His torch beam travelled back.
Is that carved from wood? The creases of toil and age meticulously etched.
Falcon leaned in, slapped the light switch. Two horror flashes, two mind gasps, the brain needing two attempts to transform the black and white to full Technicolor. Then solid, unwavering, penetrative, buzzing neon to show the full extent of the abattoir.
The blood had achieved terminal viscosity about half a metre from the door. It wasn't a carving. It was a human foot lying on its side, sole straining against the encroaching tide. Marisa's body was stretched out on the work bench. The caramel of her mulatto skin now the only part of the picture that was grey. Her handless arm hung down straight as a drainpipe to the pool of blood. She had no head. The only detail which distinguished the meat as human were the bikini briefs, which were soaked through. The monster which had perpetrated this butchery was propped up on some blocks of wood further along the work bench. The meat hook where it had hung, empty above it. The teeth of its chain were clogged with gore. Next to it stood the final horror. The carving of the two men on either side of the young girl, who now had a head. Eyes closed. Face slack. Coppery hair matted with blood. Marisa: part of her own work.
The smell wafted out to them. The metal of Marisa's blood. The cess of her guts. The sulphur of her incipient rot. And on the back of this foetor came her terror, wriggling like a live worm in the brain, touching all the atavistic points, twitching up the old fears of the unstoppable agony with only one possible exit. Falcon turned away with the slaughterhouse image burned into his mind. The sweat stood off his face in beads. The saliva thickened to an eggy slop in his mouth. He sucked in the black night air, thick as bitumen.
'Don't look,' he said.
Too late. Ferrera had already seen enough for her to lose another rasher of her faith. It had taken her off at the knees. She slumped on the stairs, holding on to the banister, panting under her thin cotton blouse, which now had the weight of a trench coat. The torch hung slack on a loop of cord from her wrist, its light wavered over the weeds and junk beneath them. She stared, mouth gaping, until the torch light was completely still and only then did she regain her footing in the world.
The sweat stung Falcon's eyes as he called the communications centre in the Jefatura and gave his report. He hung up, wiped his face with his hand and flung it out into the darkness. He lowered himself down on to the top step, reached out to Cristina Ferrera and squeezed her shoulder, as much to comfort himself that there were still good people in this world. She rested her face on his hand.
'We're all right,' she said.
'Are we?' said Falcon, because he was already thinking that the people who had done this were the same people who'd taken Dario. The courtyard was frozen under the portable halogen. Falcon sat, listing to one side, on a broken chair. The suited forensics did their work, moving to and fro before him with their evidence bags and cases. Anibal Parrado, the instructing judge, stood by looking down on the bristle-cut head of the Inspector Jefe. He spoke to his secretary in a low murmur. Falcon's eyelids were heavy and his vision kept closing in on him. Ramirez came through the archway from Calle Bustos Tavera carrying a black plastic bin liner.
'We found this in some rubbish bins round the corner, just off Calle Gerona,' he said, 'which probably means that the forensics aren't going to find very much up there.'
Still with latex gloves on, he pulled out a white paper suit covered in dramatic slashes of blood, which had already dried to a reddish brown.
'Match the blood to Marisa's first,' said Falcon, on automatic. 'Then send them down to the lab… get what we can from the inside.'
'Go home, Javier,' said Ramirez. 'Get some sleep.'
'You're right,' he said. 'I need more than sleep.'
Ramirez called up a patrol car, stuck Falcon in the back, told the driver and his partner to see the Inspector Jefe all the way up to his bed.
Falcon woke momentarily, hanging like a drunkard between the two men's shoulders halfway up the stairs in his home. Then more oblivion. The only place to be. Nikita Sokolov had arrived at eleven o'clock, told Marisa to get down to the street, said they were going for a little walk. She felt like hell. Not used to alcohol. Her stomach was sore and belching up Cuba libre, which filled the cavities of her face with the old sticky stink. She puked in the toilet, brushed her teeth. Slumped in the lift. Through the bars of the front door she saw his cigarette glowing from where he was leaning against the back wall of the church. Small, wide, dark, horribly muscular and hairy with very pale white skin. He revolted her. They avoided the drinkers outside the bars. He steered her by the elbow to the studio. She stumbled over the cobbles in the darkness of the archway, was nauseated by the shakiness of the metal stairway up to her studio. She unlocked the door, slapped on the light. Two flashes to bring her work to life. She sat on the stool, too weak to stand. He stood in the doorway, asked his questions. His polo shirt was stretched tight over the muscles in his chest and shoulders. Dark patches under his armpits. Hair sprouted from the open collar of his shirt. Colossal quadriceps shrugged under his trousers. She'd been told Nikita Sokolov was a weightlifter before he got into slapping girls around.
She told him about the visits from the police. The questions. The stuff about the little boy. What did they tell you about the little boy? He wanted to hear what they knew. Everything. She spoke. Her arms, with nothing in them, hung by her sides. She couldn't seem to satisfy him. She couldn't seem to find enough detail to make him believe her. He told her to strip. He went out on the landing to flick a cigarette into the courtyard. Pulling off her T- shirt, dropping her skirt left her exhausted. She was still wearing the bikini briefs. She could smell herself. It wasn't nice.
The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. He blocked the doorway again and stepped quickly aside to let two men into the room. Panic seized her throat as she saw their white suits and hoods, their masked faces, blue latex gloves. He nodded to her from the doorway – or was it to them? She had nothing in her legs now. One of the men reached for the chain saw, unhooked it, checked its teeth and the chain oil. He knew the work. Her tongue rattled in her head, mouth dry as parchment. More questions about what she had told them. Her answers no more than the clucks of a chicken beaking around in the dust. More nodding from the doorway. The one with the chain saw unravelled the flex, plugged it in, flicked off the safety, ran the motor for a second. The noise went through to her spine, left her stomach quivering. The other paper suit came for her. Turned her. Stretched her arm out on the work bench, viced her head so that she had to watch. The chain a blur coming down on her thin wrist. Had she given any names? Nothing came out of her throat. She tried to shake her head. The chain trembled above her skin. She felt the arousal of the man holding her. She lost control of her bladder. No answer would save her now. She shut her eyes, wished she'd talked to the little nun. Shoes off. Sweat in his shirt. Falcon came awake as if he'd been defibrillated back into the world. He hurt. All the mental anguish had found its way into his muscles and skeleton. Time? Just after midday. He showered. No clarity from the cascade, just vacillation between the two colossal problems which had landed on his shoulders in the last twenty-four hours. He dressed in fresh clothes. The patrolmen had taken the mobiles out of his pockets and turned them off so that he wouldn't be disturbed. He sat on the edge of the bed and played them over each other in his hand. Action for the day of rest? There was nothing to be done about Yacoub's situation. He'd entered into a pact. Silence was the only game. Breakfast. Think about how to find Dario. Resist the intrusion of all images of Marisa's terrible end.
Sitting at a table underneath the gallery was Pablo from the CNI. He had an empty coffee cup in front of him. Falcon had never seen him out of a suit. He looked younger, more approachable, in his dark green polo shirt and white chinos, although the scar running from his hairline to his left eyebrow demanded that he always be taken seriously. Out of his work clothes, Falcon could also see that the man was athletic, and that his body hadn't been sculpted out of vanity but by repeated physical demands.
'How did you get in?' asked Falcon, as they shook hands.
'The patrolman at the door,' said Pablo. 'It took a direct order from Comisario Elvira. You're under protection now, it seems.'
'From who?'
'The Russians, I'd have thought.'
'What do you know about the Russians?'
'After you asked me to look at those unidentified guys from the mafioso's disks we had a talk with our old friends at the Organized Crime Intelligence Centre in Madrid,' said Pablo.
'Another coffee?'
Pablo shook his head.
