ate, he saw himself appear on the news, answering that last question put to him by the journalist at the press conference. They showed his answer in its entirety. The waiter recognized him and wouldn't take money for the food and instead sloshed more wine into his white porcelain dish.
Out in the street he was suddenly exhausted. The hours of adrenaline-filled work had caught up. He bought a pringa-a spicy, meat-filled roll-and ate it on the way home. He fell into bed and dreamed of Francisco Falcon, back in this house, knocking down a wall to reveal a secret chamber. It woke him in the intense dark of his bedroom, with his heart pounding in his ears. He knew that he would not sleep for at least two hours after that.
Downstairs he flicked through the endless satellite channels, looking for a movie, anything that would quieten down his brain activity. He knew why he was awake: he'd heard himself on the news making that promise to the people of Seville. He still had Hammad and Saoudi on his mind. The hexogen they'd stored in the ruined house outside El Saucejo. The great deal of 'reorganization' that 'the disruption' of the bomb had caused to the GICM's plan.
The TV screen was filled with the face-off between two colossal armies in some recent swords-and-sandals epic. He'd seen it before and it had made no lasting impression on him apart from the designer's vision of what the wooden horse would have looked like if the Greeks had built it, as he supposed they had, out of broken-up triremes. He had to wait for more than an hour for the horse to be given its roll-on part and, as he lay on the sofa, drifting along with the plot, he wondered at the power of myth. How an idea, even one with faulty wiring in the logic, could worm its way into the psyche of the Western world. Why did the Trojans drag the damn thing inside their city walls? Why, after all they'd been through, weren't they in the least bit suspicious?
Just as he'd reached the point of wondering whether there would ever be a generation of kids that didn't know about the wooden horse, the beast hove into view on the screen. The sight of it triggered something in his brain and all the random thoughts, notes and jottings of the past five days came together, jolting him off the sofa and into his study.
43
Seville-Sunday, 11th June 2006, 08.00 hrs
The Hotel Alfonso XIII was, in terms of size, probably Seville's grandest place to stay. It had been built to impress for the 1929 Expo and had a mock mudejar interior, with geometric tiles and Arabic arches, around a central patio. It was dark in the reception and the strong scent of the lilies in the huge flower arrangement struck a funereal note.
The manager arrived a few minutes after eight. Falcon had dragged him out of bed. He was shown into the office. The manager glanced at the police ID as if he saw them every day.
'I thought it was a heart attack,' he said. 'We get plenty of those.'
'No, nothing like that,' said Falcon.
'I know you. You're investigating the bomb,' said the manager. 'I saw you on the news. What can I do for you? We haven't got any Moroccan clients here.'
People saw the news, thought Falcon, but they only listened to what they wanted to hear.
'I don't know exactly what I'm looking for. It could be a block-booking for a minimum of four rooms made by some foreign tourists, possibly French, maybe from Paris. The booking would have been made for El Rocio,' said Falcon. 'It could possibly be for more rooms, but the crucial thing is that they would have four-wheel-drive cars, driven down from Northern Europe rather than hired locally.'
The manager spent time at his keyboard, shaking his head as he entered variations on Falcon's data.
'Around the time of El Rocio I've got large tour groups in coaches,' he said. 'But there's nothing in the smaller block-bookings of between four and eight rooms.'
There were roadworks where the metro was being built outside the Hotel Alfonso XIII and Falcon decided that this was not the sort of place they'd stay in. He'd had a look at the Porsche Cayenne on the internet, and he reckoned that the owner of a car like that would be looking for exclusivity. Somehow the Alfonso XIII's grandeur made it passe. It was a conservative person's hotel.
He tried the Hotel Imperial. It was hidden away down a quiet street and overlooked the gardens of the Casa Pilatos. He had no luck there either. His epiphany of last night was beginning to take on the luridness of an early- morning idea that looked absurd in the cold light of day.
The first indication that his creative instincts hadn't gone completely awry was at a boutique hotel where the receptionist remembered a woman from London, calling in March, asking for four rooms before and after El Rocio with parking for four vehicles. The hotel had no parking and only two rooms for the dates she'd wanted. The woman had asked to hold those rooms for twenty-four hours to see if she could find another two elsewhere. The receptionist showed an email from a UK company, which had arrived after the call, from a woman called Mouna Chedadi making the booking on behalf of Amanda Turner. Falcon was certain that he'd found what he was looking for.
He started working his way through a list of local hotels, asking for a booking made by Amanda Turner. Thirty- five minutes later, he was sitting in the manager's office of the Hotel Las Casas de la Juderia.
'She was lucky,' he said. 'A group had just cancelled ten minutes before she called and she got her four deluxe suites together.'
'What about their cars?' asked Falcon, giving him Mouna Chedadi's name to make the search through the hotel email database.
'They had four cars,' said the manager. 'And I see here, she was asking if they could leave them in the hotel while they went on the pilgrimage to El Rocio.'
'Did you let them?'
'The garage isn't big enough to hold four cars for people who aren't current clients of the hotel at that time of year. They were told that there were plenty of car parks in Seville where they could leave them.'
'Any idea what they did with their cars?'
The manager called the receptionist and asked her to bring in the hotel registration forms for the four rooms. She confirmed that the eight people had arrived in taxis from wherever they'd parked their cars.
'They stayed here on 31st May,' said the manager, 'and left the following day to go on the pilgrimage. They came back on 5th June and left again on 8th June.'
'I remember they were going to Granada for a night,' said the receptionist.
'They came back here on 9th June and left…have they left yet?'
'They paid their bill last night and left at seven thirty this morning, when the garage opened.'
'So they did leave their cars here when they came back from Granada?' said Falcon. 'Do you know the models?'
'Only the registration numbers.'
'What do they give as their professions?'
'Fund managers, all four of them.'
'Did they leave any mobile phone numbers?'
Falcon asked for photocopies of the forms. He went outside and phoned Gregorio, gave him the four UK registration numbers and asked him to find which models they belonged to. Back in the hotel he asked to speak to the bar staff who'd been on duty the night before. He knew what English people were like.
The bar staff remembered the group. They tipped very well, like Americans rather than English people. The men drank beer and the women drank manzanilla, and then gin and tonics. None of the bar staff knew enough English to understand anything of their conversation. They remembered a man who'd had a short exchange with them and then left soon after and there was another couple, some other foreigners, who'd joined them for drinks. They'd all gone out for dinner afterwards.
The other couple were identified as Dutch, and were called down to reception. Falcon worked on identifying the lone man who'd had a brief chat with the group before leaving. The bar staff said he looked Spanish and spoke with a Castellano, rather than Andaluz, accent. The receptionist remembered him and said that he'd paid his bill last night as well. She dug out his registration form. He'd given a Spanish name and ID card. He'd arrived on 6th June and had parked a car in the hotel garage as well. Falcon asked them to scan the ID and registration form, paste it
