Falcon blinked. She told him about the email and the call she'd made from the bottom of next-door's garden.
'And we have no record of this conversation,' said Falcon.
She handed him two sheets of A4 with the transcript of the dialogue as best she could remember it.
'I was not calm when I made that call,' she said. 'I realize now that I was stupid. I reacted in a state of excitement and panic, which was how they expected me to react.'
Falcon nodded, read the transcript several times.
'Talk to me, Javier,' she said, unable to bear the silence any longer. 'Tell me what you make of it. Ask me questions. Every detail, from the top.'
'When did this happen?' he asked.
'The email was timed two p.m., but I didn't see it until after four, then I had to charge the phone and open an account. I made the call at around five.'
'Five hours ago,' he said.
'I didn't want to call you. You can see how complicated it is,' she said. 'I only wanted to do this face to face. I've been waiting outside for the American to leave.'
'Tell me about the voice,' said Falcon. 'Was there only one voice?'
'The first voice was foreign. I don't know what Spanish sounds like spoken by a Russian, but I'm certain it was a foreigner. All he said was Diga and Momentito, but I could tell.'
'So the second voice was the one you had this conversation with, and he was Spanish.'
'Yes, definitely Spanish-speaking, but not from Spain. I'd say South American.'
'Or Cuban?' said Falcon. 'A lot of Cubans still speak Russian.'
'That must be it. I wasn't listening to the finer points of accent. I was concentrating on what he was saying and his tone. He was quite gentle with me. The second time he asked whether I knew why Dario had been kidnapped, he put it a different way.'
'He said: 'Do you understand why your son has been taken from you?'' said Falcon.
'He said it like a doctor who wanted to explain the necessity of Dario's quarantine. As if he had a contagious disease and it was better for him. It made me very emotional.'
'The next bit about…'
'That's about you, isn't it?' she said. 'I was angry and, I can't deny it, Javier, I still am.'
'Just remember, Consuelo, that I am your friend,' said Falcon. 'Whatever this has done to us, I am still your friend. I want to get Dario back as much as you do. I did not kidnap him and it's not me threatening him with harm, and I will do everything I can to bring him back safely.'
'That's why I said, it's our enemies who've brought us together this time,' said Consuelo. 'I only understood that by working on the transcript.'
'They are trying to do something very tricky here. They want to remind you that I am responsible for all this – not them,' said Falcon. 'But they also need me to be your friend because they know that what you're asking of me is very difficult.'
'I realize that they want me to corrupt you,' said Consuelo. 'They believe that by holding my son they will have reduced me to their own moral level and that I will make you my friend, or even my lover, in order to corrupt you for my own purposes.'
'You don't need to talk me through this, Consuelo.'
'I do. I need you to understand that I know exactly what they're doing,' said Consuelo. 'They're making me a whore, in the hope that I will entice you to corrupt yourself, and I hate them for it. I could kill them for that, let alone taking Dario.'
And in that moment he fell for her all over again. If he'd thought that he loved her in the airport on Saturday he'd been mistaken, because what filled him now was an admiration so complete that he wanted to kiss those lips that had spoken such words.
He knew then that he would do anything for her.
'The one thing that is not established here, and given the stress of the call you were unlikely to think of it, is whether they have Dario or not,' said Falcon.
'You mean I didn't ask for some proof that he was alive?'
'Not exactly. I'm sure that Dario is being held by Russians; we're just not sure which group,' said Falcon.
He explained how Leonid Revnik had taken over the Russian mafia on the Costa del Sol after his predecessor had fled to Dubai and how Yuri Donstov had arrived in Seville. He also laid out his theory of Russian mafia involvement in the Seville bombing.
'But why would the Russians involve themselves in something like that?' asked Consuelo.
'Because they were invited to do so by the conspirators,' said Falcon. 'Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito didn't know how to plant a bomb, they needed men of violence to do it for them. They had access to these people presumably because they were doing some money-laundering for them. The idea was that the Russians would be rewarded in the political fallout after the bombing. It didn't happen. And not only that, their whole criminal organization was put at risk. The Russians did the only thing possible and assassinated the Catholic conspiracy's ringleaders before they could implicate them.'
'And this huge amount of money and the disks?'
'They represent a complication. They came into our hands because of a defection from Revnik to Donstov by a gangster called Vasili Lukyanov,' said Falcon. 'It means that men in both groups were possibly responsible for the Seville bomb and also that both groups will want to get their hands on those disks, because they will give them the leverage they need.'
'What exactly is on those disks?'
'They show powerful people having sex with prostitutes. The most important people on those disks, as far as my investigation is concerned, are the ones who are representatives of the two companies who I think originally initiated the Seville bombing: an American corporation, called I4IT, who own a Spanish holding company in Barcelona, called Horizonte.'
'And those companies are now excluding the Russians because they no longer need, or want, their brand of violence.'
'I have no proof of any of this,' said Falcon. 'All I know is that the original idea behind the Seville bomb was to take political control of the Andalucian state parliament and I can only assume that there would ultimately be economic rewards for those involved. What's happening now is smaller scale. It's just business. I'm not sure what the business is, but it's probably something to do with construction in or around Seville. I think the Russians got their foot in the door with Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito, and they still want their reward for the dirty work they've done.'
'So whichever mafia group holds the disks can exert pressure on I4IT and Horizonte.'
'My guess is that Dario is being held by Yuri Donstov, who was expecting delivery of the disks from Vasili Lukyanov when the car accident put his whole strategy in jeopardy.'
'Does Leonid Revnik know that Lukyanov has disappeared with the disks?'
'We assume so, because Lukyanov's best friend was found shot dead in the woods behind Estepona.'
'So it could just as easily be Revnik holding Dario, trying to get back in the game?'
'If Lukyanov had the foresight to ensure that he had the originals and there were no copies, then yes,' said Falcon.
'If I was him, I'd have made sure of that,' said Consuelo. 'That money and the disks were probably in the same safe and he stole both.'
'Lukyanov ran puti clubs. He controlled the girls. So he was probably responsible for the secret filming of what they did with these men,' said Falcon, tapping the transcript.
'And the money?'
'I'm thinking about that,' said Falcon. 'They're asking for the return of €8.2 million, but Ramirez told me there was only €7.75 million accounted for.'
'Light-fingered Guardia Civil on the motorway?' said Consuelo.
'Or the Russians are lying.'
'Or they don't know. They're guessing.'
Falcon paced slowly around the patio.
