The haircut was part of it, or had it become part of it? Was that retrospective suspicion? Yacoub had always liked to keep his luxuriant hair long. Maybe he was just getting into role. In fact, before the haircut was the apartment. He hadn't asked him about it. Whose was it? He'd have to find that out. He called an old detective friend from his Madrid days who was in a bar on his way home. Falcon gave him the address, told him to keep it to himself. He wanted the owner's identity and background and he was to speak to Falcon only, no messages left in the office.
'I'm not even going to ask,' said his friend, who told him he'd probably have to wait until Monday now.
Headlights wavered in the blackness of the countryside and swung away. Someone across the aisle was studying him. He got up, walked down the train to the bar, ordered a beer. What else? He took out his notebook, jotted down his thoughts. Trust. Yacoub had kept on at Falcon about how much he trusted him: 'The only man I can trust… You always have to be between me and them…' That was where the cramps had started and when he'd first questioned Yacoub's reliability. 'You're a good friend. The only true friend I've got.' It was that line which had allowed the ugliest thought to enter his head: Is he using me? Falcon rewound to a question he'd asked: 'So where's this influence coming from?' The shrug. Had someone got to Yacoub? He knew the GICM didn't like his relationship with the inspector jefe. Were they breaking it up, and using young Abdullah to do it?
The notes streamed out of his pen. The swearing. The plan. There was no plan, but Yacoub wanted him involved. Why? 'You're my friend. I'm in this because of you.' He'd qualified that blame immediately, but there was no doubt that he wanted Falcon to feel culpable. Then there was Yacoub's vision of his own death. Had he overdone the self-pity? Finally, there was the slip. Was it a slip to reveal that he'd seen Abdullah since he'd gone to the training camp? Yacoub was under pressure. The stress of it created emotional extremes and mistakes were made.
He closed the notebook, took a swig of beer. He breathed back a sense of disequilibrium that he couldn't put his finger on. How do you describe that feeling when it occurs to you that your brother might be exploiting you? There was no word for it. It couldn't be that it was so rare that they hadn't bothered to invent it. People were always exploited and betrayed by those closest to them. But what was the word for the feeling of the victim? The Americans have a good word: suckered. Because the feeling was one of being drained, having the marrow sucked out.
He took out his mobile, and it wasn't just for the usual banal exchange that was played out in trains all over the world; he needed to hear the sound of a voice that he believed in and who believed in him. He called Consuelo. Dario, her youngest boy, the eight-year-old, picked up the phone.
'Hola, Dario, how's it going?' he said.
'Javi-i-i,' screamed Dario. 'Mama, mama, it's Javi.'
'Bring the phone to the kitchen,' said Consuelo.
'Are you good, Dario?' asked Falcon.
'I'm good, Javi. Why aren't you here? You should be here. Mama's been waiting and waiting…'
'Bring that phone here, Dario!'
He heard the boy sprinting down the corridor. The phone changed hands.
'I don't want you thinking I'm sitting around here like some lovesick teenager,' said Consuelo. 'Dario's been desperate for you to get here.'
'I'm on the AVE and running late.'
'He won't go to bed until you arrive, and we're going shopping tomorrow. New football boots.'
'I've got to see someone in town before I come out to your place,' said Falcon. 'It's going to be after midnight before I get to you.'
'Maybe we should have dinner out,' said Consuelo. 'That's a better idea. I really want him to go to bed now. I'll take him next door. He's in love with their sixteen-year-old daughter. Let's do that, Javier.'
'Tell him I'll have a kick around with him in the garden tomorrow morning.'
A hesitation.
'You think you're getting lucky tonight?' she said quietly, teasing.
They hadn't discussed his staying over. It was part of the new coming together. No assumptions.
'I've been praying for luck,' he said. 'Has Our Lady been good to me?'
Another hesitation.
'I'll tell Dario,' she said. 'But once you've made a promise like that, you've got to be prepared for him to jump on your head at eight in the morning.'
'Where shall we meet?'
She said she'd arrange everything. All he had to do was meet her in the Bar La Eslava on the Plaza San Lorenzo and they'd take it from there.
Calm restored. He nearly felt like a family man. Consuelo's two older boys, Ricardo and Matias, hadn't been so interested in him. They were fourteen and twelve. But Dario was still keen on the idea of a dad. The boy had brought him closer to Consuelo. She could see that Dario liked him and, although she would never say it, Dario was her favourite. He also distracted them from the seriousness of what they were trying to do, made them feel more casual, less anxious.
And with that thought, sleep finally claimed him.
He woke up sitting in the carriage in the Santa Justa station, with people shuffling out of the train. It was just after 11.30. He left the station, drove to Calle Hiniesta. Falcon wanted to have Marisa sleeping uneasily with the knowledge that after their chat this afternoon he'd taken an anonymous threatening phone call and that he wasn't scared by it.
As he parked at the back of the Santa Isabel church he saw that the light was on in her penthouse apartment, the plants were lit up on her roof terrace. He pressed her buzzer.
'I'm coming down,' she said.
'This is Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon,' he said.
'What are you doing here?' she said, annoyed. 'I'm on my way out.'
'We can discuss this in the street, if that's what you want.'
She buzzed the door open. He took the small lift up to her floor. Marisa let him in, closing down her mobile, nervous, as if she'd just asked her date to delay his arrival unless he wanted to meet the police.
'Going somewhere special?' asked Falcon, taking in her long, tight turquoise dress, her coppery hair down to her shoulders, the gold earrings, the twenty-odd gold and silver bangles on her arm, an expensive scent.
'A gallery opening and then dinner.'
She closed the door behind him. Her hands were uneasy at her sides. The bangles rattled. She didn't ask him to sit down.
'I thought we had a long talk this afternoon,' she said. 'You took up an hour of my work-time and now you've moved in on my relaxation…'
'I had a call from a friend of yours this afternoon.'
'A friend of mine?'
'He told me to keep my nose out of your business.'
Her lips opened. No sound came out.
'It was a couple of hours after we talked,' said Falcon. 'I was on my way up to Madrid to see another friend of yours.'
'I don't know anyone in Madrid.'
'Inspector Jefe Luis Zorrita?'
'There's the confusion,' said Marisa, dredging up some boldness. 'He's no friend of mine.'
'He's as interested as I am in your story,' said Falcon. 'He's told me I can dig away to my heart's content.'
'What are you talking about?' she said, her brow puckering with fury. 'Story? What story?'
'We all have stories,' said Falcon. 'We all have versions of these stories to suit every occasion. We've got one version of your story, which has put Esteban Calderon in prison. Now we're going to find the real version, and it'll be interesting to see where that puts you.'
Even with the armour of her beauty, her lithe sexuality encased in the aquamarine sheath, he could see that he'd got under her skin. The fever had started. The uncertainty behind the big, brown eyes. His work was done. Now it was time to get out.
'Tell your friends,' said Falcon, making powerful eye contact as he walked past her to the door, 'that I'll be waiting for their next call.'
'What friends?' she said to the back of his head. 'I don't have any friends.'
&
nbsp; On his way out of the apartment he looked back at her, standing alone in the middle of the room. He believed her. And for some reason he couldn't help but pity her, too.
Back in his car he wanted to hang on to see who turned up to take her out. Then he saw her on the roof terrace, looking down at him with the mobile to her ear. He didn't want to keep Consuelo waiting. He pulled away, drove back home where he had a quick shower to try to wash off all that police work. He changed his clothes and ten minutes later he was on his way to the Plaza San Lorenzo. The cab dropped him off in the square, which was full of people ambling about in the warm night under the high trees, with the impressive terracotta brick facade of the church of Jesus del Gran Poder behind. His police mobile vibrated in his pocket. He took the call without thinking, resigned to his fate.
'Listen,' said the voice. 'You'll realize when you've gone too far with this because something will happen. And when it does, you will know that you are to blame. You will recognize it. But there'll be no discussion and no negotiation because, Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon, you will never hear from us again.'
Dead. No number. He wrote the words he'd heard in a notebook he always carried with him. Having just seen Marisa he'd expected that call, but now that it had come he did not feel strengthened by it. Its psychology had unnerved him. That was the calculation of the voice, but his anticipation of it should have protected him. It hadn't. Like a probing question from the blind psychologist, Alicia Aguado, the voice had lifted the lid on something and, despite not knowing its precise nature, he dreaded it coming to the surface.
The Bar La Eslava was packed. Consuelo was standing outside, smoking and sipping a glass of manzanilla. Sevillanos were not known for respecting other people's personal space, but they'd made an exception for Consuelo. Her charisma seemed to create a forcefield. Her short blonde hair stood out under the street lights. She made the simple wild pink mini-dress she was wearing look even more expensive than it was and her high heels made her slim, strong legs look even longer. Falcon was glad he'd taken the time to shower and change. He walked through the crowd towards her and she didn't see him until he was on her.
They kissed. He tasted her peachy lipstick, put his hands around her slim waist, felt her contours fitting into his. He inhaled her smell, felt the sharp prick of her diamond-stud earring in his cheek as his lips found her neck.
'Are you all right?' she said, running a hand up the back of his head so that electricity earthed through his heels.
'More than all right now,' he said, as her hands travelled the outline of his shoulders and his blood went live. Her thigh slipped between his legs. His stomach leapt, cock stirred, perfume shunted into his head and he became human for the first time that day.
They parted, feeling the eyes of the people around them.
'I'll get a beer,' he said.
'I've booked us a table across the road,' she said.
The bar was heaving and noisier than the trading floor of a metal exchange. He fought his way in. He knew the owner, who was serving. A guy he didn't immediately recognize grabbed him around the shoulders. 'Hola, Javier. Que tal?' The owner handed him a beer, refused payment. Two women kissed him on his way through. He was sure he knew one of them. He squeezed back out into the street.
'I didn't know you were going to Madrid today,' said Consuelo.
She knew Yacoub, but not that he was Falcon's spy.
'I had a meeting with another cop about all that stuff in June,' said Falcon, keeping it vague, but still stumbling around in the memory of his meeting with Yacoub, Marisa, that second phone call.
'You were looking as if you'd had a hard day.'
He took out his mobile, turned it off.
'That helps,' he said, sipping his beer. 'How about you?'
'I had some interesting conversations with a couple of estate agents and I had a session with Alicia.'
'How's that going?'
'I'm nearly sane,' she said, smiling, blue eyes widening hysterically. 'Only another year to go.'
They laughed.
'I saw Esteban Calderon today.'
'I'm not as nuts as he is,' said Consuelo.
'The prison governor called me on the way up to Madrid to say he'd put in a request to see Alicia.'
'I don't know if even she could sort out his madness,' said Consuelo.
'That was the first time I'd seen him since it happened,' said Falcon. 'He didn't look good.'
'If what he's got in his mind has started to come out in his face, he should be looking terrible,' she said.
'Are you moving?' he asked.
'Moving?'
'The estate agents,' said Falcon. 'You're not bored of Santa Clara already?'
'My business expansion plans.'
'Seville not big enough for all your ideas?'
'Maybe not, but how about Madrid or Valencia? What do you think?'
'Will you still talk to me when you've been photographed by Hola?' he said. 'Consuelo Jimenez in her glorious home, surrounded by her beautiful children.'
'And my lover… the cop?' she said, looking at him sadly. 'I might have to let you go unless you learn how to sail a yacht.'
That was the first time she'd called him her lover and she knew it. He finished his beer, took her empty glass and put them on a ledge. She took his arm and they walked across the square to the restaurant.
They knew her in the restaurant, which despite its Arabic name had a neo-classical feel to it – all pillars and marble and strong white nappery, with no such thing as a round plate. The chef came out to greet her and two glasses of cava, on the house, arrived at their table. There was a lull in the restaurant hubbub as the other diners looked at them, recognized their faces from distant scandalous news stories; moments later they were forgotten and the cacophony resumed. Consuelo ordered for both of them. He liked it when she took over. They drank the cava. He wished they were at home and he could lean over and kiss her throat. They talked about the future, which was a good sign.
The starter arrived. Three tapas on an oblong plate: a tiny filo pastry money bag containing soft goat's cheese, a crisp toast of duck liver set in sticky sweet quince jam, and a shot-glass of white garlic and almond soup with an orb of melon ice cream floating at the top and flakes of wind-dried tuna nestling in the bottom. Each one went off in his mouth like a firecracker.
'This is oral sex,' said Consuelo.
Plates were removed with their empty flutes. A bottle of 2004 Pesquera from the Ribeiro del Duero was opened, decanted and glasses filled with the dark red wine. They talked about the impossibility of going back to live in Madrid after the lotus life of Seville.
She'd ordered him duck breast, which was presented in a fan with a mound of couscous. Consuelo had the sea bass with crisp silver skin in a delicate white sauce. He felt her calf rub against his and they decided to forgo the dessert and get a taxi instead.
They practically lay down in the back and he kissed her neck as the street lights flashed overhead and the young people outside made their moves from the bars to the clubs. The lights were still on at her neighbour's house and the daughter let them in. Falcon lifted Dario from the bed. He was fast asleep.
As they walked across to Consuelo's house the boy came awake.
'Hola, Javi,' he said sleepily and thumped his blond head into Falcon's chest and left it there, as if he was listening to his heart. The trust nearly broke Falcon apart. They went upstairs where he poured the boy into his bed. Dario's eyelids fluttered against the weight of sleep.
'Football tomorrow,' he murmured. 'You promised.'
'Penalty shoot-out,' said Falcon, pulling up the bedclothes, kissing him on the forehead.
'Goodnight, Javi.'
Falcon stood at the door while Consuelo knelt and kissed her son goodnight, stroked his head; he felt the complicated pang of being a parent, or of never having been one.
They went downstairs. She poured a whisky for Falcon, made herself a gin and tonic. He could see her properly now fo
r the first time that night. Those slim, muscular legs, a subtle line running down her calf. He found himself wanting to kiss the backs of her knees.
There had been a difference in her touch tonight. It wasn't as if they hadn't made love since they'd got back together after the Seville bombing. She hadn't been restrained in that department, although, what with the summer holiday and the kids being around, there hadn't been much opportunity. The first time they'd got together, a couple of years ago, it had been different. They'd both been a little wild then after a long drought. This time they'd been feeling their way around each other tentatively. They needed reassurance that this was the right thing to be doing. But tonight he'd felt a difference. She was letting him in. Maybe it was Alicia, her psychologist, telling her she should let herself go, not just physically this time, but emotionally, too.
'What's going on in there?' asked Consuelo.
'Nothing.'
'All men say that when they're thinking dirty thoughts.'
'I was thinking how magnificent that meal was.'
'Then they lie to you.'
'How is it that you always know what I'm thinking?'
'Because you are completely in my thrall,' she said.
'You really want to know what I was thinking?'
'Only if it's about me.'
'I was controlling a powerful desire to kiss the back of your knees.'
A slow smile crept across her face as a thrill streaked down the back of her thighs.
'I like a bit of patience in a man,' she said, sipping her drink, the ice cubes rolling and tickling the glass.
'The trick of the patient man is to recognize boredom before it sets in.'
She stifled a fake yawn.
'Joder,' he said, getting to his feet.
They kissed and ran upstairs, leaving their drinks quaking on the table.
She stepped out of her pink dress and a small pair of knickers. It was all she had to do. He wrenched at his hands caught in the cuffs of his shirt, kicked off his shoes. She sat on the edge of the bed with her hands on her knees, tanned all over except a small white triangle. After some ferocious moments with his clothes he was naked, went over to her, stood between her legs. She stroked him, looking up at his agony. Her lips were moist, still with the vestiges of the peachy lipstick that matched her fingernails. She reached up from his thighs, over his abdomen, to his chest. Her hands slipped round his back and she dug her nails into his skin. As he felt her mouth on him, her nails clawed their way down to his buttocks. He was hanging on to his patience by the skin of his teeth.
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