The Hidden Assassins (5 page)

‘
Diga
,’ said Ramírez.

‘There’s been a bomb, José Luis…’

‘I heard it even out here,’ said Ramírez.

‘I’m at the Institute. It sounded close. Get me some news.’

‘Hold it.’

Falcón ran past the receptionist, the mobile pressed
to his ear, listening to Ramírez’s feet pounding down the corridor and up the stairs and people shouting in the Jefatura. The traffic had stopped everywhere. Drivers and passengers were getting out of their cars, looking to the northeast at a plume of black smoke.

‘The reports we’re getting,’ said Ramírez, panting, ‘is that there’s been an explosion in an apartment block on the corner of Calle Blanca Paloma and Calle Los Romeros in the barrio of El Cerezo.’

‘Where’s that? I don’t know it. It must be close because I can see the smoke.’

Ramírez found a wall map and gave rapid instructions.

‘Is there any report of a gas leak?’ asked Falcón, knowing this was wildly optimistic, like the so-called power surge on the day of the London underground bombings.

‘I’m checking the gas company.’

Falcón sprinted through the hospital. People were running, but there was no panic, no shouting. They had been training for this moment. Everyone in a white coat was making for the casualty department. Orderlies were sprinting with empty trolleys. Nurses ran with boxes of saline. Plasma was on the move. Falcón slammed through endless double doors until he hit the main street and the wall of sound: a cacophony of sirens as ambulances swung out into the street.

The main road was miraculously clear of traffic. As he crossed the empty lanes he saw cars pulling up on to pavements. There were no police. This was the work of ordinary citizens, who knew that this stretch of road had to be kept clear to ferry the wounded. Ambulances careered down the street two abreast, whooping and
delirious, with lights flashing queasily, in air that was filling with a grey/pink dust and smoke that billowed out from behind the apartment blocks.

At the crossroads bloodstained people stumbled about on their own or were being carried, or walked towards the hospital with handkerchiefs, tissues and kitchen roll held to foreheads, ears and cheeks. These were the superficially wounded victims, the ones sliced by flying glass and metal, the ones some distance from the epicentre, who would never make it into the top flight of disaster statistics but who might lose the sight in an eye, or their hearing from perforated eardrums, bear facial scars for the rest of their lives, lose the use of a finger or a hand, never walk again without a limp. They were being helped by the lucky ones, those who didn’t even have a scratch as the air whistled with flying glass, but who had the images burned on to their minds of someone they knew or loved who had been whole seconds before and was now sliced, torn, bludgeoned or broken.

In the blocks of flats leading up to Calle Los Romeros, the local police were evacuating the buildings. An old man in bloody pyjamas was being led by a boy, who had realized his importance. A young man holding a crimson-flashed towel to the side of his head stared through Falcón, his face horribly partitioned by rivulets of blood, coagulating with dust. He had his arm around his girlfriend, who appeared unhurt and was talking at full tilt into her mobile phone.

The air, more dust-filled by the moment, was still splintering to the sound of breaking glass as it fell from high shattered windows. Falcón called Ramírez again and told him to organize three or four buses to act as
improvised ambulances to ferry the lightly wounded from all these blocks of apartments down the road to the hospital.

‘The gas company have confirmed that they supply buildings in that area,’ said Ramírez, ‘but there’s been no report of a leak and they ran a routine test on that block only last month.’

‘For some reason this doesn’t feel like a gas explosion,’ said Falcón.

‘We’re getting reports that a pre-school behind the destroyed building has been badly damaged by flying debris and there are casualties.’

Falcón pressed on up through the walking wounded. There were still no signs of serious damage to buildings, but the people floating around, calling and looking for family members in the spaces at the foot of the emptying apartment blocks were phantasmal, dust-covered, not themselves. The light had turned strange, as the sun was scarfed by smoke and a reddish fog. There was a smell in the air, which was not immediately recognizable to anyone who didn’t know war. It clogged the nostrils with powdered brick and concrete, raw sewage, open drains and a disgusting meatiness. The atmosphere was vibrant, but not with any discernible sound, although people were making noise—talking, coughing, vomiting and groaning—it was more of an airborne tinnitus, brought about by a collective human alarm at the proximity of death.

Lines of fire engines, lights flashing, were backed up all the way to Avenida San Lazaro. There wasn’t a pane of intact glass in the apartment buildings on the other side of Calle Los Romeros. A bottle bank was sticking out of the side of one of the blocks like a huge green
plug. A wall that ran down the street opposite the stricken building had been blown on to its back and cars were piled up in a garden, as if it was a scrapyard. The torn stumps of four trees lined the road. Other vehicles parked on Calle Los Romeros were buried under rubble: roofs crumpled, windscreens opaque, tyres blown out, wheel trims off. There were clothes strewn everywhere, as if there’d been a laundry drop from the sky. A length of chain-link fencing hung from a fourth-floor balcony.

Firemen had clambered up the nearest cascade of rubble and had their hoses trained on the two remaining sections of what had been a complete L-shaped building. What was now missing was a twenty-five-metre segment from the middle of it. The colossal explosion had brought down all eight floors of the block, to form a stack of reinforced concrete pancakes to a height of about six metres. Framed by the ragged remains of the eight floors of apartments, and just visible through the mist of falling dust, was the roof of the partially devastated pre-school and the apartment blocks beyond, whose façades were patched with black and gaping glassless windows. A fireman appeared on the edge of a broken room on the eighth floor and in the war-torn air made a sign to show that the building was now clear of people. A bed fell from the sixth floor, its frame crunched into the piled debris, while its mattress bounced off wildly in the direction of the pre-school.

On the other side of the rubble, further down Calle Los Romeros, was the Fire Chief’s car but no sign of any officers. Falcón walked along the collapsed wall and made his way around the block to see what had
happened to the pre-school. The end of the building closest to the explosion had lost two walls, part of the roof had collapsed and the rest was hanging, ready to drop. Firemen and civilians were propping the roof, while unblinking women stared on in appalled silence, hands holding their faces as if to stop them from dropping off in disbelief.

On the other side, at the entrance to the school, it was worse. Four small bodies lay side by side, their faces covered with school pinafores. A large group of men and women were trying to control two of the mothers of the dead children. Covered in dust they were like ghosts, fighting for the right to go back to the living. The women were screaming hysterically and clawing madly against hands trying to prevent them from reaching the inert bodies. Another woman had fainted and was lying on the ground, surrounded by people kneeling to protect her from the swaying and surging crowd. Falcón looked around for a teacher and saw a young woman sitting on a mat of broken glass, blood trickling down the side of her face, weeping uncontrollably, while a friend tried to console the inconsolable. A paramedic arrived to give her wounds some temporary dressing.

‘Are you a teacher?’ asked Falcón, of the woman’s friend. ‘Do you know where the mother of the fourth child is?’

The woman, dazed, looked across at the collapsed apartment block.

‘She’s in there somewhere,’ she said, shaking her head.

Only firemen moved around inside the pre-school, their boots crunching over debris and glass. More props
came in to support the shattered roof. The Fire Chief was in an undamaged classroom at the back of the school, giving a report to the Mayor’s office on his mobile.

‘All gas and electricity to the area has been cut off and the damaged building has been evacuated. Two fires have been brought under control,’ he said. ‘We’ve pulled four dead children out of the pre-school. Their classroom was in the direct path of the explosion and took its full force. So far we’ve had reports of three other deaths: two men and a woman who were walking along Calle Los Romeros when the explosion occurred. My men have also found a woman who seems to have died from a heart attack in one of the apartment blocks opposite the destroyed building. It’s too difficult to say how many wounded there are at the moment.’

He listened for a moment longer and closed down the phone. Falcón showed his ID.

‘You’re here very early, Inspector Jefe,’ said the Fire Chief.

‘I was in the Forensic Institute. It sounded like a bomb from there. Is that what you think?’

‘To do that sort of damage, there’s no doubt in my mind that it was a bomb, and a very powerful one at that.’

‘Any idea how many people were in that building?’

‘I’ve got one of my officers working on that at the moment. There were at least seven,’ he said. ‘The only thing we can’t be sure of is how many were in the mosque in the basement.’

‘The mosque?’

‘That’s the other reason why I’m sure this was a
bomb,’ said the Fire Chief. ‘There was a mosque in the basement, with access from Calle Los Romeros. We think that morning prayers had just finished, but we’re not sure if anyone had left. We’re getting conflicting reports on that from the outside.’

Seville—Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 08.25 hrs

Desperation had brought Consuelo to Calle Vidrio early. The children were being taken to school by her neighbour. Now she was sitting in her car outside Alicia Aguado’s consulting room, getting cold feet about the emergency appointment she’d arranged only twenty-five minutes earlier. She walked the street to calm her nerves. She was not someone who had things wrong with her.

At precisely 8.30 a.m., having stared at the second hand of her watch, chipping away at the seconds—which showed her how obsessive she was becoming—she rang the doorbell. Dr Aguado was waiting for her, as she had been for many months. She was excited at the prospect of this new patient. Consuelo walked up the narrow stairs to the consulting room, which had been painted a pale blue and was kept at a constant temperature of 22°C.

Although Consuelo knew everything about Alicia Aguado, she let the clinical psychologist explain that she was now blind due to a degenerative disease called retinitis pigmentosa and that as a result of this disability
she had developed a unique technique of reading a patient’s pulse.

‘Why do you need to do that?’ asked Consuelo, knowing the answer, but wanting to put off the moment when they got down to work.

‘Because I’m blind I miss out on the most important indicators of the human body, which is physiognomy. We speak more to each other with our features and bodies than we do with our mouths. Think how little you would glean from a conversation just by hearing words. Only if someone was in an extreme state, such as fear or anxiety, would you understand what they were feeling, whereas if you have a face and body you pick up on a whole range of subtleties. You can tell the difference between someone who is lying, or exaggerating, someone who’s bored, and someone who wants to go to bed with you. Reading the pulse, which I learnt from a Chinese doctor and have adapted to my needs, enables me to pick up on nuance.’

‘That sounds like an intelligent way of saying that you’re a human polygraph.’

‘I don’t just detect lies,’ said Aguado. ‘It’s more to do with undercurrents. Translating feeling into language can defeat even the greatest of writers, so why should it be any easier for an ordinary person to tell me about their emotions, especially if they’re in a confused state?’

‘This is a beautiful room,’ said Consuelo, already shying away from some of the words she’d heard in Aguado’s explanation. Undercurrents reminded her of her fears, of being dragged out into the ocean to die of exhaustion alone in a vast heaving expanse.

‘There was too much noise,’ said Aguado. ‘You know how it is in Seville. Noise was becoming so much of
a distraction for me, in my state, that I had the room double-glazed and soundproofed. It used to be white, but I think my patients found white as intimidating as black. So I opted for tranquil blue. Let’s sit down, shall we?’

They sat in the S-shaped lovers’ seat, facing each other. She showed Consuelo the tape recorder in the armrest, explaining that it was the only way for her to review her consultations. Aguado asked her to introduce herself, give her age and any medication she was on so that she could check it was recording properly.

‘Can you give me a brief medical history?’

‘Since when?’

‘Anything significant since you were born—operations, serious illnesses, children…that sort of thing.’

Consuelo tried to drink the tranquillity of the pale blue walls into her mind. She had been hoping for some miraculous surgical strike on her mental disturbances, a fabulous technique to yank open the tangled mess and smooth it out into comprehensible strands. In her turmoil it hadn’t occurred to her that this was going to be a process, an intrusive process.

‘You seem to be struggling with this question,’ said Aguado.

‘I’m just coming to terms with the fact that you’re going to turn me inside out.’

‘Nothing leaves this room,’ said Aguado. ‘We can’t even be heard. The tapes are locked up in a safe in my office.’

‘It’s not that,’ said Consuelo. ‘I hate to vomit. I would rather sweat out my nausea than vomit up the problem. This is going to be mental vomiting.’

‘Most people who arrive at my side are here because
of something intensely private, so private that it might even be a secret from themselves,’ said Aguado. ‘Mental health and physical health are not dissimilar. Untreated wounds fester and infect the whole body. Untreated lesions of the mind are no different. The only difficulty is that you can’t just show me the infected cut. You might not know what, or where, it is. The only way for us to find out is by bringing things from the subconscious to the surface of the conscious mind. It’s not vomiting. It’s not expelling poison. You bring perhaps painful things to the surface, so that we can examine them, but they remain yours. If anything, it’s
more
like sweating out your nausea than vomiting.’

‘I’ve had two abortions,’ said Consuelo, decisively. ‘The first in 1980, the second in 1984. Both were performed in a London clinic. I have had three children. Ricardo in 1992, Matías in 1994 and Darío in 1998. Those are the only five occasions I have been in hospital.’

‘Are you married?’

‘Not any more. My husband died,’ said Consuelo, stumbling over this first obstacle, used to obfuscation of the fact, rather than natural openness. ‘He was murdered in 2001.’

‘Was that a happy marriage?’

‘He was thirty-four years older than me. I didn’t know this at the time, but he married me because I reminded him physically of his first wife, who had committed suicide. I didn’t want to marry him, but he was insistent. I only agreed when he said that he would give me children. Quite soon after the marriage he found out, or allowed himself to realize, that my likeness to his wife stopped at the physical. We still stayed
together. We respected each other, especially in business. He was a diligent father. But as for loving me, making me happy…no.’

‘Did you hear that?’ asked Aguado. ‘Something outside. A big noise, like an explosion.’

‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘I know about your husband’s case, of course,’ said Aguado. ‘It was truly terrible. That must have been very traumatic for you and the children.’

‘It was. But it’s not directly linked to why I’m sitting here,’ said Consuelo. ‘That investigation was necessarily intrusive. I was a prime suspect. He was a wealthy, influential man. I had a lover. The police believed I had a motive. My life was turned inside out by the investigation. Nasty details of my past were revealed.’

‘Such as?’

‘I had appeared in a pornographic movie when I was seventeen to raise money to pay for my first abortion.’

Aguado forced Consuelo to relive that ugly slice of her life in great detail and didn’t let her stop until she’d explained the circumstances of the next pregnancy, with a duke’s son, which had led to the second abortion.

‘What do you think of pornography?’ asked Alicia.

‘I abhor it,’ said Consuelo. ‘I especially abhorred my need to be involved in it, in order to find the money to terminate a pregnancy.’

‘What do you think pornography is?’

‘The filming of the biological act of sex.’

‘Is that all?’

‘It is sex without emotion.’

‘You described quite strong emotions when you were telling me—’

‘Of disgust and revulsion, yes.’

‘For your partners in the movie?’

‘No, no, not at all,’ said Consuelo. ‘We were all in the same boat, us girls. And the men needed us to perform. It’s not a highly sexually charged atmosphere on a porn set. We were all high on dope, to help us get over what we were doing.’

Consuelo’s enthusiasm for her account waned. She wasn’t getting to the point.

‘So who were these strong feelings of anger aimed at?’ asked Aguado.

‘Myself,’ said Consuelo, hoping that this partial truth might be enough.

‘When I asked you what pornography was, I don’t believe you were telling me what
you
actually thought,’ said Aguado. ‘You were giving me a socially acceptable version. Try answering that question again.’

‘It’s sex without love,’ said Consuelo, hammering the chair. ‘It’s the
antithesis
of love.’

‘The antithesis of love is hate.’

‘It’s self-hate.’

‘What else?’

‘It’s the desecration of sex.’

‘What do you think of men and women being filmed having sex with multiple partners?’ asked Aguado.

‘It’s perverted.’

‘What else?’

‘What do you mean, “what else”? I don’t know
what else
you want.’

‘How often have you thought about the movie since it came to light in your husband’s murder investigation?’

‘I forgot about it.’

‘Until today?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘This isn’t a social situation, Sra Jiménez.’

‘I realize
that
.’

‘You mustn’t be concerned with what I think of you in that respect,’ said Aguado.

‘But I don’t know what you’re trying to get me to admit.’

‘Why are we talking about pornography?’

‘It was something that came to light in my husband’s murder investigation.’

‘I asked you whether your husband’s murder had been traumatic,’ said Aguado.

‘I see.’

‘What do you see?’

‘That the movie coming to light was more traumatic for me than my husband’s death.’

‘Not necessarily. It was bound up in a traumatic event, and in that highly emotionally charged period it made its mark on you.’

Consuelo struggled in silence. The tangled mess was not unravelling but becoming even more confused.

‘You’ve made appointments with me several times recently and you’ve never appeared for them,’ said Aguado. ‘Why did you come this morning?’

‘I love my children,’ said Consuelo. ‘I love my children so much it hurts.’

‘Where does it hurt?’ asked Aguado, leaping on to this new revelation.

‘You’ve never had children?’

Alicia Aguado shrugged.

‘It hurts me in the top of my stomach, around my diaphragm.’

‘Why does it hurt?’

‘Can’t you ever just accept something?’ said Consuelo. ‘I love them. It hurts.’

‘We’re here to examine your inner life. I can’t feel it or see it. All I have to go on is how you express yourself.’

‘And the pulse thing?’

‘That’s what raises the questions,’ said Aguado. ‘What you say and what I feel in your blood don’t always match up.’

‘Are you telling me I
don’t
love my children?’

‘No, I’m asking you why you say it hurts. What is causing you the pain?’

‘
Joder!
It’s the fucking love that hurts, you stupid bitch,’ said Consuelo, tearing her wrist away, ripping her blabbing pulse out from under those questioning fingertips. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. That was unforgivable.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ said Aguado. ‘This is no cocktail party.’

‘You’re telling me,’ said Consuelo. ‘Look, I’ve always been very firm about telling the truth. My children will confirm that.’

‘This is a different type of truth.’

‘There is only
one
truth,’ said Consuelo, with missionary zeal.

‘There’s the real truth, and the presentable truth,’ said Aguado. ‘They’re often quite close together, but for a few emotional details.’

‘You’ve got me wrong there, Doctor. I’m not like that. I’ve seen things, I’ve done things and I’ve faced up to them all.’

‘That
is
why you’re here.’

‘You’re calling me a liar and a coward. You’re telling me I don’t know who I am.’

‘I’m asking questions, and you’re doing your best to answer them.’

‘But you’ve just told me that what I’m saying and what you’re feeling in my pulse don’t match. Therefore, you are calling me a liar.’

‘I think we’ve had enough for today,’ said Aguado. ‘That’s a lot of ground to have covered in the first session. I’d like to see you again very soon. Is this a good time of day for you? The morning or late afternoon is probably the best time in the restaurant business.’

‘You think I’m coming back for any more of this shit?’ said Consuelo, heading for the door, swinging her bag over her shoulder. ‘Think again…blind bitch!’

She slammed the door on the way out and nearly went over on her heel in the cobbled street. She got into her car, jammed the keys into the ignition, but didn’t start the engine. She hung on to the steering wheel, as if it was the only thing that would stop her falling off the edge of her sanity. She cried. She cried until it hurt in exactly the same place as it did when she was watching her children sleeping.

Angel and Manuela were sitting out on the roof terrace in the early-morning sunshine, having breakfast. Manuela sat in a white towelling robe examining her toes. Angel blinked with irritation as he read one of his articles in the
ABC
.

‘They’ve cut a whole paragraph,’ said Angel. ‘Some stupid sub-editor is making my journalism look like the work of a fool.’

‘I can hear myself getting fat,’ said Manuela, barely thinking, her whole being consumed by the business that was to take place later that morning. ‘I’m going to have to spend the rest of my life in a tracksuit.’

‘I’m wasting my time,’ said Angel. ‘I’m just messing about, writing drivel for idiots. No wonder they cut it.’

‘I’m going to paint my nails,’ said Manuela. ‘What do you think? Pink or red? Or something wild to distract people from my bottom?’

‘That’s it,’ said Angel, tossing the newspaper across the terrace. ‘I’m finished with this shit.’

And that was when they heard it: a distant, but significant, boom. They looked at each other, all immediate concerns gone from their minds. Manuela couldn’t stop herself from saying the obvious.

‘What the hell was that?’

‘That,’ said Angel, getting to his feet so suddenly that the chair collapsed beneath him, ‘was a large explosion.’

‘But where?’

‘The sound came from the north.’

‘Oh shit, Angel! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!’

‘What?’ said Angel, expecting to see her with red nail polish all over her foot.

‘It can’t possibly have slipped your mind already,’ said Manuela. ‘We’ve been up half the night talking about it. The two properties in the Plaza Moravia—which is north of where we’re standing now.’