Robert Wilson: The Ignoranceof Blood

He took one look at Abdullah's wound and said he'd have to come with him to his surgery and have it properly cleaned and stitched. Falcon and Consuelo washed Dario in the bath and put him to bed. They slept with the boy in between them and were woken just before midday by his crying. He had no recollection of what had happened to him. Although he vaguely remembered being taken away from the Sevilla FC shop, he could not recollect how it had happened or who had done it.

It was decided that Abdullah would travel with them and stay in Seville with Falcon until the Barakat murder and the death of the mother had been dealt with by the authorities. They took a cab to the hydrofoil and were across the straits by 3.30 p.m. They drove back to Seville, where Falcon left Consuelo and Dario in Santa Clara with her sister and the boys, Ricardo and Matias. He and Abdullah went to the Jefatura, where he gave Barakat's DNA swab to Jorge in the forensics lab and asked him to check it against samples on the Jefatura's database.

'You know Comisario Elvira is looking for you,' said Jorge.

'He's always looking for me. I'm going home to bed,' said Falcon. 'You haven't seen me.'

He and Abdullah went home. Encarnacion fed them. Falcon turned off all his mobiles and disconnected his phone. He slept the rest of the afternoon and whole night without waking.

In the morning he inspected Abdullah's wound and redressed it. He took a slow breakfast out in the patio, staring at the marble flagstones. At midday he called Jorge and asked if he'd run the DNA test.

'There was a match to Raul Jimenez,' said Jorge. 'The DNA you gave me would probably have belonged to his son. Does that help you?'

'Interesting.'

'You might also be interested to know that your squad are on a high. Last night they arrested two building inspectors in Torremolinos, who they'd identified from those Lukyanov disks. They've already charged them with conspiring to cause an explosion,' said Jorge. 'This morning they picked up the owner of a small hotel in Almeria, who also happened to be an electrician and was trained by the army in the use of explosives. He'll be arriving in Seville this afternoon. Ramirez has been trying to call you and Comisario Elvira is still very eager to know where you are. I've said nothing.'

Falcon hung up, called Consuelo. Dario was playing with his brothers and some friends in the pool.

'He seems untouched by it all,' she said, amazed. 'I was going to get Alicia to talk to him, but I'm not sure whether it will just make him unhappy.'

'See what Alicia says. You don't have to rush,' said Falcon.

He told her about the DNA match from Barakat to Raul. Consuelo couldn't understand how Raul Jimenez, her ex-husband, came to be Mustafa Barakat's father.

'The reason Raul suddenly had to leave Morocco back in the fifties was because he'd made the twelve-year-old daughter of Abdullah Diouri Senior pregnant. Diouri Senior had demanded that Raul marry the girl to preserve the family honour. Raul couldn't because he was already married, so he fled. Diouri took revenge by kidnapping Raul's youngest son, Arturo. And for whatever reason – guilt, or because he loved him – Diouri gave Arturo the same status as his own sons with his family name. So Arturo Jimenez became Yacoub Diouri.

'But because Diouri's twelve-year-old daughter had brought shame on to the family, her son by Raul was not allowed to bear the family name. However Diouri Senior didn't totally reject him. The close ties between the Diouris and the Barakats meant that the boy was introduced into that family to become Mustafa Barakat.'

'That sort of knowledge in the wrong mind could breed a special kind of hatred,' said Consuelo.

'And how do you think Mustafa Barakat would feel about Yacoub Diouri?'

'Imagine the bitterness that poor girl must have felt at her own rejection for being defiled by Raul, only to have to witness Yacoub's smooth integration into the Diouri family while her own son is kicked out.'

'Profile of a terrorist?'

Consuelo invited Javier to dinner that night, asked him to bring Abdullah. Falcon drove out to the prison in Alcala de Guadaira. He'd called ahead so Calderon was already waiting for him in a visiting room. He wasn't smoking. He had his hands clasped in front of him on the table to stop them from fidgeting. He still looked haggard, but not as reduced as he had been when Falcon had last seen him. The supreme self-confidence had not been recovered, but he seemed more solid.

'You've heard,' said Falcon.

'My lawyer came to see me yesterday,' said Calderon, nodding. 'I'm still going to face assault charges, but…'

He trailed off, looked up at the high barred window.

'You're going to get your life back.'

'In the end,' he said. 'But it'll be a different one. I'm going to see to that.'

'How's it been going with Alicia Aguado?'

'Hard,' said Calderon, leaning back, hooking his hands around his knee. 'I spend a lot of my day thinking about myself, and not much of it is good. You know, Alicia told me in our last session that it was rare for a male patient to turn on himself as comprehensively as I'd done. I told her: "This last week has been the longest sustained period of facing the truth that I've ever been through in my life." A lawyer speaks, Javier.'

They grunted laughter at each other.

'I also spend a lot of my time thinking about you. I feel I owe you an explanation.'

'It's not necessary, Esteban.'

'I know, but you started me on this journey with Alicia, and we have this curious relationship that's entwined with both Ines and Marisa. So I want to clarify a few things, if you can bear to listen to me. It's not going to make me look very pretty, but then you're getting used to that.'

They sat in silence for a moment while Calderon prepared himself.

'As you know, four years ago I nearly lost my career. I needed all my family connections, and Ines's, to maintain a foothold in the Edificio de los Juzgados. Ines was fantastic throughout. She was strong. I was weak. And, as you know from your murder cases, Javier, the weak man is full of self-hatred and develops a bottomless pit of savagery, which by rights he should unleash against himself, but inevitably he turns on the person closest to him.'

'Is that when it started?'

'The beatings? No. The hatred, yes. When Ines became my wife and the balance of power shifted in my favour, I started breaking her down with my extravagant philandering,' said Calderon. 'By the time that bomb went off on 6th June we were both primed for violence. By that I mean: I was ready to give it and she was ready to receive it. I was feeling sufficiently strong and angry, and she was sufficiently fragile and humiliated. I'm not sure there wasn't something sadomasochistic in the state of our relationship. When I came back from Marisa's that morning we could have had just another row, but this time she wanted it to be taken further. She goaded me, and I, inexcusably, complied.'

'She was goading you to violence?'

'It probably wasn't as clear as that in her mind; we'd shouted and screamed, thrown things at each other, and I suppose it was the only possible next step. You know how important Ines's public image was to her, she couldn't walk away from a second failed marriage. And I would have found it hard to split from her. What she wanted was for me to hit her, then for me to be filled with remorse, and in that softening she would bring us back together. I surprised her and myself. I didn't know I had that pent-up rage inside me.'

'Did you feel any remorse?'

'At the time, no. I realize this sounds pathetic, but I felt immensely powerful,' said Calderon. 'To have beaten a fifty-kilo woman into terrified submission should have appalled me, but it didn't. Then, later, after Marisa told me about her confrontation with Ines in the Murillo Gardens, I became incensed once again and gave Ines an even worse beating. Still no remorse. Just madness and rage.'