'Consuelo refused to see me or speak to me. She cut me out of her life.'
'Not unlike what Raul had tried to do with Arturo,' said Juan.
'If you like.'
Juan took a pickled garlic and bit into it with a light crunch.
'I realized that the only way I'd be able to see her again under the right circumstances, rather than as a mad stalker, was to do something extraordinary. I knew that if I found Arturo she would have to see me again. It was the way we had connected in the first place and I knew it would stir something in her.'
'And did it work?' asked Juan, fascinated by Falcon's torment.
16
Seville-Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 20.45 hrs
A warm breeze made a circuit of the patio and stirred up a large, dead and dried-out plant in a far dark corner of the cloister.
'I think it would be better to approach this chronologically,' said Pablo. 'Why don't you tell us how you found Arturo Jimenez?'
The rustle and rattle of the plant's dead leaves had drawn Falcon's gaze to its desiccated corner. He had to get rid of that plant.
'Because my search for Arturo was motivated by this hope for reconciliation with Consuelo, I imagined it as a sort of quest. It was a little more straightforward than that. I was lucky to have some help,' said Falcon. 'I went to Fes with a member of my new Moroccan family. He found a guide who took us to Abdullah Diouri's house deep in the medina. Apart from a magnificently carved door, the house looked like nothing from the outside. But the door opened into a paradise of patios, pools and miniature gardens, which had been allowed to decay from some greater former glory. There were tiles missing and cracked paving and the latticework around the gallery was broken in places. The servant who let us in told us that Abdullah Diouri had died some twenty years ago but that his memory lived on, as he had been a great and kind man.
'We asked to speak to any of the sons, but he told us that only women lived in this house. The sons had dispersed throughout Morocco and the Middle East. So we asked if one of the women would be willing to speak to us about this delicate matter that had occurred some forty years ago. He took our names and left. He returned after quarter of an hour and told my Moroccan relative to stay at the door while he took me on a long trip through the house. We ended up on the first floor, with a view through some repaired latticework on to a garden below. He left me there and after a while I realized that there was somebody else in the room. A woman dressed in black, her face totally veiled, pointed me to a seat and I told her my story.
'Fortunately I'd talked to my Moroccan family about what I was intending to do, so I knew I had to be very careful about how I related this story. It had to be from the Moroccan perspective.'
'What did that entail?' asked Juan.
'That Raul Jimenez had to be the villain of the piece and Abdullah Diouri the saviour of the family honour. If I sullied the name of the patriarch in any way, if I made him out to be a criminal, a kidnapper of children, I would get nowhere. It was good advice. The woman listened to me in silence, still as a statue under a black dustsheet. At the end of my story a gloved hand came out of her robe and dropped a card on to a low table between us. Then she got up and left. On the card was printed an address in Rabat with a telephone number and the name Yacoub Diouri. A few minutes later the servant came back and returned me to the front door.'
'Well, not quite the Holy Grail,' said Juan, 'but worthy of something.'
'Moroccans love mystery,' said Falcon. 'Abdullah Diouri was a very devout Muslim and Yacoub later told me that the Fes household was kept in that state in honour of the great man. None of the sons could stand the place, which was why it was so run down, and it had been given over exclusively to the women of the family.'
'So you had an address in Rabat…' said Pablo.
'I stayed the night in Meknes and called Yacoub from there. He already knew who I was and what I wanted, and we agreed to meet in his house in Rabat the next day. As you probably know, he lives in a huge modern place, built in the Arab style, in the embassy zone on the edge of the city. There must be two hectares of land with an orange grove, gardens, tennis courts, swimming pools-a small palace. He has liveried servants, rose petals in the fountains-that kind of thing. I was taken to a huge room overlooking one of the swimming pools, with cream leather sofas all around. I was given some mint tea and left to stew for half an hour until Yacoub turned up.'
'Did he look like Raul?'
'I'd seen shots of Raul when he was a younger man in Tangier and less battered by life. There were similarities, but Yacoub is a different animal altogether. Raul's wealth never managed to get rid of the Andaluz peasant, whereas Yacoub is a very sophisticated individual, well-read in Spanish, French and English. He speaks German, too. His business demands it. He makes clothes for all the major manufacturers in Europe. He's got Dior and Adolfo Dominguez on his client list. Yacoub was a cheetah to Raul's gnarled old lion.'
'So how did that first meeting go?' asked Pablo.
'We hit it off immediately, which doesn't happen to me very often,' said Falcon. 'These days I seem to find it hard to get on with people of my own class and background, while I seem to have a talent for engaging with misfits.'
'Why's that?' asked Juan.
'I suppose living with my own horrors has given me the ability to understand the complexities of others, or, at least, not to take things at face value,' said Falcon. 'Whatever, Yacoub and I became friends in that first meeting, and, although we don't see very much of each other, we still are. In fact, he called me last night to say he wanted to meet in Madrid at the weekend.'
'Did Yacoub know your story?'
'He'd read it in the press at the time of the Francisco Falcon scandal. It was big news over there that the famous Falcon nudes were actually painted by the Moroccan artist, Tariq Chefchaouni.'
'I'm surprised some journalist hadn't tried to track him down before,' said Pablo.
'They had,' said Falcon. 'But they didn't get any further than the outside of Abdullah Diouri's house in Fes.'
'You said Yacoub was a misfit,' said Gregorio. 'He doesn't sound like one. Successful businessman, married, two children, devout Muslim. He seems to fit in perfectly.'
'Well, that's how it looks from the outside, but from the moment I first met him I knew he was restless,' said Falcon. 'He was happy with where he was and yet he felt he didn't belong there. He'd been torn away from his own family and yet Abdullah Diouri had made him a part of his and given him the family name. His real father had never come to search for him and yet he was treated no differently to Diouri's own sons. He told me once that he didn't just respect his kidnapper, Abdullah Diouri, he loved him as a father. But despite this acceptance from his new family, he never lost that terrible feeling of having been abandoned by his own. That's what I call a misfit.'
'You say he's married,' said Pablo. 'How many wives does he have?'
'Just the one.'
'Isn't that unusual for a man such as Yacoub Diouri?' asked Juan.
'Why don't you just ask your question to my face instead of wheedling-'
'Because we're interested in the extent of your relationship with Yacoub. If he's told you intimate details about himself, then that has meaning for us,' said Juan.
'Yacoub Diouri is homosexual,' said Falcon, wearily. 'His marriage is something that is expected of him by his society. It is part of his duty as a good Muslim to take a wife and have children, but his sexual interest is exclusively with men. And before you let your prurient interest get carried away, I mean men, not boys.'
'Why do you think that detail should be important to us?' asked Juan.
'You're spies, and I just wanted you to know that his homosexuality is not an area of vulnerability.'
'Why are we questioning you about Yacoub Diouri?' asked Juan.
'First I'd like to know how Yacoub came to tell you he was homosexual,' said Pablo.
'Sorry to disappoint you, Pablo, but he didn't make a pass at me,' said Falcon. 'How did you find out about him?'
'There's a lot of cooperation between the intelligence services these days,' said Juan. 'Prominent, devout and
