Robert Wilson - The Hidden Assassins

'We can't access it because we do not hold it,' said Pablo.

'Who does hold it?'

'The Americans.'

'Did you find a heavily annotated copy of that edition of the Koran in the Imam's apartment?' asked Falcon.

'No.'

'So you don't think he was in the loop?' said Ramirez.

'We don't know enough to be able to answer that question.'

The meeting broke up soon after that exchange. The CNI and CGI men left the pre-school together. Elvira asked Falcon to attend the press conference in the Andalucian Parliament building when the new judge arrived, to show a united front. Ramirez was waiting outside the classroom.

'I'm sorry for your loss, Javier,' he said, holding him by the shoulder and shaking his hand. 'I know you and Ines had grown apart, but…it's a terrible thing. I hope you didn't go to the crime scene.'

'I did,' said Falcon. 'I don't know what I was thinking. They told me over the phone that he'd been identified as Juez Calderon and that he'd been trying to dispose of a body. I don't know why…I just didn't think it would be Ines.'

'Did he do it?'

'I went to talk to him in the patrol car. All he said was: "I didn't do it."'

Ramirez shook his head. Denial was a very common psychological state for husbands when they murdered their wives.

'There's going to be a feeding frenzy,' said Ramirez. 'A lot of people have been waiting for this moment.'

'You know, Jose Luis, the worst thing…' said Falcon, struggling, 'was that she was very badly bruised over her torso, down her left side…and it was old bruising.'

'He'd been beating her?'

'Her face was completely clear.'

'You'd better take the riot squad with you into that press conference,' said Ramirez. 'They're going to go mad if they hear about that.'

'Ines came round to my house the other night,' said Falcon. 'She was behaving very strangely. I thought for a moment she wanted to get back with me, but now I think she was trying to tell me what was happening to her.'

'Did she seem in pain at all?' asked Ramirez, preferring to stick to the facts.

'She was swearing like I'd never heard her swear before and, yes, she did hold on to her side at one point,' said Falcon. 'She was furious with him for all his…'

'Yes, we know,' said Ramirez, who hadn't banked on this level of intimacy.

Falcon's eyes filled, his mind taking its grief in gulps. Ramirez squeezed his shoulder with his huge mahogany hand.

'We'd better start thinking about today,' said Falcon. 'Did you manage to read that file about the unidentified body found at the dump on Monday?'

'Not yet.'

'We don't get that many dead bodies in Seville,' said Falcon. 'And in my career I have never come across such a disfigured corpse, and poisoned with cyanide, too. And all this happens days before a bomb goes off in the city.'

'There doesn't have to be a connection,' said Ramirez, wary of letting himself in for more fruitless work.

'But before we get a ton of forensic information from the mosque, I'd like to see if there is one,' said Falcon. 'At least I'd like to identify the victim. It might open up another pathway into this situation.'

'Any pointers before I start reading?'

'The Medico Forense thought he was mid forties, long-haired, desk bound but tanned and didn't wear shoes very much. He had traces of hashish in his blood. There was also tattoo ink in the lymph nodes, which is the reason his hands were severed: they had tattoos on them, small ones, but presumably distinctive.'

'Sounds like a university type to me,' said Ramirez, who was suspicious of anybody with too much education. 'Post-graduate?'

'Or maybe a professor trying to recapture his youth?'

'Spanish?'

'Olive-skinned,' said Falcon. 'He'd had a hernia op. The Medico Forense removed the mesh. See if you can get a match for it, find the company that supplied it and to which hospital. Of course, he might have had it done abroad…'

'Do you want me to do this on my own?'

'Take Ferrera with you. She's done some work on this already,' said Falcon. 'Perez, Serrano and Baena can tour the construction sites of Seville, especially any with immigrant labour. Tell them they have to find the electricians.'

'Didn't I hear someone say that you were having a model made of this guy's head-the one from the dump?'

'The sculptor's a friend of the Medico Forense,' said Falcon. 'I'll follow that up.' 'You missed your session last night,' said Alicia Aguado.

'Something cropped up,' said Consuelo. 'Something very upsetting.'

'That's why we're here.'

'You told me to make sure I had a family member to look after me when I came home after my session on Tuesday evening,' said Consuelo. 'I asked my sister. She was there, but couldn't stay for long. We talked about the session. She could see that I was calm and so she left. Then yesterday afternoon she called me to check that I was still OK, and we chatted and she remembered something she'd meant to ask me about the night before. My new pool man.'

'Pool man?'

'He looks after the pool. He checks the pH levels, hoovers the bottom, skims the surface, cleans the…' said Consuelo, getting carried away on the detail.

'OK, Consuelo, I'm not going into the pool-cleaning business,' said Aguado.

'The point is, I don't have a new pool man,' said Consuelo. 'The same guy has been coming round every Thursday afternoon since I bought the house. I inherited him from the previous owners.'

'And what?'

Consuelo tried to swallow, but couldn't.

'My sister described him, and it was the same disgusting chulo from the Plaza del Pumarejo.'

'Very upsetting,' said Aguado. 'It unnerved you, I'm sure. So you called the police and stayed with your children. I can understand that.'

Silence. Consuelo was slumped to one side of the chair, as if she'd lost some stuffing.

'All right,' said Aguado. 'Tell me what you did, or did not do.'

'I didn't call the police.'

'Why not?'

'I was too embarrassed,' she said. 'I'd have to explain everything.'

'You could have just told them that an undesirable person was snooping around your home.'

'You probably don't know very much about the police,' said Consuelo. 'I was a murder suspect for a couple of weeks five years ago. What they put you through is not so different to what you're doing to me here. You start talking and they smell things. They know when people are hiding the shit in their lives. They see it every day. They'd ask a question like: "Do you think it possible that you know this person?" and what would happen? Especially in my fragile mental state.'

'I know you might find this difficult to believe, but to me this is a positive development,' said Aguado.

'It makes me feel like a failure,' said Consuelo. 'I don't know whether this person could be a danger to my children, and just because of my own shame I'm prepared to put them at risk.'

'But at least now I know that he's real,' said Aguado.

Silence from Consuelo, who hadn't considered this alarming possibility.

'Our minds have ways of correcting imbalances,' said Aguado. 'So, for instance, a powerful chief executive who controls thousands of people's lives may redress the balance by dreaming of being at school and the teacher telling him what to do. This is a very benign form of balancing things out. More aggressive forms exist. It's not unusual to find successful businessmen who visit a dominatrix in order to be tied up, rendered powerless and punished. A New York psychologist told me he had clients who went to nurseries where they could wear nappies and sit in oversized playpens. The danger comes with the uncertainty between the fantastic, the real and the illusory. The mind becomes confused and cannot differentiate, and then a breakdown can ensue, with possible lasting damage.'