ROBERT WILSON
The Ignorance of Blood
For Jane
Love is the master key that opens
the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Table of Contents
Seville – Thursday, 14th September 2006, 19.30 hrs
The ice-cold vodka slipped down Vasili Lukyanov's throat as the traffic thundered past the lay-by on the new motorway from Algeciras to Jerez de la Frontera. The heat had started the sweat beading in his dark hair as he stood by the open boot of the Range Rover Sport. He was waiting for it to get dark, didn't want to do this last stretch into Seville in daylight. He drank, smoked, ate, and thought about his last night with Rita, the whole escapade making him silently, but grossly, oral. My God, she knew how to do it to him. He felt bad leaving her behind. He'd trained her to perfection.
The blood thumped hard in his throat as he looked down on the solid block of Samsonite luggage, jammed up against the open cool box with its chilled champagne and bottles of vodka set in blocks of ice. He tore another chunk off his bocadillo, enjoying the rip of the ham between his teeth, chugged the icy vodka. Another carnal scene from his last night with Rita came to him. Her violoncello waist, the caramel of her skin as soft as toffee in his kneading fingers. A chunk of the bread roll suddenly clogged his throat. He gasped, his eyes came out on stalks. He struggled and finally coughed. A clod of masticated bread and ham shot out over the Range Rover's roof. Steady, he thought. Don't want to choke now. Die in a lay-by with the trucks rumbling past and your future all before you.
Pepe Navajas had just finished loading the steel rods, the twenty bags of cement, and the wooden planking for making reinforced concrete pillars, which he'd stacked alongside some plumbing equipment, sanitaryware, floor and wall tiles. He was going to build an extension for his daughter and son-in-law who'd just taken delivery of twins and needed more space in their small house in Sanlúcar de Barrameda. They also had no money. So Pepe was buying everything on the cheap and, because his son-in-law was useless, he was doing the work for them over the weekends.
Pepe parked the heavily laden truck outside a restaurant in Dos Hermanas, a few kilometres before the start of the motorway heading south to Jerez de la Frontera. He'd had a beer or two with the guys from the building supplies depot. Now he was going to have an early dinner and wait for dusk. He kidded himself that the Guardia Civil didn't notice so much between dusk and night and only stopped cars later on, when people were more likely to be drunk.
Vasili turned on his mobile phone for the first time that day at just after 11 p.m. He had resisted the temptation until he was through the tollgate on the last stretch of motorway to Seville because he knew what was coming. It had been a while since he'd spent a whole day on his own and he was bursting to talk. The first call came through in a matter of seconds and, as expected, it was from Alexei, his old fellow at arms.
‘Are you alone, Vasya?’ asked Alexei.
‘Yes,’ said Vasili, his lips thick and mouth slow from the vodka.
‘I don't want you to get upset,’ said Alexei, ‘make a mistake while you're driving.’
‘Have