with you.'
Silence from Consuelo.
'I could ask my sister, I suppose,' she said.
'It's very important,' said Aguado. 'I think you've realized the extreme vulnerability of your state, so I would recommend that you confine yourself to home, work and my consulting room.'
'Can you just explain that to me?'
'Not now over the phone, face to face this evening,' she said. 'Remember, come straight to me. You must resist all temptations to any diversion, however strong the urge.' Manuela Falcon sat in Angel's big comfortable chair in front of the television. She was now incapable of movement, with not even the strength to reach for the remote and shut down the screen, which was transferring the horror images directly to her mind. The police were evacuating El Corte Ingles in the Plaza del Duque after four reports of suspicious packages on different floors of the department store. Two sniffer dogs and their handlers arrived to patrol the building. The image cut to a deserted crossroads in the heart of the city, with shoes scattered over the cobbles and people running towards the Plaza Nueva. Manuela felt pale, with just the minimum quantity of blood circulating around her head and face to maintain basic oxygenation and brain function. Her extremities were freezing, despite the open door to the terrace and the temperature outside steadily rising.
The telephone had rung once since Angel had left for the ABC offices where he hoped to put his finger to the thready pulse of a convulsing city. She'd had the strength then to answer it. Her lawyer had asked whether she'd seen the television and then told her that the Sevillana buyer had pulled out with an excuse about her 'black' money not being ready and that she would have to postpone the signing of the deed.
'That's not going to stop her from losing her deposit,' said Manuela, still able to raise some aggression.
'Have you been listening to what Canal Sur have been reporting?' said the lawyer. 'They've found a van with traces of a military explosive in the back. The editor of the ABC in Madrid was sent a letter from al-Qaeda saying that they would not rest until Andalucia was back in the Islamic fold. There's some security expert saying that this is the start of a major terrorist campaign and there'll be more attacks in the coming days.'
'Fucking hell,' said Manuela, jamming a cigarette into her mouth, lighting it.
'So that 20,000 deposit your buyer might lose is looking like a cheap way out for her.'
'What about the German's lawyer, has he called yet?'
'Not yet, but he's going to.'
Manuela had clicked off the phone and let it fall in her lap. She smoked on automatic with great fervour, and the nicotine surge enabled her to call Angel, whose mobile was off. They couldn't find him in the ABC offices, which sounded like the trading floor in the first minutes of a black day for the markets. Her lawyer called again.
'The German has pulled out. I've called the notary's office and all deed signings have been cancelled for the day. There's been an announcement on the TV and radio, the Jefe Superior de la Policia and the chief of the emergency services have told us to only use mobile phones if absolutely necessary.' The workshop was in a courtyard up an old alleyway with massive grey cobbles, off Calle Bustos Tavera. Marisa Moreno had rented it purely because of this alleyway. On bright sunny days, such as this one, the light in the courtyard was so intense that nothing could be discerned from within the darkness of the twenty-five-metre alleyway. The cobbles were like pewter ingots and drew her on. Her attraction to this alleyway was that it coincided with her vision of death. Its arched interior was not pretty, with crappy walls, a collection of fuse boxes and electric cables running over crumbling whitewashed plaster. But that was the point. It was a transference from this messy, material world to the cleansing white light beyond. There was, however, disappointment in the courtyard, to find that paradise was a broken-down collection of shabby workshops and storage houses, with peeling paint, wrought-iron grilles and rusted axles.
It was only a five-minute walk from her apartment on Calle Hiniesta to her workshop, which was another reason she'd rented somewhere too big for her needs. She occupied the first floor, accessed via an iron staircase to the side. It had a huge window overlooking the courtyard, which gave light and great heat in the summer. Marisa liked to sweat; that was the Cuban in her. She often worked in bikini briefs and liked the way the wood chips from her carving stuck to her skin.
That morning she'd left her apartment and taken a coffee in one of the bars on Calle Vergara. The bar was unusually packed, with all heads turned to the television. She ordered her cafe con leche, drank it and left, refusing all attempts by the locals to involve her in any debate. She had no interest in politics, she didn't believe in the Catholic Church or any other organized religion, and, as far as she was concerned, terrorism only mattered if you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In the studio she worked on staining two carvings and polishing another two, ready for delivery. By midday she had them rolled in bubblewrap and was down in the courtyard waiting for a taxi.
A young Mexican dealer, who had a gallery in the centre on Calle Zaragoza, had bought the two pieces. He was part Aztec, and Marisa had had an affair with him a few months before she'd met Esteban Calderon. He still bought every carving she made and paid cash on delivery every time. To see them greet each other you might have thought they were still seeing each other, but it was more of a blood understanding, his Aztec and her African.
Esteban Calderon knew nothing of this. He'd never seen her workshop. She didn't have any of her work in her apartment. He knew she carved wood, but she made it sound as if it was in the past. That was the way she wanted it. She hated listening to Westerners talking about art. They didn't seem to grasp that appreciation was the other way around: let the piece talk to you.
Marisa dropped off her two finished pieces and took her money. She went to a tobacconist and bought herself a Cuban cigar-a Churchill from the Romeo y Julieta brand. She walked past the Archivo de las Indias and the Alcazar. The tourists were not quite as numerous as usual, but still there, and seemingly oblivious to the bomb which had gone off on the other side of the city, proving her point that terrorism only mattered if it directly affected you.
She walked through the Barrio Santa Cruz and into the Murillo Gardens to indulge in her after-sales ritual. She sat on a park bench, unscrewed the aluminium cap of the cylinder and let the cigar fall into her palm. She smoked it under the palm trees, imagining herself back in Havana. Ines had pulled herself together after fifteen minutes weeping. Her stomach couldn't take it any more. The tensing of her abdominals was agony. She had crawled to the shower, pulled off her nightdress and slumped in the tray, keeping her burning scalp out from under the fine needles of water.
After another quarter of an hour she had been able to stand, although not straight because of the pain in her side. She dressed in a dark suit with a high-collared cream blouse and put on heavy make-up. There was no bruising to disguise but she needed a full mask to get through the morning. She found some aspirin, which took the edge off the pain so that she could walk without being creased over to one side. Normally she would walk to work, but that was out of the question this morning and she took a taxi. That was the first she knew of the bomb. The radio was full of it. The driver talked non-stop. She sat in the back, silent behind her dark glasses until the driver, unnerved by her lack of response, asked if she was ill. She told him she had a lot on her mind. That was enough. At least he knew she was hearing him. He went into a long soliloquy about terrorism, how the only cure for this disease was to get rid of the lot of them.
'Who?' asked Ines.
'Muslims, Africans, Arabs…the whole lot. Get shot of them all. Spain should be for the Spanish,' he said. 'What we need now are the old Catholic kings. They understood the need to be pure. They knew what they had to do…'
'So you're including the Jews in this mass exile?' she asked.
'No, no, no que no, the Jews are all right. It's these Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians. They're all fanatics. They can't control their religious fervour. What are they doing, blowing up an apartment block? What does that prove?'
'It proves how powerful indiscriminate terror can be,' she said, feeling her whole chest about to burst open. 'We're no longer safe in our own homes.'
The Palacio de Justicia was frantic as usual. She slowly went up to her office on the second floor, which she shared with two other fiscales, state prosecutors. She was determined not to show the pain each step unleashed in her side. Having wanted to wear the badge of his violence, she now wanted to disguise her agony.
The mask of her make-up got her through the first excited minutes with her colleagues, who were full of the latest rumour and theory, with hardly a fact between them. Nobody associated Ines with emotional wreckage so they glided over the surface and went back to their work unaware of her state.
