The Ignorance of Blood (48 page)

‘Hit him over the head, hard,’ Falcón yelled at the driver.

Sokolov hefted him to shoulder height and slammed him down on the wooden table.

The mayor's driver jettisoned himself out of his seat, reached behind him, picked up the metal chair and brought it down so that the edge of the seat made horrific contact with the back of Sokolov's head. The noise it made was violently musical, a pianist's mad discord. Sokolov turned and the driver thought for a moment that he'd made a terrible mistake, but the light went out of the Russian's eyes and he crumpled to the tiled floor. Falcón, too, was on the floor, staring bug-eyed at the unconscious Russian, trying to remember how to breathe.

The porthole door opened and the
plongeur
charged in with a shining stainless-steel cleaver in one hand and a rolling pin in the other.

‘Damn!’ he said, as if he'd just missed out on the ultimate culinary experience.

Alejandro Spinola was out on the Huelva road, running towards Seville, the velvet night air on his sweaty skin, the smell of hot, dry grasses in his nostrils. Occasionally he looked behind him, but each time he found he was only running away from the dark. He wasn't moving very quickly because he was in no condition to. His head was full of the junk of his life, the wreckage of tonight's events.

He couldn't have faced the mayor. He couldn't have faced approaching the mayor and the people from Agesa and the town planning office with his bruised lips and missing tooth, saying that he had to speak privately to the boss. He couldn't bear even the thought of the mayor's disappointment in him. Then there was his father. He'd have to face him, too. The whole messy business was going to come out, right down to what he'd done to his cousin, Esteban Calderón. It was going to be intolerable and he wasn't going to face it. He was going to run. He was going to run and run and not stop until…

Headlights came up slowly behind him, stopped. He looked back, couldn't see anything behind the blinding lights until a man stepped out from behind them, running after him. Who the fuck? He tried a sprint, but he had nothing in the tank, and slowed to a lolloping jog. The car started up again, pulled alongside him, the window down.

‘Alejandro, we're the police,’ said the driver. ‘Come on now. Just stop and get in the car. No sense in this.’

He could hear the other man's footsteps behind him, it gave him a surge of panic. He saw headlights coming the other way. Something shrill and exciting rose in his throat. He thumped his foot down, stopped, turned back, ducked under the arms of the policeman following him, shoved past him, slipped round the back of the car and stood up straight between the oncoming headlights. The truck's horn blew the night open for three seconds, a white light covered Spinola from head to toe, and the black grille with thirty-five tons behind it gathered him in with a sickening crunch.

28

Hotel Vista del Mar, Marbella – Wednesday, 20th September 2006, 01.00 hrs

Lying on his back on the firm, expensive bed, pillow supporting his neck, phone to his ear, Yacoub Diouri was talking to his sixteen-year-old daughter Leila. They had always got on so well. She loved him in the uncomplicated way that a daughter loves her protective father. Leila and her mother was a different story, that was to do with her age, but she'd always been able to make her father happy. And Yacoub was laughing, but tears were also leaking out of the corners of his eyes, trickling down the sides of his face and coiling around the curlicued passages of his ears.

He'd already spoken to Abdullah in London, who'd been annoyed because he'd never been so popular with the girls before and he'd had to stand outside a club in the dark and cold, listening to his father prattling on about matters that could easily wait for when they were back in Rabat, but he indulged him. Yacoub was sorry for this, not because he would have liked a better conversation, but because he knew that Abdullah would always remember his irritation and
exasperation as the prevailing sentiment of this particular conversation with his father.

Leila said good night, passed the phone to her mother.

‘What's going on?’ asked Yousra. ‘It's not like you to be calling home while you're away, and you'll be back here on Thursday.’

‘I know. It's just that I missed you all. You know what it's like. Business. Madrid one day, London the next, Marbella the day after. The endless talk. I just wanted to hear your voices. Talk about nothing. How's it been without me?’

‘Quiet. Mustafa left last night. He's gone back to Fès. He managed to get his consignment of carpets out of customs in Casablanca and he's got to go to Germany at the weekend. So it's just been Leila and me.’

They talked about nothing and everything. He could hear her moving around in her private living room, which she'd decorated in her own taste, where she received her woman friends.

‘What's it like outside?’ he asked.

‘It's dark, Yacoub. It's eleven o'clock.’

‘But what's it like? Is it warm?’

‘It can't be much different to Marbella.’

‘Just go outside and tell me what it's like.’

‘You're in a funny mood tonight,’ she said, stepping out of the french windows on to the terrace. ‘It's warm, maybe twenty-six degrees.’

‘What does it smell of?’

‘The boys have been doing the watering so it smells of earth and the lavender you planted last year is very strong,’ she said. ‘Yacoub?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you sure you're all right?’

‘I'm fine now,’ he said. ‘I really am. It's been wonderful to talk to you. I'd better go to sleep now. Long day tomorrow. A very long day tomorrow. I mean today. We're two hours
ahead here, of course, so it's today already. Goodbye, Yousra. Give a kiss to Leila from me … and take care of yourself.’

‘You'll be all right in the morning,’ she said, but she was talking to no one. He'd gone. She went back inside and, before she closed the doors, took one last breath of the lavender-infused night air.

Yacoub swivelled his legs off the bed, sat on the edge and buried his face in his hands. The tears ran down his palms. He wiped them on his bare legs. He breathed deeply, got his head back together. He put on a pair of black stretch-cotton jeans, a black long-sleeved T-shirt, black socks and a pair of black trainers. He wrapped a black sweater around his shoulders.

He lit a cigarette, looked at his watch: 01.12. He turned his bedside light off, let his eyes get used to the dark. He rested the cigarette on the ashtray, went to the window, slipped out on to the balcony and looked down into the street. The car, which had been there for days, was still there, the driver still awake. He shrugged, went back in. He checked his pockets. Nothing but the photograph. From the side pocket of his suitcase he removed a single ring with four keys. He looked around him, knowing there was nothing else he needed now. Took one last drag of the cigarette, stubbed it out and left the room. He had a powerful sense of relief as he closed the door.

The corridor was empty. He took the stairs down to the ground floor, came out into the hotel and immediately went through the door marked ‘Staff Only’. It was quiet. He walked past the laundry and down a small flight of stairs to the kitchens. Voices. They were wrapping up the dinner service. He waited, gauging the different sounds, then stepped into the corridor, ducked underneath the portholes of the double doors and went out into the night and the stink of the rubbish bins. He climbed up the metal bin closest to the wall and checked over the top.

A complication had arisen here. On his return from his meeting with Falcón in Osuna, he'd been told that the CNI had put a car in the street at the back of the hotel as well as the front. The car was there now and almost directly opposite the rear exit of the hotel. He was going to have to drop over the wall into the street at the side of the hotel, and this involved a leap of some two and a half metres.

He made the jump, hit the wall messily, smacked his chin, but clung on to the top of it with his arms and shoulders cracking under the strain. He swung his leg up, lay flat on the top, gasped, looked down. Empty. As he lowered himself the strength drained from his arms and he dropped heavily into the narrow alleyway, went over on his ankle and limped to the corner. He checked out the car: only a driver with his head resting against the window. No movement. Yacoub looked left and right. Nobody around. He ducked and ran along the line of cars, found a gap, squeezed into it, held on to his ankle and waited. Blood trickled down his chin. A car turned into the street, headlights swept the tarmac. As it passed, he crossed the street running low and went straight up the narrow alley opposite. He hopped to the next street.

The Vespa and the helmet were locked to a lamp post. He used one of the four keys to unlock the heavy padlock and unthreaded the chain from the wheel and helmet. He used the second key to start the Vespa. He wiped out the helmet with his hand, put it on. It was sticky with the hair gel of the kid who'd left it there.

There was little traffic in the town. He set out west, heading for a small bay along the coast, which was protected from the sea and had shallow waters. On the other side of Estepona he turned towards the sea. He hid the Vespa and helmet by the side of the road and limped two hundred metres down to the water's edge where the boat was waiting for him. The only light came from the tower blocks of tourism set back from the road above.

Nobody could accuse the GICM high command of having no sense of humour. The power boat they'd bought for this mission was called the
35 Executioner.
It was dark blue, ten metres long and had twin Mercury 425-horsepower engines, capable of speeds in excess of 130 kilometres per hour. It looked sleek, almost flashy, as it rocked gently against the small wooden jetty where it was moored.

He unclipped the awning over the rear of the boat and dropped himself into the cockpit. He inserted the third and fourth keys in the ignition panel on the right-hand side of the dashboard, but did not turn them on. He threw the sweater off his shoulders into the passenger seat. He opened the hatch, leading to the cabin, which had been stripped out and a false wall installed. Yacoub felt his way around to the side, peeled back the edge of the carpet. He ran his fingers over the wood until he felt the metal ring inset and lifted out a thirty-centimetre square of wood. He found the pen torch first, turned it on, put it in his mouth. Blood on his hands from his chin. He lifted out a compass and a mobile phone, which he turned on, and a pair of binoculars. All that was left was a switch mechanism from which two copper cables emerged. He could now see the five jerry cans of fuel strapped to the bulkhead, two five-litre flagons of water and a tupperware box of food.

The phone was ready. One message. He opened it, nodded, turned off the phone and threw it in the cache. He checked his ankle, fat and soft as a ripe mango.

Back outside he rolled up the awning, threw it in the cabin, checked the stern lockers, more jerry cans of fuel. He opened up the two engine hatches. He stood in front of the driver's seat and familiarized himself with the gauges, switches and controls. In the middle of the dashboard was the SatNav screen, which he would not deploy until he was outside Spanish territorial waters. He turned on the battery switches and flipped on the blowers. He gave them
five minutes, checked that the shift handles were in neutral and the throttles down all the way. He armed the safety switch. He turned the ignition keys one click clockwise. Indicator lights and audible alarms came on for a moment. He turned them on to the start position and released. The engines came alive with what seemed like a colossal noise in the silent bay.

The pressure gauge told him that the water flow through the engine was normal and he glanced over the side at the exhaust tips. While the engines warmed up he checked the bilge and engine compartments, made sure there were no leaks or weird noises. He closed the engine hatches. He raised the throttles slightly to check response. Good. Checked shifters. He slipped the moorings, pushed himself away from the jetty. He put the shifter into forward gear and, at very low throttle, moved out into the open sea, which was almost as flat as the cove's protected waters.

It was warm but he continued sweating, even with the gentle cooling breeze. The first part of this mission had its difficulties. He had no SatNav and no moon. He had to find a bearing out to sea and get himself out of Spanish territorial waters. The compass could be illuminated by pressing a button and he did this once a minute to check his course. There were a few lights out on the water – fishing boats, which he had to avoid. He, himself, was unlit. He maintained low revs. The coastline of the Costa del Sol gradually revealed itself. The lights of Estepona appeared to the west.

It took him more than an hour to get three kilometres from the shore and only then did he open up the throttles a little, feeling the eagerness of the two big engines beneath him. He scoured the blackness for fishing boats, checked his bearing, looked back to the east at the lights of Fuengirola, Torremolinos and Málaga.

The danger was different now. He wasn't so scared of
being picked up by the coastguard, but he was entering one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Colossal container ships, which could rise forty or fifty metres above the sea, coming in from the Atlantic, or massive Liquefied Natural Gas carriers sailing from Algeria to Sines on the Portuguese coast. If they hit him they wouldn't know it. He listened and searched the darkness.