He nodded, bored by her already. He wondered what Calderón. saw in her, apart from the blue veins under the white skin, cold as marble. This one was living life out as a project. Falcón stifled a yawn.
'You're not listening to me,' she said.
He came round to find her standing quite close to him, close enough for him to see the red blood spots in the green of her iris. She licked her lips, applying some natural gloss. Her sexuality, in which she was so confident, shimmered beneath the silk of her loose blouse. She moved her head, a slight tilt, to tell him that he could kiss her now, while her eyes said that this could turn into something frantic on the marble flags of the patio if he wanted. He turned his head away. He was slightly revolted by her.
'I was half listening,' he said, 'but I've got a lot on my mind and I'm meeting someone for lunch, so I should really be getting on.'
'I must go, too,' she said. 'I have to get back.'
Her hands trembled with rage as she picked up her bag of hand-painted tiles. He thought she might throw them at his head, one by one. There was something destructive in her nature. She was like a spoilt child who would break things just so that others couldn't enjoy them.
The walk to the front door was punctuated by the anger of her heels on the marble. She kept ahead of him so that he couldn't see her humiliation while she gathered up the fragments of the face she had lost and rearranged them into disdain. He opened the door, she shook his hand and headed off towards the Hotel Colón.
The Casa Ricardo was on Hernan Cortes at the meeting of three streets. It was a bar that could only exist in Seville, where the religious and the secular constantly rub shoulders. Every centimetre of the walls in the bar and small restaurant at the back was covered in framed photographs of the Virgin, the brotherhoods and all the paraphernalia of Semana Santa. The sound system played processional marches from Holy Week while people leaned against the bar drinking beers, eating olives and jamon.
Consuelo was waiting for him at a table in the back with a chilled half-bottle of manzanilla. They kissed each other on the mouth as if they'd been lovers for months.
'You look tense,' she said.
He tried to think of something other than Pablo Ortega, which he couldn't talk about.
'It's just developments. We keep finding things out about Rafael Vega that make him more of a mystery man.'
'Well, we all knew he was a secretive guy,' said Consuelo. 'I once saw him leave his house in his car, the Mercedes he had before he bought the Jaguar. And an hour later I was in town at a traffic light and this old dusty Citroen or Peugeot Estate pulls up alongside me and in the driver's seat was Rafael. If it had been anybody else I'd have knocked on the window and said hello, but with Rafael, I don't know… you just didn't intrude on Rafael.'
'Did you ever ask him about it?'
'First of all he never responded to direct questioning and, anyway, so what if he's in a different car? I just assumed it was an office car he used for going out to building sites.'
'You're probably right, it's nothing. You get to the point where every little thing has meaning.'
They ordered a revuelto de bacalao, some clams and langoustines, a bright orange bowl of salmorejo and grilled red peppers spiked with garlic. Consuelo filled their glasses. Falcón calmed down.
'I've just had a… confrontation with Maddy Krugman.'
'That puta americana didn't come to your house on your day off?' asked Consuelo.
'She ambushed me in the street,' he said. 'That's the third time. She's come round twice when I've been to the Vegas' house… offering coffee, wanting to talk.'
'Joder, Javier, she's stalking you.'
'There's something of the vampire about her, except she doesn't feed on blood.'
'My God, you let her get that close?'
'I think she feeds on what she doesn't have herself,' said Falcón. 'Her talk is full of arty phraseology about "empathizing", and "emotional response" and "the prison of her anguish", but she has no idea what they mean. So when she sees people who are really suffering she photographs it, captures it to try and make it hers. When I lived in Tangier the Moroccans believed that photographers were stealing their souls. And that's what Maddy Krugman does. She's sinister.'
'You're making her sound like your prime suspect.'
'Maybe I'll send her to the prison of her anguish.'
Consuelo pulled him to her and kissed him hard on the mouth.
'What was that for?'
'You don't have to know everything.'
'I'm an Inspector Jefe, it's in my nature.'
The food arrived. Consuelo released him and poured more manzanilla. Before they started eating he beckoned her forward across the table so that they were cheek to cheek.
'I can't say this too loudly in here,' said Falcón, his lips just brushing her ear, 'but there's another reason why I'm looking a bit tense. It's just that… I'm falling in love with you.'
She kissed his cheek, held his hand.
'How do you know?'
'Because when I came in here and saw you waiting for me I've never felt so happy to know that the empty chair was mine.'
'You're all right,' she said. 'You can stay.'
He sat back, held his glass up to her and drank.
They chose a bottle of white wine to drink with the sea bass they'd ordered after the starters.
'I'm sorry, I forgot,' she said, going through her handbag. 'Somebody from your office…'
'My office?'
'I assumed he was from the Jefatura. He told me to give you this -'
She handed over an envelope.
'Nobody knows I'm here,' said Falcón, 'except you. Tell me what he said again.'
'He said, "I understand you're meeting Inspector Jefe Falcón here. Could you please make sure he gets this." And he gave me that envelope.'
'He was Spanish?'
'Sevillano.'
Falcón turned the white envelope over in his hands. It was very thin. He held it up to the light and could see that it had a single item in it. He knew it was another threat and shouldn't be opened in front of Consuelo. He nodded and put it in his pocket.
He took a taxi home and went straight to his study where he kept latex gloves. He used a paper knife to open the envelope and shook out a photograph which had been folded into a single sheet of paper.
Nadia Kouzmikheva's naked body was very white with the flash from the camera. She was blindfolded and tied to a chair with her arms painfully stretched over the back. On the grimy wall behind her was a single handprint the colour of rust and in black was written: El precio de la came es barato. The price of meat is cheap.
Chapter 18
Saturday, 27th July 2002
The sunlight was still bright in the cracks of the wooden shutters as he lay on his bed with the thought of Nadia, blind and vulnerable, sharp in his mind. He'd overcome his initial reaction of horror and brought the analytical part of his brain to bear on the meaning of this latest message. These threats, each one worse than the last, each one digging deeper into his private life and now entangling Consuelo – what was their purpose? The car following him at the end of the first day and the photograph of Inés pinned to his board were designed to unsettle him. They were bold – we can follow you and we don't care if you see us, we can enter your house and we know things about you. The implicit physical threat to Nadia and the inclusion of Consuelo raised the stakes, but what was actually happening here? He gave up on any possibility of sleep and dragged himself to the shower and let the water pummel his head clear of the lunchtime wine. Each threat had only the appearance of boldness. There had been no follow-up to any of them so far. They were trying to distract him… but from what?
He started thinking about Rafael Vega and the Russians. The phrase that Vázquez had used – 'facilitating their business needs' – had snagged in his brain. It was a natural process of the mind to think that a man who'd had questionable dealings with Russian mafiosi and subsequently been found dead would probably have been murdered as a result of some disagreement. In this case, though, it seemed illogical. The Russians were reaping enormous advantages from their dealings with Vega. Why kill him?