Robert Wilson: The Ignoranceof Blood

'Any idea why Vasili Lukyanov would be heading for Seville with eight million euros in his boot?' asked Elvira.

'I don't know. I'm not up to date on what's happening in Seville. It's possible that CICO in Madrid have some intelligence on what's been going on here. I've put in a request,' said Diaz. 'It wouldn't surprise me if there was a rival group opening up here. Leonid Revnik is fifty-two and old school. I think he'd be suspicious of someone like Vasili Lukyanov, who didn't come up through the Russian prison system but was an Afghan war veteran who bought his way in and works with women, which Revnik probably considers inferior, despite its profitability.'

'How profitable?' asked Elvira.

'We have four hundred thousand prostitutes here in Spain and they generate eighteen billion euros' worth of business,' said Diaz. 'We are the biggest users of prostitutes and cocaine of any country in Europe.'

'So you think Leonid Revnik despised Vasili Lukyanov, who would then have been open to offers for his expertise in a very profitable business?' said Falcon.

'Could be,' said Diaz. 'Revnik has been away in Moscow. We were expecting him back next week, but he returned early. Maybe he heard Lukyanov was making a move. I can tell you one thing for sure: Lukyanov wouldn't be going it alone. He'd need protection; but whose support he's getting, I don't know.'

'And the eight million?' asked Elvira, still not satisfied.

'That's a sort of entry fee. It forces Lukyanov to burn his bridges,' said Cortes. 'Once he's stolen that sort of money he's never going to be able to go back to Revnik.'

'The disks in the briefcase I mentioned in my initial report,' said Falcon. 'Hidden-camera stuff, older men with young girls…'

'It's how the Russians get things done. They corrupt whoever they come into contact with,' said Cortes. 'We might be about to find out how our town planners, councillors, mayors and even senior policemen spent their summer holidays.'

Comisario Elvira ran his hand over his perfectly combed hair.

Seville Prison, Alcala de Guadaira – Friday, 15th September 2006, 13.05 hrs

Through the reinforced glass pane of the door, Falcon watched Calderon, who was hunched over the table, smoking, staring into the tin-foil ashtray, waiting for him. The judge, who'd been young for his position, looked older. He had lost his gilded, moisturized sheen. His skin was dull and he'd lost weight where there was none to lose, making him look haggard. His hair had never been luxuriant, but was now definitely thinning to baldness. His ears seemed to have got longer, the lobes fleshier, as if from some unconscious tugging while musing on the entanglements of his mind. It settled Falcon to see the judge so reduced; it would have been intolerable had the wife-beater been his usual arrogant self. Falcon opened the door for the guard, who held a tray of coffee, and followed him in. Calderon instantly reanimated himself into an approximation of the supremely confident man he had once been.

'To what, or to whom, do I owe this pleasure?' asked Calderon, standing up, sweeping his arm across the sparsely furnished room. 'Privacy, coffee, an old friend… these unimaginable luxuries.'

'I'd have come before now,' said Falcon, sitting down, 'but, as you've probably realized, I've been busy.'

Calderon took a long, careful look at him and lit another cigarette, the third of his second pack of the day. The guard set down the tray and left the room.

'And what could possibly make you want to come and see the murderer of your ex-wife?'

'Alleged murderer of your wife.'

'Is that significant, or are you just being accurate?'

'This last week is the first time I've had since June to think and… do some reading,' said Falcon.

'Well, I hope it was a good novel and not the transcript of my interview with my Grand Inquisitor, Inspector Jefe Luis Zorrita,' said Calderon. 'That, as my lawyer will tell you, was not my finest hour.'

'I've read that quite a few times and I've also gone over Zorrita's interview with Marisa Moreno,' said Falcon. 'She's been to see you a number of times, hasn't she?'

'Unfortunately,' said Calderon, nodding, 'they've not been conjugal visits. We talk.'

'About what?'

'We were never very good at talking,' said Calderon, drawing hard on his cigarette. 'We had that other language.'

'I was just thinking that maybe since you've been in here you might have developed some other communication skills.'

'I have, but not particularly with Marisa.'

'So why does she come to see you?'

'Duty? Guilt? I don't know. Ask her.'

'Guilt?'

'I think there might be a few things she regrets telling Zorrita about,' said Calderon.

'Like what?'

'I don't want to talk about it,' said Calderon. 'Not with you.'

'Things like that little joke you had with Marisa about the "bourgeois solution" to costly divorce:… murder your wife.'

'Fuck knows how that bastard Zorrita squeezed that out of her.'

'Maybe he didn't have to squeeze too hard,' said Falcon calmly.

Calderon's cigarette stopped on the way to his mouth.

'What else do you think she regretted talking to Zorrita about?' asked Falcon.

'She covered for me. She said I left her apartment later than I did. She thought she was doing me a favour, but Zorrita had all the timings from the cab company. It was a stupid thing to have done. It counted against me. Made me look as if I needed help, especially taken in conjunction with the cops finding me on the banks of the Guadalquivir river trying to dispose of Ines's body,' said Calderon, who stopped, frowned and did some concentrated smoking. 'What the fuck are you doing here, Javier? What's this all about?'

'I'm trying to help you,' said Falcon.

'Are you now?' said Calderon. 'And why would you want to help the alleged murderer of your ex-wife? I realize that you and Ines weren't particularly close any more, but… still…'

'You told me you were innocent. You've said so from the very beginning.'

'Well, Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon, you're the expert on the murderer's constant state of denial,' said Calderon.

'I am,' said Falcon. 'And I'm not going to pretend to you that my investigation into what happened on that night doesn't have ulterior motives.'

'All right,' said Calderon, sitting back, paradoxically satisfied by this revelation. 'I didn't think you wanted to save my ass… especially if you've read that transcript as many times as you said.'

'There's some very ugly stuff in there, I can't deny that, Esteban.'

'Nor can I,' said Calderon. 'I wouldn't mind turning back the clock on my whole relationship with Ines.'

'I have some questions relating to the transcript,' said Falcon, heading off a possible descent into self-pity. 'I understand that the first time you hit Ines was when she discovered the naked photographs of Marisa on your digital camera.'

'She was trying to download them on to her computer,' said Calderon, leaping to his own defence. 'I didn't know what her intentions were. I mean, it's one thing to find them, but it seemed to me that she was going to make use of them in some way.'

'I'm sure Ines knew you very well, by then,' said Falcon. 'So why did you leave the camera hanging around? What were you thinking of, taking shots of your naked lover?'

' I didn't take them, Marisa did… while I was asleep. She was nice about it, though. She told me she'd left some "presents" on the camera,' said Calderon. 'And I didn't leave the camera hanging around. Ines went through my pockets.'

'And what were you doing with the camera in the first place?'

'I took some shots of a lawyers' dinner I'd attended earlier in the evening,' said Calderon. 'My alibi, if Ines found the camera.'