Robert Wilson - The Ignorance of Blood

‘There was no intent,’ he said, out loud.

‘Start from the beginning, Esteban.’

‘Look, Javier, I've tried it every which way: forwards, backwards and inside out, but however hard I try there's always a gap,’ said Calderón, lighting another cigarette from the stub of the last one. ‘The cab driver opened the apartment door for me, two turns of the key. He left me there. I went into the apartment. I saw the light from the kitchen. I remember being annoyed – and I repeat, “annoyed”, not angry or murderous. I was just irritated that I might have to explain myself when all I wanted to do was crash out. So I remember that emotion very clearly, then nothing until I woke up on the floor in the corridor beyond the kitchen.’

‘What do you think about Zorrita's theory, that people have blank moments about terrible things they have done?’

‘I've come across it professionally. I don't doubt it. I've searched every corner of my mind…’

‘So what was this about seeing Inés alive and being so happy?’

‘My lawyer tells me that Freud had a term for that: “wish fulfilment”, he called it,’ said Calderón. ‘You want something to be true so badly that your mind invents it for you. I did not want Inés to be dead on the floor. We were not happy together, but I did not want her dead. I wanted her to be alive so badly that my mind substituted the reality with my most fervent wish. Both versions came out in the turmoil of that first interview with Zorrita.’

‘You know that this is the crux of your case,’ said Falcón. ‘The flaws I've found are small. Marisa going through your pockets, getting the upper hand in the shouting match with Inés in the Murillo Gardens and burning your foot to wake you up. These things amount to nothing when put against your recorded statement, in which you say that you entered the double-locked apartment alone, saw Inés alive, blacked out and then found her dead. Your inner turmoil and all that wish-fulfilment crap is no match for those powerful facts.’

More concentrated smoking from Calderón. He scratched at his thinning hair and his left eye twitched.

‘And why do you think Marisa is the key?’

‘The worst possible thing that could have happened at that moment in our investigation into the bombing was to have our instructing judge, and our strongest performer in front of the media, arrested for the murder of his wife,’ said Falcón. ‘Losing you pretty well derailed the whole process. If your disgrace was planned, then Marisa was crucial to its execution.’

‘I'll speak to her,’ said Calderón, nodding, his face hardening.

‘You won't,’ said Falcón. ‘We've stopped her visits. You're too desperate, Esteban. I don't want you to give anything away. What you've got to do is unlock your mind and see if you can find any detail that might help me. And it might be advisable to get a professional in to do that for you.’

‘Ah!’ said Calderón, getting it finally. ‘The shrink.’

Puti Club, Estepona, Costa del Sol – Friday, 15th September 2006, 14.35 hrs

Leonid Revnik was still sitting at Vasili Lukyanov's desk in the club, but this time he was waiting for news from Viktor Belenki, his second-in-command. When Revnik had taken control of the Costa del Sol after the police had mounted Operation Wasp in 2005, he'd got Belenki to run the construction businesses through which they laundered most of the proceeds of their drugs and prostitution trade. Belenki had just the right veneer of the good-looking, successful businessman and he spoke fluent Spanish, too. The veneer, though, was only an expensive suit thick, as Viktor Belenki was a violent brute with access to a rage so incandescent that even Revnik's most psychopathic henchmen were afraid of him. Belenki could also be very friendly and extremely generous, especially if you jumped when he told you to. This meant that he had developed good contacts in the Guardia Civil, some of whom had thick wads of Belenki's euros hidden in their garages. Leonid Revnik was hoping that Belenki could tell him where the money and disks that Lukyanov had stolen from the puti club safe had ended up. He was on his third cigar of the day. The empty safe was still gaping. The air-con was on the blink and he was uncomfortably hot. The mobile on the desk rang.

‘Viktor,’ said Revnik.

‘It's taken some time to get this information because it's out of the normal area of my guy's jurisdiction,’ said Belenki. ‘The Guardia Civil who went to the scene of the accident came from a town outside Seville called Utrera. When they found the money they called the police headquarters in Seville and, because it was clear that this wasn't just any old guy who'd died in a car accident, they went to the top for instructions: Comisario Elvira.’

‘Shit,’ said Revnik.

‘And he put it in the hands of Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón. Remember him?’

‘Everybody remembers him from the bombing in June,’ said Revnik. ‘So where's it all gone?’

‘It's in the Jefatura in Seville.’

‘Have we still got somebody in there?’

‘That's how I know where everything is.’

‘Right, so how do we get it out?’

‘You can say goodbye to the money,’ said Belenki. ‘Once the forensics have been over it, they'll stick it in the bank – unless you want to hold up a Prosegur van.’

‘I don't give a fuck about the money. I mean, I do, but … you're right. The disks, they're a different matter,’ said Revnik. ‘What can we get on Falcón?’

‘You're not going to be able to buy him, that's for sure.’

‘So what else?’

‘There's always the woman,’ said Belenki. ‘Consuelo Jiménez.’

‘Ah, yes, the woman,’ said Revnik.

At the traffic lights Falcón searched his eyes in the rear-view mirror, trying to find the evidence of obsession Calderón had seen there. He didn't really need to look at the tell-tale blackberry smudges; he knew from the slight gaucherie in his left hand, and that feeling of wearing someone else's right leg, that what was cradled in his mind was beginning to have physical manifestations.

Work had sat on Falcón's shoulders like an overweight, badly packed rucksack, and it never slipped off, not even at night. In the mornings he opened an eye, his face crushed hard into the pillow after snatching an hour's lethal sleep, to feel his bones creaking in his skeleton. The week's holiday he'd taken at the end of August, when he'd joined his friend Yacoub Diouri and his family on the beach at Essaouira in Morocco, had worn off on his first day back in the office.

Horns blared behind him. He pulled away from the traffic lights. He came into the old city through the Puerta Osario. He parked badly near the San Marcos church and walked down Calle Bustos Tavera to the tunnelled passageway that led from the street into a courtyard of workshops where Marisa Moreno had her studio. His footsteps sounded loud on the large cobbles of the dark tunnel. He broke out into the fierce light in the courtyard, squinted against it to take in the dilapidated buildings, the grass growing up through old rear axles and expired fridges. He walked up a metal stairway to a doorway above a small warehouse. Foot shuffling and dull thuds came from inside. He knocked.

‘Who is it?’

‘Police.’

‘ Momentito.’

The door was opened by a tall, slim mulatto woman with an unusually long neck, who had wood chips stuck to her face and in her coppery hair, which was tied back. She wore a cobalt-blue gown under which she was naked apart from some bikini briefs. Sweat pimpled across her forehead, over the undulation of her nose and trickled down the visible bones of her chest. She was breathing heavily.