He gulped down half a glass of wine which nearly choked him. Stay calm. Consuelo returned with two grilled pieces of steak an inch thick. Blood oozed from the meat into a potato confection and a salad. More Basque rioja was put in his hand and a corkscrew. He pulled the cork, poured the wine. He wanted to get her down on the floor amongst the chair legs, find out what was under the blue crepe. Stay calm. He watched her waist, hips, buttocks move around the table. His eyeballs felt hot. His cooling system was shot. She sat back down.
He drank. He was drunk.
'How are we going to find Arturo?' she asked, unaware of the turmoil on the other side of the table. 'I've never even been to Morocco.'
'We should go,' he said, the words out of his mouth before he could stop them.
'What are you doing this summer?'
'I'm free in September.'
'Then in September we shall go,' she said. 'The estate of Raúl Jiménez can pay the expenses.'
'This steak is fantastic.'
'Hand cut by Rafael Vega,' she said.
'My God, he knew what he was doing.'
'You're not concentrating,' she said.
'There's too much happening to me at once,' he said, slugging down more wine. 'I think I'm reaching critical mass.'
'Don't go off in here,' she said, 'I've just had the decorators in.'
He laughed, poured more wine.
'We should start a charity,' he said, 'which specifically looks for missing children.'
'There must be one already.'
'We'll use retired policemen. I know just the man. He's the Inspector Jefe of the Grupo de Menores and he's coming up for retirement.'
'Slow down, Javier,' she said. 'You're talking too much, you're eating too quickly, you're drinking like a fish.'
'More wine?' he asked. 'We need more wine.'
'You'll be drunk and incapable if
Their eyes met across the table and stuff that was far too complicated to be talked about was instantly understood. Falcón dropped his knife and fork. Consuelo stood up. They kissed. She pushed her hands up under his shirt. All sorts of personal hygiene matters tore through his brain. He eased the zipper down her back, ran his finger along the furrow of her spine and encountered no underwear. His thighs shuddered. Her hands found his back. Adrenalin careered around his system.
Steady on, he thought, or I won't have even got out of my trousers.
She saved him.
'Not here,' she said. 'I don't want la puta americana nosing around with her camera.'
She led him upstairs, holding him by the wrist.
'You know I haven't done this for a long time,' he said, following the two dimples in her lower back.
'Nor have I,' she said. 'Perhaps we should turn up the air conditioning.'
Chapter 15
Saturday, 27th July 2002
In bed Consuelo Jiménez was as he had expected her to be – exciting, demanding and unrelenting. In one of the several cigarette breaks she'd revealed that this had been her first sex since she'd been with Basilio Lucena on the night her husband, Raúl, had been murdered. Since then she'd been concentrated on the children.
'I had an AIDS test, too,' she said, 'when I found out about Basilio's promiscuity. You know, I haven't had much luck…'
Falcón turned his head on the pillow to find her dark eyes close to him.
'It was negative,' she said.
This was how they'd talked, which had fascinated Falcón. He couldn't remember lying in bed with a woman and talking about anything and everything. Even in the two big relationships in his life, lying in bed had never been a time for honesty but for some acting role whose lines he wasn't sure of and a part he was not suited to.
They woke up early and stickily in the morning.
Consuelo took him off for a shower and soaped him up with her body so that he had to support himself on the glass doors. She took advantage of his arousal, thrusting down on him so that the whole structure shuddered. They dressed looking at each other.
He stood in her kitchen with a coffee and toast drizzled with olive oil. His legs felt brand new, straight out of the factory. He didn't have even the scintilla of a hangover and yet three bottles of Basque rioja stood empty by the bin. Still he looked at her wordlessly, with big, risky things going through his head.
'I'd like to see you again,' he said.
'I'm glad we've got that out of the way,' she said. 'Since the invention of the mobile phone women haven't had to spend the day waiting, but now we know for certain that he didn't call.'
'You'll have to tell me how I can fit into your life,' he said.
'Yours is more complicated than mine.'
'You have children.'
'They're going away.'
'You'll follow them.'
'Later in August.'
'I have no control over my time at the moment,' he said. 'Something happens and I have to react.'
'Then call me when you have some time to spare,' she said. 'Unless… it's all taken up talking to your lawyers about Manuela so that you can't have dinner with me.'
He smiled. He was falling in love with her humour, her directness. He told her his idea about selling the house to Manuela and what Isabel Cano had advised.
'Take her advice,' said Consuelo. 'The best you can expect from Manuela is respect, and you get that by driving a hard bargain. I'll say this once, Javier, and then it's finished. You can listen or ignore. Get a valuation on the house, offer her a private sale less the agent's commission, and give her a week to respond before you put it on the open market.'
He nodded. This was what he needed in his life – simplification. He pulled her to him, kissed her through the smell of coffee and toast.
It was 9.30 a.m. He called Ramírez on his mobile.
'Have you made an appointment to see Carlos Vázquez this morning?' asked Falcón.
'What about the search warrant from Juez Calderón?'
'I couldn't get hold of him,' said Falcón. 'And I checked his office last night.'
'Then we'll just have to try and talk it out of Vázquez,' said Ramírez. 'I'll call you when I've set up the meeting with him. I've just put Sergei's face up on the computer – national and international.'
Falcón called Alicia Aguado to ask her if he could pick her up and bring her out to Santa Clara to meet Pablo Ortega later that morning. On the way back into town Ramírez told him that Vázquez would be in his office until midday. Falcón took down the address and said he'd meet him there in fifteen minutes.
He took a call from Cristina Ferrera.
'Nadia's gone,' she said. 'Two guys came round last night and picked her up and they didn't bring her back.'
'Has that happened before?'
'She's always back in the apartment by five or six in the morning,' said Ferrera. 'What do I do?'
'Unless there's someone who's prepared to give you a detailed description of the two guys – which I doubt – there's nothing you can do,' said Falcón.
Carlos Vázquez's offices were in the Edificio Viapol in a soulless part of the city on the edge of San Bernardo. Ramírez was waiting for him at the entrance. They went up in the lift. Ramírez stared into the side of his face.
'What are you looking at, José Luis?'
'You,' he said, grinning. 'I heard it in your voice. Now I've seen you in the same clothes you were wearing yesterday, it's confirmed.'
'What, exactly?' he said, thinking he'd be able to brazen this out.
'I am the expert,' said Ramírez, holding his huge fingers to his chest, nearly offended by his boss's effrontery. 'I can tell, even over the phone, that you've finally come to the end of a drought.'
'What drought?'
'Is it true… or am I a liar?' said Ramírez, laughing. 'Who is it?'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
Ramírez's big, dark, mahogany face took up Falcón's vision. The individual rails of the Inspector's black pomaded hair stood out pin sharp.