The Ignorance of Blood

‘You told me you were innocent. You've said so from the very beginning.’

‘Well, Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón, you're the expert on the murderer's constant state of denial,’ said Calderón.

‘I am,’ said Falcón. ‘And I'm not going to pretend to you that my investigation into what happened on that night doesn't have ulterior motives.’

‘All right,’ said Calderón, sitting back, paradoxically satisfied by this revelation. ‘I didn't think you wanted to save my ass … especially if you've read that transcript as many times as you said.’

‘There's some very ugly stuff in there, I can't deny that, Esteban.’

‘Nor can I,’ said Calderón. ‘I wouldn't mind turning back the clock on my whole relationship with Inés.’

‘I have some questions relating to the transcript,’ said Falcón, heading off a possible descent into self-pity. ‘I understand that the first time you hit Inés was when she discovered the naked photographs of Marisa on your digital camera.’

‘She was trying to download them on to her computer,’ said Calderón, leaping to his own defence. ‘I didn't know what her intentions were. I mean, it's one thing to find them, but it seemed to me that she was going to make use of them in some way.’

‘I'm sure Inés knew you very well, by then,’ said Falcón. ‘So why did you leave the camera hanging around? What were you thinking of, taking shots of your naked lover?’

‘ I didn't take them, Marisa did … while I was asleep. She was nice about it, though. She told me she'd left some “presents” on the camera,’ said Calderón. ‘And I didn't leave the camera hanging around. Inés went through my pockets.’

‘And what were you doing with the camera in the first place?’

‘I took some shots of a lawyers' dinner I'd attended earlier in the evening,’ said Calderón. ‘My alibi, if Inés found the camera.’

‘Which you knew she would.’

Calderón nodded, smoked, searched his memory; something he did a lot these days.

‘I'd overslept at Marisa's,’ he said. ‘It was six o'clock in the morning and, you know, I wasn't as collected as I would have been normally. Inés appeared to be asleep. She wasn't. When I dropped off, she got up and found the shots.’

‘And that was the first time you hit her,’ said Falcón. ‘Have you thought about that since you've been in here?’

‘Are you going to be my shrink as well, Javier?’

Falcón showed him an empty pair of hands.

‘If you didn't take the shots of Marisa and the only reason you had the camera with you was to provide yourself with an alibi for Inés, how come it was at hand for your lover to take photos of herself naked?’

Calderón stared into the wall for some time until he gradually started chopping the air with his cigarette fingers.

‘She told me she went through my jacket pockets. She said: “I come from a bourgeois family; I kick against it, but I know all the tricks,”’ said Calderón. ‘They all go through your pockets. That's what women do, Javier. It's part of their training. They're very exigent on details.’

‘Did she volunteer that information?’

‘No, I asked her.’

‘Any reason?’

‘I don't know,’ said Calderón. ‘I think I was hunting for my shoes. I was nervous about getting back to my apartment and having a confrontation with Inés. I'd never stayed out all night before. I suppose Marisa's behaviour just struck me as a bit odd.’

‘Any thoughts about it now?’

‘It's the sort of thing a wife would do … not a lover,’ said Calderón, crushing out the cigarette in the tin-foil ashtray. ‘It's what Inés did when I got home.’

‘You're smoking a lot, Esteban.’

‘There's nothing else to do, and it calms my nerves.’

‘Maybe you should think of an alternative method of calming your nerves.’

Calderón looked up, suspicious.

‘You can keep trying, Javier, but I'm not going to lie down on your couch.’

‘What about somebody else's couch?’ said Falcón, flicking over a page in his notebook. ‘Another question about the transcript…’

Calderón lit a cigarette, belligerently. He inhaled deeply without taking his eyes off Falcón and blew the smoke out the side of his mouth.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘I'm listening.’

‘Why do you think Marisa told Inspector Jefe Zorrita that she'd met Inés?’

‘Zorrita said that dealing with liars was like dealing with children. Marisa tried to lie about it but he broke her down.’

‘Zorrita is a dictaphone man, not a note-taker. I've listened to the recording of the interview with Marisa,’ said Falcón. ‘If there was one bit of evidence you didn't want in Zorrita's hands it was the fact of Marisa and Inés having met before, and especially the circumstances of that meeting.’

‘Probably,’ said Calderón, not that interested in something he didn't regard as a development.

‘Zorrita found a witness to that meeting in the Murillo Gardens on 6th June. It wasn't too difficult because, apparently, it was quite a showdown between the two women. The witness said they went at each other like a couple of whores competing for the same patch.’

‘Doesn't sound like that witness hung around in very nice places.’

They smiled at each other with no humour.

‘According to this witness, Marisa had the last word,’ said Falcón, flicking through his notebook. ‘She said something along the lines of: “Just remember, Inés, that when he's beating you it's because he's been fucking me so beautifully all night that he can't bear to see your disappointed little face in the morning.” Is that what Marisa told you? Because she didn't happen to mention that to Zorrita.’

‘What's your point?’

‘First of all, how did Marisa find out that you'd been beating Inés? She didn't have a bruised face. Did you tell her?’

‘No.’

‘Maybe one of the ugly lessons she learnt in her early life in Havana was how to spot an abused woman.’

‘Your point, Javier?’ said Calderón, with courtroom lawyer's steel.

‘Marisa gave Zorrita the impression that Inés had the upper hand. She mentioned Inés's phrase several times: “La puta con el puro.”’ The whore with the cigar.

‘That's what she told me,’ said Calderón, listening hard now.