'I want you to call me,' said Falcon, giving him his card, 'at any time, day or night, for whatever reason. If you're angry, depressed, violent, lonely or even hungry, I want you to call me.'
'I didn't think you people were supposed to get personally involved.'
'I also want you to tell me if you're ever contacted by a group who call themselves VOMIT, so it's important on two levels that we keep in touch.'
They left the toilet and shook hands outside, where, on the other side of the glass, his daughter's life was readable in green on the screens. Fernando hesitated as he leaned against the door.
'Only one politician spoke to me today,' he said. 'I saw them all parading themselves before the cameras with the victims and their families. This was while they were operating on Lourdes' skull, so I had time to look at their ridiculous antics. Only one person found me.'
'Who was that?'
'Jesus Alarcon,' said Fernando. 'I'd never heard of him before. He's the new leader of Fuerza Andalucia.'
'What did he say to you?'
'He didn't say anything. He listened-and there wasn't a camera in sight.' The sky darkened to purple over the old city like the discoloration around a recent wound that had begun to hurt in earnest. Falcon drove on automatic, his mind buried deep in intractable problems: a bomb explodes, killing, maiming and destroying. What is left after the dust clears and the bodies are taken away is a horrendous social and political confusion, where emotions rise to the surface and, like wind on the susceptible grass of the plain, influence can blow people's minds this way and that, turn them from beer-sippers into chest-thumpers.
The three CNI men were waiting for him outside his house on Calle Bailen. He parked his car in front of the oak doors. They all shook hands and followed him through to the patio, which was looking a little dishevelled these days. Encarnacion, his housekeeper, wasn't as capable as she used to be and Falcon didn't have the money for the renovation required. And anyway, he'd grown to enjoy living in the encroaching shabbiness of his surroundings.
He dragged some chairs out around a marble-topped table on the patio and left the CNI men to listen to the water trickling in the fountain. He came back with cold beers, olives, capers, pickled garlic, crisps, bread, cheese and jamon. They ate and drank and talked about Spain's chances in the World Cup in Germany; always the same-a team full of genius and promise, which was never fulfilled.
'Do you have any idea why we want to talk to you?' asked Pablo, who was more relaxed now, less intensely observant.
'Something to do with my Moroccan connections, so I was told.'
'You're a very interesting man to us,' said Pablo. 'We don't want to hide the fact that we've been looking at you for some time now.'
'I'm not sure that I've got the right mentality for secret work any more. If you'd asked me five years ago, then you might have found the ideal candidate…'
'Who is the ideal candidate?' asked Juan.
'Someone who is already hiding a great deal from the world, from his family, from his wife, and from himself. A few state secrets on top wouldn't be such a burden.'
'We don't want you to be a spy,' said Juan.
'Do you want me to deceive?'
'No, we think deceiving would be a very bad idea under the circumstances.'
'You'll understand better what we want by answering a few questions,' said Pablo, wresting the interview back from his boss.
'Don't make them too difficult,' said Falcon. 'I've had a long day.'
'Tell us how you came to meet Yacoub Diouri.'
'That could take some time,' said Falcon.
'We're not in any hurry,' said Pablo.
And, as if at some prearranged signal, Juan and Gregorio sat back, took out cigarette packs and lit up. It was one of those occasions after a long day, with a little beer and food inside him, that made Falcon wish he was still a smoker.
'I think you probably know that just over five years ago, on 12th April 2001, I ran a murder investigation into the brutal killing of an entrepreneur turned restaurateur called Raul Jimenez.'
'You've got a policeman's memory for dates,' said Juan.
'You'll find that date written in scar tissue on my heart when I'm dead,' said Falcon. 'It's got nothing to do with being a policeman.'
'It had a big impact on your life?' said Pablo.
Falcon took another fortifying gulp of Cruzcampo.
'The whole of Spain knows this story. It was all over the newspapers for weeks,' said Falcon, a little irritated with the knowingness with which the questions had started coming at him.
'We weren't in Spain at the time,' said Juan. 'We've read the files, but it's not the same as hearing it for real.'
'My investigation into Raul Jimenez's past showed that he'd known my father, the artist Francisco Falcon. They'd started a smuggling business together in Tangier during and after the Second World War. It meant they could establish themselves and start families and Francisco Falcon could begin the process of turning himself into an artist.'
'And what about Raul Jimenez?' said Pablo. 'Didn't he meet his wife when she was very young?'
'Raul Jimenez had an unhealthy obsession with young girls,' said Falcon, taking a deep breath, knowing what they were after. 'It wasn't so unusual in those days in Tangier or Andalucia for a girl to get married at thirteen, but in fact her parents made Raul wait until she was seventeen. They had a couple of children, but they were difficult births and the doctor recommended that his wife didn't have any more.
'In the run-up to Moroccan independence in the 1950s, Raul became involved with a businessman called Abdullah Diouri who had a young daughter. Raul had sex with this girl and, I think, even got her pregnant. This would not have been a problem had he done the honourable thing and married the girl. In Muslim society he would have just taken a second wife and that would have been the end of it. As a Catholic, it was impossible. To complicate matters further, despite doctor's orders, his wife became pregnant with their third child.
'In the end Raul took the coward's way out and fled with his family. Abdullah Diouri was incensed when he discovered this and wrote a letter to Francisco Falcon in which he told him of Raul's betrayal and expressed his determination to be avenged, which he achieved five years later.
'The third child, a boy called Arturo, was kidnapped on his way back from school in southern Spain. Raul Jimenez's way of dealing with this terrible loss was to deny the boy's existence. It devastated the family. His wife committed suicide and the children were damaged, one of them beyond repair.'
'Was it that sad story that made you decide to try to find Arturo thirty-seven years after he had disappeared?' asked Pablo.
'As you know, I met Raul's second wife, Consuelo, while investigating his murder. About a year later we started a relationship and during that time we revealed to each other that the one thing that still haunted us about her husband's murder case, and all that surfaced with it, was the disappearance of Arturo. There was still a part of us that imagined the eternally lost six-year-old boy.'
'That was in July 2002,' said Pablo. 'When did you start looking for Arturo?'
'In September of that year,' said Falcon. 'Neither of us could believe that Abdullah Diouri would have killed the child. We thought he would have drawn him into his family in some way.'
'And what was driving you?' asked Juan. 'The lost boy…or something else?'
'I knew very well I was looking for a forty-three-year-old man.'
'Had something happened to your relationship with Consuelo Jimenez in the meantime?' asked Pablo.
'It finished almost as soon as it started, but I'm not going to discuss that with you.'
'Didn't Consuelo Jimenez break off the relationship?' asked Pablo.
'She broke it off,' said Falcon, throwing up his hands, realizing that the whole of the Jefatura knew what had happened. 'She didn't want to get involved.'
'And you were unhappy?'
'I was very unhappy about it.'
'So what was your motive in looking for Arturo?' asked Juan.
