‘Did you know her?’
‘Inés?’ 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.
9
Consuelo's house, Santa Clara, Seville – Saturday, 16th September 2006,10.30 hrs
Consuelo was having trouble getting Darío out of the house and into the car. She was on the phone, talking to the estate agent in Madrid who'd found her ‘the perfect property’ in the Lavapiés district of the city. He was selling it hard because he was pushing something that was ‘off brief’. Darío was on the computer, playing his favourite soccer game. He was impervious to her occasional shouts to turn the damn thing off, and he only complied when she appeared over his shoulder to wrestle the mouse from his hand.
The electricity demands at the airport were such that the air-conditioning was not working at its optimum level. Looking out on to the taxiways where the aircraft unpeeled their tyres from the searing tarmac, Falcón held his jacket slung over his shoulder and put in a call to the only person he wanted to talk to.
‘I'm stuck in traffic,’ said Consuelo. ‘Darío, will you please just sit down. This is Javi.’
‘Hola, Javi,’ shouted Darío.
‘We're on our way to the Nervión Plaza. The only place in the world where we're allowed to buy football boots. You know, the pilgrimage to Sevilla FC.’
‘I'm going to be out of town again today,’ said Falcón, ‘but I want to see you tonight.’
‘Do you want to see Javi tonight?’
‘Ye-e-es!’ roared Darío.
‘I think that sounds as if it would be acceptable.’
‘I love you,’ said Falcón, trying that out again, seeing if she would react this time.
‘What was that?’
‘You heard.’
‘The line's breaking up.’
‘I love you, Consuelo,’ he said, and it made him feel young and foolish.
She laughed.
‘Let's go!’ roared Darío.
‘Traffic's moving,’ she said. ‘Hasta pronto.’
The phone clicked off. He was disappointed. He'd wanted to hear it from her lips, but she wasn't quite ready for that yet, admitting to love in front of her youngest son. He put his hands up on the glass, stared out into the wavering heat and felt a great sense of longing in his chest.
How the hell would you fall in love if you were blind? thought Consuelo, phone in her lap, traffic at a standstill again. Smell would be important. Not the quality of a man's aftershave, although that in itself would tell you something, but rather his … musk. Nothing sharp or rancid and not soapy or fragrant, but not too manly either. Voice, too, would have powerful effects. You wouldn't want to listen to somebody whiny or booming, nothing guttural or sibilant. Then there was touch: the feel of a man's hand. No limpness, pudginess, nor clamminess. Dry and strong, but not crushing. Delicate, but not effeminate. Electric, but not furtive. And then there were the lips. The crucial mouth. How his lips fitted on to yours. Just the right amount of give. Not hard, unyielding, nor soft and mushy. Kissing blind would tell you everything. Is that why we close our eyes?
‘Mamá?’ said Darío.
Consuelo wasn't listening. She was too engrossed in her imagination, thinking how well Javier scored on smell, voice and touch. She'd never believed, after her marriage to Raúl Jiménez, that she would ever think these foolish things again.
‘Mamá?’
‘What, Darío?’
‘You're not listening to me.’
‘I am, sweetie, it's just that Mamá's thinking, too.’
‘Mamá?’
‘Yes.’
‘You missed the turning.’
She squeezed his knee so that he yelped and made the complicated series of turns to get back to the Nervión Plaza parking.
‘Mamá?’ said Darío, as they descended into the underground car park, ground to a halt in the queue to go in.
‘What is it, darling?’ said Consuelo, feeling that the first three inquiring ‘Mamá's’ had been a prelude to some big, burning question, dying to be asked.
‘Do you still love me now that Javi is with us?’
She looked at him, big eyes beseeching her, felt her insides collapse. How do we know these things? Even at eight years old he can tell something important might be swerving away from him. She stroked his head and cheek.
‘But you're my little man,’ she said. ‘The most important one in the world.’
Darío smiled, that small confrontation with sadness instantly forgotten. He pushed his fists between his knees and hunched his shoulders up to his ears as his world fell back into place.
The driver of the black Jaguar didn't say a word. The car sped along the M4 motorway into London. Falcón was cold, underdressed for the season, and he was feeling a Spaniard's uneasiness for silence in company, until he remembered his father, Francisco, telling him that the English liked to talk about the weather. But as he looked out on to the dull, grey, flat landscape overhung by dull, grey, pendulous clouds, he could find nothing to say about it. Couldn't imagine what anybody would find to say about it. He put his face close to the window to help him perceive what a local person might see in such unmitigated dullness and thought it might be what you couldn't see.
‘When did you last see the sun shine?’ he asked, in perfect English, his breath fogging the glass.
‘Sorry, mate,’ said the driver, ‘don't speak Spanish. Go to Mallorca every year for my holidays, but still don't speak a word.’
Falcón checked him for irony but could tell, even from the back of the man's head and his quick glance at the rear-view, that he was totally good-natured.
‘It's not our strong point either,’ said Falcón. ‘Languages.’
The driver whipped round in his seat as if to check he still had the same passenger.
‘Oh, right,’ he said. ‘Yeah, no. You're pretty good. Where d'you learn to speak English like that?’
‘English lessons,’ said Falcón.
‘Well, that's cheating, innit?’ said the driver, and they both laughed, although Falcón wasn't quite sure why.
The traffic seized up as they came into the city. The driver turned off the Cromwell Road; twenty minutes later they went past the famous revolving sign of New Scotland Yard.
Falcón introduced himself at reception, handed o
ver his ID and police card. He went through security and was met at the lifts by a uniformed officer. They went up to the fifth floor. Douglas Hamilton met him off the lift, took him into a meeting room where there was another man in his late thirties.
‘This is Rodney from MI5,’ said Hamilton. ‘Take a seat. Flight OK?’
‘Not your sort of temperature, eh, Javier?’ said Rodney, releasing Falcón's ice-cold hand.
Finally, the weather, thought Falcón.
‘Pablo forgot to tell me it was already winter here,’ he said.
‘This is our bloody summer,’ said Hamilton.
‘You ever been to the Irish bar in Seville, down by the cathedral?’ asked Rodney.
‘Only if someone was murdered there,’ said Falcón.
They laughed. The room relaxed. They were going to understand each other.
‘You run Yacoub Diouri,’ said Rodney, ‘but you're a police officer.’
‘Yacoub is a friend of mine. He said he would supply information to the CNI only on condition that I was his main contact.’
‘How long have you known him?’
‘Four years,’ said Falcón. ‘We first met in September 2002.’
‘And when was the last time you saw him before yesterday?’
‘We spent some time on holiday together in August.’
‘And his son, Abdullah, was with you?’
‘It was a family holiday.’
‘And how did Abdullah appear to you then?’
‘As I would have expected the son of a wealthy member of the Moroccan elite,’ said Falcón.
‘Spoilt brat?’ asked Hamilton.
‘Not exactly. He didn't behave any differently to a Spanish boy of his age. He was very attached to his computer, bored by the beach, but he's a good kid.’
‘Was he devout?’
‘No more than the rest of the family, who take their religion very seriously. As far as I know, he wasn't leaving dinner early to go and study the Qur'an, but then Yacoub said his browser was full of “Islamic” sites, so maybe that's what he was doing.’
‘Did he drink?’ asked Rodney. ‘Alcohol?’
‘Yes,’ said Falcón, feeling the strange weight of this question. ‘Yacoub, Abdullah and I would share a bottle of wine at dinner.’
‘Just one bottle between three?’ said Rodney, whose top button was undone and the knot of his tie off centre.
There was a grunt of laughter from Hamilton.
‘If I hadn't been there they wouldn't have drunk alcohol,’ said Falcón. ‘It was just to make me comfortable as their guest.’
‘Has Abdullah ever joined Yacoub on any of his business trips to the UK?’ asked Hamilton.
‘I think so. I seem to remember Yacoub talking about taking Abdullah to the Tate Modern to see the Edward Hopper exhibition. That was before I recruited Yacoub.’
‘Did you know that Abdullah was in London now?’
‘No. In fact yesterday Yacoub told me he was in a training camp for GICM mujahideen back in Morocco. He also told me that he himself was returning to Rabat…’
‘Pablo briefed us,’ said Rodney, nodding.
‘Have you found him yet?’ asked Falcón, and Rodney glared. ‘Pablo said you'd lost Yacoub, or rather Yacoub had lost your…’
‘We picked him up again about an hour ago,’ said Rodney. ‘It was just him. Abdullah stayed in the hotel. It's not the first time he's lost one of our tails, you know that.’
‘Do you follow him every time he comes to London?’
‘We do now,’ said Hamilton. ‘Since the first time he lost a tail, back in July.’
‘July?’ said Falcón, amazed. ‘That was only a month after I recruited him.’
‘That's the question,’ said Rodney, shifting in his seat, pulling his tie back to centre. ‘How was an amateur able to take us to the cleaners so easily?’
‘Take you to the cleaners?’ said Falcón, puzzled.
‘Fool us,’ said Hamilton, clarifying.
‘How could a fucking jeans manufacturer from Rabat take on MI5 and make us look stupid?’ said Rodney.
‘And the answer is …?’ said Hamilton, not wanting Rodney's testiness to get a foothold.
‘He's been very well trained,’ said Rodney. ‘And we don't believe he learnt that in a month.’
‘If he did, it was auto-didactic,’ said Falcón.
‘You what?’ said Rodney.
‘Self-taught,’ said Hamilton.
‘Sorry, my English. Sometimes only the Spanish word comes to me,’ said Falcón. ‘Didn't you … or was it MI6, try to recruit Yacoub before me? And I heard the Americans had a go, too.’
‘So?’ asked Rodney.
‘So you vetted him, didn't you?’ asked Falcón.
‘MI6 said there was nothing unusual,’ said Rodney. ‘Apart from him being a shirt-lifter. But no fucking PhD from spy school, if that's what you mean.’
‘Shirt-lifter?’ said Falcón.
‘It's nothing,’ said Hamilton.
‘Maricón,’ said Rodney, fixing him with a look.
‘So what's going on?’ asked Falcón, giving Rodney's aggression a quick sideways glance.
‘We were hoping you'd be able to tell us,’ said Hamilton, pushing over a piece of paper. ‘These are the five separate occasions where we've lost him.’
Falcón looked down the list of dates, times and places. Holland Park, Hampstead Heath, Battersea Park, Clapham Common and Russell Square. Twice in July, once in August and twice in September. Never less than three hours, except this last time.
‘So you lost him in these places, but where did he reappear?’
‘We pick him up when he's on his way back to the hotel,’ said Hamilton.
‘Brown's?’
‘Always.’
‘And after your briefing to Pablo on what had happened between you and Yacoub in Madrid yesterday, we wouldn't mind knowing what he's been up to,’ said Rodney. ‘You're his controller and he's lying to you. He's not working with us, but he's supposed to be on our side. If he's operating in his own interests, that's one thing. If he's been turned, then, obviously, that's another.’
‘We've already got thirty-two separate possible terror groups under some sort of surveillance here in the UK,’ said Hamilton. ‘Seventeen of them are in London. That's nearly two thousand people we're watching nationwide. Obviously we've had to step things up since 7/7 last year, which means we're stretched. We're having to recruit at the same pace as the terrorists.’
‘So we can do without your shit on our doorstep,’ said Rodney. ‘To put it politely.’
‘Are any of these groups you're watching connected to any of the GICM cells in the rest of Europe, or Morocco?’ asked Falcón.
‘Let's put it this way,’ said Rodney, ‘we haven't been able to match any known GICM players with any of the UK groups. But that's not to say it hasn't happened. The French are telling us there's already a live GICM cell here.’
‘And how do they know that?’ asked Falcón.
‘They picked up a Moroccan kid on a drugs bust in Alès, in southern France, who gave up some stuff on a group in Marseille in exchange for no jail. This Marseille cell were providing safe houses and documentation. The DSG went in there and beat out some good intelligence. The Moroccan kid was found dead in the river Gard a week later, with his feet beaten to a pulp and his throat slit. So the French reckoned they'd hit gold,’ said Rodney, who recalled something else. ‘And the Germans told us they saw Yacoub meeting a devout Turkish businessman at a trade fair in Berlin at the beginning of this month.’
‘What sort of businessman?’ asked Falcón. ‘There's plenty of cotton in Turkey, and Yacoub's a clothing manufacturer.’
‘That's why we weren't too concerned,’ said Rodney. ‘The Turk is a cotton manufacturer from Denizli. It's just that when we couple that with other information we find it's begging more questions.’
‘What “other information”?’
‘Where does the Turk's mone
y go?’ asked Rodney.
‘Wealthy, devout Muslims regard it as part of their duty to the community…’
Rodney gave him the yapping hand.
‘You know how it is in Turkey, with this battle between the secular and the religious,’ said Rodney. ‘We could understand it if the Turk's money was being put into a local school, but it's finding its way to Istanbul and political coffers there. And they're not secular coffers.’
‘All right,’ said Falcón, holding up his hands. ‘So what you're looking for from me is some clarification of Yacoub's behaviour over the last few months.’
‘Don't get us wrong,’ said Hamilton, running his tie between his fingers. ‘We're very grateful to Yacoub. His observations back in June on the four-wheel-drive plot were invaluable. MI6 were nowhere on that mission. But the point was that then he was on your territory, now he's on ours, and we're not taking any chances.’
‘We don't think it was a coincidence that he turned down MI6 and the Yanks,’ said Rodney, and Douglas Hamilton gave him a hard stare.
‘And what do you mean by that?’ asked Falcón.
‘Time for a smoke,’ said Rodney, who got up and left.
The sports shop, Décimas, on the first floor of the Nervión Plaza shopping centre, was full of kids and parents. Everybody with the same idea. The assistants were worked off their feet. Darío knew what he wanted. Black Pumas. Consuelo cornered a salesgirl and got her working on the project. Her mobile rang. Ricardo, her eldest boy, was asking, or rather telling her, that he was going down to Matalascañas on the coast for the afternoon. She told him to be back for the family dinner with Javier. She'd reached the shop entrance by the time she hung up. Two men looked in past her shoulders, then directly at her, one after the other. They raised their eyebrows, shrugged and walked off towards the escalators.
Back to Darío. He had the boots on. They were too small. Too small already? His feet growing by the month. The girl went back to the store room, got waylaid by a couple who would not take the brush-off. Consuelo's mobile rang again. The estate agent from Madrid. Working hard on a Saturday, trying to impress her. The signal was weak in the shop, started to break up. The salesgirl came back with the next size up. Immediately got snagged by somebody else. Consuelo got the boots on to Darío's feet. He trotted around the shop. Smiled. They were perfect. The girl came back, boxed them up and took them to the cash desk. Three people waiting to pay. The mobile went off again. She left Darío at the desk, walked out of the shop, went to the window overlooking the big open-air plaza in the middle of the shopping centre, the football stadium with Sevilla FC's coat of arms loomed to the left. She kept an eye on the progress of the queue from the main concourse. Two minutes. Cut off again. Went back into the shop. Tapped the desk with her credit card while Darío turned the box round in his hands. Couldn't wait to get back home, try them on, put a few past Javi this evening … if he got back before dark.