‘My methods have been questioned before,’ said Falcón, ‘but never the results.’
‘We think you're doing too much, Javier,’ said Elvira.
‘Two comments about your mental state from different sources on the same day,’ said Lobo. ‘That rings alarm bells with us, Javier.’
‘Given your history,’ added Elvira.
‘What you mean is that the Juez Decano – who, by the way, I did not see – was persuaded by his son that my behaviour was unstable,’ said Falcón. ‘Do I appear mad to you? Have any members of my squad, who are the people closest to me and most able to observe any changes, expressed concern about my behaviour?’
‘Even I can see you're tired,’ said Elvira. ‘Exhausted.’
‘We're not taking any chances with you, Javier.’
‘So what's the deal?’
‘The deal?’ said Lobo.
‘Any further comment about concerns for your mental state and you'll be suspended from duty,’ said Elvira.
‘And for my part,’ said Falcón, ‘I promise not to talk to Alejandro Spinola on any matter relating to Marisa Moreno or Esteban Calderón.’
The two men looked at him, eyebrows arched.
‘Wasn't that the purpose of this meeting?’ asked Falcón.
It was early evening and the temperature had just dropped below 40°C for the first time since 11 a.m. Inspector Jefe Tirado sat in Consuelo's living room, preparing to give her a short report on the developments in her son's kidnapping. He was disconcerted by her poise. Most women who'd been made to sweat for more than forty-eight hours without hearing a word from the kidnappers would be on the verge of a breakdown by now. Most mothers he'd dealt with had been reduced to a state of tearful exhaustion by the constant oscillation between hope and despair within the first twelve hours. They'd look at him with begging eyes, pleading with every cell in their bodies for the thinnest sliver of good news. Consuelo Jiménez sat before him dressed and made up, even with her toes and fingernails painted with red varnish. He had never encountered a woman under these circumstances who'd shown such total composure, even refusing support from family members. She made him nervous.
He talked her through the interview with Carlos Puerta, her stalker back in June.
‘He said that?’ said Consuelo, outraged but remembering her instability at that time. ‘He put his hands up my skirt, stole the money from my handbag and then kicked it down the street. At the very least it was a mugging.’
‘I found a shot of this man. I've been around the neighbourhood here, and nobody has seen him in Santa Clara, certainly not recently,’ said Tirado. ‘The Narcotics guys down in Las Tres Mil say he's been a permanent fixture down there for the last two months.’
‘So you don't think he's involved in Darío's kidnapping?’
‘He was also in very poor condition,’ said Tirado, flipping through his notes. ‘I understand from the sound engineer that there have been no communications here.’ Consuelo shook her head. The strain of keeping what she knew from Tirado was making her absurdly conscious of the functioning vertebrae in her neck. She realized, in that instant, that the phone call she'd made to the kidnappers had transformed Tirado into someone she could no longer trust.
Tirado looked up when he heard no reply.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’
‘I've also been to Darío's school,’ said Tirado, ‘and conducted a number of interviews with the teachers and children. I'm afraid I have nothing to report from there, although they asked me to give you this.’
He handed over an envelope. She opened it and drew out the handmade card. The drawing on the front in coloured crayons showed a boy with standing-up hair in the sunshine, with trees and a river behind. Inside it said: Darío is all right. We know he will come home again soon. It was signed by everyone in his class.
Only then did Tirado discover what was going on underneath. Consuelo closed her eyes, her mouth crumpled, and two silvery rivulets crept hesitatingly down her face.
17
Plaza Alfalfa, Seville – Monday, 18th September 2006, 18.00 hrs
La Galería Zoca was owned by a venerable old gentleman for whom the word señorial had been invented. He had impeccable manners, superb conversational skills, perfect tailoring, precision coiffure and gold-rimmed half-moon spectacles which hung from his neck by a cord. You would be in no doubt, just from the look of him, that this man came from lengthy and outstanding lineage, but that he would be the last person in the world to tell you anything of the sort.
Although Falcón had known José Manuel Domecq for many years, he had not seen him this century. They sat in an office at the back of the gallery, where Domecq had led him after a genuinely warm welcome. Two small coffees were brought in. Domecq shook the sugar sachet empty over his and stirred it in for a length of time for which only an old man would have the patience.
‘I know you don't have anything left of your father's to sell, Javier,’ he said. ‘I heard you burnt it all.’
‘Under his orders.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he said sadly. ‘A travesty and a tragedy. So what brings you here?’
‘I just wanted to know if you've ever seen this woman,’ said Falcón, handing Domecq a photograph he'd printed off his computer after his meeting with Lobo and Elvira.
Domecq settled his specs on his nose and leaned forward to inspect.
‘She's very lovely, Marisa, isn't she?’ he said.
‘Did you know her well?’
‘She came in here asking me to represent her once, but, you know, wood carving, ethnic stuff, it's not really my thing,’ he said. ‘But she was very attractive so I asked her to some openings, and sometimes she came and lent a somewhat exotic atmosphere to the proceedings. A mango amongst the oranges, or rather, a leopard amongst the … er … reptiles might be a more accurate description of some of my collectors. They liked her, found her rather interesting.’
‘About what?’ asked Falcón, thinking some of those words and phrases had sounded very familiar.
‘The work,’ said Domecq. ‘Although I didn't like her stuff, she knew how to talk about art.’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Not for a while at an opening,’ said Domecq. ‘But she didn't live far from here, so she'd drop in every so often to say hello. I probably saw her three or four months ago.’
‘That's very good, José Manuel. Thank you for that,’ said Falcón, taking the photograph back.
Some minutes later Falcón walked back to the tree-lined, leafy square, got into his car and sat at the wheel with the photograph still in his hands. The Plaza Alfalfa was quiet, the heat too oppressive for anybody to be sitting outside the Bar Manolo. The captivating woman in the photo stared back at him with dark, wide eyes. Domecq was right, she was lovely; but it was a picture of the American actress Halle Berry he'd shown to the gallery owner, not Marisa Moreno.
It was clear that Alejandro Spinola had moved fast. First, getting his father to complain to Comisario Lobo, of all people. Changing the story only a little so that it had come out as Falcón ‘interrupting a press conference’ just to talk about Calderón's old girlfriend. That could be construed as ‘unstable behaviour’. And now, here he was, covering his tracks at La Galería Zoca. Domecq must have a need for Spinola's social and professional network to have to lie for him like that.
His mobile vibrated. Cristina Ferrera.
‘Diga,’ he said.
‘My friend in the CGI just came back to me,’ she said. ‘I thought you might be interested to know that Charles Taggart is booked to fly into Madrid from Newark tonight. Antonio Ramos is flying in from Barcelona, also tonight. And, this is the interesting thing: I4IT has chartered a private jet to fly down to Seville tomorrow. The pilot has logged his flight plan with a take-off time of five p.m.’
‘Are they staying the night or flying back?’
‘The pilot's flight plan indicates a take-off time of eleven a.m. on Wednesday, 20th September,
destination Málaga, which meant that my friend, being a very thorough person, checked all the upmarket hotels in and around Seville and found four suites booked in the company name of Horizonte at an exclusive country-house hotel called La Berenjena, which is just off the road to Huelva.’
‘Four suites?’
‘There must be someone else invited to the party.’
‘That's a pretty good contact you've got at the CGI,’ said Falcón. ‘You might have to marry him for doing all that for you.’
‘My friend is a “she”,’ said Ferrera. ‘You don't think you'd get that kind of detail from a man, do you, Inspector Jefe?’
There were too many people for the meeting to take place in the judge's offices, so they'd had to wait half an hour for the conference room in the Edificio de los Juzgados to come available. At the end of the table sat the instructing judge, Anibal Parrado. To his left were Sub-Inspector Emilio Pérez, Vicente Cortés and Martín Díaz. Opposite them sat Falcón and Ramírez. Falcón introduced Cortés and Díaz, whom the judge hadn't met before. He then gave an introduction to the three murders they were about to discuss and sat down. Anibal Parrado asked for an update on developments in the Marisa Moreno case. Ramírez described the sighting of three men down Calle Bustos Tavera by the young female witness. His description of the third man as a bodybuilder earned an interruption from Cortés.
‘You mean a weightlifter,’ he said.
‘You know someone built like that?’ asked Falcón. ‘Because I have a witness from Las Tres Mil, Carlos Puerta, who gave a similar description of the possible shooter in El Pulmón's apartment.’
‘Nikita Sokolov,’ said Cortés. ‘Just missed out on a bronze medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, middleweight class, which means around seventy kilos, although he must be heavier than that by now, but certainly no taller, and he still trains. We haven't seen him in the Costa del Sol for a few months … not since May or June.’
‘What did he do down there?’
‘He was an enforcer. When the old Russian gang leader fled to Dubai after Operation Wasp, he carried on working for Leonid Revnik,’ said Cortés. ‘His job was to make people pay or perform and, if they didn't want to do either, he'd kill them. I'll get back to you with more information on him.’
‘A photo would help,’ said Juez Parrado. ‘Only one witness in the Marisa Moreno investigation, Inspector Ramírez?’
‘There's not much residential around there. The courtyard was closed off from the street. The chain saw was electric and therefore quiet. It was pure luck that we found this witness.’
‘Forensic information?’
‘We found two paper suits in some rubbish bins around the corner, just off Calle Gerona. They were in a bin liner, which is what our witness described seeing in the hands of one of the three men she saw in Calle Bustos Tavera. The blood on the suits was matched to Marisa Moreno and some DNA has been derived from hairs found on the inside of one and from a semen deposit in the other. The data has been passed to CICO headquarters in Madrid to see if they can find a match on their database.’
‘That could take some time,’ said Díaz. ‘Computer matches have to be confirmed by human inspection these days. We'll be lucky to have anything on that by tomorrow, if they exist in our database. If they don't, we have to pass the samples over to Interpol and that might take weeks.’
‘So we have a sighting of three men, but DNA from only two,’ said Parrado.
‘Nikita Sokolov wouldn't do dirty work like that,’ said Cortés. ‘He'd shoot a guy, but he wouldn't get actively involved in cutting up a woman. He wouldn't lower himself to that.’
‘Lower himself?’ asked Parrado.
‘These guys keep male company. Women, to them, are a lower form of life. They're good for preparing food, sex and beating. Sokolov is a real vor-v-zakone, which means “a thief with a code of honour”. When he came back from the Olympics he served time in jail for murder. Most of the Russian mafia guys on the Costa del Sol these days have just bought the right to be vory-v-zakone, but Sokolov actually earned it in jail. He would have overseen Marisa's killing, but he wouldn't have done the work.’
‘Do we have Sokolov's DNA on file?’ asked Juez Parrado.
‘That's what I'm not sure about,’ said Cortés. ‘I wasn't involved in the case, but I think Sokolov and this guy who was killed on the motorway, Vasili Lukyanov, were friends and they were both being processed as a result of an assault on a local girl. Blood samples would have been taken for DNA purposes, prior to the girl dropping the charges and the men being released. I'll check with the Sex Crimes squad in Málaga to see if they've still got them.’
‘That was a rape charge,’ said Falcón. ‘I remember Comisario Elvira mentioning it when I gave him my first report on Vasili Lukyanov's accident.’
‘So Sokolov was into sexually assaulting women on that occasion?’ said Ramírez.
‘I think he was more interested in violence against women,’ said Cortés. ‘I'll check the case history and get back to you.’
‘Well, that's progress on Marisa Moreno,’ said Parrado. ‘If we can match the DNA and find the suspects.’
‘We've done some limited work on that,’ said Ramírez. ‘Before the incident in Las Tres Mil occurred, our two detectives, Serrano and Baena, were in Seville Este, trying to find out where one of these Russian groups are holed up.’
‘Why Seville Este?’
‘We believe that Vasili Lukyanov was defecting from Leonid Revnik to join a renegade gang run by Yuri Donstov. The GPS in Lukyanov's Range Rover had an address in Calle Garlopa in Seville Este.’
‘Any sightings of Yuri Donstov?’ asked Falcón. ‘Or any Russians?’
‘There are a lot of apartment blocks on Calle Garlopa and, so far, no Russians and no reports of having seen any.’
‘It was probably just a meeting point,’ said Cortés. ‘I can't see him putting an address into his GPS. They've been more careful since Operation Wasp.’
‘I have a source who tells me that Yuri Donstov could be in the Polígono San Pablo,’ said Falcón.
‘They don't advertise their whereabouts,’ said Díaz.
‘Let's move on to the two murders in Las Tres Mil,’ said Parrado. ‘Sub-Inspector Emilio Pérez is the investigating officer, I believe.’
‘I'm not in possession of a fully confirmed ballistics report yet,’ said Pérez, starting off in his characteristic fashion.
‘But you have what we need to know, Emilio, so tell us that,’ said Ramírez.
‘Oh, right, Inspector. The autopsy revealed that the two dead bodies were killed by nine-millimetre rounds, which we assume were fired from the same gun, but this has not been confirmed yet.’
Ramírez tried to speed him up with quick turns of his fingers.
‘The weapon found at the scene was a Beretta 84FS Cheetah. This is a .380-calibre weapon and only one round had been fired, which was found embedded in the living-room wall opposite the window. I have the plan here.’
‘Keep going, Emilio,’ said Ramírez.
‘It is believed that this round wounded the assailant holding the nine-millimetre weapon. Preliminary findings from the autopsy reveal that the trajectory of the bullets entering Miguel Estévez, the Cuban victim, meant that the gun was fired from the floor, which encourages us to believe that the shooter has been injured. The first bullet smashed Estévez's spinal column at the sixth vertebra, the second hit his fourth rib and penetrated his heart.’
‘Blood?’ said Ramírez.
‘Three blood samples were recovered from the apartment. One belongs to Miguel Estévez, the second to Julia Valdés, who was El Pulmón's girlfriend, and the third is unknown, but corresponds to the samples found on the floor and wall of the living room where the .380 round was found, the threshold of the door to the bedroom from where Julia Valdés was shot, the stairs up to the apartment block and the pavement outside. They're working on generating the DNA now. We have not had time to derive El Pulmón's DNA from hair
and bristles found in his bathroom, but we believe that…’
‘He wouldn't shoot his own girlfriend,’ said Ramírez. ‘What about the Beretta?’
‘Ballistics say that it was fired lying flat on the table with the screw within the trigger guard. There were other screws holding the barrel in place. They think it was covered by the magazine. The recoil had sent the gun back to the window.’
‘The knife?’
‘The hunting knife had Estévez's fingerprints on the handle. The knife which stabbed him was not found.’
‘Conclusion?’
‘The first shot from the Beretta injured the shooter. Estévez tried to stab El Pulmón, who in turn stabbed him and then turned the Cuban so that he was between El Pulmón and the injured man on the floor. The shooter hit Estévez twice. Powder burns on the shirt suggest that the second shot was fired as Estévez was pushed back on to the shooter. El Pulmón escaped. The shooter then killed Julia Valdés and left the apartment himself.’
‘Good,’ said Ramírez. ‘Any witnesses?’
‘Just the one,’ said Pérez. ‘Carlos Puerta, one of El Pulmón's clients, who the Inspector Jefe mentioned earlier.’
‘Four gunshots go off in an apartment in the middle of the barrio and we have only one witness?’ said Juez Parrado.
‘It's Las Tres Mil,’ said Pérez, hopelessly. ‘The only person who was prepared to say anything was the tenant above El Pulmón, who told us he'd heard the gunshots at about one p.m. When it comes to seeing people running around with blood all over them, especially when drugs are involved, then everybody is suddenly deaf and blind in Las Tres Mil.’
‘So what did Carlos Puerta see?’
‘He saw two men pull up in a dark blue car. He didn't notice the model or the number plate. They went into the building. One fits the description of the Cuban, Miguel Estévez, and the other this person we now know is the Russian weightlifter, Nikita Sokolov,’ said Pérez. ‘He heard three shots. Puerta saw El Pulmón run out wearing a T-shirt covered in blood and heard a fourth gunshot. Then the weightlifter came out, got into the car and drove off.’