'I can see that you are afraid,' said Falcón. 'I can see that you have been beaten by the people you have been working for. They are probably threatening your family, too. We won't interfere with any of that if you don't want us to. We only want to know about Sergei because he was working for someone who is now dead. He is not a suspect. We want to talk to him to see if he has any information for us. I would like you to tell us how you know Sergei, when you last saw him and what he said to you. Nothing will leave this room. You can return to your apartment when you want.'
He didn't take his eyes off her. She'd learnt some ugly lessons about human beings and she was staring back at him to see if there were cracks in his nature – any faltering, any shift of gaze, any telltale tic – that might mean more pain for her. She looked at her watch, a cheap, pink plastic thing with a big flower for a face.
'I have thirty-eight minutes to get back to my apartment,' she said. 'I'll need a little money to keep people quiet about where I've been.'
'How much?'
'Thirty euros will be enough.'
Falcón unfolded a twenty and a ten and laid them on the table.
'Sergei and I are friends. We come from the same village outside Lvov. He used to work in a technical college teaching mechanics. He earned twenty-seven euros a month,' she said, looking down on the money that Falcón had given her so easily. 'I was earning seventeen euros a month. It wasn't so much a living as a slow death. Sergei came to see me one day, very excited. He'd heard from friends that Portugal was a good place to go to get into Europe, that in Europe you could earn twenty-seven euros a day. We went to the embassy in Warsaw to get our visas and that's where we met the mafia. They got us our visas, they arranged transport. You paid in dollars – eight hundred each. We already knew about the rumours that the mafia were big in Lisbon. We had heard that they take you off the bus, beat you and put the young women into prostitution and the men into slave labour until they've paid off a never-ending debt. So we decided that we would not go to Lisbon. The bus stopped at a service station outside Madrid. I met a Russian girl there in the toilets. She told me not to go to Lisbon and gave me a cigarette. She introduced me to a Spanish man who said he could get me work in a restaurant in Madrid. I asked if he could get Sergei some work and he said that he could wash dishes, no problem. They pay six hundred euros a month. We left the bus.'
She shrugged, stubbed out the cigarette and Ramírez gave her another.
'There was no restaurant. We were taken to an apartment where we were told we could stay. They left us there saying they would be back in the morning. Later there was a knock on the door and three big Russians came in. They beat us up very badly and took our passports. All three men raped me. Sergei was taken away. I was locked in the apartment. Every day men came to have sex with me and left without a word. After three months the three Russians came back with another Russian. He made me strip and inspected me as if I was an animal. He nodded and left. I had just been sold. They brought me to Seville and put me in a flat. They treated me very badly for six months and then things got a little better. I was allowed to leave the apartment to work in a club. I served drinks and did… other things. They gave me my passport but dislocated my finger,' she said, holding up her hand, ' so that I would remember… They needn't have bothered. I was scared anyway. Too scared to run – and where would I go with no money and looking like this? They told me my family's address and what they would do to them. They also told me that they had Sergei here and what would happen to him if I ran.'
She asked for water. Serrano brought in a chilled bottle. She smoked hard. The translator didn't look as if she'd be able to bear much more of Nadia's story.
'I am allowed a little money for food and cigarettes. I am trusted, but one mistake and I'm beaten and locked up in the apartment,' she said, pointing at her eye. 'This was from my last mistake. They saw me in a bar talking to Sergei. It was the second time I'd seen him. We met by accident one night and he told me where he worked.'
'How long ago was that?'
'Six weeks,' she said. 'I was beaten and locked up for two weeks.'
'But you saw him again?'
'Twice. Two weeks after I got out I found the house where he worked. We just talked. He told me what had happened to him. The work he'd had to do on the building sites – dangerous work where men died – how much he hated Europe and wanted to get back to Lvov.'
'Did he tell you who he worked for?'
'Yes, I don't remember the name. It wasn't important. He was the owner of the construction sites where Sergei had worked.'
'When was the second time?'
'Wednesday morning he came to the apartment and told me to get my things… that we were leaving. He said that the man he worked for was dead on the floor of his kitchen and that he had to run.'
'Why did he have to run?'
'He said he didn't want to go back to the building sites. He said we had to be quick, that the police were going to come and he had to move very fast.'
'Did he have money?'
'He said he had enough money. I don't know how much that was.'
She blinked, tried to swallow but couldn't. She sipped the water. Ramírez gave her another cigarette.
'You didn't go?' said Falcón.
'I couldn't. I was too scared. He said goodbye and that was it.'
'Can you remember exactly what he said when he told you his employer was dead?'
She put her face in her hands, pressed the fingertips into her forehead.
'He just said he was dead.'
'Did he say he'd been murdered?'
'No… he was dead, that's all.'
'And since then – has anybody been to see you about Sergei?' asked Falcón.
She pointed at the bruises on her arms.
'They knew Sergei would come to see me,' she said. 'They held me down and did some things to me, but
I couldn't tell them anything. All I knew was that he had gone.'
She looked up at the clock, nervous.
'What did they ask you?'
'They wanted to know why Sergei had run and what he'd seen, and I told them that he'd only seen a dead man lying on the floor. That was it,' she said. 'Now I have to go.'
Falcón called Serrano in, but he'd already left and been replaced by Ferrera. He told her to get the girl back to the bar on Calle Alvar Nunez Caleza de Vaca in twenty-three minutes. Ramírez gave her his cigarettes. She grabbed the money, stuffed it down the front of her skirt and left.
The translator struggled to fill in the receipt, as if the last quarter of an hour had removed some of the purpose from her life. Ramírez reminded her of the confidentiality agreement she'd signed. She left. Ramírez smoked in silence, his legs braced on either side of his chair.
'It's our job to listen to that,' he said, 'and do nothing. That's what we're paid for.'
'Go and take a look at Alberto Montes,' said Falcón. 'He's had those stories up to here.'
'I don't know how your meeting went with Calderón this morning,' said Ramírez, 'but that has clarified one thing. We definitely have Russian mafia involvement in this case.'
He stubbed out his cigarette in the cheap tin ashtray. They walked back up to the office. Ramírez jangled his car keys.
'I'll put some men on the bus stations this afternoon, check the airport, send Sergei's photograph down to the ports and e-mail the Policía Judiciária in Lisbon,' said Ramírez, and left for lunch.
Falcón stood at the window. Ramírez appeared below him and walked the length of the main block of the Jefatura to his car. In the adjoining block of offices Falcón could see another man standing at his window looking down at the same dull scene – Inspector Jefe Alberto Montes. Falcón's mobile vibrated. Isabel Cano wanted to talk to him in her office sometime before 9 p.m. He said he would do his best and shut the phone down.
Montes opened his window and looked down the two floors into the car park. Falcón took another call. Consuelo Jiménez asked him to dinner that night at her house in Santa Clara. He agreed without thinking because he was so fascinated by Montes, who was now leaning out of the window, both elbows on the ledge. Nobody opened their window to 45°C heat in an air- conditioned office. Montes's head turned. He backed away and closed the window.