The Ignorance of Blood Read Free Page B

arrived?’
‘I'll call you when Vicente Cortés gets here and we'll have a meeting in my office,’ said Elvira. ‘Maybe you should go home and get some sleep.’
They came for Alexei just before dawn and couldn't raise him. One of them had to scramble down the side of the small villa and get into the garden over a low wall. He broke the lock on the sliding window, let himself in and openedthe front door for his friend, who took out his Stechkin APS handgun, which he'd hung on to since leaving the KGB back in the early 1990s.
They went upstairs. He was in the bedroom, wound up in a sheet on the floor with an empty bottle of whisky next to him, dead to the world. They kicked him awake. He came to, moaning.
They stuck him in the shower and turned on the water, cold. Alexei grunted as if they were still kicking him. The muscles trembled under his tattoos. They kept the water trained on him for a couple of minutes and let him out. He shaved with the two men in the mirror and took some aspirin, swilled down with tap water. They walked him into the bedroom and watched him while he got dressed in his Sunday best. The ex-KGB man sat on the bed with his Stechkin APS dangling between his knees.
They went downstairs and out into the heat. The sun was just up, the sea was blue, there was barely any movement, just birds. They got into the car and drove down the hill.
Ten minutes later they were in the club, sitting in Vasili Lukyanov's office, but with Leonid Revnik behind the desk smoking an H. Upmann Coronas Junior cigar. He had short grey hair, cut en brosse with a sharp widow's peak, big shoulders and chest under a very expensive white shirt from Jermyn Street.
‘Did you speak to him last night?’ asked Revnik.
‘To Vasili? Yes, I got through eventually,’ said Alexei.
‘Where was he?’
‘On the road to Seville. I don't know where.’
‘What did he have to say?’ asked Revnik.
‘That Yuri Donstov had made him an offer that you wouldn't have given him in a million years.’
‘He's right there,’ said Revnik. ‘What else?’
Alexei shrugged. Revnik glanced up. A hard fist clubbedAlexei in the side of the head, knocked him and the chair over.
‘What else?’ said Revnik.
They hefted Alexei and the chair back to vertical. A lump was already up on the side of his face.
‘“What the fuck,”’ said Alexei. ‘He had an accident.’
That had Revnik's attention.
‘Tell me.’
‘We were talking and he suddenly said: “What the fuck is this …” then BANG! and the sound of tyres screeching, a thump, a crash and then it all went dead.’
Revnik hit the desk.
‘Why the fuck didn't you tell us that last night?’
‘I was drunk. I passed out.’
‘You know what that means?’ said Revnik to no one in particular, but pointing across the room. ‘It means that what was in there is now in the hands of the police.’
They looked at the empty safe.
‘Take him away,’ said Revnik.
They took him back out to the car, drove up into the hills. The smell of pine was very strong after the cool of the night. They walked him into the trees and the ex-KGB man finally got to use his Stechkin APS.

2
Outside Seville – Friday, 15th September 2006, 08.30 hrs
The sun had been up for twenty-five minutes over the flat fields of the fertile flood plain of the Guadalquivir river. It was close to 30°C when Falcón drove back into the city at 8.30 a.m. At home he lay on his bed fully clothed in the air-con and tried to get some sleep. It was hopeless. He drank another coffee before heading into the office.
The short drive took him down by the river, past the spearhead railings and gates to the Maestranza bullring, whose whitewashed façade, smooth and brilliant as the icing of a cake, had its porthole windows and dark red doors and shutters piped with ochre. The high phoenix palms near the Toro de Oro sagged against the already bleached sky and as he crossed the San Telmo bridge the slow water was almost green and had no autumnal sparkle.
The