wanted him to encourage her husband, with whom he'd only ever had a professional relationship, to go and see a shrink.

'What do you think, Javier?'

'I think it's none of my business,' he said firmly.

'I still want to know what you think,' she said, her eyes huge in her head.

'You'll never persuade Esteban-or any man, for that matter-to go to a shrink or a marriage-guidance counsellor, unless he himself perceives that there is a problem,' said Falcon. 'And most men, in these situations, rarely see that the problem is theirs.'

'He's been whoring around in this marriage since…since before we got married,' she said. 'He must see that he needs to change.'

'The only thing that will change him is a major trauma in his life, which might make him reflect on his… insatiable needs,' said Falcon. 'Unfortunately, it might also mean that those close to him now will not remain so…'

'I stuck with him through his last crisis with the American bitch and I'll stick with him through this,' she said. 'I know he loves me.'

'That was my experience,' said Falcon, holding out his hands and realizing that he'd just told Ines why she wasn't a part of his life any more. 'My problem didn't happen to be womanizing, though.'

'No, it wasn't, was it? You were so cold, Javier,' she said.

That tone of false concern set his teeth on edge, but the doorbell rang, saving him from having to dig deeper into his reserves of patience. He walked her to the door.

'You're popular tonight,' said Ines.

'I don't know what people see in me,' said Falcon, braking hard on the irony.

'We don't see so much of each other these days,' she said, kissing him before he opened the door. 'I'm sorry…if we don't see each other again…'

'Again?' said Falcon, and the doorbell rang once more.

'I'm sorry,' she said. At 9.30 p.m. Calderon had arrived at Marisa's apartment. Twenty minutes later they lay naked and sexsmeared on the floor by the sofa. They were drinking Cuba Libres chock full of ice, and smoking their way through a packet of Marlboro Lights. She straddled him and brushed her hardened nipples against his lips, while lowering her pubis until it just tickled the tip of his exhausted penis. He filled his hands with her buttocks and bit her nipple a little too hard.

'Ai!' she yelped, pushing away from him. 'Haven't you eaten?'

'There hasn't been much time for eating,' he said.

'Why don't I make you some pasta?' she said, standing over him, still in her heels, legs astride, hands on hips, cigarette dangling from her plump lips.

I'm Helmut Newton, thought Calderon.

'Sounds good,' he said.

She put on a turquoise silk robe and went into the kitchen. Calderon sipped his drink, smoked, looked out into the dense, warm night, and thought: This is all right.

'Something strange happened to me today,' said Marisa, from the kitchen, knife working over some onion and garlic. 'I sold a couple of my pieces to one of my dealers. He pays cash and I like to treat myself to a nice cigar-a real one, made in Havana. I sit under the palm trees in the Murillo Gardens to smoke it, because it reminds me of home and it was really hot today, the first heat of the summer. And I'd just got myself into a really cool Cuban mood…'

Marisa could tell from the back of Calderon's head that he was barely listening to her.

'…when this woman sat down in front of me. A beautiful woman. Very slim, long dark hair, beautiful big eyes…Maybe a little too thin, now that I think about it. Her eyes were so big and she was staring at me in this very strange way.'

She had his attention now. His head was as still as rock.

'I like to smoke my cigars in peace. I don't like mad people looking at me. So I asked her what she was staring at. She told me she was looking at the whore with the cigar-la puta con el puro. Well, nobody calls me a whore, and nobody ruins a top-quality Havana cigar. So I gave her a piece of my mind-and you know what?'

Calderon took a viciously long drag of his cigarette.

'You know what she said to me?'

'What?' said Calderon, as if a long way off.

'She said: 'You're the whore who's fucking my husband.' She asked me how much you were paying me and said that it didn't look as if it was more than € 15 a night and that you'd probably thrown in the copper wig and the cigar to keep me happy. Can you tell me how the fuck Ines knows who I am?'

Calderon stood up. He was so angry he couldn't speak. His lips were pale and his genitals were shrivelled back into their pubic nest as if his rage had taken all available blood to keep it stoked. He was clenching and unclenching his fist and staring off into the night, with bone-snapping violence ricocheting around his head. Marisa had seen this trait in physically unimpressive men before. The big, muscly guys had nothing to prove, whereas the fat, the puny and the stupid had big lessons to hand out.

When she heard the shower running, Marisa stopped preparing the food. Calderon dressed in ominous silence. She asked him what he was doing, why he was leaving. He whipped his tie up into a tight choleric knot.

'Nobody talks to you like that,' he said, and left. Ines stopped to look in a hand-painted tile shop on Calle Bailen. She felt better after seeing Javier. She'd persuaded herself, in the short walk after their brief encounter, that Javier still cared for her. How sweet of him to ask her if she was thinking of leaving Esteban. He still lived in hope after all these years. It was sad to have to disappoint him.

The darkness under the huge trees of the Plaza del Museo held the murmur of more young people, the chinking of beer bottles and the reek of marijuana. She walked through them feeling more cheerful. The light was on in the apartment, which elated her. Esteban was home. He had come back to her. They were going to repair the damage. She was sure, after what had happened this morning, that he would see reason and she could persuade him to make an appointment with a psychologist.

The stairs no longer inspired dread and although the pain in her side meant that she didn't exactly sprint up them, she reached the door with a lightness of heart. Her hair swung on her shoulders as she closed the door. She instantly felt his looming presence. A smile was already spreading on her face when he sheafed her hair and turned it once around his wrist. She toppled backwards, falling to her knees, and he brought her face up close to the pallor of the pure hatred in his own.

18

Seville-Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 22.05 hrs

Mark Flowers had already eaten. His American digestive system had never got used to the Spanish custom of not even thinking about dinner until 9.30 p.m. He turned down Falcon's offers of beer and manzanilla and opted for a single malt whisky. Falcon wolfed down a quickly made sandwich in the kitchen and stuck with the manzanilla. It was still very warm and they sat out under the open sky of the patio.

'So what did 'your own' people want to talk to you about?' asked Flowers, always a man to get his questions in first.

'They're trying to persuade me to go into the recruitment business for them.'

'And will you do it?'

'I've got until 6 a.m. to decide.'

'Well, it was nice of them to wait until you had nothing on your plate,' said Flowers, who was always determined to show him that not all Americans had undergone an irony bypass. 'I don't know who they want you to recruit, but if he's a friend he might not stay a friend. That's the way these things work, in my experience.'

'Why's that?'

'People react strangely to being asked to become a spy. It calls into question your prior relationship: Did he become my friend just to recruit me? It also implies moral duplicity. You, as the recruiter, have a singular purpose,

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