She quietened.
‘She always becomes agitated at the sight of blood,’ he explained.
The Moroccan’s name was Ahmed. He had a degree in psychology from Casablanca University. His good nature and openness iced over visibly when Falcon showed him his police ID.
‘But what are you doing
Falcon looked down on Marta’s salt-and-pepper head, the white pad over her eyebrow, and an immense sadness broke inside his chest. Here was the real casualty of the Jimenez story.
‘Does she understand anything of what we say?’ he asked.
‘It depends,’ he said. ‘If you talked about C-A-T-S, she might react.’
‘What about A-R-T-U-R-O?’
Ahmed’s face settled into a bland wariness, which Falcon had seen before in immigrants under police questioning. The blandness was to minimize any irritation in the officer, the wariness to combat intrusive questioning. It was an attitude that might have worked with Moroccan police, but it annoyed Falcon.
‘Her father has been murdered,’ he said quietly.
Marta coughed once, twice and the third was followed by a stream of vomit, which pooled in her lap and dripped to the floor.
‘She’s in shock from her fall,’ said Ahmed, and moved away.
Falcon sat on the bed, his face level with Marta’s. Vomit clung to some hairs on her chin. She was panting and not looking at him. Her hand still held the locket. Ahmed returned with new clothes and cleaning equipment on a trolley. He screened Marta off. Falcon sat across the room to wait. Under her bed was a small, padlocked metal trunk.
The screens were pulled back and Marta reappeared in new clothes. Falcon walked with Ahmed as he pushed his trolley.
‘Have you ever talked to her about Arturo?’
‘It’s not my job. I’m qualified, but only in my own country. Here I am a nurse. Only the doctor talks to her about Arturo.’
‘Have you been present?’
‘I have not been in attendance, but I have been there.’
‘What’s her reaction to the name?’
Ahmed performed his cleaning tasks on automatic.
‘She becomes very upset. She brings her fingers to her mouth and makes a noise, a kind of desperate pleading noise.’
‘Does she articulate anything?’
‘She is not articulate.’
‘But you spend more time with her, maybe you understand her better than the doctor.’
‘She says: “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my fault.”’
‘Do you know who Arturo is?’
‘I haven’t seen her case notes and nobody has seen fit to inform me.’
‘Who is her doctor?’
‘Dra Azucena Cuevas. She is on holiday until next week.’
‘What about the kitten? Wasn’t it you who brought in the kitten and she started …?’
‘There are no cats allowed on the ward.’
‘The locket round her neck, and the key — is that the key to the trunk under her bed? Do you know what she keeps in there?’
‘These people don’t have very much, Inspector Jefe. If I see something private, I leave it for them. It’s all they have apart from … life. And it’s amazing how long you survive if that is all you have.’
That was Ahmed. A perfectly intelligent, reasonable and caring individual, but not an expansive one, not in front of authority. He had irritated Falcon. He tried to picture him as the blackness ripped past the window of the AVE, just as he had done Jose Manuel Jimenez, whose tormented features were pin-sharp in his mind. He failed because Ahmed had done what all immigrants seek to do. He’d blended in. He didn’t stand out. He’d merged with his drab, grey surroundings and disappeared into modern Spanish society.
The trickle of these thoughts stopped as he found that the transparent reflection of the woman opposite was returning his look. He enjoyed this: to stare at his leisure as if he was doing nothing more than admiring the hurtling night. The flickering of sex started up in him. He had been celibate since Ines had left. Their sex had been nearly riotous in the early days. It made him pull at his collar to even think of it. Eating outside on the patio and Ines suddenly coming round to his side of the table and straddling him, tugging at his trousers, pushing his hands up her dress. Where had all that gone? How had marriage snuffed that out so quickly? By the end she wouldn’t let him look at her dressing. ‘You have no heart, Javier Falcon.’ What was she talking about? Did he watch blue movies? Did he fuck prostitutes while watching blue movies? Would he stamp out the existence of his own child? And yet … Raul Jimenez still had, yes, the comfort of a beautiful woman. Consuelo, his consolation.
The woman opposite was no longer meeting his eye in the glass. He turned to her real face. There was a small horror there, a minor pity as if she’d perceived the complications of a mid-forties man and wanted none of it. She
