The Ignorance of Blood (54 page)

‘Why did you do that?’ asked Falcón.

Abdullah stopped, threw his back against a whitewashed wall. Tears streaked his face.

‘I've loved that man all my life,’ he said. ‘Since I can remember, Mustafa has been a part of our family. I used to fall asleep on his chest in the back of the car. He rescued me when I nearly drowned in the sea at Asilah. He took me to Marrakech for my sixteenth birthday. He is my
uncle.’

‘But you knew I would kill him. You didn't have to do that.’

‘He has betrayed us all. I can hardly bear to speak his name. He has disgraced us. I don't care if I go to jail for the rest of my life,’ said Abdullah. ‘At least I have restored some of our family honour.’

Falcón grabbed him by the arm, told him they had to keep moving, the news of Barakat's death might leak out. They jogged through the empty streets. It was no more than a few hundred metres to the house. The door was open a crack. Abdullah went in. Consuelo appeared out of the darkness wearing a headscarf, startled him.

‘Is it done?’ she asked.

Falcón nodded.

They left Consuelo by the main door. Abdullah led Falcón across the first patio of the house. Women's voices came
from one of the upstairs rooms. In the second patio Abdullah ducked into a doorway and went down a long unlit passage to a stone spiral staircase at the end. It was only just big enough for a single person to pass.

‘There's no electricity in this part of the house,’ said Abdullah. ‘When we get to the door at the top I will go through and leave the door ajar. You must stay behind. Nobody comes to this part of the house without being invited first.’

‘Think about what you're going to say to her.’

‘I'm not going to take any nonsense,’ said Abdullah, determined. ‘She'll know I mean business just by the fact I'm in her quarters without her invitation.’

‘You mustn't give her the slightest chance.’

‘There's nothing she can do, Javier.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Falcón. ‘After all this, I don't want anything to happen to the boy.’

‘She'll be on her own up here. The boy will be kept elsewhere. I'll ask her where she's keeping him and, if she doesn't tell me, I'll beat her until she does.’

Abdullah took off his shoes. They crawled up two floors in the narrow staircase. At one point the women's voices in the patio were as clear as if they were next door. Abdullah reached the door at the top. It did not appear to have a handle or a lock but he felt up and down the stone wall near the door jamb and pressed. The door sprung open silently. The room had a floor of heavy wooden planking covered with carpets. The windows had broken latticework over them and the smell of jasmine from the garden below had come in with the warm night air. A floorboard creaked as Abdullah went in. A woman's voice in Arabic asked:

‘Who's there?’

‘It is me, Abdullah, my great aunt,’ he said, approaching her. ‘I'm sorry to come here without your invitation, but I wanted to talk to you about my father's death.’

‘I have already spoken to your mother,’ she said.

‘I was sure that you had been told, but I would like to talk to you about it as well,’ said Abdullah. ‘You know that your son, my uncle, and my father were very close.’

‘My son?’ she said.

‘Mustafa and my father, they were like brothers.’

‘Come here,’ she said. ‘Step into the light where I can see you. Why are you wearing these clothes? These are not mourning clothes. And what is that mark –?’

There was a sharp intake of breath. The silence of shock before the comprehension of pain. Falcón opened the door. The woman was dressed completely in black, which made the curved blade of the knife stand out in the oily yellow light. The sight of Falcón distracted her from Abdullah, who was holding his right arm, with blood oozing through his fingers. He grunted with pain. The woman tipped a lamp on to the wooden floor. The oil spilled, caught fire immediately and flames spread across the carpets and floorboards. The hem of Abdullah's jellabah was alight as he staggered backwards. The woman opened the door and disappeared into the darkness.

Falcón used a small rug from the floor to slap out the flames climbing up Abdullah's legs. He used one of the other larger carpets to smother the fire creeping across the floor. He ran to the door. She'd locked it. He kicked at it, once, twice, on the third savage blow it came open. No light. His sight still a wavering green from the flames. His hands found a door across the landing, a top stair to his right. The rest of the stairs could have been a lift shaft for all he could see. He went down the stairs, right hand on the wall. A landing. No door. More stairs. Another landing. Two doors. A window. Faint light coming from outside. He listened at one door. Then the other. Went back to the other door, tried it. It opened on to an empty room. He turned, ran at the other door, and shouldered through it into the room, crashing
into some furniture and landing on his front. The door kicked back against the wall and slammed shut again behind him. Still no light. Movement in the darkness. A faint whimpering sound of a small animal, cowering in a dark corner. He got up on to his knees, no higher than that, he was aware of the window behind him. Didn't want to stand out. Something flew over his head with a swish, like a low flying bird. He rolled to one side. Feet in light slippers padded across the floor. Falcón crawled deeper into the room, turned, lay on his back. He could just make out some of the broken latticework across the window. His eyes searched for a silhouette. Somebody was coming down the stairs. Abdullah recovered, or the woman getting away. His eyes improving all the time. He lay still. By the door he was aware of a denser mass. There was a twitch of silver. He felt around him. A small table came to hand. He sat up, brought his knees to his chin, rocked forward and in one movement came to his feet and ran full tilt, table out in front of him, at the black mass. There was a collision. The woman cannoned backwards and hit the window frame. The rotten latticework did not hold, the window frame cut her mid-thigh, her centre of gravity toppled and she was out and into the night before Falcón could grab at anything. A shout, more of surprise, followed by a compact thud and a crack. Then silence. A long silence, which was broken by that whimpering in the room.

‘Abdullah?’ said Falcón.

‘I'm here,’ he said. ‘On the landing. She cut me with a knife. I can't let go of it, I'm bleeding too much.’

‘Where's the light?’

‘You'll have to find a candle or a lamp.’

Women's voices raised down below. They'd found the body. Abdullah yelled some Arabic out of the window. Uncertain light and footsteps came up the stairs. A lamp came into the room. Falcón turned to look at the corner
where the whimpering was coming from. There was a child's cot with bars around it. Behind the bars he could see a child's back completely still. Falcón stumbled through the furniture in the room. At the foot of the cot, curled in a tight ball was a small, black, trembling dog. Next to it was Darío, inanimate. There was a strong smell of faeces and urine. The boy was naked. In the hopeless light he could not tell whether the mad crone had killed the boy out of spite, as Yacoub said she might. After that night with the Russians outside Seville, he could barely bring himself to do it, but he reached out a hand, touched the small naked shoulder, let his hand slip into the crook of the neck and felt the pulse ticking under the warm skin.

32

There was no lingering on that hot night in Fès.

The women in the Diouri household did not seem unduly troubled by the death of Barakat's mother, they were far more concerned about the injury to Abdullah and confounded by the presence of a child and a small dog in the house. When Abdullah told them he'd been knifed by the mad woman, and they found the bloody blade still in the woman's hand, they were appalled. Falcón looked at the wound. It was a deep cut in the shoulder muscle and, although bloody, the blade had not severed anything serious. The women brought alcohol and bandages. He dressed the wound, but said it would need stitches. Given the circumstances, he told Abdullah, this would best be done in Ceuta. Yousra and Leila would stay in Fès.

They were led to the car through the back streets of the medina. Consuelo would not let Falcón carry the boy. She was frightened by Darío's total lack of animation, but encouraged by the steadiness of his pulse. They left for Ceuta at 9.30 p.m. On the way Falcón called Alfonso, the concierge, at the Hotel Puerta de Africa and told him they would be arriving at about 1 a.m. Moroccan time at the border and would need help to get through. Abdullah had changed out
of his bloody clothes and back into mourning. He had his ID card, but had left his passport in Rabat. Consuelo had had the foresight to bring Darío's documents. Falcón also told Alfonso they'd need a doctor on arrival at the hotel and a couple of rooms for what was left of the night.

At the border they were walked through to the Spanish side, with no official inspection. A taxi was waiting. Darío had still not stirred. He had the distressing feel of a large ragdoll. The doctor was waiting at the hotel and they went straight up to the room. Abdullah insisted that Darío was seen to first. The doctor lifted Darío's eyelids, shone his torch into the pupils. He listened to the heart and lungs. He minutely inspected the boy's body and found needle punctures in the crooks of his elbows. He declared there was nothing wrong with him apart from having been heavily sedated.

He took one look at Abdullah's wound and said he'd have to come with him to his surgery and have it properly cleaned and stitched. Falcón and Consuelo washed Darío in the bath and put him to bed. They slept with the boy in between them and were woken just before midday by his crying. He had no recollection of what had happened to him. Although he vaguely remembered being taken away from the Sevilla FC shop, he could not recollect how it had happened or who had done it.

It was decided that Abdullah would travel with them and stay in Seville with Falcón until the Barakat murder and the death of the mother had been dealt with by the authorities. They took a cab to the hydrofoil and were across the straits by 3.30 p.m. They drove back to Seville, where Falcón left Consuelo and Darío in Santa Clara with her sister and the boys, Ricardo and Matías. He and Abdullah went to the Jefatura, where he gave Barakat's DNA swab to Jorge in the forensics lab and asked him to check it against samples on the Jefatura's database.

‘You know Comisario Elvira is looking for you,’ said Jorge.

‘He's always looking for me. I'm going home to bed,’ said Falcón. ‘You haven't seen me.’

He and Abdullah went home. Encarnación fed them. Falcón turned off all his mobiles and disconnected his phone. He slept the rest of the afternoon and whole night without waking.

In the morning he inspected Abdullah's wound and redressed it. He took a slow breakfast out in the patio, staring at the marble flagstones. At midday he called Jorge and asked if he'd run the DNA test.

‘There was a match to Raúl Jiménez,’ said Jorge. ‘The DNA you gave me would probably have belonged to his son. Does that help you?’

‘Interesting.’

‘You might also be interested to know that your squad are on a high. Last night they arrested two building inspectors in Torremolinos, who they'd identified from those Lukyanov disks. They've already charged them with conspiring to cause an explosion,’ said Jorge. ‘This morning they picked up the owner of a small hotel in Almería, who also happened to be an electrician and was trained by the army in the use of explosives. He'll be arriving in Seville this afternoon. Ramírez has been trying to call you and Comisario Elvira is still very eager to know where you are. I've said nothing.’

Falcón hung up, called Consuelo. Darío was playing with his brothers and some friends in the pool.

‘He seems untouched by it all,’ she said, amazed. ‘I was going to get Alicia to talk to him, but I'm not sure whether it will just make him unhappy.’

‘See what Alicia says. You don't have to rush,’ said Falcón.

He told her about the DNA match from Barakat to Raúl. Consuelo couldn't understand how Raúl Jiménez, her ex-husband, came to be Mustafa Barakat's father.

‘The reason Raúl suddenly had to leave Morocco back in the fifties was because he'd made the twelve-year-old daughter of Abdullah Diouri Senior pregnant. Diouri Senior had demanded that Raúl marry the girl to preserve the family honour. Raúl couldn't because he was already married, so he fled. Diouri took revenge by kidnapping Raúl's youngest son, Arturo. And for whatever reason – guilt, or because he loved him – Diouri gave Arturo the same status as his own sons with his family name. So Arturo Jiménez became Yacoub Diouri.

‘But because Diouri's twelve-year-old daughter had brought shame on to the family,
her
son by Raúl was not allowed to bear the family name. However Diouri Senior didn't totally reject him. The close ties between the Diouris and the Barakats meant that the boy was introduced into that family to become Mustafa Barakat.’

‘That sort of knowledge in the wrong mind could breed a special kind of hatred,’ said Consuelo.

‘And how do you think Mustafa Barakat would feel about Yacoub Diouri?’