Plaza Alfalfa, Seville – Monday, 18th September 2006, 18.00 hrs
La Galeria Zoca was owned by a venerable old gentleman for whom the word senorial had been invented. He had impeccable manners, superb conversational skills, perfect tailoring, precision coiffure and gold-rimmed half-moon spectacles which hung from his neck by a cord. You would be in no doubt, just from the look of him, that this man came from lengthy and outstanding lineage, but that he would be the last person in the world to tell you anything of the sort.
Although Falcon had known Jose Manuel Domecq for many years, he had not seen him this century. They sat in an office at the back of the gallery, where Domecq had led him after a genuinely warm welcome. Two small coffees were brought in. Domecq shook the sugar sachet empty over his and stirred it in for a length of time for which only an old man would have the patience.
'I know you don't have anything left of your father's to sell, Javier,' he said. 'I heard you burnt it all.'
'Under his orders.'
'Yes, yes, yes,' he said sadly. 'A travesty and a tragedy. So what brings you here?'
'I just wanted to know if you've ever seen this woman,' said Falcon, handing Domecq a photograph he'd printed off his computer after his meeting with Lobo and Elvira.
Domecq settled his specs on his nose and leaned forward to inspect.
'She's very lovely, Marisa, isn't she?' he said.
'Did you know her well?'
'She came in here asking me to represent her once, but, you know, wood carving, ethnic stuff, it's not really my thing,' he said. 'But she was very attractive so I asked her to some openings, and sometimes she came and lent a somewhat exotic atmosphere to the proceedings. A mango amongst the oranges, or rather, a leopard amongst the… er… reptiles might be a more accurate description of some of my collectors. They liked her, found her rather interesting.'
'About what?' asked Falcon, thinking some of those words and phrases had sounded very familiar.
'The work,' said Domecq. 'Although I didn't like her stuff, she knew how to talk about art.'
'When did you last see her?'
'Not for a while at an opening,' said Domecq. 'But she didn't live far from here, so she'd drop in every so often to say hello. I probably saw her three or four months ago.'
'That's very good, Jose Manuel. Thank you for that,' said Falcon, taking the photograph back.
Some minutes later Falcon walked back to the tree-lined, leafy square, got into his car and sat at the wheel with the photograph still in his hands. The Plaza Alfalfa was quiet, the heat too oppressive for anybody to be sitting outside the Bar Manolo. The captivating woman in the photo stared back at him with dark, wide eyes. Domecq was right, she was lovely; but it was a picture of the American actress Halle Berry he'd shown to the gallery owner, not Marisa Moreno.
It was clear that Alejandro Spinola had moved fast. First, getting his father to complain to Comisario Lobo, of all people. Changing the story only a little so that it had come out as Falcon 'interrupting a press conference' just to talk about Calderon's old girlfriend. That could be construed as 'unstable behaviour'. And now, here he was, covering his tracks at La Galeria Zoca. Domecq must have a need for Spinola's social and professional network to have to lie for him like that.
His mobile vibrated. Cristina Ferrera.
'Diga,' he said.
'My friend in the CGI just came back to me,' she said. 'I thought you might be interested to know that Charles Taggart is booked to fly into Madrid from Newark tonight. Antonio Ramos is flying in from Barcelona, also tonight. And, this is the interesting thing: I4IT has chartered a private jet to fly down to Seville tomorrow. The pilot has logged his flight plan with a take-off time of five p.m.'
'Are they staying the night or flying back?'
'The pilot's flight plan indicates a take-off time of eleven a.m. on Wednesday, 20th September, destination Malaga, which meant that my friend, being a very thorough person, checked all the upmarket hotels in and around Seville and found four suites booked in the company name of Horizonte at an exclusive country-house hotel called La Berenjena, which is just off the road to Huelva.'
'Four suites?'
'There must be someone else invited to the party.'
'That's a pretty good contact you've got at the CGI,' said Falcon. 'You might have to marry him for doing all that for you.'
'My friend is a "she",' said Ferrera. 'You don't think you'd get that kind of detail from a man, do you, Inspector Jefe?' There were too many people for the meeting to take place in the judge's offices, so they'd had to wait half an hour for the conference room in the Edificio de los Juzgados to come available. At the end of the table sat the instructing judge, Anibal Parrado. To his left were Sub-Inspector Emilio Perez, Vicente Cortes and Martin Diaz. Opposite them sat Falcon and Ramirez. Falcon introduced Cortes and Diaz, whom the judge hadn't met before. He then gave an introduction to the three murders they were about to discuss and sat down. Anibal Parrado asked for an update on developments in the Marisa Moreno case. Ramirez described the sighting of three men down Calle Bustos Tavera by the young female witness. His description of the third man as a bodybuilder earned an interruption from Cortes.
'You mean a weightlifter,' he said.
'You know someone built like that?' asked Falcon. 'Because I have a witness from Las Tres Mil, Carlos Puerta, who gave a similar description of the possible shooter in El Pulmon's apartment.'
'Nikita Sokolov,' said Cortes. 'Just missed out on a bronze medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, middleweight class, which means around seventy kilos, although he must be heavier than that by now, but certainly no taller, and he still trains. We haven't seen him in the Costa del Sol for a few months… not since May or June.'
'What did he do down there?'
'He was an enforcer. When the old Russian gang leader fled to Dubai after Operation Wasp, he carried on working for Leonid Revnik,' said Cortes. 'His job was to make people pay or perform and, if they didn't want to do either, he'd kill them. I'll get back to you with more information on him.'
'A photo would help,' said Juez Parrado. 'Only one witness in the Marisa Moreno investigation, Inspector Ramirez?'
'There's not much residential around there. The courtyard was closed off from the street. The chain saw was electric and therefore quiet. It was pure luck that we found this witness.'
'Forensic information?'
'We found two paper suits in some rubbish bins around the corner, just off Calle Gerona. They were in a bin liner, which is what our witness described seeing in the hands of one of the three men she saw in Calle Bustos Tavera. The blood on the suits was matched to Marisa Moreno and some DNA has been derived from hairs found on the inside of one and from a semen deposit in the other. The data has been passed to CICO headquarters in Madrid to see if they can find a match on their database.'
'That could take some time,' said Diaz. 'Computer matches have to be confirmed by human inspection these days. We'll be lucky to have anything on that by tomorrow, if they exist in our database. If they don't, we have to pass the samples over to Interpol and that might take weeks.'
'So we have a sighting of three men, but DNA from only two,' said Parrado.
'Nikita Sokolov wouldn't do dirty work like that,' said Cortes. 'He'd shoot a guy, but he wouldn't get actively involved in cutting up a woman. He wouldn't lower himself to that.'
'Lower himself?' asked Parrado.
'These guys keep male company. Women, to them, are a lower form of life. They're good for preparing food, sex and beating. Sokolov is a real vor-v-zakone, which means "a thief with a code of honour". When he came back from the Olympics he served time in jail for murder. Most of the Russian mafia guys on the Costa del Sol these days have just bought the right to be vory-v-zakone, but Sokolov actually earned it in jail. He would have overseen Marisa's killing, but he wouldn't have done the work.'
'Do we have Sokolov's DNA on file?' asked Juez Parrado.
'That's what I'm not sure about,' said Cortes. 'I wasn't involved in the case, but I think Sokolov and this guy who was killed on the motorway, Vasili Lukyanov, were friends and they were both being processed as a result of an assault on a local girl. Blood samples would have been taken for DNA purposes, prior to the girl dropping the charges and the men being released. I'll check with the Sex Crimes squad in Malaga to see if they've still got them.'
'That was a rape charge,' said Falcon. 'I remember Comisario Elvira mentioning it when I gave him my first report on Vasili Lukyanov's accident.'
'So Sokolov was into sexually assaulting women on that occasion?' said Ramirez.
'I think he was more interested in violence against women,' said Cortes. 'I'll check the case history and get back to you.'
'Well, that's progress on Marisa Moreno,' said Parrado. 'If we can match the DNA and find the suspects.'
'We've done some limited work on that,' said Ramirez. 'Before the incident in Las Tres Mil occurred, our two detectives, Serrano and Baena, were in Seville Este, trying to find out where one of these Russian groups are holed up.'
'Why Seville Este?'
'We believe that Vasili Lukyanov was defecting from Leonid Revnik to join a renegade gang run by Yuri Donstov. The GPS in Lukyanov's Range Rover had an address in Calle Garlopa in Seville Este.'
'Any sightings of Yuri Donstov?' asked Falcon. 'Or any Russians?'
'There are a lot of apartment blocks on Calle Garlopa and, so far, no Russians and no reports of having seen any.'
'It was probably just a meeting point,' said Cortes. 'I can't see him putting an address into his GPS. They've been more careful since Operation Wasp.'
'I have a source who tells me that Yuri Donstov could be in the Poligono San Pablo,' said Falcon.
'They don't advertise their whereabouts,' said Diaz.
'Let's move on to the two murders in Las Tres Mil,' said Parrado. 'Sub-Inspector Emilio Perez is the investigating officer, I believe.'
'I'm not in possession of a fully confirmed ballistics report yet,' said Perez, starting off in his characteristic fashion.
'But you have what we need to know, Emilio, so tell us that,' said Ramirez.
'Oh, right, Inspector. The autopsy revealed that the two dead bodies were killed by nine-millimetre rounds, which we assume were fired from the same gun, but this has not been confirmed yet.'
Ramirez tried to speed him up with quick turns of his fingers.
'The weapon found at the scene was a Beretta 84FS Cheetah. This is a.380-calibre weapon and only one round had been fired, which was found embedded in the living-room wall opposite the window. I have the plan here.'
'Keep going, Emilio,' said Ramirez.
'It is believed that this round wounded the assailant holding the nine-millimetre weapon. Preliminary findings from the autopsy reveal that the trajectory of the bullets entering Miguel Estevez, the Cuban victim, meant that the gun was fired from the floor, which encourages us to believe that the shooter has been injured. The first bullet smashed Estevez's spinal column at the sixth vertebra, the second hit his fourth rib and penetrated his heart.'
'Blood?' said Ramirez.
'Three blood samples were recovered from the apartment. One belongs to Miguel Estevez, the second to Julia Valdes, who was El Pulmon's girlfriend, and the third is unknown, but corresponds to the samples found on the floor and wall of the living room where the.380 round was found, the threshold of the door to the bedroom from where Julia Valdes was shot, the stairs up to the apartment block and the pavement outside. They're working on generating the DNA now. We have not had time to derive El Pulmon's DNA from hair and bristles found in his bathroom, but we believe that…'
'He wouldn't shoot his own girlfriend,' said Ramirez. 'What about the Beretta?'
'Ballistics say that it was fired lying flat on the table with the screw within the trigger guard. There were other screws holding the barrel in place. They think it was covered by the magazine. The recoil had sent the gun back to the window.'
'The knife?'
'The hunting knife had Estevez's fingerprints on the handle. The knife which stabbed him was not found.'
'Conclusion?'
'The first shot from the Beretta injured the shooter. Estevez tried to stab El Pulmon, who in turn stabbed him and then turned the Cuban so that he was between El Pulmon and the injured man on the floor. The shooter hit Estevez twice. Powder burns on the shirt suggest that the second shot was fired as Estevez was pushed back on to the shooter. El Pulmon escaped. The shooter then killed Julia Valdes and left the apartment himself.'
'Good,' said Ramirez. 'Any witnesses?'
'Just the one,' said Perez. 'Carlos Puerta, one of El Pulmon's clients, who the Inspector Jefe mentioned earlier.'
'Four gunshots go off in an apartment in the middle of the barrio and we have only one witness?' said Juez Parrado.
'It's Las Tres Mil,' said Perez, hopelessly. 'The only person who was prepared to say anything was the tenant above El Pulmon, who told us he'd heard the gunshots at about one p.m. When it comes to seeing people running around with blood all over them, especially when drugs are involved, then everybody is suddenly deaf and blind in Las Tres Mil.'
'So what did Carlos Puerta see?'
'He saw two men pull up in a dark blue car. He didn't notice the model or the number plate. They went into the building. One fits the description of the Cuban, Miguel Estevez, and the other this person we now know is the Russian weightlifter, Nikita Sokolov,' said Perez. 'He heard three shots. Puerta saw El Pulmon run out wearing a T-shirt covered in blood and heard a fourth gunshot. Then the weightlifter came out, got into the car and drove off.'
'And Carlos Puerta didn't report the shooting?' asked Parrado.
'He's a junkie,' said Perez, by way of explanation.
'What about El Pulmon?' asked Falcon. 'He being our most valuable witness of all.'
'I spoke to Serrano and Baena before I came here and they've come up against the same brick wall,' said Perez. 'El Pulmon was late with his product, so there would have been plenty of his clients out on the street. He'd also have been running and with Estevez's blood down his front. There must have been fifty people who saw him. Only Carlos Puerta has come forward.'
'So why was Puerta prepared to talk?' asked Parrado.
'He said he was a friend of El Pulmon,' said Falcon. 'He was very upset about the girl, Julia Valdes, getting killed. There's more to his story than he's prepared to admit, but getting it out of him is a different matter.'
'I'll go back to him later this evening or tomorrow with the Narcs,' said Perez.
'So, Puerta is unreliable, which means we have to find El Pulmon,' said Parrado.
'If I was El Pulmon, I would go to ground as far away from my regular haunts as possible,' said Ramirez.
'We do know he owned a car,' said Perez, 'but it's not in Las Tres Mil any more. Traffic are looking for it.'
'In that case he could be out of Seville by now,' said Ramirez.
'He used to be a novillero,' said Falcon. 'Find the name of his sponsor and see if he has any old friends in that community.'
'He hasn't been in the bullfight game for years,' said Perez.
'Work back, Emilio,' said Falcon. 'He's not going to go anywhere near his drug contacts. Family is equally unlikely. So it's old friends, and the ones from the bullfight game are the most likely to stick by him in his hour of need.'
'Especially if they've got gypsy blood as well,' said Ramirez.
'I'd like the DNA from the blood samples belonging to the nine-millimetre shooter,' said Cortes. 'If, as I'm hoping, we've still got Sokolov's DNA on file and we can get a match, that would put him at the crime scene in Las Tres Mil and then the girl who saw him in Calle Bustos Tavera would put him at the Marisa Moreno scene, too.'
'I'm not sure the witness we've got, who saw him and his two "comrades" in Calle Bustos Tavera, is reliable enough for court,' said Ramirez.
'Why not?' asked Parrado.
'Saturday night – she'd been using drugs.'
'If we can put Sokolov there, it will at least inform us,' said Cortes.
'Both Marisa and El Pulmon had direct contact with Russians. We believe that Marisa had been coerced, through threats to her sister who was working for the Russians as a prostitute, to start a relationship with Esteban Calderon and fulfil certain tasks related to the 6th June bomb conspiracy,' said Falcon.
'And El Pulmon?'
'I don't think there's a connection between him and the 6th June conspiracy,' said Falcon. 'This was just business. But it looks as if Nikita Sokolov, the weightlifter, was involved in clearing up the loose end of Marisa Moreno, and he's now made a mistake in failing to kill El Pulmon. If we can find El Pulmon, we can use him to locate Nikita Sokolov, and if we can charge Sokolov with the two killings in Las Tres Mil, that will give us some leverage in the case of Marisa Moreno.'
'Matching DNA from the paper suits to unknowns on a database is going to take longer than seeing if we have a DNA sample for Sokolov and matching the samples from El Pulmon's apartment,' said Parrado. 'So let's do that first.'
'We've still got the problem of finding either of them,' said Ramirez.
'Nikita Sokolov will be very keen to find El Pulmon. He's the only credible witness we might get who'd be willing to place him in his apartment as the shooter,' said Falcon. 'I'll talk to my brother, Paco, as well. After his own accident in the ring he's always tried to help injured toreros.'
The meeting broke up while Parrado was called out for an urgent consultation on another case. Everybody turned on their mobiles, went to the windows to make calls.
Falcon called his bull-breeding brother, worked through the excuses for not having gone out to the farm for months.
'Paco, a question for you on your specialist subject,' said Falcon, hurrying things along. 'Do you remember a novillero called El Pulmon?'
'Roque Barba, you mean. El Pulmon was the name they gave him after his accident,' said Paco. 'I remember it. Got a horn in the chest. When they moved him back to Seville after his initial surgery, I went to see him. I told him if he needed any help to call me. That was three years ago. I saw him a few times in the months after he first came out of hospital. I tried to persuade him to come up to the farm to work. Then we lost touch.'
'A lot has happened since then, Paco, and not much of it good,' said Falcon. 'He became a heroin dealer in Las Tres Mil.'
'A dealer? Shit, that's bad.'
'The thing is, we need to find him.'
'This sounds like trouble.'
'He is in a lot of trouble, but not from us,' said Falcon. 'He's gone into hiding after a Russian gangster tried to kill him.'
'I've just seen something on Canal Sur about a shooting in Las Tres Mil. Two people dead,' said Paco.
'That was the incident. And now we need to find him before the Russian gangster does.'
'Well, he's not here, if that's what you're asking.'
'I want you to use your contacts to find out if he still has any friends from his novillero days. Somewhere he could hole up and get watered and fed,' said Falcon. 'That's all I want you to do. I don't want you to talk to him, Paco. That's important. I just want some ideas about where he might be, and we'll do the rest.'
'He didn't kill either of those people in his apartment, did he?'
'No,' said Falcon. 'The gangster did that.'
'What's the worst that can happen to him?'
'That the gangster finds him first.'
'And from your side?'
'We want to protect him because we want him to testify against the gangster. The worst charge against him will be possession of an illegal firearm.'
'I'll see what I can do.'
Falcon went back to the table. The others finished their calls. Parrado came back into the room. The meeting resumed.
'Anything else we should talk about now?' asked Parrado.
'I've just heard that the hair and semen deposit from the paper suits does not match any of the Russian DNA we have on our CICO database,' said Diaz.
'That was quicker than you thought,' said Parrado.
'The database is smaller than I thought,' said Diaz.
'I spoke to the Sex Crimes squad in Malaga and Nikita Sokolov was definitely Vasili Lukyanov's partner in the assault on that local girl. He beat her up and held her down, but insisted he did not have sex with her,' said Cortes. 'The good news is that they do have a sample of Nikita Sokolov's DNA.'
'Felipe in Forensics has confirmed that he'll have the DNA from the blood samples of the unknown in El Pulmon's apartment generated by eleven p.m. tonight,' said Perez.
'Good. Get that together with Cortes,' said Parrado. 'Now we know the direction we're heading in, let's find Nikita Sokolov and El Pulmon before they find each other.'