turn on himself as comprehensively as I'd done. I told her: 'This last week has been the longest sustained period of facing the truth that I've ever been through in my life.' A lawyer speaks, Javier.'
They grunted laughter at each other.
'I also spend a lot of my time thinking about you. I feel I owe you an explanation.'
'It's not necessary, Esteban.'
'I know, but you started me on this journey with Alicia, and we have this curious relationship that's entwined with both Ines and Marisa. So I want to clarify a few things, if you can bear to listen to me. It's not going to make me look very pretty, but then you're getting used to that.'
They sat in silence for a moment while Calderon prepared himself.
'As you know, four years ago I nearly lost my career. I needed all my family connections, and Ines's, to maintain a foothold in the Edificio de los Juzgados. Ines was fantastic throughout. She was strong. I was weak. And, as you know from your murder cases, Javier, the weak man is full of self-hatred and develops a bottomless pit of savagery, which by rights he should unleash against himself, but inevitably he turns on the person closest to him.'
'Is that when it started?'
'The beatings? No. The hatred, yes. When Ines became my wife and the balance of power shifted in my favour, I started breaking her down with my extravagant philandering,' said Calderon. 'By the time that bomb went off on 6th June we were both primed for violence. By that I mean: I was ready to give it and she was ready to receive it. I was feeling sufficiently strong and angry, and she was sufficiently fragile and humiliated. I'm not sure there wasn't something sadomasochistic in the state of our relationship. When I came back from Marisa's that morning we could have had just another row, but this time she wanted it to be taken further. She goaded me, and I, inexcusably, complied.'
'She was goading you to violence?'
'It probably wasn't as clear as that in her mind; we'd shouted and screamed, thrown things at each other, and I suppose it was the only possible next step. You know how important Ines's public image was to her, she couldn't walk away from a second failed marriage. And I would have found it hard to split from her. What she wanted was for me to hit her, then for me to be filled with remorse, and in that softening she would bring us back together. I surprised her and myself. I didn't know I had that pent-up rage inside me.'
'Did you feel any remorse?'
'At the time, no. I realize this sounds pathetic, but I felt immensely powerful,' said Calderon. 'To have beaten a fifty-kilo woman into terrified submission should have appalled me, but it didn't. Then, later, after Marisa told me about her confrontation with Ines in the Murillo Gardens, I became incensed once again and gave Ines an even worse beating. Still no remorse. Just madness and rage.'
'What happened after that beating?'
'I walked the streets telling myself it was all over. There could be no going back.'
'But you already knew how difficult it would be for you to split from Ines,' said Falcon. 'So did it occur to you then… that little joke you had with Marisa about the 'bourgeois solution' to complicated divorce?'
'Yes, it did. Not quite in that way. I was in a rage. I just wanted to get rid of Ines.'
'And what? Fall into the arms of Marisa?'
'No,' he said, shaking his head.
'Why did you give Ines the most savage beating of all for badmouthing a woman you didn't care about?'
'In calling Marisa the whore with the cigar, Ines had pointed out to me what I thought of her,' said Calderon. 'Marisa was an artist, but that never interested me. Throughout our relationship I treated her like a whore. Much of our sex was like that. And Marisa despised me. In fact, looking back on it, she hated me. And, I have to admit, my behaviour was loathsome.'
'So, what are you saying about Ines and Marisa now?'
'You know when you came to see me last I told you that Alicia had accused me of hating women. Me? Esteban Calderon. The greatest lover of women in the Edificio de los Juzgados? Yes, well, that's what I found out: I treated Marisa like a whore and Ines worse than a dog. And that's what I've been finding hard to face up to.'
Falcon nodded, stared at the floor.
'The first real glimmer of the truth that I could remember, one that really shook me to the core, was when I regained consciousness after my faint to find Ines dead in the kitchen. That was when I saw the damage from my earlier beatings and it was what made me panic, because I knew my evident abuse of her would make me the prime suspect in her murder,' said Calderon. 'Whenever I'd recalled that night I'd always concentrated on my lack of intent to murder her.'
'Because that would be your defence in court,' said Falcon.
'Exactly, but what came back to me during my sessions with Alicia was, having come into the apartment, seen the light on in the kitchen and been annoyed at the possibility of another confrontation and wished her gone from my life, I then saw her lying there in that vast pool of her own blood. That was when it came to me that I might as well have killed her. To see her there, in such hideously bright light, was like being confronted with the image of my own guilt. I fainted at the thought and sight of it.' In the early evening Falcon went to the Jefatura. The whole squad was in the office. The atmosphere was upbeat. They'd had two very successful days. Serrano put a cold beer in his hand.
'Guess what?' said Ramirez. 'Elvira wants to see you.'
'You'd think this guy doesn't have my phone number,' said Falcon.
'He's going to reinstate you.'
'I doubt it.'
'First of all, Spinola,' said Ramirez. 'Tell him, Emilio.'
'We went through his apartment and found seventy-eight grams of cocaine, forty grams of heroin and a hundred and fifty grams of cannabis resin,' said Perez.
'So he's a drug user,' said Falcon, shrugging.
'And… copies of all the rival bids in the Isla de la Cartuja development.'
'Which have also been found in the possession of Antonio Ramos, Horizonte's head of construction,' finished Ramirez.
'That was lucky,' said Falcon, nodding, taking a pull of the beer.
'The Juez Decano appointed the instructing judge, who was present throughout the search of the apartment, and he's totally accepted our findings.'
'What about Margarita?' Falcon asked Ferrera.
'She's in hospital in Malaga,' she said. 'She'd been given a very severe beating by one of Leonid Revnik's men when they found that Vasili Lukyanov had gone to Seville.'
'Was she his girlfriend?'
'Not exactly. She was special to him, that's all she would admit, but she was in very bad shape. They're going to call me when she's recovered enough to talk properly. Broken jaw, left arm and two cracked ribs.'
'El Pulmon?'
'He's identified Sokolov. We're in discussion over the knifing and the illegal firearm.'
'And what are they going to do to Mark Flowers?'
'They're not going to press charges for killing Yuri Donstov, but he's finished here in Seville,' said Ramirez. 'They're putting him on a plane back to the States, and he'll face a disciplinary hearing there.'
'And the big question for me,' said Falcon. 'What about Cortland Fallenbach? Was he involved in the original conspiracy?'
'They've taken away his passport,' said Ramirez, 'and he's got a team of lawyers fighting to get it back. I don't know. Without Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito around, that might be a difficult thing to prove.'
The phone rang. Baena took it, held the phone to his chest.
'Guess what?'
'All right,' said Falcon. 'I'm going up there. Tell him I just wanted to see the most important people first. Great work everybody.'
Comisario Elvira didn't keep him waiting. His secretary offered him coffee. This almost never happened.
'I'm writing the press release,' said Elvira.
'What's that for?'
