'You'll recognize it?' she repeated. 'And what did you think they meant by that at the time?'
'I don't know that I did think about it that much,' said Falcon. 'It was just another threatening phone call. I'd had several.'
'You'd been somewhere that night.'
'Madrid. On the train. I had a call on the AVE telling me to keep my nose out of other people's business.'
'What was the business you were going to do in Madrid?'
'Yes,' he said slowly. 'Police business and… other business.'
'The same business you were on when you went to London and Dario was abducted?'
'Exactly that,' said Falcon. 'I thought the call I received on the AVE was because I was pushing Marisa Moreno to talk to me. So when I got back to Seville I went to see her again before I went to meet you, just so that she knew I wasn't scared by the calls. I even told her I'd be waiting for a call from her people. So when I got that call just as I came into the Plaza San Lorenzo I didn't think about it. My brain made the automatic connection back to Marisa.'
'But they weren't Marisa's people.'
'And by going to London I disobeyed their instructions to keep my nose out of their business.'
'And who are they?'
'I'm not quite sure,' said Falcon. 'Let me use your mobile.'
'But do you know why Dario was taken?'
'I think,' said Falcon, punching out a text to Yacoub, 'that it was done so that my attention would be diverted elsewhere.'
'You're saying things without saying anything, Javier.'
'Because I can't,' he said and sent the text.
Need to talk. Call me. J.
'But you think you know who took Dario?' asked Consuelo.
'I'm not precisely sure who would have done the job, but I know the group who ordered it.'
'And they are?' said Consuelo, grabbing his head, turning it towards her. 'You don't want to tell me, do you, Javier? What could be worse than the Russian mafia?'
'This time I'm going to get my intelligence right,' said Falcon. 'I'm not making the same mistake twice.' Crawling along Avenida Kansas City looking for a public phone. The heat oppressive. Falcon alone now. The text back from Yacoub had told him that he was in a hotel in Marbella and gave the telephone number of a Spanish mobile to use. Falcon gave up looking, went to the railway station.
'What are you doing in Marbella?' asked Falcon.
'Business. I mean, clothes,' said Yacoub. 'It's a small fashion show, but I always pick up a lot of work for the factory here.'
'Is Abdullah with you?'
'No, I left him in London. He's going back to Rabat,' said Yacoub. 'Why all the questions?'
'There's been a development. We need to talk face to face.'
'I don't know whether I can get all the way to Seville,' said Yacoub. 'That's three hours in the car.'
'How about half way?'
'I'm on the road to Malaga now.'
'Could you get to Osuna?' asked Falcon. 'That's about a hundred and fifty kilometres from Malaga.'
'When?'
'I'll call you with a time. I haven't been into the office yet.' As he was leaving the station he picked up a message from Mark Flowers asking for a meeting in the usual place. Falcon was desperate to get to the office, but the river was on the way.
Ten minutes later he parked by the bullring, crossed the Paseo Cristobal Colon and trotted down the steps to their bench. Flowers was waiting.
'I haven't got much time,' said Falcon.
'Nor have I,' said Flowers. 'These Russians holding the boy…'
'What are you looking at them for?'
'I thought you wanted to find Consuelo's kid?'
'Right,' said Falcon, needing to think about Flowers's relationship to this before he told him anything important. 'A lot on my plate, Mark. Long nights.'
'I need some help.'
'Does that mean you've been given permission to help me?'
'I don't always need permission,' said Flowers.
Falcon briefed him on the power struggle between Leonid Revnik and Yuri Donstov, only giving him as much detail as Pablo of the CNI had told him and not touching on any of the developments of last night. He couldn't afford to have that knowledge swimming around in Flowers's head.
'And you don't know which group has the boy?'
'Either or neither,' said Falcon.
'But the threatening phone calls were about what exactly?'
'Initially they wanted me to stop investigating Marisa Moreno and thereby make a connection through her to them and the Seville bombing,' said Falcon. 'But then they identified me at the scene of Vasili Lukyanov's accident and saw an opportunity to get their disks back.'
'Which would allow them to pressurize I4IT and Horizonte in whatever business they're doing,' said Flowers. 'So why neither? You said: 'Either or neither'.'
'The threatening phone calls are unidentifiable. I've been guessing that it's the Russians, but it could just as easily be something to do with… other things.'
'Yacoub, you mean?' said Flowers immediately. 'And you've heard nothing since the kidnap?'
'One of the calls said I would never hear from them again.'
'Can you get me copies of these disks?'
'What for?'
'You, as an inspector jefe, can't be seen to be negotiating with criminal gangs, but there's nothing to stop me in my line of work.'
'Is this your profound moral certitude coming out again?' asked Falcon.
'I wish I'd never said that.'
'The disks are evidence.'
'Just copies, Javier. Copies.'
'You want me to start making copies of certified evidence in a busy Jefatura?'
'It's dead in there at lunchtime,' said Flowers. 'If you want me to find the boy, you've got to give me the tools.'
'I'll see what I can do,' said Javier, who was feeling a strong desire to get away from Flowers, something smelling very bad about his request. It was 1.30 p.m. by the time he got to the Jefatura. Cristina Ferrera was alone in the office. He told her he'd heard from Ramirez about Carlos Puerta and asked if there'd been any developments on the various murders.
'We picked up some further sightings of El Pulmon after he left his vehicle yesterday afternoon,' said Ferrera. 'He bought a bottle of water on Avenida Ramon y Cajal and was seen washing himself off in the street. He was spotted again, still stripped to the waist, running down Calle Enramadilla. The last sighting was in the bus station in the Plaza San Sebastian.'
'That sounds as if he was getting out of town.'
'They're still working the bus station, but at some point he must have got a T-shirt because we're not picking up any more sightings of someone stripped to the waist.'
He got her to check the arrival time of the I4IT private jet in Seville and went down to the computer room. No natural light. Banks of computers. Young faces lit by grey light coming from the screens. The Inspector Jefe told him that they'd been working on the disks since eight thirty that morning. At eleven thirty they'd brought in a couple of mathematicians from the university. By midday they were in touch with Interpol to see if they'd cracked any Russian mafia codes recently. They hadn't heard anything back.
'How urgent is this?' asked the IT chief.
