no idea he was so unstable.'
'He thought your husband had betrayed him, that he'd made him his friend to further his political career. And Fernando is unstable. Nobody can be called stable after losing their wife and son like that.'
Jesus appeared in the doorway. He'd lost the ashen look. He was shaved and dressed in a white shirt and black trousers. Falcon made him a coffee. Monica went back upstairs to check on the children. They sat at the kitchen table.
'A lot has happened overnight,' said Falcon. 'Can you answer a few questions before we discuss that?'
Alarcon nodded, stirred sugar into his coffee.
'Can you tell me where you were on Saturday 3rd June?' asked Falcon.
'We were north of Madrid for the weekend,' said Alarcon. 'One of Monica's friends got married. The wedding party was at a finca on the way up to El Escorial. We stayed there on Sunday and came back on the AVE train early on Monday morning.'
'Did you go to the Fuerza Andalucia offices in Eduardo Rivero's house during the week before that?'
'No, I didn't,' said Alarcon. 'On the advice of Angel Zarrias I was staying clear of Eduardo. Angel was still working on him to relinquish the leadership and he reckoned that for Eduardo to see the new young blade of the party around him might be construed as humiliation. So, I didn't see any of them, except Angel, who came here a couple of times to tell me how things were going.'
'When you say you didn't see any of them, who do you include in that?'
'Eduardo Rivero and the three main sponsors of the party, who are all my supporters: Lucrecio Arenas, Cesar Benito and Agustin Cardenas.'
'When did you last see Eduardo Rivero?'
'On the Tuesday morning, when he formally handed over the leadership.'
'And before that?'
'I think we had lunch around the 20th of May. I'd have to check my diary.'
'Have you ever seen this man before?' asked Falcon, looking at Alarcon as he pushed a photo of Tateb Hassani across the table. It was clear he didn't recognize the man.
'No,' he said.
'Have you ever heard mention of the name Tateb Hassani or Jack Hansen?'
'No.'
Falcon took the photograph back and turned it over and over in his hands.
'Has that man got anything to do with what Fernando was talking about?' asked Alarcon. 'He looks North African. That first name you mentioned…'
'He's originally a Moroccan who became a US citizen,' said Falcon. 'He's dead now. Murdered. Rivero, Zarrias and Cardenas are under arrest on suspicion of his killing.'
'I'm confused, Inspector Jefe.'
'Don Eduardo told me a few hours ago that he paid Tateb Hassani a € 5,000 consultancy fee last week for his advice on the formulation of Fuerza Andalucia's immigration policy.'
'That's ridiculous. Our immigration policy has been in place for months. We started work on that last October when the EU opened the door to Turkey and all those African immigrants tried to jump the wire into Melilla. Fuerza Andalucia does not believe that a Muslim country, even with a secular government, can be compatible with Christian countries. Europeans have shown themselves to be consistently intolerant of other religions throughout history. We have no idea of the social consequences of introducing Turkey, whose membership will result in one fifth of the European Union population being Muslim.'
'You're not on the campaign trail now, Sr Alarcon,' said Falcon, holding up his hands against the avalanche of opinion.
'I'm sorry. It's automatic,' he said, shaking his head. 'But why are Rivero, Zarrias and Cardenas accused of murdering a man who they'd just paid to help formulate policy? Why does Fernando think that Fuerza Andalucia is in some way responsible for planting a bomb in the mosque?'
'I'm going to give you an irrefutable fact and I want you to tell me what you construe from it,' said Falcon. 'You heard on the news that a fireproof box was found in the destroyed mosque, which included architect's drawings of two schools and the university biology faculty, with notes attached in Arabic script.'
'The ones giving the horrific instructions.'
'Those were written by Tateb Hassani.'
'So, he was a terrorist?'
Falcon waited, tapping the edges of the photograph, one after the other, on the table top, while the espresso machine fumed quietly in the corner. Alarcon frowned at the back of his hands as his brain worked through the permutations. Falcon gave him the other facts that were not in the public domain, as yet: Tateb Hassani's handwriting also matched that found in the two Korans, found in the Peugeot Partner and in Miguel Botin's apartment. He also told him about Ricardo Gamero's final meeting with Angel Zarrias and the CGI agent's subsequent suicide. Alarcon turned his hands over and looked at his palms, as if his political future was trickling away through his fingers.
'I don't know what to say.'
Falcon gave him a short life history of Tateb Hassani and asked him if that sounded like the profile of a dangerous Islamic radical.
'Why did they pay Hassani to make up documents that would indicate a planned terrorist attack when, as has been made clear by the discovery of traces of hexogen in the Peugeot Partner, Islamic terrorists were positioning material to carry out a bombing campaign?' asked Alarcon. 'It doesn't make sense.'
'The executive committee of Fuerza Andalucia did not know about the hexogen,' said Falcon, which opened up the story about the surveillance by Informaticalidad, the fake council inspectors, the electricians, and the planting of the secondary Goma 2 Eco device and the fireproof box.
Alarcon was stunned. He knew all the directors of Informaticalidad, whom he described as 'part of the set-up'. Only then did he finally understand how he'd been used.
'And I was positioned as the fresh face of Fuerza Andalucia, who, in the aftermath of the atrocity, would attract the anti-immigration vote, which would give us the necessary percentage to make ourselves the natural coalition partner of the Partido Popular for next year's parliamentary campaign,' said Alarcon.
The revelations drained what little energy remained in Alarcon and he sat back with his arms limp at his sides and contemplated the catastrophe in which he'd been unwittingly involved.
'I realize that this must be hard for you…' said Falcon.
'There are enormous implications, of course,' said Alarcon, with an odd mixture of dismay and relief spreading across his features. 'But I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking that Fernando's madness has had the inadvertent side effect of allowing me to exonerate myself in front of the investigating Inspector Jefe.'
'Our range of interrogation techniques no longer includes mock executions,' said Falcon. 'But it has saved me a lot of time.'
'It wasn't what I had in mind for the extension of police powers in the handling of terrorists, either,' said Alarcon.
'You might have to work a little harder than that to get my vote,' said Falcon. 'How would you describe your relationship to Lucrecio Arenas?'
'I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that he's been like a father to me,' said Alarcon.
'How long have you known him?'
'Eleven years,' said Alarcon. 'In fact, I met him before that, when I was working for McKinsey's in South America, but we became close when I moved to Lehman Brothers and started working with Spanish industrialists and banks. Then he head-hunted me in 1997 and since then he's been a surrogate father…he's shaped my whole career. He's the one who has given me belief in myself. He's second in my life only to God.'
It was the response Falcon had expected.
'If you think he is involved in whatever this is, then think again. You don't know the man like I do,' said Alarcon. 'This is some local intrigue, cooked up by Zarrias and Rivero.'
'Rivero is finished. He was finished before this happened. He was walking with the fly-buzz of scandal about him,' said Falcon. 'I know Angel Zarrias. He's not a leader. He makes people into leaders, but he doesn't make things happen himself. What can you tell me about Agustin Cardenas and Cesar Benito?'
