Marisa's studio, Calle Bustos Tavera, Seville – Sunday, 17th September 2006, 00.55 hrs
Black and white again, in the torch beam, but this time the real noir. Liquid on the floor, black as an oil spill with a grey flotsam of wood shavings. The work bench's pylon standing in welled crude. A sketch scratched across paper, a bleached square on the lake of tar. A foot, grainy, off-white, creased with grime. Stool on its side, chrome legs, the pitch lagoon sucking up to the silver. Pencils like a barge flotilla broken up in a harbour.
A foot?
His torch beam travelled back.
Is that carved from wood? The creases of toil and age meticulously etched.
Falcon leaned in, slapped the light switch. Two horror flashes, two mind gasps, the brain needing two attempts to transform the black and white to full Technicolor. Then solid, unwavering, penetrative, buzzing neon to show the full extent of the abattoir.
The blood had achieved terminal viscosity about half a metre from the door. It wasn't a carving. It was a human foot lying on its side, sole straining against the encroaching tide. Marisa's body was stretched out on the work bench. The caramel of her mulatto skin now the only part of the picture that was grey. Her handless arm hung down straight as a drainpipe to the pool of blood. She had no head. The only detail which distinguished the meat as human were the bikini briefs, which were soaked through. The monster which had perpetrated this butchery was propped up on some blocks of wood further along the work bench. The meat hook where it had hung, empty above it. The teeth of its chain were clogged with gore. Next to it stood the final horror. The carving of the two men on either side of the young girl, who now had a head. Eyes closed. Face slack. Coppery hair matted with blood. Marisa: part of her own work.
The smell wafted out to them. The metal of Marisa's blood. The cess of her guts. The sulphur of her incipient rot. And on the back of this foetor came her terror, wriggling like a live worm in the brain, touching all the atavistic points, twitching up the old fears of the unstoppable agony with only one possible exit. Falcon turned away with the slaughterhouse image burned into his mind. The sweat stood off his face in beads. The saliva thickened to an eggy slop in his mouth. He sucked in the black night air, thick as bitumen.
'Don't look,' he said.
Too late. Ferrera had already seen enough for her to lose another rasher of her faith. It had taken her off at the knees. She slumped on the stairs, holding on to the banister, panting under her thin cotton blouse, which now had the weight of a trench coat. The torch hung slack on a loop of cord from her wrist, its light wavered over the weeds and junk beneath them. She stared, mouth gaping, until the torch light was completely still and only then did she regain her footing in the world.
The sweat stung Falcon's eyes as he called the communications centre in the Jefatura and gave his report. He hung up, wiped his face with his hand and flung it out into the darkness. He lowered himself down on to the top step, reached out to Cristina Ferrera and squeezed her shoulder, as much to comfort himself that there were still good people in this world. She rested her face on his hand.
'We're all right,' she said.
'Are we?' said Falcon, because he was already thinking that the people who had done this were the same people who'd taken Dario. The courtyard was frozen under the portable halogen. Falcon sat, listing to one side, on a broken chair. The suited forensics did their work, moving to and fro before him with their evidence bags and cases. Anibal Parrado, the instructing judge, stood by looking down on the bristle-cut head of the Inspector Jefe. He spoke to his secretary in a low murmur. Falcon's eyelids were heavy and his vision kept closing in on him. Ramirez came through the archway from Calle Bustos Tavera carrying a black plastic bin liner.
'We found this in some rubbish bins round the corner, just off Calle Gerona,' he said, 'which probably means that the forensics aren't going to find very much up there.'
Still with latex gloves on, he pulled out a white paper suit covered in dramatic slashes of blood, which had already dried to a reddish brown.
'Match the blood to Marisa's first,' said Falcon, on automatic. 'Then send them down to the lab… get what we can from the inside.'
'Go home, Javier,' said Ramirez. 'Get some sleep.'
'You're right,' he said. 'I need more than sleep.'
Ramirez called up a patrol car, stuck Falcon in the back, told the driver and his partner to see the Inspector Jefe all the way up to his bed.
Falcon woke momentarily, hanging like a drunkard between the two men's shoulders halfway up the stairs in his home. Then more oblivion. The only place to be. Nikita Sokolov had arrived at eleven o'clock, told Marisa to get down to the street, said they were going for a little walk. She felt like hell. Not used to alcohol. Her stomach was sore and belching up Cuba libre, which filled the cavities of her face with the old sticky stink. She puked in the toilet, brushed her teeth. Slumped in the lift. Through the bars of the front door she saw his cigarette glowing from where he was leaning against the back wall of the church. Small, wide, dark, horribly muscular and hairy with very pale white skin. He revolted her. They avoided the drinkers outside the bars. He steered her by the elbow to the studio. She stumbled over the cobbles in the darkness of the archway, was nauseated by the shakiness of the metal stairway up to her studio. She unlocked the door, slapped on the light. Two flashes to bring her work to life. She sat on the stool, too weak to stand. He stood in the doorway, asked his questions. His polo shirt was stretched tight over the muscles in his chest and shoulders. Dark patches under his armpits. Hair sprouted from the open collar of his shirt. Colossal quadriceps shrugged under his trousers. She'd been told Nikita Sokolov was a weightlifter before he got into slapping girls around.
She told him about the visits from the police. The questions. The stuff about the little boy. What did they tell you about the little boy? He wanted to hear what they knew. Everything. She spoke. Her arms, with nothing in them, hung by her sides. She couldn't seem to satisfy him. She couldn't seem to find enough detail to make him believe her. He told her to strip. He went out on the landing to flick a cigarette into the courtyard. Pulling off her T-shirt, dropping her skirt left her exhausted. She was still wearing the bikini briefs. She could smell herself. It wasn't nice.
The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. He blocked the doorway again and stepped quickly aside to let two men into the room. Panic seized her throat as she saw their white suits and hoods, their masked faces, blue latex gloves. He nodded to her from the doorway – or was it to them? She had nothing in her legs now. One of the men reached for the chain saw, unhooked it, checked its teeth and the chain oil. He knew the work. Her tongue rattled in her head, mouth dry as parchment. More questions about what she had told them. Her answers no more than the clucks of a chicken beaking around in the dust. More nodding from the doorway. The one with the chain saw unravelled the flex, plugged it in, flicked off the safety, ran the motor for a second. The noise went through to her spine, left her stomach quivering. The other paper suit came for her. Turned her. Stretched her arm out on the work bench, viced her head so that she had to watch. The chain a blur coming down on her thin wrist. Had she given any names? Nothing came out of her throat. She tried to shake her head. The chain trembled above her skin. She felt the arousal of the man holding her. She lost control of her bladder. No answer would save her now. She shut her eyes, wished she'd talked to the little nun. Shoes off. Sweat in his shirt. Falcon came awake as if he'd been defibrillated back into the world. He hurt. All the mental anguish had found its way into his muscles and skeleton. Time? Just after midday. He showered. No clarity from the cascade, just vacillation between the two colossal problems which had landed on his shoulders in the last twenty-four hours. He dressed in fresh clothes. The patrolmen had taken the mobiles out of his pockets and turned them off so that he wouldn't be disturbed. He sat on the edge of the bed and played them over each other in his hand. Action for the day of rest? There was nothing to be done about Yacoub's situation. He'd entered into a pact. Silence was the only game. Breakfast. Think about how to find Dario. Resist the intrusion of all images of Marisa's terrible end.
Sitting at a table underneath the gallery was Pablo from the CNI. He had an empty coffee cup in front of him. Falcon had never seen him out of a suit. He looked younger, more approachable, in his dark green polo shirt and white chinos, although the scar running from his hairline to his left eyebrow demanded that he always be taken seriously. Out of his work clothes, Falcon could also see that the man was athletic, and that his body hadn't been sculpted out of vanity but by repeated physical demands.
'How did you get in?' asked Falcon, as they shook hands.
'The patrolman at the door,' said Pablo. 'It took a direct order from Comisario Elvira. You're under protection now, it seems.'
'From who?'
'The Russians, I'd have thought.'
'What do you know about the Russians?'
'After you asked me to look at those unidentified guys from the mafioso's disks we had a talk with our old friends at the Organized Crime Intelligence Centre in Madrid,' said Pablo.
'Another coffee?'
Pablo shook his head.
'I don't think you came all this way to talk to me about the Russians,' said Falcon, heading for the kitchen, setting the percolator on the stove, making toast.
'The Russians have given you a problem very close to your heart,' said Pablo. 'And that has an impact on my problem.'
'Tell me about the Russians.'
'Vasili Lukyanov was coming to Seville to join forces with a fellow Afghan war veteran called Yuri Donstov, who's set up a successful heroin-smuggling operation between Uzbekistan and Europe. He already understood the importance of reliable supply from his army service in Afghanistan. Then he had to find a retail outlet which wouldn't offend anyone back in Moscow. He chose Seville. It's thought that he lives in an apartment block in Seville Este, but some say he's holed up in the Poligono San Pablo. Since the head of the Russian mafia in Spain fled to Dubai after Operation Wasp in 2005, Yuri Donstov has begun to believe that he can control the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. Leonid Revnik doesn't see it like that. Vasili Lukyanov was being brought into Yuri Donstov's operation to run prostitution in Seville. CICO think that Donstov has also secured the services of another gangster with expertise in casinos. Yuri Donstov, it seems, is gradually developing all the talent to run a successful criminal organization, using Seville as a base rather than taking on Leonid Revnik on his own territory in the Costa del Sol.'
'How old is this Yuri Donstov?' said Falcon, pouring olive oil on to his toast.
'Born 1959. His nickname is the Monk, which he has tattooed on his back beneath two angel wings and a crucifix. He wears his head completely shaved and has a strong beard, although that description is based on his gulag mug shot. There is no recent photo of him. He doesn't drink, but he smokes upwards of sixty cigarettes a day. What else? He has only one kidney. The other was damaged in a shooting incident and had to be removed.'
'"The Monk"?'
'Yuri Donstov is a very religious man.'
'Why Seville Este or the Poligono San Pablo? They're hardly upmarket.'
'He despises luxury. A lot of the money he makes ends up going back to Russia to finance various monasteries and church-building programmes.'
'Vicente Cortes from the GRECO in the Costa del Sol didn't know about him,' said Falcon. 'Why not?'
'Seville is still not his area of expertise. Cortes is more concerned about Leonid Revnik and his right-hand man, Viktor Belenki, who runs all their construction companies.'
'How long have you had this information about Yuri Donstov?'
'Me? Since yesterday,' said Pablo. 'But these are all developments since the beginning of this year. Yuri Donstov is a very quiet man. Nothing flamboyant about him.'
'Any connection between him and Lucrecio Arenas from the Banco Omni?'
'Not yet,' said Pablo. 'We've found no concrete link between Yuri Donstov and the bombing of 6th June, nor with Leonid Revnik, for that matter.'
Falcon sipped his coffee, ate his toast.
'Now all we have is a further complication,' he said.
'You don't know whether it's Yuri Donstov or Leonid Revnik who's holding Dario,' said Pablo. 'They'll tell you soon enough.'
'They said they wouldn't. They said I'd never hear from them again,' said Falcon. 'And I don't like the lessons they've given me so far. Yesterday I had a potential witness to a murder conspiracy and a woman who loved me. Now I have a dead witness, a kidnapped boy and a woman who never wants to see me again.'
'The Russians will call,' said Pablo. 'They have to.'
'Did you have any luck identifying those men from Vasili Lukyanov's disks?' asked Falcon.
'As a matter of fact, we did,' said Pablo. 'They're businessmen. The one having sex with Marisa's sister is Juan Valverde. He's a Madrileno and the Chief Executive Officer of I4IT Europe. The one you spotted as an American is a consultant to I4IT, personally appointed by Cortland Fallenbach. His name is Charles Taggart. Two years ago he had to resign from his post as head of the fifth largest television church in America when some footage of him with three prostitutes appeared on the internet.'
'The fallen preacher,' said Falcon. 'An ideal recruit for the born-again Christian founders of I4IT.'
'The third man is Antonio Ramos. He is on the board of directors of the Horizonte Group. He is a civil engineer who was the late Cesar Benito's right-hand man. Benito was the creative guy with the designs and presentation skills. Ramos got them built. He now heads up the whole construction arm of Horizonte.'
'Was he in it from the beginning?' asked Falcon. 'Didn't you go through Horizonte's offices and give them a clean bill of health?'
'We didn't, but the Barcelona police did, and they found nothing,' said Pablo. 'If Horizonte were in on the bombing conspiracy they kept it out of their offices.'
Falcon poured more coffee. Just as he seemed to be getting somewhere, the new information presented more complications.
'I know it doesn't help you make a clear-cut case,' said Pablo, 'but at least you've got it more or less confirmed by the footage on Vasili Lukyanov's disks that the Russians were somehow connected to the Banco Omni, Horizonte, I4IT conspiracy and provided the violence for the Seville bombing. Concentrate on that…'
'But which Russians?' said Falcon.
'The disks were found on Vasili Lukyanov, who stole them from Leonid Revnik.'
'But when was the footage of the men with the girls taken? Is there a date on it?'
'I don't know,' said Pablo. 'You've got the original disks in the Jefatura.'
'Was it before or after the Seville bombing?' asked Falcon. 'That could be significant. Were Yuri Donstov and Leonid Revnik ever together as part of the same group before Donstov broke away at, say, the time of Operation Wasp in 2005?'
'That's not how it was explained to me.'
'You have no recent photographs of Yuri Donstov, which probably means you don't know exactly what he's been doing,' said Falcon. 'Is it significant that Donstov was set up in Seville, where the bombing occurred? Who were Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito in bed with: Yuri Donstov or Leonid Revnik?'
'All right. You've made your point,' said Pablo. 'You'll have to leave it to the kidnappers. They will make their demands.'
'There's a further complication because of the defections from Revnik's group to Donstov's,' said Falcon. 'There are probably going to be members of each group who were responsible in some way for elements of the Seville bombing and wanted to keep Marisa quiet.'
'Leonid Revnik must be holding her sister. Margarita was having sex with the I4IT Europe boss, Juan Valverde, on Vasili Lukyanov's disk.'
'Right, so there would have been contact between Marisa and Leonid Revnik. But what about any defections to Yuri Donstov's group before Vasili Lukyanov?' said Falcon. 'We have no idea whether Lukyanov was the first. Given Marisa's terror and unwillingness to talk, it wouldn't surprise me if she had been taking heat from both sides.'
'Find Margarita?' said Pablo, shrugging.
Falcon checked him, detected a flagging interest in his problems.
'All right, you've helped me, Pablo,' said Falcon. 'You've given me enough to go on. So what do you really want to see me about?'
'The notes of your meeting with MI5 and SO15 were sent to me yesterday,' said Pablo. 'I'd already heard about the kidnapping, so I held off until today.'
'Very thoughtful of you,' said Falcon.
'I realize that you're pledging your support to Yacoub, which is what I asked you to do. It's just that you're doing it blindly,' said Pablo. 'All you know is what he's told you: that the GICM have recruited his son.'
'Why would he lie about that?'
'You also know that Yacoub would never do anything that might result in a family member being harmed or arrested,' said Pablo. 'This may mean he'll want to put you off the scent. What we can do is prevent that, through corroboration of information and a broader view of the intelligence picture. But you have to get us started. You have to tell us what you know about Yacoub's actions or intentions.'
'But that would endanger Yacoub.'
'Just out of interest,' said Pablo, 'what did Yacoub tell you about the one piece of information he was prepared to give away: the identity of Mustafa Barakat?'
'No more than I told the British,' said Falcon. 'He's a family friend. He has a carpet business and tourist shops in Fes.'
'And this is what Yacoub told you to say?'
'It's the information he gave me.'
'You said he'd lived in Fes all his life.'
'A lot has happened, Pablo. I don't remember everything perfectly.'
'You probably don't know this, but before I came back to the CNI in Madrid I ran agents in the Maghreb for more than ten years. I'm part of an enormous North African intelligence community,' said Pablo. 'If you give me a name like Mustafa Barakat I have access to all my friends' archives as well as my own. I put that name straight across to my Moroccan colleagues, who don't just look at their files but, because they understand the complex nature of families in their country, they get down on the ground as well. They feed their informers into the termites' nest of the medina. That's a lot of manpower I can draw on.'
'And what did they find?'
'That there are very close ties between the Barakat and Diouri families. Since 1940 there have been thirty-six marriages between the families, which have produced one hundred and seventeen children. Sixty-four with the name Diouri and fifty-two with the name Barakat. Eight of those Barakats are called Mustafa. Two of them are interesting because they were both born in the late 1950s. The other six are either too old or too young to be the Barakat staying at Yacoub's house.
'Of those two remaining Mustafas, one went into the family carpet business during the seventies and never left Morocco, but the other had a much more interesting life. In 1979 he went to a madrassa, a religious school, in Jeddah for three years. From there he went to Pakistan, where nothing more was heard about him until he resurfaced in Morocco in 1991. The word on the street is that he spent quite a few of those years in Afghanistan. Now this is where there's a bit of confusion, because in 1992 Mustafa Barakat died in a car accident on a steep road up in the Rif mountains on his way back from Chefchaouen, where the family had opened a small hotel and tourist shop. It was sad because he'd only just settled back in his own country and…'
'Which Mustafa Barakat are we talking about?' asked Falcon.
'That's where it gets confusing. The interesting thing is, after the accident on the road from Chefchaouen, the other Mustafa Barakat still ran the family carpet business, tourist shops and hotels but, having never left the country before, he suddenly started an import/export business. He would fly to Pakistan to buy carpets. Since the Afghan war, all carpets in that area of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, even the eastern part of Iran, come to Pakistan and are exported as Pakistani carpets. These carpets, which he brought back from Pakistan, were then re-exported to countries like France, Germany, Holland and the UK.'
'You think there was a switch?'
'There are no post mortems performed out there in the Rif.'
'Presumably the Mustafa Barakat who'd gone to the madrassa in Jeddah had also made the pilgrimage to Mecca and was al-Hadji.'
'Mustafa Barakat, who'd only just started travelling in 1993, did the Haj that same year,' said Pablo. 'Detail is something we're good at in the intelligence service. So before you ask: no dental records.'
'Anything else that might help us identify which Mustafa Barakat we're dealing with?'
'It would be nice if the mujahideen kept army records and let us have a look at them. It would be better to have some DNA.'
A wave of paranoia swept through Falcon. He stared into Pablo's face, like a poker player looking for tells. Is this true? Is this just a construct to get me back on side? Why would Yacoub have given such a thing away, exposing a family member to such scrutiny?
'Don't cut yourself off from that level of intelligence,' said Pablo, 'without at least giving it a second thought.' In the end Consuelo had taken the sleeping pills left by the doctor. She'd watched the clock work its way round to 6 a.m. with her mind unable to hold steady on any logical path. She was caught in triangular thinking, flitting between Dario, herself and Javier, but unable to concentrate on any one of them.
Even with her sister and her two other sons in the house she felt a terrible loneliness. In between the bouts of rage that periodically washed over her she reluctantly identified a need for the one person she'd banished from her sight for ever. Almost as soon as this came to her she was consumed by hatred for him. Then despair would crash in and she would sob at the thought of her little boy lost in the dark, terrified and alone. It was exhausting, emotionally draining, but the mind would not shut down and let her drift into sleep. So she took the pills. Three instead of two. She woke up at two in the afternoon with her head and mouth full of cotton wool, feeling as if she'd been embalmed.
The sleep had weakened her and she couldn't stand in the shower. She sat and let the water fall on her pitiful shoulders. She sobbed and raged all over again.
She drank water and her strength slowly returned. She dressed, went downstairs. Everybody looked at her. She read their faces. Victims were always the stars of their own dramas and the supporting cast had nothing to offer.
This was Sunday. Sitting with her arms folded, waiting for the phone to ring.