The Hidden Assassins

by Robert Wilson

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘It will change people’s perceptions. They’ll now know that anyone can be an abuser of women. It’s not the preserve of uneducated brutes with no self-control, but possibly civilized, cultured, intelligent men who can be moved to tears by Tosca.’

  They hung up. Covo’s workshop was near the Plaza de Pelicano, an ugly, modern square of 1970s apartment blocks, whose central sitting area had become a place where dog owners brought their pets to shit. Falcón parked outside Covo’s studio in an adjacent compound of small workshops and took a digital camera out of the glove compartment.

  ‘I used to keep it all in the house,’ said Covo, as he led Falcón through a steel-caged door into a room that was completely bare of any decoration and had only a table and two chairs. ‘But my wife started to complain when I worked my way into other rooms.’

  Covo made some strong coffee and broke the filter off a Ducado and lit it. His head was shaved to a fine white bristle all over. He wore half-moon glasses with gold rims, so that he looked like an accountant from the neck up. He was slim with a nut-brown body, and his arms and legs were all sinew and wiry muscle. This was all visible because he wore a black string vest, a pair of running shorts and sandals.

  ‘The only problem with this place is that it gets very hot in the summer,’ he said.

  They drank coffee. Covo didn’t volunteer any more information. He studied Falcón’s face, eyes flicking up and down, side to side. He nodded, smoked, drank his coffee. Falcón did not feel uneasy. He was glad to have a respite from the madness of the world outside in the company of this strange individual.

  ‘We’re all unique,’ said Covo, after some minutes, ‘and yet remarkably the same.’

  ‘There are types,’ said Falcón. ‘I’ve noticed that.’

  ‘The only problem is that we live in a part of Europe where there has been a lot of genetic exchange. So that, for instance, you will find the Berber genetic marker e3b both in North Africa and on the Iberian peninsula,’ said Covo. ‘Much as we’d like to, we’re not going to be able to tell you where exactly your corpse comes from, other than that he is either Spanish or North African.’

  ‘That’s already something,’ said Falcón. ‘How did you find the genetic marker?’

  ‘Dr Pintado has been calling in some favours from the labs,’ said Covo. ‘Your corpse has good teeth. You already know that he’s had corrective work to make them straight; expensive and unusual for someone of his generation. The work was not done in Spain.’

  ‘You’ve been very thorough.’

  ‘I presumed that this man’s death has something to do with the bomb, so I have been working hard and fast,’ said Covo. ‘The important thing is to work out how this affects the shape of the face and the overall effect of good teeth is impressive. Hair is also important, head and facial.’

  ‘You think he was bearded?’

  ‘The job they did with the acid was not as thorough as it could have been. I’m certain he was bearded, but that presents other problems. How did he keep it? All I can say is that it wasn’t long and shaggy. The teeth perhaps indicate a man who cared about his appearance.’

  ‘And he kept his hair long.’

  ‘Yes, and he had high cheekbones,’ said Covo. ‘A prominent nose—part of the septum was still intact. I think we’re talking about a rather striking individual, which was why they probably went to such lengths to destroy his features.’

  ‘I’m surprised they didn’t smash up his teeth.’

  ‘They would have had to extract each one to make sure. It was probably too time-consuming,’ said Covo. ‘Let me show you what I’ve done.’

  Covo stubbed out his Ducado after a last long drag and they went into the studio. Lights came on in certain areas. In the centre of the room was a block of stone from which a number of faces were emerging. They all gave the impression of struggle, as if they were inside the rock and nosing out into the world, desperate to be free from the stultifying substance. Around the walls, in the gloom, were the spectators. Hundreds of heads, some in clay, others frighteningly real in wax.

  ‘I don’t let many people in here,’ said Covo. ‘They get spooked.’

  ‘By the silence, I imagine,’ said Falcón. ‘One would expect so many faces to be expressing themselves.’

  ‘It reminds people too much of death,’ said Covo. ‘My talent is not artistic. I am a craftsman. I can recreate a face, but I cannot give it life. They are inanimate, without the motivation of soul. I embalm people in wax and clay.’

  ‘The faces coming out of the rock seem animated to me,’ said Falcón.

  ‘I think I’ve started to feel the restraint of my own mortality,’ said Covo. ‘Let me show you our friend.’

  To the right of the block of stone was a table with what looked like four heads under a sheet.

  ‘I made up four copies of his faceless head,’ said Covo. ‘Then I made a series of sketches of how I thought he looked. Finally, I started to build.’

  He lifted the sheet off the first head. It had no nose, mouth or ears.

  ‘Here I’m trying to get the feeling for how much skin and fat would cover the bones,’ said Covo. ‘I’ve looked at the whole body and estimated the extent of his covering.’

  He lifted the sheet off the next two heads.

  ‘Here I’ve been working with the features, trying to fit the nose, mouth, ears and eyes together on the face,’ said Covo. ‘The third one, as you’ve probably noticed, is more decisive. Once I’ve reached this stage I do more sketches, working with hair and colour. This fourth figure I made last night. I painted him and attached the hair just this morning. It’s my best guess.’

  The sheet slipped off to reveal a head with brown eyes, long lashes, aquiline nose, sharp cheekbones, but with the cheeks themselves slightly sunken. The beard was clipped close to the skin, the hair long, dark and flowing and the teeth white and perfect.

  ‘I’m only worried that I may have got carried away,’ said Covo, ‘and made him too dashing.’

  Falcón took photographs, while Covo made a selection from the sketches of other possible looks. By 11 a.m. Falcón was heading back across the river to the Jefatura. He had the sketches scanned and the image of the victim transferred to the computer. He called Pintado and asked him to email the dental X-rays. He put together a page with the corpse’s approximate age, height and weight, the information about the hernia op, tattoos and skull fracture. He called Pablo, who gave him the email address of the right man in the CNI in Madrid who would distribute it to all other intelligence agencies, the FBI and Interpol.

  Ramírez called just as he was leaving.

  ‘I’ve spoken to the vascular surgeon at the hospital,’ he said. ‘He’s identified the hernia mesh taken from the body as one known by the trade name SURUMESH, made by Suru International Ltd of Mumbai in India.’

  ‘Does he use them?’

  ‘For inguinal hernias he uses a German make called TiMESH.’

  ‘You’re learning stuff, José Luis.’

  ‘I’m completely fascinated,’ said Ramírez, drily. ‘He tells me Suru International would probably supply hospitals through medical supplies wholesalers.’

  ‘I’ll speak to Pablo. The CNI can get a list from Suru International.’

  ‘Then they’ve got to contact the hospitals supplied by those wholesalers. It’s quite possible that a hospital takes meshes made by a number of different manufacturers. Then there are the specialist hernia clinics. This is going to take time.’

  ‘We’re moving on a lot of fronts,’ said Falcón. ‘I have a face to work with now. We have dental X-rays. I’m thinking more about America. He had orthodontic work done—’

  ‘Most inguinal hernias occur over the age of forty,’ said Ramírez. ‘Dr Pintado estimates the guy’s hernia op as three years old. So we’re only looking at, say, the last four, maximum five years of hernia operations. Maybe two and a half million ops worldwide.’

  ‘Keep thinking
positively, José Luis.’

  ‘I’ll see you next year.’

  Falcón told him about the meeting with Juez del Rey at midday and hung up. He sent another email about Suru International to his contact in the CNI. He got up to leave again. His personal mobile vibrated, no name came up on the screen. He took the call anyway.

  ‘Diga,’ he said.

  ‘It’s me, Consuelo.’

  He sat down slowly, thinking, my God. His stomach leapt, his blood came alive. His heart beat loudly in his head.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ he said.

  ‘I saw the news about Inés,’ she said. ‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I am and to let you know that I’m thinking of you. I know you must be very busy…so I won’t keep you.’

  ‘Thank you, Consuelo,’ he said, willing something else to come to mind. ‘It’s good to hear your voice again. When I saw you in the street…’

  ‘I’m sorry for that, too,’ she said. ‘It couldn’t be helped.’

  He didn’t know what that meant. He needed something to keep her on the phone. Nothing seemed relevant. His mind was too full of the corpse, hernia meshes and two and a half million ops world-wide.

  ‘I should let you go,’ she said. ‘You must be under a lot of pressure.’

  ‘It was good of you to call.’

  ‘It was the least I could do,’ she said.

  ‘I’d like to hear from you again, you know.’

  ‘I’m thinking of you, Javier,’ she said, and it was all over.

  He sat back, looking at the phone as if her voice was still inside it. She’d kept his number for four years. She was thinking of him. Do these things have meaning? Was that just social convention? It didn’t feel like it. He saved her number.

  The car park at the back of the Jefatura was brutally hot, the car windscreens blinded by the sun in the clear sky. Falcón sat in the car with the air conditioning blasting into his face. Those few sentences, the sound of her voice, had opened up a whole chapter of memory which he’d closed off for years. He shook his head and pulled out of the Jefatura car park. He headed for El Cerezo the back way, via the Expo ground, crossing the river at the Puente del Alamillo. He arrived at the bombsite at the same time as Ramírez.

  ‘Any news about the electricians?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘Pérez called. They’ve been through seventeen building sites. Nothing.’

  ‘What’s Ferrera doing?’

  ‘She’s chasing down witnesses who might have seen our friend with the hernia being dumped in the bin on Calle Boteros.’

  They went into the pre-school. Juez del Rey was alone, waiting for them in the classroom. They sat down on the edges of the school desks. Del Rey folded his arms and stared into the floor. He gave them a perfect recap of the major findings of the investigation so far. He didn’t use notes. He got all the names of the Moroccan witnesses correct. He had the whole timetable of what had happened in and around the mosque, in his head. He’d decided to make an impression on the two detectives and it worked. Falcón felt Ramírez relax. Calderón’s replacement was no fool.

  ‘The two most significant recent developments in the investigation concern me the most,’ said del Rey. ‘Ricardo Gamero’s suicide and the belief that his source was working as a double agent.’

  ‘We had a sighting of Gamero by a security guard in the Archaeological Museum in the Parque María Luisa,’ said Falcón. ‘We’ve got a police artist working on some sketches of the older man he was seen talking to.’

  ‘I’ll call Serrano,’ said Ramírez, ‘see how that’s going.’

  ‘I’m not convinced that a sense of failure at preventing this bomb attack from taking place was enough to drive a man like Gamero to suicide,’ said del Rey. ‘There’s something more. Failure is too general. Feeling personally responsible is what drives people to kill themselves.’

  ‘The police artist didn’t have much luck with the security guard last night,’ said Ramírez, coming back from his call. ‘He’s been with him again this morning. They should have something by lunchtime.’

  ‘I’m not convinced by Miguel Botín as a double, either,’ said del Rey. ‘His brother was maimed by an Islamic terrorist bomb, for God’s sake. Can you see someone like that being turned?’

  ‘He was a convert,’ said Falcón. ‘He took his religion very seriously. It’s difficult to know what sort of impression a charismatic radical preacher could make on someone like that. We have the example of Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the London bombers, who was transformed from a special needs teacher into a radical militant.’

  ‘We don’t know what the relationship between Miguel Botín and his injured brother was like, either,’ said Ramírez.

  ‘I’m also uncomfortable about the electricians and the fake council inspectors. I don’t buy the CNI line that they were a terrorist cell. The CNI seem to me to be trying to cram square information into a round hole.’

  There was a knock at the door. A policeman put his head round.

  ‘The forensics have been working their way through the rubble above the storeroom in the mosque,’ he said. ‘They’ve found a fireproof, shock-proof metal box. It’s been taken to the forensic tent and they thought you might like to be there when they open it.’

  28

  Seville—Thursday, 8th June 2006, 12.18 hrs

  Outside the pre-school everybody was wearing masks against the stench and Falcón, Ramírez and del Rey walked with their hands clasped over their mouths and noses. There was an anteroom to the main body of the forensics’ tent, where they all dressed in white hooded boiler suits and put on masks. The interior of the tent was air conditioned down to 22°C. Five forensic teams were currently working at the site. All of them had stopped for the opening of the box. Something within the human psyche making it impossible, even for forensics, to resist the mystery of a closed, secure container.

  A dictaphone was tested and set in the middle of the table. The leader of the forensic team nodded to the judge and detectives as they gathered around. His hands, in latex gloves, were spread on either side of a red metal box. Next to him was a shallow cardboard evidence box, dated and with the address of the Imam’s apartment on the lid. Inside were three small plastic bags containing keys. A white-suited figure nudged into Falcón. It was Gregorio.

  ‘This could be interesting if those keys open that box,’ he said. ‘Two sets came from the desk and one from the kitchen of the Imam’s apartment.’

  ‘Are we ready?’ asked the forensics team leader. ‘Here we are on Thursday, 8th June 2006 at 12.24 hours. We have a sealed metal box, which has sustained some blast damage to the lid, although the lock still appears to be sound. We are going to attempt to open this box, using keys taken from the Imam’s apartment during a search of those premises on Wednesday, 7th June 2006.’

  He rejected the first sachet of keys but selected the next one and poured the two keys into his hand. He fitted one of the identical keys into the lock, turned it, and the lid sprang open.

  ‘The box has been successfully opened by a key found in the kitchen drawer of the Imam’s apartment.’

  He opened the lid and lifted out three coloured plastic folders, thick with folded paper. This emptied the box, which was removed to another table. He opened up the first green folder.

  ‘Here we have one sheet of writing in Arabic script, which has been paper-clipped to what appears to be a set of architect’s drawings.’

  He opened out the drawings, which proved to be a detailed plan of a secondary school in San Bernardo. The other two folders followed the same pattern. The second set of drawings featured the plan of a primary school in Triana, and the third, the biology faculty on Avenida de la Reina Mercedes.

  Silence, while the men and women of the forensic teams contemplated their find. Falcón could feel the minds in the room working their way towards more and more uneasy conclusions. Each Islamic terrorist atrocity had released new viral strains of horror into the body of the West. No sooner had the
West become reconciled to men as bombs, than they had to accept women as bombs, and even children as bombs. It seemed sickeningly obvious now that car bombs would transmute to boats as bombs, and then planes as bombs. Finally the atrocities would no longer remain at a distance in the Middle East, Far East or America, but come to Madrid and London. Then there was the unimaginable. The stuff that would make a horror novelist tremble at night: executions beamed around the world of men and women being beheaded with kitchen knives. And finally Beslan: children held hostage, given no food or water, explosives hung over their heads. How is an ordinary mind supposed to work under these conditions of easy contagion?

  ‘Were they going to blow these places up?’ asked a voice.

  ‘Take hostages,’ said a woman. ‘Look, they’re after kids from five years old up to twenty-five years old.’

  ‘Bastards.’

  ‘Is there nothing these people won’t do? Are there no fucking boundaries?’

  ‘I think,’ said Juez del Rey, quick to put a lid on the mounting hysteria, ‘that we should wait until we have translations of the Arabic script in our hands before we jump to conclusions.’

  It was not the voice of reason that people wanted to hear. Not just yet, anyway. They’d been waiting a long time to get their hands on solid evidence and now they’d found something spectacular they wanted to vent some of their anger. Del Rey sensed this. He moved things along once more.

  ‘As a precaution, these three buildings should be searched. If there was a plan to seize them it’s possible that weaponry has been stored there.’

  Everybody nodded, glad to see that even the man from Madrid suffered the same paranoia, the same corrupted brain circuit as themselves.

  ‘Let’s get these drawings and the Arabic texts through the forensic process as soon as possible. We need those translations fast,’ he said.

  ‘There’s something else,’ said the forensics team leader. ‘The bomb disposal people have come across something interesting on the explosives front.’