The Ignorance of Blood (19 page)

‘Abducted?’ said Consuelo, her neck lengthening by ten centimetres.

‘Don't alarm yourself, Consuelo,’ said Ramírez.

‘I'm not alarming myself, José Luis.
You're
alarming me.’

‘This is what the GRUME do. They look at the background. They judge probabilities. Have you made enemies in business?’

‘Who hasn't?’

‘Have you noticed anyone hanging around your home?’

She didn't answer. That made her think. What about that guy last June? The gypsy-looking guy who'd muttered obscenities at her in the street, then she'd seen him again in the Plaza del Pumarejo, not far from her restaurant. She'd thought he was going to rape her down a back street. He'd known her name. He'd known all sorts of things. That her husband was dead. And, yes, her sister, later, had referred
to him as the ‘new pool guy’ when she'd been looking after the kids and had seen him hanging around the house.

‘You're thinking, Consuelo.’

‘I am.’

‘Will you talk to the GRUME officers now?’

‘All right, I'll talk to them. But as soon as Javier is available …’

‘We're trying to get a message to him now,’ said Ramírez, patting her on the shoulder with one of his huge, steadying mahogany hands. He felt for her. He had his own kids. The abyss had opened up in him before now and changed him.

They were angry with Falcón. Douglas Hamilton, who was on the brink of losing his usual calm, was jabbing him with irony. Rodney had already called him a cunt. Falcón knew from his English lessons that this was the worst thing you could say to someone in England, but to him, a Spaniard, the world's greatest insulters, it was water off a duck's back.

They were mildly irritated by the fact that the listening device they'd planted on him hadn't worked, but what was really incensing them was that Falcón wouldn't tell them anything juicy from his meeting with Yacoub.

‘You can't tell us where he's been on the five occasions he's lost us. You can't tell us who trained him. You can't tell us why his son is with him in London…’

‘That I don't know,’ said Falcón, cutting in on the litany. ‘He wouldn't tell me that.’

‘Maybe we should just shoot the fucker anyway,’ said Rodney.

‘Who?’ said Falcón.

Rodney shrugged as if it didn't matter.

‘It won't come to that,’ said Hamilton smoothly.

‘He's in a very difficult position,’ said Falcón.

‘Oh, fuck right off,’ said Rodney.

‘Aren't we all?’ said Hamilton. ‘You're talking to people
with two thousand suspected terrorists under constant watch. Can't you at least throw us a bone, Javier?’

‘I can tell you about the Turkish businessman from Denizli.’

‘Fuck that,’ said Rodney.

‘We're listening,’ said Hamilton.

‘They've signed a contract for the supply of denim to his factory in Salé,’ said Falcón. ‘The first shipment was received …’

‘Bugger off,’ said Rodney. ‘You know what he's doing and you're not fucking telling us. We don't give a shit about the Turkish tosser.’

‘Maybe you knew that Yacoub and the Turk had a genuine business relationship,’ said Falcón, ‘and you were just using their mildly suspicious backgrounds to make them appear more threatening.’

‘We know about the Turk,’ said Hamilton, holding up a calming hand. ‘What else
can
you tell us?’

‘Yacoub knows of no active GICM cell currently operating in the UK,’ said Falcón. ‘This doesn't mean there isn't one, it just means he has never been asked to make contact with it, and he's never heard any reference to one in any of his discussions with the military wing of the GICM.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Rodney.

‘Let's at least get something straight,’ said Hamilton. ‘Do you know what he's been up to when he's lost the MI5 tails?’

‘Not exactly. All I do know is that it's a private matter…’

‘Which requires top-level spy craft?’

‘In order to stay private … yes,’ said Falcón.

‘All right,’ said Hamilton. ‘The person or group that he's met on these occasions, you're saying they're not an active GICM cell.’

‘I can confirm that,’ said Falcón. ‘I can also confirm that they are in no way your enemies.’

‘Then why the fuck can't you tell us who they are?’ said Rodney, in a crescendo.

‘Because you'll start to make assumptions,’ said Falcón. ‘I'll tell you one thing and you'll put it together with other, perhaps unrelated, bits of information about Yacoub. You'll build a picture. The wrong one. Then you'll act in your own interests and not those of my agent, and that will more than likely put Yacoub and his son in serious danger.’

‘What's Yacoub's interest?’ asked Hamilton.

‘That everybody close to him gets out alive … and he doesn't necessarily include himself in that number.’

‘Fuck me, now he's giving you the sacrificial lamb shit,’ said Rodney.

‘Why does he think that we wouldn't help him?’ asked Hamilton.

‘Yacoub turned down approaches from both MI6 and the CIA,’ said Falcón, ‘because he had very good reasons for thinking that they would quite quickly find him expendable.’

‘Let's just take him out,’ said Rodney, bored by it all. ‘Then we won't have to worry about him any more.’

Falcón had been waiting for this moment. He needed to create a little scene and Rodney had just given him the opportunity. He took three steps across the room, lifted Rodney out of his chair and slammed him up against the door.

‘You're talking about my friend,’ said Falcón, through gritted teeth. ‘My friend who has given vital information at considerable risk to himself, which prevented an attack on a landmark building in the heart of the City of London containing thousands of people. If you want to put yourself in the way of more information like that, then you'll have to be patient with him. Yacoub, unlike you, is not in the business of endangering people's lives.’

‘All right,’ said Hamilton, grabbing Falcón's tensed bicep. ‘Let's calm things down.’

‘Then get this trigger-happy imbecile out of my sight,’ said Falcón.

Rodney grinned and Falcón realized that the man had been playing a part all along, getting under his skin, trying to lever him open.

Falcón, still simmering, allowed himself to be guided back to his chair.

‘Just give us something to go on, Javier,’ said Hamilton, ‘that's all we ask.’

‘All right,’ said Falcón, who'd been prepared by Yacoub for this free gift. ‘A number of agencies, including the CNI, have been concerned by the appearance of a stranger in Yacoub's household.’

‘In Rabat?’

‘That's where he lives, Rodney.’

‘What the fuck's that to us?’

‘Then that probably concludes our business,’ said Falcón coldly, preparing to leave.

‘Take no notice of him,’ said Hamilton. ‘Tell us about the stranger.’

‘He's a family friend. His name is Mustafa Barakat. He runs a number of tourist shops in Fès, which was where he was born in 1959 and has lived his entire life.’

‘What's he doing in Yacoub's house?’

‘He's a guest. It's not the first time, although it is probably the first time since foreign and Moroccan agencies have taken an interest in Yacoub's life.’

‘We'll check him out,’ said Rodney, as if that was a threat.

‘She'll talk to you now,’ said Ramírez, addressing the two officers from the Crimes Against Children squad, GRUME, who were standing in the corridor outside the director's office.

‘What's her problem?’ asked the younger one.

‘She's been investigated by the police before,’ said Ramírez. ‘That's how we know her. We suspected her – or rather,
I
suspected her – of murdering her husband, Raúl Jiménez.’

‘And Falcón didn't?’ asked Inspector Jefe Tirado, the older GRUME officer. ‘Is that why she'll only talk to him?’

‘They're close,’ said Ramírez, and cut off that line of questioning with his hand.

‘She didn't kill her husband, did she?’ asked the younger officer, nervously.

‘Just stick to the fucking point,’ said Ramírez, ignoring him. ‘Stay focused on her missing son, don't try to broaden things out too quickly. Concentrate on the immediate facts and then work back … slowly.’

‘But that's not how we work,’ said the young officer.

‘I know. That's why I'm telling you,’ said Ramírez. ‘If you start rooting around in her private life, her business associates, her family album before you've gained her complete trust, then she'll clam up until Falcón gets here.’

‘And when is that going to be?’

‘I don't know. Maybe ten or eleven o'clock this evening.’

‘I hear she lost sight of the boy when he went into the Sevilla Futbol Club shop,’ said Tirado. ‘You know they don't have CCTV out there. It's going to be hard going for us to establish whether he wandered off or was abducted. You got any feeling for what might have happened, José Luis?’

‘I doubt the kid wandered off,’ said Ramírez. ‘You're going to find out that she's a complicated woman.’

‘I don't even understand them when they're simple,’ said the young officer, looking down the corridor.

Ramírez made a short mental appeal to the Holy Virgin.

‘Stick to the facts. Broaden out slowly,’ he repeated the mantra. ‘We may have to wait for Falcón, anyway.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means Falcón's stirring a lot of pots at the same time and a fair few of them have shit at the bottom.’

They opened the door. Consuelo's voice barged out into the corridor.

‘What do you mean, they
don't
have CCTV?’ she asked.
‘Why don't you have CCTV? In England I've heard they have CCTV everywhere … even on roundabouts in the middle of nowhere.’

‘This isn't England,’ said the director, feeling sorry for her but having to tamp down his irritation, too, as he was having to repeat himself again and again because not much was sticking in her mind.

‘But there must be
something.’

‘Good afternoon, Señora Jiménez, my name is Inspector Jefe Tirado,’ said the senior GRUME officer, as he entered the room. ‘We are from the Crimes Against Children squad. There
is
, of course, plenty we can do. We're going to check all the footage of every camera in the Nervión Plaza, and that includes the internal shops' CCTV. As you know, there are cameras in the central area, too, and it's possible that we will get sufficient angle on some of them to include the Sevilla FC stadium and shop. There are already officers conducting interviews with people in and around the shop and stadium. I expect that we will find out very quickly what has happened to your son, Darío.’

Consuelo stood up and shook the man's hand.

At 18.00 Falcón was on his way back to Heathrow. Douglas Hamilton had told him he'd make sure they held the flight, but Falcón wasn't sure the man liked him enough to actually do it. Despite the aggression from the two men, Falcón was relaxed. Yacoub had told him the truth. They were back on track and he didn't mind doing some blocking for him. There were still moments of panic when he thought about the ruthlessness of the GICM, but he calmed himself with the thought of Faisal's Saudi security detail.

He turned his mobile on without thinking. It exploded with messages and missed calls. He went into the inbox. Twelve messages from Consuelo. He leaned back in his seat. The Jaguar coasted along the raised section of the Great
West Road, past empty high-rise office space. He allowed some exhaustion to creep into his neck and back as he savoured the weight of the unread messages. He smiled to himself, thinking: Javier Falcón, the romantic. He'd never have believed it. He shrugged and opened the first message.

‘Darío missing. Help.’

He clicked through all twelve messages hoping that this was just the first panicked text and that by number twelve he'd get ‘Darío found. See you tonight.’ Instead he pieced together the chain of events and the last message read: ‘WHERE ARE YOU? I NEED YOU HERE.’ It was timed 17.08. His insides felt hideously cold, as ugly thoughts stirred at the back of his mind.

Ramírez was still in the corridor outside the director's office waiting for news when he took Falcón's call. He gave him the update, told him that Consuelo was with the GRUME officers.

‘I'm not going to get back until ten thirty tonight at the earliest,’ said Falcón. ‘Let me talk to her … in private.’

‘Hold on a second, Javier.’

While listening to the extended muffled conversation at the other end, Falcón tried to think of consoling things to say to Consuelo, but he knew that no words of comfort ever worked in these situations.