such an oppressive and potentially volatile atmosphere, with everybody staring at the phone, willing it to ring. She didn't want them to see her hope and despair, the possible joy and the probable disappointment. Despite Alicia's call, she knew her emotions would be uncontrollable because she still felt exposed.
Upstairs she had a small study next to her bedroom – a chair, a desk, a laptop, nothing more. Alicia Aguado had encouraged her to pass the time writing her thoughts and feelings down, to get them out of herself where they could be seen. She closed the blinds and sat there in the dim light, tried to purge her brain of all the unimportant white noise. She booted up the computer and was automatically linked to the internet. She saw she had new mail. This address was different to the one in the restaurant and it was one only used by her family and close friends. There was one new message sent today at 14.00 entitled 'Dario'. Just seeing the name made her heart lift and her stomach cold. The sender was someone called Manolo Gordo. She knew no one of that name. Her hand trembled as she opened it. If you want to see your son again call 655147982. Do not tell the police. Do not try to record the call. Use your mobile outside the house. Delete this email – it will not help you find your son.
She read it over and over. Not many people knew this email address, but her sons did. It gave her hope. An excitement gripped her. Contact had been made. She looked over her shoulder as if she should be hiding this from someone. She put the email in her 'spam' folder, closed down the computer and thought about how she was going to make this call. 'Inspector Jefe Tirado is waiting for you outside,' said Baena.
Falcon trotted down the stairs, being careful to avoid the yellow-circled blood drips. There was no shade outside and they had to stand in the stink of piss and rubbish in the stairwell.
'Who's this guy Carlos Puerta?' asked Falcon.
'He's the one who assaulted Senora Jimenez near the Plaza del Pumarejo back in June and was seen later snooping around her house by Senora Jimenez's sister,' said Tirado. 'I spent the morning tracking him down. His friends in the Plaza del Pumarejo told me he was a junkie, so I asked the Narcs to help me out.'
'Do you mind if I listen in?'
'No problem,' said Tirado, who beckoned to the Narc. 'He doesn't look much now, does he? But he's got a good voice. As soon as I saw him I recognized him. Five years ago he cut an album, made some money, got fucked up, failed an audition with Eva Hierbabuena to go to London. And this is the state he's in now.'
The officer pushed Carlos Puerta towards the apartment block. He shuffled forward with little, jittery steps like a comic actor. His shoulder-length hair had seen neither water nor brush for a good six weeks. It was book-thick, matted and coated in dust from the wrecked building where he'd been found. He had a problem with his left arm, which looked wasted, the hand swollen. His T-shirt had white stencilling, which had faded into the oblivion of the background material. Falcon could just make out that it was from the Flamenco Biennale of 2004.
'He was with a woman,' said Tirado. 'She was so emaciated the Narcs called an ambulance for her.'
Tirado introduced himself and Falcon. Puerta's lean, pockmarked face was a mass of tics. He begged for a cigarette. They found him one, sat him down on a couple of breeze-blocks.
'You recognize this woman?' asked Tirado, holding a shot of Consuelo in front of his face.
Puerta peered from under black eyebrows angled sharply into his nose. An eyelid fluttered at the smoke trickling up his face. He shook his head.
'You know her name, Carlos.'
'I don't think so,' said Puerta, who touched his chest and wheezed a laugh. 'Not my type.'
'You also know where she lives.'
'All the people I know live in Las Tres Mil, and she doesn't look like any of them,' said Puerta. 'Not with those earrings, that necklace, that hair and make-up. If she appeared like that in my world, she'd get picked clean.'
'You met her in the Plaza del Pumarejo,' said Tirado. 'She runs a restaurant near there. You know it.'
'I don't eat in restaurants.'
'You also know about her husband, Raul Jimenez. He was murdered.'
'I know a few people who've been killed. Some more who've overdosed, but I can't remember their names. Did he run a record label?'
'We've got witnesses who said you assaulted Consuelo Jimenez one night last June in a street just off the Plaza del Pumarejo.'
'What sort of witnesses?' asked Puerta, dredging up some derision. 'If you're talking about those cretins in the Plaza, they'd tell you anything for a litre of Don Simon.'
'We've got another witness. Not a cretin. This woman's sister, who saw you snooping around Consuelo Jimenez's house in Santa Clara the day after you assaulted her,' said Tirado. 'If you can tell me what that was all about I won't take you down to the Jefatura and stick you in a cell until your last fix wears off.'
'I'm not sure what you mean,' he said, listening intently.
'Senora Jimenez doesn't want to press charges for the assault or for trespassing,' said Tirado. 'But if you've had anything to do with the abduction of her eight-year-old son…'
That got his full attention. His head started shaking, not in denial, but with some sort of heroin-induced tremor.
'I'm a junkie,' he said. 'So I recognize vulnerable people and I try to get money out of them. I knew that woman and her story. She's famous, been all over the news. I'd seen her around. I thought there was something unstable about her. Then she turned up in the Plaza del Pumarejo one night a bit dazed, possibly drunk, and I bummed some money off her.'
'What were you doing around her house the day after?'
'Looking for her again, see if I could get something more out of her,' said Puerta. 'That's what junkies are like. And I can tell you that I haven't seen her since.'
'Why didn't you keep after her?' asked Tirado.
'It's a long way out to Santa Clara and I found some money closer to home.'
Tirado and Falcon moved away from him to confer.
'I think he's telling the truth,' said Tirado. 'It fits with what I've heard from Senora Jimenez and her sister… more or less. She told me she was depressed at the time, and her sister said she started therapy soon after. And neither of them have seen him since. I'll get one of my guys to show his photo around Senora Jimenez's neighbours, just to make sure.'
'Do you mind if I talk to him now?' said Falcon. 'See what he knows about this killing upstairs?'
Tirado clapped him on the shoulder, went back to his car. Falcon found another cigarette and went back to Puerta, who smiled to reveal teeth with a brown scum line.
'Is El Pulmon your dealer?' asked Falcon, handing him the new cigarette.
'Yes, and my friend.'
'You know what happened up there?'
Puerta shook his head, pawed at a spasm in his cheek.
'Someone shot his girlfriend.'
'Julia?' said Puerta, who looked up with brilliant green eyes, gone weak as slime.
'Shot her in the face.'
Puerta seemed to have difficulty swallowing. The hand with the cigarette trembled to his mouth. He coughed. Smoke came out in rags. He hunched over, rested his forehead on his good hand and sobbed himself silent. Falcon patted him on the shoulder.
'Why don't you tell me what you saw,' he said, 'and then we can get the guy who shot Julia before he shoots your friend.' 'So now we're sure there's a Russian mafia ingredient,' said Anibal Parrado, the instructing judge, pacing the window in El Pulmon's apartment.
'But I've only got the word of a complete wreck of a junkie and not one bit of evidence,' said Falcon. 'Marisa Moreno didn't even tell us that the Russians were holding her sister; we've only surmised that from finding the disk in the possession of Vasili Lukyanov. The Narcs have never seen this Cuban before, don't know about any Russian involvement. I've got nothing to give you that you could use in court – unless we find El Pulmon.'
'So where are you going now?'
'There's nothing more for me to do here,' said Falcon. 'Detectives Serrano and Baena are going to work with Narcotics to find El Pulmon. Sub-Inspector Perez is going to run this investigation. Inspector Ramirez is looking after the Marisa Moreno murder. We should all meet up this evening and compare notes.'
'Where are you going now?'
'I'm looking for people who've had direct contact with the Russians,' said Falcon. 'Marisa Moreno is dead. It's
