The heat did not back off during the night. By the time Falcón arrived at the Jefatura at 7.30 a.m. the street temperature was 36°C and the atmosphere as oppressive as an old régime. The short walk from his car to the office with a hangover like a hatchet buried in his head left him gasping, with odd flashes of light going off behind his eyes.
At one of the desks in the outer office he was surprised to find Inspector Ramírez already at work, two thick fingers poised over the computer keyboard. Falcón had always doubted that he and Ramírez would ever be friends since he’d taken the job that Ramírez had thought should have been his. But he’d been getting on better with his number two in the last four months since he’d started full-time work again. While Falcón had been suspended from duty due to depressive illness, Ramírez had seized the opportunity for command with both hands, only to find that he didn’t like it. Its pressures did not suit his personality. Not only did he lack the necessary creative streak to launch a new investigation, but he could be explosive and divisive. In January Falcón had returned to part-time work. By March he had been reinstated as Inspector Jefe full time and Ramírez had been grateful. These developments had reduced the tension within the squad. They now rarely used each other’s ranks in addressing each other in private.
‘My God,’ said Ramírez, ‘what happened to you?’
‘Buenos días, José Luis. It was a bad day for children, yesterday,’ said Falcón. ‘I got friendly with the whisky again. How did it go at the hospital?’
Ramírez stared up from the desk and Javier had the vertiginous experience of teetering over two dark, empty lift shafts which led directly to this man’s pain and intolerable uncertainty.
‘I haven’t slept,’ said Ramírez. ‘I’ve been to early-morning Mass for the first time in thirty years and I’ve confessed my sins. I’ve prayed harder than I’ve ever done in my life – but it doesn’t work like that, does it? This is my penance. I must watch the sufferings of the innocent.’
He breathed in and covered his cheeks with his hands.
‘They’re keeping her in for four days to conduct a series of tests,’ he said. ‘Some of these tests are for very serious conditions like lymphatic cancer and leukaemia. They have no idea what the problem is. She’s thirteen years old, Javier, thirteen.’
Ramírez lit a cigarette and smoked with one arm across his chest as if he was holding himself together. He talked about the tests as if he’d already confirmed to himself that she had something serious and the terrible words of future treatment were creeping into his vocabulary – chemotherapy, nausea, hair loss, crashing immune system, risk of infection. Footage came to Falcón’s lurid mind of huge-eyed children beneath the perfect domes of their fragile craniums.
His cigarette suddenly tasted foul to Ramírez, who crushed it out and spat the smoke into his lap as if it was responsible for his child’s health. Falcón talked him down, reminded him that these were just tests, to stay calm and positive and that he could take any time off that he needed. Ramírez asked to be put to work to stop his endlessly revolving thoughts. Falcón brought him into his office, took another two aspirin and briefed him on the Vega deaths.
Pérez and Ferrera turned up just after 8 a.m. The other two squad members, Baena and Serrano, were out doing a door-to-door. Falcón decided to move on two fronts. He would conduct a house search at the Vega property while Ramírez made a start on Rafael Vega’s place of business, interviewing the project managers, the accountant and visiting all the construction sites. They would also have to work on finding the missing gardener, Sergei, and getting more information on the Russians seen by Pablo Ortega on La Noche de Reyes visiting the Vegas’ house.
‘Where do we look for Sergei?’ asked Pérez.
‘Well, you can find out if there are any Russians or Ukrainians working on Vega’s building sites and ask them, for a start. I doubt he’s unique.’
‘If we want to search Vega’s office, from what you’ve said about Vázquez, we’re going to need a warrant.’
‘And we won’t get one from a judge unless we can prove suspicious circumstances, for which we’ll have to wait until we get the autopsies,’ said Falcón. ‘I’m going to have to take someone from Lucía’s family down to the Instituto to identify the bodies. I’ll pick them up probably around midday and see if that scrap of photograph we found in the barbecue means anything to any of them.’
‘So until then we rely on the kindness of Sr Vázquez?’ said Ramírez.
‘He’s already told me to talk to the accountant and given me his details,’ said Falcón, who turned to Ferrera. ‘Did you get anything more on those number plates?’
‘What plates?’ asked Ramírez.
‘Somebody followed me home last night in a blue Seat Cordoba.’
‘Any ideas?’ asked Ramírez, while Ferrera called the traffic police.
‘Too early to say, but they didn’t seem too bothered by me or that I saw their plates.’
‘They were reported stolen off a VW Golf in Marbella,’ said Ferrera. ‘Nothing more.’
Falcón and Ferrera picked up the crime scene photographs from Felipe and Jorge and went down to the car. Cristina Ferrera always dressed as if she was about to disappear without trace. She never used make-up and had one piece of jewellery: a crucifix on a chain. Her face was wide and flat with a nose that calmed the traffic of freckles across it. She had watchful brown eyes that moved slowly in her head. She made no physical impact and yet she had a strong presence which had impressed Falcón in her interview. Ramírez had passed over her photograph on the grounds of looks alone, but Falcón’s curiosity was piqued. Why should an ex-nun want to become a member of a murder squad? Her prepared answer was that she wanted to be part of a group that was engaged on the side of Good against Evil. Ramírez had warned her that there was nothing theological about murder work, that in fact it was illogical – the result of breakdowns and short circuits in society – and nothing to do with chariot battles in heaven.
‘The Inspector Jefe was asking for my reasons as someone who’d been thinking of becoming a nun,’ she’d said, coolly. ‘It was my naïve belief then that the next best institution after the Church where I could do some good was the police force. My ten years on the streets of Cádiz have taught me that that is possible only on rare occasions.’
Falcón had wanted to give her the job there and then, but Ramírez wasn’t finished.
‘So why did you leave your vocation?’
‘I met a man, Inspector. I fell pregnant, we got married and had two children.’
‘In that order?’ asked Ramírez, and Ferrera had nodded without taking her brown eyes off him.
So, a fallen angel, too. A Bride of Christ who’d found herself more mortal boots. Falcón had made his decision. The transfer from Cádiz had been slow but the few days she’d been with his squad had convinced him that he’d made the right choice. Even Ramírez had taken her out for a coffee, but that was how things changed. Ramírez, with his daughter’s mystery illness, had found himself searching for spiritual sustenance rather than the corporeal version he usually hunted for amongst the courts’ secretaries, the bar flirts, shopgirls and even, so Falcón suspected, some of the hookers that crossed his path.
Ferrera drove. Falcón preferred to lose himself in vague thoughts that might lead to better ideas. They drove to Santa Clara in silence. Falcón liked her for that resistance to the Andaluz gene for talking non-stop. His thoughts moved in a slow sickly loop. How men were changed by crisis. Ramírez had gone to church. Falcón had never been attracted to it. It made him feel fraudulent. He, like Sr Vega, had gone to the river, whose draw, he had to admit, was not always positive. There had been times when it offered him an alternative solution and he’d had to pull back and rush home to the comfort of whisky.
They pulled