‘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 Falcón. ‘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 Falcón. ‘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 Falcón. ‘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 Inés'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 Falcón. ‘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 Falcón 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 Falcón. ‘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 Falcón 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 Falcón.
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 Falcón. ‘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 Falcón. ‘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 José Luis Ramírez was hovering over Vicente Cortés and Martín Díaz, 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 Ramírez 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.
Cortés and Díaz 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 Andalucía, the Guardia Civil and CICO in Madrid.
‘Why just Andalucía?’ asked Falcón.
‘All of the sixty-one men and women we've already identified come from towns on the coast between Algeciras and Almería.’
‘Maybe the reason you can't identify these three men is that they're outsiders,’ said Falcón. ‘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. Falcón asked Ramírez 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 Málaga 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 Falcón. ‘You remember the two ringleaders of the conspiracy: Lucrecio Arenas and César 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 Falcón. ‘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 Falcón. ‘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. Falcón 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,’ Falcón shouted through to Vicente Cortés in the adjoining office.
The three faces came up on his screen. He inspected them carefully. Ramírez came in and stood by the window.
‘This guy – “Unidentified B”. He doesn't look Spanish to me,’ said Falcón.
‘No,’ said Ramírez flatly, looking over his shoulder.
‘The other two could be Spanish or Hispanic,’ said Falcón, ‘but this guy looks American.’
‘American?’ said Cortés, 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 Falcón. ‘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 Ramírez grimly.
‘You can tell all that from this shot?’ said Cortés, leaning over Falcón's desk.
‘Look at his hair,’ said Falcón. ‘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 Ramírez, 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.
Ramírez took Cortés 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 Falcón. ‘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 Falcón. ‘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 Falcón.
They hung up. Falcón 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 Darío and remembered the boy's instinctive trust of him the night before, his head on Falcón'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 Darío 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 Falcón 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 Cádiz 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.’