gun in hand. Another head-ringing bang inside the four hard walls of the apartment and the Cuban's rigid body leapt and jerked. El Pulmon forced him backwards on to another spine-rupturing explosion. He dropped his shoulder and shoved the Cuban at the Russian, who grunted under the weight and El Pulmon, still with his blade, was out of the door, down the stairs and on the other side of the garages before he remembered Julia, asleep in the bedroom. There was a taxi waiting in the prison car park, engine running, air-con roaring, cabbie asleep, head thrown back, mouth open. As Falcon went up the path to the prison reception he took a call on his mobile from his old detective friend in Madrid, calling him about the apartment in La Latina where he'd met Yacoub.
'It's not privately owned,' he said. 'The whole block belongs to the Middle East European Investment Corporation, based in Dubai.'
'Was that apartment rented out to anyone?' 'It's one of three in the block that's empty.' Falcon hung up, found Alicia with her serene white face, red lipstick under a jet-black bob, waiting patiently in the reception area. He greeted her. They kissed. She squeezed his shoulder, happy to hear his voice. He told her about her taxi.
'I've been sitting here for twenty minutes,' she said, annoyed. 'What's the matter with these people?'
'He's a taxi driver from Seville,' said Falcon. 'It's their nature.'
'How are you?' she asked.
'Complicated,' he said.
'That seems to be the default setting for people our age,' she said.
Falcon told her that Consuelo's youngest son had been abducted and the effect on their relationship. Alicia was shocked, said she'd call her straight away.
'She must be going crazy.'
'Don't speak to her on my behalf,' said Falcon.
'Of course not.'
He walked her to her cab, the heat cracked down on their heads. He opened the cab door for her, showed the cabbie his police card, pointed at his meter with a long hard stare. The cabbie zeroed it, pulled away. When the guards first brought Calderon into the room made available to them by the prison governor, he looked so shattered Falcon thought he might send him straight back to his cell. The guards got him seated and left the room. Calderon ransacked his pockets for cigarettes, lit up, sucked in a huge drag, swayed in his chair.
'What brings you here, Javier?' he asked.
'Are you all right, Esteban? You look…'
'Bedraggled? Crazy? Fucked up?' said Calderon. 'Take your pick. I'm all of them. You know, I hadn't really understood it before, but there's nowhere to hide in psycho… you wouldn't call it therapy, exactly, would you? It's more like… extraction. Psycho-extraction. Yanking rotten memories from the brain.'
'I just saw Alicia in the car park.'
'She doesn't give much away, that one,' said Calderon. 'I reckon psychoanalysis is no different to poker, except that nobody knows what cards they have. Did she say anything interesting?'
'Nothing about you. She's very discreet. She didn't even tell me why she was here,' said Falcon. 'Maybe you shouldn't look at it as extraction, Esteban. You can't extract memories, nor can you hide from them without consequences. You just illuminate them.'
'Thanks for that, Javier,' said Calderon, dismissively. 'I'll see if that makes it any less painful. Doctora Aguado asked me what I wanted from our sessions. I said I wanted to know if I'd killed Ines. It's interesting. She's no different to a lawyer making a case. She starts with a premise – Esteban Calderon hates women. Me – can you believe it? Then she starts wheedling the usual shit out of me about how I despise my stupid mother and how I fucked up a girlfriend who didn't like my poems.'
'Your poems?'
'I wanted to be a writer, Javier,' he said, holding up his hand. 'It's all a long time ago and I'm not going into it. What are you doing here?'
'We're getting somewhere on Ines's murder,' said Falcon. 'But we've also hit a brick wall.'
'Come on, Javier. Don't talk shit to me.'
'I've been working on Marisa.'
'That sounds like the wet-towel treatment.'
'It probably was something like that for her and she's been getting it from all sides,' said Falcon, and went on to tell him about finding the footage of Margarita, the threatening phone calls and the kidnapping of Dario.
'You keep your inner turmoil better hidden than I do, Javier.'
'Practice,' said Falcon. 'Anyway, I sent Cristina Ferrera to talk to Marisa, and while intoxicated she pretty well admitted that she'd been coerced to start a relationship with you.'
'By whom?'
'The people holding her sister. A Russian mafia group.'
Calderon smoked intensely, staring at the floor.
'What I need to know from you, Esteban, is how you met Marisa,' said Falcon. 'Who effected that introduction?'
Silence for a moment while Calderon leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed.
'She's dead, isn't she?' he said. 'You've come to me because she can't tell you any more.'
'She was murdered last night,' said Falcon. 'I'm sorry, Esteban.'
Calderon leaned across the table, looking up into Falcon's head.
'What are you sorry about, Javier?' he asked, tapping his own chest. 'Are you sorry for me, because you think I loved her and she was just fucking me under orders?'
'I'm sorry because she was a woman in an impossible position, under immense strain, whose only thought was for the safety of her own sister,' said Falcon. 'That's why she didn't talk to us. A singular, but very compelling reason.'
That did something to Calderon's equilibrium. He even wobbled in his chair and had to anchor himself with his hands flat on the table. Emotion rose in his chest. And maybe it was because this conversation had come hard on the heels of his session with Alicia Aguado that he managed to see beyond his own self-interest and realize that sitting before him was a man with a completely different moral centre to his own.
'You've forgiven her, haven't you, Javier?' he said. 'You now know that Marisa was in some way involved in Ines's murder, and yet…'
'It would be very helpful if you could remember who introduced you to Marisa,' said Falcon.
'Does this mean,' said Calderon, blinking back the tears, 'that I didn't do it?'
'It means that Cristina Ferrera thought that Marisa, who was drunk at the time, had been coerced into consorting with you,' said Falcon. 'Marisa never admitted that it was the Russians who'd forced her. We have no signed statement and no recording of the conversation. There's no new evidence. We have, however, lost Marisa. Her words will never be heard. We have to go back to an earlier level of involvement, which means finding out how she met you. Were you introduced?'
Falcon could see quite clearly that Calderon did remember. He was staring at a point above Falcon's head and running his thumbnail up and down between his front teeth, weighing something up; and whatever it was it had weight.
'It was at a garden party at the Duchess of Alba's house,' said Calderon. 'Marisa was introduced to me by my cousin.'
'Your cousin?'
'That is the son of the Juez Decano de Sevilla,' said Calderon. 'Alejandro Spinola. He works in the mayor's office.'
15
Outskirts of Seville – Monday, 18th September 2006, 13.30 hrs
On the way back from the prison, Falcon got the call.
'Two officers from the Narcotics squad in Las Tres Mil just called in a double murder in the apartment of a drug dealer called Roque Barba, also known as El Pulmon,' said the operator. 'A Cuban male called Miguel Estevez found
