paedophile ring…'
'We haven't discussed that yet.'
'It's just names in an address book. Some of them are crossed out. There's no meat, Javier. There aren't even skeletons in here, they're just phantasms.'
'There you go again.'
'You know the meat I'm looking for and I'm not letting you launch a full murder investigation until I get it,' said Calderon. 'We'll reconvene for a case update early next week and if you still can't bring me anything that stands up in court then we'll have to move along.'
Calderon sat back, lit another cigarette – the man smoking more than Javier could remember – and became lost in his own thoughts.
'You wanted to see me alone,' said Javier, just to nudge Calderon out of his groove.
'Apart from not wanting Inspector Ramirez thumping me into submission -'
'He's more subdued these days,' said Falcon. 'His daughter's undergoing tests in the hospital.'
'Nothing serious, I hope,' said Calderon, on automatic, the news shooting past him while his mind wrestled with his own predicament. 'I didn't know that you and Ines were still in contact.'
'We're not,' said Falcon, who then gave an absurdly elaborate explanation of how he came to be in El Cairo with her.
'Ines seemed very nervous,' said Calderon.
'Look what happened the last time she got married,' said Falcon, opening his hands, opting to look ridiculous. 'She seemed to be worried that you were having doubts. I -'
'Why would she think I was having doubts?' asked Calderon, and Falcon felt the diamond bits of the judge's drilling mind cut into him.
'She thought you seemed nervous, too.'
'And what did you say to that?'
'That it was quite natural for a man to feel nervous under these circumstances. I myself had felt the same nervousness,' said Falcon. 'And nervousness is easily misinterpreted as doubt.'
'Did you doubt?' asked Calderon.
'I never doubted her,' said Falcon, the sweat streaming down his back.
'That wasn't the question, Javier.'
'I probably did doubt. In retrospect I was probably afraid of change, of my incapacity…'
'For what?'
Falcon's chair creaked as he writhed on the skewer of the judge's questions.
'I was a different man then, more distant,' said Falcon. 'That's why I go to the shrink.'
'And now?'
With that last light inquiry, Calderon's cycle was complete. Falcon was almost grateful to receive the implicit warning that he should keep his nose out of the judge's private life.
'It's a long haul,' he said.
Falcon sat at his desk replaying the dialogue. He was relieved that he hadn't brought up the internet downloads about Maddy Krugman. That might have turned Calderon savage. The judge knew that Falcon had seen something. But under their delicate personal circumstances Falcon couldn't start talking about Maddy's involvement in the FBI inquiry until he was certain of the facts. He pitied the two lives he saw on their way to destruction as he dialled his lawyer, Isabel Cano.
She agreed to see him for a maximum of ten minutes. He drove to her small office on Calle Julio Cesar and made his way past the three law students in the outer office. She greeted him in her bare feet. He sat down and laid out his proposal to her for cutting a deal with Manuela.
'Are you out of your mind, Javier?'
'Not always,' he said.
'You now want to give her everything we've been fighting over for the last six months. You're prepared to take a loss of, God knows, half a million euros. Why don't we throw in the contents as well?'
'That's not a bad idea,' said Falcon.
She leaned over the desk at him, long black hair, dark brown, almost black eyes, a beautiful, fierce and haughty Moorish look that could wither most of the fiscales in the courts at a hundred metres.
'Is that shrink still tinkering about in your head?'
'Yes.'
'Has there been a change in medication?'
'No.'
'You're still taking the drugs?'
He nodded.
'Well, I don't know what's going on in there, but it must be very loud,' she said.
'I don't want to live in that house any more. I don't want to live with Francisco Falcon. Manuela does. She's obsessed by the place… but she doesn't have the money.'
'Then she can't have it, Javier.'
'Just think about it.'
'I've thought about it and rejected it – instantly.'
'Think some more.'
'That's your ten minutes,' said Isabel, putting on her shoes. 'Walk me to my car.'
The law students fired questions at her as she strode through the office. She ignored them all. Her heels cracked across the marble foyer.
'I've got another question for you,' said Falcon.
'Let's hope it's cheaper than the last,' she said, 'or you won't be able to afford me.'
'Do you know Juez Calderon?'
'Of course I do, Javier,' she said, stopping dead in the street so Falcon knocked into her. 'Ah, now I get it. You're emotionally distraught about him and Ines. Let's forget this meeting ever happened and when you're calm we'll -'
'I'm not that emotionally distraught.'
'So what is it about Juez Calderon?'
'Does he have a reputation?'
'As long as your arm… longer than your leg… longer than this street.'
'I mean… with women.'
Falcon, who was staring eagerly into her face, saw all her fierceness disappear to be replaced by a vast hurt, which surfaced like a harpooned whale and disappeared. She turned away and pointed her keys at her car, whose lights flashed back.
'Esteban has always been a hunter,' she said.
She got in the car and pulled away, leaving Falcon on the pavement thinking that Isabel Cano had been happily married for more than ten years.
Chapter 12
On the way to Ortega's house he took a call from Jorge, who told him that the paper used for the Ines print was of a different make and quality to the blank stock he'd given him. The news momentarily elated him until he realized that this proof of his sanity must also mean that someone had got into his home and planted the photo. Not only that, they also knew about him and his particular vulnerability. His blood felt sharp in his veins but he calmed his paranoia with the thought that everybody knew about him. Since the Francisco Falcon scandal his story was public property.
