaps, why Ines was murdered in her own home.'

'Marisa is in with the Russians?'

'I've been to see her twice and each time I've had a threatening phone call within hours of our meetings,' said Falcon. 'Has the man in this shot been identified?'

'Not yet.'

'Tell Cortes and Diaz that, out of the three, this is the first shot that they have to work on. This guy will tell us where Margarita is being held,' said Falcon. 'Now let's go back to Marisa.'

'Both of us?'

'She doesn't like men,' said Falcon. 'I want you involved with her.' On the way to Calle Hiniesta Cristina Ferrera called Inspector Jose Luis Ramirez and Vicente Cortes. The shot was accessible on Ramirez's computer in padlocked files to which only he and Ferrera had the password.

Marisa was not at home. They walked to her atelier on Calle Bustos Tavera. Marisa answered the door in a scarlet silk dressing gown open to reveal bikini briefs. She held a hammer and a wood chisel in one hand, a chewed cigar stub in the other.

'You again,' she said, making eye contact with Falcon, before dropping her gaze to Ferrera. 'Who is this?'

'I can perfectly understand why you don't like men now, Marisa,' said Falcon. 'So I've brought another member of my squad to talk to you. This is Detective Cristina Ferrera.'

'Encantada,' said Marisa, and turned her back on them.

She put the hammer and chisel down on the work bench, tied up her dressing gown, sat on a high stool and lit the cigar stub. Resistant was a mild description of her attitude.

'Now?' she asked. 'Why can you understand it now, Inspector Jefe?'

'Because we've just found your sister,' said Falcon.

The line was intended to shock and it did. In the intense silence after its delivery Falcon saw pain, fear and horror flash across Marisa's beautiful features.

'I distinctly remember telling you that my sister was not lost,' said Marisa, summoning all the self-control she could muster.

Ferrera stepped forward and gave her the printout of the still image taken from Vasili Lukyanov's disks. Marisa looked down at it, pursed her lips. Her face was impassive as she reconnected with Falcon.

'What is this?'

'This was in the possession of a known Russian gangster who died in a motorway accident yesterday morning,' said Falcon. 'Maybe you knew him, too: Vasili Lukyanov.'

'How is this relevant to me?' asked Marisa, that name thudding into her with the force of a slaughterer's bolt. 'If my sister, who I haven't seen for six or seven years, has chosen to take up prostitution…'

'Chosen to take up prostitution?' said Ferrera, unable to contain herself. 'Of the four hundred thousand prostitutes operating in Spain, barely five per cent have chosen their profession. And I don't think any of them are working for the Russian mafia.'

'Look, Marisa, we're not here to take you down,' said Falcon. 'We know you've been coerced. And we know who's been doing the coercing. We're here to relieve your situation. To get you out of it, and your sister.'

'I'm not sure what this situation is that you're talking about,' said Marisa, not ready yet, needing to keep it going while she weighed things up in her mind.

'What was the deal? Did they say they'd let Margarita go if you started up an affair with Esteban?' asked Falcon. 'If you fed them information, told them he was beating his wife, got them a key to his apartment…'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' said Marisa. 'Esteban and I are lovers. I go to see him every week in prison – or at least I did, until you stopped my visits.'

'So they haven't let Margarita go yet,' said Ferrera. 'Is that right?'

'Is what right?' said Marisa, turning on Ferrera, feeling that she could loose off some of her fierceness at her. 'What…?'

'That you've got to keep up the after-sales service,' said Falcon. 'But how long for, Marisa? How long do you think they'll keep you dangling? A month? A year? Maybe for ever?'

As he said this he wondered whether he was the right man for this job. Maybe he was too personally involved. This woman's responsibility for Ines's death was perhaps making him too brutal, giving her nowhere to turn. But he had to show the full weight of his knowledge, make her face the gravity of her circumstances, before showing her that he was the softer option. This, he thought, might not be achievable in a single visit.

'Esteban and I are very close,' said Marisa, setting off on another round of fabrication. 'It might not look it from the outside. You might think I've been using him in some way. That he was somehow my ticket to a better life. But I'm not…'

'I've heard all this before, Marisa,' said Falcon. 'Maybe I should let you see Esteban again.'

'Now that you've poisoned his mind against me, Inspector Jefe?' she said, getting to her feet, going on the attack with that cigar stub. 'Now that you've told him that he might not have to face twenty years in jail because you reckon you can shift the blame on to some black trash he was fucking. Is that it, Inspector Jefe?'

'I'm not the one who's put you in your situation.'

'What fucking situation?' she screeched. 'You keep talking about it, but I don't know what it is.'

'Your position between the gangsters holding your sister and the police investigating the Seville bombing,' said Falcon calmly.

'We're already close to finding where Margarita is being held,' said Ferrera, which snapped Marisa's head round in her direction.

'The man in the photo,' said Falcon. 'He'll talk. And if you talk to us, Marisa, nothing will happen until Margarita is safe.'

Marisa looked at the printout. Still not ready. Needing more time to make up her mind, not sure who or what was going to be more dangerous for her sister. Ferrera and Falcon exchanged a look. Ferrera gave her a card with her fixed line and mobile numbers. They made for the door.

'Talk to us, Marisa,' said Ferrera. 'I would, if I was you.'

'Why? Why would you?' said Marisa.

'Because we are not in the business of killing defenceless women in their homes, planting bombs, bribing local government officials and forcing girls into prostitution,' said Falcon.

They went down the steps from her atelier and into the broiling heat of the courtyard. They stood for a moment in the cool of the tunnel leading to Calle Bustos Tavera.

'We were that close,' said Ferrera, holding up her thumb and forefinger pressed together.

'I don't know,' said Falcon. 'Fear does strange things to people. It can bring them to the brink of the only possible next logical step, and then they veer off into the night because some perceived threat appears to be nearer and uglier.'

'She just needs time,' said Ferrera.

'Time is the problem, because she's alone,' said Falcon. 'Under those circumstances, the person who's going to kill you seems more powerful than the one who's holding out a helping hand. That's why I want you involved with her. I want you to make her feel as if she's not facing this on her own.'

'Let's find Margarita then,' said Ferrera. 'If we can get her safe, Marisa will follow.' Back at the Jefatura Inspector Jose Luis Ramirez was hovering over Vicente Cortes and Martin Diaz, arms folded, biceps bulging under his red polo shirt. His brow was furrowed with fury, the mahogany colour of his skin and his dark swept-back hair making him look even more thunderous. They were looking at the footage from the disks taken from Vasili Lukyanov's briefcase. The sight of young girls being defiled always made Ramirez uncomfortable. He didn't even like seeing his own teenage daughter hand in hand with her boyfriend, even though his wife had assured him she was still innocent.

Cortes and Diaz had found a better angle of the face of the man having sex with Margarita. His features had been isolated from the footage, blown up and sent out to every police station in Andalucia, the Guardia Civil and CICO in Madrid.

'Why just Andalucia?' asked Falcon.

'All of the sixty-one men and women we've already identified come from towns on the coast between Algeciras and Almeria.'

'Maybe the reason you can't identify these three men is that they're outsiders,' said Falcon. 'I think you should at least send these shots to Madrid and Barcelona and have somebody take them round to the chambers of commerce. This is a break. If we can locate the girl and make her safe, we have a chance of getting Marisa Moreno to talk. And she's possibly the only person left who's associated with anybody who had a part in the Seville bombing.'

The phone rang in his office, the scrambled line to the CNI. Falcon asked Ramirez to email the close-up shot of the unidentified male to his computer.

'I spoke to MI5 about Yacoub,' said Pablo. 'Of course they knew about him coming in on that flight, but they've lost him.'

'Lost him? What do you mean?'

'They followed him. He took the metro into London. They lost him at Russell Square.'

'So Yacoub realized he was being tailed and lost them, which means he now knows, or will assume, that I've talked.'

'Not necessarily. It's not the first time the British have taken an interest in Yacoub. What it does mean is that he didn't want them to know what he was doing,' said Pablo. 'We've now seen that his name has appeared on a manifest on a flight from London to Malaga tomorrow evening.'

'What does any of this mean?'

'It might mean that we have a rogue agent on our hands. On the other hand, it might just be that he is having to behave in a certain way because of pressure from the GICM,' said Pablo. 'What we have to do now is find out in whose interests he's working.'

'How are you going to do that?'

'Through you. But we're still thinking about it,' said Pablo. 'There's something else. An unidentified male has turned up in Yacoub's house in Rabat. He seems to be family, but the Moroccans haven't been able to place him yet and they don't want to go in there and spoil our show.'

'Can't they check his papers when he comes out of the house?'

'If he came out, they would, but he doesn't,' said Pablo. 'There's a shot of him on our website. Take a look. You might know him from that holiday you took with Yacoub down in Essaouira. By the way, you haven't communicated with Yacoub through the CNI website for three weeks.'

'He hasn't communicated with me.'

'But before that you were in regular contact.'

'Given his domestic situation, he's got to be more careful now.'

'That's what we're thinking here,' said Pablo. 'Anything else?'

'I'm working on a potential breakthrough in the Seville bombing. We've come across some disks in the possession of a known Russian mafioso showing men having sex with prostitutes,' said Falcon. 'You remember the two ringleaders of the conspiracy: Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito?'

'Benito was an architect for the Horizonte Group and Arenas was the CEO of their bankers, Banco Omni,' said Pablo.

'That's right. We never managed to find anything in either company that linked them to the conspiracy, but we're equally sure they weren't motivated by their Catholic beliefs,' said Falcon. 'I've isolated a male from the disks we found in the Russian mafioso's possession. Our two Organized Crime specialists from the Costa del Sol have been able to identify more than sixty people from these disks, but not this guy, and it occurs to me he may be an outsider.'

'And you think this may link the Russian mafia to Horizonte and Banco Omni?'

'It might do, if this guy happens to be in the hierarchy of either company or of Horizonte's holding company, an American-based investment group called I4IT,' said Falcon. 'The problem is that I know from my earlier investigations into these two companies how camera-shy their personnel are, and that you probably have access to… certain files that I don't. He might even be a foreigner.'

'You want me to see if I can match him?' said Pablo. 'For you, Javier, anything.'

They hung up. Falcon emailed the facial close-up of the male having sex with Margarita to the CNI website and, while there, checked the photo of the guy staying at Yacoub's house, but didn't recognize him.

'Send me those shots of the other two guys you haven't been able to identify from the Russian's disks,' Falcon shouted through to Vicente Cortes in the adjoining office.

The three faces came up on his screen. He inspected them carefully. Ramirez came in and stood by the window.

'This guy – "Unidentified B". He doesn't look Spanish to me,' said Falcon.

'No,' said Ramirez flatly, looking over his shoulder.

'The other two could be Spanish or Hispanic,' said Falcon, 'but this guy looks American.'

'American?' said Cortes, appearing at the door. 'How can you tell he's American from a grainy shot like that?'

'He doesn't look like a man whose face is burdened by centuries of history,' said Falcon. 'He has the innocence of someone who's spent his life embracing the future.'

'Even if he is fucking a teenager in the ass,' said Ramirez grimly.

'You can tell all that from this shot?' said Cortes, leaning over Falcon's desk.

'Look at his hair,' said Falcon. 'We don't have hair like that any more in Europe. That's what I would call American corporate hair. It's very conservative.'

'You should see the full clip. It doesn't even move during sex,' said Ramirez, looking out of the window. 'By the time he'd finished with that poor kid he should have had hair like a wrestler's, and yet… maybe it's a rug?'

'Possibly.'

The phone with the scrambled line to the CNI rang.

Ramirez took Cortes by the arm, led him out. Ferrera leaned in and closed the door.

'We want you to go to London,' said Pablo.

'I can't.'

'We've already spoken to Comisario Elvira.'

'I've just told you, things are breaking here. I feel as if I'm finally getting inside. I can't leave now,' said Falcon. 'And if I go to London, Yacoub will know I've spoken to you. He'll see it as a breach of trust.'

'You're going to see the British counter-terrorism squad, SO15, in New Scotland Yard. A guy called Douglas Hamilton. He will brief you. When you make contact with Yacoub you'll tell him why you're in London, which is to find out what the fuck he is doing losing an MI5 tail. That is not the kind of behaviour we expect from one of our "untrained" agents,' said Pablo. 'You understand me, Javier? And look, you'll be away from your desk for the rest of today only. We've got you on to a scheduled flight in an hour's time and we'll make sure you get an early-evening flight back.'

'All right,' said Falcon. 'I'm sending you another two shots of men from the Russian's disks who we can't identify. One of them I'm sure is an American.'

'Don't talk to your friend Flowers about any of this.'

'Are you going to say that every time I say the word "American"?'

'Mark Flowers is a very experienced operative. He has an instinct for when things are happening. I'd be very surprised if you didn't hear from him by the end of the day.'

'So what is happening?'

'Did you take a look at the mystery man who appeared in Yacoub's house?' asked Pablo, ignoring the question.

'Never seen him before,' said Falcon.

They hung up. Falcon stared grimly at the phone, not wanting any of this other, even more complicated, stuff. He called for Ferrera.

'I'm going to be out until this evening,' he said. 'I want you to go back to Marisa and work on her. Do everything you can to get her into your confidence. She has to tell us who is putting pressure on her.'

He sat back, tried to breathe down the stress, closed his eyes, thought about Consuelo's goodbye kiss. Everything had been in that kiss. The full complexity of a woman joining her life to his. Then he thought about football in the garden with Dario and remembered the boy's instinctive trust of him the night before, his head on Falcon's chest. The boy had done something for him, brought back memories of his own trust in his mother; those goodnight kisses in Tangier. It bound him to Dario in a way that made him feel both strong and vulnerable. He opened his eyes, placed his hands on the desk, squared his shoulders and, as he raised himself to go to the airport, he suddenly realized what was happening. The process of Javier Falcon becoming a parent had begun, and that was what was different in Consuelo: she'd decided to let him all the way into her life. 'You again,' said Marisa, seeing Cristina Ferrera through the door, open a crack. 'I don't know what the matter is with you people. Half Seville could be robbed and raped, and you'd still come knocking at my door.'

'That would be because it's my job to investigate murder,' said Ferrera, 'rather than anything else.'

Marisa looked her up and down. Her eyes were glazed. Maybe she was drunk or stoned.

'Specially selected,' said Marisa.

'For what?' asked Ferrera, sweat gathering under her eyes.

'Come in,' said Marisa, voice suddenly bored, walking away from the door.

She was wearing bikini briefs only. She picked up a cigar stub, lit it, leaned against the work bench and blew out smoke.

'Sweet and virginal,' she said.

'I used to be a nun,' said Ferrera. 'Maybe that's got something to do with it.'

Marisa snorted laughter, which came out on a long plume of smoke from her nose.

'You've got to be kidding.'

Ferrera stared her down, saw the half-bottle of Havana Club and a can of Coke behind her.

'I'll put on a top,' said Marisa, found a T-shirt, fought her way into it.

'Your boss…' she said, and losing her way she rubbished the air with her cigar stub. 'Whatever his name is. He's a clever guy, that one. You don't see many cops like him. You don't see many Sevillanos like him. A clever guy. He's sent you here on your own. He's thinking all the time. He comes in here, looks at my pieces… doesn't say a word. Thinking. Thinking. And he works things out. And that's why you're here, isn't it? The ex-nun. Everything is calculated.'

'I wasn't a great nun,' said Ferrera, cutting through the drunken babble.

'No? Why not? You look perfect,' said Marisa. 'I bet you only get guys you like coming after you.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'I get all sorts of people coming after me,' she said, to herself. 'Tell me why things didn't work out for you as a nun.'

'I was raped by a couple of guys in Cadiz one night,' said Ferrera, matter of fact. 'I was on my way to see my boyfriend. That's it. That's all you need to know. It wasn't working out for me as a nun. I had weaknesses.'

Marisa spat out some tobacco from the ragged end of her cigar stub.

'Even that's calculated,' she said nastily.

'The only thing that the Inspector Jefe has calculated is that you don't like men very much, so he sent me… a woman.'

'An ex-nun who's been raped.'

'He didn't expect me to tell you that.'

'So why did you?'

'To show you that I'm not the sweet, virginal little woman you think you see,' said Ferrera. 'I've suffered… maybe not as much, or as continuously, as Margarita is suffering, but enough to know what it's like to be a piece of meat.'

'Drink?' asked Marisa, as if Ferrera's words had signalled something.

'No, thanks,' said Ferrera.

Marisa poured herself a hefty measure of rum and topped it off with Coke.

'Take a seat,' she said, pointing at a cheap, low stool. 'You look hot.'

Ferrera sat in the smell of her soap and deodorant mixed with sweat.

'Do you always drink while you work?' she asked.

'Never,' said Marisa, relighting her cigar stub.

'So you're not working?'

'I'd work if people didn't keep interrupting me.'

'Other people?' asked Ferrera. 'Apart from us?'

Marisa nodded. Drank some more.

'It's not just that he thinks I hate men…' she said, pointing at Ferrera with her cigar stub. 'And I don't hate men. How can I hate them? Only men can satisfy me. I only fuck with men, so how can I hate them? You? Do you only fuck with men? After what those guys did to you?'

'So what else is it?' asked Ferrera, feeling Marisa's drunken mind swerving away from her.

'He thinks I killed her,' said Marisa. 'The Inspector Jefe thinks I killed his wife. I mean his ex-wife, Esteban's wife.'

'He doesn't think that.'

'Did you know her?'

'Ines?' asked Ferrera, shaking her head.

'I don't know why your Inspector Jefe married that one,' said Marisa, pointing to her head, blowing her brains out. 'There was nothing inside.'

'We all make mistakes,' said Ferrera, some of her own and their consequences flashing through her mind.

'She was right for Esteban,' said Marisa. 'Absolutely right.'

'Why do you say that?'

'Another empty vessel,' said Marisa, knocking on the side of her work bench. 'A hollow man.'

'So why did you like Esteban?'

'It's more to do with why did Esteban like me,' said Marisa. 'I was just there. He came after me. It didn't matter what I thought. That's what Sevillano guys are like. They come after you. They don't need any encouragement.'

'And Cuban guys are different?'

'They seem to know when you're not right for them. They see who you are.'

'But you didn't turn Esteban down.'

'I tell you, Esteban is not my kind of guy,' said Marisa, and her face struggled against the alcohol into a sneer.

'So what happened?'

'He pursued me.'

'You look as if you're old enough to be able to tell a guy that his interest is going to get him nowhere.'

'Unless…' Marisa said, holding up her finger.

Some tinny Cuban music started up in the back of the workshop. Marisa staggered off amongst the clutter and picked up her mobile phone. Ferrera gritted her teeth, the moment lost again. Marisa retreated into the darkness and listened intently without saying a word. After some long, silent minutes she dropped the phone and skittered away from it as if she'd suddenly realized it was emitting poison into her ear.