The room was lit by a kerosene lamp. The light was a slow, fluid yellow. There was a single bed, metal frame, pushed up against the wall. The windows were shuttered and had a metal bar across them, padlocked. Dario was lying face up, head still under the smothering pillow, bare chest. His right arm lay by his side, his left arm formed a right-angle, fist closed by his head. A sheet lay over his torso, legs awry underneath, the feet sticking out. His right foot was bandaged. There was a dark stain on the sheet where the blood had soaked through.
'Skinny kid,' thought Falcon, pushing himself forward. 'Always on the move.'
Falcon felt for a wrist pulse, but he knew a dead body when he saw one. He set the legs straight, brought the arms down by the boy's side, reorganized the sheet over the body, and that was when he saw it. A large scar, as of a messy appendix operation. He checked under the armpit for the 'strawberry' that Consuelo had talked about, but the light was not good in the room. And for the first time he brought himself to look under the pillow. Even now he peeled it back slowly, flinchingly, as if he was going to see something he didn't want to. The face staring up at him, wide-eyed, purple-lipped was not Dario's.
'Bring me a torch,' he said.
The big Russian came in. Falcon pointed at his belt. He handed the torch over. Falcon shone it in the boy's face. Still not Dario.
'What?' asked the Russian.
'It's not the boy.'
'I don't understand.'
Falcon went out into the night. This time he was angry, almost insanely angry. He called for Consuelo and they released her, lifted her to her feet. She stumbled towards him over the uneven ground. He caught her.
'It's not Dario,' he said. 'Dario is not dead.'
'Who is it?' she asked, utterly confused.
'A dead boy,' said Falcon. 'A nameless, dead boy.'
They ducked in through the doorway, went into the room. Falcon shut the door behind him with his foot. It slammed to. Consuelo knelt by the bed, held on to the boy's arm and shook her head and sobbed as she stared into his inert face.
Falcon undid the bandage on the boy's foot.
'They cut off his toe,' he said, beside himself with rage. 'They cut off the poor boy's toe.'
Consuelo sat on the floor with her back to the bed and started crying, huge racking sobs came up as if from her pelvis, physically lifting her off the clay tiles. It lasted for a few minutes until she got a hold of herself.
'I can't take any of this in,' she said. 'You'll have to explain it to me.'
'They didn't have Dario,' he said. 'They never had Dario. They played a game to see if they could get what they wanted.'
'But Revnik doesn't have Dario either,' said Consuelo. 'We know that. He's told us.'
'That was why Donstov's man called us back,' said Falcon. 'You were right. He was nervous. You'd enraged him by telling him that Revnik claimed to have Dario, which was why he cut off this boy's toe. Then he calmed down. Came back with the incentive just in case you were bluffing him. He had nothing to lose by trying to pretend that he had Dario, and it worked. He brought everything forward, made everybody work under pressure. And there is, of course, the possibility that he still has a friend in Revnik's group.'
'But who's got Dario?' said Consuelo.
'I don't know.'
The sound of a muffled scream came from the other room.
'Take me away from this place,' she said. 'These are hell's people in here.'
They went out into the main room. The Spanish speaker was back.
'What is the problem?' he asked.
'The boy is not her son,' said Falcon. 'We don't know who he is.'
'He must be,' he said, looking at the door.
'I know my own son,' said Consuelo.
'Stay there. Don't move.'
The Spanish speaker went into the room where they were interrogating the Cuban, who was still tied to the chair, but face down on the floor and bloody with a wad of cloth in his mouth. The door shut. Questions in Russian. Muffled screams of pain. Then a dry indiscernible whisper. The door opened.
'He says they never had the boy, they cheat you,' said the Spanish speaker. 'I'm not sure I believe him. Anyway, we work on it. You go now. Wait.'
He reached into his combat trousers, pulled out two disks in their sleeves.
'These are exact replicas of the locked disks numbers 26 and 27, but with different encrypted data. Change these for the originals. They require the same password and encryption software to unlock and unscramble them as the ones you've got in the Jefatura. Bring those originals to us. Now you go. She stays.'
'What?'
'She stays as security,' he said, shrugging. 'We don't have the boy any more.'
'No,' said Falcon. 'I'm not leaving her here. She stays, I stay. You won't get your disks.'
'Wait.'
'You don't need her as security,' said Falcon. 'You know where to find us.'
The Russian went out of the farmhouse. Three minutes. The Cuban's punishment continued. Consuelo had to put her hands over her ears. The front door opened again. The Russian beckoned them out.
'Senor Revnik agrees. Less complicated for us.'
He walked them to the car. The digger worked away in the distance. Consuelo got in the passenger side. The Russian took out a pen torch, slid under the boot of the car, came back out with a small black box in his hand.
'Nearly forgot,' he said. 'Tracking device.'
'You took your time,' said Falcon.
'We had to cover the last three kilometres on foot,' he said. 'But our timing was perfect, no? Not too early so we get nervous and not too late so that you…'
He left it unfinished, said adios, went back to the farmhouse. Falcon joined Consuelo in the lit cockpit of the car. They set off down the track, on to the rough road. They passed a car parked in the long grass, headlights masked with black tape so that only slits were visible. They thumped back up on to the tarmac. Falcon drove hunched over the wheel. He stopped in Castelblanco de los Arroyos, took his police mobile out and ran through the numbers.
'It's a bit too late for the police,' said Consuelo.
'I can't blame you for forgetting that I am supposed to be the police,' said Falcon, still in a rage. 'I've nearly wiped it from my own mind.'
'Who are you calling now?'
'The head of the IT department. He's got to crack the encryption code on those two disks as quickly as possible.'
'Leave it, Javier. It's six in the morning,' said Consuelo. 'You're going to have to do a lot of ugly explaining to some guy you've just woken up and, I can assure you, you'll come out of it badly. Sort it out when you get into the office.'
'What about Revnik? Do you want him after you?'
'I don't care. Let's just go. Revnik will have to learn to be patient. You can delay him somehow. With the disks in police possession, you're in control,' she said. 'I know you want to do something positive after all that horror, but my advice to you now is not to call anybody, because the repercussions will be serious.'
Back in the car, driving through the night. After the tension, a colossal tiredness. He drove with one hand, his arm around Consuelo, her head in his chest. She changed the gears when he needed it. They were silent for some time.
'I know you're angry,' she said.
'I'm angry with myself.'
'I feel as if I've ruined you,' she said.
'I'm not ruined,' he replied, but he thought he probably was.
'I know what that cost you, having to walk away from the dead boy,' she said. 'Because it's cost me, too. They'll bury him in that pit with those people. They'll bury him like a bird that's broken its neck flying into a window.
