'This is what we're concerned about here,' said Pablo, enthused by Elvira seeing his point of view. 'Are we experiencing a series of diversionary jabs prior to the main attack-something on the scale of the World Trade Center in New York?'
'What we need to know,' said Ramirez, tiring of all the conjecture, 'is where our investigation here, in Seville, should be heading.'
'There is no Juez de Instruccion until Sergio del Rey arrives from Madrid,' said Elvira. 'The Madrid CGI have been pulling in all contacts of Hammad and Saoudi for interviews, but so far they appear to have been operating alone. The Guardia Civil have successfully plotted the route taken by the Peugeot Partner from Madrid to the safe house near Valmojado, where it is believed they were keeping the hexogen. They are having difficulties plotting the route taken by the vehicle from Valmojado down to Seville. There are concerns that it diverted on its route.'
'Where was the last sighting of the Peugeot Partner?' asked Falcon.
'Heading south on the NIV/E5. It stopped at a service station near Valdepenas. The concern is that ninety kilometres later the road forks. The NIV continues to Cordoba and Seville, while the N323/E902 goes to Jaen and Granada. They are looking at both routes, but it's not easy to track a particular white van amongst the thousands on the roads. Their only chance is if the vehicle stopped and the two men got out so that someone could identify them, as happened at the service station near Valdepenas.'
'Which means there's a distinct possibility that there's more hexogen elsewhere,' said Pablo. 'Our job at the moment is to find out what connections Botin made, and we'll be speaking to his partner, Esperanza, this morning.'
'That's great,' said Ramirez. 'But what are we supposed to do? Keep searching for the non-existent electricians and council inspectors? We're looking like incompetents at the moment. Juez Calderon was doing a good job of protecting us from too much media attention. Now he's in a police cell. A CGI antiterrorist agent has committed suicide and his source could be a double agent. We're at crisis point here. Our squad can't just carry on as we were.'
'Until we receive forensic information from inside the mosque, there's not a lot else we can do,' said Falcon. 'We can go back to the congregation of the mosque and interview them about Miguel Botin, see what that throws up. But I believe we should keep hammering away at the electricians and council inspectors-who do exist. They have been seen. And if I understand the CNI correctly, the council inspectors created a pretext so that the electricians could plant a bomb. They are the perpetrators of this atrocity. We have to find them and the people who sent them. That, as the Grupo de Homicidios, is our goal.'
'But possibly one that you can only achieve through quality intelligence,' said Elvira. 'Are they part of an Islamic terrorist cell or not? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the history of Miguel Botin, who gave their card to the Imam.'
'And what about the Imam?' said Ramirez, not wanting to be thwarted. 'Where is he in all this? Has the CNI search of his apartment been completed? Can we have their findings? Has access to his history finally been granted to someone who's allowed to tell us?'
'We can't access it because we do not hold it,' said Pablo.
'Who does hold it?'
'The Americans.'
'Did you find a heavily annotated copy of that edition of the Koran in the Imam's apartment?' asked Falcon.
'No.'
'So you don't think he was in the loop?' said Ramirez.
'We don't know enough to be able to answer that question.'
The meeting broke up soon after that exchange. The CNI and CGI men left the pre-school together. Elvira asked Falcon to attend the press conference in the Andalucian Parliament building when the new judge arrived, to show a united front. Ramirez was waiting outside the classroom.
'I'm sorry for your loss, Javier,' he said, holding him by the shoulder and shaking his hand. 'I know you and Ines had grown apart, but…it's a terrible thing. I hope you didn't go to the crime scene.'
'I did,' said Falcon. 'I don't know what I was thinking. They told me over the phone that he'd been identified as Juez Calderon and that he'd been trying to dispose of a body. I don't know why…I just didn't think it would be Ines.'
'Did he do it?'
'I went to talk to him in the patrol car. All he said was: 'I didn't do it.''
Ramirez shook his head. Denial was a very common psychological state for husbands when they murdered their wives.
'There's going to be a feeding frenzy,' said Ramirez. 'A lot of people have been waiting for this moment.'
'You know, Jose Luis, the worst thing…' said Falcon, struggling, 'was that she was very badly bruised over her torso, down her left side…and it was old bruising.'
'He'd been beating her?'
'Her face was completely clear.'
'You'd better take the riot squad with you into that press conference,' said Ramirez. 'They're going to go mad if they hear about that.'
'Ines came round to my house the other night,' said Falcon. 'She was behaving very strangely. I thought for a moment she wanted to get back with me, but now I think she was trying to tell me what was happening to her.'
'Did she seem in pain at all?' asked Ramirez, preferring to stick to the facts.
'She was swearing like I'd never heard her swear before and, yes, she did hold on to her side at one point,' said Falcon. 'She was furious with him for all his…'
'Yes, we know,' said Ramirez, who hadn't banked on this level of intimacy.
Falcon's eyes filled, his mind taking its grief in gulps. Ramirez squeezed his shoulder with his huge mahogany hand.
'We'd better start thinking about today,' said Falcon. 'Did you manage to read that file about the unidentified body found at the dump on Monday?'
'Not yet.'
'We don't get that many dead bodies in Seville,' said Falcon. 'And in my career I have never come across such a disfigured corpse, and poisoned with cyanide, too. And all this happens days before a bomb goes off in the city.'
'There doesn't have to be a connection,' said Ramirez, wary of letting himself in for more fruitless work.
'But before we get a ton of forensic information from the mosque, I'd like to see if there is one,' said Falcon. 'At least I'd like to identify the victim. It might open up another pathway into this situation.'
'Any pointers before I start reading?'
'The Medico Forense thought he was mid forties, long-haired, desk bound but tanned and didn't wear shoes very much. He had traces of hashish in his blood. There was also tattoo ink in the lymph nodes, which is the reason his hands were severed: they had tattoos on them, small ones, but presumably distinctive.'
'Sounds like a university type to me,' said Ramirez, who was suspicious of anybody with too much education. 'Post-graduate?'
'Or maybe a professor trying to recapture his youth?'
'Spanish?'
'Olive-skinned,' said Falcon. 'He'd had a hernia op. The Medico Forense removed the mesh. See if you can get a match for it, find the company that supplied it and to which hospital. Of course, he might have had it done abroad…'
'Do you want me to do this on my own?'
'Take Ferrera with you. She's done some work on this already,' said Falcon. 'Perez, Serrano and Baena can tour the construction sites of Seville, especially any with immigrant labour. Tell them they have to find the electricians.'
'Didn't I hear someone say that you were having a model made of this guy's head-the one from the dump?'
'The sculptor's a friend of the Medico Forense,' said Falcon. 'I'll follow that up.' 'You missed your session last
