of rum was strong, its sweetness mixed in with the hashish.
'Come in, little nun, come in. I'm not going to bite you.'
Marisa walked extravagantly to the work bench, swivelled and landed heavily on a stool. She swayed backwards and managed to sweep up a glass of Cuba libre and sipped it with distaste. It was warm and sticky. She licked her lips.
'What you looking at?' she asked, her face weak and evil by turns.
'You.'
Marisa posed with her legs spread, ran a finger under the waistband of her briefs.
'Fancy a bit of that?' she asked. 'Bet you had to do a bit of that in nun school, or whatever they call it.'
'Shut up, Marisa,' said Cristina. 'I'll make some coffee.'
'Your boss,' said Marisa, adopting a mock sexualized tone, 'the Inspector Jefe – he knows why he sent you here. He thinks I'm into that. Hates men, loves -'
Marisa stopped dead as Cristina lashed her across the face with her open palm. It knocked her off the stool. She dropped the joint, hunted for it among the wood shavings, replugged it into her mouth, got to her feet blinking, tears streaking her cheeks. Cristina made the coffee, forced her to drink water, got her into a T-shirt and a robe.
'No amount of alcohol or dope is going to stop you thinking about what you've got on your mind, Marisa.'
'How the fuck do you know what I've got on my mind?'
Cristina got up close, grabbed hold of Marisa's chin, made those lazy eyes pop open. She took the joint from her fingers, crushed it underfoot.
'Every time the Inspector Jefe has come to see you he's taken a threatening phone call afterwards from the same people holding Margarita,' she said. 'He got a call last night. They told him something bad was going to happen. And this morning the Inspector Jefe's partner is in the Nervion Plaza, and what happens, Marisa? Are you listening to me?'
She nodded, Cristina was hurting her.
'They kidnapped her son. Eight years old. They led him off, stuffed him in the back of a car,' said Cristina. 'So now, because you won't talk to us, an innocent child is suffering. And you know what these people are like, don't you, Marisa?'
Marisa jerked her head back, tore her chin out of Cristina's grip, paced the floor with her arms over her head, trying to close it all out.
'Eight-year-old little boy,' said Cristina. 'And you know what they said, Marisa? They said that we would never hear from them again. So, because you won't talk, the little boy's gone and we will never get him back. Not unless you -'
Marisa stamped her foot, clenched her fists, looked up to an unseen, uncaring God.
'That's the point, little nun,' she said. 'They'd do anything, these people. You know, they have guys who don't care one way or the other. A girl, a baby, an eight-year-old boy – it doesn't make any difference to them. And if I speak to you, if I say one word…'
'We can protect you. I can have a patrol car around here -'
'You can protect me,' said Marisa. 'You can put me in a concrete bunker for the rest of my life and that would give them pleasure because they would know that all I'd think about would be Margarita and the terrible things they would do to her. That is how these people operate. Why do you think they've got her anyway? An innocent teenager.'
'I'm listening, Marisa.'
'When my father died, he had a debt on his club in Gijon. My mother scraped together money from wherever she could to pay them. Then she got ill. They took Margarita to clear the debt,' said Marisa. 'But you see, we didn't really owe them money. They had my father's club. They had made money out of him all his life, even when he was on the Sugar Board in Cuba. But then they saw some helpless women and they invented a debt, an unrepayable debt. My sister will whore for them until she's finished. And when she's dried out and gaping from the drugs and the endless fucking, they'll kick her out on to the street and let her live in the gutter. To them, livestock has more value.'
12
Flight London/Seville – Saturday, 16th September 2006, 20.15 hrs
He hadn't been able to respond. He'd waited for those words all this time and when they'd come he couldn't say them back. Why not? Because the words that had so comforted her and elicited those heavily guarded and locked-away sentiments had come from the office of Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon. He'd said those words to hundreds of people staring down the empty luge run that opened up when they learned that somebody close to them had been murdered. It had been taught to him by a retired Norwegian detective at the police academy back in the 1980s. When Per Aarvik had told them that the luge run was unavoidable for those closest to the victim, he'd had to start by describing what a luge run was. Its icy insanity sounded terrifying to a class of Spanish twenty- year-olds. And, as Per Aarvik said, everybody went through it, but if you wanted someone to be of use to you in your investigation you had to focus their mind, steady their nerve, point them in the right direction and, by the time you let them go, make them believe that you would be with them to the end. If you said it right, if you believed in it yourself, they would love you as they would close family.
Consuelo loved him for the course he'd done at the police academy. Per would have been proud.
Clear the mind. This is avoidance thinking. He could see what was happening to him. The stress of the flight had been terrible, even though, with the plane full, they'd had to put him in business class. He'd sipped a whisky and water, gnawed on his thumbnail and writhed deeper into his luxurious seat at the thought of Dario in the hands of strangers. She would know as soon as she looked into his face that he was guilty, that he was the cause of her most loved son's abduction.
If he told her she would not forgive him.
If he didn't tell her she would never forgive him.
There was only hope in the first course of action.
And he'd have to find the boy.
He called Cristina Ferrera as he trotted through the arrivals hall at Seville airport. It was 10.35 p.m., he'd lost an hour to the time difference. Ferrera had stayed with Marisa for two hours and the Cuban hadn't cracked. She'd walked her home, given her some aspirin and put her to bed. Marisa hadn't even been prepared to confirm that it was the Russians who'd taken her sister and who were putting her under such extreme pressure not to talk. She wouldn't admit to knowing Vasili Lukyanov. She wouldn't talk about the purpose of her relationship with Calderon. She'd never got drunk enough to forget her fear.
'You took her home,' said Falcon. 'That's good.'
'I think I'm all she's got.'
'What are you doing tonight?'
'I'm going to bed so that I can get up tomorrow to take the kids to the beach on the way down to Cadiz for lunch with my mother.'
'Of course you are.'
'And you?'
'I thought I'd do the first shift on a twenty-four-hour surveillance of Marisa Moreno.'
'For which you have no budget,' said Ferrera. 'What about Consuelo?'
'I don't think she'll want to see me for very long.'
'You're going to tell her?'
'The alternative is not an option.'
'I'll go and sit outside Marisa's apartment. Relieve me when you can.'
'What about the kids?'
'My neighbour's good for a few hours, but I'm not going to be able to get to Marisa's immediately,' she said. 'I haven't eaten.'
