Falcon’s mind slipped again and he saw Eloisa Gomez servicing her clients in the backs of cars and in her room until she got the call, the call she’d been waiting for all day. The call she’d been thinking of as her disembodied voice sobbed and whimpered under the bestial intrusions of her trade. The call that touched her so lightly, the words like a feather on a child’s ear, and it moved her, turned her, flipped her stomach over her heart. Such a gross seduction of someone who would start when the shadows moved, could only have been pulled off by another who had made a study of human nature with his own very specific purposes in mind. In his own way the killer was as brutally demanding as any client.
The only interesting thing to be derived from the report was that it looked as if the killer had taken Eloisa Gomez to the cemetery on Saturday morning, probably when it first opened, and had killed her there.
Ramirez arrived with the rest of the group at 8.30 a.m. They were briefed on the latest developments and given the profile of the killer, who would now be referred to as ‘Sergio’. If the killer had strangled the girl in the cemetery on Saturday morning then it was clear that he’d returned at night to put her in the Jimenez mausoleum. This would mean that he probably had transport and also accommodation in Seville. This galvanized the group. The idea that he was local made it somehow personal. Fernandez, Baena and Serrano would take the area in and around the cemetery and try to find someone who’d seen Eloisa Gomez there on Saturday morning. The killer may have parked his car in the vicinity when he came back to deal with the body, so the security people in the industrial zone would have to be interviewed, given that the narrow passage at the back of the cemetery was the likely way in for Sergio.
A different strategy was going to be used on Sra Jimenez. Ramirez would ask to look at the packing cases held in the Mudanzas Triana warehouse and also date all the different shots in the
Sub-Inspector Perez provided the list of directors of major building contractors still existing who had been involved in the development of the Expo ‘92 site. Falcon sent him down to Mudanzas Triana to continue Baena’s work interviewing the employees. He wanted to know if any odd people had been seen in the depot and to find out about the storage warehouse, who ran it and who had access to it.
Alone, Falcon looked down the list of building companies and counted forty-seven. He consulted Perez’s original list and found that only one company had ceased to exist since the completion of the Expo site — MCA Consultores S.A.
Falcon went to the Chamber of Commerce and looked up MCA, whose activities were described as building security consultants, giving advice on structure, design and materials in high-traffic buildings. He flicked through three years of accounts in which the company had generated between 400 million and 600 million pesetas a year until its closure at the end of 1992. An address was given on Republica de Argentina. The directors of the company leapt off the page: Ramon Salgado, Eduardo Carvajal, Marta Jimenez and Firmin Leon. He wondered what Ramon Salgado knew about building security — about as much as Raul Jimenez’s incapacitated daughter, Marta. At least Comisario Leon had a job that was vaguely connected, but it did not persuade Falcon that this wasn’t just a shell company channelling funds to Raul Jimenez and his valued friends. And Eduardo Carvajal … why did that name mean something to him?
He photocopied the documents and went back to the Jefatura. As he pulled into the car park he remembered that Carvajal’s name had come up in a case that was still being talked about when he’d arrived from Madrid to take up his new post. The police computer revealed that Eduardo Carvajal had been part of a convicted paedophile ring but had never faced trial. He’d been killed in a car crash on the Costa del Sol in 1998. He called Comisario Lobo for a meeting.
Before going up he took his messages, which included one from the Cadiz Police, saying they were bringing Eloisa Gomez’s sister up for the identification of the body and another from his doctor, asking why he’d failed to keep his appointment. He called Dr Valera and told him about his father’s paintings in the waiting room.
‘Has it occurred to you, Javier, that this is something you should talk about?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘but if it did, then I would not want to talk to somebody who … ‘
“Who what?’ said Valera.
‘Who thinks he knows my father.’
‘You have to credit these people with more intelligence … ‘
‘Do I?’ said Falcon. ‘You never went to his openings, Dr Fernando.’
‘This might be difficult,’ said Valera. ‘He was a very famous man.’
‘But not everybody is interested in art.’
They hung up. Falcon went up to see Lobo, who took the photocopies and pored over them like a man about to feast on small children. He asked how Falcon had come across the documents.
‘Of all the companies directly involved in the building of Expo ‘92, this was the only one that had ceased to exist. I asked Sub-Inspector Perez —’
‘You know Perez and Ramirez have been friends for years?’ Lobo interrupted.
‘I’ve noticed they talk.’
‘How relevant is this to the investigation?’
‘With the killing of Eloisa Gomez I think this case has taken a different turn,’ said Falcon. The soured business relationship may have been an initial motive but now, I think, this killer is operating on his own.’
‘I’ve heard Ramirez has other ideas and Juez Calderon, too.’
‘I’ve sent Inspector Ramirez round to see Sra Jimenez on his own. He’ll apply a different kind of pressure to me. We’ll see if he’s satisfied or not,’ said Falcon. ‘As for Juez Calderon, I think he’s open-minded. He has a practical, rather than obsessive, attitude to our prime suspect.’
‘You think Ramirez obsessive?’
‘Sra Jimenez is just the kind of woman that Inspector Ramirez despises. I think she represents a change in the order of things that he is not yet ready for.’
Lobo nodded, went back to the documents.
‘Who on this list could you talk to privately?’ he asked.
