the way back he steadied himself and hopped more carefully over the blood-soaked towel.
He wrapped the tape around her ankles, knees, waist, chest, neck and head. He pocketed the cooking string and tape. He didn't bother to admire his mummified wife, but ran out of the apartment, grabbing his keys and the garage remote as he left. He took the door off the latch. Slapped the fucking light on again-tick, tick, tick, tick, tick- and rumbled down the stairs. He sprinted down Calle San Vicente to the garage, which was just around the corner. He hit the button of the remote as he rounded the bend and the garage door opened, but so slowly he was jumping up and down in towering frustration, swearing and punching at the air. He rolled underneath the quarter-open door and hurtled down the ramp, pressing another button on the remote for the light. He found his car. He hadn't driven the damn thing for weeks. Who needs a car in Seville? Thank fuck I've got a car.
No mistakes. He reversed out calmly, as if suddenly on beta-blockers. He eased up the ramp. The garage door was only just fully open. The car hopped out on to the street, which was deadly quiet. The red digits on the dashboard told him it was 4.37. He pulled up outside the apartment, clicked the button to open the boot. He sprinted upstairs, in the dark this time, fell and cracked his shin such a blow on the top stair that the pain ricocheted up his skeleton to the inside of his skull. He didn't even stop. He unlocked the door, slowed down at the kitchen and stepped over the bloody towel.
Ines. No, not Ines any more. He picked her up. She was absurdly heavy for someone who was less than fifty kilos and had lost at least three kilos of blood. He got her into the corridor, but she was too heavy to cradle-carry her. He hoisted her over his shoulder and closed the apartment door. He stepped carefully down the stairs in the dark again. That fucking tick, tick, tick of the light just too unbearably stressful at this stage. He stuck his head out into the street.
Empty.
Two steps. In the boot. Shut the boot. Close the apartment building door. Wait. Slow down. Think. The tins of paint to weigh down the body. Open the boot. Back under the stairs. Pick up the two cans of paint. As heavy as Ines. Heave them into the boot. Close the boot. In the car. Rear-view mirror. No headlights. Calm. Nice and slow. You're nearly there. This is going to work.
Calderon's car was alone at the traffic lights by the Plaza de Armas, which were showing red. The lights from the dash glowed in his face. He checked the rearview again, saw his eyes. They were pitiful. The lights changed to green. He eased across the six empty lanes and took the ramp down to the river. It was first light. It wasn't quite as dark as he would have liked down by the river. He would have preferred something subterranean, as black as antimatter, as utterly lightless as a collapsed star.
There was still plenty to do. He had to get the body out, attach the cans of paint, and push it into the river. He had a good, long look around until he couldn't believe that everything wasn't moving. He shook the paranoia out of his mind, opened the boot. He lifted the body out and laid it down on the pavement close to the car for cover. He heaved out the cans of paint with superhuman strength. Sweat cascaded. His shirt was stuck to him. His mind closed off. This was the home stretch. Get it done.
He didn't see the man at the back of the bus station, was not aware of him making his fatal call to the police. He worked with savage haste while the man muttered what he was seeing into his mobile phone, along with Calderon's registration number.
With no traffic it took less than a minute for a patrol car to arrive. It had been cruising down by the river less than a kilometre away when the two officers were notified by the communications centre in the Jefatura. The car rolled down the ramp towards the river with its headlights and engine switched off. Only Calderon's car was visible. He was kneeling behind it, taping the second can of paint to Ines's neck. His sweat was dripping on to the hessian sheet. He was finished. All he had to do now was hump close to 100 kilos about a metre across the pavement and then up over a low wall and into the water. He summoned his last reserves of strength. With the two paint cans attached, the body had become incredibly unwieldy. He jammed his hands underneath, not caring about the skin he tore from his fingers and knuckles. He drove forward with his thighs and, with his chest and pelvis close to the floor, he looked like an enormous lizard with some unmanageable prey. Ines's body shifted and thumped into the low wall. He was panting and sobbing. Tears streamed down his face. The pain from his stubbed fingers and torn nails didn't register, but when the headlights of the patrol car finally came on and he found himself encased in light, like an exhibit in the reptile house, he stiffened as if he'd just been shot.
The policemen got out of the patrol car with their weapons drawn. Calderon had yanked his arms out from under the body, rolled over, and was now lying on his back. His stomach convulsed with each racking sob. A lot of the emotion he was coughing up was relief. It was all over. He'd been caught. All that hideous desperation had flowed out of him and now he could relax into infamy and shame.
While one patrolman stood over the sobbing Calderon, the other ran a torch over the taped-up hessian sheet. He put on some latex gloves and squeezed Ines's shoulder just to confirm what he already knew, that this was a body. He went back to the patrol car and radioed the Jefatura.
'This is Alpha-2-0, we're down by the river now, just off the Torneo at the back of the bus station in Plaza de Armas. I can confirm that we have a male in his early forties attempting to dispose of an unidentified body. You'd better get the Inspector Jefe de Homicidios down here.'
'Give me the car registration number.'
'SE 4738 HT.'
'Fuck me.'
'What?'
'That's the same number given to me by the guy who reported the incident. I don't fucking believe this.'
'Who's the owner of the vehicle?'
'Don't you recognize him?'
The patrolman called out to his colleague, who passed a torch over Calderon's face. He was barely recognizable as human, let alone a specific person. His face bore the contortions of a particularly agonized flamenco singer. The patrolman shrugged.
'No idea,' the patrolman said, into the radio.
'How about Juez Esteban Calderon?' said the operator.
'Fuck!' said the patrolman and dropped the mouthpiece.
He shone his own torch in the man's face, grabbed him by the chin to hold him still. Calderon's agony slackened off with surprise. The patrolman let a sly grin spread across his face before he went back to the car. Falcon had to claw his way out of sleep like an abandoned potholer, desperately trying to reach a star of light in a firmament of blackness. He came to with a jerk and grunt of disgust, as if he'd been spewed up by his own bed. The bedside light hurt him. The green digits on his clock told him it was 5.03. He grappled with the phone and sank back into his pillow with it clasped to his ear.
The voice was of the duty officer in the communications centre of the Jefatura. He was babbling. He was speaking so fast and with such a heavy Andaluz accent that Falcon only picked up the first syllable of every other word. He stopped him, got him to start again from the top.
'We have a situation down by the bus station at the Plaza de Armas. Behind the bus station, down by the river near the Puente de Chapina, a man has been apprehended attempting to dispose of a body. We have a positive identification of the owner of the vehicle used to bring the body to that point, and we have a positive ID of the man who was attempting to dispose of the body. And the man's name, Inspector Jefe, is…Esteban Calderon.'
Falcon's leg spasmed as if some high voltage had shot up it. In one movement he was out of bed and pacing the floor.
'Esteban Calderon, the judge? Are you positive?'
'We are now. The patrolman at the scene has checked the ID and read the number back to me. That and the car's registration confirm the man as Esteban Calderon.'
'Have you spoken to anyone about this?'
'Not yet, Inspector Jefe.'
'Have you called the Juez de Guardia?'
'No, you're the first person. I should have-'
'How was the incident reported?'
'An anonymous phone call from a guy who said he was walking his dog down by the river.'
'What time?'
'It was timed at 4.52 a.m.'
