the surrounding blocks and people in the street. Where's Cristina?'
'She should still be working those blocks on Calle Los Romeros,' said Falcon. 'What we need to find is someone who was inside the mosque in the last forty-eight hours to corroborate what we're hearing about on the outside. What about that woman, Esperanza, who gave Comisario Elvira the list-didn't she leave a number? Call her and get some names and addresses. Those women must know.'
'Hasn't anybody from the Moroccan community approached the Comisario yet?'
'Somebody turned up with the Mayor,' said Falcon. 'You know what it's like. They've got to contain the media before they can give us any practical help.'
'You remember that mosque they wanted to build over in Los Bermejales?' said Ramirez. 'A huge place, big enough for seven hundred worshippers. There was a protest group organized by the locals called Los Vecinos de Los Bermejales.'
'That's right, they had a website, too, called www.mezquitanogracias.com. There were a lot of accusations about xenophobia, racism and anti-Muslim activity, especially after March 11th.'
'Maybe we should look up some of the personalities from that dispute,' said Ramirez. 'Or is that too obvious?'
'Keep working on what happened inside and outside the building in the last forty-eight hours,' said Falcon. 'In the end there are two possibilities: explosives were brought here by terrorists and accidentally exploded, or an anti-Muslim group has planted a bomb and set it off. There are a lot of complications within those scenarios, but those are the two basic concepts. Let's work with the information we find, rather than getting distracted by the possibilities.'
Falcon hung up. The saws had stopped. The workmen were shovelling out rubble by hand. Two more props, planks and lights were called for. Men ran up the ladders with the equipment. Props were passed in. Torches were trained into the hole. A single saw ripped into some steel and stopped. A length of metal rod was flung out followed by more rubble. Four paramedics leaned against their ambulance, waiting for their turn in the drama. Two cradle stretchers with straps were brought to the foot of the ladders by the rescue teams. Fernando was concentrating on his breathing, under orders from his trauma counsellor. There was a shout for a doctor. A Medico Forense stepped up the ladder with his bag and crawled down the tunnel. There was silence, apart from the rumble of the insulated diesel generators. The diggers had stopped work. The drivers were out of their cabs watching. There was a collective need to wring some hope out of this calamitous day.
Another shout, this time for a stretcher. The doctor backed out on all fours and came down the ladder, while two men from the rescue services dragged the stretcher up the other ladder. Fernando came off his haunches and in seconds was on the doctor, holding him by the sleeves of his shirt. The doctor grasped Fernando by the shoulders and spoke directly into his eyes. The tension in their strange embrace made them look like judoists, struggling for the upper hand. Fernando's hands fell to his sides. The doctor put his arm around him and beckoned the counsellor. Fernando leaned into him like a lost child. The doctor spoke to the trauma counsellor over Fernando's shoulder.
The doctor trotted over to the paramedics, who radioed through to the hospital. He talked directly with the emergency room. The paramedics reversed the ambulance up to the ladders, opened the double doors, prepared the trolley with a head, neck and spine immobilizer, turned on the oxygen, charged the defibrillator.
The workmen, who'd plunged into the hole after the doctor had backed out, now called the rescue workers in with the stretcher. The Medico Forense joined Falcon, just as Calderon came round from the front of the building.
'Have we got a survivor in there?' asked Calderon.
'The woman is dead,' said the doctor, 'but her child is hanging on. She's breathing and there's a thready pulse. The mother seems to have fallen with her body protecting the child, as much as possible, from the debris falling on top of them. The problem is to get the girl out. The mother's back is facing the rescue workers, so they've got to lift the child up and over her body and there's no room in there. If the child has a spinal injury, just the movement could cause permanent paralysis, but if she stays there much longer she'll die.'
The workmen roared from the mouth of the hole and held their thumbs up. The rescue workers slid the steel cradle stretcher out, mounted it on the ladder's sliders and lowered it to the paramedics, who lifted the girl out, on the count, and fitted her into the immobilizer. Two television crews came running, pursued by local police. The Medico Forense made a full report to Calderon. The pneumatic drills, saws and diggers started up again as if galvanized by this thin slice of hope. Falcon got into the ambulance cab. The trolley was lifted into the back, followed by Fernando. A cameraman was pushed back roughly by one of the workmen. The door closed on a woman's microphone. The driver leapt into his seat and set the siren off. He drove slowly over the rough ground until he got back on to the tarmac. Photojournalists stormed the side and back of the ambulance, holding cameras up to the windows and flashing away. The lurid lights, hysterical siren and the sprinting journalists left pedestrians gaping and slack-faced.
The news of a survivor travelled faster than the ambulance and there was a media scrum, battling it out with a dozen local policemen and hospital orderlies, at the entrance to the hospital. The ambulance ramp was clear and they got the girl out and through the swing doors before the newsmen could get near her. Fernando was sucked in after her. The media rounded on Falcon, who they'd seen in the ambulance cab, and he steadied their hysteria by informing them that the girl had been removed from the destroyed building showing signs of life. A doctor would make a full statement once he'd completed his examination. Falcon held up his hand and pushed back the barrage of questions that followed.
Ten minutes later he'd picked up his car from the Forensic Institute and was easing his way out through a gaggle of journalists still desperate for his final words. He crossed the river and went into the old Expo ground. He found Informaticalidad in an office that fronted a large warehouse on Calle Albert Einstein. He showed his police ID to the woman in reception and told her he wanted an immediate interview with Pedro Plata in connection with a murder investigation. He gave her his stoniest policeman's stare and she phoned through. Sr Plata was in a board meeting but would make himself available in a few minutes. She took him through security to an office with glass walls on all sides. The receptionist was still the only visible person. There was a lack of movement in the building, as if business was slow, even dead.
Pedro Plata arrived with the receptionist, who set down two coffees and left. He had only been responsible for buying the property so could offer no help in explaining how it had been used.
'Any reason why you bought it rather than rented it?'
'Only if you assure me this is not going to get back to the tax authorities, or be used against this company in any way.'
'My job is finding murderers.'
'We had some black money to get rid of.'
'And its use wasn't discussed at a board meeting?'
'Not one I attended,' said Plata. 'It was Diego Torres's idea, he's the Human Resources Director, you'd best talk to him.'
More time leaked past. The chill of the air conditioning and his exposure in the glass office made him feel like an Arctic zoo animal. Diego Torres arrived and before he'd even sat down Falcon asked him how they'd used the apartment.
'We try to encourage our employees to think creatively, not just about our business but business in general,' said Torres. 'Where will the next opportunities come from? Is there another strand that we can attach to our core business? Is there another business out there that could improve our own, or help it to grow? Is there a totally different project that could be worth investing in? These sorts of things.'
'And you think you can achieve that by investing in a small apartment, in an anonymous block, in a poor neighbourhood of Seville?'
'That was a conscious decision,' said Torres. 'Our employees complained that they never had time to think creatively, they were always too busy with the work at hand. They came to us demanding 'brainstorming time'. A lot of companies offer this and it normally consists of sending employees away to an expensive country club, where they attend meetings and seminars, listen to gurus spouting common sense and charging a fortune, interspersed with tennis, swimming and staying up until five in the morning partying.'
'They must have been very disappointed by your solution,' said Falcon. 'How many employees did you lose?'
