Robert Wilson - The Ignoranceof Blood

'How was that?'

'Lung cancer. Too many cigars,' she said, waving the smoking stub in her hand. 'He only married her after his diagnosis.'

Marisa blew a plume of smoke out into the rafters of the wooden roof. She felt she had to keep this thing going. Do one long stint with this new inspector jefe and then maybe he'd leave her alone.

'What did you do after your father died?' asked Falcon.

'We moved down here. My mother couldn't stand the north. All that rain.'

'What about her family?'

'Her parents were dead. She had a brother in Malaga, but he didn't like black people very much. He didn't come to her wedding.'

'How did your mother die?'

'Heart attack,' said Marisa, eyes shining at the memory of it.

'Were you living here at the time?'

'I was in Los Angeles.'

'I'm sorry,' said Falcon. 'That must have been hard. She wasn't very old.'

'Fifty-one.'

'Did you see her before she died?'

'Is that any of your business?' she said, turning away, looking for an ashtray.

This cop was getting under her skin.

'My mother died when I was five,' said Falcon. 'It doesn't matter whether you're five or fifty-five, it's not something you ever get over.'

Marisa turned back slowly; she'd never heard a Sevillano, let alone a cop, talk like this. Falcon was frowning at the floor.

'So you came back from Los Angeles and you've been here ever since?' he said.

'I stayed for a year,' said Marisa. 'I thought I should look after my sister.'

'And what happened?'

'She left again. But she was eighteen this time so…'

'And you haven't seen or heard from her since?'

There was a long silence in which Marisa's mind seemed to float off out of the room and Falcon thought for the first time that he was getting somewhere.

'Senora Moreno?' said Falcon.

'I haven't heard from her… no.'

'Are you worried about her?'

She shrugged and for some reason Falcon didn't think he was going to believe what he heard next.

'We weren't very close, which was why she left the first time without telling me.'

'Is that right?' said Falcon, locking eyes with her across the studio. 'So what did you do when she left the second time?'

'I finished the course I was doing at the Bella Artes, rented out my mother's apartment, which my sister and I had inherited…'

'Is that where you live now, in Calle Hiniesta?'

'And I went to Africa,' she said, nodding. 'Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Congo, until it got too dangerous and then I went to Mozambique.'

'What about the Touaregs… didn't you spend some time with them?'

Silence, as she registered that he'd heard that from someone else.

'If you know all this, Inspector Jefe, why are you asking me?'

'I know it, but hearing it from you arranges the furniture.'

'I let you in here to talk about my sister.'

'Who you're not close to.'

'You seem to have expanded your interests since you started using up my work time.'

'And then there was New York…?'

She grunted. Puffed on the cigar to get it going again.

'You've been talking to Esteban, haven't you?'

'How do you know?'

'I lied to him about New York,' she said. 'I saw a movie about an artist starring Nick Nolte, and I assumed the role of his assistant. I've never been to New York.'

'Did you lie to him about anything else?'

'Probably. I had an image to live up to.'

'An image?'

'That's how most of the men I've spent any time with see women.'

'You described Esteban Calderon as your lover to Inspector Jefe Zorrita.'

'He was then… still is, kind of, although prison doesn't help,' she said. 'I'm sorry he killed his wife. He was always so controlled, you know, still passionate in the way Sevillanos are, but a lawyer, too, and with a lawyer's mentality.'

'So you think he did it?'

'What I think doesn't matter. It's what Inspector Jefe Zorrita thinks that matters,' she said, and something clicked in her mind. 'That's it, I've got it now. It was your ex-wife that Esteban murdered. That's interesting.'

'Is it?'

'I don't know what you're doing here,' she said, puffing on her cigar, appraising him anew.

'Was your sister with a boyfriend when she left the second time?'

'There was always a man involved with Margarita.'

'Pretty girl?'

'That… and the other thing.'

'Sex?'

'Not exactly,' said Marisa, who went over to a small plans chest, opened a drawer and slapped a sheaf of photos down on the top. She was going to let him in, or rather let him think that she was opening up. 'Take a look. I took these three weeks before her eighteenth birthday.'

Falcon flicked through the shots. A sadness lodged itself in his chest. It wasn't sex, despite the provocative nudity. Even when she was lying back, legs splayed, she had an innocence about her. An innocence that itched to be desecrated in the eyes of men. That was why Marisa had taken the shots and only Marisa could have taken them. Even in the most pornographic of poses Margarita never lost her childlike purity, whereas the viewer, or the voyeur, felt the beast rise up on its hind legs and dance on its furry hooves.

'For a Sevillano, you don't say very much, Inspector Jefe.'

'Nothing to add,' he said, giving up on the shots halfway through, feeling the woman's intention and not flattered by it. 'They do their work.'

'You're the first person to see those.'

'I'd like a shot of Margarita with some clothes on,' he said, 'so that we can begin to look for her.'

'She's not lost any more,' said Marisa. 'She doesn't need to be found.'

'I'm sure you'd like to hear from her, though, wouldn't you?'

Another shrug from Marisa, something very uneasy about her. She handed over a head-and-shoulders shot of her sister.

'You used to go through Esteban's pockets,' said Falcon, taking the photo. 'Why did you do that? I mean, you're an artist, I can see that from the quality of this work. So you're curious, but not for the sort of crap you find in a man's pockets.'

'My stepmother did the same thing when my father came back at seven in the morning. She hated herself for it but couldn't help it. She had to know, even though she already knew.'

'That doesn't explain anything,' said Falcon. 'I could understand Ines wanting to go through his pockets, but you? What were you looking for? You knew he was married, and not very happily. What else was there?'

'My mother came from a very conservative Sevillana family. You can see the type in her brother. And she got involved with a black man when she was forty-five years old and he repaid her by fucking everything that passed beneath his nose. Her bourgeois instinct -'

'Hers, not yours. She wasn't your natural mother.'

'We adored her.'

'That's your only explanation?'

'You amaze me, Inspector Jefe.'

'Keys?' he said, cutting in on her digression, eyebrows raised.

'What?'

'You were after his keys.'

'That's why you amaze me,' said Marisa, puffing on her chewed-over cigar butt, spitting out flakes of tobacco. 'Zorrita told me, triumphantly no less, that he had a rock-solid case against Esteban for the murder of his wife, your ex, and here you are, trying to chip away at it for some reason that I don't quite understand.'

'Did you get a key made to his apartment and have a good look around for yourself, or make a duplicate for somebody else so that they could?'

'Look, Inspector Jefe, one time I found he had condoms which he never wore when he was with me,' said Marisa. 'Once a woman finds something like that, she keeps checking to see if there are any fewer.'

'I've spoken to the governor. We're stopping your prison visits.'

'Why?'

'I'd have thought that would be a relief.'

'Think what you like.'