It was suddenly cold in the room, as if the air conditioning had found another gear. She swallowed against the rise of adrenaline. She headed for the bedroom, with the backs of her thighs trembling below the oversized T-shirt she wore in bed. She slapped the light on and opened the drawer of her dresser where she kept a vast tangle of knickers and bras. Her hand roved the drawer, again and again. She ripped it out and turned it over. She ripped out the other drawer and did the same. She thought she was going to faint with the quantity of chemicals her body was injecting into her system. Her gun was no longer there.
This was too big for her to manage on her own. She was going to have to call her Inspector Jefe. She hit the speed-dial button, listened to the endless ringing tone and reminded herself to breathe. Falcon answered on the eighth ring. He'd been asleep for one and a half hours. She told him everything in three seconds flat. It went down the line like a massive file under compression software.
'You're going to have to tell me all that again, Cristina,' he said, 'and a little slower. Breathe. Close your eyes. Speak.'
This time it came out in a thirty-second stream.
'There's only one person from Fuerza Andalucia who Fernando knows who isn't currently in police custody and that's Jesus Alarcon,' said Falcon. 'I'll pick you up in ten minutes.'
'But he's going to kill him, Inspector Jefe,' said Ferrera. 'He's going to kill him with my gun. Shouldn't we…?'
'If we send a patrol car round there he might get spooked and do just that,' said Falcon. 'My guess is that Fernando is going to want to tell him something first. Punish him before he tries to kill him.'
'With a gun he doesn't have to try very hard.'
'The concept is easy, the reality takes a bit more,' said Falcon. 'Let's hope he woke you up as he left your apartment. If he's on foot he can't be too far ahead of us.' Fernando squatted on his haunches next to some bins on the edge of the Parque Maria Luisa. Only his hands were in the light from the street lamps. He looked from the dark at the blue metal of the small.38 revolver. He turned it over, surprised at its weight. He'd only ever held toy guns, made from aluminium. The real thing had the heft of a much bigger tool, condensed into pure efficiency and portability.
He emptied the bullets from the chambers of the revolver's cylinder and put them in his pocket. He clicked the cylinder back into place. He was good with his hands. He played around with the weapon, getting used to its weight and the simple, lethal mechanisms. When he was confident with it, he counted the bullets back into the chambers. He was ready. He stood and did what he'd seen people do in the movies. He tucked it into the waistband in the small of his back and pulled the Fuerza Andalucia polo shirt, given to him by Jesus Alarcon, over the top.
The wide Avenida that separated the park from the smart residential area of El Porvenir was empty. He knew where Jesus Alarcon lived because there'd been the offer of a room for as long as he wanted it. He hadn't accepted it because he didn't feel comfortable with their class differences.
He stood in front of the huge, sliding metal gate of the house. A silver Mercedes was parked in front of the garage. If Fernando had known that it was worth twice as much as his destroyed apartment it would have stoked his fury even more. As it was, the malignancy growing inside him was too big to contain. His rib cage creaked against his endlessly extending outrage at what Jesus Alarcon had done. Not just the bombing, but the purpose with which he'd set out to make Fernando, whose family he had personally been responsible for destroying, his close friend. It was treachery and betrayal on a scale to which only a politician could have been impervious. Jesus Alarcon, with all his authentic concern and genuine sympathy, had been playing him like a fish.
There was no traffic. The street in El Porvenir was empty. None of the people in these houses was ever up before dawn. Fernando called Alarcon on his mobile. It rang for some time and switched into the message service. He called Alarcon's house phone and looked up at the window he imagined would be the master bedroom. Jesus and Monica in some gargantuan bed, beneath high-quality linen, dressed in silk pyjamas. A faint glow appeared behind the curtains. Alarcon answered groggily.
'Jesus, it's me, Fernando. I'm sorry to call you so early. I'm here. Outside. I've been out all night. They threw me out of the hospital. I had nowhere to go. I need to talk to you. Can you come down? I'm…I'm desperate.'
It was true. He was desperate. Desperate for revenge. He'd only ever heard tales of the monstrousness of this horrific emotion. He had not been prepared for the way it found every crevice of the body. His organs screamed for it. His bones howled with it. His joints ground with it. His blood seethed with it. It was so intolerable that he had to get it out of himself. He wanted stilts so that he could step over the gate, smash through the glass, reach into Alarcon's bed and pluck out his beautiful wife and throw her to the ground, break her bones, dash out her brains, tread his sharpened stilt into her heart and then see what Jesus Alarcon made of that. Yes, he wanted to be enormous, to drive his arm into Alarcon's home as if it was a doll's house. He saw his hand ferreting around the bedrooms reaching for Alarcon's small children, who would run squealing from his snatching hand. He wanted Alarcon to see them crushed and laid out under little sheets in front of the house.
'I'm coming,' said Alarcon. 'No problem, Fernando.' Had he known the hidden hunger behind the eyes staring through the bars of the gate, Jesus Alarcon would have stayed in his bed, called the police and begged for special forces.
A light came on outside the front of the house. The door opened. Alarcon, in a silk dressing gown, pointed the remote at the gate. Fernando flinched, as if being shot at. The gate rumbled back on its rails. Fernando slipped through the gap and walked quickly up to the house. Alarcon had already turned back to the front door, holding out an arm, which he expected to fit around Fernando's shoulders and welcome him into his home.
Moths swirled around the porch light, maddened by the prospect of a greater darkness, which never materialized. Alarcon was still too groggy to recognize the level of intent moving up on him. He was astonished to feel a fistful of his dressing-gown collar grabbed from behind and the front door reeling away from him as Fernando, with the hardened strength of a manual worker, swung him round. Alarcon lost his footing and fell to his knees. Fernando yanked him backwards and trapped his head between his thighs. He had the gun out of his waistband. Alarcon reached back, grabbing at Fernando's trousers and polo shirt. Fernando showed him the gun, poked the barrel into the socket of his eye so that Alarcon gasped with pain.
'You see that?' said Fernando. 'You see it, you little fucker?'
Alarcon was paralysed with fear. His voice, with his neck pulled taut, produced only a grunt. Fernando pushed the gun between Alarcon's lips, felt the barrel rattle across his teeth and sensed the steel mushing into the softness of his tongue.
'Feel it. Taste it. You know what it is now.'
He wrenched the gun out of his mouth, taking a chip of tooth with it. He jammed the barrel into the back of Alarcon's neck.
'Are you ready? Say your prayers, Jesus, because you're going to meet your namesake.'
Fernando pulled the trigger, the gun pressed hard against Alarcon's shaking neck. There was a dry click. A gasp from Alarcon and a stink rose up from behind him as he loosed his bowels into his pyjamas.
'That was for Gloria,' said Fernando. 'Now you know her fear.'
Fernando moved the gun round to Alarcon's temple, screwed it into the top of his sideburn so that Alarcon winced away from it. Another dry click and a sob from Alarcon.
'That was for my little Pedro,' said Fernando, coughing against the emotion rising in his throat. 'He didn't know fear. He was too young to know it. Too innocent. Now look at the gun, Jesus. You see the cylinder. Two empty chambers and four full ones. We're going upstairs now and you're going to watch me shoot your wife and two children, just so you know how it feels.'
'What are you doing, Fernando?' said Alarcon, finding his voice and his presence of mind, now
that the rush of the initial onslaught was past. 'What the fuck are you doing?'
'You and your friends. You're all the same. There's no difference between you and any other politician. You're all liars, cheats and egomaniacs. I don't know how I fell for your stupid, fucking line. Jesus Alarcon, the man who will talk to you without cameras, without the photo opportunity, without his beautiful profile in mind.'
'What are you talking about, Fernando? What have I done? How have I lied and cheated?' said Alarcon, pleading.
'You killed my wife and child,' said Fernando. 'And then, because you needed me, you made me your friend.'
'How did I kill them?'
'I read it in the police notes. You were all in it. Rivero, Zarrias, Cardenas. You planted the bomb in the mosque. You killed my wife and son. You killed all those people. And for what?'
'Fernando?'
He looked up. A different voice from beyond the gate. Female. Not in his head. The blood was simmering in his brain, bubbling and popping in such arterial rage that he'd become confused.
'Gloria?' he said.
'It's me, Cristina,' she said. 'I'm here with Inspector Jefe Falcon. We want you to put the gun down, Fernando. This is not how you resolve things. You've misunderstood…'
'No, no. That is not true. I have finally understood only too well. You listen. You listen to my "friend", Jesus Alarcon.'
Fernando knelt down by the side of Alarcon and whispered harshly in his ear.
'I am not going to shoot you or your family on one condition,' he said. 'The condition is that you must tell them the truth. They're the cops. They know what the truth is. You're going to tell them the truth for the first time with your gilded politician's lips. Tell them how you planted the bomb and you will live to see the rest of this day. If you don't, I will shoot you and, when you are dead, I will go inside and find Monica and shoot her, too. Go on, tell them.'
Fernando stood up and prodded Alarcon in the neck with the gun. Alarcon cleared his throat.
'The truth,' said Fernando, 'or I'm sending you into the dark. Tell them.'
Alarcon crossed himself.
'He has asked me to tell you the truth about the bomb,' said Alarcon, his head hung on to his chest, his arms limp by his sides. 'If I fail to tell you the truth he says he will shoot me and then my wife. I can only tell you what I know, which may not be the whole truth, but only a part of it.'
Fernando stood back, arm straight. He rested the gun barrel on the crown of Alarcon's head.
'I had nothing to do with the planting of any bomb in that mosque, so help me God,' said Alarcon.
37
Seville-Friday, 9th June 2006, 05.03 hrs
There was no gunshot. A force travelled from Alarcon's head, up the gun barrel, through Fernando's hand, arm and shoulder and into his mind. It made his upper body shudder so that the gun barrel drifted from its aim, and had to be retrained on to Alarcon's crown, not once or twice, but three times. His finger caressed the trigger with each retraining of the revolver. He blinked, took in huge gulps of air and looked down on the man, who a few moments ago had been the object of his deepest hatred. He couldn't do it. Alarcon's words had somehow drained all his resolve. It was the miracle cure for the malignancy of his revenge. He knew with absolute certainty that he had heard the truth.
At first light, with the sky turning from midnight blue to anil, Fernando dropped his arm and let it hang with the weight of the gun. Ferrera stepped forward and removed it from his slack grasp and holstered it. She moved him away from behind Alarcon, who fell forwards on to all fours.
'Take Fernando to the car,' said Falcon. 'Cuff him.'
Alarcon was dry retching and sobbing at the sudden release of tension. Falcon got him to his feet and took him to where his wife was standing, wide-eyed, features rigid, by the front door. Falcon asked for the bathroom. The request brought Monica Alarcon back to reality. She led Falcon and her husband upstairs to where the children were standing, one holding a fluffy tiger, the other a small blue blanket, uncomprehending of the adult drama. Monica got the kids back into their bedroom. She joined Falcon in the bathroom where her husband was struggling to undo the buttons on his pyjamas. Falcon told her to strip her husband's clothes off and get him into the shower. He would wait downstairs in the kitchen.
Exhaustion leaned on Falcon like a big, stupid dog. He shut the front door and sat at the kitchen table, staring into the garden, with only one thought shuttling backwards and forwards through his mind. Jesus Alarcon was not part of the conspiracy. It looked as if he was their compliant and ignorant front man.
Monica came back down to the kitchen and offered him a coffee. She was shaken, her hands trembled over the crockery. She had to ask him to work the espresso machine.
'Did he have a gun?' she asked. 'Did Fernando have a gun?'
'Your husband handled himself very well,' said Falcon, nodding.
'But Fernando and Jesus were getting on so well.'
'Fernando read something he shouldn't have done and misunderstood an observation as a fact,' said Falcon. 'Your husband's courage meant that it didn't end in tragedy.'
'We both admired Fernando so much for the way in which he was managing his terrible loss,' she said. 'I had 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 pol
icy.'
'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.
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